1/1 LowViz Lurker

Proof that basara has a Jungian racial memory dating back to M0

I've got images of the robotech Invid flower of life. The octos and 1-eyed mech does kind of look like an invid. I think all the ancient myths make more sense when you take an ancient astronaut perspective to history. We already had our war with the zentradi and beat them. They as soldiers were bored of just experiencing the same crappy lifestyle of war that never ends. It means no time for leisure, no women, no drinks, no sex, no toys, videogames, hobbies, no freedom to think or educate yourself etc... everyting is just structured for military purposes. All the money (if there was currency) just went into spending towards more weapons which we humans ended up doing in world wars and got sick of. Kakazaki summed it up well how boring life would be without being allowed to love in the episode where him, misa and hikaru were captured aboard the ship. I think the story of the zentradi is over and we all have to get over it. There's not much more to tell imo. I think the whole x-files style aproach to human origins is refreshing theme. It really adds to believeability to the ancient zentradi legends of people with super powers that couldn't be explained. SDF Macross shows them believing we ARE the PC, and this brings up an interesting twist: Maybe we really are them? Maybe the PC did spread a virus to earth or had some of thier people come here and mate with ancient civilisations whose history is hidden from the rest of the world due to isolation? Why would exedol respond so frightened about Kaifun's 'PC power' unless there really were encounters like this? For people like me who just bought the DVD boxset of SDF macross and scratching thier head about who the PC really were, what genetic experiments they got into, and the possibility of ancient astronauts on earth, this is an interesting topic. As well as the prophecies about the world ending because it is thought we are going through some sort of hippy's 'new age' of spriritual awakening. (Hasford makes a phoenix reference about how the world will be remade from ashes, which could be references to the coming holocaust in SDFM) Notice how goverments around the world just seem not to care anymore about local concerns and turn only towards global ones? They want a global government or rule with themselves in power. To me the original tv series shows the new world order after the anti-un (that is anyone with an anti-global goverment belief) have been killed off, whereas this one shows us who the anti-un were, how they got to be such a threat, and what they were planning to do. (world peace, evolve the race, end the war) They seemed to get mentioned in the tv series (the bye bye mars ep) but for people like me, I want to know more of thier history and have some image of them. I'm glad that the events in Zero showed us characters who were neutral to these two sides because in war, innocent people are the ones who get caught up in the ambitions of the few, and it lets us all know that neither the UN or Anti-UN were saints. No good guys or bad guys, just powers. I felt sorry for sara when they showed the image of the blown up bridge and the crying kid with the dead parent, and the octos invasion. As seen from those images: how things got to be the way they were (in the tv series) was through a lot of sorrow, and people having to follow orders and accept the hypocracy of those orders even if they did not agree with them. ie global's little speech to lisa about the need to spread the human race to avoid another holocaust due to the human race having ever more deadly military weapons and increased military funding; risking us becoming like the warlike zentradi and powerhungry PC. Obviously, given they are survivors of a holocaust, he does not trust the higher ups, whether we are PC-descended or not, since there is no perfect race that is free from mistakes. We also get to see Roy being neutral to war. I'm pretty sure the only reason he and shin fights is out of duty and a naive sense that the wars and suffering will finally end by them merely protecting thier loved ones, (Shin:"I know it's just a fantasy") not because they love killing so much and a military career. Hikaru's perception of them as murderers earlier in the tv series really shows the journey and progress they would end up going through as more and more pilots died in the Unification war and they were running short and desperate. (ie it was more like they were forced into the killing and protection/defense of others was inevitable due to the circumstances) Despite Roy's apearances in the SDFM series and his cockiness and drunken behaviour in the movie (trying to make out with claudia in public) did we really get to know Roy up close before? His death was sudden and almost too quick, almost like what happens when a soap star gets into a real life accident and suddenly does not appear anymore in the soap. Claudia flashback wasn't enough to flesh this character out imo. My main complaints: -needed a sixth part to resolve the characters and the events after the afos disappeared. You don't leave people hanging like that. It's not nice. Perhaps flesh out what happened to nora and the brutal treatment of villagers she was reffering to. Yeah we know she's angry, but be more specific. I get the sense they were just put there as filler to provide opposition to the good guys. -They needed to end the dogfight with a decisive victory for shin and roy. Maybe they use some strange new maneuver to outfly their instructors? I liked the training scene between roy and shin with the 3 modes. Perhaps finish the aces off in style and add a matrix-style slowdown and cam rotation like in some of the earlier eps? I can think of heap of cool finishing moves and maybe even a one liner for Shin or Roy that makes the audience feel good about the last duel. It just seemed weak given all the taunting before.

Yeah, in my later edit I just double checked: the bird human was going against orders from the god of the heavens. Meaning the chic who flew that ancient bird human somehow managed to fly back to heaven, as it mentions she leaves earth. (without the bird human, or maybe there was an extra birdmech lying around or something?) In the legend I think there was something about her saying that when she comes back to her husband, it will only be "when the destiny of the stars crumble." (intergalacitc war?) So I'm still wondering then, is the husband still alive in ghost form? Mao has alpha bombay blood running in her so the human race could in fact be carrying PC genes as opposed to us merely having our genes affected due to genetic engineering or from a bunch of insects singing a song that creates life and we evolve. They need a sixth part imo.. Maybe earth is somehow attacked again by this God Procacha or something? And the female rejoins her hubby? Perhaps this is SW II? Or maybe Shin was just replaying the role as the first human male, and Sara replaying the role of the first female, and they (husband+wife) re-united again in heaven when shin and sara disappeared? (ie of course they are not literally the human people in the legend, just playing the ROLE of what the legend prophecises will happen and they close the chapter; having fullfilled the ancient prophecy) Keep in mind too the other usage of "star": the "stars" on the ground. All those rare species (maybe evolved or genetically modified from pc-instroduced diseases?) that were being created in the forest just prior to the anti-un bombing could be reffered to as stars on the ground because of the light they emitted. It was a prophetic sign. "when the destiny of the stars crumble" A foretelling of another event which is about to happen in space.(zentradi destroying other planets) When those glowing insects (stars on the ground) died, you could say that was when Sara and shin were brought together closely and ultimatly they would go to heaven together as if they fell in love and played the figures in the legend. (Rooy Kanu and Rooy Waka) When the Afos+Sara left in ep5, it was taking its husband (played by shin) back to heaven after the destiny of the stars crumbled. (fireflies dying) It's said that the flying fish were the first children of Rooy Kanu and Waka, so it had to be a mating of species with different genes, (genetic modification or evolution helped by the ancient afos bird which possibly was responsible for the wings on the fish which seemed to be unique to that island) or 2 people falling in love like how the legend tells of the 2 figures (1 female from the bird human culture mating with 1 male from underwater culture) who were united in the begining to provide company and children to each other, got seperated, and finally would meet again. ie shin and sara who both disappear in ep 5 to be mysteriously beamed to heaven.

Yeah but the scientists had actually observed the neck of the afos and said it was cut off literally. Maybe all types of diseases were introduced as a result of the blood? Kind of like what happens when you introduce new species into another country and upset the balance? All kinds of animals would mutate and the fish would inherit the wings of the bird people to make flying fish? Or perhaps a combination of both: The pilot exited, cut the head off, but her blood was through her offspring when she passed her genes on to new generations after mating with the fishman? (not the blood from the neck itself. But this is confusing since the afos has its own blood as evidenced by the blood pouring out of it which was used to heal Mao. This reminds me of something: Mao has the afos blood pumping in her veins.) The disease the wife had was passed down and some pure bloods could develop thier powers which stemmed from the PC race? (like levitation of rocks, healing through music etc) I agree with the dna thing and the dna double helix though. I guess as guardian she was traumatised that when she was a kid she gave into the bribe and let the greedy Hasford take her blood sample. When she saw needles she knew that white people were going to steal thier blood and went psycho. I still think the bird cut its head off out of love. (if not the bird itself, then the female pilot who mated with the fishpeople after falling in love) Hasford says that this bird human was ordered by another bird human thingy to destroy us. (I think it was in ep4) This God has a name but I can't remember what it was. "The bird human who created the humans on the Mayan Islands. Was ordered to sing the song of destruction by the god of the heavens, Procacha.When the bird human was told to do that, he cut off his own head...tp prevent the song from being sung. But evertime a bond between people and a bond between the people and the earth is broken it's believed that the head and body move closer together and will one day sing the song of destruction. Sara, you were the one who told me that, remember? You broke that rule o tell me that, Sara.Also you shared the blood of the priestessess even when your father, Ugari, urged you not to." *cue akira style scream, with floating rocks in place of cracks in walls* I like to think that the "bond between the people and the earth" has to do with two things: 1) we now have possession of sdf1 to go and rape and pillage other civilisations. The antigravity effect of the floating rocks = the "bond weakening between people (who have wings to explore the heavens) and earth" (ground). In real life you could say this is when man developed planes and flying vehicles to go and attack other isolated cultures which were once protected from advancing civilisations.(whose intent was to control the less advanced ones) The military arm of our civilisation had these ambitious intentions of using this superior tech to take control of other planets through force. Only using military superiority and forcing others to bow down do we ensure total order though and that's why we kind of deserved to be attacked by the zentradi. Our leaders had no intention of just using technology for good purposes. 2) people have forsaken thier sacred duty to thier religions and turned towards city life. (Mao is bored sh1tless on the island as evidenced on by shin's arrival) "The bond between the people" was just symbolic of our warring with each other from ancient times up till now with better technogy which has become increasingly efficient at doing its job on a mass scale. ie Nukes? Once those islanders worshipped nature and respected the forces of the forest. Now they turned to industry and war. In real life: a lot of our technology comes from what we've learned from machines developed during our wars against each other and this tech has filtered down to our consumer products. Our factories are super efficient, and mass-produced items are kept cheap thanks only to the robots that create them quickly at next to no expense. It's a brave new world where man can turn his back on god. He became god when he could sail heaven without listening to all the warnings, so primitives will eventually think of us as special and we can ignore thier considerations. We already failed in the ancient days I bet. think about it: Even primitive tribes would fight over things like land and food and stuff. They actually show a bunch of natives with spears fighting in the paintings I think. It was out of love that we were saved not because we were fit to live. And Sara is such a hypocrit. If she didn't fail the test her dad gave her, none of this mess would have happened. Hasford told Sara in ep 5 that her Dad actually ASKED him to test her to see if she would obey his order. She gave into temptation and took the bribe. (a bead necklace) Civilised cultures can bribe primitive cultures with goodies. (we saw this when Aries used the drinks to bribe the natives to give thier blood up for testing) I guess it's up to mao now to take the guardianship role which her sister failed to do and with her newfound powers she leads her culture back to its primitive ways. Or.. she decides to just live a life in the cities now that the end time prophecy is fullfilled and neither the song of creation or destruction was able to go through. I wish they resolved this better so we know what happens next. One thing I'm wondering is: Are the legends about the female actually real? Will there in fact be a female coming to visit earth to rejoin her husband here? And where is this husband? The female says she will come back during the time of the end which is kind of vague.

I agree. Which is why I said the rules of the real world should not always be aplied to the rules of the creator's world as they have different technology which can't be compared with anything we might try to come up with. We clearly see battroids moving like humans hiding behind buildings for cover, and generally avoiding (dodging) enemy fire as if it made a difference. My idea about limbs only explains that because this IS possible to do in that world, (and not in the real world) its use (of limbs) is justified because it (dodging) WORKS in that world. Similar to how I can accept the reasoning about why putting legs on a giant machine is still practical, because in THIER world, they found out how to make these things run fast. (which we in the real world probably haven't done) It's like a comic book. If superman were real, and kryptonite was real and I use kryptonite against superman to make him weak, then going by the creator's rules: superman must "react realistically" if kryptonite is used on the hero. There is comicbook "realism", and real realism. I'm trying to justify the use of limbs in the comic book realm and rationalise thier use under the creator who put limbs there for a reason. (eg Limbs are needed because: ....because the UN expected to fight giants and need to open giant doors and may need to manipulate giant sized equipment) I'm not saying these are going to replace tanks or that wheels will be superceded by legs in the real world. Just that a monster with legs has it's own "fictional justification" in macross just as the need for giant hands on the VF. There are many instances where the characters get close and personal to the giants. Urban settings where you can't see, inside a giant ship, when they've run out of ammo and have to physically fight,(the scene with britai ripping off the chest plate) when the earth forces have depleted ammo supplies etcetc... There are also fictional settings and fictional situations for the reason behind a battroid mode. You will notice many times the pilot changes to battroid mode when he gets close and the micrmissiles start to swarm. Maybe because he can freely gun them down easier when he is holding a gunpod in his hands and spread the fire as opposed to shooting them in fighter mode where your line of fire is limited to the centre of the plane? These are all just explanations to make-believe situations. But the same thing coult be said about antigravity. (and there are already hints that antigrav may have been solved by some genius and the information is too controversial to be handed out to just anyone) Ever heard about ufos? We don't know what kinds of emerging technologies might spring up in the future (which is what futurists must do by not just modeling ideas off obvious stuff that we already know about today) that will solve those very problems you bring up. And the computers become more advanced every 2 years. This is what I mean by being open-minded. You as a scifi author must assume the problems were already solved somehow and explain with as little or as much detail as possible how it all works. Heck, I don't complain when I see stupid impractical things in minortiy report that just don't make sense (like that little spiral rail where gumballs ride down ) because I can keep an open mind. Just because it doesn't make sense to us yet, we shouldn't automatically dismiss it so easily. I think part of the reason why people hate magic so much is merely because anything metaphysical has not been easily understood with a model and it gets out of thier comfort zone so they have this witch hunt mentality where "if nothing makes sense to me, I just can't enjoy it". or "If Neo in the matrix can jump in the air and dodge bullets because he can predict what the enemy does then its not worth explaining how he can do this with fictional ideas and fan theories, because it just isn't realistic." Ok but the terrain is really rough. Like ditches and hills that just make trying to shoot at things behind those hills impossible because they are not in your line of fire all because you are bogged down and need to climb up first. I find that a giant legged robot like the regult which could leap, duck, hop, boost-jump and run over certain obstacles may have an easier time because the legs only have to touch a small portion of the surface in negotioating those obstacles, ..instead of rolling over them. This isn't unreasonable considering that the mechs may have to negotiate all type of different surfaces where having treads means a bumpy unpleaseant ride because it takes a larger surface area. And I'm sure somebody will be able to provide some kind of dampening effect to lessen the bumpiness in a mech, (similar to what they use in amusement rides) and allow for legs to only clamp down on a surface and stretch according to the variable height. Check out the forest walker for eg.: A regult could hop from one cliff to another, jump to the crest of the hills without needing to roll down the hill first. It would eliminate the time for rolling down the hill, and then climbing up the hill, when it could just jump from crest to crest of each hill and keep a height advantage over rolling targets that are bogged down at the bottom of the hills by shooting them from above. It would be easy to kill tanks and outmaneurer them. And unlike flying machines they can stay low to the ground if they wanted to. Helicoptors and other flying machines can co-exist with these. But why do we have to say there is absolutely no purpose for using legged mecha when the fictional world shows them jumping like kangaroos and thier tech is advanced enough to allow things the real world hasn't allowed for? Strafing?: Inside the belly of a zentradi ship you may not have time to turn the treads first and then move sideways. You might need to just move immediately out of sight without the turning and steering first. When you play dodgeball, do you see people turning thier body in the direction they want to move before avoiding the ball? Nope you see them stepping sideways and leaping out of the way without turning thier feet. It's more efficient this way. If somebody was about to shoot you with a gun and they just hadn't fired it yet, you would do the same thing. You wouldn't turn your body and then run. If armed, you would even hide behind the wall, and only expose yourself enough to be able to get a clear shot. When you consider that the gunpod is just a giant machine gun (and sometimes it jams) then it helps to imagine how the battroid would act. (like a giant human soldier) That's true we even see them in macross zero when the UN soldiers are shooting the submerged Octos mechs with those rocket launchers. But just because they (anti-tank/anti-mecha people) exist doesn't eliminate the existance of the machines. If the antitank guys were so effective, I doubt we would even see mechas at all in macross right? My constrained examples are just situations that might demonstrate the need for limbs, which is the purpose of the debate in the first place. Remember though, that I'm not saying legs are going to replace wheels or treads in the real world, (actually I said there is no need for there to be a war between them, since they can co-exist) rather, I was just explaining thier fictional use in the fictional macross world. Like the fictional fact about how superman is supposed to be weak against kryptonite. He doesn't fricken exist but it's still fun to know why he becomes weak right? There are rules in the world about why things are like that. It's important to realise that some science fiction first asks you to understand these rules/lore of thier world, before you can actually make sense of them because they are not modelled on reality and its laws, which are NOT related to the laws in the creator's fictional world. Matrix is a perfect example where they have 1 world that is real and one where the characters can dodge bullets, and have jedi-like perception to see things ahead of time to respond quickly. Of course, it's not "real" to us that they could do that, but it (the matrix) offers an fictional comicbook explantion as to WHY they can do it, just like a majority of anime out there. Nobody promised macross was to be modelled on hard reality. So people are being unfair when compare our world with macross fictional world. Apples and oranges. Sure, it may have been inspired by something that was seen in real life (Like how a vf1 just so happens to look like a f14 so we understand that it is aerodynamic enough for flight) but it is not playing by the rules of realism. (the vf1 moving like a completely different animal, smashing into a concrete overpass as if it were made of clay) That would be a good idea. I often wonder why the Monster doesn't just have a turret. I've often thought of lots of mechs as just vertical tanks anyway. The ones with lots of firepower and armor are the slow ones (the tanks, like the monster) and the ones that can fly around and attack sensitive targets which possess more mobility thanks to thier humanoid 'suit' design are the 'fast' ones. A VF battroid and a Qrau would probably outclass a monster for example. (hell maybe a battroid could act as the 'anti-tank' guy against the larger mechs) To the guy asking about the dinobot: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/home.html There is some footage there of it moving around. Click "Troody" from the list.

I just watched episode 5 again and noticed a few things: Somebody way back made a point about the afos being a hypocrite for destroying the human race because we are destructive. It was too preachy. Part of the reason was to stop us from spreading our behaviour across the galaxy and part of it has to do with the fact that because the machine responds to emotions, sara at the time felt she needed to punish the race because it was possessed by demonic behaviour (everyone looked like a kadun to her) Sort of like a purification and cleansing of the people who had known only bad behaviour. Because the war had gotten out of hand and threatened to consume her own culture (people leaving for the big bad corrupt cities) it was natural for her to be angry as well which resulted in the death beams and killing of both sides. ....But...remember she broke her OWN rules... She gave in to Dr Hasford's bribe and gave blood which her dad said was forbidden. (pay particular attention to the bit where Hasford tells Sara that her Dad asked him to test her) So she has to wear part of the blame. For the Afos to choose NOT to destroy us (in the ancient legend where the bird human cuts it's head off) was a sign of forgiveness for our imperfections. That was the ultimate lesson Sara had to learn. You could say it was preachy but the OVA shows that even the best person with good intentions can fall. I guess Sara learned that trying to be perfect and follow rules (which she herself failed to do) was never the intention of the legend from the beginning. To me the legend says: "We will fail it's just a matter of time before history repeats". But through love, mankind is forgiven for his failings. And if you pay attention to what Hasford shows in the legend where the bird human had cut its own head off to avoid destroying us, you will see this "forgiveness through love" theme plays out in the ending where shin fullfills the prophecy and rises into the sky to join the Sara. (like a re-enacting ritual to show that the first female who came to earth would regroup with the first male during "the time of the end" and they would be joined together. With shin acting out the ritual or play as an actor playing the role of the first human.) This just reaffirms my belief that the human race had actually been designed to fail the tests from the beginning to learn forgiveness using love. If people like sara can't relax; imposing rules on everyone that she herself had broken, then the human race will die (but not because god was angry and fear-mongering, but because man himself would drive himself to extinction if he keeps the war going with no sign of forgiveness for each person's sins). Life wouldn't be as interesting or worth living without love. To some it gives them purpose.(unlike the original zentradi who had only known war and destruction)

[WARNING LONG POST- AN ANALYSIS OF 5 PARTS] Just watched all eps. Wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. The only thing I had a problem with was the way nora and ivanov had died. Really waste of an opportunity to have the last duel. But when you consider that's all they do for the whole series, it adds a little twist to have them taken out by the aifos. The overall theme of love and forgiveness within the creation myth runs throughout the whole thing nicely. The bird human was probably able to sense and feed off the hate of Sara and responded according to her emotions. Unlike a mech which would respond to phyical control, this thing is able to sense what the person is feeling.(eg was when the head glows after seeing mao and shin kissing) Sara may have been in control of the aifos, but was she in control of her feelings? The human race was never really meant to live imo. Because in the legend the bird cut its head off and had disobeyed orders from its master to destroy the planet. The only reason it must have cut its head off was because of something it may have loved on the planet. It was more like it felt sorry and wanted to forgive the inhabitants for being imperfect the way they were. Similar to how sara and shin had tried to carry and repress thier hate about losing thier parents and didn't want to trust people, but through love could forgive people for the pain in thier pasts. So they just held onto the negative atitude for so long that the only thing they could do to relieve themselves is to experience love. If evolutionary steps are just mutations and mistakes that nature makes, then these two can learn from thier mistakes and gain knowledge from each other's differences that become seeds for the new hybrid generation. Sara was going to be one lonely gal once all her people discovered the cities and moved there. Her bloodline/genes may have needed to pass onto a generation exposed to more than a simple life. The PC gene would die off along with the abilities of her people given that she was the only one who was given the guardian powers. I like to think that sara is just a Misa Hayes in island form. Always sticking to the rigid rules and never being honest with herself and her imperfections. Less able to open up to people. Distancing herself from others and putting herself in a position where she risks living a life of isolation and loneliness. When a person gets to the point where they won't breed to carry on thier genes for the next generation, it's no wonder certain species become extinct! The Bird human's legend of sacrifice was an example of love which allows and accepts both the good AND bad in people even if they may not deserve to live. Ths lessen is to teach us all to pass on forgiveness to our enemies if we expect forgiveness from others. Of course unless people excorcise thier demons of fear, hate, anger.. etc they will continue to want to get revenge (like nora and ivanov) and bring about an endless cycle of killing and bloodletting leading to extinction. Forgiveness vs an endless cycle of revenge. Forgiveness being the symptom of love, revenge a symptom of hate. If the Bird Human in the legend didn't have faith in humans to cut its own head off in the beginning, (like the faith Shin has in Sara, by shedding his fear; and the faith of Sara in Shin once she got to know him) then there would be no chance for the human race to go on. A whole species hangs by a thread on 1 person being able to love another and learning to forget thier pain. Even minmay had no faith in her original singing in stopping the war in DYRL, until being convinced. Similar theme here. In war people cling to thier need to overpower and control others because they are scared of each other. I'm guessing this is why the UN had to steal the transformation technology off the anti-un because they were afraid of being left behind in the arms race. The reason I think the anti-UN Octos can transform while the UN cheyenne can't is because the anti-un stumbled upon the idea first, and the UN, having eventually defeated them, got to write the official history. But because the UN didn't follow its own rules by announcing these findings to the hardworking tax payers who are funding the research into all these technologies, the anti-un can be cynical about who really stole what from whom. (doesn't it belong to everyone?) Under the UN united perspective, they had it first and they can say whatever they want with the public believing thier version of the story. It's all so topsecret and shadowy, with the UN being able to control the flow of information. Just like in the SDF: Macross tv series where the people had absolutely no idea that the planes could transform into giant robots right until the first giant invasion. Without honesty and trust from the begining, it's no wonder you invite dissenters like Kaifun. When you fear and don't trust the people below you, they will fear you; creating stellar republic-style splits. Mankind could evolve easier if certain people shed thier fear of the past and open thier hearts up to give others chances. People like misa, the perfect woman who can't learn to relax, tend to destroy the chances of others around them in trying to live up to that person's high expectations. As a result, people who hang around character's like misa just give up because they are scared to aproach them. I've met people like that in real life who can't learn to love, and expect you to be perfect with them, imposing rules to limit what is acceptable. If you want to relate that to M0: It was only after Sara stopped being so judgemental, that the species had another chance at survival. (Imo we already failed the test when the anti-un and un were destroying whole civilisations just to ensure they could either have the power for themselves, or deny the power to thier enemy through destroying things) Even though humans didn't deserve to live, we can survive if people: a) didn't impose laws on others to control them and then go around and break thier own laws in secret and be hypocrits. The un is guilty here. Since military power and selfish control of information is the means to an end. This happens all the time where the same rules are not applied to those in powerful positions, or the ones in power are able to just whitewash themselves and lie. b) had faith enough to forgive the past and move on. The anti-un characters just wanted revenge such that bombing innocent people neutral to either side in the war is perfectly justified to them. That behaviour would not get much sympathy from the audience just because you were beaten in by someone in the past. They are both the reasons for continued fighting, and for why wars keep going, proving that the evil and lack of trust of others is really just within everyone (as a darkside to the personality) and it's a never-ending spiritual battle. You could say that Sara herself was evil (NOT in control of her feelings) when she wanted revenge on the human race for the injustices commited against her people (and her reactions were perfectly justfied...but still wrong) but going by the idea that even if we don't deserve to live, (like I said humans failed the test long before the birdhuman was awakened imo) the lessen of forgiveness, learning to let go of fear was the most important thing to species survival. (even animals don't hold grudges) Taken to a mass scale it's only when people think they are too perfect (misa and Hikaru's first encounters and fights) and impose thier stupid rules unto others because they are narrowminded and can't accept other people's diverse qualities, that starts wars and leads to death. Eg. the fishpeople's original insults about the bird people lacking as much knowledge of the sea, which started the rift in the first place. Obviously fish and bird, like the wind and the sea, could learn to live in harmony, but nooo someobody had to think they were higher in importance and let thier fear and insecurity against cultures that happen to look different to themselves get in the way of things... which eventually led to the fall of man.(or "fishpeople with legs" however you want to call them ) The truth is: What makes us human are those unique imperfections; those mistakes and character frailties and flaws that were given to us that may be helpful in evolution when combined with other species/cultures who can complement our unique abilities to allow newer and better generations with mixed genes, resulting in generations with abilities of both species. Like the flying fish, the wind and the sea, this symbolised the melding of two cultures that resulted in benefits for both. Magick when combined with technology seems to be the protoculture's motif after all. Almost as if they were masters of material and spiritual realms, minus the unique culture we created for ourselves by integrating zentradi, possible PC, and human blood. It's when the split occurs (due to hate and fears because of greed and of the fear of what others wuld use with power) that chances for species survival lessen as both sides try killing each other off. The machine they left behind may have anticipated all of this fear and anger but didn't care if we failed the test, just like the legend of the bird human which cut its head off to go against orders from above, to destroy everything. (Hasford reveals this crucual piece of the myth showing picture of a beheaded birdman to prevent the order from going ahead) If the mayan god gave up, and lost faith in us they would have easily destroyed us from the start, instead of ordering incompetant underlings to destroy the human race who keep going against orders. In other words, god anticpated our failure (and the failure of the bird human in destroying us by it deliberately not following rigid set of orders) all along since it knew the outcome but needed certain influential figures to meet up before allowing the remains of the birdmachine in finally leaving. Because the bird human felt sorrow, by not destroying us as ordered, it learned love. The lesson all humans (and later zentradi), had forgotten. The goal all along wasn't so much a test but was to set up compassion between two completely different people from different backgrounds to prove that there was hope after all. (it was a repeat of the ancient legend for today) The lesson was mainly for those who had stopped believing. (that is most of the younger mayan islanders who had stopped believing thier own legends and moved to the cities. Giving up thier peaceful culture and being a part of the war machine by joining UN) To me a "test" is merely to see if you deserve to live. (ie "if don't follow these rules, you will be killed." Inciting fear) Whereas a lesson shows man is in complete control, but god will love you and keep the faith and promises. If men kill themselves that is thier problem for turning thier backs on the lessons, since god had the capability to destroy us (and chose not to out of love) whenever he wants. It's only when man forgets love and compassion and loses faith in others(other cultures, other people), does he risk destroying everything he has. (including his loved ones) Contrary to what all the mad scientists believe, if evolutionary steps are to be taken we must be prepared to accept imperfections, because that is how nature works in evolving us, through mistakes. (Aries theory of passing our unique 'diseased' genes, and our love, to another species to help evolve them)

wtf.. you'll die, did being able to fight hand to hand help the marines any? no. and if you run out of ammo how likely is it the enemy did too? very VERY implausable senario. my god man, tanks have no trouble at all lining up targets when on uneven terrain, where the HELL are you getting this reasoning from? turrets have sophisticated technology that makes aiming them a SNAP. and they already do it today. what the hell are you talking about? Have you ever driven a car? ever talked to a tank operator? operating machinery isn't this insanely complicated task that breaks your concentraition and leaves you vunerable. airplane operators and tank crews often talk about their machines becomeing an extension of themselves. this arguement makes no sence. a mech would require just as much training as a tank or plane. wtf. infact, trying to do simple tasks but with a even slightly diffrent body would probably prove to be very disorienting. driving a tank is simple, aiming a turret is simple. operating a walking robot is NOT SIMPLE. aside from jumping, a tank could do all these moves you mentioned, (it woudln't need to roll since its already lower and more stable than a tumbling robot) and in case you forgot, tanks can hide behind cover too. but you're also forgetting that a tank is infinately more strong than the average building, a missle could just go through the ply wood and drywall and still hit the targget. tanks are VERY good already at keeping their guns on target, they don't need to stop to aim or fire. i don't know what you're trying to prove here. what the bloody crap are you talking about, people drive cars all the time, its a very intuitive machine to operate. you turn the wheel and the car turns, it's EASY. i don't know about you but i can floor the gas pedal in my car much faster than i can get to a full sprint. no, actually, ignoring real world physics is the realm of fantasy, not sci fi. good sci fi does its best to UPHOLD the laws of physics and reality as much as possible. hence the SCIENCE part of the name. 1/1 seriously stop telling me stuff that doesn't make sence. dont' TELL me that turrets on uneven terrain are hard to operate when they arn't and that wheels will confuse pilots. that is total crap! don't tell me remote control cars will outrun humans when i've owned gass powered RC cars that could reach 80mph. dont' tell me cars are slower than the zentradi in macross, when NOW ADAYS cars will do 140 150 pretty easily and fast cars cacn reach 200, i dont' think any zentradi could run that fast. don't tell me complicated ass legs will ever be faster than wheels made with the same technology, wheels are simpler, they are easyer to use. if there is technology to make legs work, it can be use to make wheels even faster! don't tell me driving tanks are difficult when i have friends in the army that say its easyer than driving a car. giant robots are cool to look at, neat to imagie, fun to watch animated, you sh ouldn't need more reason than that. stop telling me a bunch of false and innacureate CRAP to try and rationalize them. King, in a scf fi world there are no facts just "fictional realism" based on the rules the creators decide to make up. However they can be inspired by the real world and fans can rationalise the reasons about the mech design to themselves. (it's anyone's opinion - my ideas are not dogma, or absolute truth, just a suggestion to help explain the need for robotic limbs on vehicles that do more than 1 thing) That's what I've done here. If the conventional tanks were so great for all the purposes the VF and destroids were applied to, then it wouldn't really be a sci fi since conventional human weapons would be enough and there would be no need to design new machines suited for the specific tasks that the mechs are shown for. Just remember: The tv series shows actual battroids engaged in hand to hand combat with the giants. Tanks would be harmless in this instance if you could imagine giant men existing. Ammo would be in short supply, so in desperation they go toe to toe. (have you ever seen a post-apocalyptic movie like mad max? That's what the events after sw1 were like with bandits and rebels stealing things and people like kamjin acting like cowboys in an old western ) This is why I'm trying to make sense of the use of legs on a monster. You don't have to understand the reasoning because the machines don't really exist for us to measure thier efficiency vs other machines. You just have to have an open mind about what could be possible in an alternate reality. (as if there were a place jjust like earth and the human technology tree went down a different path instead of the one we have in real life) As for the example about the lack of ammo, the robots have super strength. A punch from a robot is enough to at least do a massive dent to armor or crush the head camera of the mech. No I am not talking out of my ass because this is what actually happens in the realms of the various anime. A tank would be useless if ammo ran out. A mech with hands to pick up dropped zentradi weapons wouldn't. The comment about the tank turret speed: -------------------------------------------------- I believe a mechanical hand (or the hand off a giant man) would be quicker to gun several targets down than the turret. Regardless of whether it exist yet, its just more natural. If a giant existed holding a giant machine gun or a regult had it's omnidirectional cannons I would go for them over the tank turret in a wildwest-style shootout. About tanks in general: ---------------------------- Sorry, it's just hard for me to explain in words without a picture. But imagine very, very, uneven terrain and lots and lots of variation in the surface and elevation like the pictures you see in the links ewilen gave of the forest robot.. A regult would just be less troublesome in some enviroments than a tank with treads. In enclosed environmetns; like, say hallways, tanks still don't strafe the way a human giant would be able to. I guess you have to play lots of FPS videogames to understand where I am coming from. It has to do with very sudden quick and sharp movments. Nevermind. Cars being intuitive: ------------------------- I agree. I'm not saying that cars are hard to drive. My point was that humans need machines to map thier own natural movements so they can do things intuitively, just on a bigger level. (it's every little kid's fantasy) See the philosophy of lots of humanoid mecha is that they are in fact like suits that are 'worn' which correspond to the human's movment. This is an abstract concept but the ideal is to have something where the pilot doesn't feel like they are steering something, but rather just moving thier own body and the mech responds to the movements and mimmics it. A good example is the 'Loader' ripley uses in aliens. The humanoid design (limbs instead of wheels with permanent gun attachments) allows a range of acrobatic maneuvers and tasks that can match the giant men. (jumping, strafing, dodging, rolling, running, ducking, holding of giant items and giant weapons etc) I don't even think some of the destorids would be able to pick themselves up. Real-world physics: ----------------------- No way man. I have to disagree here. I'm not trying to get you angry or piss you off or anything. I just disagree. In lots of good sci-fi, some of it can be done, some of it is just there to look cool, and some could be the subject of xfiles (like concepts of antigravity and how it might work) that I speculate are too top secret for general public. (yeah I believe in ufos and the possibility of alien lifeforms) There are a lot of cool things being done in macross that are not possible in the real world but I think others have probably touched on them better than me by giving detailed explanations so I won't go into it. "STOP TELLING ME BS LV!" ------------------------------- ok ok already I will lay off the topic for good. So cranky. ^ Here's a prototype regult. Enlarge this, add a cockpit to sit in, slap some armor on, arm it with guns and limitied flying ability, and off you go.

Cory, ewilen, good points. I guess my idea is that with enough funding and enough time who knows what the future can hold? I like to be openminded about the future which is why I'm interested in all the darpa research into robots inspired by how insects move in nature. King I think we have a misunderstanding. I agree that wheels in the real world are more efficient in the open plain but not under the needs of the humans in the macross world/universe where the battlefield varies. A destroid with legs has some advantages that just wouldn't be there with wheeled ones. And yes it probably was only put there for coolness factor but all sci-fi suffers from that. (light sabers are stupid and don't exist but those are jedi who can use the force to beat armed opponents?) within the world limbs are put to practical uses not just there for appearances only. It's about keeping options open. A single pilot of a mech would need several machines to do 1 task. He would need a machine with wheels, then a giant robot (or machine with limbs for the one on one fights to do all the things max did when rescuing misa, hikaru, kakazaki and fighting) then on top of that a seperate plane to fly around. 1) The plane would be useless up close and personal because it might crash into many things in an enclosed space. Combat-wise this is silly. 2)the robot wouldn't travel fast enough to avoid attacks from multiple incoming targets. But like I said roy was seen gunning down MM using head laser + gunpod and he could swivel faster in giant-human/battroid mode than he would in fighter mode which can only aim in 1 direction at a time. And we know the battroid can hide behind buildings only partially exposed using cover like humans do in a gun fight. Tanks would might need to expose themselves. and 3)without gerwalk, trying to resuing people by flying into areas where there is no place for a jet to land (or if the land was too damaged) wouldn't be possible. (think of it like the harrier jet but with arms to hold objects. Macross plus makes exceleent use of this when isamu rescues guld in this mode while slowly cushioning the descent.) The vf sort of emobdies all of those things to become an all terrain, all-environment and all-combat-situation vehicle. Giants are not going to sit around and wait for the little pilot to exit his vehicle and let him shoot them. Because the giants can survive in different environments, they have the mobility advantage by having limbs, being bigger and using machines that can hop right above tank fire. Glaugs and pods with long treads may have added unnecessary weight to a machine that is designed to hope like a kangaroo from 1 small uneven surface to another. No need to roll when you can boost jump. Let me ask you a question: could a tank fall off a sheer cliff and guarantee that it lands right side up? The legs are the regult's failsafe and balance to be able to do this jumping task. It would still be classfied as a land vehicle mind you, but a land vehicle that was truly all-terrain and indpendant from other vehicles to get around. Also unlike the conventional tanks, thier pods could submerge underwater avoiding detection. I continue to believe the reason they need humanoid robots was because they wanted to end the need for several types of vehicles that overspecialised in 1 thing and instead gave them abilities that could do many tasks in one. So they came up with variable mech. And favoured limbs which could grip objects and react to the environment the way a giant human would react to his environment. That is: to gain readiness advantages like being able to strafe which tanks can't achieve without first turning. (thier movements are predictable and slow, like somebody who refuses to use a keyboard and mouse control setup in a FPS game and doesn't circle-strafe. ) A tank doesn't jump sideways or do those rolls on the ground that the battroid is seen doing. Nor would a tank skate along the surface standing vertical and upright, or hop like the regults. But tanks just weren't designed to avoid giants, only fight in human wars where the opposition did not have machines with several omni directional cannons which could shoot several directions at once. A turret to me is slow and inefficient, whereas a human piloted mech with swivel action is fast. It's just the way I imagine it because the robots are enhanced to match the ablilty of the fluid motion of a human. (and not the other way around where the human learns to master a complex machine and rely on more than 1 crew to do a task. His own body is mapped and mech matches the sensitive motions of the human in real time. I respect your opinions about the real world practicalities of tread with turret, but you are not going into space with them, expecting to fly in an atmoshpere with them, or do all the things you do in the anime using the robot to fight toe to toe. (ie when britai managed to overpower the mech after they ran out of ammo.) Certain weapons and technology is suitable for certain type of things (guns still rule but what happens if you have no ammo like the marines in the aliens movie and the aliens outnumber you? The battroid in macross could use ANY dropped zentradi troop's weapon, thanks to having hands, just as Zentradi giants were seen using vf1 gunpods in the episodes after sw1 with kamjin's rebel forces) There are advantages to limbs which are needed to do things other than combat. But my points about moving are more anime magic and alien tech enhanced. They don't take into account real world physics just as some of the vf1 fighter mode behaviour doesn't take into account the physics of real life either. I wanted people to assume that because it was possible with vehicles in the air, maybe it could be possible with mechs on the ground. ie legs that are sophisticated enough to be able to run really fast so much that giant ostrich-like mechs could keep up with pilots in flying gerwalk mode. In summary: I just want to keep an open mind about the fact that monster (not designed to move as fast as othr mechs but having better range) could acually run in that universe thanks to the alien technology. Not to convince everyone that robots in our world will overtake the roles of tanks. As mentioned in one of my other responses the battroid isn't just a machine for taking out other mechs and giants, but also a zentradi infantry-sized suit to augment the human body. 1)Increased strength, 2) bigger stride, 3) armour that is thick enough to withstand abuse, but without losing all the abilities a giant would lose. (ie abilit to walk up stairs or terrain where the elevation varies too much, ability to fight indoors, ability to push buttons and grab levers with ease, etc all matching the things the giants would do with thier own hands.) My conslusion is that the humanoid form for a robot offers more options and versatility than a tread-only tank with no limbs, or a ground-combat-only destroid with no hands to perform specialised functions like opening giant doors, picking things up, manipulating large objects intuitively etc Todays surgeons can already perform complicated tasks remotely without the surgeoun needing to be in the same location of the patient thanks to robotic hands that respond very accurately to the hands of the surgeon. I imagine this kind of thing being implemented in the vf1 hands when it is handling it's own gunpod or doing other things like gripping objects accurately and easily and lining up targets quicker and more intuitively than what a turret could on uneven terrain because it's motions do not capture the fine motions of the hand. Combined with the head laser system which can map the eye moves, and head moves (speculation of course) and you've got a robot that can increase the effiiciency it does things by being wired right to the form factor of the human. Going into a room and moving your head, while keeping your arms steady while moving your legs all at the same time in a co-ordiated manner is much quicker than doing these task sequentially and treating them as seperate steps. Pilots shouldn't need to think in this mode, just respond like they naturally would if they were giant people. I'm not sure if I am using the right terminology but my definition of mobility is that a machine should be fast at reacting (using it's robotic limbs to maneuver, say in a closed environement with obstacles cluttered all over the place) and not just have good topspeed moving in a straight predictable line on flat surface. All kinds of jumping, rolling on ground, dodging and falling over and getting back up from falls should be acceptable things and the reaction should be immediate so that if a battroid fought a tank, the gunpod held in direct line with the tank would easily rip it open all the while the mech is able to hide partially behind a wall or building. I like to think that the mech in battroid mode wouldn't be a treated like a machine requiring driver to steer it and gunner to aim, but more like a giant soldier with super fast reaction speed. Humans don;t have wheels on thier bodies so it would be counter-intuitive and slow reaction speeds. All the old predudices of how slow real-world robots are and how that kind of movment defies physics should be thrown out the window. Otherwise it wouldn't be scifi.

Richter: Yeah the real thing I wanted to get to though is that sometimes scifi over-romanticises what is in reality the death of individual culture and national sovereignity. There is no more respect left for that which is supernatural when tehcnology adds convenience. Just because a culture seems more primitive and less technological it must then be cruel and barbaric. "Oh those poor natives living in such third world conditions who need our help" (in real life those people are probably secretly being armed with machine guns by the good guys who manufacture them ) My own unique interpretation of Macross Zero was that cultures die and get replaced by less individualistic ones (world goverment) that used thier asumptions about "right or wrong" and imposed it on others for purely political reasons. (under 1 rule the world can be controlled more easily. Read the orwell's "1984" to see how close fiction can be to reality. The white people were being accused of taking that culture away and replacing it with thier own, which wasn't necessarily welcomed with open arms by Sara.) But of course it is inevitable when you think about it. All men are kind of guilty of using thier superior tech to gain control of others. It's a common thing. We love to hear about the good things that are in man (like our universal ability to love each other that is common to all people) but we forget we can also hate as well as love. My guess is the original poster who criticicised the "love cures everything" theme, was saying that maybe it wasn't deep enough, which I can agree with because maybe it is shallow after they preached it in the original series. (this remind me of all the criticism of the third matrix movie: most people wanted the hero to kick ass not be "a new jesus" where the audience was preached to. People don't like symbolism or spiritual victories that suggest the hero is weak, they want violence and climactic battles like the first movie. Personally I don't understand this because in star wars obi wan practically allows darth vader to kill him and nobody cared, yet the matrix isn't allowed to have the hero die?)

Gist of these long posts: first point: Humanism says love rules everything and we are all equal. It stops wars. I say: It's romantic, but not going to save your life, and it stomps all over people's religious beliefs just to satisfy a political view. Some people have problems accepting that belief because they want an ending in a story to have substance. Love is not going to stop wars. I took too long to say it in a paragraph though. I wanted to say that mankind can't aspire to be perfect when his method to bring peace is through violence, so we are all imperfect hypocrits. What makes "loving everyone" convince us this will end violence when even people who can express love are also able to express hate and be violent? In fact our imperfection make us human. UN in real life pretends to respect diversity only on the surface when in fact they want to unite and destroy individual cultures under dogmatic laws they must abide by that nobody in thier own land cares about. One example of this is the "rights of the child". Do parents really want thier kids to be treated as equal as adults when they are innocent kids who are not ready to be thrown into the real world at an early age? This is controversial because it takes away controls the family had over thier own children and puts it into the hands of a global goverment who can make and enforce rules nobody agrees with. Equality is an illusion. We are unique but not equal. second: This is off topic it is my belief that some scifi can be used as a conditioning agent to test people's reaction to controversial topics that will inevitably be brought into debate into the future. They will create movie first, portray both sides in a neutral light, but the goal is to get the reactions of the people. Then when people start talking they can prepare pre-planned counter-arguments to any opposition to thier agenda for going ahead with some new technology (eg experiments in genetics) or introducing some new law. (banning weapons, which is against the nations best interests) This is a general conspiracy theory amoungst the paranoid folk. Wag the dog and F911 are examples of trying to condition you to accept the creators opinions of those films and change your existing beliefs, question your long held fear or just test your reactions. Just in sumary of the first point: many sci fi movies have love as this hidden magic ingredient to solve the problems or war and suffering. The fifth element had it. The matrix had it. Blade Runner had it. Macross has. This is why I am coming to this conclusion that maybe humanistic ideas (tolerance for differences even when those differences are forced upon you) are flawed. People will always fight and there is no long term solution that will end all war. Not even love lasts forever.

hah you got that right, and that's partially my point: movies and works of fiction are a powrful medium that can influence people's decisions in real life. Wag the Dog, Farenheit 911, POTC. It's almost a secret conditioning agent when emotions are concerned and people ignore the fact that the characters are not real (or not portrayed realistically) and the stereotypes of groups presented, are stretching the truth. In some instances it may not matter if the characters or events were real or ever happened the way they did onscreen. There can still be great truths within the fiction. I love the God father trilogy for example, it's like being a fly on the wall. A movie like Braveheart is a great piece of entertainment but is it factually true? Nope. Do people know any better to care? probably not. That's what creators are hoping for. Fictional example of obvious stereotype: final fantasy the spirits within. Characters right out of a cookie cutter videogame. The big tough guy, the ballsy feminist, the the skinny tech geek, the two leads who will eventually fall in love. And the left wing preachiness of environmental destruction because of ignorant men who don't believe in fairy tales to care about mother earth. (play lots of japanese rpgs to know what I mean) Right away you could sense who the bad guys were going to be from the start and who the good guys were and who you knew was going to die based on how one-sided and mean-spirited they were in the movie. Little kids might thnk it were original but the rest could notice patterns and behaviours from other movies, rpgs, comics and other pulp fiction. If a story is too obvious and preachy but doesn't offer a good resolution it can be a turn-off to some people. Like "what's the point of watching this?" If we are the bad guys for wanting to protect ourselves from alien ghosts/alien giants who are stronger than us, why should we be all loving and peacful and give up our resistance? They're monsters! Who cares about thier feelings. What about all the people that got eaten? This ain't just revenge, its killing to survive. (this is what I would be thinking if I were attacked. Like if I were stranded in a jungle with dangerous animals which want to eat me, and I have a gun and some animal right's activist tells me to be nice and not harm them; preaching about how we must respect the dangerous monster that is trying to kill you.) Both sides need to be represented realistically instead of pushing political views down our throats. This only makes the story more appealing because it is more grounded and convincing with substance and a good conclusion, rather than formulaic and stereotypical. Although I don't hold it against macross. I was just playing devil's advocate, because I thought the original series had the best characters and good detail into thier personal lives.

^ This isn't so much to do with macross but this is what I have suspected for a long time: I think partly the goal of a lot of sci-fi is to promote humanism over the rigid, irrational, outdated (not my words) religions of the world. The overall anti-war message is that "Man is flawed but through his emotions alone, he can save the world. Just learn to feel" Face it the UN (in real life) favours humanism and actually believes in equality and moral relativism. When in reality there is no such thing as equality. There will always be those who are richer than others, more successful in love than others, more popular than others, more talaented than others, more intelligent than others, and the sooner we realise that we are unique and not equal in everything, the better society is because it is allowed to contribute something to the human race (no matter how unimportant or valued it seems to the globalist agenda. (of a perfect utopian world society) When watching sdf:macross, the impression I got was that: there doesn't have to be an answer to god's reasons for making us kill each other. It's ok to arm yourself to protect yourself from what you see as a threat. Freewill gives us liberty to be pioneers (like the reckless characters in macross plus who forge ahead and are not afraid to try dangerous and stupid things to learn) but it ultimately dooms us if we turn our backs on responsibility and ethics. ie The result of sharon apple's own "freewill" getting out of control when tied to emotions (the bioneural chip) and losing the reasoning (hardcoded program logic) that humans put into her hardcoded program for safety purposes. The mad scientist's "reckless", non-prudent, ambition; taken to a macronised level in the form of the SDF1 turning against civilian lives, is a lesson to man that moral recklessness has a price, too. When reason from a mad scientist, is combined with emotion from a love-deprived singer who is constantly hurt and depressed, ....it can lead to disaster, not perfection. To me there is that eternal struggle between reason and emotion. Where reason says: it's ok to blow away another person or murder or rape or steal thier stuff, if it's goverment santioned! After all, what's legal on a piece of paper by our elected leaders is right! I'm just a robot like sharon apple paid to do a job by my master. I'm not responsible for what happens. (wrong, there are moral reasons challenging laws to consider too) The other emotional half of me says it is wrong to harm others no matter the reason because I am hurting people's feelings (and a lot more than that After all, killing animals for food might hurt the feeling of animal rights activists or a hippy vegetarian, but my beliefs say God gave these for me to eat so his own creation and gifts are not wasted if used to survive.) Somewhere in between those extremes God is telling me: "shut up! learn through silence and behold the error of both lines of thinking and the extremes of left and right" The only truth is what my conscience tells me is right or wrong and whether I can pierce that facade of deception used by single interest apologists and go deeper spiritually to see the real reasons that led to man's inhumanity to man, rather than being critical of the mere symptoms of the sickness in all of us. The symptoms are: suffering happens in the world everday, so stop whining and do something. The reasons for the problems: point to powerful single-interest groups pushing thier own selfish agendas and asking for more power to achieve thier ambition, without consideration for others or the wishes of the community. Even in democracy there is not eternal happiness because people still have to fight for control over who gets to make and pass the rules. And thats where the reality of knowing the world was never promised to be a perfect place (a paradise where everyone gets what they want and nobody has to fight for thier slice of the pie, where we don't rely on weapons to protect our land) by God, but instead, more like a sinful place due to God promising not to directly interfere and upset the balance of freewill that all people demand, but...allowing spiritual protection from evil that some people pray for daily if they ask for help...voluntarily. (not by a single group or cult leader who can control the crowd through a specific man-made heirachy) Whnever someone suffers it does no good to pretend it didn't happen ("ok lets cover this up and hope nobody finds out, after all what people don't know can't hurt them. As long as you can get away with a sin, it's ok, since the end justifies the means") or to point the finger at a particular group or person. Because no matter who is performing the evil act, if they are cursed or die, there will always be more men like him to replace him. Evil is not limited to a single person. Like in LOTR evil is a force that can travel into anyone. Instead the lesson is to understand, (forgiving them because of imperfection in all of us) pray (asking to God that suffering be lessened) and hope. (knowing that although pain and suffering is inevitable, the outcome turns out good in the end since God is in control through indirect means and through enough people voluntarily obeying to do the right thing to make a real physical difference. A good example is when Global prepares the rest of humanity to abandon the reckless ambitions of his superiors who were only interested in appeasing the aliens if it meant they could keep thier positions of authority by using the sdf1 (and the threat of a secret weapon) as a bargaining chip to the aliens for peace, instead of rejecting thier demands and allowing human life; no matter what rank of importance, to survive. (Remember the tax payers on macross city helped those traitors understand the technology. It's a disgrace that a leader that poses in public as a protector of people would do such a thing. True colors show in times of pressure.) The problem with ambitious high ranking people is they forget thier "slaves" entrust them to protect them, not use them. The minute you turn your back on them, the more it will backfire. (witness the destruction of bodol's army as all the good zentradi mutiny, and ally with the humans) In the grand scheme we are led to death because nobody questions the "why we are led to kill" We just accepted that it was inevitable and did nothing about it to correct our own hypocrisy and predjudice, which is preyed upon by think tanks who deliberately turn us against each other for political purposes. The end of the world is in fact conditional on the actions of man to do the right thing or whether enough of the good guys who resist corruption are around to provide the balances and checks for the bad corrupt guys (like the mad scientist characters. The UN can't be blamed for the bad eggs after all, it's our stupidity and freewill which allows it to happen that is to blame). A single group or religion can't be blamed for all the world wars that humans engaged in. Corruption is in everyone - demons of fear are tempting people to do wrong everyday. It's just that we tend to hide our fear from everyone and believe our own lies instead of changing the destructive behaviour, seeking the cause that leads to the desruction, and trying to accept that we as an individual can be wrong on some things. (eg myung admitting she made mistakes to Sharon Apple; which was just an immature version of herself crying to 'be perfect' like the mad scientist had wanted, and also what the UN upper brass, had wanted to achieve in a perfect "new space order" where they would no longer need humans to govern the galaxy and humans could just abandon thier responsibility and concentrate on procreating like rabbits and having hedonistic fun. Watch for the words "New Space Order" used in the elevator after the inquiry where Millard defended Guld and the speech he gives for the need for imperfect human pilots to make and govern the important decisions. New Space Order is a direct reference to "new world order" where a world dictator tries to impose his absolute rule on the slaves underneath him "1984"-style. Morals and Ethics are like the missing ingredients to the upper levels in control who foolishly think they can control everything and create a world which would 'be perfect'. You will note that humans are a necessary evil when making decisions. This is something that is interesting from a science fiction perspective because humanists themselves do not have a formula for right or wrong. Just a formula for emotional happiness where there are no strugles or fights because people will be assumed to be in a happy place when thier beliefs are not there to correct thier imperfect thinking pattern from an "always right" god who imposes "outdated" rules. (that are seen by the humanists as being put there for no reason) It's like if everyone could be hypnotised like the hacker Yang was in macross plus, all will be well because "it's all just joy!" I hope this post has kind of made some sense because I have been thinking about the message myself as the world becomes more global in its ideals. It's almost as if we are all being asked to agree with each other and give up our own beliefs everyday, just because by being politically correct it would be 'convenient' and 'comfortable', and because it makes people 'feel good'. All the 'war is bad' messages sound tempting but if we are asked to disarm ourselves and throw out our ability to think (which is what the humans tried to do in macross plus when they wanted an AI to control the world and to create the souless trance music), then aren't we just becoming more like the zentradi? There has to be a good reason for it otherwise I'm not going to budge. (not because I'm hardheaded or can't apreciate a perfect society, but more because I just don't see it happening the way pro-humanist science fiction authors with thier heads in the clouds think it would happen. (I'm more a fan of dystopian rather than utopian sci fi because of my cynicism of people's true motives ) I know this is going to sound paranoid of me but I cling to the belief that science fiction movies are created sometimes by those who hang around the powerful people and can see the motives that the goverments and world leaders want to push and kind of make certain movies to test our reactions (or question our beliefs) to issues that they know are going to be controversial in the future. It's almost like they know this will happen (they are the ones partly wanting to bring it about) but it will kind of soften the blow to the conservatives who will rise up in strong opposition agsint thier plans when the new laws are passed and the go-ahead for making lots of money out of the changes in law can finally proceed and bring world "happiness". eg Think about The Sixth Day which was about cloning and the "science experiment gone wrong" story. We all know at the time that was made so biotech companies wanted to introduce these technologies to a future generation who found cloning acceptable. There money to be made. It's just a case of when. Do you think they care about the fundamentalists' spiritual reasons which get in the way of profit? Do they care about a magic entity they can't see called a "soul"? No way! It's a matter of preparing you for something that is going to come whether you want it to happen or not. (with the right connections, timing, and propaganda people will eventually accept their fantasy and give up) another eg: Enemy of the state. About the controversy surrounding civilians losing privacy because of the need to protect people from terror. OF course this tech would be abused like the "science experiment gone wrong" story we are used to seeing all the time and of course the villains would use it for evil purposes and as usual stuff that might seem helpful can backfire. But the desired effect is by at least exposing us to these controversies at least it is all laid bare on the table for us to talk about and the mind conditioning can begin. Whether you are bothered by it makes no difference because when you oppose it they will be prepared for thier counterargument to your concerns after it is officially introduced in public in future. (eg they manufacture a false news story to appeal to your emotions to get you on thier side) I'm a believer in power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The real future imo will probably be a form of corporations becoming the government.

Roy got long hair (and started playing guitar) in the tv series which I think made him look more hippy-ish. He was in fact "spreading the love" if you think about it. (nudge nudge wink wink think of the swinging 60s and "free love" ie sex .) Think of all the chics he would have banged before he met claudia. His drinking prob can be attributed to the tension of being test pilot who might die since it is a dangerous job. He was always first to use these unproven machines so I gathered the drinking kept him relaxed.) I guess if it weren't for aids (there are rumours/conspiracy theories this was made in a lab to test on minority groups ie it may have been a bioweapon like sars) people may not have modified thier behaviour. In the tv series there was also a hint of 70s flares in the pants, huge collars, and sideburns.

I just watched that the other day. I can't wait for king conan. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376707/ Predator 1 > Conan. Hopefully arnie is going to be in it (his old age is just right for a king role) and I'm glad milius is going to be directing it. The second movie was so crap. Favourite macross is sdf because everything seemed new and original. But that was helped because it covered a main event. Each mode of the VF was used in equal time and even destroids got time to shine. Also it wasn't bogged down in having to use mystery to block us from knowing the charcters. (something I find annoying now: how can you care about a character if you don't tell us anything about them until the last minute?)

That reminds me: DD ivanov had that inspector gadget stretchable head in macross zero. I thought that was cheesy. Just like the fight arnie had with the terminatrix in terminator 3. What on earth would he do if somebody blew the neck off and he lost the head? Anything that has retractable pieces that stretch for too long look silly imo

Ah, it depend on the value of the target. If the target is worth lots to the enemy I might even go in with a kamikaze attack to make sure nothing leaves alive. But of course I would choose a gun. I'm not saying mechs don't need them. But having human limbs and moving like a human is easier than like something else. Your hands can aim, you head can look, your feet can keep you centrered. These things I would do in real life while trying to kill my opponent. If under fire I run. Now I'm not disagreeing with the idea that mechs need to be armed and also move fast. (monster was an exception since it isn't going to be up close and personal) But lets play the what if game again. When the sdf1 landed on earth and they found giant airlocks and giant doors and giant rooms for what else, giants? ....what do you think would have inspired them most in how they would build thier mecha? Answer: The fact that by making your mecha human shaped you could at some point meet these giants on thier own homeland and open thier doors, sneak up to thier airlocks, grab thier own weapons and ammo, (with your human shaped hands) grab hold of them physically if you managed to sneak onto one of thier ships. Even gosh, press buttons on thier own scout ships and control the giant ship control panels using the mechas hands. Don't think of the battroid as just a military vehicle but rather as an anti-giant suit. Those hands might even be useful for grabbing items from behind enemy lines and bringing back something valuable to un spacy. Of course most of the time the hands were used to grab people and rescue them, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been used for many many other things. All of the humanoid deisngs paid off in later episodes where they were short on ammo and forced to duke it out. (earth was a wasteland after sw 1 and the defeat of bodol. Peopoe would be starving because of food shortage and you would have to fight for resources and that included ammo and food. It's like a post apoc world like mad max only with mechs.) You see I don't like to think of the battroid as a giant robot (human perspecitve) but more like regular-sized vehicle especially tailored to infiltrate alien enemy lines and access everything a regular sized zentradi could access by being one of them. This is all just speculation on my part, but to me limbs are important on some mechs and the human form is much more versatile than a simple vehicle like a tank which is speciallised only for shooting. Why have something that only shoots when you can have something that does that AND THEN SOME. Don't you think it is better to be able to have a hand that can grab just about any weapon and use it? Whether it be a gunpod, a large metal pipe, (think this would have done max good in that episode when he had to rescue hikar, misa and kakazaki) or a zentreadi shield. Destroids are great for shooting and have the firepower but that's only because they were speciailised for 1 task. Ground combat. VF are more than that. They may need to interact with giant sized door handles, giant people, and generally go toe to toe in instances where other humanoid mecha which are too fast for destroid to shoot down, and must be handled face to face in a closed environment where two very good pilots are going to duel. And please I don't care how useful 1 mode is for just destroying things in an open space. When I meant all-environment I also meant all situations. That means indoors like the battroid battle that max and millia were having inside the sdf1. A fighter jet would have had a lousy day trying to find a good angle to shoot from while avoiding all those obstacles. Think about the philosophy of the transform like they emphasised in mac 0 where roy physically grabs shin and tosses him around. It's not just for flash, shin may need to master this mode for encounters with other mecha that aren't possible to fight with in fighter mode. Yes he could shoot the crap out of them but you got to understand that these mechs have jetpack on them that allows them to speed directly at you and try to smash your robot head off to blind you. (it actually happened in the tv series) If people can get scared of an unstoppable 911 style plane crashing into a building, think about a big mech doing that to you, with a pilot who doesn't care if he is going to die or not. It might not sound so scary if you are ready for them, but think of the poor colonial marines in Aliens when they got thier asses whupped..

But a tank with limbs to right itself is a robot. ;D A tank with wings is now a plane. A tank with indestructible super armor is a god. The definiation of tank just changed and you reinvented what the tank was. So where's the argument? My argument is against conventional tanks with no OT enhancement or anything. If a tank toppled over it couldn't right itself. A robot can. Now you want a tank that uses robotic arms but is still classified as tank? I think humans would want to model a machine off the human form for control reasons. I know this is all speculation but I have always seen bipeds as having more mobility and intuition. What I mean here is when the driver/pilot "feels" he must move, he controls the mech as if he were a giant himself with the same form factor of a giant person. What advantage does this have in combat? Faster response time because you are not concerned with controls that seem mechanical and step-by-step but instead feel to you as straightforward and seamless in thier motion as if the mech were you. As one. Like the pilot is sort of strapped into a VR machine and his focus isn't on the complicated controls themselves and what his hands are doing, but just him knowing what to do without having to look and think before doing it. That kind of time wasted standing there is just going to give the enemy chances to kill you. The time a giant points and aims at you is the time you are already strafing into a safe zone out of his line of fire. You can't strafe, roll, duck, jump very well in a tank now can you? The idea here is that in a mech modelled after the human form you can pretty much keep a constant flow of movement in any direction while attacking, without having to stop and allow any opportunities to be targeted. It's just a convenience thing. In a mech modelled after human form you are more likely to avoid threats by just moving around and knowing what is around you though movements that come naturally to you if you were imagining yourself as a giant human: Turning the head corresponds to the pilot turning his own head, moving the arm corresponds to moving a stick controller off the side, moving forward might correspond to somthing that mirrors what his legs are doing. All operations and limbs being moved simulataneously insted of being reliant on a seperate controll stick or for another crew person to worry about. Some of these controls are simplified for basic mechs but others would be more complex to allow for more interesting and flashy moves. A tank by its very nature can only move and aim in a single direction at any one time. Tanks can't strafe. Ever see a human that can step in any of 360 directions on the spot without needing to turn before moving in that direction? Yes? Well that's what a mech should be able to do if it can move like a human or a specially gifted animal. Humans don't move so mechanically and in sequence as machines do, so why should mechs? Why not model mechs off the human body rather than adapt our bodies to accept a machine? The philosophy is that by making the machine more like you, you can start concentrating on what's important in combat, similar to how making an easier-to-use, intuitive computer program will allow for more work to be done than a more-complex slow one which confuses the user and makes them less productive. This is best shown in mac plus where the goal there was to make the pilot BE the thing it was controlling, speeding up response times to pull off feats not possible before. Creeping low for cover is better than not being able to. If the aliens had the tech to see in the dark why wouldn't the humans? So it comes back down to the skill of the pilot. You assume both sides aren't prepared in some way for things that are common usage. The reason for why the enemy wouldn't be alert 24/7 are the same reasons why Zentradi don't have radars or thermal displays implanted in ther brains or have mechs walking inside thier own ships where infantry would walk. By the way who says they are expecting you? What if you came in during a big battle and there were machines, soldiers all over the place fighting to create a distraction that wouldn't allow the giants time to scope you out? You're thinking as if the mechs can't plan thier attacks and co-ordinate thier moves in teams. Now if the Zents had cyborgs like giant terminators that might be another story. There are different methods to take an enemy down. Would you live inside your tank and never come out of it? If somebody called you back to headquaters would you drive your tanks through walls to get to a location that isn't supposed to be accessible by that tank? No. When you get out of your vehicles as a normal person, your opening up opportunities for an attack. There is a special order to how the enemy has thier forces organised. What if you had to piss while you were in your glaug? There are all sorts of possibilities. I don't just make this stuff up because its fun. Also keep in mind that there is always going to be the eternal struggle between sword and sheild. One guy invents new weapons that kicks ass. Another guy builds counterweapons to defend against that specific weapon to defend with. And the cycle repeats. As for hand to hand, what good is a tank if I can just boost jump over it or step on it? Once you get within a certain range of a tank it is helpless. And what if I use a smoke bomb to blind you while you are looking around? Also you act as if a giant wouldn't be carrying thier own weapons to shoot at the tanks. A lot of the advantage has to do with the terrain and planning of the attack too. If you can't see me because I'm hiding behind a wall, (even if you have yf21 x-ray vision, it makes no difference if I ALSO have it) and my friend has grabbed your attention and allowed me a free shot, then you are toast. Remember the episode in macross where the sdf1 lands on mars and is trapped by the zentradi, and they ambush them by hiding low into the ground so they can't be seen until it is too late? Bottom line: If you were in a mech you might have better chances imo because being bipedal, they have more mobility and direct control of the direction they want to move in. You can strafe and duck or run with barely a thought. If a tank had to play dodgeball it wouldn't last as long as a mech with proper legs to move around. Play Armored Core, tracks are slow. In order for a tank to match a mech, you would have to redefine what that tank is, because I'm going to assume you are reffering to the kind that runs on treads and can get bogged down or toppled over by a fictional-but useful-if-made-real robot and could only move in 2 directions at any time. True. We already do have unmanned vehicles but they would not be smart enough to replace a human pilot. Everything has limits. It;s like the best sci-fi movies always show the limits of technology and never is that tech perfect. Take aliens for example, the colonial marines thought they were going to kick so much ass with thier superior technology and they ended up being stranded because of 1 stinking alien that managed to sneak onboard and crash the ship holdling thier ammo and supplies. They ended up having to call for help because they had a limit of how much they could shoot their way out. Once they ran out of ammo you could sense the doom of the grim reaper coming for them one by one. You can live a dream world where everything is perfect all you like but poo happens buddy. I'm not going to point out all the "what if" scenarios all day because to me these are obvious things and there would be just too many to list. I heard Darpa already had robot terminator-like soldiers being built but they said these were limited as decoy tarrgets to draw fire away from the flesh and blood soldiers. A mere distraction. Why? because they can be blown to bits by rocket launcher and they are dumb. Again: limits. Agreed. That's why the Valks have no swords. But it's still cool when a Qrau gets within range to punch a hole in the face of a mech to blast somebody in the face at point blank range, or to have a pin point barrier shield to block incoming fire or to have a barrier on your fist to punch the armour plating. (really how much muscle is in a mech punch? Does anyone know? If mechs get within range they use thier limbs and engage in hand to hand combat when the opportunity arises. Just like what might happen in real life if your gunpod jammed and you were not given a choice in the matter. That scene in the movie "saving private ryan" comes to mind where the sniper is snuck up from behind and got stabbed in the heart by that nazi... tsk tsk You can never predict what's going to happen. Again, controllable limbs are far more practical than a machine with no limbs. Advantages: more precision, increased response time, and as close combat weaponry as fists or to grab other weapons. (not a primary weapon) I don't disagree with that. But the tanks with tracks that we see in that scene where the machine got fried by the zentradi "lasers of death from the heavens", demonstrates that range and speed plays an important role too. If you are talking about a monster, it is kind of like a gigantic tank with legs but with a massive line of cannons that shoot long distance and does heavy damage. the trade off for slow speed is awesome damage and good armor. Is there a trade off for a regult? I don't think so: it can leap up in the air and outmaneuver the tank. In the first episodes of macross we witness a regult able to keep speed with a gerwalk in flying mode. And that's only when it is running. Now imagine if a tank tried to shoot down a pod running at that speed? It would have as much chance as it would shooting a VF in Gerwalk flying. Given that pods are bigger than vfs, that just translates into bigger strides and longer jumps than an equivalent gerwalk. Consider too the Qrua with massive boost on its back that only a fast pack-equipped fighter can challenge. Speed is important, range is important. Tanks I assume just aren't what they were before they introduced robotic limbs that allowed for immediate response times to shoot targets down in as little time as possible. (watch roy as his head laser locked onto those minimissiles in mac 0. If a tanks could spin on a dime or had an independant robotic head that kept up with the gunner head/eyes maybe, but even then it would have to be moving away from missiles at a decent speed while shooting them down to avoid the destruction, something which a tank might not be fast enough to do. ie no boosters to jump out of way or legs to hop into safe zone) In my mind/world/fantasy: Monster beats tank because it is simply bigger with better range. May have comparable speed to tank, and bonus of not getting squashed by enemy mecha that can outmaneaver tank and step on it. Regult beats tank because it doesn't rely on slow tracks or the conventional old technology meaning it has better maneuverability and speed with other advantages like independant omni directional guns on the body of the thing. (no need for a turret which is slow when each barrel can move indpenedantly) Heck, you could shoot several things at once if you felt like it. Battroid destroys tank because having hands allows for more precision, more simultaneous tasks to be performed at any one time (block shots with shield, while reloading, while running, while using head cam to survey area all in real time etc) as well as righting the machine when it falls, and picking up enemy weapons to fight the giants with. (dropped guns and ammo) It would be a different story if we were comparing some new tank that didn't use the treads and had dramatically increase movment ability. (like a hover tank which could strafe in any direction and not compromise the accuracy of the fire because of terrain) Keep in mind I'm giving fictional world scenarios by using the rules of the world and not basing this in reality. In reality mechs don't exist, there is no OT that has been creating transformable machines, and the machines don't match the movement of the humans to a point that the controls would allow small people to act and move just like giant men. I'm not arguing about the feasiblity of the machines in real life, but instead the feasibility of the machines in the creator's world playing by its rules and time. And by the rules of the world: tanks were older technology designed to fight against conventional human-made weapons. Mechs were built in response to fighting giant aliens and other advanced machines, with all the most high tech equipment put into these mecha first. I assume the zentreadi being able to withstand the vacuum of space were early prototypes to a design of super soldiers that could survive in any enviroment. (The protodevil were the end result - with no reliance on technology - no need for machines to kill stuff) Now you can make parrallells here with the way the VF transformable robots are designed: They too are designed to survive in any environement, (underwater, atmoshpere, space, in areas with little land, in areas where hovering is required etc) almost independant of a seperate transport vehicle. A tank is not designed to survive in any environment. Put it in water and it will sink. Put it in space and it will float away. Put it on uneven ground and it could topple over (whether by accident or with a little help from zentreadi getting close, picking it up like a toy and throwing it ). Unlike a battrois which can pick itself up like a human giant and put up some sort of resistance. It is both anti-giant and all-enviroment (through the modular design) vehicle/robot/whatever-you-want-to-classify-it. But they are more practical than the existing tanks in that universe at that time. Even the slower ones (monsters) because of the fact (fictional fact) they benefit from the newer OT discoveries. And when I say practical I mean practical for the creators world. (ie designs based on specific needs, not on feasibility in real world) Phew, that is one monster (pun intended) reply, I hope there is no response. *feint*

fair enough, wheels aren't completely useless then.. ok, ok, but a disabled human still wouldn't outmaneuver a giant with 2 working legs in an armoured powersuit. He would probably outrun a monster though. jk Ah, but what if the giant got so close and knocked weapons out of your hands? Now what if the technology of the robotics was so advanced that you may as well have modelled the form of the machine off the human body since there was no reason not to, given how advanced the machines could be made to move and perform? The only reason we don't in real life is because it is impractical but not to the lucky macross people who live in a comic world with thier own rules and events. Already I can come up with 1 really "realistic" reason for needing to model the VF on human body: The fact that if you get knocked to the ground, you can at least pick yourself up with your hands and grab all sort of weapons with the hand. Imagine knocking a giant out and taking his weapons, and then using it against him? That's as good enough a reason as any imo. The transforming idea I agree is far fetched (as is the whole idea of the sdf 1 needing to look humanoid ) but to me, limbs have thier purpose. If the monster wants to spend all day with rollers trying to slowly get over hills and try to keep steady as it levels it's guns at things and fails to aim accurately because the base of the vehicle is leaning all over of the place, then so be it, but legs in that instance are just more efficent. I would think that bending one of the independant knees just a little to compensate for the variation in elevation is just more human and intiutive. Nope because we wouldn't understand all of it. The reverse engineering of the tech wasn't entirely done. They tried to master antigravity but even when sdf1 launched it still had glitches and the theories about how it should work were a little fuzzy to the best minds. Did you see any hovercars in city around macross? They were still learning. As I said it takes time. Patience. If the antigrav thing could be used everywhere we would have definately seen hovertanks. Because antigrav hadn't been mastered. You will note that as the timeline advances so does the technology. Helicopters can be shot down and are not used to fight from the ground. Mechs can hide low for cover. Missiles? Computers can lock onto them to shoot them down as Roy did in mac zero. Bombs? It would be unwise to start a war because of retalation, so you would be forced to use conventional stuff to avoid sensitive situations with neighbours you wouldn't want to piss off. It would be like me shooting you in an area full of explosives with me in the room. Ah but Zentradi have mecha and beams of death, and um... I think they are a little more threatening than a bunch of wild animals that are unarmed and only attack if provoked. Besides what if I threw a bunch of deadly spider at you or a scorpian? What are you going to do shoot yourself? One sudden movement could result in death. What about a snake that crept up on you or a deadly taipan that can bite you several times before you've even realised there was something there? You know man should learn to respect nature. After all, the inspiration for variable sweep wings came from the flexibility that birds have when they fly around. They may be primitive but evolution in these primitive beasts can teach us a thing or two. (this is I think a key theme in mac 0 where the bird+fish is combined to symbolise the philosophy for the variable fighters) And like I keep saying: you can have both wheels and legs. There doesn't have to be a war between the two. I merely wanted to give a few ideas about why I think limbs are more than just to look cool. (even if that was thier intention for inclusion)

Of course you could, but why not ALSO take advantage of the feet? If you look at the Cheyenne and Octos they use a combination of wheels and feet. Legs have advantages on a surface with large craters or steep inclines that would risk sending those trucks toppling over. If you want another movie example, remember the flashback scene in terminator 1 where the gunner in the car was shaking around alot because the gorund was so uneven? That's what I'm imagining a battlefield might be like. Even with the speed of a car, the hilly ground would just slow it down. A giant robot could leap or run faster if it didnt need to have the surface of its feet constantly in contact with the ground at all points. A semitrailer is dangerous when it is loaded with stuff and makes a sudden turn. Yeah but the landings are kind of gentle with the jets. They aproach a certain way. The way the robots land in anime is kind of rough with barely a regard to the velocity and overall wieght of the mech. Take the regults as a good example. It has to be really strong to be able to take the full wieght of the mech dropping right down vertically and not just aproaching gently. I agree with the hoverbike comment but not the treads being uber advantageous. Not against a giant well-balanced mech using technology that really allows it to run. (of course this doesn't exist in real life. But a monster's legs are thick and if it can run in the anime then it would be pretty fast imo) As for giant wheels? Depends on how big the actual vehicle is right? It may need more energy to spin that wheel than to lift a leg. Top speed is only 1 factor. It would take time for that wheel to gain speed similar to the way it would take time for you to accelerate while on a racer bicycle. But while taking that long to accelerate, aren't you a sitting duck? Remember you want to be able to move quickly and responsively. A giant wheel would beat the legs at top speed but be more clumsy in certain situations. My legs can push me in any direction instantly whereas a wheel requires steering and can only reverse or go forward which takes longer to get the vehicle moving responsively. You're right. Ladder is a bad analogy for the monster. But mechs do more than roll across the surface of the ground was what I wanted to say. They are practical for reasons wheels aren't. And wheels can be practical for reasons legs aren't. Why can't both vehicles co-exist? (like they actually do in the series? why choose one over the other when you can have both? sheesh!) Yeah but that's unfair. It's used because its tried and tested so there wasn't much choice to begin with given the limits we have. You're not giving legs a chance yet. They are still experimental in the real world. I'm sure given time and more funding if research into legs were advanced further we could see benefits to exploration that wheels just arent suitable. Refer to the robodog example. Patience grasshopper. These things take time. Are you sure? Can a tank shoot a regult that has just jumped over the turret in mid air and fired from above? What about a Qrau which is just a powersuit with gigantic jetpack for a giant? I'm pretty sure a tank could be outmaneuvered if you consider that to a giant zentradi the tank is just a toy on the ground. There are all sorts of crazy situations that could occur. A mech is modelled after the human form which allows the pilot to go toe to toe. A tank has no limbs. You're probably right. I have to admit I like and prefer robots and giant mechs. I just want to point out if taken to a large scale, legs can be feasible if you think about the whole philosophy behind why the characters thought they needed them in the context of giant killing. If those things got close, a mech that responds the same way you would respond in real life if you were thier size, has a responsive advantage. You are still just controlling a machine but we see those "machines" doing things like kicking, punching and throwing the giants. So there is logic and 'feasiblilty' right there staring us in the face. As mentioned alien tech is involved and machines are at the level of tech where they can finally move with the precision and grace of movement of the human body. Yeah but my comparision was with a giant robot and regular sized tank. Or regular sized human with a small rc car. I'm assuming humans wouldn't be at the point where they would bother trying to make such masive wheels since they wanted legs all along for the advantages the legs give. Limbs are more versatile, (can do more things, offer more fine articulation, more intuitive to the controller) while wheels are more specialised. (used for hauling ass but limited at the small scale) Yes that's true. But I still want to stick to my idea that there are still terrain advantages to legs and they aren't completely impractical. Robots on wheels can't climb steps for example. You need some system of limbs to be able to run on uneven terrain unless you want these giant exposed wheels on your machines. It would only be natural that after creating the destroids they would recycle some of what they created from those robots and incorporate the robotic limbs with other military vehicles. A monster that runs instead of rolls on tracks would seem logical in the context of creating machines designed to combat giant men as opposed to giant tanks. I have nothing against wheels and how practical they are in the real world honestly. But the world of macross is different to ours since they have alien technology. Now if you started to play "What if?" and imagine if we had robotic limbs that could match the moves of organic lifeforms and the speed wasn't a problem because earth had access to alien technology from a civilisation way ahead of us then you start to think: "maybe this whole idea of running robots ain't such a bs concept after all"..IF.... we were given an advanced alien races highest technology to play and experiment with. Ostriches and emus can run really fast and they use legs, right? Now imagine if we had giant ostriches and emus? Now just imagine we used the advanced technology to make giant robot emus and we knew it oculd be done because the technology was so advanced? "No way Lvis, that just couldn't happen!" I hear you say. Consider this: Stuff that is common to us humans today would seem magical or unbelievable to people in ancient times. If you were to take a flashlight and say, go back in time to another period of history and show the people this flashlight, they would think you had magic powers or something. Why? Because the tech to them is something from another world. They couldn't conceive of it existing because of the huge gap in progress, similar to the huge gap in progress from human tech in macross to the protoculture civilisation. So the point I'm trying to make is these robots aren't just robots, but robots that were way better than what the current world had seen when they were having thier anti un war going. Where robots didn't move slowly and sluggishly, but rather, they moved with speed and accuracy. If VF's can fly around and perform such sharp accurate manuevers, then why is it so hard to accept the equivalent of that advancement in the destroid's and other mecha? (such that we can have giant i-peds that can really run?)

..and don't forget to watch the episode after kamjin stole the zentradi resizing machine and gets taken down by (mutant) monsters standing on hills. He actually runs using the monster. So like I was saying, it's not just a siege weapon after all. I can think of a few reasons: -with regards to the transformable monster the feet would distribute the weight evenly on the ground and might help keep the robot steady when landing by absorbing the shock. Giant legs with knees that bend are better than wheels that might get squashed here. The same principle I assume would apply with regults with the grasshopper-like legs. When they land from a hop, they absorb the shock by bending the knees. And these were designed for fighing in any environment. -because robots are tall, they have an advantage over tanks when walking on uneven terrain. Check star wars for an example. I would much rather be in a giant robot than a tank on the ground. Tanks would topple over if forced to travel over ground that isn't flat enough and be too unsteady to be able to target anything. In extreme conditions it risks getting bogged down. A big boulder for a 4wd car is an obstacle for that car, but merely a small rock to a robot whose feet could step onto it without losing any balance. And would there be much speed in some environments where there isn't much flat surface, or good for vehcles that use wheels, like snow? A robot that just runs is going to be quicker in this instance, but this depends on the size of the wheels and speed of the robot legs. I remember there were some strange looking vehicles ion episode 2 of starwars with gigantic wheels. But these don't look that practical because they would be unsteady. -In some instances, legs allow for things that wheels can't allow for. With legs you could say, climb a ladder, (not the monster but a spartan might) leap from one surface to another (like the tops of buildings or a gap on the ground that leads to a large pit) or even prevent losing balance. (a tank landing on its side is useless, imagine ifthey brought tanks on sdf1?) Add arms and you can lift yourself up from the ground if the machine fell over. If a robot lifted a tank and placed it upside down, could the tank do anything to keep fighting? Keep in mind that in the macross world they do have tanks (there is one in the episode where the world get blasted by the 4 million ships) but they probably aren't OT enhanced or anything to make them special. These robots aren't just conventional robots you see, they are OT ones enhanced by the knowledge of alien race. I assume normal robots would have existed but would have been the typical kind in factories and stuff. If you want to do an experiment: bring a remote control car to a hilly bike track with uneven terrain. (lots of rocks, bumby surfaces, and natural obstacles like tree branches) Now get your friend to race you with his RC, while you use your feet to run. See who wins the race. A giant robot or giant zentradi would easily beat a tank or vehicle with wheels imo. I would be surprised if the car didn't get stuck onto something, topple over, or be forced to go around obstacles (as opposed to just jumping over them) before finishing. Redo the experiment in a variety of surfaces: grass, areas with steep inclines, in a creek, flat surface on a rainy day with puddles. Given that the monster isn't designed to be all environment like the VF, it would at least trade off lack of speed for firepower or other things. (ie the fact that it could shoot at stuff from afar) In real life there are some robots that can jog so who knows what cold be achieved in future when they experiment with true running robots. (like robot dogs)

Misa mentions to Hikaru that roy mentioned to her that he grew up without a mom and his dad died in an accident. Roy must have been pretty close to Hikaru in the movie to know his whole life story. Also Roy mutters to himself in the bar when Hikaru recieves the phonecall from minmay, "family?". So there's a hint he knows Hikaru pretty close to know the call wasn't from a family member.. Also Hikaru kinda cries when Roy dies but not when Kakazaki does. They must be very close for him to care that much.

Like the tanks in starcraft. They are sitting ducks if you leave them in the wrong mode for too long pinned to one spot, forced to aim in a single direction. Tieing cables means no ability to point at things in different directions. As seen in mac +, 1 shot from those anti warship missiles and it's bye-bye monster. And those are rare. The controller of the mech should have complete independance from others in combat imo If it is a siege weapon and nothing more than ok, but philosophically a monster to me is a tank which moves as well. I don't think a jungle would be suitable for giant mecha if you consider how dense they can get. I would rather one of those landspeeder bike things in star wars. But a scorched earth environment like what happened after sw I where you had rogue zentradi running around with stolen mechs? maybe. The monsters could pick a spot high up, dig into the rocks, aim, fire and move for a clean ambush while the valks take care of the rest. It would probably take much longer to fight a large group individually by dogfighting them, or going one-to-one than to just get the group into one area and shoot them with big guns from afar, dealing heavy damage cheaply. Maybe even slowly advancing the monster forward as the enemies retreat and more ground is gained. Maybe the claws don't grip the ground and only rely on what it is holding onto, to keep it steady? Maybe it merely absorbs shock (it may allow for some give) and helps to spring the mech into a forward motion using its arms after the kickback, to lessen the stress on the third leg? The philosophy being to fire shots more rapidly by having the mech and guns lined up more quickly after each shot? Even if it had nothing good to grip onto, just having them there to scrape against a rough surface to add friction and to put added weight to the front (as well as prevent it from falling over backward or forward) has to count for something.

I haven't seen it either. I'm just going to assume it was costs. (and as I mentioned about complicated technology on old things: is a record player more cumbersome than a cd player? an old 5" diskette more complicated and impractical than a 3.5" diskette? technology evolves) So..this was a prototype, they were limited in implementing the more advanced stuff (like the magentics) and made the compromise, sacrificing firepower for an early release to impress people that this was what the monster could do and to justfiy the expense of it to themselves and the client. More funding was then given, and eventually they went ahead with more expensive monsters with secure balance and more firepower. Sound reasonable enough. But I like my rock climbing idea. If you think about it, why don't the lower-ranked zentreadi soldiers all use glaug instead of regults? Having those two arms by your side for more firepower would seem more practical in combat than having none, right?

Well it IS a prototype. They must have seen the error of needing the claw once enough funding, parts, etc were available. Just as they found the brainwave stuff on the early yf21 to be too dangerous or not practical, since only select pilots could handle it, so too the claw is taken off of the monster in favour of something more straightforward and there we have the mk II. There you go! http://www.anime.net/macross/mecha/united_...wr00/index.html If they had given even more arms to the monster it might affect how it balanced (this thing has to walk on land you know) and people were in a race to get them ready. Just one possible explanation. Or maybe they simply changed minds and altered decisions at the 11th hour. My guess is as designs evolve they only become practical through the testing and experiences of problems that are reported. We probably only apreciate the practicality after seeing mk II first, becuase we are used to it. But as an example, if you look at computer architecture in the past and how it evolved over time before becoming standardised, it was a mess becasue of small iterative steps and evolutions. These were ideas that didn't foresee problems for the future. So if you want to translate that into mecha, you could say things started out more complex and gradually got simpler as people found out the errors of doing things the way they did them at the time. Not much a fan of the claw myself since it looks unnecessary and would get in the way if it tried to move around but they had to put something different there. I suppose if the monster ever fell off a cliff it could do the old trick of scraping the side of the wall to grab on for dear life. Maybe these monsters were designed for climbing mountains and hilly terrain! It could hide behind them but increase the range it could shoot at when on an elevated position jk