Seto Kaiba

To the best of my knowledge, no. It's always been well-understood that Kawamori's design for the VF-1 Valkyrie was based on the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Publications that discuss the development of the series rarely fail to mention that Kawamori's inspiration for the VF-1 was the US Navy's Grumman F-14 as on page 22 of Kawamori Shoji Design Works, page 28 of Shoji Kawamori Macross Design Works, the 30th anniversary "special appendix" Document of Macross, Kawamori's interview in the 2018 Autumn issue of Great Mechanics G magazine (pg31), and so on. The only other aircraft typically mentioned in connection with it are its namesake, the North American XB-70, and the McDonnell Douglas F-15C's FAST Pack capability inspiring the VF-1's FAST Packs. The connection is drawn in-universe as well, with even very early versions of the technical setting (e.g. Sky Angels) indicating the VF-1 was literally based on the F-14 in-universe and that F-14s were used to evaluate some systems being developed for the Valkyrie. This relationship only got closer post-Macross Zero. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix has some remarks about how the first VF prototypes that preceded the VF-0 were quite literally modified F-14s. EDIT: It's also fairly well-known that Roy's VF-1S color scheme and the SVF-1 Skulls are modeled on the colors of the US Navy's VF-84 Jolly Rogers, who gained fame on film two years before Macross came out flying their F-14s in the 1980 movie The Final Countdown.

For a number of reasons, I doubt that's the intended connection... There's no real connection between the SV Works and the Anti-Unification Alliance ideologically. Also, thus far Kawamori has used German references for most of the enemy VFs in the franchise so far. The name of the Sv-303 is another Hindu mythological reference... though there is some confusion as to which mythological character the name is actually referencing. It's either a reference to a premodern Hindi rigvedic deity by that name, to Surya once the many different solar deities all got conflated into a single being in modern Hinduism, or to Vivasvata, a descendant of either of them who in Hindu cosmology is the progenitor of humankind in the current iteration of the world. It could also potentially just be the adjective for "brilliant" or "shining brightly". (At least it's not as bad as the ones in Macross the Ride, where two obscure references were misspelled.) Whether the SV-52 ever actually existed is an unresolved topic... depending on which publication you ask, it was either a planned successor to the SV-51 that never materialized due to the Anti-Unification Alliance falling apart in the wake of its self-destructively moronic bombing of St. Petersburg and the Mayan incident or that the airframes were at least partly built but never completed as intended due to the engine being unavailable. It's worth remembering that, much like the VF-0 and VF-1, the SV-51's development was an international effort involving companies from many different regions including Russia, Germany, and Israel. It's also worth remembering that the Alliance was not a governmental organization but a loose confederation of various anti-government groups, militias, and other violent partisans receiving the clandestine support of various regional governments even while the national governments of those regions supported unification. The one known surviving developer - Alexi Kurakin - was Eastern European. He was also apparently not particularly invested in the Alliance's political goals and defected to the UN Government shortly after the Mayan incident. By the time the First Space War started, he was working for Stonewell and Bellcom on the VF-X-4. He cofounded the General Galaxy corporation in the wake of the war. (He, like most of the Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier team who worked on the SV-51, was busy being dead at the time the Sv-154 and Sv-262 were drafted.) Not "Anti-UN affiliates"... just "people who once worked for companies that sold arms to the Anti-Unification Alliance under the table". Magdalena makes a few dubious claims... like that the heavily modified SV-51 she calls a SV-52 (but, under the hood, is mostly a VF-17) was her grandfather's aircraft that he flew during the First Space War, which doesn't quite tally with it being recovered from an underground bunker. Assuming, of course, that the pre-war and post-war Mikoyan are the same corporate entity... Mikoyan collabored with General Galaxy on the design of the VAB-2 and VA-14, the UN Forces aircraft that were captured and reworked into the FBz-99 and Az-130 when the Varauta colony defense forces fell under the control of the Protodeviln. For the Sv-262 project specifically... the General Galaxy SV Works were established by Alexi Kurakin after the formation of General Galaxy and were supposedly active the whole time between then and now (2067). The Sv-154 Svard is one of theirs, and was Windermere's main fighter in the 2050s apparently including Grammier's tenure as a pilot during the 2050-2051 Second Unification War, meaning it was developed in the 2040s. Exactly how many models they've developed over the fifty or so years since their inception. The Mayan incident itself was heavily classified, the VF-0 and SV-51 were simply obscure because most of their data and most of the aircraft produced were lost. The SV Works Valkyrie designs are not direct successors to the Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier SV-51 in a direct sense. They're more like successors to its design philosophy of "a variable fighter to fight variable fighters". General Galaxy and SV Works founder Alexi Kurakin felt that there would eventually be a new era of VFs fighting VFs and created the SV Works inside the newly established General Galaxy to prepare for that eventuality. Also, remember that many (2/3) of the developers of the SV-51 were not Russian and were from countries ideologically aligned AGAINST Russia during the Cold War: Germany and Israel. (There's also not really an ideological link between the Anti-Unification Alliance forces of the early 2000s and the anti-government forces of the 2050s and beyond. The groups who are causing trouble in the late 2050s and 2060s we've seen so far are mainly the remnants of the Earth Supremacist fascists who were ousted from power in 2051.) The Epsilon Foundation subsidiary Dian Cecht has been buying the rights to build and sell designs developed by General Galaxy's SV Works.

Which magazine would that be?

I'd assume everything is or will be shortly...

... hey now, get the guys who did Potter Puppet Pals and/or If The Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device on it and that could actually be pretty good.

... that is legitimately hilarious.

... wasn't Shadow Chronicles produced in 720p, though? Did they downscale it somehow?

That's likely to be Discovery's next port of call if the viewers who were previously following the series on Netflix prove as unwilling to pay for yet another streaming service just so they can watch Star Trek as their American counterparts were/are. Possibly all of new Trek, given that they were dependent on more cashflow-positive financial backers to provide funding for production of the new Trek shows. Based on the incomplete picture we have of their situation, this feels like a very strange move for ViacomCBS to make. If Amazon Prime and Netflix are withdrawing their support of the Star Trek shows they were previously sponsoring, it would certainly explain the stock price-cratering decision to try to raise $3 Billion for streaming development by selling shares back in Q1 2021. They've also seen a steady decline in pre-tax profits over the last few years and the company's debt is over $21 Billion. For them to suddenly decide they're gonna go all-in on the global launch of the proprietary streaming service that's been operating in the red since its creation has a sort of do-or-die "Hail Mary" vibe to it. Either that or there was something major missing from the Q3 Earnings Call earlier this month that's making them much more confident than they would ordinarily be. (It's enough to make you wonder if we'll be seeing Star Trek next to Simon & Schuster and CBS's old headquarters building on the auction block in the near future. I gather they were really hoping to make bank selling Simon & Schuster to the parent company of Penguin Random House, but the UDOJ stepped in and stopped it with an antitrust filing earlier this month.)

I guess the show's viewership on Netflix in the global market slipped to the point that Netflix isn't willing to fund it in exchange for the rest of world rights anymore. That would definitely explain the huge stock selloff a year or so ago... with their cashflow problems, they didn't have the available cash to fund it on hand without Netflix. (Alternatively, you could think of it as ViacomCBS doing everything it can to protect people from being exposed to this series...)

According to Macross Chronicle, the reason the larger and longer-ranged missiles have multiple guidance systems is because radar guidance really took it on the chin when OTM introduced active stealth technology to fighters. Radar-guided missiles lost a lot of their reliability when aircraft gained the ability to use targeted destructive interference to make themselves effectively invisible to radar systems. Hence the need for either powerful ECCM on the missiles themselves and/or multiple guidance systems to prevent any single type of countermeasure from diverting the missile. Active stealth also led to engagements becoming much closer-ranged, fought with infrared, laser, and TV-guided missiles that were not vulnerable to active stealth measures. (Prior to active stealth becoming a part of this explanation, "powerful ECM" was mentioned in its place.) On the rare occasion the missiles have been talked about in detail, they're usually described as blast fragmentation warheads (though there are mentions of flechettes in some warheads, apparently to beef up armor penetration). One version of the AMM-1 is mentioned in Master File as having a Munroe effect (HEAT) warhead instead.

Sounds about right. It's not like Funimation was going to spend a lot of money on digital cleanup for a high-def re-release of a series with an expected sales volume of only a couple thousand copies worldwide. I'm actually kind of surprised they went to the trouble of doing a new transfer from source instead of just upscaling the last DVD release. Reminds me of the first few Robotech DVD releases, which were a grainy, faded, occasionally blurry mess. (IIRC, wasn't that a transfer from VHS tapes rather than from source?) Somewhat surprisingly, it's mostly the other way around these days. Many of the remaining Robotech fans rewatch the series on a regular basis, but they've proven to be a lot less willing to open their wallets for the franchise the way they used to. The recent Robotech RPG Kickstarter attracted less than 550 backers, and only reached the funding level it did because most of them were collectors buying multiple editions of the book. Interest in Robotech on home video kind of dried up after Remastered, since the new audio was poorly received and subsequent editions didn't add any new content of note. Plus it's been slumming its way around the streaming services for most of that time too.

Chronicle is the official encyclopedia. You may be thinking of Variable Fighter Master File, which self-disclaims as not "official setting" material.

Interestingly, there's not really a good explanation for why the missiles in Macross are so thick. The one time detailed missile specs were actually given, the atmospheric performance of the missile cited (AMM-1A Arrow) was broadly comparable to its real world counterparts at the time the series was made (e.g. the AIM-7F Sparrow). They're much faster in space, but otherwise the only real differences given are the warhead filler is MUCH more energetic in the OTM-based missiles and many of them have multiple guidance systems including active radar homing, infrared, and optical contrast systems working in tandem. (Macross Chronicle later added some stuff about the missiles needing powerful ECCM to counteract active stealth.)

I was quite surprised to see that there are actually theaters near me carrying it. I'll be buying my tickets tonight.

Finished Sengoku Basara: Judge End. Why does this exist? It's just worse in every way than the previous series. The animation quality's all over the place, the pacing makes it feel like the screenwriter has undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and there are so many unnecessary side plots about someone accusing someone of betraying them that it all just sort of drunkenly stumbles to the Battle of Sekigahara and then collapses in a heap without any real resolution. Mieruko-chan is... a thing that exists. It's well animated, but there's no semblance of an actual story here. It's just a girl living in a world that hired Junji Ito as production designer for the afterlife trying to pretend that she can't see the many horrifying ghosts who seem to have no agenda beyond trying to find someone who can see them. It's horror for Miko, the main character, but for the audience it comes off less as horror and more as Dull Surprise as ghost after horrifying ghost rolls up expecting to get some kind of reaction out of the girl with the world's best pokerface only to leave disappointed. My Senpai is Annoying offers some amusing slice of life comedy. It's really well-produced and engaging, if slightly generic feeling. Feels a bit like its trying to veer into romcom territory since the main character (a very short OL named Futaba) comes off as more than a bit tsundere towards her gargantuan senpai Takeda.

Ech... yeah, Skyward Sword suffered the same way a lot of Wii games did. The obligation to work the Wii's motion control gimmick into core gameplay created a lot of obstacles for the game design that the designers clearly struggled with. Having a "support" character even more unnecessary, useless, and obnoxious than Navi DID NOT HELP. Fi is just... why? Who thought that it this version of the Masters Sword should come with a digital assistant who talks like a robot was a good idea? I hated the game with a passion on the Wii. Even with Wii Motion Plus, the Wiimote never seemed to have anything more than scorn for my frantic controller-waggling and treated my movements as more like polite suggestions than directives. It made fighting that one boss - the creepy tongue guy whose name I forget - an exercise in controller-chucking frustration. At least there are better Zelda games on offer for the Switch. IIRC, A Link to the Past is in the SNES emulator they offer. I had a blast replaying that on my 3DS a while back.

The UUM-7 micro-missile pod contains 15 Bifors HMM-01 micro-missiles racked in three sets of five, with all fifteen facing forward.

Jeez... I try not to think about 24. Bad times. 😅 By that point in my life, I'd finished my undergraduate degrees and was halfway into a Master's. That was the year the evil empire up in Redmond let me and like 1,500 other software engineers go due to the recession and I had to scramble to find another job while looking after my mentally ill grandmother and my engagement broke up. That was also the year I'd filed for my first patent, though I don't think it was granted until early the following year. That was an unpleasant year... and so were the next three. Company loyalty died with the concept of the Defined Benefit Pension. When companies no longer thought it was worth it to buy your loyalty long-term with the promise of a guaranteed retirement with benefits, the general attitude toward employment became a mercenary one where loyalty is rented by the highest bidder for as long as they're willing to pay and no longer.

Ah, yeah... the UUM-7 missile pod is pretty big. The size chart in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 makes it out to be approximately 5m long and a bit over a meter in diameter. Two of 'em side by side would be pretty much exactly the size of a large-ish four-door sedan. (The Chrysler 300 is 5.044m x 1.908m.) The missiles themselves are about 40cm in diameter and about 1.25m long, making them around the diameter of a 80L office garbage can but nearly twice as tall.

Watched my way through the available episodes of Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside today. Pretty unremarkable stuff... basically the same series as Drugstore in Another World but without (explicitly) being an isekai. Starting Mieruko-chan now... the OP is surprisingly upbeat and cheerful given that the plot is basically about a girl who can see Junji Ito-esque ghosts wandering around in everyday life.

Started The Vampire Dies in No Time a bit ago... it's a mildly entertaining odd couple sort of comedy series about a vampire hunter who is guilt-tripped into letting a pathetically weak vampire whose home he accidentally destroyed live with him. Worth a watch for its unusual premise, though it's pretty conventional odd couple comedy otherwise. The opening is a rather visually appealing swing dance routine featuring the two main characters which actually works quite well with the art style.

Sengoku Basara: the Last Party has the action... but I'll be damned if the plot doesn't feel like a clumsily executed bait-and-switch. It's a 94 minute movie, and it spends the entire first hour building up Mitsunari Ishida as the story's villain. At about the 62 minute mark, they're building up to a big climax with a free for all battle and a final duel between Ishida and Masamune... It's over so fast that nobody in the cast seems to even think it's worth remarking on that a dead man whose skull had long since been repurposed as a sakazuki had popped out of the ground and started shooting people before another dead person wandered in from stage left and dragged them to hell. That everyone immediately goes back to what they were doing before has EXACTLY this energy: There's still like twelve minutes left on the clock when the dust has finished settling! They show snippets of the remaining grudge matches between Tokugawa and Mitsunari, Mori and Chousokabe, and Date and Yukimura... and then cut to a choreographed dance number instead of resolving anything. It's a nice, solid movie for the first sixty or so minutes and then the pacing just goes completely to pot. I can kinda see why Sengoku Basara: Judge End didn't want to build on that ending... it's a mess.

Goin' back to more shows of seasons past since this season's some weak sauce... Currently wrapping up a rewatch of Sengoku Basara with the second season OVA "Dragon and Tiger: Oath of Victory", and it has completely lost its fragile fingertip-only grip on reality. I just watched a scene where Takeda Shingen entered like a goddamn colony drop, bellowed a bunch of stuff about a contest, and then soared back into the sky as if he were Superman. I sympathize completely with Date Masamune's look of abject bewilderment. With only Last Party and Judge End to go, Sengoku Basara is, if anything, even weirder than I remember... though it's a bit disappointing that the series never really gets to explore the rest of the cast.

If there's more recent news anywhere, it'll be on Tatsunoko's webpage for it... though it's inaccessible outside Japan and apparently to my VPN as well.

In all honesty, I have no idea (WRT the toyline). The article itself is absolutely about Genesis Breaker, though. My intention was just to answer the "Whatever happened to the Genesis Breaker announcement?" question. The only mentions of Sentinel in the aforementioned article are one in the foreword, which states that [Genesis Breaker] is a "product project" inspired by the success of Sentinel's toy line and a few in the following interview talking about modernizing the designs. It's also referred to as a "spin-off episode" (スピンオフ的エピソード) of the same work (MOSPEADA) in the preceding sentence. There's a lengthy interview with Hideki Kakinuma about the development of the original designs, merchandising, and a bit about refinement of the designs for Genesis Breaker using modern art techniques and technologies, but not much that I can see about the actual status of the project. Nothing that I can see about a release date or media. The rest of the article after that is just a two-pager about the Genesis Breakers setting and story that paints a much darker picture of the setting than the original series did. There's definitely some story here, but all we've seen art/design-wise is the same three pics of Gate/Breaker-1's riding suit and ride armor. Nothing explicit about toys/models or timing for same.