Seto Kaiba

Summer 2021 was a pretty lackluster season, and the Winter 2021 season looks to be similarly sparse pickings. The only ones I can find on the currently announced channels that looks even mildly interesting Komi Can't Communicate, Lupin III Part VI, and the inevitable promise of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part VI: Stone Ocean.

IMO, it's better for that than for playing the game.

Fair Use has to meet certain qualifications outlined by law and legal precedent. The most likely explanation is that it got nuked was because it was crowdfunded. That would arguably make it a commercial, for-profit endeavour and precedent makes such uses of copyrighted material without permission presumptively unfair. Did the Toy Galaxy guy crowdfund his?

In all fairness, Strange Machine Games has a major advantage over Palladium Books in the management of their Robotech license: Strange Machine Games knew from the start that there wasn't any more Robotech coming. Palladium Books was stalling for time with its last couple books. They were basically out of canon material by the time the New Gen book was being written. Harmony Gold had said it planned to release new episodes of the RTSC OVA every two years, and that's what the RPG had been planned around. That never came to pass, so they were stuck in a holding pattern waiting for new material that wasn't coming.

Yeah, Macross II had a completely different concept for the future of VFs that was more in line with the Gundam franchise, focusing more on weaponry than speed/thrust. The VF-2SS is only about on par with the VF-11 flight performance-wise, but laser weapons were replaced with particle beam guns, the OTM-improved rotary cannons with (true) railguns, the use of bits and funnels, etc. (Though in the OVA it's noted quite often that the military has become complacent thanks to the effectiveness of.the Minmay Attack.)

Nah... just a strategic adjustment for the lower level of fan/audience interest in the latter two Robotech sagas. From a certain point of view, it makes good game sense in the context of the Robotech setting. There wasn't really anything going on between the Macross Saga's end (2014) and Masters Saga's beginning (2029). There was a brief but furious war that almost immediately segued into resistance against the Invid occupation, so combining those two into one book (Homefront) is actually a pretty good decision that would facilitate a campaign flowing directly from one into the other. Consolidating both stories into one book also means they don't have to try to pad two separate books with stats for background mecha or unused concept art that 99% of their audience doesn't give a flip about the way the Palladium RPG did. Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles are an even easier combination since they're the beginning and the end, respectively, of the same story arc and can just run as a sort of adventure manual by putting up the unused-in-the-animation setting materials and calling it a day.

's kind of a non-issue on many levels. The "fold crystals" just attached a new name to something that'd already been present in the technical setting for a long time as the heart of the Gravity and Inertia Controller that makes the artificial gravity used in thermonuclear reactors. You could say they might've already done... the Minmay Attack girl appears in Macross 7, along with much of Macross II's soundtrack.

Macross Ace #1, pages 6-7. Basically, the confusion here is a matter of imprecise terms being used. There was, for a time, a persistent and baseless bit of fanon going around that claimed that Macross II: Lovers Again was not considered a legitimate Macross title because it had the official status of a Parallel World story. It was spread with malicious intent on these boards by certain fans to troll the fans of Macross II. Kawamori, as noted above, publicly refuted that particular claim on multiple occasions, but there was never actually any evidence behind that claim to begin with. Official publications were only too happy to tip the hat to Macross II and even its two tie-in/prequel games even though it was a Parallel World story. So... where the imprecise terms come into this is that Macross II: Lovers Again is an official Macross title and part of the broad strokes Macross setting/franchise, but at the same time it's still officially a Parallel World story with its own alternate history that isn't in continuity with the Macross titles that came after it. Kawamori's attitude that each Macross is its own stand-alone story makes trying to explain it problematic since he doesn't regard continuity as existing at all. 2090's still objectively wrong in any sense, though... the OVA's official materials give the year as 2092, though Macross Chronicle listed it as 2091.

They probably did, but proofreaders are human too ... they can and do make mistakes or fail to catch mistakes. Odds are they copied their timeline from Macross Ace and never questioned it.

No, Macross II's status has been that of a parallel world story since the mid 90s. This periodical simply made the same mistake that was made ~12 years ago in Macross Ace. They didn't even cite the correct years for the OVA's events (2091-2092).

Their problem was they asked someone who couldn't actually legally give permission... and then both they AND the people they asked got in trouble. 😅 This is more straightforward.

... it's not, though. After the Macross Saga core book, Strange Machine Games decided to consolidate the rest of Robotech into just two books. That book is a combined Masters Saga/New Generation book. Seems like they're not expecting the later sagas to sell very well. Here's one of the other two covers. Robotech II: the Sentinels and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles are also being consolidated into a single book.

Predictable outcome was predictable... esp. given how the Macross international licensing is still in the process of being un****ed.

Probably started out as a pair of military-issue Birth Control Glasses and as he rose in rank he was gradually able to clout his way into more fashionable frames.

That was me who said it, but the actual theory comes from the Macross Delta TV series itself. One of the rumors Berger Stone relates to the crew of the Macross Elysion is that Lady M's clandestine program to create a music-based ultimate weapon was believed to either be through cloning or through AI.

OK, yeah... this new crop of images definitely feels like confirmation of my earlier hypothesis that this is a General Galaxy-made Variable Fighter. I'm gonna go ahead and call it now. This is a further development of the Neo Glaug and Neo Glaug bis, the unmanned variable fighter that was the rival prototype to the Ghost X-9 way back in 2040 and found further utility after being reconverted back into a manned variable fighter for the NUNS Marine Corps. We know the Neo Glaug bis was in use into the late 2050s and 2060s with the Marines and that a few had fallen into the hands of anti-government forces like Naresuan's group Fasces. I have a feeling that's still a good ways off. Efforts to miniaturize a fold system were problematic enough, since energy storage is the main determiner of a fold system's range and the initial model miniaturized fold systems ("fold boosters") were only good for a one-way trip of not more than 20ly. It'll be a long time before they can make the unit small enough that it can fit into a VF, and longer still before they can have one store enough power to actually go any useful distance.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a new spin... it's more like a nod to the Advanced Valkyrie: the original, non-Macross, draft of the story from 1985. In Advanced Valkyrie, the name of the organization testing the variable fighter prototypes was NOVA.

At least a semi-understandable flub... the "shin" in Shinsei is the kanji for "New" (新). "Shinsei" itself is the word for a nova, literally "new star" (新星).

So... it's Fire Bomber vs. Fire Bomber American all over again?

We haven't heard anything of Vrlitwhai in the main timeline apart from him becoming the chief of staff of the Spacy in 2016. The last we heard of Exsedol was in 2047 in Macross Dynamite 7 unless we're counting the movie novelization of Frontier... but Exsedol was a civilian advisor not a soldier so he wouldn't necessarily be subject to the mandatory age requirements.

Or, as a fellow "genius" pilot, she's simply subject to the same stupid meme about "growing old is a state of mind for normal men" that is the official reason Max and Milia look far younger than they actually are. Let's say it again for the folks in the back... the "Zentradi have much longer lifespans" thing is a Robotech-ism with no basis in Macross. Who knows how old she is? We do... because we have her official bio from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that says she was 15 in 2009. She was 52 in "Fleet of the Strongest Women", and would've been 73 during the events of the Macross Delta TV series. If this movie is set a year after that, as previously talked about, she's 74. Max, who was 16 in the original series, would be 75. Who can say? All I'll say is I really hope that's just an ill-advised holographic costume choice made after Mikumo found an unattended KISS album and not Bizarro Walkure. Mao is actually a few years younger than Max and Milia, but she was a civilian who lived a pretty hard life on Earth after the First Space War and then in space doing field research in xenobiology without being subject to Creator's Pet treatment. Max and Milia are drawn much younger than they actually are because of an in-joke about growing old being a state of mind for normal people while they're geniuses. Everyone else who was alive for the First Space War - e.g. General Gomez and Colonel Millard in Plus, Richard Bilra and Dr. Mao Nome in Frontier, etc. - looks more or less their actual age. There's a limit to what diet and exercise can do to arrest or mitigate the physical decline caused by aging... which is one of the reasons militaries have regulations for things like maximum enlistment age and mandatory retirement age. In Macross, you could potentially cheat that with cybernetics but cybernetically-enhanced soldiers are illegal under interstellar law. With several previous works basically setting Max up as a sort of Big Good in the setting, I can't see him doing something so illegal and so obvious. All in all, I'm kind of hoping that's not actually Max. Maybe Mirage's dad is just really creepily into cosplaying as his father-in-law like some kind of Las Vegas Elvis impersonator? Delta Flight has enough problems being taken seriously as it is. The deck's already massively stacked against them by their members being washouts from the underfunded local New UN Forces of the Brisingr Alliance and an itinerant forklift driver instead of elites poached from the military by a company with roughly All The Money, and them having failed so hard at their job that the totally inexperienced forces of Windermere steamrolled them and effectively won the war before their series was even halfway over. Having Max just show up to save their bacon is rubbing salt in the wound. They either screwed up so hard the greatest living ace felt compelled to come out of retirement to clean up their mess, or their reputation is so deep in the toilet that the only remedy they could think of was bringing the greatest living ace out of retirement to backhand out a few lines of halfhearted praise. Isamu got people's attention in the second Frontier movie despite being from a less-popular OVA and not actually appearing onscreen. Max is going to roll up and steal the scene if not the whole movie.

Chlore was a rival to Milia when they were both younger, yeah... but Chlore doesn't look any younger or older than Milia herself so I'm not sure that proves anything. Maybe this new, and likely unmanned, fighter works like a gaming PC? The more RGB lighting case mods you have the better your performance, right? Either that or this is Alienware's entry into the Variable Fighter market. 🤪

That's a Robotech-ism. In Macross, the question of the Zentradi natural lifespan only comes up once that I can recall... in the Macross 7 Encore episode "Which One Do You Love?". It went unanswered since it was the setup for a joke about Milia self-diagnosing herself with imminent death after catching the space equivalent of the common cold. There's been nothing to suggest a Zentradi would have a natural lifespan significantly different from the humans they're practically identical to. It's only the Windermereans who stand out in that regard, having got it in the shorts with an average lifespan of just 30 years.

Yeah, depending on whether we're talking TV Max or DYRL Max they'd be either 75 or 77 in 2068. Milia would be 74. Real-world regulations regarding mandatory retirement ages tend to be a bit more lax where senior and flag officers are concerned, but even Max and Milia have got to be at least ten years on the wrong side of that line by now. In the US and Japan, IIRC the mandatory retirement age for a flag officer is 64. That's not to say they couldn't be involved in other ways. Milia was a head of state and Max supposedly had a lot of clout in the New UN Gov't too via his support for Vindirance.

DO. NOT. GIVE. THEM. IDEAS!