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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It depends on what's stored on the wing pylons. For large munitions, it simply doesn't fold the wings... as seen in Super Dimension Fortress Macross ep27 with the RMS-1 thermonuclear reaction warheads. For smaller munitions like the AMM-1 Arrow multipurpose missile, the underwing pylons can rotate and there is enough clearance for them to do so with the missiles attached without having them bump up against the cockpit block. Nah. Hikaru was, however, one of the more skilled pilots in the SVF-1 Skulls and was selected to assume command of that squadron after his CO (Roy) passed. The F203 Dragon II is not related to variable fighter development. It was a UN Forces conventional fighter jet that was developed during the Unification Wars to adopt new materials and technological improvements that would have been difficult or impossible to retrofit into older models of fighter. It served alongside various pre-OTM conventional fighters during the Unification Wars until it was... forcibly retired... when the Zentradi vaporized them all in the orbital bombardment shortly before the First Space War ended. (While it is not strictly canon, Variable Fighter Master File even asserts there was a naval version that was considered to be F-20N.) Most of the battles in the Unification Wars were fought with conventional weaponry. Even in 2008, there were maybe a hundred operational Variable Fighters on the entire planet, with only around 60 VF-0s existing and most of those assigned to just two aircraft carriers - CVN-99 Asuka II and CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II - for evaluation and ad hoc training use. It wasn't until very late 2008 that the first VF-1 Valkyries came off the line... most of the first few production lots went to the CVS-101 Prometheus and SDF-1 Macross, and ended up out in space.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Most Macross resources to comment on the topic put the post-war human population at approximately one million people. With the exception of the crew of the SDF-1 Macross, the survivors were those individuals who were assigned to underground military bases like the incomplete Grand Cannon III and Grand Cannon V or were offworld at installations like Apollo Base on Luna, the L5 Manufacturing Station, the space colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, and the few UN Spacy warships assigned close protection duty at those locations like the Constellation and the Midway. After the war, the New UN Government authorized a mass-cloning program to increase the size of the human population and duplicate individuals with essential skills in order to accelerate the postwar recovery effort and provide enough people to support the government's plans for extrasolar space colonization via long-distance emigrant fleets. Human cloning efforts were terminated after twenty years due to a sharp rise in the incidence of recessive genetic disorders. There were also noted to be approximately eight million Zentradi remaining after the ~4 million surviving ships of the Boddole Zer main fleet withdrew from the Sol system.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Starting Ghost in fhe Shell: Arise right now... it's a little weird seeing how everyone in this looks more or less exactly the same as they did in Stand Alone Complex except Motoko. I guess her new design better fits the idea in the movie that she went with a generic face on her prosthetic body... but stylistically it's nowhere near as appealing as her design in the manga or SAC. Her face looks painfully under-detailed compared to the rest of her, and those of the other characters. Almost to One Punch Man levels in a few shots.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Kawamori's pretty hard to predict... It's not impossible, but after so much time it feels a bit unlikely esp. since the Supervision Army's creators have already been dealt with. Edit: Not to mention the Protoculture have supposedly been extinct for a long time themselves outside of Macross II, where the Mardook were supposed to be a surviving group of them.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Prior to Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! the prevailing theory was that the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 had entered some kind of portal near the galactic core. That was based on a mail-in promo gift that came with the PlayStation Macross: Do You Remember Love? game that purported to be Minmay's last message to Earth. Another popular theory was that they had settled on some remote world that was isolated from the rest of the galaxy by fold faults like Uroboros or Windermere IV are, and that fold communications simply couldn't reach them because of that. Now, the answer seems to be that... Because neither side cares. The Zentradi mindset is pretty simple and straightforward. They're interested in pursuing and destroying enemies - the Supervision Army - and the ancient Protoculture's decision to indoctrinate curiosity out of them for the most part has left them largely uninterested in anything else. The Supervision Army is likely in the same boat with their brainwashing and being under constant threat from the Zentradi, there's no reason to attack an alien race that doesn't seem individually intelligent enough to have spiritia and isn't attacking them. If the Vajra aren't shooting at them, the Vajra belong to the category called "Not an Enemy" and are therefore firmly in "I don't care about that" territory. The Vajra, for their own part, are quite happy to be left to their own devices and ignore anything that isn't an overt threat to them. They'll respond with force if attacked themselves, but they have no real interest in going on the offensive unless their own kind are in imminent danger. That's not to say the occasional battle doesn't happen... but it's rare, since both sides tend to be thoroughly disinterested in each other. The Vajra attacked and destroyed a Zentradi main fleet and repurposed its mobile fortress as a nest for reasons unknown c.2009 that is seen in the second Macross Frontier movie. The novelization of the film asserts that the mobile fortress in question belongs to the Koper main fleet, a surviving reconnaissance unit of which attacks the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet in 2058 in the light novel Macross the Ride. The reason the Vajra attacked the Macross Frontier repeatedly in 2059 was because the biological fold waves in Ranka Lee's songs convinced the Vajra she was a Vajra herself, and they were trying to rescue her from danger. If not for that, they'd have left the Frontier and her fleet alone.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... sadly, an early cancellation was always the most likely outcome for this project. Live-action adaptations of anime or manga produced in the west have never been commercially successful. It doesn't seem to matter much how iconic or successful the original is or how much money the studio can afford to throw at it. Some things just don't seem to translate well enough to be viable. I'm inclined to suspect going for titles that already have brand awareness in the west hurts more than it helps since the show/movie then has to contend with the audience's memories of the original in addition to trying to succeed on its own merits. IMO, familiarity definitely hurt Netflix's Cowboy Bebop. I'm one episode in, and while it's not bad... or at least not agonizingly so... I'm not sure I could call it good either. The cast is clearly putting in a sincere effort but the writing, choreography, and effects just aren't there. My viewing experience as a Cowboy Bebop fan is a lot like having someone disguised unconvincingly as a family friend show up at my home uninvited and having to decide if it's worth the effort to call them on their dodgy impersonation before showing them out. Netflix seems to be making a lot of its keep-or-cancel decisions for its original or sponsored shows based on international market performance these days. Like Star Trek: Discovery, which did OK in the US but was poorly received globally. Netflix was only prevented from cancelling the series after just one season by CBS threatening to sue them over it.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    When I booked my ticket, the theater showed as about half full... which kind of surprised me, given that the only other Macross fan I know of in the area outside my RPG group is Kaneda's Bike.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So... initially, the ancient Protoculture heavily indoctrinated their Zentradi forces in order to keep them obedient and prevent them from developing beyond their role as the ancient Protoculture's expendable clone army. Their directives included a general prohibition on anything outside of the relatively narrow focus of their military lifestyle (activities deemed "productive" or "creative"), very specific rules on when and how they are allowed to interact with clone troops of the opposite sex, and a safety net sort of regulation that prohibited the Zentradi from interfering with the ancient Protoculture themselves in any way. When the Supervision Army emerged, the Zentradi were unable to fight them effectively because their forces were made up of brainwashed Protoculture. The directive had to be either lifted or amended to facilitate an actual defense. By the time the war was over, the Protoculture had lost so much that they were unable to reassert control over the active Zentradi forces and reinstate the directive to not interefere with the Protoculture. Fast forward 500,000 years, and what the Zentradi remember of that ancient directive that had ceased to be a part of their everyday lives half a million years ago is that some of their most ancient military records contain dire warnings instructing the Zentradi to avoid worlds inhabited by miclones. As such, the directive is not entirely effective/observed anymore... and it requires the Zentradi to know beforehand that they're encountering miclones. It took Vrlitwhai's branch fleet some time to analyze the recorded combat data from their reconnaissance Regults that accompanied the attack on South Ataria island and discover that the people they'd attacked were miclones. It's been 500,000 years or more since any Zentradi saw a living specimen of the Protoculture, and humanity's spacecraft look nothing like the ones the Protoculture used in their heyday so the Zentradi don't inherently recognize them as "miclones". The First Space War started, if you discount the booby trap, becuase Vrlitwhai's fleet initially thought it'd found a Supervision Army base after discovering the ship they'd been chasing on the planet's surface. There is one notable incident where a commander did decide to pack up and leave like that, though. It's in the Macross II timeline's story Macross: Eternal Love Song. One of the Meltrandi main fleets chases a Zentradi main fleet into our solar system and sends a scouting party to Earth. The information the scouts bring back causes the living command computer governing the fleet to conclude it's stumbled on a surviving enclave of the ancient Protoculture and orders its forces out of the system immediately.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Well, at least one of them anyway... factory satellites are designed to manufacture one specific product in a single, completely self-contained operation that goes all the way from collecting raw material with a fleet of drone ships to the finished fully-operational product. It's an exponentially larger version of the all-in-one factory concept behind facilities like Ford's River Rouge factory at the time of its inception. So individual factory satellites aren't self-replicating, but there is noted to be at least one factory satellite out there that has the task of building factory satellites. We can't say for certain since humanity lacks the technology to reach for other galaxies themselves... but it's definitely very unlikely that the Zentradi or Supervision Army would've made it to another galaxy. Not only are they basically completely preoccupied with their own private forever war, but it's a pretty high hurdle technologically and their lowest bidder fold systems probably aren't up to the job. It's questionable whether the ancient Protoculture's even were. The only species known to have intergalactic range are the Vajra, whose biological technology was the envy of even the Protoculture. Fold navigation is an efficient but fairly inconvenient way to get around space. As noted previously, because it's basically a form of teleportation by folder higher dimensions you're not able to examine or observe the space between Point A and Point B while you travel. You're just at one point, then you're in the folded space, then you're at the other point. The other main problem is that it requires a fairly massive amount of energy to tie higher dimension spacetime in knots using gravity control and all that energy is needed upfront as a fold jump's range is limited to how far out you can compress that space to a single point. Your maximum potential range in one fold jump is limited by the amount of energy your ship can spare for the fold system and how much energy that system can store in order to make the largest possible fold in higher-dimensional spacetime. Jumping tens or even hundreds of light years can be done reasonably casually though it still requires at least some advance notice. Thousands of light years can take a while to charge up for, and that energy demand grows in a geometric progression as distance increases. Consequently, with the level of fold technology possessed by humans and the Zentradi it can take a long time to do something like cross our own galaxy. It's been indicated that humanity's farthest-flung holdings on emigrant fleets and emigrant planets like the Brisingr cluster are 10 years away from Earth when traveling by space fold with the resources of an emigrant fleet. Andromeda's ~2.5 million light years away. To get there by space fold, assuming you could take all the fuel and resources you'd ever need with you, would take centuries or even longer with a conventional fold system. (It might be more achievable with the Vajra's zero-time fold biotechnology, the first human imitation of which is said to be ten times as capable as the conventional fold systems in use at the time... but that requires large amounts of fold quartz, which even humanity struggles to acquire by pillaging Protoculture ruins.)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. (Unless you want to look at the in-universe DYRL?'s use of the Meltrandi as a separate and distinct faction standing in for the Supervision Army as the Zentradi's opponents as the reason... that the Meltrandi designs were historically inaccurate, in other words.) Exactly how many would be hard to say for much the same reason as the number of active Zentradi main fleets... 500,000 years of battlefield attrition and replacement have left the numbers a bit muddied. The official encyclopedia Macross Chronicle indicates that a Zentradi fleet has anywhere from 20 to 50 factory satellites in its logistical support arm, and that the total number of factory satellites was well into the millions in the ancient Protoculture's heyday. The Regult type used by the Boddole Zer main fleet is produced out of the Esbeliben 4,432,369th Zentradi fully autonomous weapons development and production facility. The Glaugs came out of the Roiquonmi 330,048,902nd. The numbers on the battle suit plants were in the billions (the Nousjadeul-Ger's is the Flemenmik 7,721,242,921st, the Queadluun-Rau the Quimeliquola 74,710,020,692nd). One of the more irresponsibly bonkers things the ancient Protoculture did was set the Zentradi's logistical support arm up to be completely self-sufficient and autonomous... so there are factory satellites churning out everything from uniforms, food, and ammunition right on up the scale to personnel, warships, and even other factory satellites. It's that insane level of autonomous operation that has allowed the Zentradi and Supervision Army to wage a forever war against each other for half a million years and counting. (It's especially worrying that those massive numbers of autonomous weapons plants are the Protoculture's lowest bidder manufacturing tech... the stuff they reserved for their own use veers into Clarke's Third Law territory by dint of being able to build without limit by cheating its way around conservation of matter as long as it had an adequate power source. One can only imagine the insanity that might've ensued if they'd been able to combine that with their invention of a power source that defies conservation of energy, which they put into the Evil-series and later biotechnological horrors like the Fold Evil and Birdhuman.) Yes, Mr March is working on that. Those pesky day jobs do tend to get in the way of hobbies... though I know he's not quite as happy with the later titles that don't publish actual line art for him to color. Lucky me, I just have to keep the servers ticking over and paid-for while I work on my own site.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    At the peak of the ancient Protoculture's military power, their Zentradi forces consisted of approximately 5,000 main fleet-strength forces. Combat losses in the intervening 500,000 years have whittled that down to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 main fleet-strength forces by the "present day" of the First Space War in Super Dimension Fortress Macross or Macross: Do You Remember Love?. "Yes and no". Space is big. Really big. Unreasonably so, in fact, if your goal is to cover an interplanetary or interstellar distance quickly. Traveling those long distances by folding higher-dimension spacetime is a quick and relatively efficient way to circumvent vast distances very quickly, but because space folding is effectively a form of teleportation it's a terrible way to travel if you're looking for something that you don't know the location of (like an enemy fleet) or you just want to explore. It doesn't offer any way to see what's in the space between Points A and B. For this reason, large fleets (both humanity's and the Zentradi's) rarely travel as a single monolithic formation. The fleet's main force is surrounded by a loose halo of small sub-fleet scouting forces and early warning pickets spread across light years of space in every direction to warn of approaching threats and scout ahead of the fleet's chosen course. Most of the Zentradi fleets that humanity has encountered are these smaller "branch fleet" forces of a thousand or so warships that are dispersed around thousands of light years in search of the Supervision Army's own fleets. Vrlitwhai's fleet in the original series and DYRL? was one such scouting force. The standard strategic practice of the New UN Forces is to avoid contact with the Zentradi if at all possible, and to destroy any branch fleets that discover emigrant fleets or planets to prevent them from being attacked by larger forces like a main fleet. There hasn't been any direct mention of encountering a main fleet head-on in official setting material, but the accounts in Variable Fighter Master File incidate the prevailing strategic doctrine involving main fleets is one of avoidance... run away before they can see you, and blow up anything that might potentially provide them actionable intelligence about humanity. The VF-25 Master File tells a story about the Macross Valiant fleet finding itself in close proximity to a Zentradi main fleet that just folded into the area and executing an emergency space fold to get out of the area before they're detected, with one ship needing to be evacuated when its fold system failed and then destroyed with a dimensional warhead to prevent it from falling into Zentradi hands. In Macross II's timeline, Earth encounters several main fleets over the 80 years between the First Space War and Mardook invasion... mainly due to Zentradi ships escaping and linking up with other main fleets. "Rogue" doesn't mean "pirate" or "rebel"... just "unorganized", not under the direction of a main fleet due to the loss of the higher levels of the chain of command. Zentradi don't have concepts like piracy in their "culture", all they understand is military service and their mission to destroy the Supervision Army. The ones who become pirates or rebels are the Zentradi who have been exposed to Earth's culture and found themselves unable to fit in, like the terrorist organization Struggle in the 2010s.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Officially - at least as far as Shoji Kawamori is concerned - each and every Macross series is a stand-alone story and all are equally "canon" and equally inaccurate dramatizations of some "true" Macross timeline we're not privy to. In practical terms, there is an in-universe movie called Do You Remember Love?... but it isn't necessarily the same movie as the real world Macross: Do You Remember Love?. The in-universe film, as shown via snippets in Macross 7, apparently contains a number of scenes that are not found in the real world version like Max and Milia's wedding. Macross has always sort of treated the truth of the First Space War as being somewhere between the events of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?. Even Macross II does it... though Macross II and its parallel world timeline bias more heavily towards Do You Remember Love? and the later titles bias more heavily towards the original TV series for narrative details. DYRL?'s designs have largely supplanted the original series versions too, further muddying the waters. The fan theory that Macross II is an in-universe work of dramatic fiction is driven mostly by the reuse of large portions of Macross II's soundtrack in Macross 7, complete with at least one cameo by the Minmay Defense singer from the OVA's first episode. However, it has never been officially acknowledged as such and Macross II's official status remains "parallel world story". "Brainwashed" doesn't mean "mindless"... as seen in Macross 7 with the Protodeviln's appropriated UN Forces, they're still perfectly capable of rational thought, strategic thinking, and exercising personal initiative. They've just had their thought processes and priorities altered to make them loyal and obedient to the Protodeviln. For what it's worth, official publications tend to consider the Zentradi to be brainwashed too due to their heavy indoctrination. They're missiles. This was a quick-and-dirty fix for the scene that immediately follows where the animators realized they'd drawn Max firing WAY too many missiles at a theater scout pod.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    So... like this? (That's the Oracle mothership from Phantasy Star Online 2... a massive propulsion system built around the sentient planet Xion.) If Uroboros in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and Windermere IV in Macross Delta are any indication, the Protoculture's preferred method to being left alone or ensuring that things they left behind were left alone was to construct intense artificial fold faults around the planet so severe that fold travel becomes impossible. (Like the Uroboros Aurora, the fold fault that cuts the planet Uroboros off from the rest of the galaxy for months or years at a time.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... and the defections/captures from subsequent Zentradi encounters. Shipbuilding isn't much of a priority when fresh warships practically deliver themselves to you complete with crews every couple years. They had other original ships prior to that, like the Daedalus II-class. It's more like the pace of development was distributed differently... some technologies advanced faster than in the main timeline, while others advanced more slowly or not at all. For example, while the Macross II timeline may not have inertia capacitors and the power of thermonuclear reaction engines grew much faster in the main timeline the Macross II timeline developed beam gunpods much faster (back in the 2030s) and had applied drone technology to create funnels and bits when the main timeline was still working on making drone fighters able to fight effectively on their own. It's somewhat unhelpful to say it like this... but the Varauta forces are the Varauta forces. Most of them were/are the UN Spacy defense force maintained by the Megaroad-13 emigrant fleet after it colonized the third planet in the Varauta 3198XE star system. The others were members of the UN Spacy's Blue Rhinoceros special forces who'd accompanied the investigation of the system's fourth planet and were the first ones to be spiritia drained by the Protodeviln after they were accidentally released (see Macross 7 PLUS: Spiritia Dreaming). Midway through the conflict, the Varauta forces "drafted" the survivors of Macross 5's defense forces to bolster their numbers. The Varauta forces under Protodeviln control continued to use the same ships and equipment they had used before the system was taken over, which were modified somewhat to improve their performance and add capabilities related to harvesting spiritia. The only new weapon introduced after the colony was taken over was a dedicated aircraft carrier the Varauta system's defense forces had previously lacked (having gone for a Zentradi-style battleship/carrier hybrid setup previously). None, save for the picture of the pre-crash Supervision Army version of the SDF-1 Macross in the Macross Model Hobby Handbook and the picture of the derelict from Ep30 of the original series, which was presumed to be the same type. Eh... only partly. Macross Chronicle asserts that a fair amount of the fleet the Protodeviln mobilized for Gepernich's spiritia farm project - including Gepernich's own flagship - were pre-existing ships from the Varauta colony's UN Spacy defense force that were modified after being captured. The only one that was explicitly new was the dedicated carrier they'd introduced late in the war. Eh... I'm not sure I would agree with that assessment, since the only portions of Earth we see in Macross II are heavily developed urban areas and cultivated parklands. In the main timeline, the only part of Earth we really see on a regular basis is the center of Macross City in Alaska. (The Macross II UN Spacy doesn't really have a ton of choice about having more experience with the Zentradi... you can't fold a planet away from an approaching fleet the way you can an emigrant ship.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, the arrival of a Zentradi (or Meltrandi) main fleet is still absolutely 100% "fetch my brown trousers" time for most if not all of the Macross II parallel world timeline. Unlike the main timeline, in Macross II's timeline Earth is attacked by Zentradi fleets of various sizes with downright monotonous regularity in the wake of the First Space War. The Minmay Attack strategy got a lot of polish and refinement in that period, to the point that dealing with small Zentradi forces like branch fleets became somewhat routine. On those rare occasions when something larger showed up it was still a major crisis. The 2036 attack on Earth by the Neld main fleet saw the UN Forces pushed to the breaking point, and victory was only achieved by the tried-and-true tactic of using the Minmay Attack as a diversion and going after the command ships to force the larger fleet to withdraw once their command ships were sunk. 2037's run-in with the Burado main fleet saw humanity basically lose the war because the Burado forces initially appeared immune to Minmay Attack tactics (actually a product of salvaged Protoculture communications tech encrypting the fleet's comms). Humanity's bacon was saved by the Burado fleet not being hell-bent on destruction, and having actually come to let Earth do the heavy lifting against the Meltrandi Leplendis fleet that was chasing them. Leplendis concluded humans were a surviving enclave of the Protoculture and ordered her fleet out of the area, and Burado's forces got taken down in the standard manner afterwards. The 2054 invasion saw most of the UN Forces wiped out in a conflict that lasted the better part of a year. It wasn't until the early 2080s, when humanity had made major strides in weapons technology that dealing with large Zentradi fleets became manageable. That was when they'd introduced massive gunships that could one-shot branch fleets and so on. (That's right around the point where the UN Forces start becoming complacent, which Sylvie complains about to Exegran at the start of the OVA.) Of course, you also have to wonder if the 2082 victory was really THAT easy... since the general public (e.g. Hibiki) only saw the sanitized press reels and not the unredacted war photography like what Hibiki got to shoot himself in 2092 when the Mardook invaded.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well, not in any direct depictions in the official setting... there have been remarks about the New UN Forces occasionally bumping into other Zentradi, and the Master File books have made a few mentions to that effect involving near misses or abject losses to other main fleets.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    That's the thing with Macross stories... nobody's evil. The antagonists are generally decent people doing what they believe is right in their own specific context. (Contrast with Gundam, where everyone's a bastard...) Maybe. What becomes of them after the events of Macross 7 aren't really clear... they just take off for parts unknown, announcing they have no further need of this galaxy because they've found a "spiritia paradise" by learning how to self-generate spiritia. Nah, they're still very much around... In Macross's very first episode, Vrlithwhai notes that the Supervision Army forces should've been withdrawing from the space around Earth eight terms (approx. 40 Earth years) ago when they trace the Supervision Army gunship's fold jump to Earth. In episode 30, the crew of Vrlitwhai's ship stumbles on a Supervision Army derelict on their way to capture a factory satellite. Exsedol examines it and notes that it appears to have been destroyed very recently, most likely after the remnants of Boddole Zer's main fleet scattered (meaning "in the last year and a half"). Remember, the galaxy is a VERY big place and fold navigation is an absolutely terrible way to explore it. The only way to communicate is the equivalent of long-range radio which anyone listening can hear and trace, and getting around is basically teleportation. You don't get to see what's between Point A and Point B... you can only see what's immediately around you once you pop out at Point B. (This is why emigrant fleets deploy large advance scouting forces, so they don't accidentally blunder into anything, fold into the path of something like a comet, or a Zentradi fleet, etc., like what happened to Macross Valiant.) Long term, the Protodeviln probably did intend to find what remained of the Supervision Army and link up with it... if only to bring it under control again. But they were weakened from their defeat by the anima spiritia and their long imprisonment and were likely trying to keep a low profile until they could build up enough of a force to be sure they wouldn't simply get stomped by the first Zentradi main fleet they ran into. The Supervision Army's a massive force like the Zentradi, so it wouldn't exactly have made for a believably winnable fight if one of their main fleets had been present when the titular Macross 7 fleet was struggling with a force only a few times larger than itself.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Most of it. The Supervision Army's leaders - the seven Protodeviln - were energy beings from fold space who were accidentally drawn into and trapped inside the bodies of the seven Evil-series bio-weapon prototypes being developed for the Protoculture's de facto cold war. The Evil-series were something like an early version of the Birdhuman mecha from Macross Zero, and used an early version of the same fold dimensional energy conversion power system that was what accidentally sucked up those energy beings when it glitched during a test. The energy beings who became known as the Protodeviln were understandably a bit shocked about the whole accident, and panicked because the dimension they'd just been yanked into had none of the natural higher-dimension energy they needed to survive except in the minds of sentient beings. So the Protoculture's bungling handed them the unwanted New Objective: Survive that led to them draining the spiritia from everyone they ran across in a desperate attempt to not starve to death and using their victims as soldiers to secure more victims vampire-style. 30 GOTO 10 until the Protoculture were mostly wiped out and finally discovered a way to essentially give the Protodeviln food poisoning and stuff them into stasis.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of. The Supervision Army was, at least originally, an ad hoc force made up of the Protoculture and Zentradi who had been captured, drained of their spiritia, and then brainwashed to fight for the Protodeviln during their rampage across the galaxy ~500,000 years before the series.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Happy to help. Like I said, if you have questions we have answers... the subject of fold waves is just a complex one since its importance expanded past the last major effort to put together a One Book to Rule Them All type reference.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    "Fold waves" is a very broad topic that covers a LOT of territory. They're broadly analogous to electromagnetic waves, but in higher-dimensional spacetime where they propagate at faster-than-light speeds. Mechanically-generated fold waves are used in a variety of technologies. They're the basis for FTL communications (fold communications) and FTL radar systems (fold wave radar). The interaction between fold waves and a specific type of exotic matter called Heavy Quantum forms the basis for a bunch of other technologies including thermonuclear reactors, thermonuclear weapons, gravity control, fold navigation, and heavy quantum beam weaponry. Heavy Quantum's an exotic particle that straddles the border between normal space and fold space, with most of its mass being on the fold space side. Fold waves are used to manipulate how much of that mass is on the fold space side, allowing for precisely-controllable gravity modification using the super-high mass of the heavy quantum. Biological life forms can also create fold waves on their own, in much the same way that the brain creates weak electromagnetic field activity (brainwaves). It borders on the idea that the conscious mind has an intrinsic connection to higher dimensions. Some individuals have the ability to create specific types of biological fold waves that are strong enough to be detectable by others or even influence others. Song energy in Macross 7 was humanity's first real understanding of biological fold waves, with the anima spiritia being able to tune theirs in ways inimical to the higher-dimensional life forms called the Protodeviln. The Vajra hive mind is essentially a form of distributed computer network created using biological fold waves. Var syndrome in Macross Delta is an illness caused by exposure to specifically-tuned biological fold waves meant to interrupt their conscious thought process in much the same way that you could interfere with a person's thoughts using focused electromagnetic interference. (Fold Quartz, a purer form of the dimensional oscillator fold carbon, can be used to create stronger fold waves that can bypass dimensional faults and other disruptions.) There is a fan translation of Macross Delta: White Knight of the Black Wing floating around... I'd recommend checking your preferred manga agregator. The new movie isn't going to offer much help to characterizing the Windermereans. As far as I've heard, the Aerial Knights show up just long enough to get Worf'd and are promptly forgotten about except for Bogue.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not as such. As you know, most Macross publications are not available in English. Macross Chronicle, the official encyclopedia, did have some articles on the Protoculture's history but those were only current up thru the end of the Macross Frontier movies, and they're in Japanese. If you have specific questions, this is the place for 'em and the fan community here is always happy to help. ... nah, Macross Delta just wasn't very well-written compared to Macross's usual level of quality. IMO, the series did a poor job of laying out its additions to the setting... especially when it came to the Windermereans, who had most of their backstory presented in a gaiden manga rather than in the series proper. (They're much more in line with Macross's sympathetic antagonists if you've read it, but if you haven't they're just kind of arbitrarily bastards.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Jojo's Bizarre Adventure VI: Stone Ocean is supposed to start airing soon, I believe. That should be wild.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Unlikely, IMO... I have never seen any mention of the F-111 in connection with the VF-1's design. He's referring to the angle of the underside of the nosecone... which is similar to the VF-1's, but using that as the basis to claim the VF-1 is based on the F-111 is pretty silly when the aircraft is literally a scaled-down F-14. It's not inconceivable that the F-111 might find itself pressed back into service during the Unification Wars, though after the first couple years there wouldn't have been much in the way of utility for older planes as newer models upgraded with or built around OTM like the F-14++, MiM-31, or F203 were being introduced.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing's been said about Super Dimension Fortress Macross or Do You Remember Love? yet, AFAIK. I'd assume any news about Super Dimension Fortress Macross would have to come at HG's discretion since they still hold the distribution rights in their partnership with Big West. The rights to DYRL? are a bit muddled, as I understand it, though through no real fault of Harmony Gold's as it's supposedly confusion originating with whoever they originally gave the international rights to.
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