1/1 LowViz Lurker

So what do you think "shadow force" is reffering to: -a jedi like power. Kind of like the force from star wars? Shadow meaning 'evil'? (there is like this dark side to rick hunter's character for being willing to sacrifice human life on earth by using neutron bombs which risks killing innocents?) -a name of a special forces team (ie alphas and betas working together) -like the above-mentioned, but this time with shadow technology used for stealth against invid? My guess is this is going to be a series about a bunch of characters who are like this special group of human spies out to take on the invid homeworld. They use the stealth technology to do it, and the whole story is like a sequel to TNG in robotech which will be edited and tweaked and brought to japan as sequel to mospeada. (saves money if they can share footage and effort) I have nothing to back up my guess but the ending of TNG pretty much shows human using stealth to beat the invid so they can't sense thier presence. The emphasis here si that this new technology itself was what saved thier asses and turned the tide. The humans didn't win by wiping out the invid, the invid decided to leave earth. So this next series must be the humans taking the offensive using old mechs from TNG mospeada and maybe 1 or 2 newer mechs. (not a mixture of mecha like some RT fans have been hoping eg. don't expect things like old vf1s or hover tanks to appear) I always thought that the invid were actually pretty nice aliens compared to the zentradi (notice how they didn't use thier full power to wipe out all the human ships when that thing turned into a bird and flew away? - only taking out the missiles?)but were a little misunderstood because they were more highly evolved and thought that they were higher on the foodchain to other organisms. They had no real interest in wiping the humans themselves out, (the zentradi almost did this in sw I) rather they were more interested in just taking resources from the planet to survive. (like there is this energy crisis in the robotech universe and it can't be recycled or renewed cause everyone is addicted to having it and controlling for themselves to maintain thier control over others) I just hope toys are made of some new mechas and maybe if the sequel does good in japan I can buy them. Well to elimante the competition. (If you could call it that) You don't have to do anything with it. Just buy it to control it and then do nothing with it so it dies off.

Good posts. I can now understand why the gundams use those beam shields and stuff. All that antibeam coating must modify the effiectiveness of the weapons. I wonder why macross doesn't have beam sabers? I think it would make a lot of sense if they somehow took whatever they learnt from the pinpoint barrier punch/deadalus maneuver and somehow made it pointy. There are a few valks in macross design works with swords . Whats up with that?? With regards to physical shields though, I'm still not convinced it would be as lifesaving as just dodging fire or just seeking cover. Yes it is true that we see them being used in macross plus to deflect fire, but everything has limits. I doubt you could keep it up with several attackers firing at you at once, plus any missiles to keep you busy. The PPB can't be on all parts of the body at once. Transforming into fighter and herding them into a neat line would seem more safe. Max dodging and weaving through them and Gulds sheer speed (to outfly them)suggest that speed and agility are still the a top priority when it comes down to it. I'd also like to add one other advantage to having 2 small gunpods over 1 long one: In fighter mode you may be able to inflict twice as much damage in the same time it might take with a single gunpod. Maybe given the speed you are going to be moving at, you'll only have half the time to line yourself up to shoot it down before it escapes, meaning that killing it in half the time is required. If you are up against a ghost which keeps darting about, I can imagine that extra stream of fire can only double your chances of killing it. I always thought that it would be cool for the vf17 to just have 2 gunpods (1 in each leg?) instead of one. And the yf21 just makes the logical step of having 1 on each side.

Yeah but in the real world that would be like if every nation that went to war was allowed to use nuclear bombs to fight with... We could easily make ourselves extinct by blowing up this planet and making it unlivable if we wanted to, but is it worth it? The established super powers wouldn't allow for it. I get the feeling that the un spacy has to be careful in relying on WMD for political reasons.. Maybe hippies like Kaifun would start mass protests to have them banned altogether if there wasn't some sort of strict control over who can use them and and when and for what reason they should be used. (the protodevlin were obviously one of the bloody good reasons much to basara's dismay) with regards to the shotty, again I say it would be boring. How much fun was it watching destroids standing completely still duking it out versus, watching lightly armed and amored valks dodge and weave through masses of missiles ala mac+? If you transform into fighter you could just shake them, or do what roy did with his gunpod which covers both short range AND long range with a single weapon but without the penatly of crappy rate of fire (lasers which shoot out in short pulses instead of a stream of continueous fire, and pulses that happen to be spaced too far apart in timing to catch several small, weakly-amored-but-fast targets) or cover too short a distance because shotguns were mainly effective upclose only. What you need are good "general purpose", multi-use weapons for any situation. And damage for a shotgun wouldn't be that nice as a main weapon would it? I thought shotguns did poorly against armored vehicles? You may need bullets that penetrate the armor, or explosives that blow armour completely off doncha? And distance is important. Fighters move quickly and shooting other fighters moving around is probably much easier if your main weapon was a machine gun. If you start specialising you lose abilities in other areas, (like mech to mech fights) and to me the valk is multitask machine that is mass produced to be good in as many roles as possible rather than too specialised. ie weapons that might be good for one task but suck for many other tasks. I think all the limits of the sdf should apply to the valks. I was just playing macross plus arcade and was wondering what it would be like if valks had a big-ass SDF1 beam weapon like what happens when you transform into gerwalk mode in that game. If you had a weapon like that, that could melt through anything it would make every other weapon obsolete.. (they actually weakened it in macross plus, but in the DYRL arcade game it's the best for killing most bosses.)

Nah that's probably kuriboh: It's a design for an early protodevlin that was rejected. They changed the character a bit (macross 7 is aimed at kids) and decided to make it mylene's pet donchaknow? Then yugioh came out and stole the design because it looked like a cool monster.

Ah but that's the beauty of anime right? Things are possible when you are the "hero" of the story and not the average soldier who can't beat the odds. Witness Milia's "arms praying" technique where she clamps together both her claws together to get double the shots on a single target in DYRL. Or max's ability to just fly up point blank to an enemy (OMG!!11 He's a genuis!!1)just to finish off the enemy in style by shooting them in the face because they were too slow to get him from afar. You never saw as much cool stuff like this in macross 7 mech fights I've noticed. Some of the flashiness was taken out (save for the rare occasion when max+milia were kicking butt) which is why I thought the mech battles weren't exciting in this. (there were some good ones in the ova and bonus stuff I think though) While the cannon fodders struggle just to shoot an enemy from afar here you have the "hero" doing stuff that looks easy that nobody else can do, making the mech fight exciting. I think that guld could just tell the computer with his brain, initiate "the john woo manuever" and the arms would line up side by side to finish off a stupid enemy that thought it would be a good idea to fly close. We can rationalise all we want what would work in real life (like the use ofthe giant knife of a gunpod?) but some mechs weren't designed for the average pilot and have to stand out. I can totally imagine some good destroid pilots using both arms to shoot down pods rather than only using one. Just keep the two arms fixed at exact level with each other, and use the "turret hips" to finish off ground targets. If you are fighting on the ground as a mech, you have two feet planted to the ground meaning there is some kind of stability that you wouldn't get in space. A glaug with both arms fixed at it's side with legs fixed in its booster acts just like a ship with two guns on its body. Maybe they took the eyeball targeting technology from macross zero (remember how roy could shoot down the minimissiles so easy?) and evolved it in future?

Well think of the limits of energy based weapons like with the sdf'1's inability to use the main cannon if it uses the pinpoint barrier or full barrier? Or if it DOES use the Full barrier, it can't just abuse this feature and have the barrier on forever. Kamjin successfully kept sapping the barrier until it caused an barrier overload. I sorta wish that idea came into play with valkyries too, where there was some limiting factor that penalises you into terms of power if the pilot overuses something. The gunpods could come into play as a "more reliable trusty" weapon that won't limit how much damage you do or sap some power from the mech each time. By having both gunpod and laser weapons you get the best of both worlds. Didn't the little head lasers overheat in SDF:Macross? Nothing should be perfect. Kind of like how they portrayed the advantages/disadvantages of energy based alien weapons and human weapons in the game halo. In that, the aliens relied on energy weapons that had limited power based on how much "shots" the little battery could store, but ALSO if you kept up the shooting constantly, the weapon could overheat and leave you vulnerable. There was no reliable inbuilt cooling system to the weapon which meant you were hamstrung in how you wanted to fight. Now imagine if the laser overheated in times when a Qrau launches its micromissiles at you from different directions and you needed to dodge them all? A wrist laser can't help you, a shield with PPB can't cover the whole body. So the next logical choice would be to shoot them all down with a gunpod, or haul ass instead of staying there. Or a combination of the two. This hauling ass method relies on speed and accleration which depends on if you are willing to shed some weight in exchange for lessened firepower. The Qrau has superior maneuverability to pods for example and half the battle is avoiding and dodging as well as shooting. Watching this happen is more exciting than two mechs standing still and blowing the crap out of each to see who blows up the quickest. (obviosly the guy with less and smaller guns or the one without the shield Maneuverability, speed and piloting ability has to play as the most important factor that determines survival else we could rely on cannon fodders to not get blown up in every scene. Some by a single shot ) I'm not saying laser wrist guns should be useless but that everything needs to have some kind of limit. ie if Roy fires the double beam cannon and misses, he shouldn't be allowed to just follow up indefinately with more shots in rapid succession without some penalty similar to how each fire of the main gun of the sdf1 saps energy and needs time to recharge. Perhaps the slower rate-of-fire of the double beam cannon leaves him vulnerable long enough to allow the target to escape, that say a lighter, more simple ammo-based weapon would have shot down by then? When a fast moving target is hard to keep in your sights, it would be useful to have a constant uninterrupted stream of bullets to have a good chance of hitting it, which a more traditional weapon may offer.(with no overheating, recharging or sapping of the mechs own power) Keep in mind that in macross plus, Guld could just fly right through the micromissiles because of sheer speed! If a slower valk did not have this choice to just fly somewhere else and buy some time by just plain increasing the distance between you and the missiles, things may be different. Take for example you are trying to keep you sights on the x9 ghost which you are barely able to keep speed with, and it keeps darting in different directions. Having a machine gun could increase chances of hitting it because really there is no worry about the rate of fire being too slow, or laser overheating, or anyhing like that. Having lasers could complement the gunpod but I would say that the gunpod/s have better chance of nailing it.

I was told that the gunpod doesn't need to be inside the fastpacks on the yf21? Cleared up a lot of confusion for me. I thought someone may have used a portable fold booster and the weapons were magically there.

Well it might affect the transformation and speed in fighter if you give it too many weapons. If they are going to fly around most of the time they want to be the fastest and lightest bird to outfly anything. Just one really good general purpose gunpod (or 2 small ones) complemented with built in beam weapons (or external ones like strike vf1) could be more effective. I say that the reason they were lightly armored has to do with money and time, as in the tv series, the fast packs were not really ready yet and more of an upgrade. People were flying around without a speed boost. If you are fast enough and good enough to not get hit, the need to carry so much just complicates the design of "the machine that does everything, rather than specialises in only a few things". The shields on the yf21 at least were part of the fighter design itself so it had defence without too much penalty. (two sheilds but not necesarily serving a major purpose for battroid) The 19 and 11 didn't look like they were reliant on the shields a lot of the time so I guess having them didn't make as much difference such that including them were going to be lifesaving. People would still get killed in a few hits such that maneuvering becomes more important than protecting parts of the body. (why else would dyson hide first and then gut the mech with the knife? because I think its safer to just seek cover using speed than standing there with a shield) You'll note that the vf17 hides the gunpod in its body and uses it for fighter too. That would be very useful if you were flying at high speed trying to shoot down a target that is constantyl avoiding your sights. But what use would a shotgun have in fighter mode? You might have trouble getting in enough hits to do any damaged? Plus I imagine needing to get close. Bullets are faster than shells in that instance. In variable mechs, you would want a good general purpose weapon that could suit any situation.

Well maybe they overheat or something and might not be reliable in times of many small targets that need to be shot down with rapid fire. think of a Qrau that just released all its mini missiles, and all of them are closing in simulataneously from many different angles. If you don't have the skill or time to dodge them all, and your wrist guns will overheat too much if you over heat them with too much use as a main weapon, a gunpod with spread fire could be your saving grace. (the logic being that multiple rapid shots may increase the chance of hiting a smaller or fast target, as opposed to a one big heavy attack) I always liked the idea that a mech with a gatling gun could just spin around 360 and wipe out small targets with ease. (the intro of sdf:macross kind shows that. The little explosions when the rounds hit the missiles, makes a nice fireworks display. ) I also think that if hikaru did not have a gatling gun instead of a "beam weapon that pulses", in his fight against incoming missiles (this was the episode where he gets his arms blown off) he may not have taken down as many targets (probably groups of little homing micromissiles) as easily. There is probably this pattern that when the elite soldiers want to kill something they just get up close and release the missiles as soon as they can, then wipe out whatever survives that, with beam blasts. I also like the idea that there are cooler designs and crappier ones alongside them to make the cooler ones shine more. Maybe shields are heavy? The arm armour on vf1 could be thought of as an early design shield. In boxing when you block an opponents punchs you tend to put your forearms together like a shield. I always thought that those arm armours on the "super vf1" forearms act like a shield when the mech tries to protect itself. But when you see pilots dodging shots with agility and grace, you kind of question the need for them. A fast ghost fighter (like macross plus) might be a threat since it might be able to outmanuever a slower mech, but how helpful was the shield to those cannon fodders in macross 7? They were getting blown away too easily that it probably made little difference. I would think that pilots that favour long range fights with accurate aim and fast speed allowing them more an "offensive" style to combat, would look down on the need for shields, and cowardly cannon fodders would need them so they added it to the vf11 as a failsafe. If you think of it as a "safety in numbers" idea, several of the mass produced cheap regults with barely any protection would probably be more effective than a few battroids with shields as protection like a line of riot police whose purpose is to just guard an area. I think of zentradi as being more the offensive style, and the humans being more the defensive. It's a question of "do you want to guard something (like a zone or an area where you won't be moving much?), or do you want to attack and raid with as many people carrying guns (increase damage) as possible? the zents probably like killing and raiding than defending (boring) so they probably have the attitude of foregoing sheilds and protective features in exchange for more firepower given that their lives are expendable and there is so many of them. The destroid with lots of guns guns guns, is probably so that the humans have as many options as possible in choose how to deal with giants. But because they don't have much speed, they get thier asses kicked meaning all that expense on increased firepower for nothing. The agility and flexibility of valks to move and haul ass from one place to another through transformation is probably what saved them. there's also the psychological idea of the shield. It may suggest you are cowardly and a crap pilot: you expect to be hit and need to hide when you can dodge or seek cover. (the grunts foot soldiers at the start of DYRL (the scene with the singing minmei doll) have these big tower shields but as you can see they are scared when milia attacks. They need armour because they are probably crap pilots. Speed would probably only make much differnece if the person could handle it and control it, and tame it. I doubt all pilots could withstand the speeds at which some of the aces pilot thier mechs when they do thier fancy manuevers so the crap guys get the slower, more armoured design. ...Or.. they just don't get anything because; being expendable, go by the "safety in numbers" idea: just have lots of the cannon fodders with weapons.

Well I think having little wrist guns is soo cool. I don't know why but it has something to do with the idea of holding TWO guns in it's hands like some kinda cowboy, and STILL having extra weapons in its body. The lessened weight of 2 small gunpods would proably allow for some old western gunfighting showdown shootout where the mech with the quicker draw wins. Guld, the pussy was probably just holding back in the street fight thanks to all the pills he was taking to supress his zentradi berserker instinct. I fully hoped he could have gave the yf19 a flying pinpoint barrier uppercut to its chest, followed by a wrist blast in the punctured hole its punch just made to kill the pilot inside, similar to what milia did in DYRL to that zentradi or the deadalus manuever.

I wish Gubaba had his own small mech. He deserves better treatment than as a sidekick to mylene. He did rescue everyone from capture afterall. Things that could have made the series much better: -A scene with gubaba getting awarded medals. -Having max and milia allow the building of a customised super deformed Valkyrie (maybe an old yf21 with brainwave controls so he doesn't have to use his tiny limbs to control it) for him to help fight as a proper soldier. Imagine tiny reaction weapons? I just kept thinking that they wasted this character's talents. Also I think the mascot has more personality than Gamlin!

I was halfway through that myself, (were you looking for gundam?) pain in the ass (hehe) when it went down. Try: http://www.boxtorrents.com search for it, "Mobile Suit Gundam Double Zeta" I think somebody is still seeding the ASS sub of it.

Certainly, if you can afford both, that would be great. I would have bought a line of 1/60s if I had gotten into the toys earlier but 1/48s are enough for me. Not everyone may be able to afford a line of 1/48s was what I was saying, so it might be a bit of a risk if these do poorly and not enough buy them. If they are popular, that may increase the chance we start seeing more in the 1/48 line though. Everyone has a different price range though. If the 1/60s (less risky?) did poorly, we may not have seen the 1/48s. Now that 1/48s are here, if more buy them up we might see more support for this scale. I see it as a case of the price being the main obstacle. Most people probably want this scale but have to settle for the 1/60 if thier pocket is taking too much of a massive hit with each one. (as opposed to being because they believe the 1/48 is inferior in any way) If your priority is to "get everything in a line" than it may even be less attractive to get 1/48 because of a percieved belief that there will never be as complete a range of different valks released for this line. (similar to how evryone wants to see a masterpiece megatron because they are impressed with masterpiece prime. Not necessarily being a line of stuff and more like a one-off for the anniversary) I tend not to think of expensive stuff as being "collectible" ie you intend to fully buy a complete set of something (like the banpresto cheapies) so am happy if not everything was released for me to buy. But that's just me.

I don't know. It could be that only macrossworld people think 1/48 is the most popular. There might be a whole mass of fans that aren't coming here but who've been buying 1/60 scale because it's more affordable since 1/48 are too expensive for them. Apart from all the other bonuses of being superior in most things to the smalleer scale, I prefer the 1/48 for thier perfect transformability. Having legs that detach isn't as cool as having a massive swing bar keeping the whole toy together. I think I remember some people saying that because the legs detach from 1/60s it was a negative point to be considered if you were going to get the yamato 1/60. (some people really place importance on perfect tranformability.) If some toy company were to say release a variable glaug or something I would want perfect transforms in sacrifice of slightly less poseable bot mode. (cuz it kind of proves to a person looking at the toy that it is 'not cheating' in its transformation. What I mean by this, is if they don't see the legs physically detach in the cartoon/anime they will think the toy "isn't realistic". We know some kind of detaching actually takes place from design works, of course but 'they' might not and wonder why the legs have to come off to create the bot mode. Unless some toy company recreates the detaching mechanism in the lineart to be as realistic as possible for the toy.)

General Galaxy > Shinsei Guld Superior in design ability to Yang Neuman even though he looks like the space marine grunt in the fps game Doom.

There's this long range beam you can use on the first two frames if you press the Z key and hold space and then release it. I like this weapon but you can't fly around while charging up the beam, making it useless. I hope they fix that.

But in macross zero we have a mech that is brain controlled by sara. Wouldn't it be better to have mechs that could learn you, rather than you learning how to control them? Imagine the time you'd save not having to train yourself to use one? You could eat a bowl of noodles using your hands while using your mind to blast other mechs. I think that would be cool! I think machines controlled with brainwaves are interesting. I hope in a future series of macross they don't totally ditch the idea of brain controlled mechs and support drones which act like sentry guns (similar to aliens) which can guard an area while the human is elswhere. Just because the drone lost the competition somebody somewhere out there in the macross universe would have a good use for them. All they need is another war that enables the funding for designing newer, more-efficient killing machines. (say they create a story similar to the one in Zero where all the good pilots are killed in a previous war. The solution would be to rely on drones since there is a great shortage and all sorts of remote-piloted vehicles are used in place of humans. If the SDF1 could be piloted by sharon apple asa proper weapon in the event of a new war against hostile protoculture experiments that escaped thier labs, maaaan think of all the cool things you could do with that? Whole fleets would be AI controlled to go out and fight the wars for us while we stay at home waiting for the spoils with no risk. I often wonder if the Bird human got into a fight against sharon apple (inside SDF1 controlling it), who do you think would win? :D Teams of SDF1's in attack mode versus PC bird humans might an idea for the the next series. "The year is 3000 AD: Humans, Zentradi and protoculture are long extinct. (they are having a huge party at the centre of the galaxy along with the SDF1's vanished fold drives) Now the war begins between the AI controlled Super Dimensional Fortresses and thier hated enemies, the Bird humans who tried to destroy planet earth because people couldn't get along."

Same here. The problem was that the zentradi looked at the song and memory plate as if it were a weapon and not something to bring good things to all people. This is why they were willing to come to us in peace for only short period a time in the movie. It was more like a strategic partnership to use us to help them kill thier enemy. They narrow mindedly just wanted the Meltran off thier backs. Some of the zentradi (Bodol) probably viewed this (idea) as a threat to thier way of life: "fighting", and because of it threatening to bring chaos to the structure of thier society; with soldiers mutinying by the droves for a something better, this was the effect that won the war. Not necessarily that particular song, or the way minmay sang it, or whether that song was tasteful, or whether the song itself was popular. (when misa tells claudia that it was merely a pop song (or a song that was popular in the past) that doesn't necessarily mean the popularity of the song itself was what won the war. The point of her mentioning it wasn't to emphasise how popular or well-liked it was, but that to us, something so irrelevent (an ancient pop song) is the key to bringing these killing machines back to a civilised society aiming towards a 'creative' life-giving, purpose-driven culture, rather than a destructive, futile one that would bring them to extinction once everything they encountered was destroyed, ending thier purpose for living once the mission was over. The song is just the main symbol used to bring 'culture' back to them. But culture can be any irrelevant activity we do, that 'creates' something, which is non-destructive and not related to war in any way. (notice at the beginning of the tv series when Britai mentions how our building structure is "illogical" in its design. They are completely ignorant of the fact that we do not viw war as the purpose and joy of living. Now when I explain this idea of bringing culture to my GF, she didn't view it as cheesy anymore because the emphasis was taken off only the song itself or only the pop idol, or only the joy of sex or ... you get the idea. It was more "the culture shock" that destroyed thier way of life than a particular song by itself. The song itself just had to introduce the culture back to thier memory to remind them that thier whole lifestyle was just the PC's way of using them as tools. Because the movie was more brief than the tv series, it was designed to be more dramatic, more romantic, more sappy, and more entertaining for a movie audience. This "style" in telling it, so as to portray the pop idol and handsome heroic pilot single-handedly rescuing the human race from doom rather than a whole society working together to contribute as well, (like all the insignificant civilian acitivities aboard the sdf1 as seen in the tv series) is just more entertaining. Movie = more entertaining to an audience, but sooo brief and sudden at the end, that it makes it look cheesy to people who have watched it for the first time with no knowledge of the tv series Tv series = the real story that led to the gradual mass exodus of aliens from thier leader turning the tide and a major factor in winning the war. (like the 3 spies who helped smuggle some of the zentradi refugees onto the sdf1 because they couldn't stand thier crappy lifestyle compared to ours. Remember this helped to convince some of the more stubborn headed (misa's dad?) to trust some of the zentradi and appeal to the politicians to consider a peaceful way to end the war rather than a destructive way. ie to exterminate all aliens, even if there were good ones like Milia who managed to fall in love with a human and bring hope fro the refugees who wanted to change) Whenever somebody laughs at how unrealistc the macross story is and poke fun at a singing pop idol defeating the aliens, they are usually only considering the music itself, not culture being given to the aliens as a whole. It is an oversimplification imo to just say that it was minmay who "defeated" the aliens from invading and killing us or that all the zentradi magically understood how bad it was to fight the moment the song was sang. The tv series showed civilians and thier activities on the sdf1 as contributing to the whole effect of "culture shocking" them as well. So from now on when someone says: tell them the tv series is way more honest in the SW I events, with the movie being more "mythical". Whereas the Kaifun kissing minmay was the pornographic distraction to shock the yet-to-be-contaminated soldiers, (and remember what the leader does to contaminated ones..) it was actually the culture (non-destructive activites) on sdf1 that brought people like milia, britai, exedol, the spies and thier followers etc to our side because they realised fighting was just one aspect of life and there were peaceful solutions (like how the spies were inspired by the peace protests, the first sign of thinking for themselves and individual freedoms they wouldn't have had before) and other reasons for existance beyond thier commands to kill and destroy things. I think it was vital to establish that the whole plan of minmay singing was to contaminate the soldiers so the leader would be force to kill his own guys, and hopefuly those who went to our side, might tip the odds in our favour. Little did we know that some of the zentradi like Kamjin had adapted to the culture shock tactics, and actually embraced it but still continued to kill anyway due to fighting instincts (the "fight" gene?) and wanting revenge. The tv series is much more believable in this sense. Hikaru protecting minmay in this was just the symbol of him "protecting culture". And minamy deciding in the end to continue her career (rather than quit) was a symbol of keeping up the "creating" of this culture which was so vital but seemingly-insignificant for any future encounter with un-converted aliens. I suppose though that an entertaining pop idol in many ways IS important in that it also helps the civilians to keep calm and be agreeable with harsh decisions and conditions. (example in the tv series: minmay showing support for gloval after he breaks the bad news that they were stranded on sdf1 forever, allowing fans to follow her because the people look up to the idol enough to want to listen to what they are saying.) I think the idea Kaifun had was that once Minmay quited her singing career, people would lose thier symbol of hope. Even if she was a pop idol people needed something to worship and idolise to take thier attention away from thinking too much about the bad stuff that was happening during wartime. This is why it was so important for Hikaru to be this protector of the "princess" who created culture, because once "hope" was gone, the people on sdf1 might stop working and living as they usually would have on earth due to low morale. While hikaru and misa worked to defend, she could fanserve (hehe) the people by transforming thier sad mood from their misery at being stuck in the ship, into one where they are happy and wanting to party whereby her entertainment for the masses (a valuable asset to the community spirit) made the experiences more bearable.

I think the timelessness of the design comes also from why it is beneficial for it to transform with the show. You always got the sense that each mode has a functional purpose in the tv series and visually you can see what advantage the modular vehicle has beyond just being a fancy disguise. Also all the parts of the vehicle are used in each mode so there is no wastage. Not all transformers had designs that were perfect. Even the binaltech toys have interior parts of the car exposed when in bot mode. Bits of the vehicle weren't neatly sealed off from the outside compared to the valk which hid parts carefully. One thing I couldn't get over was how things shrunk and grew in transformers. Star scream should by rights be tougher than megatron because he transforms into a jet. Megatron shouldn't be the size of prime in bot mode because prime is a truck. All this growing and shrinking is hard to imagine the transformers being a truly realistic design with a useful function. (apart from the vehicles that didn't undergo the resizing during transforms) If they were to ever remake the transformers they should limit the number of designs and characters in the show and up the realism and quality of each one. For eg what's the point of having a flying shark? Or, why do some robots fly in robot mode and others can't? In the G1 cartoon: Decepticons could fly away whenever they wanted to but not autobots. If they created a world a little closer to the movie version (ie giant robots transporting the bots to the location) it would be cooler. Prime's appearance and entrance in the movie has far more impact than the tv version because we all see him as an elite amoungst the crowd. (all the others becomes cannon fodder) This portrayal of prime as the guy who would turn the tide ofthe battle made the character iconic. (not so much because he has the superior design - its a nostalgiac thing more than a cool design thing)

I remember reading an article about that. The monkey (not sure, it may have been a gorrilla though, this might have been a different experiment) had like a hole drilled into its skull. This reminds me of something I have seen in a simpson episode. I can't wait till we have monkey cyborgs trained to pilot fighters with thier brains! This would have been even more kickass in battroid. The mech would just do what you think. You could hold a bowl of noodles in your lap and eat and kill things at the same time by thinking. One question though: how come when guld lost control of the mech in the episode where he is falling to his doom and Dyson has to rescue him, did they not design the yf21 to just automatically change to manual control scheme if the connection that responds to brainwaves is interrupted? Like say as a failsafe when his brain is distracted? This would have solved all the problem from the beginning wouldn't it? If his brainwaves told the plane to do something dangerous and reckless, they could have programmed it so the computer takes control and overides the command to avoid crashing. That he could beat the AI and the mind control and that good human pilots are "in control", not the machines. We control them, they don't rule and control us. (which is what happened when the crew was brainwashed by the AI+chip.) The whole guilt trip that Guld puts upon Dyson is that "he is the reckless careless and cold one". Because Guld believes he is "dangerous", myung could get hurt and he needs to protect her from Dyson. When guld outperforms him and taunts him about not being "in control" in the first episode of the ova, it is like an insult to him who values the fact that he is "in control" at all times. The same thing happens with Guld where he loses control of his plane and of himself. He has to take drugs to surpress this zentradi fighting instinct which could cost him the competition. (like a kid with ADD who needs prozac or something) In between all this is the AI. An AI which was toying and controlling both Guld AND Isamu because it had parts of myung's own personality inside it and was manipulating both of them to compete for myung, causing this whole conflict. The AI took control of the SDF1 (and the crew's minds) but ultimately couldn't control the human soul which broke out when myung sung her song which magically broke the spell. I think the moral of the story here was that machines can mimmick us, but they cant truly "create" by feeling like us humans. The reason the programmers failed to make a truly human-behaving AI (and needed to cheat when that mad scientist put the bioneural chip in it) is because we humans do things that go beyond those "rules and regulations" that people like millard set up because they are "ordered to follow" to stop reckless people like Dyson from doing what they want to do. The same could be said of a program that follows a strict set of rules to govern behaviour. Artists really just 'feel', they don't have to think about strict rules of program code to create thier art. Those rules might prevent and restrict them from thier expressions. If it gets to a point where they can't express what they are truly feeling then that's not creating from thier heart. (maybe for profit though) When myung let her spirit guide her and just sang her song because she "felt" like it, that's us humans being "human" by spontaneously letting the feeling come out rather than be commanded to by the design of the program that some techie thought would best mimmick real human behaviour. This was that flaw of the AI: by not being able to express feelings spontaneously to create it's own personality (it merely stole an inferiour copy off myung's mind) it wasn't behaving the way a real person would. Similarly when Myung tells the dying AI that she made the same mistake: not expressing her true feelings and bottling it all up, that was what stopped her career from taking off and letting the mess build up into a big conflict. She stopped singing because she couldn't feel the feelings of love that she may have genuinely been having all those years ago when things weren't so depressing and all three of them were happy. She probably thought by turning her back on the events and focusing on work, the bottled up feelings would go away. I hope that after that sharon apple incident, she didn't make the same mistake the AI made, and instead let her heart (the truthful side of her character) just govern her actions more than her mind so that she could get on with life and be honest with herself just like she was was 7 years back. Her "career" was a facade all along which Dyson knew about right from episode 1 when he was on the bike and heard her voice and knew it was not the computer generated one that all the fans of sharon apple were meant to believe. If Dyson knew she was acting fake from the begining, (pretending she was not miserable and not allowing the hurt and her feelings to come out) maybe the AI was justified in expressing those true feelings FOR her with its fake personality, since she preffered acting fake all the time anyway. Computers/machines only do what they are told you know.. and the AI thought it was making the two pilots happy by giving them what they desire, not matter how misled. I can't help but feel Myung is the biggest fraud ever who kinda deserves what she got. Imagine all the fan disapointment when they find out the secret that it was a human singing all along and not an AI with it's own emotions? As bad as Milli Vanilli!!

Explain to the GF that the zentradi were lacking a few things they needed from us: 1) Women to bang (they don't reproduce or have recreational sex, just clone themselves) Wait I should have said "partners" to bang. 2) the ability to entertain. In the tv series they show how fascinated they are by little childrens toys: it has no military value but "its fun" kind of like how buying an astroboy/Atomu or a macross model kit would be fun for fans with lots of leisure time to build. All of the activities that have nothing to do with fighting is labeled "culture". Bringing this to them is like, say, taking your girldfriend on a trip to an alien world in a ufo and showing them a world of things she had never seen before. Of course look at a little child of say 2 years old whose eyes light up at the world around them: that's the zentradi. The only reason we HAVE leisure time is because we, as an advanced society split up our tasks and specialised our minds and bodies to perform various jobs rather than all of us being farmers/hunter gatherers where there is no structure. 3) ability to repair. Remember they were only "programmed to destroy things", I don't think they had any maintenance people which was the reason it took Kamjin so damn long to repair the ship that would eventually "kamikze attack" the sdf-1. If the soldiers became too intelligent they might turn against thier creators so this was a form of government mind control - limiting thier education: a bit like public school kids today who can barely read or write. These soldiers were expendable with life being meaningless. I wrote a post a while ago about how I thought the tv series was WAY superior in getting its idea across than the movie because it didn't put all the credit for saving humanity on "just the song" but more on culture in its entirety. "Culture" includes all kind of creative activities that don't involve desruction. In fact I mentioned that showing the movie version to a new person would result in them thinking the story is very cheesy, because that's how I felt it when I saw it as a kid. If she watched the tv series first: It clears all this up. I showed my own GF the tv series first and she likes the idea of culture saving the zentradi which saved us from extinction. I tried to mention that the music was just one aspect of the whole idea and it isn't as cheesy if you think of it this way. I like to think the zentradi were akin to the legendary giant warrior/barbarians whose only love was of combat and who went to other villages and killed and robbed people using thier superior strength but in the end doomed themselves because they were not educated in things like farming/agriculture, mining, building, learning languages etc (all of these are "creative activities/culture" which help civilised people survive) which destroyed the chances of humans being self-sufficient. The plan being to replace existing humans with "super warrior class only humans" and that these warriors (who may have been heroes to some in the legends) were bad influences for this world and had to be wiped out and bred out of existance by us "lesser" humans. (the "good guys" in macross) Exedol refers to his race as "satan's puppets" as if they were only designed to destroy and replace existing cultures by destroying everything and wiping from existance all knowledge and cultured peoples. Misa was very observant when she saw there were no civilians in the zentradi's base in the tv series. Without civilians, who repairs things? Who builds and creates new weapons? Who does tasks that keep the infrastructure of society moving? The zentradi society were civilian-less, and thus uncivilised. They didn't know any better (ie that some people had to specialise in a task and work thier butt off to create these things) and because they were "combat only" people they threatened to make humanity extinct through destroying our cultures that created useful inventions that helped us to survive as a whole race. The zentradi were not self-sufficient and more like these uncivilised, culture-killing barbarians who raided and stole whatever they could find, and they were a menace to more-peaceful civilised societies who learned to create these things for the benefit of all people, rather than just stealing from others (like parasites) and destroying things. These dumb, brutish barbarians are seen in macross as "giant aliens" rather than the mighty, musclebound, wild, cold-blooded cannibalistic warriors they would be in say a conan comic.

Well in the episode with shin diving with mao to see the treasure, he notices along the way: birds swimming and the flying fishes, then during the bit where he fights the octos you see like a split second "flashback" of the various undersea creatures, (shin is thinking about them as he fights the octos you see, very relevent in the context of combating something which is specialised for underwater tasks: ie the octos) and then a moment later shin (after thinking about these creatures from his journey) quickly transforms into battroid mode JUST as the octos tries to snatch the "nose" of his plane. I rewinded this to see what was going on in this sequence because it happens quickly, but the idea of "transforming to suit the environment and situation" plays an important part to how the valkyrie inherits all the abilities of the creatures in nature. The octos screws ups its snatch attempt (it has two manipulator arms to carry things and was using these to grab the bird-human piece) and shin makes his move while it is vulnerable. A plane cannont enter a physical fight against a robot with limbs up close. But a battroid with limbs can. It would not have worked if he was not quick, but it saved his life. As he fights the octos you see quick flashes to images of these undersea creatures that were just shown a while earlier to remind us that shin is learning from nature. In short: you're right, but I think I'm right too. The "feelings" doesn't just have to do with emotional feelings, but can also refer to "feeling" your enemy out in combat and predicting thier behaviour and mode of attack just as they do it. This applies even to Shin's fight against Sara: knowing what your enemy is feeling may allow you to disarm them if you don't wish to harm them while defending yourself. The emotion he had when reminded of loss of his parents was what clouded his vision and turned him into a "Kadun" for a moment. The kaduns of anger, sadness, and fear were "possessing" or "manipulating" him, until he opened his heart up and personally "transformed" himself to stop letting those "evil" emotions control and rule him. It's a spiritual battle against personal demons for control of your body, and once you lose, you become bitter like that Albino-haired chick and transform into a "monster" which the Bird Human is programmed to terminate based on how much hate there is in the person. Else the bird would have destoryed Shin and the world along with it. Watch the scene with the butch lady, (and how she can see what is on shin's mind and "feel" what moves he is most likely to pull, and also roy's references to "adapting to the situation" as he tutors shin about the weakness of just using one mode of the valkyrie. Shin only got his ass kicked by the albino-headed ace because he was so damn predictable and easy to manipulate and thus, predict his moves in combat. That's why she was taunting him in combat because she could see what his moves were he didn't open his instinctive "feelings" up in combat (similar to Luke relying on the force in A new Hope) and only relied on his ability in fighter. The very first episode where Shin gets shot down by her after she transformed into battroid should have taught the sucker to not fall for the same trick twice. Only until shin used all 3 modes (an unexpected behaviour pattern that the ace could not have predicted) did he start to turn the dogfight around. He does a little gerwalk kick on the canopy of the enemy to lift himself up like in a game of mario bros. where you stomp on your opponent's head to jump higher. Also I think another anime best sums up this "feeling out your enemy" idea: Ninja Scroll. At the end the old man talks about having actually manipulated the hero right from the beginning of the movie into joining him in his secret mission because he systematically appealed to the hero's willingness to help others by poisoning him so that he could get close to the poison-tasting woman (who had not known love before). The ninja's goal is to predict what is going to happen, read what others are going to do(studying thier behaviour), and manipulate them so that you are in control. (just like today's spies correct?) But the one thing that was missing was the genuine feelings that come from the heart when people are in love. So he chose the poison that would force the hero and the woman to come together to help him get the villain. The old man would not have been able to do this without A knowing what the woman was up to (reading thier feelings, studying behaviour) B knowing that Jubei was skilled enough by observing the fights from a hidden place C using manipulative tactics to get what he wanted. (poisoning) All of this is in context of combat (understanding the enemy and yourself) as much as it refers to love. (the "heart"; which governs how the hero will behave under certain "forced" conditions, conditions that are set up by the spying old man to get what he wants from the beginning of course.) It might seem irrelevent now but I find that nature inspires technologies and gives ideas. The variable sweep wings are like that of how bird manipulates thier own wings, so the transformation of the valkyrie in combat are like that of the way certain creatures in nature learn to survive by inheriting characteristics to go anywhere from evolution in nature. (these might be the genetic manipulation the PC was carrying out) If you watch that episode carefully you will see that I'm not making this up, shin "remembers" (through a flashback) what he saw down in the ocean and "copies" them, getting an idea to fight underwater with the valk to kill the octos so the bird-human fragment could get away to safety. Why fight against nature when you can just adapt to it, use it to your advantage, and use less effort to get what you need? There is no reason why a mech shouldn't match the abilities of humans: fighting giant zentradi through the use of a battroid's giant arms and legs to manipulate giant-sized objects, birds: (fighters), fish, (if needs be it can fight octos underwater) and it's this idea that brings valkyrie more towards an "all-environment" vehicle that adapts to whatever the aliens can throw at humans when they finally arrive. If they are going to mass-produce the right weapon to fight them, it better be something that can do many tasks by itself or it risks weaknesses that don't allow for the defense against aliens who they have barely any strategic information about. This is probably what the PC were preparing humans for. Evolution kills off those that are weak, and strengthens those that are strong by introducing advantageous "mistakes" in nature (can be in the form of a mutation or a "disease" or whatever) that may be helpful to a future species survival for that particular environment they are competing with rival organisms in. (for food, resources, control or whatever) Not all mutations are advantageous to survival but it at least ensures biodiversity for the future if one species is weak against certain things risking extinction of that whole species. (like how pesticides might not work forever on an pest once that species adapts to the poison, making it immune) The valkyrie then, can be seen as the militaries' ultimate organism that stands on the top of the food chain as far as survival is concerned because it can be strong in any environment through transformation and adaptation. (it "evolved" from just fighter to giant robot to something inbetween: a bird style machine with limbs. An advantageous mutation like what happens in nature to evolve a species.) http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-history-fixedwing.htm

Heh, kinda grumpy eh? Maybe because macross plus was recieved well by lots of people, so pumping loads of effort and money into this prequel was a logical thing for them to do? analogy: if terminator 1 was a success despite being low budget, don;t you think it logical to make the sequel or prequel more high budget for fans of the original and for the masses and to give the talented people behind the first, more freedom to do what they wish? It would be pretty boring (storywise) without some "major crisis event" like the UNG struggle between Anti-UN imo. There has to be something to challenge our heroes for thier to be some cool "survive by just a moment to spare" action scenes. Realise too that technology is an important part of how humans got so advanced to be able to challenge the Zentradi by the start of SW I. I'm starting to believe now that the "transformation" of mechs is a motif that relates to the "transformation/evolution" of living organisms on that island. The "flying fish", the "swimming birds" etc These are animals not limited by their native environments thanks to evolution giving them extra abilities - like the valkyrie which swims, flies, and walks. Not limited by the environment. Technology meeting nature. In combat a pilot of a transformable mech must understand that in order to beat his opponent he must learn to adapt to his style of fighting to the environment like those animals shown in the "nature channel" scenes. It's a beautiful way to show how technology can be influenced by nature and so forth. I read somewhere that the variable sweep wings on f14 were inspired by how birds can alter wing shape during flight to adapt to the situation, giving the plane more flexibility. By going back to nature in macross zero, we see a kind of "evolution" of the early valkyrie design and where it could have been inspired from. It was presented very nicely. Also to me, the overall background of Roy (popular character from the original) and his inability to express genuine feelings to the girl he likes even though he is this great womanising man who you wouldn't suspect is a shy person, shows us the hidden side of the character that we didn't see in sdf macross. The girl Roy likes actually makes him nervous and weak at the knees - he was just as insecure as Hikaru was at the start of macross. This is a more honest view of who roy was than the taunting Jock we all know from SDF:Macross. All of this small stuff is very relevent to fans and details like gravity control system being used and the witnessing of folding must have seemed like mysterious events to humans when first viewed. It would be like finding out that aliens/ancient astronauts really DID exist and that nothing was myth as told by mainstream science but instead historical fact. And it wouldn't surprise me that government would want to cover it up and keep all the best secrets to themselves and revealing information to the public until absolutely necessary. (not only for security to protect people but for power so they can research it for themselves to make the best weapons and destroy the competition) For a good real world example read about the desruction of archealogical evidence in iraq: http://www.conspiracynewsnet.com/shadow.html (scroll down to the "The Iraqi Mandaean Conspiracy" story.) True or not, it makes for some great sci-fi. :D Make up your own mind about what you think is relevant to fans of macross, but I say kawamori is just extending his original "ancient astornauts/atlanteans seeded humantiy" idea from DYRL "Protoculture" to me is a topic that links the ancient (advanced) past with the future technological present. (with the secrecy of government cover-ups and power struggle against a paranoid opposition not trusting of the establishment) Protoculture is a topic that really bridges that gap of events from 1999 to the first Main Gun blast that started the whole space war. The character Aries is like the Mulder character from the xfiles and is searching for truth in a world of lies. These are interesting characters. Much more deep than the cliched macross plus ones imo.

I just got macross design works last week so I'll be looking forward to this. I can't read japanese though so I'm a little disapointed at not knowing what's being said in all the text arond the pics.

Oh, then that's even worse. Poor Roy. I think he was pretty cocky in that episode too if my memory serves me right.