Seto Kaiba

Nah, even in the original series the "culture shock" effect of the Minmay Attack and so on was shown to vary depending on the individual and the duration of their exposure. The Zentradi spies were immersed in Earth's culture for a month or so and being the inquisitive sort from a reconnaissance unit they went native pretty quick. Others struggled to adapt and lost to their engineered fighting instincts and the Protoculture-designed mental conditioning only to be killed in combat by the UN Forces. Among the Boddole Zer main fleet, of the 4,000,000 ships left after the Grand Cannon was done firing the only ships and crews left after the fleet scattered with the loss of its mothership were the ones who'd already sided with Earth against their own people (for fear of being destroyed by their own people as "contaminated") and those that'd been shot down and crashed on Earth as a result of the fighting. The overwhelming majority of the 3 million ships left after the mothership blew up scattered to the metaphorical winds rather than stay at Earth. There's some excellent examples in Macross II's timeline, where Quamzin and some of his malcontents not only escape into space but repeatedly come back wth other fleets and try to destroy Earth. They're clearly having none of it. Basically, to some Zentradi the exposure and interest in Earth's culture is a passing fancy. To others, that culture is internalized and becomes their own. That's why there are the occasional outbreaks of violence among the Zentradi population on Earth as folks struggle with adapting to Earth's culture and sublimating or suppressing their instinctiver drive to do battle. Some get through it by simply being well-adjusted and openminded. Some need a little medicinal help, like Guld. Some self-medicate in unhelpful ways with alcohol like Roli Dosel did. Some don't get through it and either get packed off into a New UN Spacy Marine Corps unit to help them live a productive and full life while indulging in the combat instincts they couldn't suppress (e.g. the 33rd Marines in Macross Frontier), and the ones who go off the metaphorical reservation and become terrorists tend to end up shot.

That's not the name of that class of ships in Macross or Robotech, hence my confusion. Yes, that is kind of what I'm saying. The difference in the level of capability between the two settings is a difference measured in multiple orders of magnitude. It's why these kind of comparisons are problematic at best, and a lost cause at worst... and why the Robotech setting leaves the question of who exactly the Zentradi were created to fight unanswered. There isn't a plausible answer in the setting because they're so ridiculously overpowered compared to everyone else. (Which, when you think about it, makes them an amazing deterrant if you're empire-building... and would explain why the Masters went unchallenged until the well ran dry on their macguffin fuel source.) It's like how Star Trek originally regarded the Borg... they were one of the show's most impressive villains, but they were so hard to write for because they were made so powerful in their first few appearances that they were impossible to use in any story that involved fighting them. TBH I'm not even sure why this is a surprise to you... the Zentradi are a clone army created by sufficiently advanced aliens, while the Zor are a race of mutated, temporally-displaced human technical pacifists. You wouldn't expect a species like the Zor, who abolished not only war but all internal conflict through genetic and social engineering to come loaded for bear. For the record, the Zor "motherships" only have one kind of beam cannon turret in the series and production materials. They seem to have just stopped drawing the spiraling beam effect partway through the series. It was probably too expensive to draw on a regular basis. There are one or two shots showing ships seemingly being destroyed in one hit, but in most cases the Southern Cross Army's ships are shown taking many hits without incident. That's not what we were talking about... that's a one-of-a-kind in-universe character, not the designs shared between the original MOSPEADA animation and the low budget work done for Robotech II: the Sentinels.

Nope, they just kinda go off and do their own thing I guess... they're never mentioned again. (It was an unbroadcasted episode, so it borders on being a Big Lipped Alligator Moment.)

It's actually presented more along the lines of LAI itself leaked the information...

"YF-28" is on the list because it's mentioned in Macross the Ride, though the rumors connected to it in the story where it's assumed to be a Macross Galaxy-developed rival to the Macross Frontier fleet arsenal's YF-29 actually refer to the production VF-27 design. At the time, Macross Galaxy was hiding the true specs of the VF-27 behind a misinformation campaign with the help of some purpose-built lower spec prototypes including the YF-27-3 Shahar Female type. All we know is what's mentioned in the article... it's some kind of system that uses lasers, electromagnetic pulses, infrared stimulation, and other means to activate the body's own natural resistance to stress.

All told, it's about time this got a freshening too to cover the new info from Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. For the sake of convenience, the following rant will be color-coded! VFs that officially exist and have appeared in a Macross official setting work VFs that officially exist and have NOT appeared in a Macross official setting work. VFs that exist solely in non-official works like Variable Fighter Master File VFs whose placement is speculative. Last Edited: 23 Dec 2021 - added SV-303 Vivasvat and VF-31AX Kairos Plus to 5.5th Generation Generation 0 - "Prototype Generation" This generation is purely speculative and exists mainly to segregate designs that do not fully comply with the design qualifications for the First Generation Variable Fighter (e.g. thermonuclear reaction turbine engines) and were built principally for evaluation purposes rather than mass produced for actual combat service. YVF-X-0 VF-0 Phoenix (YVF-X-0B) VF-0-NF Sv-50 Sv-51 Sv-51Σ (Unmanned Sv-51) Generation 0.5 - "Upgraded Prototype Generation" This generation contains designs that exist only in Variable Fighter Master File. These VF designs are upgrades of the 0th Generation prototypes that were upgraded with technology from 1st Generation VFs or otherwise modernized to make them viable for long-duration operation. VF-0+ Phoenix Plus Sv-51Ω (Repurposed incomplete Sv-52 with conventional engines) Generation 1 - "First Generation" The defining traits of this generation are the adoption of Overtechnology, including thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, laser weaponry, energy converting armor, etc. in a production variable fighter. Sv-52 VF-1 Valkyrie VF-X-2 Generation 1.5 - "Upgraded First Generation" First Generation designs upgraded with Second Generation hardware drawn from the VF-4. Sv-51 Replica (Macross 30) VF-0 Phoenix Replica (Macross 30) VF-1 Valkyrie Plus (Blocks 6 and later, incl. VF-1X) VF-1P Freyja Valkyrie VF-1X++ Valkyrie Double Plus VF-1C Civilian Valkyrie VF-1EX Valkyrie EX VF-3000S Crusader VF-3000B Generation 2 - "Specialization for Emigrant Fleets" The hallmarks of the Second Generation designs include the adoption of Zentradi overtechnology, refinements for regime-optimized performance in either atmosphere or space, "lessons learned" from the First Space War, and optionally the adoption of particle beam weaponry. Most were intended for use by emigrant fleets, with low cost, simplified manufacturing, and parts-sharing. VF-X-3 VF-4 Lightning III VF-3000S Crusader VF-3000B Bomber Valkyrie VF-5000 Star Mirage VF-5 VF-6 VF-7 VF-9 Cutlass VF-X-10 V-BR-2 VA-X-3 Generation 2.5 - "Upgraded Second Generation" Second Generation VFs that were modernized to keep them in service alongside Third Generation VFs. VF-4G Lightning III VF-5000G Star Mirage VF-9E Cutlass Generation 3 - "Project Nova and Diversification" The Third Generation VFs are defined chiefly by the Project Nova design contest that decided the generation's main variable fighter as a true all-purpose successor to the VF-1 Valkyrie, but also by the continuing diversification of variable craft design into dedicated Attacker and Bomber roles. VF-11A/B/C/D Thunderbolt VF-14 Vampire VF-15 VF-17A/B/C Nightmare VA-14 VAB-2 VA-3 VBP-1/VA-110 Variable Glaug VB-6 Generation 3.5 - "Upgraded Third Generation" Third Generation VFs that've been modernized or upgraded with technology drawn from Fourth Generation VFs to keep them viable or evaluate technologies meant for Fourth Generation implementation. VF-11MAXL Thunderbolt VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor VF-16 VF-17D/F/S/T Nightmare XVF-19 (a modified VF-11) Fz-109 Elgersoln Az-130 Panzersoln FBz-99 Zaubergern Generation 4 - "Project Super Nova: the Advanced Variable Fighter" The Fourth Generation's distinctive design traits are among the best known in Macross. The adoption of the next-gen ARIEL airframe control AI, thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines, fighter-scale pinpoint barrier systems, and native compatibility for fold boosters. This generation was largely defined by Project Super Nova, the ultimately futile contest between the YF-19 and YF-21 at Eden's New Edwards Test Flight Center. The insurmountable technological and performance complications of the two designs led to a third design, the VF-171, becoming this generation's main variable fighter. VF-19 Excalibur YF-21 VF-22 Sturmvogel II VF-22 Sturmvogel II (SMS Type) VF/B-22 Jagdvogel II VF-171 Nightmare Plus (Blocks I and II) VB-171 Nightmare Plus (Blocks I and II) RVF-171 Nightmare Plus (Blocks I and II) Sv-154 Svard Feios Valkyrie Fz-109G Elgersoln Gustav VBP-1/VA-110(改) Neo Glaug bis Generation 4.5 - "Upgraded Fourth Generation" The Generation 4.5 designs are few, and consist mostly of VF designs that were either upgraded to evaluate tech for eventual adoption by Generation 5 designs, or ones that were upgraded in extremis to make them more effective in combat against the Vajra. VF-19ACTIVE Nothung VF-19EF Caliburn RVF-19EF Caliburn VF-19EF/A Excalibur ADVANCE VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei VF-22 Sturmvogel II "Manfred" VF-22 Sturmvogel II "Ushio Todo Custom" VF-171 Nightmare Plus (Block III and IIIF) VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX Throne RVF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX Queadluun Alma Generation 5 - "Project Evolution and Decentralized Development" The Fifth Generation of Variable Fighters started development as a response to the disastrous first contact with the insectoid alien race known as the Vajra. Existing VF designs proved utterly inadequate to rival the performance of Vajra drones, and new programs were launched to develop countermeasures for the high-g forces and other major problems with the newly finalized Fourth Generation. The design hallmarks of Fifth Generation Variable Fighters include the adoption of Inertia Store Converter technology to insulate the cockpit against high g-forces, Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, contactless Linear Actuator technology for transformation, the ARIEL II airframe control AI, Extender Gear (EX-Gear) user interfaces, Advanced Energy Conversion Armor (ASWAG), and heavy quantum beam weaponry. YF-24 YF-24 Evolution VF-24 YF-25 Prophecy VF-25 Messiah YF-26 YF-27 Shahar VF-27 Lucifer YF-28 YF-29 Durandal YF-29B Percival (NUNS Ver.) YF-30 Chronos YF-30B Chronos (NUNS Ver.) VF-30 VF-31 Kairos Sv-262 Draken III Queadluun Alma Unknown New VF - Absolute LIVE!!!!!! Generation 5.5 - "Fold Wave Performance Enhancement" The precise criteria for considering a design to belong to Generation 5.5 are unclear at the present time, but remarks by Tactical Sound Unit Walkure leader Kaname Buccaneer and team mechanic Makina Nakajima suggest that a Fifth Generation VF which has been upgraded with a fold wave-based performance enhancement system may technically qualify as Generation 5.5. The only craft explicitly identified as belonging to this VF Generation is the Xaos Valkyrie Works VF-31 Siegfried, which may indicate Generation 5.5 is an informal classification used only by Xaos. Previous media have suggested the VF-31 Siegfried and others are considered Fifth Generation VFs. YF-28 YF-29 Durandal YF-29B Percival YF-30 Chronos YF-30B Chronos (NUNS Ver.) VF-30 VF-31 Siegfried (Xaos Custom) Sv-262 Draken III Sv-303 Vivasvat VF-31AX Kairos Plus

Ah, nice. I'm doing well, working on my own website and all... still hosting M3 and all. You may find this helpful, my breakdown of all VFs by generation:

What's a "Tou Redir"? Also, the simple answer... as noted previously, despite a technological head-start measured in millennia, the Zor's weapons technology isn't depicted as being significantly more powerful or more effective than the basic laser weapons that are the Southern Cross Army's stock in trade. What's more, the setting generally presents laser weapons as being roughly equivalent in power to a conventional gun of the same bore... a trait shared with MOSPEADA for the most part. They're not "immensely powerful". We're shown that the fairly primitive space warships fielded by the Southern Cross Army can tank multiple hits from them without issue or impediment. The reason these comparisons always run into problems is a difference in the scale of technology. Most mecha anime, including Southern Cross and MOSPEADA, are on a level much closer to real world technology despite having things like giant robots. You could say UC Gundam is the archetype there. Giant robots might be able to generate a couple megawatts of power at most, and a megawatt is a lot of power in a generator or an energy weapon. A mecha-mounted weapon might have an effective range of a kilometer or two, and a warship maybe tens of kilometers in good conditions. Energy weapons as a whole generally aren't significantly more powerful than conventional alternatives... just more space-efficient and accurate. Macross is really quite unusual as a mecha series for shunning that convention and going to almost the opposite extreme chasing a power system that could realistically provide the instantaneous acceleration of a high performance jet engine even in space. A megawatt is, consequently, a piddlingly small amount of power with even small fighter-mounted beam weapons throwing around tens or hundreds of megawatts and ship-based weapons using anywhere from thousands to millions or billions of megawatts with ranges to match. It's part of why the creators of Robotech stayed away from depicting the Zentradi fighting... well... anyone. The scale of them is just so different to anything else in Robotech that there's no plausible way anyone could actually win against them in a fair fight. How's a hostile alien power that could barely cope with a few thousand human troops despite the benefit of superior numbers supposed to credibly fend off a force of seven billion soldiers, each of whom is more resilient than a main battle tank in their underwear? The scale of the threat they pose is so huge that even in Macross the only way they can be worked into the narrative is as an invincible apocalyptic threat to be avoided at all costs. They're more aggressive, not necessarily more powerful... and there is no size difference it's just dodgy off-model animation from the ultra-low budget Sentinels series.

... woah, now there's a name I haven't seen in a long time. How you doin'? As for your question, the Macross Compendium Wiki is probably as close as you'll get in English right now... I don't think anyone has a complete listing, partly bceause some stuff doesn't actually have names and partly because definitions of "complete" vary a bit depending on whether one wants to count material outside the official setting like Master File.

Myung Fang Lone's psychological issues definitely played a role because her emotional responses were sampled to simulate emotional responses in the computer model of the human brain that governed Sharon's behavior. That said, both the OVA and Movie versions of Macross Plus are pretty clear that Sharon was little more than an elaborate puppet thanks to an incomplete AI system until she was outfitted with the prohibited bio-neural chip and became self-aware. Her AI was a separate development from the work done in cybernetics, with Macross Chronicle asserting the Sharon-type AI was sponsored by the New UN Forces for use as a sort of supervisory AI to maintain public order in emigrant fleets due to the less-than-comfortable living conditions in early emigrant ship types. Undoubtably there were some "cloning blues", though the New UN Government seems to have deliberately acted to separate clones for that reason. Marge's issues are attributed by Macross Chronicle to an unhealthy obsession with Sharon Apple rather than anything to do with his upbringing though. For him, it may have been a bit of an ego thing since he was the lead developer on the Sharon-type AI and when Sharon Apple debuted she was falsely promoted as not just a completed AI system, but also as being able to feel authentic human emotion. The AI was actually incomplete and the emotion program just didn't work, so he was probably quietly seething for a good while at being made to look a fraud. He seemed to see Sharon's true completion as his vindication, and eventually her awakening as her becoming an actual life form. (He does show some transhumanist leanings philosophically, like when he notes he doesn't share Aristotle's view that the mind must be tied to the flesh... which is actually pretty reasonable when humanity has access to cloning systems able to transfer consciousness between bodies.) That's just regular war profiteering by the Epsilon Foundation... though they started dealing with Ivan Tsari and Grammier Neirich Windermere VI under entirely legitimate conditions.

Almost certainly not... though, I suspect, as much from a simple lack of inclination as from a difference in the scale of warfare between shows. The Zor were quite advanced, but they were also a fundamentally peaceful people who'd retooled their entire culture from the ground up to forsake conflict after their civil war left Glorie in the grip of a nuclear winter like their ancestors had done to Earth. Despite a head start measured in millennia, their weapons technology was mostly on par with the Southern Cross Army's despite being a lot more complex.

This is a do-over on an episode of the original series (#15) that Yoshiyuki Tomino was so unhappy with he asked for it to not be aired or included in the home video releases in the Americas.

That's a beautifully animated Gundam... it'll be interesting to see how they clean up the story.

Given that the Invid Regent's forces spent the better part of twenty years getting repeatedly rolled by a few thousand human soldiers with comparatively primitive weapons before his entire force was wiped out by being shot in the back by an ally mid-fight, it strikes me as rather unlikely that they'd pose much threat to a much more advanced military with far more manpower behind it. Even the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA had a lot of trouble trying to make the Invit out to be a serious threat to anyone. There were a lot of them and they were indifferent to their own casualties, but that's all they had going for them militarily. Once you got past that, they were just big, clumsy, dim-witted mechanical bugs that could be killed easily using man-portable laser weapons and rocket-propelled grenades without even being able to shoot back.

An interesting idea... though it doesn't seem like any of the surviving Protoculture-created humanoid species were far enough along to even consider a scenario like that when they were found by the New UN Government's emigrant fleets. Humanity was, as far as we know, the only sub-Protoculture species yet depicted to have actually begun space exploration at the time it had a first contact scenario. The Zolans were the next farthest along, but they'd only achieved a level of technological advancement equivalent to the first half of the 20th century when an emigrant fleet found them. In Macross Delta, the Brisingr cluster's native sub-Protoculture species don't seem to have been even that far. Windermere IV was still living in the age of mounted cavalry when the Megaroad-04 blundered into the fold fault surrounding the planet and was knocked back into realspace. The New UN Government has a pretty good idea what's out there, but that's their reason for spreading out as far as they can... so no one planet being attacked could result in human extinction.

Perhaps literally... as in, an Invid could smack a Zentradi in the nose with that blunt little claw and give them a bloody nose. Figuratively? No. The massive difference in the scale of conflict is kind of the elephant in the room for Robotech's later sagas. The later antagonists were much less capable than the Zentradi, as a result of the less ambitious scale of the original shows, so canon Robotech always kind of tried to avoid the whole subject. Titan's comics had a few piss-take moments referencing the problem. It's essentially a reversed Sorting Algorithm of Evil where the strongest enemy was fought first and both sides were progressively weaker each time. RTSC's story was the first real attempt to buck that trend, by establishing the Haydonites had wrecked the Invid with impunity in the distant past the same way the Masters had. In a word, "What battle?". The Haydonites and the Robotech Masters both canonically rolled up with a fleet, turned the Invid's planet into a parking lot, and left without facing much (if any) opposition. Basically, like episode 27 of Macross/the Macross Saga, but without the Grand Cannon or counterattacking fleet. Just a brief apocalypse and maybe some celebratory drinks after. To make the Invid a credible threat to... well... anyone, you'd have to completely rework them and then you're stuck explaining why they've seemingly regressed to Mostly Harmless by the time they attack a defenseless Tirol or almost-defenseless Earth.

No, it's what you do when you know exactly what your fans want but can't give it to them because... ... your franchise is a long-dead industry joke that wouldn't have been able to afford it at any point in its history, never mind now. ... you'd get sued into oblivion for infringement of copyright. ... what your fanbase wants isn't marketable outside your fanbase, meaning it has zero chance of growing your brand. ... what the vocal minority in your fanbase wants isn't marketable, even to the rest of the fanbase. ... your fanbase are fractious arseholes who'll complain endlessly about it anyway for failing to live up to their rose-tinted or completely false memories from their youth. Prelude and Shadow Chronicles were a kick in the arse intended to get the franchise moving again and make a clean break with the stuff that doesn't sell (e.g. the New Generation and Masters Saga) and the stuff that can't be used (e.g. the Macross Saga). That, combined with some lingering copyright issues due to serial infringement by 90's licensees, are why ideas from old comics like an Invid v. Zentradi storyline were never to be revisited. Maybe if the Zentradi get indigestion after the biggest clam bake in galactic history... but otherwise, no. The Invid don't even pose a credible threat in the New Generation itself. Up against a foe that isn't holding the idiot ball 24/7, they have no chance. Then you have to explain away why they don't have this capability later on... when it would actually be useful.

Oh, that's just Tuesday to the Robotech fandom. 😅 I'd say it's cursed, but there are cursed properties that don't have it that hard. Prelude was Harmony Gold's effort to clean house and gently usher everyone and everything that was either too expensive, legally problematic, or just wildly unpopular out of the franchise for good so they could focus on their MOSPEADA-based ripoff of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. So they removed all the non-MOSPEADA human mecha, banned using the Sentinels knockoff Macross designs, killed off all the remaining Zentradi in the setting, killed off the Invid Regent's forces so the Invid would be gone from the universe too at the start of the Shadow Chronicles proper, chucked the last couple Bioroids on the Zentradi's funeral pyre, put the remaining Macross Saga cast on a bus except for Admiral Plot Critical, and gave one last hurrah to the Sentinels original characters before dumping them for suspiciously similar replacements. They did everything they could to ensure there would be no reminiscing about previous sagas from that point forward... which would've been the rule for the entire franchise had the "movie" not bombed.

There's a bit of a problem with the order of events there... Namely, the Evil-series bio-weapons that became the Protodeviln were powered by the prototype fold dimensional energy converters. That's why they ended up possessed by the extradimensional energy beings who became their respective consciousnesses. The Birdhuman is powered by a production version of that same technology, which suggests it'd have to have been built after the Protodeviln emerged. The Protoculture also weren't super-opposed to internal conflict until after their cold war went hot with the the Protodeviln attacking both sides. Given that the Fold Evil sealed on Uroboros is a more advanced, piloted Evil-series... it's likely the Birdhuman is a derivative of the Evil-series bioweapons to begin with... so it could only have been placed on Earth after the Protoculture were nearly wiped out. Quite the opposite... the murals in the Protoculture ruins on Lux contain a narrative that claims the Protoculture had been a divided people from an incredibly early point in their development. It literally asserts that by the time they made the switch from being hunter-gatherers to inventing agriculture and metal tools they were already divided, and that divide only got worse as they ventured into space and created the Zentradi to fight their wars for them. In the sense that the war... the war they'd created the Zentradi and Meltrandi for... was ongoing and they were forced to continually abandon their settlements and flee from it when the Zentradi and/or Meltrandi began to move into the region of space they'd tried to settle in. Not nanomachines... they predictably decided to build giant biotechnological murder machines, because that's basically their go-to solution for everything. The Protoculture who sealed and buried the Fold Evil on Uroboros constructed a self-replicating race of giant biotechnological insects to inhabit and guard what remained of their civilization on Uroboros, and to act as a very clear and very proactive Keep Out sign to anyone who might investigate the facilities maintaining the fold fault around the planet and the seal on the Fold Evil. It's not clear whether humanity came up with the name or they found it in the ruins, but they're called the Dyaus. The small ones are about the size of a Valkyrie or Battle Pod. The big ones are easily ten times the size of a Valkyrie. The really big ones, the ones humanity called Mother Dyaus, are easily larger than a stealth frigate and durable enough to repeatedly tank reaction weapon strikes. They're biotechnological, but they reproduce biologically... their nests are frequent fixtures in Protoculture ruins there. A lot of the Protoculture's problems could've been avoided if they'd just not built such stupidly dangerous things in the first place... though some of what they sealed was beyond their ability to destroy, like the Protodeviln.

Let us not do or say anything that might give anyone the insane idea to revive the Robotech Swimsuit Spectacular. There is nobody sane on this Earth or any alternate Earth who wants to see that. Mind you, if you want to tell a story like this - about an army of interchangeable and expendable one-dimensional gung-ho stock characters fighting a pitched battle against a huge swarm of interchangeable and expendable utterly generlc giant space bugs - in the final analysis you're just doing an unauthorized remake of 1997's Starship Troopers without any of the social commentary and satire that justified the original's hamminess. It's basically a story for one very specific kind of fan... The last official position they had was that the 85 episode TV series, the non-AU post-reboot licensed comics, and the Shadow Chronicles "movie" were canon and everything else was non-canon except the Sentinels movie, which was broad strokes canon only. That said, they definitely gave up enforcing their official setting in licensed works after they finally admitted Shadow Rising had been cancelled all along and ragequit a Kickstarter for an animated side story. That's when the bottom fell out again and we started seeing the licensees just doing whatever again followed by Harmony Gold essentially farming all future licensed product development out to Funimation. Which is inevitably embarrassing for the authors and audience alike at best... and is all downhill from there. That would kind of require Robotech to... y'know... not have been a complete and utter trashfire for the last 36+ years? There was an attempt... but the fan group working on it only got as far as producing one very basic teaser trailer to promote their project before Harmony Gold slapped them with a cease-and-desist order and then filed DMCA notices against all of the group's DeviantArt pages. (Oddly, they even went after non-Robotech fan works on those DeviantArt pages... like the director's Star Trek fan art.) I ended up with a front row seat to that one because one very stupid Robotech fan tried to shift the blame for the cease-and-desist to me personally. He tried to convince them I'd forged the legal papers they received demanding a halt to the project, and when they didn't buy that, that I'd somehow influenced Harmony Gold to kill the project because I'm just such an evil guy, y'know? He even tried to persuade them to file a lawsuit against me. Ironically, I only learned about the project because of that... when the fan film group behind the project reached out to me to let me know what that particular crazy person had been saying and assure me they didn't believe a word of it. Swell guys, as it turned out, shame they fell afoul of Harmony Gold's attempts to create a fan film section on the old robotech.com site with the same draconian submission guidelines as the fan art and fan fiction sections. No, it was called Robotech: Genesis. It was supposed to be the Robotech origin story, with Zor discovering the Invid, the Masters attacking their homeworld, etc. etc. No Zentradi in sight, it was all Bioroids and Invid. The one shot I remember really clearly from their development portfolio was a massed regiment of Bioroids marching.

I'm a cynic at heart, but I feel like that's probably way more noble than they actually were... Knowing engineers as I do (being one) and given that the Protoculture kept building irresponsibly dangerous things and only deciding to bury them after completing them... I'm kind of inclined to suspect the conversation went more like this: "You built what?" "You said you wouldn't get mad at me..." "You. Built. WHAT?" "... a time-traveling Fold Evil." *some Protoculture government official spends the next five minutes hyperventilating into a paper bag* "Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna bury that thing somewhere nobody would ever look. We're gonna build a Keep Out sign that literally murders trespassers to make sure nobody who tries to look there comes back alive. Then we're gonna break spacetime around the entire planet to make sure nobody can go there to look. Only then will I be able to sleep without fear that you idiots will screw this galaxy up even worse than we already have." The conversation about the Delta Wave System was probably worse. Can you imagine putting in the effort to build an interplanetary fold network, massive fold wave resonators, and a colossal tower shrine with a docking spaceship in a bid to end conflict in the galaxy and then having to explain to the authorities that it can't ever be used because it might kill all of the intelligent life in the galaxy by lethally overclocking their brains instead? I get the distinct feeling their engineers could make even the most mundane home appliances distressingly lethal entirely by accident.

's why it makes so much more sense to have the Bioroids do it... not only because it fits with the series chronology, but also because they're already about the right size for the larger Invit/Invid forms. There was a fan film that tried to do that, but it got shut down on a copyright claim.

That they not only didn't make the attempt but sealed and buried the time travel-capable Fold Evil they built and set an army of self-replicating technorganic monsters to keep all and sundry away from it shows that, at least at the end, the Protoculture were starting to learn from their mistakes.

Eh... it's more like "scale of budget". The lower the budget for a given Robotech project, the less incentive the staff has to do a quality job and the more inconsistent the scaling becomes. Robotech's efforts to develop an original work have always operated on a hair-shirt budget, and the licensees who worked on the comics and novels cheaped out so badly that even the pittance spent on developing new animation looks like unprecedented largesse by comparison. Needless to say, consistency has consistently been more than they could afford. 😅 The novelization was... contentious... to say the least. It differed so heavily from the series that even its proponents advocated treating it as a wholly separate story, and Harmony Gold ultimately weighed in on the side of its critics twenty years ago by classifying it as "Robotech in name only". Titan's time loop plot seems to have been entirely to set up skipping the other two Robotech "sagas" in favor of doing their own original storyline.

The main/ongoing Macross continuity generally takes the view that the ancient Protoculture are extinct. Their interstellar civilization was all but completely destroyed in the Supervision Army's initial rampage across the galaxy. What was left after the Protodeviln were defeated and sealed by the anima spiritia apparently wasn't enough to sustain itself, and their remaining isolated population centers slowly died out over the next 22,000 years. Macross Delta offered up a theory in-universe that the Brisingr globular cluster was the last enclave of the Protoculture where the species finally died out completely. Macross II's parallel world continuity offers a different take where the Mardook are strongly implied to be the descendants of a surviving group of Protoculture refugees like the ones who settled on Earth and created humanity in DYRL?'s backstory, though their entire original civilization was obliterated by the out-of-control Zentradi and Meltrandi forces.