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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Just to clarify, the VF-31B is not a Master File variant. It's an official setting variant that IIRC was first mentioned in Great Mechanics G's Spring '16 issue. We've never seen it (as far as we know), but it's one of two variants mentioned as the mass-production "standard type" VF-31. Per Kawamori, the VF-31A/B types that Xaos has are the same in all respects as the ones that will eventually be delivered to the Brisingr Alliance NUNS. It's unclear if the VF-31B is meant to be a tandem cockpit training version of the VF-31A similar to how Master File describes the VF-19B and VF-25B, or if it's an improved single-seat production type like the VF-11B. Weird that this makes the third different explanation of the Siegfried's origins though. The TV series materials say it's a modified VF-31A, the Master File says it's a separate VF-31 based off a prototype, and the novelization says it's derived from the VF-31B. Macross Delta's cast is just too big for the length of the series. Macross Frontier had 25 episodes, and the important main and secondary cast amounted to nine characters: Alto, Sheryl, Ranka, Ozma, Michael, Luca, Nanase, Grace, and Leon. Macross Delta had only one more episode than Frontier but its core cast was more than twice the size at 21 people. You had the five members of Delta Flight, five Walkure idols, Ernest Johnson, Roid, the six Aerial Knights, King Grammier, Prince Heinz, and Berger Stone. The story was simply not long enough to give most of them more than the absolute minimum of development.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Most of the Meltrandi designs got reused in "Fleet of the Strongest Women". Beyond that, there really aren't many designs that are unique to the movie version. The Moruk Laplamiz mobile fortress is the big one, literally and metaphorically. The others are mainly little, incidental designs. Mostly utility and support craft like the Spacy's RC-4E Rabbit, the Zentradi transport, and the Golg Gants Charts light attack craft. Macross has always used its music side as a main selling point so that part is actually pretty logical in hindsight. Leaving other primary characters unnamed, well... I suspect part of that is to enforce the player projecting themselves onto the nameless ace pilot saving the day since it IS meant to be a simulation game. That seems unlikely to happen for a couple reasons. First and foremost, the creative team tries to avoid having any visual confusion WRT who the protagonists and antagonists are. This has been cited in the past as a reason that the Zentradi's ships and mecha generally do not show up in mixed forces alongside the regular New UN Spacy. Second, in a more in-universe perspective, the New UN Forces use of Zentradi mecha in the immediate aftermath of the war was a pragmatic decision. They had a lot of Zentradi volunteers for the New UN Forces and military service was an adequate sort of "halfway house" to help Zentradi who were struggling to adapt to life on Earth make the transition gradually and at their own pace. Zentradi mobile weapons also fall short in the survivability, safety, and ergonomics areas and so would not be particularly attractive options to a non-clone Zentradi or the New UN Forces brass. Zentradi born into culture would probably gravitate towards Variable Fighters as well, since those are the iconic weapons of the New UN Forces and prominently depicted as heroic in the media. Third, well... Earth's technology is great but it's not quite up to the same standards the Protoculture had for Ragnarok-proofing, so Human-made Zentradi mecha aren't likely to be as durable or reliable as the genuine article. Plus the more different varieties of mecha a fleet has the more complex its supply chain becomes. That seems likely. Zentradi mobile weapons in general eschew transparent canopies and such in favor of armoring the cockpit and getting by with monitors. He doesn't say anything besides remarking about an old hand who's on the brink of retirement, and how "old men" tend to have trouble with their aim. (His excuse for breaking orders and directly hitting the Macross with what was meant to be a warning shot.) The only time I can recall Zentradi forces mentioning medical treatment for the wounded even in passing is in Macross 2036, a Macross II timeline game where Quamzin turns out to have been Not Completely Dead and leads a new Zentradi fleet to attack Earth. (No mention is made of how his injuries were repaired but he does have a prosthetic eye in that story.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Not a lot of blood in that scene though, all things considered. That probably owes a bit to the fact that most of the violence is inflicted with laser weapons. Most sci-fi tends to go with the idea that laser weapons cauterize the wounds they make because lasers inflict damage by burning the target rather than piercing it with kinetic energy, though this is not entirely realistic...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Plot-wise, I feel like this chapter lands flat the same way that its TV and Movie equivalents did.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Either that or someone's been digging around in that storage facility where Quamzin got his. IMO, the stealth pods in VF-X are almost certainly Human-designed and built. Well, it was used by a predominantly Zentradi anti-Latence faction (Black Rainbow) so it would make a certain amount of sense for it to accommodate a giant pilot. Doubly so given that it seems to be built as a four-legged battle pod and shares a lot of design similarities with the Golg Gants Charts heavy attacker. Oh, no there's only one of the Quimeliquola factory satellites in Human hands as far as we know... which was placed in orbit of Eden, and restored by General Galaxy in the 2030s to satisfy the New UN Gov't demand for a way to maintain its Queadluun battle suit units.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Hmm... a few errors in this latest one. Both of the noteworthy ones being connected to some of the chapter's most interesting and unusual points. The first one is that this chapter makes the Macross Delta novelization one of the few publications to acknowledge the existence of the VF-31 Kairos's B variant. More interestingly, the novelization presents the VF-31B as the predecessor to the Siegfried custom rather than the VF-31A as is generally assumed and implied by the Macross Delta animation. This seems to have unintentionally been changed to VF-31A in the translation, though? The second is the very unusual mention of the VC-19V VIP-Calibur. This is one of the even rarer moments of official setting materials acknowledging something that originated in the Master File books. Normally when they tap those books for info they're doing it for technological key terms like ARIEL/ANGIRAS, the meaning of acronyms, etc. This might be the first time they've brought in an original design from Master File. There is another translation error here though, it's written VIPカリバー not VIPカリバーン, so the name should be "VIP Calibur" as in the Master File book not "VIP Caliburn". Interestingly, what Messer describes is a little different to the VIP Calibur in Master File. The aircraft he describes must be a newer/later variant of the VIP Calibur specification as he describes it as possessing an Inertia Store Converter to protect the VIPs from high g-forces. The original version of the VIP Calibur (c.2050) predates the availability of the ISC and just has five g-force seats in the passenger compartment. Unfortunately, this nod to Master File comes at the immediate price of the story having to engage in some spectacular pants-on-head imbecilic reasoning to try explain why such an incredibly useful thing isn't being used. Why? Because the New UN Government - who are A-OK with Xaos having a Macross-type warship, a full squadron's worth of the latest 5th Generation main VFs, and five Gen 5.5 ace custom machines with Fold Wave Systems - considers it too dangerous to sell this 20+ year old, previous-gen, unarmed transport aircraft to a private company. The Macross Galaxy Corporate Army can field an entire squadron of VF-19C's just so their parent company can flex on Shinsei Industry and SMS's forces can have dozens of VF-19E's for combat use, but this unarmed VF-19C that can't transform... no that's much too dangerous for Xaos to have.🤣
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Macross M3 gets almost no coverage in art books and the like outside of Kawamori's designs for the VF-3000, VF-9, and VF-14. I don't think I've ever seen the line art for the game's final boss mecha published. It must be in some doujin or some game magazine from the period. The game's old official website on shoeisha.co.jp does not credit any other designs besides Shoji Kawamori but AFAIK it's never been covered in any of his official art books. Which is doubly odd, since he does acknowledge the other Zentradi mecha he's designed in them. Which was rather surprising, given that the factory satellites producing the Glaug were destroyed 280,000 or so years before the original series... making them quite rare as a result. One has to wonder if the so-called "Super Glaug" in Macross Delta is a modified First Space War-vintage Glaug chassis or a Human-made reproduction. Oh no, there are lots. The mission to capture a factory satellite that we see in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series was just the first of many. Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the Factory Satellite mentions that "more than 20" factory satellites were seized and relocated by the New UN Forces in the following months. Exactly when they came into possession of a factory satellite capable of producing Queadluun-Rau battle suits is not clearly stated, but seems likely to have happened somewhere in the early 2030s given that General Galaxy was commissioned to restore the facility in 2035 in response to the New UN Forces diminishing stock of Queadluun-Rau battle suits.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Zentradi (and Meltrandi) Battle Suits aren't true powered armor. Officially, they're described as being something like a hybrid of powered suits and a battle pod in the sense that they are humanoid in configuration but the operator's body is situated almost entirely in the battle suit's torso and head and the limbs are mostly controlled indirectly. As such, you wouldn't see any blood from damaging the suit's arms or its legs below the knee because none of the pilot's body is in those parts. They're entirely mechanical. You probably wouldn't see blood from one even if you did hit the pilot, though. The cockpit's pretty close quarters but not skintight and the pilot inside it is also wearing an armored space suit. So if the pilot is injured, blood is likely to end up either inside their suit or inside the cockpit rather than leaking out of the battle suit itself. The one exception that sticks out in my memory is from the opening of Macross Plus, where Isamu is fighting against rogue Zentradi and stabs one of their battle suits with his VF-11's bayonet. That gets a LARGE amount of something reddish-orange that might be the pilot's blood. There has been no word on if the New UN Forces have captured a factory satellite that manufactures the Nousjadeul-Ger battle suit. The New UN Forces must have at least a few that are still in good working order, though. The in-universe version of DYRL? was shot with real ships and mecha to an extent, so several Nousjadeul-Ger battle suits were likely used in the filming of the movie c.2030. New Edwards Test Flight Center on Eden seems to have at least two working Nousjadeul-Ger units that we see used in simulated combat testing with paint rounds. Whether they belong to the base proper or were borrowed from a squadron stationed nearby for aggressor duty is never stated. We do know that the New UN Forces captured factory satellites making the Regult battle pod and Queadluun-Rau battle suit, and that those facilities have been used to develop and produce improved versions like the Regult Type-104 and Type-106 and the Queadluun-Rhea/56. The gradual breakdown of the New UN Spacy's captured Queadluun-Rau suits was supposedly part of what prompted the mission to seize and restore the factory satellite that had been making the Queadluuns for the Boddole Zer main fleet. (This also led to the development of the YF-21 and VF-22.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... machine translation has a ways to go before it's ready to properly take over for humans. It's way better than it used to be, but there are some definite context whoopsies and so on in there as well.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    What kind of detail in particular are you looking for? Markings? Equipment placement?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I've been using a bit of my vacation time to catch up on some of my translations and chase a few nagging open points in what I've translated about overtechnology. In this case, in the descriptions of energy weapons as part of an effort to provide some in-depth explanations of how they work. Laser weapons in Macross have thus far all been presented as real world laser technology that has simply had its performance enhanced by the inclusion of OTM. Master File has made VF-mounted laser weapons out to be a mix of fiber lasers (mostly on the monitor turret) and free electron lasers (nacelle/body mounts). The VF-1's Strike Pack gets identified as a gas-dynamic laser in Master File, and there's also passing mention of research into a Project Excalibur-style reaction bomb-pumped laser missile. Macross Chronicle has shot down my hypothesis that impact cannons are dimensional weapons. Nothing has been forthcoming as of yet about how the plasma cannons of the setting work (since there's all of one of the bloody things, IIRC, on the Nousjadeul-Ger). Particle beam weapons are where things get a bit contradictory. Macross Chronicle seems to imply that particle beam cannons are just juiced up linear accelerators, with mention of them injecting opposite-charged particles into the beam to neutralize the charge so it doesn't diverge due to repulsion forces. Then again, there are other books that mention using Gravity and Inertia Control for beam focusing and acceleration. There's mention of the beams using ionized heavy metal particles in some books, and plasma drawn from the reactor in others. Some mention both and switch between them situationally. So I have a crazy-ish hypothesis to get these seemingly contradictory explanations aligned. Macross's particle beam weapons may be something like plasma wakefield accelerators. Those work by using lasers to create a charge imbalance in a neutrally-charged plasma that creates an ion channel and "wave" of charge imbalance that pushes the lighter electrons out at high velocities. I think both of the above-described cases can be true if they're using a GIC instead of lasers to manipulate the plasma and create the charge imbalances. That only leaves the question of where the plasma is coming from... be it tapped from the compact thermonuclear reactor, or a "beam cartridge" like those described in the VF-31 Master File.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    From that trailer, it looks like audiences will be asking for Refunds for Silent Hill. It seems almost prophetic that YouTube's recommendation bar that pops up at the end of that trailer has Doom: Annihilation on it.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Railguns are a bit of an exception there. They accelerate projectiles to tremendous speeds using the Lorentz force created by running huge amounts of electrical current up one of a pair of parallel conductive rails, across the projectile, and back down the other rail. They don't have to supply that current for very long (per shot) but the amount of power required is pretty huge. Macross's railguns from the main timeline tend to be hybrids, though, using a chemical propellant "starter" and then using a railgun system to boost the projectile's velocity beyond what the propellant can do alone... so they might still work albeit at greatly reduced muzzle velocity. Particle beam weapons also require a lot of power. The relatively low amount of "surplus" power after the demands of propulsion, stealth, and defensive systems is why VFs with beam gunpods have only come about in the 5th Generation thanks to the greater output of Stage II thermonuclear reaction engines. Pretty much the same advantages that made railguns practical as VF-mounted weapons. Of course, the beam gunpod doesn't just need power, it needs a source of charged particles to fire... whether that's drawing on plasma from the VF's reactors directly or the kind of "beam cartridge" described in Master File (or both) the particles have to come from somewhere. A conventional gunpod has the advantage of not needing much power at all to work, being capable of running its motor and electronics off power from the VF side or from internal batteries.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Oof... yeah, the machine translation is definitely having a time with the proper nouns and dialogue containing sentence fragments. It is, in hindsight, more than a little funny that Mirage [...]
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Incidentally, your chapter 3 upload seems to have an access issue?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    That doesn't seem to be the case. After all, the New UN Forces in Macross 7 spent literal years and vast sums of money on Project M for the sake of further developing the Minmay Attack as a military stratagem to be used against enemies without culture and as a way to make peaceful first contact with new alien races who did. The first thing Max does in "Fleet of the Strongest Women" once the enemy are identified as a rogue Zentradi fleet is send in Sound Force for a Minmay Attack. Similarly, in Macross Frontier, the very first suggestion Leon Mishima offers with regard to the Vajra attacks is to have them "listen to a song" (i.e. the Minmay Attack). Earth's insistence on destroying the Chlore fleet feels a bit weird and out of place on its own, though since Macross 7's themes lean heavily into rebelling against authority having an officious jerk to humble is a bit of necessary comedy. Their attitude makes a bit more sense with the extra historical context from Master File, with it having been only about 9 years since the last run-in with such a large rogue fleet and that incident having started with the loss of an entire planet, 73 warships, 600+ Valkyries, and almost 600,000 lives. Telling the crew of Battle 7 to destroy the fleet also makes a bit more sense in that context, since the Battle 7 was the flagship of the fleet mustered against the previous Zentradi fleet 9 years ago and absolutely had been able to take down a fleet that size. Maybe. Then again, considering how many of them there are and how short they seem to be on Isamu's service record even calling them "wars" may be giving them too much credit. That can't be all fleets beefing with each other either... at least one of them is a civil war and another is described as a revolution, suggesting some of it is a single fleet or group of colonists from one fleet fighting another. Others may be run-ins with Zentradi forces like the one at the start of Macross Plus's OVA version.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    There are two main reasons, and a third is mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus... First, laser and particle beam weapons lose some of their range, accuracy, and stopping power in atmospheric use due to the beam's interaction with atmospheric gases. Laser beams suffer energy loss and scattering/defocusing as a result of a phenomenon called thermal blooming as they heat the air they pass through. Particle beams also suffer some power loss due to the beam colliding with and ionizing atmospheric gases in the beam's path. High-velocity hard rounds like the explosive armor-piercing shells used by (and against) VFs are a great deal less affected (particularly since, on impact, the secondary charge will have no power loss at all). Second, laser and particle beam weapons are at a bit of a disadvantage right off the jump because modern VFs have adopted energy weapon-specific defenses in the form of an anti-beam weapon ablative armor coating. This coating is designed to vaporize when struck by an energy weapon, fogging the path of the beam and robbing it of much of its power. The coatings in use from the Frontier era onward are said to be able to reduce the effectiveness of a beam machine gun-grade weapon by 30%. You can of course overpower this by the simple expedient of an excessively powerful beam weapon like the much larger and more powerful beam gunpod, but the explosive armor-piercing shells are totally unaffected by it. Third, Master File contends that a forearm-mounted weapon with high stopping power was considered desirable to minimize the amount of time the VF is nominally defenseless during or immediately after a transformation. A high velocity railgun with explosive armor-piercing ammunition fit the bill nicely.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    AFAIK, that hasn't really been elaborated upon. We know the New UN Government has some kind of system for ranking/classifying the habitability of planets given mention of Vajra being an "A-class habitable planet" but we don't know what criteria they use, what the other classes are, or how long it takes to reach such a determination. A-class planets are said to be few and rare, and the implication from Macross Chronicle and Macross Frontier seems to be that those are ideal or near-ideal Earthlike planets that are suitable for immediate colonization and development. Macross VF-X2 suggests that less suitable worlds (classification unknown) may require years of environmental modification to become suitable for emigration. Presumably the amount of time and effort required to modify a planet's environment to make it suitable are factors in deciding whether a planet is worth colonizing in the eyes of a particular fleet, and whether that investment is containable for the fleet's resources and economy. Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! has that one unnamed planet that was apparently colonized despite being a marginal case because of the presence of rare and valuable minerals.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I guess that depends on how you want to define "run into". Emigrant fleets operate in a manner intended to avoid such run-ins whenever possible. They operate with a massive early warning picket spread across a wide area around the fleet's main group (as seen several times in Macross Frontier) and also send advance reconnaissance taskforces out ahead of the fleet along its intended course to preemptively identify any threats and locate potentially valuable resources and habitable planets so the fleet can plan accordingly. Based on Master File, if a large hostile force is detected in or entering the area then SOP is to execute an emergency fold to leave the area before being detected. If a ship can't flee the area by emergency fold and is at risk of being captured it's evacuated and then destroyed so it can't be studied. The New UN Forces only really fight Zentradi fleets if it's unavoidable. Like to protect an emigrant planet, or if it's not possible for an emigrant fleet to evacuate the area in time to avoid a confrontation. The same rules of engagement almost certainly apply to the Supervision Army if they're ever encountered. They would probably treat the Supervision Army similarly to the Zentradi and hit 'em with the Minmay Attack while spamming Macross Cannon fire and thermonuclear reaction weapons.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Pedanticness train pulling into the station! I didn't say that no CF model has had "visor"-type optics... I said: While most CF variants tend to have "monoeye face" with a single large polarized cover over a multitude of optics and other sensors, there are a few out there that go against the grain. The VF-4A has a visor-type monitor turret, as does the VF-5000B Star Mirage, and the VF-14A Vampire. The VF-171 Nightmare Plus is also a visor type, as does the Sv-262Ba. ... if not for the VF-5000B's presence on that list, I would say all of the exceptions are General Galaxy's fault.😆 (Well, the Macross II Valkyries all go in on visor types too... since they've largely gotten rid of the A-type head in that timeline as of the 2070s or so.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    If that's a virus, it's absolutely endemic anywhere modern "horror" stories are told... and it's why most modern "horror" isn't remotely scary. Effective horror needs tension, and it's hard to build tension if your characters are falling over each other in a bid to be first to become Purina brand Monster Chow™️. Making sure a monster or killer has a huge body count isn't scary in and of itself. The gore is just gore. If the audience knows where it is at all times because it's constantly mugging for the camera its ability to frighten is thoroughly minimized. Likewise, if the killer's victims consistently exhibit a lack of common sense to the point of reckless disregard for their own safety and/or that of others it's next to impossible to get the audience in their corner to build tension over their fate. Combine those two problems and you have something that's gory but feels a bit like one of those comically over-the-top safety video parodies than something intended to frighten. Alien: Earth's whole plot is full of people doing the dumbest possible thing at any given moment.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It's such a weird choice of character, if you think about it. Aisha Blanchett was the director of an SMS branch and an aerospace engineer with a basically unlimited budget and a romance with a SMS pilot... so how'd she end up in the boonies working for a different PMC as a clinical pathologist? Those aren't exactly related branches of science. I guess she's become some kind of Star Trek-y omnidisciplinary scientist. It's weird that they wouldn't just use the existing character that the gaiden manga already established was a Var syndrome researcher and the developer of a fair bit of the Tactical Sound Unit kit... Zola's Dr. Hoyly. Doubly so given that Dr. Hoyly's mentor was one of the leading researchers studying dimensional resonance effects and she was heavily influenced by the work of Dr. Chiba.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    There's a Macross 30 reference in there too. The Dr. Blanchett that's mentioned in this chapter is none other than Aisha Blanchett, former director of SMS's Uroboros branch and lead developer of the YF-30 Chronos. (So there's some incorrect pronouns in this translation where they refer to Dr. Blanchett as "he". Machine translations do that a LOT.) I do appreciate the fun little historical note Kodachi put in about the "comfort' features of naval warships like the soda fountains on IJN Yamato or the infamous ice cream machines on US Navy warships. (They omit the most excessive version, the US Navy's Barge Refrigerated Large... often slightly inaccurately called the "ice cream barge", a massive refrigerator with an ice cream factory aboard able to produce 5 tons of ice cream a day.) It is a bit weird that they have to have an "As you know" section devoted to explaining the events of Macross VF-X2 and dimensional weapons, though.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Has anyone done a fan edit of the series with Yakity Sax BGM and cartoon sound effects? That might actually improve it. Episode 5, the "how this sh*t started* flashback episode, is almost a competently written horror story. Almost. Its main stumbling block is that the characters featured therein are all exhibiting Covenant levels of suicidal incompetence. So much so that it honestly seems like they want to get killed horribly. The rest of the series? An eminently skippable example of minimum effort spinoff slop. There's a barely-there fanfic tier story that shows the writer learned NOTHING from the poor reception of Prometheus and Covenant, pacing so poor that there's no tension whatsoever, and "scares" so stale and telegraphed they can't even startle. Most of the time its feeble attempts to scare are so un-scary that it ends up unintentionally funny. The characters are so incredibly dim-witted that it's impossible to sympathize with any of them. The only signs of intelligence come from the monsters, and even they aren't very bright. My key takeaway from season one was that Noah Hawley probably used ChatGPT for a lot more than just "research" while writing it despite his claims to the contrary, and that he's almost certainly got an oral fetish. There are Quentin Tarantino levels of "the director's obvious fetish" crowbarred into this series with the camera spending more time up close and personal with the bottom half of Sydney Chandler's face than her dentist probably has. (I'm not saying she had bad teeth, I'm just saying if the camera gets any closer it's going to be less a sci-fi "horror" series and more an upper GI endoscopy.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, the sunk cost fallacy triumphs yet again at the House of Mouse. What a pity. ChatGPT and Noah Hawley will be allowed to inflict another season of their D- community college creative writing assignment on the defenseless Alien franchise. If nothing else, one has to admire their commitment to ensuring that neither Prometheus nor Covenant will be remembered as Alien's most embarrassingly stupid installment.
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