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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Black Rainbow is not a PMC. Like Vindirance, it's a paramilitary organization established by New UN Forces personnel to oppose Latence's efforts to suppress emigrant governments by force. Latence's manipulation of information branded it a terrorist organization and led to the VF-X Special Forces being deployed against it. After suffering a few defeats in their fights with the 727th Independent Squadron they more closely aligned themselves with Vindirance and were ultimately the ones who first clued the 727th in to Latence's existence in the VF-X Special Forces chain of command. Probably.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Given how successful Fire Bomber was, he probably has Scrooge McDuck-esque amounts of money with which to console himself.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That probably wasn't a hugely difficult feat, all told... the Macross Frontier fleet government developed the VF-25 with an eye towards export sales to other emigrant governments like the Brisingr Alliance did with their VF-31. More than anything, that kind of depends on what the Wind Valkyrie started life as. Basara's Fire Valkyrie was originally a military spec VF-19F. Elma's Wind Valkyrie was probably something newer, but also likely a more restricted monkey model since Elma was just an employee of a civilian corporation. Given her origin, I kind of suspect it was probably a VF-19P originally.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Probably not... Basara wasn't allowed to take the VF-19 with him when he left the fleet in 2047, so he's been bumming around the galaxy without it ever since. That's why he had to "borrow" (without permission) the Zola Patrol's shiny new VF-19P in Macross Dynamite 7. Fire Bomber itself also kinda broke up around that point, IIRC from the Re:Fire album where they did a reunion of sorts Mylene went off and had a solo career, Ray became a producer or a manager, and I completely forgot what happened to Veffidas. I know Basara was still bumming around the galaxy at the time and sent his recorded tracks in via the galaxy network.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Naturally, though you'd expect the fleet arsenal to maintain a reasonable stock level of replacement parts for routine servicing of aircraft. Basara's VF-19 Custom "Fire Valkyrie" is an extreme case, as one of the few true "Ace Custom" units that has well and truly been modified to exceed the performance (and likely the design tolerances) of the aircraft it started life as. (Macross Chronicle suggests Basara's VF-19 started as a VF-19F.) Same basic deal as in Delta, when Makina and co. complain that Hayate's inexperience is putting unnecessary stress on the custom VF-31 "Siegfried'. By the time of Macross Dynamite 7, the VF-171 was only just entering production for its earliest adopters (e.g. Earth). Even there, the process of phasing in a new model of Valkyrie takes years to complete and would only have just been starting in 2047. Once the aircraft are available the pilots and ground crews have to stand down from combat-ready status for months of retraining to familiarize themselves with the new model. That's done in waves to prevent the number of groups in retraining at a time from significantly reducing the combat readiness of the force as a whole. This has to be repeated, one or two squadrons at a time, across dozens and dozens of squadrons and the hundreds of mechanics and other support personnel. Then, of course, it also takes a while for the designs to trickle out to the emigrant fleets where the local government and local New UN Forces evaluate them and potentially submit modifications to the design before local production begins and then years more for them to gradually phase those new fighters in. Odds are the Macross 7 fleet hadn't even seen the specs for the VF-171 yet at the time of Macross Dynamite 7. They were only just starting trial production of small numbers of the VF-19 and VF-22 in 2046-2047, ~5 years after those designs were adopted by the central New UN Forces and Earth. Diamond Force is a special case in the most stringently literal sense. They were THE elite special forces unit in the 37th large-scale long-distance emigrant fleet and probably would have been the first recipients of the VF-19 if they hadn't been seconded to the City 7 government as a defense unit under Milia's command and temporarily replaced by the newly-established Emerald Force. Diamond Force and Emerald Force would have been first in line for any upgrade or new model because they were the fleet's Best of the Best. I suspect not. Kawamori's said in the past that he wanted to avoid having Zentradi ships and mecha shown among the New UN Forces to avoid any confusion about who was on what side. We're also kind of past them at this point, with the original Variable Glaug having been a 3rd Generation-equivalent Valkyrie and the manned Neo Glaug bis being a 4th Generation-equivalent. The Queadluun-Alma was a 4.5th Generation-equivalent, but it was also one-of-a-kind thanks to the unique components of the Astral System and it was still beaten by a YF-25. Well, maybe among the 37th fleet... with Max being the ranking officer of the fleet's New UN Forces and Milia being the fleet government's head of state. They managed to secure for themselves a pair of VF-22s before they were even available for Diamond Force. But then, who's going to argue? It's MAX AND MILIA. Two absolutely legendary Ace of Aces pilots who are the most respected pilots and flight instructors alive. Just irritating them is probably a career-ending move even outside the fleet. Would any career-minded officer want to have "reassigned after pissing off a living legend" on their resume? We're not exactly sure when they were made... so they may or may not be connected to General Galaxy. The New UN Forces were producing Zentradi hardware from their factory satellites from shortly after the First Space War. As a New UN Forces issue, they're pretty much guaranteed to be upgraded versions intended for better overall survivability and reliability on the battlefield. I doubt they're made that high-spec though. The Queadluun series needed special, expensive, hardware to achieve the performance it did. It's more likely that these are more subdued models which existed in the interim between the end of the First Space War and the introduction of the Queadluun-Rhea, with performance closer to their original models. There is, unfortunately, no detail on them as of yet.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    One I've been getting back to recently is The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers. It was one of the main inspirations for H.P. Lovecraft's particular style of "cosmic horror", and it has the great virtue of being in the public domain and available for free from many of the usual ebook services.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It's interesting to note that the New UN Government seems to have mandated various forms of detuning on certain export variants... particularly where the VF-19 is concerned. The New UN Forces in the Frontier era also seem to be fans of detuning in general, apparently just to reduce operating costs. The FF-2550F engines adopted by the VF-171EX and VF-171-III are detuned almost 20% compared to the ones used on the VF-19. The VF-171's FF-2110A engines seem to be detuned versions of the FF-2100X, also by about 20%. I guess even the New UN Forces of the wealthiest emigrant fleets are still fundamentally cost-conscious. EDIT: Apparently this post pushed me to "Super Dimension Member"?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... it's not as cut and dry as all that. It varies heavily based on the property, the character, and the circumstances. If a character's too important to the story to lose, they'll recast them without hesitation. If the character's important but their presence isn't strictly required, they'll often be replaced by a new, suspiciously similar, character in the same role like how Beltorchika Irma's role was taken by Chan Agi in Char's Counterattack. If the character isn't actually important, they might find themselves removed from the story outright or remain but be reduced to a non-speaking role like what happened to coach Todoroki in Silver Spoon after VA Kenji Utsumi passed. As the "author" of an original TV anime, Kawamori's got more freedom to work around characters whose voice actors are unavailable in new developments. (He hasn't exactly shied away from recasting characters for video games where necessary, like how Macross 30 cast Kenji Nojima as Hikaru.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    For now, basically nothing... assuming it's even true to begin with.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I guess it's a matter of perspective there. Tuning isn't so much enhancing performance as it is adjusting calibratable tolerances to reduce the safety margins put in place to protect the hardware. You can't tune past what the hardware is physically capable of, but you can make it run closer to the red line at the expense of increased maintenance requirements, reduced part lifespan, etc. Usually it goes the other way, detuning engines and so on to make those expensive parts last longer at the expense of reduced performance, reduce waste byproducts, etc. There's nothing quite so stimulating in a game as an underdog victory.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't Chiba do most of the Frontier-era Great Mechanics interviews? I took it more as another way of endorsing the YF-29 as The Strongest Valkyrie... Its specs are so far beyond what any other contemporary Valkyrie can offer that only a SSR Ultra Rare Legendary Ace of Aces can draw out its full potential. If they'd said Hayate I'd have taken it as a dig at the pilot because Hayate is criticized in-universe as an unpolished raw talent who is unnecessarily rough on his plane and has yet to come into his own. Alto, on the other hand, was skilled and experienced enough to explicitly draw out the full potential of the VF-25 and be frustrated by the lower specs of the VF-171EX. It's become more of a slow drip of information, which is fine as long as it gets to a reasonable level. The problem is that slow drip is distributed across so many fronts that getting all the info together becomes a huge pain in the arse. It's tuned differently, but it's still running all-stock parts. I've always tried to avoid that kind of thing. When you give players access to an uber-mecha it sucks all the tension and challenge out of combat. Gundam or Macross, I prefer to stick 'em in mass production mecha because being the Unchosen One instead of the ultimate plot armored hero of ultimate destiny makes for more engaging storytelling. It's not at all similar. In Gundam, having Newtype abilities means you've got a slightly more durable body, faster reflexes, telepathy with other Newtypes, and even a limited form of precognition. In Macross, having a fold receptor factor means you're... slightly less susceptible to falling into an uncontrollable roid rage when exposed to certain kinds of biological fold waves?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Exactly... hell, Roy's VF-1S is probably the single most distinctive design in the franchise and it's only real difference from any other unit is its paintjob. There are settings where it's justified - like Gundam's Universal Century - but it doesn't really fit in a series like Macross where there are no superhumans, nobody's got hyper-evolved super-reflexes or precognition, nobody's legally recognized as a one-man army, etc. These are regular joes working with regular military procurement. Even Gundam can't hide how stupid and impractical its obsession with ace custom mecha is, and has to lampshade it every now and again to stop the writers from going completely mad. It can be compelling when it's done well (e.g. Macross 7), but if the people in the ace customs don't really live up to it then you just wonder what the point of the ace custom even was... Was it? Yeah, he does have to boil it down and he does have the writers there to turn his ideas into something more palatable to general audiences... but even then, you could tell Delta was struggling to make the PMC idea work. Especially since the story basically had a PMC with maybe twenty planes to its name going up against an entire national military all on their own and somehow at least coming to a draw despite hilarious incompetence on all sides. Y'sure that's all Kawamori and not Masahiro Chiba chipping in? Like I said WRT ace customs, it can work if it's well thought-out... and Sound Force was well thought-out, though it was technically a unit of Irregulars inside the NUNS rather than a private orgnaization. SMS worked pretty plausibly too because it was working in concert with the NUNS rather than trying to do things solo, and even when they went rogue it was for narratively sound reasons and it was shown that even their hypercompetent forces can't really fight something like a government. Xaos was just poorly thought out, and seems like it was mainly just there so the characters could talk sh*t about the NUNS even though the writers seem to have been a bit wishy-washy on that point and show the NUNS doing way more actual work than them. Can I get back to you on that one? Still waiting for actual specs... and starting to suspect we won't get any until the Blu-rays drop.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    A bit over 9 years ago... (Macross FB7). We're about due for one. ... Netflix'll sponsor anything, then cancel it right away if it doesn't perform up to their expectations. Eh... there's hero mecha and then there's hero mecha. You can make a protagonist's mecha distinctive without having to make it a separate model of mecha entirely. Gundam has certainly proven you don't need to have ace customs all over hell's half acre in order to sell toys and kits, you just need a distinctive paintjob for a main character. The YF-29's already basically become Macross's Gundam and you can tell they're wearing that idea out pretty badly. Kawamori-san still has to answer to the production committee, though... and it's pretty clear from Macross Delta that the writers were struggling pretty hard to make the PMC idea work in the story this time around. There's a moment near the end of the Macross Delta TV anime that borders on an ignored epiphany on the writers part where it gets brought up that PMCs can't actually fight in wars the way Xaos was doing even in Macross's fictional universe. Kawamori's been putting a rather blunt anti-corporate theme into Macross stuff since Frontier, focusing on the abuses of unchecked capitalism and amoral war profiteering. The writers also started trending towards Xaos being morally rather in the grey too. I don't think he's so lacking in self-awareness that those two lines of thought won't meet in the middle sooner or later. You could do the same thing with Special Forces units easily enough... he's already done that one twice before with the VF-X Special Forces. PMCs seem to be a thing just because they can write the characters edgy and rebellious. Personally, my suspicion remains that Bandai saw the VF-31A was an unexpectedly popular option and appealed for opportunity to milk that mold more. Ordinarily, you'd expect the Next Movie to offer a new and improved mecha rather than a hastily improvised one that looks far more like the grunt mecha than the previous batch of ace customs and even shares their name.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    More a question of Macross II: Lovers Again and its tie-ins being developed by a creative team with more than a few Gundam franchise veterans and no Kawamori around to inject his passion for realistic aerospace engineering. Very much so, yes... especially since Macross II's timeline has the introduction of things like beam gunpods decades before Valkyries in the main timeline got them, as well as Gundam-inspired additions like funnels (on the VF-4) and bits (on the VF-2). There are some points in common, like the adoption of increasing amounts of Zentradi overtechnology or the inclusion of a support armature in the cockpit to enable the pilot to hold up better under high g-force loads. Generator output seems to have been considered more important than thrust, so the Macross II Valkyries are generating three times as much from their engines as a VF-1 and using it to power things like railguns and particle weapons.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much, yeah... the official Macross timeline is quite light on detail prior to July 1999, when the ASS-1 defolded in the Sol system and promptly crashed on Earth. The few times the official Macross timeline has been updated for that specific period, it's been to account for significant real world events like the interrelated dissolution of the Soviet Union, the establishment of the Russian Federation, and the reunification of Germany. Otherwise, it's been to make a few things slightly less specific like removing the mention of the fictive "People's Republic of Garalia" in favor of just saying that the disputes and internal conflicts that are collectively known as the Unification Wars started in the Middle East.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    No, it does not... and for good reason. Macross II's technical setting is more influenced by Gundam than by real world technological progression in fighter aircraft. As such, there's not really a good, clear, and explicit generational progression one can point to as we can with Kawamori's main timeline. Like the generations of Mobile Suit in Gundam's Universal Century, you've got a reasonably clear 1st Gen and 2nd Gen and past that point you're counting to potato because incremental upgrades and radical leaps in technology come in at the same time and the sharp distinctions disappear. You've got the VF-1 and VF-4 more or less the same as the main timeline's family tree... but then there's the VF-1 Kai "Refined Valkyrie"/"Attack Valkyrie" from the late 2010s and VF-4S Siren from the 2030s that don't quite fit being enhanced versions of their originals with significant new capabilities and technologies. Then you've got the events of 2054 which led to a second Overtechnology renaissance and Valkyries in Macross II that are either a single generation or potentially three generations depending on how you want to look at them. It starts with the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie in the 2060s, then the original VF-2 series in the 2070s, the regime-optimized versions in 2081 and 2086 (VF-2SS and VF-2JA respectively), then the VA-1 Metal Siren. Basically, it's hard to list them in any terms other than chronological order because it's not super clear whether there are generational divides or simple incremental enhancement and it's not really clear what the defining traits of a given generation ARE. The only really explicit point there is the pre-2054 Valkyries vs. the post-2054 Valkyries, the former being based on human reverse-engineered Overtechnology and the latter being based on a combination of human, Zentradi, and Meltrandi overtechnology with particular design emphasis explicitly drawn from powered battle suits.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. All we know is that it was an evolutionary upgrade to the VF-1 Valkyrie introduced c.2018 to improve its capabilities and that it was in widespread use c.2036 for the events of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross 2036 game where they were used by the game's main characters: Komilia Maria Jenius and her wingman Lott Sheen. It's equipped with the Super Pack II, a semi-fixed augment pack more along the lines of the VF-2SS's Super Armed Pack that has boosters, missiles, and beam guns like the VF-1's Strike Pack. There are three flavors like the standard VF-1... the VF-1AR, JR, and SR: The exemplar in the pic @Bolt posted is Komilia's VF-1SR. The one on the left here is Lott Sheen's VF-1JR, which he has in Roy Focker colors.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, and every now and again they go back and make some corrections for major historical events. For instance, the oldest versions of the Macross timeline published after the original SDF Macross series and DYRL? make mention of the Soviet Union and West Germany among the major powers that founded the Earth Unification Government and OTEC. Those references were later updated in newer iterations of the timeline published after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and now read "Russia" and "Germany". The Macross the First manga that modernized the original story also modernized its setting, giving the characters things like cell phones. ... it was in the real world too. The remark you're citing doesn't mention practical fusion power, just that an experimental fusion reactor surpasses the critical temperature point. "Achieving fusion" and "making fusion a sustainable source of energy" are two very different things. That timeline entry is the former. Technically, the first fusion experiment to reach the critical temperature for fusion occurred in 1958. The first controlled release of fusion power was the Joint European Torus reactor in '91. (There's a real world experiment that lines up almost perfectly with that arbitrary timeline entry... the 1997 JET experiment that achieved 16.1MW of fusion power generation.) It's all about how you want to define that delightfully vague statement.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That's what the Ghost X-9 was supposed to be... but it turns out Terminator, 2001: a Space Odyssey, and a few other films were just plain lost in the First Space War and everyone up and forgot that fully autonomous AIs are memetically associated with going snooker loopy and trying to kill you. (Or maybe Stealth exists in-universe, and the brain bleach needed to forget it made everyone wrong genre savvy for a bit.) Yeah, Detroit.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    The OVAs seem to get slightly different treatment on that front... it's less Bandai and more the secondary licensees that jump on that, like Arcadia, and they seem to be more willing to take risks on that kind of thing too. That's the million dollar question. When we get a new Macross series, it's almost certainly going to go forward in time rather than backward, so what'll the Main Variable Fighter be? From the 2060s on, the 5th Gen are the new emerging standard and they're gonna be around for a while. So they either have to skip forward quite a ways (20 years or so) to a point where the 5th Gen are the grunt only mecha or consider something more like the original series or II where the main characters actually use the standard mecha just with different paintjobs. Absolute Live!!!!!! kind of gives the vibe that Bandai was a bit surprised that the VF-31A proved to be more appealing as a toy than any of the Delta Flight versions, and may have put in a word about wanting stuff for the movie to use THAT mold as a starting point instead of the Siegfried type. I'd like to see the franchise get away from Hero Mecha Syndrome a bit. Especially since the novelty of the super-elite PMC has worn off quite a bit since Frontier thanks in part to the real world war crimes charges against PMCs. Not "could be" so much as "is"... Macross Chronicle, and really the Macross 7 series itself, is pretty clear on the subject. The amplification system used in the Sound Boosters is explicitly noted to be a modified fold system. Unfortunately, Macross Delta's attempt to draw a connection between the V-type bacterium and Var syndrome is really poorly done and not thought out at all. It asserts (as a theory) that humanity acquired fold receptors and biological fold wave abilities when the Vajra left the galaxy in 2059. This ignores the fact that biological fold waves were first documented decades earlier, with the first demonstrated instance being half a century earlier. It's one of a number of things that Delta appropriated from previous titles but tries to pretend it invented... like the holographic costumes, the gas jet rockets, etc. It also kind of ignores that, in Macross Frontier, being infected with the V-type bacterium was only survivable if it set up shop in your entric nervous system like it does on the Vajra. If the bacteria infect your brain instead, you get an incurable cough of death(TM) and other unfortunate consequences.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    ... nope, tho there was a brief period when people abbreviated my handle to "SK" and caused some confusion as a result. (That's what I get for being stuck with a screen name I picked back in my freshman year of HS and used across multiple sites, lol...) But no, I'm too tall, too white, and too from Detroit to be him... and too many people have met me at Super Dimension Con to think otherwise. 🤣 An interesting thought. Master File focuses mostly on the regular New UN Forces version(s) of the VF-19, but it would make a certain amount of sense for Project M to have been inspired by an event like that where a Zentradi fleet of considerable size proved extremely difficult to repel even with massive amounts of reaction weaponry and the latest Battle-class flagship. It would've been a very Max thing to do, since he lived through the First Space War and saw the original Minmay Attack firsthand. (It's also interesting to note that this non-canonical anecdote has the Battle 7 participating in combat the year before it left as part of the 37th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet... one has to wonder if Max was in command then, or someone else?)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, the planet's name is actually Spica III... it's the third planet orbiting the star Spica, also known as Alpha Virginis, approximately 260 light years from Sol. It's mentioned in an anecdote related in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur, which is not part of the official Macross setting. (So nothing of what I'm about to say is in any way canon.) Essentially, Spica III was - according to Master File's unofficial history - the ungentle reminder to the New UN Government that the Zentradi were still out there and still a significant threat to humanity. The planet had been settled by an early generation emigrant fleet and had a population of around 60,000 and an average defensive strength for the period with about 600 3rd Generation VF-14A Vampires, 48 destroyers, 16 cruisers, and 9 space carriers. In September 2037, the planet was discovered by ships of the Zentradi 1,534th Main fleet and after a brief but furious holding action involving heavy use of thermonuclear reaction weaponry in which the New UN Forces were able to evacuate approximately a third of the planet's population before being overwhelmed. The 1,534th Main Fleet bombarded the planet from satellite orbit and its surface was reduced to a barren wasteland as had happened to Earth in the First Space War. Reinforcements were unable to reach the planet in time to save it, so the New UN Forces mustered a retaliatory strike force of every ship that could be spared from within a 300ly area and 120 squadrons of Valkyries to destroy the 1,534th Main Fleet before it could threaten any other planets. The battle is noted to have been incredibly fierce, and through a sustained bombardment with the Battle 7's Macross Cannon and the expenditure of 90% of the New UN Forces total reaction weapon stockpile the fleet was repelled. The whole incident was subsequently covered up by the New UN Government to avoid a panic, but the effect it had on the New UN Forces and New UN Government officials (which became known as the "Spica Shock") led to a major rethink of the military's approach to defense and the initiation of Project Super Nova to develop a 4th Generation Variable Fighter with much greater offensive and defensive power than the 3rd Generation VF-11 Thunderbolt and VF-14 Vampire. (Of course, none of that is part of the official setting... but as you know from Macross Plus, the outcome of Project Super Nova was the events of the OVA followed by the brief attempt to adopt the 4th Generation VF-19A as the next main fighter before issues forced them to abandon it in favor of the less extreme VF-171 Nightmare Plus.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    ... on a couple of levels.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    There are more... those are just some of the ones that've been mentioned onscreen or visisted during various stories. The Brisingr cluster alone supposedly has around twenty inhabited planets at various levels of development, some with native life and some without. Only a handful - Al Shahal, Ragna, Voldor, Alfheim, Windermere IV, etc. - are visited during the course of the Macross Delta TV series.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Whether the VF-24 has technologies that other 5th Generation production or production-intent Valkyries don't have is unclear... due to nobody but the Earth/central NUNS having a complete picture of its specs. It is, however, implied to have better versions of the key technologies used in the 5th Generation production and production-intent Valkyries we've seen so far. If it is truly as OP as it's been implied to be - with the YF-29 supposedly being an attempt to exceed its specs - it'd be a bit of a gamebreaker for any conventional war. Like the VF-25 and VF-27, it was developed around the idea of having to potentially go to war against the Vajra with their incredible abilities. Now that that's not a concern anymore, no other threat we've seen quite measures up except something like a Zentradi main fleet. (As for another Master File... maybe if it's a good one. I'm still a little salty about the half-arsing of the VF-4, VF-22, and VF-31 books, even if the VF-31 book's copy-pasting from the VF-25 book was technically justified. I'm still waiting for a VF-171 Master File. That thing was the main fighter of the NUNS for at least two decades and counting.)
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