1/1 LowViz Lurker

I voted hound. Looks good in robot mode, fun to play with in car mode. I like the dark green colour. I also like the gun he has but it's a bit small. The main highlight is the way the wheels spring up and down. Two negatives: -empty space under the chest -arms are too short and not well articulated! I like long arms and ham fists like silverstreak's One surprise: -OMFG! the gun sits inside the extra tyre thing on the back. Awesome idea! I think sideswipe is ok (my first alt) if you can find a nice alternative transformation where you place the doors inside the empty space where the boot is on his back in bot mode. I tried this and now he looks ok. That empty space is now filled up with the doors bent all the way backwards and tucked inside, so it now appears like a backpack of some sort. He looks pretty cool this way - kind of like folded-up bat wings. Everyone should try this out. Don't worry nothing will break.

just use google cache: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:v05Feje...ternators&hl=en Just bought deadend today btw yippie. I wish I could find grimlock! Why on earth do so many shops get one type of each friggin toy!?!? argh So stupid..I wish I would just buy them when I wanted rather than wasting so much time going back and forth.

Why would it be even more effective? Robots are more versatile and the hands might be necessary in situations where physically gripping objects is required. The macross mechs in particular were aircraft that transformed into humanoid mechs. In the area of exploration you can think of it as a giant protective suit with manipulator hands to collect items without the need for a seperate vehicle. If there was ever a problem say opening a giant door (the aliens happened to be giants) then you could do all this yourself without waiting for other people to assist you. In fact, in the scene in macross where Max is trying to rescue Misa Hikaru and Kakizaki, I can think of several instances where having a humanoid shape with human hands would have helped. - picking up any forgiegn objects to use against the enemy. Like giants' rifle. - opening any doors with handles. (we are creatures with an opposable thumb. It makes sense giants would have objects designed to be gripped from two sides.) - fighting in close combat against a giant. "But destroids can do that too", you say. Not the intuitive way we normally fight as humans though. The gundam ones were merely a convenience due to the use of robots for contstruction. Making them used for war wouldn't have been a hassle since robots would have been common and essentially all the things you can put on a box you can put on a robot. So why not combine the two if it would not have been a hassle to design a robot that could also fight? The question shouldn't be: why make a robot do these tasks when we already have seperate vehicles doing them? It should be: The robot technology is advanced enough, (lets just assume in the future we do come across mithril-like materials to make suits less heavy) now why don't we just combine all the things our box does with the things our robot can do? To create a robot that can fight? (and manipulate objects, and be used for exploration, and to help with construction, amoung many other things) Similar to how we already have tank-like bots with guns attached to them? Why not make thier controls more intuitive so they are more like humans in thier controls? The robot or mech doesn't NEED to be humanoid shape: but that's how we are used to controlling and manipulating things which is why surgeons can do remote surgury on patients without being there. I think by making something immediately intuitive it eliminates all the hassle of making a person learn and train themselves to be experts with the controls for something when they can instinctively know the controls from the use of thier own nerves in controlling thier own body. Now imagine if we had entered a space age and the world decided earth was going to be destroyed soon and we needed to mass produced spacesuits or something? A mechanical robot suit would be perfect for walking vehicle in hostile planetary environments without bogging down the layman in complex controls. Think of the difference between using a joystick to aim a gunsight in a videogame versus using a lightgun to do the exact same thing? They both achieve the same thing in trying to take out an enemy, but one is just more intuitive. (a trigger and a tube which you can look from to centre a target near your eye.) You know of all the living organisms on planet earth that makes us special: it is our intelligence over other animals, and our opposable thumb to make tools. Without the thumb we might not have been able to make clubs to beat other people with or to grip objects or do other useful things (any activity that involves gripping: like climbing a tree, picking up rocks to throw, using our hands to feed ourself etc. We'd be like the other organisms that feed themselves the normal way but never be efficient at anything due to our tool-making skills which would be impossible without hands. If you were an amputee you might start realising how important your hands were. Although a vehicle with guns on its body seems more useful, it is a vehicle designed for a specific thing. The box doesn't do anything other than act as a weapon. You can't disarm a dangerous bomb, you can't grab an item or push objects into a position (say there is a giant slab of concrete you need to push or grab to move it aside, or a precious set of items that needs to be collected from a dangerous environment underwater?), you can't use it to do physical tasks that a human would be able to do if they were a giant. Notice how in macross the giants could be used to help the human in construction after the holocaust? Thier magnified strength was very useful here. If real giants actually existed I can totally imagine cleanup jobs would be even more quick than humans with machines. First of all giants don't need to train to use the equipment because thier own body would do a simple task like lifting a heavy load instinctively. Second, thier own body moves instantly without the need to think about how to control it. Running, jumping, climbing etc are not things that need to be co-ordinated mechanically because they have some existing "muscle memory" about how these tasks are done. When you are able to do tasks without thinking: say like walking, shooting, jumping, diving, crawling, just looking around etc it allows you to concentrate on other things so your brain is freed up and able to concentrate on other more important tasks other than movement; just as if you had been the robot itself. In summary of all this, a robot/mech is more versatile (ie can be used for more tasks just like our own human body can) and multitasking than a specialised vehicle. Up close I can imagine a set of manual tasks a soldier would be better suited to by being in some protected mechanical suit as opposed to at the controls of a box-shaped fighter plane armed with ONLY weapons and suited to ONLY specific purposes. (ie blowing stuff up) If such a vehicle existed you would still need men inside the vehicle to protect themselves in some way with a suit, when they got out, or in the instance of the environment just being too dangerous (mines that blow up? buildings whose sturcture could collapse?) and relying on remote piloted robots to do certain tasks too dangerous to risk human life over. When troops bailed out of the box: say we were now in space or on some kind of planet with hostile environment but had alien enemies to fight against? Combat situations necessitating the use of hand-carried light weapons, or enhanced strength? - the miitary would still see an interest in filling this gap. With an exosuit, you could at least continue the fight with heavy weapons like in mospeada right? Especially if the aliens were both big/heavily armoured AND fast.) Any use of limbs to make the control and response time faster for pilots has got to be a good thing for noobs with no experience: like opening a hatch with the mechanical hands. This is how we would explore environment in the first person (us being there as opposed to looking through a camera): create robots/mechs/suits with the humanoid form to mimmick our own body. If the machine can be operated by a single person who can move efficiently due to intuitive humanoid controls, it is worth developing specialised suits (armed with weapons) over. You can still have your box with weapons, but mecha and robots can be useful for more than just fighting: exploration in hostile enviroments, construction, maintenance and repair, along with the usual need as a general human-sized suit used for protection at the same time as carrying heavy loads and packing more heavy firepower. No one is saying we can't have several classes of robot/mechs: some small, some large, some gigantic, some good for flight, some for ground, some for exploration only, some for civilian use, some just to repair and aid in building (like the repair guys in starcraft), some as just drones without pilots etc.. This is no different to how we can still use tanks, and still use people on the ground with antitank weaponry. One doesn't automatically eliminate the existance of the other. What if the enemy made a weapon perfect for killing our anti-tank guys,...and then followed up with weapons that were perfect against our tanks but had no weakness? You use combinations of weapons for different purposes and to eliminate weakness/deficiencies of the other. While it is true our soldiers on foot with the right weapons armed, can take out an enemy tank, enemy soldiers can kill our antitank soldiers (which were designed to take out the enemy tanks) too. If the enemy successfully kills a whole bunch of our anti tank guys through good planning.....then those enemy tanks are now still a good threat to us...got the idea? By mixing different types of weapons you can still make good use of things with obvious weaknesses. A mech which was once soo vulnerable is now clear to do some serious damage once certain obstacles are out of the way. Not even an aircraft is perfect since enemies might have a strong anti-air defense against it. (something like mech snipers armed with some mysterious optical and radar stealth technology patrolling a zone on the ground?)

The best way to make mechs plausible is to assume the human race in some way has access to ultra light but almost indestructible alien materials. Also the idea of man actually creating antigravity in the future rather than only fantasising about it in sci-fi as something we might be able to use, can allow some of the stuff you see (for example the hover-car in appleseed) IF there wasn't some interest to supress information. (in order to protect existing industries) Ancient myths talk of people flying around in ships. I can imagine a mech running, jumping, falling, rolling, hovering in one spot, and dodging fire the way you see in anime if the world spent all it's resources towards building robots with light indestructible materials or allowing research into anti grav. Maybe mechs could even match some of the movement seen with ufo sightings (darting back and forth, coming to a dead stop, accelerating instantly etc with no killing of the poor pilot due to them being in some reduced gravitational field?) The whole "aliens gave us technology" theme in macross is interesting since if the stuff man inherited by another race happened in real life, it would open the doors to all sorts of flying and ground vehicles that did not have all the wieght problems associated with the typical robots. I thought that the depiction of the mech more as a "suit" in appleseed was the closest to a plausible mech for a few reasons: -pilot treats movement like thier own. If you want to run, you just run. Want to throw a punch or grab something? You just do it. Forget the clumsy controls associated with vehicles. You will need to aim your weapons at small targets as if the arm was your own. And sometimes locking onto targets is slower up close. You are not going to wait for the computer to target a person when you can raise your arm and aim manually. Especially when there is more than one target and all of them have thier fingers on the trigger - no time to lock on buddy just shoot!. (don't think of the scene in robocop where the guy looks at the targets first and just walks into the room absorbing the damage: that is slow. A dude with a rocketlauncher won't stand there but try to hide and seek cover - leaving you vulnerable if you can barely move.) -they were assisted with backpacks and antigravity making thier speed worth building the armor in the first place. Again I like suits that fly or can at least hover a few feet off the ground quickly. A suit should not just be like body armour that is worn, but more like a mini machine with rocket boost like the exoskeleton in mospeada. (perhaps instead of wheels on the shoulder they could somehow design wheels on the mech's feet along with a retractable third wheel on the back like R2d2 has in starwars? This way there is no need to walk when you can scoot along or roller blade.) -there appeared to be shock-absorbing and dampening in the way the limbs worked. Similar to like when you jump on a trampoline and the more force and weight you apply to your feet, the higher you propel yourself up due to potential energy being converted from the weight and energy you applied with your legs. (no wasted energy) Also the more weight applied the more resistance the machine gave back. Simple. To me the shock and stresses should be lessened and no energy wasted by adding some kind of springlike effect to the knees, ankles etc. Because when it runs you will need limbs that absorb shock and provide force feedback in the feet to give the springlike "kangaroo effect" we all wish we had as humans. If they can somehow get those existing running robots to "feel" how much weight and force they are applying to the legs and scan thier height off the ground, then this information can be used to modify the way the legs should touch the ground without breakig anything. If you want to leap, you are going to need a brain that senses how high you just leaped from the ground to modify the legs to absorb a certain amount of shock, but not too much that you will bounce around and lose balance and fall over. To me any suit that can move and haul ass will in the end, be more plausible for the fact that movement should be intuitive rather than vehicluar. Indoor missions would be easier and you could do things more silently. But you would be able to carry more weapons and do more damage, so long as somewhere along the way we find materials like that in all the fantasy and sci-fiction shows. (ie mithril, gundamium alloy etc ) I don't think a suit has to be too "indestructibe" but it has to be intuitive to the pilot, so that when they move, they really haul ass and can deal with whatever close range situation they come up against as if they weren't wearing anything. Being a smaller target than a vehicle (and rivalling it in speed) but packing firepower to take out bigger vehicles and infantry should be the goal of a mech. But they don't have to limit the mechs to 1 size: Giant mechs like that in gundam can cover great distances by flying around so people with rocket launchers wouldn't be that much of a threat to them imo. It would be similar to how any flying vehicle (a chopper with a gunner or sniper) could be shot down, but the advantage in overall speed and distance covered is too valuable to sacrifice. No machine is perfect. Even robocop and ED 209 could be killed with those grenade launchers in the movie and robo even got a jetpack upgrade in the 3rd movie I think. but who fared better in most situations? Robocop, (not ed209) because he was a smaller target, could manage indoors much easier due to a more humanoid design (the fact that he didn't have weapons fixed to his body meant he could use his hands to pick up the grenade launcher) and in sensitive situations (like the scene where the guy has a hostage and makes demands) he could still sneak in and take the enemy by surprise.

I just hope these don't suddenly malfunction and turn against us. Or a mad scientist mass produces evil versions of them and takes over the world with a robot army.

Poor kid. What a horrible dad. Why did you not tell him about macross earlier? Show him macross plus and DYRL immediately to further ensure his devotion to macross over gundam. (hide macross 7 from him, just pretend it didn't exist ) See people? This is why macross probably isn't popular anymore, there is a huge generation gap. Kids of today simply don't know what it is. There either needs to be a remake, or a generation who pimps the series to younger generations before it dies out and is replaced entirely.

Do what I do: Use the radar all the time to track where the missiles are coming from. (they should appear as red dots, you have different ranges on the radar if you press 1,2,3 key) Never rely on your main screen to shoot down missiles or enemies because you can shoot at things you can't see onscreen. (this is why I think the beam is semi useful - great long range weapon to wipe out enemies far away, but sucks up close and at medium range, I suppose that's what the support drones are for) Then with your shield fly right into the missiles and use the sword to finish off the enemy launching them once you are in range. It's safe to herd missiles into a straight line since the mech can outfly the missiles... but alwayskeep your eye on that radar so you know where it's coming from and where to point your machine gun at. And don't forget you can always dash suddenly (double click mouse) at sharp angles in an emergency for a instant acceleration for close encounters. I think the sword can kill several things at once and do tremendous damage while the gun should be used to shooting down missiles if you want to fly away from them and have them chase you around. (for exmaple you use the radar to lure them to you, and while flying away from them, you shoot them) I think the last frame has a cool weapon for killing things. Not so boring as the red mech which is a button mashing fest, but requires a little bit of skill and timing to use against groups of enemies. I love the idea of the transforming ability of the first 2 frames, but I wish they would make the beam weapon more useful. Have it charge up quicker or make the mech more manueverable while holding the weapon. This game has too many bugs to take seriously though. There are times where you will come across targets that are invincible.

Do we know either way? Ok so he floats into space with a damaged valk and limited oxygen and magically folds to another location then? (even though his machine has no fold booster) I thought the ending was too weird to make sense of which is why people hated the ending so much..Maybe if there is a movie version made some day (maybe they could include an easter egg appearance of the low visibility vf1a in the background) it can explain the ending better?

These must be civilian valks custom painted by basara. UN spacy probably used more civilians to fight the wars for them. The idea is if you frighten them with ugly paint schemes to scare them away, they will get scared to fight and thier soldiers will be contaminated by the culture forcing them to join humans. High visibility paint schemes make the people using them stand out and in the future it is fashionable to make the valks as garish as possible. (the people were on drugs when they painted them up. Like how it is retro cool for some to go back into the 60s and 70s. Orange gunpods, purple fast packs, multiple skulls where there should only be one, etc "its psychedelic man!" )

It would have been cooler if this toy made an appearance in macross zero. I think people were hoping to see roy fokker beating the anti-un in this lol With black splotches and a mystery pilot! I just imagine it's the ghost of shin from when he died in macross zero.

Everything was kept secret just like how the vf1 wasn't widely known to transform to the public or how the aliens might be giants. The vf1 and maybe a few other planes might be like an area 51 thing where all the cool stuff remains hidden underground and the testing for the transforming machines might be in a heavily guarded restricted area. Who knows? There may even be other VF craft other than the anti-un sv51 mechs and VF0? I wonder if un spacy could have easily used the octos to fight and detect the submerged zentradi regults in the early eps of the tv series.

Just a quick comment: It's important to remember though that SW I was started by us thanks to the main gun firing automatically by itself making us seem like the agressor and making any retaliatory attack extra dangerous (even if it was say, a peaceful race we may be making contact with. What if it wans't zentradi and more like the friendly ET from steven spielberg's movie? And what if this peaceful race, being technologically superior thought we were hostile and used it's weapons against us?) We may not have even fought with the zentradi (and they may have left us well alone because we are microns they are forbidden to interfere with) if it didn't fire. I think even global mentioned that we were supposed to make peace and only use the weapons as a last resort. But after the first shot..so much for peace. Because of the zentradi's greater number and the fact that we had civilians onboard the ship, this complicated matters. There weren't just soliders onboard but civilians who have no business being there and who by rights want to get off but can't. I would think there would be some decisions they would want in on if it concerns their lives too. (note the people onboard had to be lied to about casualties to keep everyone calm. ) In defence of unspacy the shots from the main gun were justified because of the threat of civilians being harmed + zentradi outnumbering us. (they could have easily finished us off just like that but chose not to. Maybe if Kamjin was in charge things would have been different?) Just using the great destructive weapons is still a sensitive issue because of concerns of the enemies power. You don't want to piss off a potential ally or a force much bigger than yours if you know that by just firing your guns you might get anihilated by the enemy in return. (notice how misa couldn't convince those in charge in the grand cannon of the zentradi's superior numbers until it was too late? Civilians were the ones in the line of danger from the retaliatory attack and so they would want ot have some say in how we negotiate with future species of aliens too. Some races might act hostile if you provoke them, other might just be pure evil, but you won't know that for sure if you just fire away first. ) So any actions the military take (that might endanger people) must have some strict controls. You'll note that in macross plus it was all about political correctness. No more room for xenophobia or racism, all those who are half breed zentradi would have equal rights as any human would, and some people like milia would be looked to by the peaceful zentradi to help convert thier brothers and sister in space towards humans side rather than just going around killing anyone that disagrees with unspacy by fighting them. If we could give the zentradi a chance in SW I then others out there might be potential allies if we can persuade them (with love songs) rather than killing them. Remember earth scientists would view the zentradi as the same we might view kids with ADD. :Thier behaviour s not thier fault since they were genetically engineered that way. And all those still out there causing problems don't know any better. So if you are a converted zentradi micron you might be thinking: "we can't turn our back on them, these are our brothers" That's the attitude un spacy should have else the celebrations of peace with humans and zentradi would be pointless.

Still if they changed it so you could move it would be more fun. I'm now getting used to using the 4th frame. Looks like the weakest in armor but it has good speed and is simple to use. I think the sword comes out automatically if you click attack close to its body.

Which is why I think given the sheer number of zentradi, they could afford to just have teams of pods with different weapons co-operating with each other (say a scout for example, and a guy holding the missiles on his mech, and another guy with standard weapons with no missiles, and a heavily armored glaug etc etc) and take a more offensive approach. Whereas the humans may have thought: gee we can only afford to make a few of these vf1s (these are more expensive than destroids but it's worth it: they don't die so easily) and hopefully this expensive stuff doesn't get too shot down easily. Because of this idea of making machines that last: "we will emphasise the speed and flexibility of transformation to save money and increase the life of the average mech. We will also make a kickass fighter to replace the dedicated stuff with this alien tech." ie these are not normal fighter planes, but enhanced in some way that makes them superior in manueverability to anything earth could come up with by themselves. Not all the credit should go to earths scientists after all. An average pilot can now do things he could not have done before through lack of skill and a skilled pilot can really kick ass and not be hamstrung by limits of earth technology. The reason shin was getting his ass kicked so much in macross zero was because his plane could not perform the same manuevers as the transforming mech and he was skilled in only the fighter. The variability is not a gimmick but can be used as part of a fighting style to make the pilots perform in combat better. Where each mode of transformation serves some kind of advantage that dedicated machines (like destroids who each hold of variety of different weapons on a single mech) lack. The VF1 was probably more expensive than a destroid but given that it transforms you have access to a do-anything vehicle type to fullfill several roles and mission types at once and when this is mass produced as the standard (maybe they eventually found cheaper ways to maufacture them over time?), there was no need to over specialise by designing too many new mech designs, since you could just add stuff onto the basic mech to increase its performance. (ie Fast pack, gbp armor, the support drones/bits/funnels you see following Dyson in macross plus for increased firepower etc) Whereas the destroid are armed with variety of different weapons but can barely move, the valkires have only the weapons they need with them. Since being that they transform the range can vary, they would then need weapons that are more "general purpose" rather than "dedicated" to a specific task. Once this was mass produced in greater numbers, it became cheap to make. (like how prices for consumer products go down as more are made to meet demand) When it became cheap to make and manufacturing of the single design became more efficient over time so more of them could be made in shorter space of time, they could then afford to make more of them as cost decreased and funding for the project and further research into improvements into the core design increased. Why have several dedicated machines to fight an unknown enemy whose tactics you may be unfamiliar with, when 1 multipurpose machine is cheaper and more versatile in the long run? Same goes with weaponsystems. If you can manuever enough so as to not get hit, (unlike a destroid which is a sitting duck) you may not need thick armor or heavy weapons, or weapons for different range since given your superior speed, you are in control of where you want the enemy (and where they can attack you from) at all times. An example is Guld's luring of the high manueverability missiles into a single area so he could shoot them down more easily rather than letting them surround him. He could fly through and put them into one side. I think the only reason for the knife in macross plus was as a backup so that if the gunpod ever jammed you weren't completely defenceless. Maybe the yf19 should have been designed to carry a small hand gun in case such a thing happened (and you were left defencless in battroid mode) rather than a silly knife?

That'd be me. It was based on the idea that gunpods using ammo would still have some advantages over the energy weapons that uses power and (possibly) overheat. (like in sdf:macross where the little head lasers couldn't burn forever) In a perfect world, the energy is free and unlimited but I would say that using ammo from a gunpod has a more immediate effect (no waiting for the thing to cool down or sapping energy from the machine, as long as their was ammo availble you could fire away with instant graitifcation and keep up a constant stream) In summary I came to the conclusion that imo, having both types complements each other than just relyong solely on energy based weapons which is what one poster asked: "Why doesn't macross just get rid of gunpods and only have lasers?" Also there was a suggestion that putting arm mounted weapons for close up (like a shotgun) might be more appropriate for taking out groups of missiles, but I said that it wouldn't be standard since imo for a majority of the time you would STILL use laser and gunpod for "general purpose" as a main weapon. It may not be as good as a shotgun in cetain situations, but because it can shoot further away, it can cover more bases. The philosophy is based on the idea that a valk is a do-anything machine, and that by making it use too-specialised weapons for specialised functions you might lose out in another core area of performance, so perhaps it is better to leave it with only primary weapons rather than a mixture of specialised weapons like how the zentradi pods have teams of people with different weapons. (ie safety in numbers. Hang out in groups and outgun the enemy with simply having more expendable people attacking at once as opposed to one guy holding ten different weapons and using them all?) If in the fictional world the lasers didn't overheat I would agree, get rid of gunpods, but I still subscribe to the idea that nothing is perfect, even in sci-fi certain things have limits. (like the PPB idea which can't be relied upon all the time since it is limited to small area on the body) Before this turns into a lasers vs gunpods thread, by no means am I saying that lasers and beams are useless, just that by having a combination of beam and bullets (kinetic weapons) you get the best of both worlds. One might be needed to penetrate armor (and un spacy may have done tests to see which is more effective at certain ranges) while the other might be better for shooting missile down. (like the head lasers - but we do see a scene of roy using both gunpod and lasers in macross zero) The zents used lasers and beams and stuff but we used gunpods in SW I. Maybe the lack of ammo didn't matter because thier armor was so weak on thier regult that 200 rounds was enough and so longas you used short bursts it was sufficient? Don't forget the missiles too. Weigh the valk down too much like the destroids, and maybe they might not fly so fast and have to take a maneuverability hit making them easier for enemies to shoot? Notice how in some scenes you see them shedding thier gunpod to fly away quickly in an emergency? Ah but it doens't have to shoot them all, maybe setting a few off causes a chain reaction exposion or perhaps the pilot can transform into fighter and manuever through some of them? The key is by having speed and agility things like that become less threatening. (guld could just weave through them as if it were nothing and actually herded them to where he wanted) Another thing that's been bugging me: didn't the tv series actually show beams coming from out of the gunpods in some scenes? I'm wondering now if the gunpods can be used as both an energy type weapon like the beam rifle from gundam as well as a gunpod which shoots bullets..Or were these just mistakes?

But the argument pat is: should laws like it be changed? The article mentioned this was a new law. See animation isn't really porn when you take into account they are characters in a fictional world. If you went to prison for merely possessing a manga with some questionable child nudity or child sex (take some of the fan made fictional H-Doujins which may involve young characters) it's a bit harsh to say the person is a pedophile and should go to prison for life isn't it? (in the above article the person was a previous offender though) If the laws are too sweeping in thier definition of porn it could include anything you make with photoshop, cg art, any hand drawn work etc. Not just anime. Which to me is very surprising to make the link between fantasy characters and real people when for a long time people have seen porn as traditionally real sex acts involving real people with real victims. (in the case of child porn) I want to see pedophiles behind bars where they belong as much as the next concerned parent, but it's a sad fact that a lot of anime has: -child nudity -characters who look young -underage sex (technically any hentai where a young girl who its hard to justify as being barely legal, not necessarily a child, is doing a much older person could be seen as pedophilia. eg "student does older teacher" sceneario) It would be similar if say you took a hardcore S & M video and went to jail because the material could be mistaken as the same thing as a videotape of someone really being raped and tortured. edit: thanks noriko. Clears up the confusion. doh!

I just saw an uncut version of Kite and an episode of cool devices where this chic who looks pretty young is raped by this old guy who I think is some corrupt cop. There's also this H doujin where Faye Valentine from cowboy bepop is having a threesome with Edward (the annoying red-haired girl) and Ein (the dog). I don't know about you, but does watching those hentai scenes count as porn? These sweeping laws are pretty farting powerful! As far as I'm concerned anything that is hand drawn, of characters that are completly fictional should not count as porn since that means I could just create my own cartoons, (no matter how crapily they resemble real people) call these characters little kids, have them be raped by stickmen, who I've called adults, give you the finished work and put you to jail for possessing it. (well maybe I planted it on your pc and named it "barely legal stickmen porn" as a joke when we were swapping files. But it would count as anime if I made the stickmen look real enough) No matter how bad a repuation some of the animated violence and sex in anime gets in the mainstream press, I would hope people would see the ridiculousness of having sweeping laws that categorise works of fiction with characters that are not real as actual porn, and actually pressure thier government to throw them out. Pedophiles surely don't need a helping hand to get softened sentences for real crimes they've commited, but they should go to jail only when they've been caught in possession of real porn where there has actually been a victim involved in all of this. Even if it was illegal I wonder how enforcable something like this would be? For example say if I was a cartoonist and I drew a bunch of pictures for myself (in the style of anime), of characters that were underage, (I decided to make these fictional characters below barely legal age) and had them being raped by some adult woman? ("Cheerleader is raped by hot female PE teacher" scenario? ) Of course the drawing style was really horrible since my skills suck at doing figures but you get the point. I could get arrested for possesing illegal child porn from my own work! There would be no clear distinction between what's real and made up. There's also the issue of digitally altered images. What if I had uber l33t photoshop skills and edited an image so it looks like a celebrity is doing a little baby from the anne geddis calander? And what about CG porn and 3d models? Holy poo nobody would be safe. With digital technology I can see all kinds of messes when they start introducing sweeping laws categorising fictional characters doing things that would be totally illegal in real life suddenly as "pornographic" material. I don't care what morals you have, even if you have strict ideas about what is acceptable to be shown in the mainstream media that a majority have no problems with (totally understandable) but surely even those people can see the failure in systems like this one. On a slightly OT subject does anyone trust disney anymore?: http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney.html funny stuff! ^ Now I'm willing to bet the place where lots of pedophiles would go to work, is to work at places where they have easy access to kids. Could pedophiles (possibly working at disney) be subliminally corrupting youth around the world to have sex with them? It seems these days you can't even rely on kids cartoons to provide family entertainment anymore. No wonder there is all this controversy about micheal jackson and his neverland ranch.. Now, now.. There has to be some limit to what is acceptable. One of the things people forget is that just because you want to bare it all, doesn't mean we all want to have to see it. It goes beyond religion or morals and more a case of: have some dignity. How would you like it if you were living with a fat fugly next door neighbour who you were forced to see naked every morning because suddenly the laws were so releaxed you couldn't do anything about it? And don't say, "just don't look" cause they are going to be in your face all the time. What I fear are people who shove thier "it's natural so get used to it!" attitude down every one else throats as if they have no consideration for how people of different cultures want to raise thier children. If you want to prance around naked in a forest that's cool, just find a forest where other nudists are while the rest of us clothed people enjoy the freedom to not have to see people's nudity because of laws that are too relaxed. I'm sure lots of people are comfortable with thier own bodies and the beauty of the human form, and I'm fine with that, but that doesn't mean I should tolerate (or even have to be polite to the person) about voicing my displeasure upon seeing your naked grandmother's wrinkled up body which would put me off my breakfast. Sure nudity is great when you are surrounded by hot sexy women, but it's more dignified for some people when others are forced to wear clothes and cover themselves up. We aren't all living in areas like that depicted in the show baywatch where you never see old, ugly, fat or hairy people around and all the women have great tits, ass, nice skin, are young and good looking etc..

I already hear rattles when I store the intake covers in the micromissile boxes. It takes ages to take the intake covers off. Whenever I fly it around, you hear the noise as if something inside is broken. Here's an idea: Maybe they could include a special transformable nosecone tip? -Split the tip in half like a binal tech at the centre so both sides fold back. (Or instead have it split at the bottom and top of nose cone tip.) -It should now look like a peeled bannana or two petals off a flower. (the centre of the flower is the now-exposed radome) -Each "petal" (the split parts of the nosecone tip) will have an articulated hip at it's base that rotates 180 degrees so the petals now sorta face flush on the round parts of the nosecone base. -folding the petals back onto the nosecone base now has the effect of shortening the whole nosecone area a little bit. Now there is now no more pointy nose sticking out! (we live in a time where you can have individually articulated fingers joints. A few extra joints in an alternate nosecone wouldn't hurt) Whoa there, they haven't even gotten around to releasing DYRL kakazaki or a tv cannon fodder paint scheme yet. They still got to milk this single seat sculpt for all it is worth.

Looking forward to buying this. The 1/48s are all females just like the skinny banprestos. All my fast pack missiles seem pretty secure, I just had to rearrange them so that tight missiles go to loose holding places, while loose missiles go to tight holding places. Maybe they should make the missiles out of rubber like the clown hands this time? It could be worse: they could have went all Qrau lazy on us and had swappable pieces. ie one shoulder with the cover closed, another shoulder with cover open; with fixed misiles molded together as a single plastic piece.

Haha I remember playing PSII on megadrive. I could never beat the game because it was farkin hard!!! The last boss was like something out of Aliens as if H.R.Giger designed the boss himself. Now I got an idea: Invid turn to the shadow force and the leader of the hive decides to evolve/morph herself into an alien queen (from "aliens") as her next stage. If they made it so that the humans got to the invid homeworld and had to explore it like the colonial marines in aliens, it would be scary. I can imagine Scott and a team exploring the alien hive in their cyclones/ride armor. Suddenly they get attacked by the walls of the hive and can see shapes come out of the walls: They are camoflaged black invid corrupted by the shadow force. Thier next step in evolution was to turn into something more evil than thier old crab form. (hopefully NOT look something like the protodevlin in macross 7) The basis for all this speculation rests entirely on what I saw from the last ep of TNG where the leader of the invid morphs into some strange phoenix-like bird creature and leaves the planet just like that. (kind of anticlimatic if you ask me.) Somehow the leader is more than a physical person but has a spiritual form too. Now given that marlene has a link to the queen and being an alien herself she guides the exploration team "Ripley"-style into the hive as all the old robotech characters die very violent deaths. The last remaining survivor: Scott/Stick discovers Rick Hunter's dead corpse in the hive and realises the shadow force had thier own clone of him aboard the SDF3 that ordered the attack on earth (last ep of TNG) with the neutron bombs. You see, Admiral Rick Hunter was dead all along and there is a clone of him in control of the RDF probably impregnating lisa!! (just like in John Carpenter's "", the alien can shape-shift into the appearance of the people that it kills.. You can't trust anyone on SDF3!!) Now It's up to scott to go on a secret mission along with max sterling to find out who the clones are and kill them without arousing the attention of the others. Maybe louie is the one helping the shadow people wipe out the invid and humans so he can get back at the militaries abuse of all his inventions when he was a kid.

Yeah I know you weren't. But the comment references those who have no problem holding onto LE things for years and years by explaining that a painted fake just ain't the same even though it could well be superior in every way. And making money isn't always what collectors collect stuff for. There are collectors that only colect stuff that they have a personal interest in. Say basketball cards or something, where they will trade lots of good cards to get thier hands on a rare card they really want. But once they have it, they still have absolutely no intention of selling that particular hard-to-get item for cash when they first began collecting. ....even when they know the market value is going up and they could get money for it. It's kind of like the feeling of knowing you have something that is valuable to you personally and also knowing it is not too mass-produced that makes it special which is why you wish to keep the item. Like if I was a world famous artist who made a one-of-a-kind painting for you, and because it was the original, and the only one in the world, to you it might seem "priceless". You don't really care about the money you could get for it, because maybe you just care more about having the original painting itself for whatever reason. (some mad fetish for anything that is an original work?) You'll note that on ebay prices for things can often times be just made up from out of somebody's ass, and when enough people get used to seeing the price for that thing as a standard for it's real value, they begin to accept it and bite the bullet if they are desperate to have something they personally really can't do without.(in the end it's really just a matter of how well-off that person is, or how desperate and fanatical the buyer is) In the end painting a vf1a grey and making it superior to the original official low vis won't be the same to Mr. Mad collector as owning the rare real one (say in years and years from now) because it just wouldn't count as an LE. (now I'm not reffering to you, just certain collectors in general) Just as a first-print comic book (maybe somehting from half a century ago?) that is actually a real "product of its time of release" in actual history just isn't the same as the exact same thing if it happened to be reproduced in a later period of time. Say, like a recent reprinting of the comic - they may look the same, be the same, and have the same use, but one item was the genuine version from 50 years back. Ones ancient, (like some kind of special sword forged by a famous master swordsmith from a bygone era - ok a little overboard there ) ...and the other is recent. But the genuine version is a piece of history that has almost died and become forgotten so its real version is all the more special even though it might be almost exactly like its recent reproduced brother.

Damn did I say ben? *smacks himself*

I just think that if any other aliens had civilians, you wouldn't want to hurt the enemy civilians, only the soldiers. It would be seen as cruel and cowardly to target the civilians, and all other races of aliens would call you terrorists. You would lose any support from the more friendly civilised breeds and races if news got out that you were using weapons that were cruel. (like say the aliens give birth to deformed babies due to contamination or something) Then an arms race to use these weapons in combat all the time would come with each standing to lose a lot of innocents on either side plus thier environments that feed them. You would think that the first option of the un spacy would be is to to greet and come in peace first, then if the aliens were hostile (they wanted to exterminate your race) and you had no choice but to use the weapons, then you are pretty blameless if the weapons were as a last resort. Also I do believe that even soldiers would see certain actions as cruel and unecessary and start to protest. Not just the hippies like Kaifun. I think that if milia was having trouble shooting down her own zentradi grunts, (after she joined us and fought alongside max) she would object to certain uses of weapons and the effects they might have on an alien's civilian population. It would have made sense to use them against a superior foe consisting of billions of giants but still... In the case of the protodevlin or the first attack against the zentradi (they were all soldiers) maybe aproval was given because it was thier last option? So although the military has all these whizz bang weapons to use, certain ones like the use of an overload, might be classed as wmd which to a lot of humans in government would be seen as unecessary to use when there are other safer methods that don't deliberately have to destroy the environment around you. To me the UN should favor peace and environmentally-aware methods of fighting over ones where the strongest weapons are the ones we should use all the time. (The anti-un do point out thier bad side in macross zero, though) Even if it is in space, using barrier overloads would be dangerous. Similar to how if you gave the rookie reaction missiles and he accidently let off a reaction missile and kills his friends. If I was in charge I would order only certain people to have access to them. I don't give a poo if we are in space or not! Remember how ben got killed accidently in the tv series? Politics, and also military control purposes. Even the zentradi had thier own control: genetically enhancing thier leaders to be superioer to thier underlings so that things wouldn't get out of control and to keep order. Yeah I know, but I just think that weapons that are multifunctional for both short range and long range (like a machine gun) would be favored on a valkyrie over ones that do well ONLY for a specialised function. The way I see it most of the time a grunt is going to be relying on his machine gun rather than suplmentary things. Is it wise to weigh him down with extra weapons at the expense of speed? Would every soldier have his own shotgun, his own rocketlauncher, sidearm etc? When you mass produce these machines, is it wise to have everyone use this weapon because now it has become standard as built-into the machine? The way I think of it: a valkyrie would have only the basic stuff as standard (beams, lasers, gunpod) integrated into the design of the transformable mech, and all these weapons that do poorly as "general purpose/multi-function" weapons (like a shotgun which can't reach the missiles until they are close) would be add-ons. I would never use the shotgun very often (as opposed to a beam weapon) so why have it integrated into the machine itself when it is only for certain occasions rather than general-use like the trusty gunpod? When these are mass produced everyone will HAVE to use it at the expense of not having a beam in thier wrist which might effect how they would normally fight. (ie waiting for things to get within range of the shotgun rather than having the freedom to shoot everything down as early as possible from as far as you can) If a valk is too specialised the enemy can exploit the weakness that comes with specialisation too easily. (eg say you replace wrist guns with wrist shotguns, the enemy will fly away and take you out at safe distance. But using beams or relying on the gunpod would mean you just use weapons that are strong at any range over one which is limited to short range.

Yeah but the official one is a true limited edition thingy. It's not because it looks cool that a person would buy it, but just so they could say: "I'm the hardest core collector out there, view my awesome complete yamato macross collection. There will never be another valk like it released again".. and poke thier tongue out at others. And remember there is always some person willing to fork out wads of cash for things in years to come. IF the prices keep rising think of all it in the future when it becomes rare.

It would be so cool if some of the main characters were "good aliens" and humans were force to ally themselves with some of them. I'm sick of seeing the humans only being the good guys who win the wars when half the time they are the ones inheriting all this technology that the aliens built by studying/reverse-engineering it. One of the patterns of the three wars is that some main charcters falls in love with the aliens and thier offspring are halfbreeds of hybrid alien-human blood. (and the end message is: "war is bad cause it achieves nothing. Love the enemy to bring the end to war and make peace by singing songs and falling in love and holding hands etc") I think the pattern is getting a bit old though. What we need are characters who are like Kamjin and almost pure evil or maybe a little mad. Not characters who are too easy to feel sorry for. Once the humans become too advanced they will have no good rivals to compete with and threaten them anymore. Maybe all three wars were destined to happen in the grand scheme of things, so that humans could take on the shadow people? With the build up of all this technology we use reflex weapons, neutron bombs, shadow technoloy, etc to fight them? I made a post on RT forums about how I think the shadow people might be the ones in control of the wars and the invid were the "pro-life" aliens who are trying to be good but are slowly becoming more corrupt. The shadow people are sort of the spirit of death that overcomes all alien races whereas the regis is the spirit of life and evolution. These two opposites have been at war with each other since the beginning of time to maintain a kind of balance so that new lifeforms can exist (and mate with each other resulting in half-human/half alien beings) after each major war. The descendants of these wars then become the next evolution of beings that tries to bring peace. (think milia after having max baby, and how dana has this connection to Zor because of her alien dna? When the main characters start becoming sympathetic to the aliens because they love them, (Bowie Grant for example) it results in peace between the two races. I'm sure scott and marlene will be much less clear-cut in thier decisions about what to do with the invid. Marlene wouldn't simply hate her own kind simply because she fell in love with Scott/Stick. It would be similar to Milia and max in macross where humans try to save the good aliens but the bad ones are controlled by a Darkforce or an emotion like anger and hate. Possibly these shadow people are like demons that posses the bad guys..) If the Shadow spirits are like the Kadun (viewed by sara as black shapes) in macross zero, this might result in harmony gold using macross zero footage in a future robotech dvd ova.