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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, they're not Supervision Army... but the more detailed and distinctive DYRL? designs have essentially retroactively replaced the SDFM TV versions throughout most sequels in the Macross franchise. It's one of those things that's best not to think too hard about, because it's basically not explained AT ALL in most cases. A plausible hypothetical would be that the less organic design aesthetic belonged to the faction opposed to the Stellar Republic during the Stellar Republic dissolution conflict and were simply rolled back into the regular Zentradi forces when both sides united against the surprise attack on both sides by the Protodeviln and their Supervision Army. If you work backwards from the published total population of the Boddole Zer main fleet and the number of ships in the SDFM TV series, you get an average crew size of 1,470. That's probably slightly misleading, since a large percentage of the ships are very small 500m-class fleet radar picket ships and there's that massive mothership the size of Japan to account for, but it's a ballpark figure for the crew of an average-sized (~2km) Zentradi warship.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It wouldn't be the only example of a duplicate name. The first Haruna was ARMD-10. If it left and was presumed lost with the Megaroad-01, they may have recycled the name. There are also known to be two ships named for Bruno J. Global: a Macross-class SDFN and a Uraga-class escort battle carrier.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Presumably the 1st Large Scale Long Distance Emigrant Fleet. Originally, the Minsk and Haruna were going to be attached, physically, to the Macross-class SDF-2.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I'm kind of wondering what the hell they can actually put in the book, since a lot of the material from the VF-31 Siegfried book was reprints of material from the VF-25 Messiah book, and the Kairos Plus has even more in common with both.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Started Trapped in a Dating Sim: the World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs. Honestly, this has one of the worst starts I've seen from an isekai title outside of zero-effort isekai shovelware shows like Isekai Cheat Magician. It's surprisingly straightforward on the topic of its own setting being an unholy melange of genres that do not go together, but the opening setup feels more like it belongs to a parody than the played-straight story of this series. (I would not have been at all surprised if the protagonist, instead of dying by falling down his apartment's staircase, had done a handspring back to his feet, landed in the street, and been creamed by a truck or had a forced-perspective shot make him look like he was about to only to be hit in the ankle by an RC car.) ... ... ... I have kind of a really REALLY bad feeling about this show. Like, the uncomfortable vibe at a large family gathering right before some slightly-drunk distant relative launches into a racist and/or sexist tirade.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It's usually assumed that ARMD-09 Minsk was the first postwar fold-capable ship.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    I'll order my customary two copies once it's listed on CDJapan or HLJ. My hopes aren't high for the actual content, but the art should be pretty good as usual.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    I get more of a kick out of Igarashi and Takeda... but then, that has some personal resonance since I'm like 2m tall and short girls are disproportionately overrepresented among my direct reports at work. Ascendance of a Bookworm is getting a bit dark. I kind of miss the happy-go-lucky adventures of Myne the bookworm before it got all political intrigue-y.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    ... I can't get past the tagline. "They'll die when they're dead". ... I mean, to be dead you kind of have to have already died. Should've workshopped that one a bit more before going to print.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well, if nothing else, it'll be interesting to see how they screw this one up. I want to be optimistic and hope this series will succeed and convince the others to course-correct back towards Star Trek's core themes of a better, brighter future... but I have a nasty suspicion this'll devolve into another wannabe space action movie.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Only a handful of Earth UN Forces warships survived the First Space War, as a result of being attached to either the UN Forces moon base or the L5 Manufacturing Station. None of them were outfitted with fold systems at the time. The ARMD-class had been designed to be fold-capable but the first eight or so ships of the class were completed before the fold systems meant for them could be delivered. The SDF-2 was still incomplete and under construction on the moon when things went pear-shaped, though it too was designed with a fold system. When construction resumed after the war, fold-capable ships were being built in large numbers to support the emigrant fleets. So, for at least a year or so immediately following the First Space War's nominal end in 2010 the newly established New UN Forces were dependent on the hundred Zentradi ships sailing under their banner for interstellar capability. (Not that fold capability was considered a priority for Earth's defense in that period, it was all about the emigrant fleets initially.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The actor who voiced K.I.T.T.. Also well known for playing Mr. Feeny in the sitcom Boy Meets World.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    If the book is specifically for the Kairos Plus, I kinda doubt it.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-31 Siegfried book was... well... it basically all but ignored the production VF-31.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yup... "man" used without an article is a gender-neutral term. It's derived from mann, proto-Germanic for "person" and passed into Old English with the same meaning.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    To boldly split infinitives no man has split before?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well that's the weirdest thing I've seen in a while. Kaguya-sama: Love is War always does weird, arsty stuff for its ED that has no real connection to the main show... and for season three it's an extended reference to Starship Troopers. Not the Studio Nue one either, the terrible live-action movie complete with a totally unmodified Roger Young appearing.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I didn't take it as such. I just felt clarifying my own position was merited, since I am known to be a rather cantankerous bloke at times... This is about the most pathetic thing I've seen from this show, and that is SAYING SOMETHING at this point. The show's property master claiming coming up with the new tricorder was one of the hardest things he's had to do... when all he did was build a bulky case with some white LEDs for an otherwise totally-unmodified Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G smartphone. If that's as far as your professional creativity can take you while you're working on a series like Star Trek, it is well past time for a career change. He couldn't even be arsed to change the default lock screen image. Bragging about putting some LEDs and a custom grip on an airsoft pistol isn't much better, come to that. 's your surname "van Winkle" by any chance? You're going to be napping for a while at this rate. If I could get a laugh out of it I probably wouldn't be as disgusted with it as I am. Somehow, Picard feels even less dignified than when you see an aging rocker who's really let themselves go after a life of hard partying and harder drugs try to perform like they're still young. At least those washed-up rockers aren't deliberately sh*tting on their past selves the way Patrick Stewart is on one of his most iconic screen roles.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Oh yeah, that's a good one. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Kinda wish that one had been longer, TBH. It had a good vibe going.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe, but if you're starting from zero why bother slapping the name of an existing property on it and paying royalties to someone who contributed basically nothing to the movie's development or production? Why indeed? Mind you, it's not just the designs. They can't adapt the original story either. Under copyright law, Harmony Gold's copyright on the story in their Robotech TV series only extends to the new material they created in the adaptation process. That's basically just some character names they changed and some minor plot points. The studio would need to negotiate for and obtain separate license agreements from the Japanese owners of the intellectual property rights to the original shows if they wanted to adapt the story used in the TV series. So not only can't the studio use the original designs or make new designs based on them, they can't use the original story or base their story on it either. Small wonder the movie has never been more than a pipe dream, eh? Of course, when it comes to Robotech, "iconic designs" means "Macross designs" and nothing else... especially in the eyes of the Robotech fanbase itself. Harmony Gold's inability to use or authorize the use of those designs outside of merchandise, has played a contributing role in the failure of practically every attempt to continue the Robotech TV series (most overtly in Robotech 3000). 😉
  21. Seto Kaiba
    The Gundam and Yamato influences are a lot more overt too... Quamzin in particular basically just looks like Purple Garma.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    In Macross Perfect Memory. There is a section The Making of Macross that starts on page 203 and has concept art for many characters and some of the mecha, and some info about the original episode counts for the series in development.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    "Kill it with gobsmackingly huge amounts of thermonuclear fire" is a surprisingly simple and straightforward strategy... and it's undeniably effective. That was the special investigation unit, which was from (New) UN Forces staff headquarters. *gestures broadly in the direction of the VF-9, VF-17, and VF-171* Not all of 'em... The Varauta folks were a mix. Macross R protagonist Chelsea Scarlett is a Zentradi former resident of Varauta, though it's worth noting that not all Zentradi have that same ghastly pallor too... their ability to blend in among standard humans varies pretty widely. By the Galaxy fleet only... though the New UN Gov't and New UN Forces don't officially recognize it as a production version because the Galaxy fleet never disclosed its specs to the central government and military. Precisely. The same style of designation is also used for the VF-25 and its gear, presumably in anticipation of export sales. It does, though it stands out as something of an aberration... if it'd just been a local spec VF-19E it would've been VF-19E/MF25, but it's heavily customized to the extent of being its own variant. Most planetary defense is space-based, so its less-than-optimal atmospheric performance would not be a deal-breaker to most. Cruising range, armament capacity, passive and active stealthiness, and cost-effectiveness made the VF-14 a very tempting prospect for emigrant governments.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Emigrant governments seem to adopt the name of whatever they've decided to call their planet once they settle there rather than continuing to refer to themselves by their fleet name or number. They also seem to have had a reasonably free hand to decide how to arm their local New UN Forces defense forces, even before the Second Unification War greatly expanded the freedom emigrant governments had to make their own policy decisions. While the VF-11 was the winning design for Project Nova, the VF-14 Vampire enjoyed considerable sales among the emigrant fleets as a space-optimized 3rd Generation VF with high frame versatility and lots of room for onboard customization. Some emigrant fleets went extremely cost-conscious and adopted all-Ghost air forces instead. The Varauta government seems to have been EXTREMELY focused on the idea of repelling a Zentradi attack, with their development of their own warship types that were more focused on the idea of directly confronting a branch fleet in open combat. The Protodeviln simply appropriated and then upgraded the designs they were already using when they took over the system. (Yes, even Gepernich's flagship, which was basically a MASSIVE floating missile battery and gun platform intended to unleash seven shades of thermonuclear hell on any Zentradi fleet unlucky enough to enter the system.) It's definitely confusing, that's for sure. Though the Caliburn itself is even worse in that it's a 4.5 Gen VF that incorporates certain technologies developed for the YF-25 Prophecy on a trial basis rather than being a mostly-stock 4th Gen VF like the regular VF-19. The VF-19 suffered from its own success. Its excessive maneuverability and over-the-top performance made the g-load on the pilot too excessive for most pilots to handle, the peaky handling made loss of control accidents common, and the cost was outrageous. (Though its main sin in production terms was looking too much like a hero mecha.) The New UN Government and Earth New UN Forces shared the YF-24 Evolution spec, with redactions and omissions as appropriate to arms export restrictions and Earth's various proprietary developments, to the emigrant governments. If an emigrant fleet decided to build their own VF-24 instead of developing a new design from it, I'd expect it to look very close to the base design with most of the changes "under the hood". There is a provision in the designation system for local specification variations below the variant level.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Well, there's autonomous and there's "autonomous"... if they're still a New UN Government member they're not actually truly autonomous since they're subject to the supranational government. Eh... we have, and we haven't. It's more an issue of the VF-19E being inconsistently presented. For instance, Aisha Blanchett's VF-19 is indicated to be a VF-19E in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and follows the design of the VF-19 1st Mass Production type. The same design family as the YF-19, VF-19A, VF-19C, and the Master File-exclusive VF-19B and VF-19D. Master File incorrectly lists the VF-19E as the first 2nd Mass Production type styled after Basara's VF-19 Custom. Basara's VF-19 Custom was, in the official setting, derived from a trial production VF-19F. Then, of course, there's the Frontier fleet's local take on the VF-19E designated VF-19EF Caliburn, which is a 2nd Mass Production type like the VF-19F/S but has a wing that sort of cuts a dash between the 1st and 2nd type and canards. That, of course, muddies the water because we don't know how much of that craft corresponds to the original design and how much is the Frontier fleet arsenal and local Shinsei branch's customizations. Somewhere along the way, that ended up being selectively downgraded to the VF-19EF/A which Isamu flies in Macross Frontier's 2nd movie, which is a VF-19EF retrofitted to return it to something close to YF-19-2 specs. So one of the unresolved questions of the VF-19 series is whether the VF-19E was a 1st Mass Production type or 2nd Mass Production type. Macross Chronicle would seem to lean in the former direction, with the F type being presented as the base model for the 2nd Mass Production type. So, that's a whole other kettle of fish. We've never seen a VF-24, but we know it exists because the Earth/central New UN Forces adopted the YF-24 Evolution as their next main fighter in 2057. The "Evolution" isn't a nickname for the YF-24, it's actually a separate model of YF-24. The original YF-24 was a failed prototype with the early/initial prototype ISC that wasn't up to the military's requirements and was ultimately cancelled. The YF-24 Evolution was Shinsei Industry's independent revival of the YF-24 design with more mature technologies which was successfully demonstrated to the military. We've only ever seen that one in line art form in Macross Frontier and Master File. Presumably the VF-24 looks just like it, or at least very similar. The original YF-24, informally nicknamed "Camel", has never been seen in art or anywhere else.
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