Seto Kaiba

Or Alto... though he only did it during a mock battle with Pixie Platoon. Mind you, it's not like the Zentradi are going to pay enough attention to realize which VFs are flown by squadron leaders while they're fighting and various anti-government forces are going to be familiar enough with New UN Forces markings and organization that they'd be able to visually identify the squadron leader's unit even if it isn't a different variant from the modex and other markings.

It's worth noting that relatively few models of Variable Fighter actually have a "command" variant... they're more the exception than the rule. Where "command" variants exist, the main reason is typically that they incorporate a more powerful communications system which was too expensive to be included on all of the variants. The performance tuning is technically unrelated, not always present, and usually justifiable as increasing the operational flexibility of the most experienced pilot running the show. Nah, the externally-visible hardware differences are pretty minor... easy to see if you know what to look for and the VF is standing still, but VFs are rarely standing still.

Yeah, you'd think that'd be the obvious way to go about it. No such luck, though. When Humanity abandoned Earth in the late 21st century and set out into deep space via bases at Mars and Jupiter. From there, they discovered planet close enough to Earthlike for their needs in orbit of Proxima Centauri and then another orbiting Epsilon Eridani. And, of course, the Zor had long since discovered a third inhabitable world in Phi Eridani's orbit. This doesn't jive with either the show's final title or its working title once it switched to a pure sci-fi mecha anime. It was original Super Dimension Cavalry Regulus for much of its time in development before having its name changed to Southern Cross. Regulus the old name for Alpha Leonis, which is in Leo not Crux. That said, I don't know why they eventually settled on calling it "Southern Cross". That'll be a detail to look for, I guess. The only possibilities I can think of besides "because it sounded cool" are possibly that they're referencing Brazil's knightly order or that particular constellation's use in navigation. Eridanus is a popular destination for sci-fi in general.

All told, it's kind of a nonsensical/improper statement... Eridanus isn't a star system, it's a constellation. There are 24 main stars in Eridanus that make up the constellation we can see and a total of 87 stars identified as "within" that constellation for astrographic purposes. You could call Glorie itself "in Eridanus", since it orbits Epsilon Eridani. Interestingly, the Southern Cross Army never seems to actually need any kind of translation when speaking to the Zor... even in person. Even if they assumed there was some kind of universal translator in play initially, it's weird that nobody comments on all the Aliens Speaking English going on when they start to talk to the Zor in person. Weirder still if you think about it, the Zor that return to Glorie in 2120 are thousands of years removed from their early 22nd century Human ancestors thanks to accidental time travel... but the language they're speaking is apparently so little changed by all that time that it's still recognizable to 22nd century Humanity. "LEND YOUR EAR TO OUR LACK OF INDOOR VOICES!"

Having played it myself on XBox and the old Games for Windows Live port, I'm pretty sure it wasn't your driving... the Warthog just handles like an inebriated cow with one short leg on an unlevel floor. It always has, and apparently always will if the gameplay I've seen of the Master Chief Edition is any indication. Just for shiggles, I'm gonna go back and do some translations from a few of the existing Southern Cross publications just to see if there's anything particularly interesting in there. Took a whack at the Southern Cross and Galvion pamphlet earlier. It was interesting to note that this one describes Earth's circumstances in harsher terms. It's not uninhabitable, the nuclear war at the end of the 21st century left it straight-up incapable of supporting life. Also, the place the Zor took off to after ruining Glorie was a planet they discovered in the Phi Eridani system.

Finished season one of Re:Zero earlier. It was nice to see a little character development for Subaru, but it felt like it ended too easily? After several episodes of building Betelgeuse up to be a nigh-unstoppable force of nature whose ability to pull a Grand Theft Me on his followers and even Subaru made him near-unkillable, he goes down like a punk repeatedly and ultimately cashes out when Subaru casually lights him on fire. Season two's opener... ech. Talk about starting as we meant to go on. Most of the troops who were victorious in the fight with the white whale and so on are wiped out, Rem's in your standard soap opera coma, and Crusch has lost her memories (and temporarily an arm), and Subaru's already committed suicide once.... and there's still like 10 minutes to go in the season's first episode.

... yep, I can see it. The worst part is that he does it to himself at least half of the time. It's one thing when events beyond his control conspire to ruin his life, but he's so good at putting his foot in his mouth that he must brush his teeth with athlete's foot cream. It makes him kind of hard to sympathize with when he's the architect of his own misery as often as not. I can tell I'm actually getting into this story a bit, though, because I genuinely wanted to punch Subaru when Rem poured her heart out to him and his immediate response was saying he loves Emilia... a girl who just sort of grudgingly tolerates his existence without any apparent interest in him.

lol, it had its drawbacks. Just looking at the development history of Southern Cross is enough to tell you we're better off without that lawless attitude. ... and all I can picture is Jeanne with Leonidas's beard screaming "THIS! IS! SPARTAS!" and having her tank punt Seifriet's red Bioroid into a pit. I think he meant the other kind... Some of them... well... don't ponder them too hard or Chris Hansen'll bust through your wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man. Remember, the original pitch for Southern Cross came from a h-doujinshi artist who specialized in lolicon and diaper fetish material. How and why Tatsunoko green-lit that I'll never understand. You'd think the author's... specialized practice... would have been a huge red flag.

A fine and fair point. Most of the mecha anime I've seen do still tend to follow the organizational logic of either the JSDF, the US Armed Forces, or a mixture the way Macross does. I suppose I can't really take it for granted that it works the same way in Southern Cross even if it typically seems to. Somewhat unhelpfully, not every character bio lists the age of the character in question. From the available bios, most of the ATAC 15th Squad's personnel have realistic ages for their ranks and positions. Jeanne's three main male subordinates are all in the early-to-mid 20's. Former 1st Lieutenant Charles de Etovard is 23, Sergeant Andrzej Slawski is 26, and Corporal Louis Ducasse is 21. They're apparently ALL adults... just really undisciplined ones. Which makes it a bit strange that Jeanne is so young and yet the most senior NCO of the lot. I admit that, prior to looking into this, I'd actually assumed the same thing you had... that these were mainly teenagers. Even Lana and Marie appear to be at least a couple of years older than Jeanne, given that Lana's backstory mentions an old romance she had at the age of 16, implying that she's at least a few years older than that, and Marie talks down to Jeanne about being a maiden looking for love at 17, contextually suggesting she's at least 18. Seifriet Weiss is also implied to be a few years older than Jeanne. The org charts published do definitely indicate the ATAC 15th Squad is a frontline combat unit, not a training group... so these are (mainly) adults in the business of killing. I'm not so sure about that... they definitely have a fashion industry given how often Jeanne is busted for sneaking fashion magazines places and the fight she gets into over that dress. A music scene too, with jazz clubs and the like where Bowie keeps sneaking out to play. Jeanne gets involved with that lounge singer too.

Are we doing reduction to absurdity now? I can do snark, but I'd really prefer to have a serious discussion. It's not like Tatsunoko Production is dependent on the residuals from a trio of nearly-40 year old shows to keep the lights on. Animation production isn't the most profitable business in the world, but they're not so pressed for cash that they can't afford to turn down a contract with a company they don't trust or one that offers unfavorable terms. Companies need to make money, but they're not obligated to take any and every opportunity. Companies dissolve contract partnerships like this all the time, and for far flimsier reasons than the ones that Tatsunoko took Harmony Gold to court over. The sum Tatsunoko collects in royalties from Harmony Gold's license is not exactly critical to its financial well-being either. It's more like a stock dividend than a paycheck. They could've walked away and left Harmony Gold to burn without any real harm to themselves. The problem, as I've said before, is that there isn't a significant financial incentive for Tatsunoko to end its partnership with Harmony Gold. They don't really stand to gain anything by siding with Big West because the market's already saturated with the original Macross series and they won't collect any distribution royalties from the sequels. It'd be a wash or small net-negative.

Watching s'more Re:Zero before bed... and holy hell this show doesn't have ANY intention of letting Subaru catch a break does it? I'd kind of hoped the show might get past its obsession with making Subaru suffer horribly after the first story arc where he was repeatedly disemboweled, had his head caved in, got his throat slashed, lost a few extremities, committed suicide by jumping off a cliff, was cursed to death, and got nearly torn apart by wild dogs. I'm all of about one episode into the show's second story arc, and he's already managed to be challenged to a duel after insulting the assembled knights in the royal castle... and even though they're using wooden swords, the fight is so horrifically one-sided and brutal that even the knights who'd gathered to watch him get his ass beat are visibly upset. Even Yamcha gets more dignity than this. He basically has a psychotic episode at the end of it all. If I didn't know there was a lot more to this show I'd almost expect him to snap and become a serial killer or something... the faces he made during his rant are not faces a mentally well person makes.

There's no obligation for them to do business with Harmony Gold, so no... their hands are not tied. That's what that idiom means... that you're unable to act freely because of some rule, law, or obligation. Tatsunoko does not need the money from the Macross-Southern Cross-MOSPEADA license. They could have just said "No" to Harmony Gold request for renewal and shopped any or all of the three shows around to other distributors with every expectation that several would've bid for Macross. That's kind of what we were expecting given that Tatsunoko took HG to court over its suspicions that HG was cheating them out of royalties owed. Tatsunoko just doesn't stand to gain significantly from ditching Harmony Gold and freeing up Macross because it can't collect royalties on the sequels.

Well, that was a fun trip down the Google rabbit hole. I suppose I should have known better... given that soldiers have been finding new and inventive ways to get into trouble for at least as long as there have been soldiers. The UCMJ has a whole section on prosecuting extramarital sexual activity and indecent sexual conduct. I still think Jeanne would've been in comparatively greater trouble... given that she was in the dock for multiple counts of assaulting an officer, breach of peace, resisting arrest, and AWOL, and they're pretty clear she spends a LOT of time in the stockade as it is. (Dunno how you'd charge ramming a giant robot with a hoverbike.) The obvious out-of-universe explanation is they wanted to us all the weird laser crossbow things they made for Science Fiction Sengoku Saga. Now we know she's not doing that... because her career goal for joining the armed forces was to find a husband and quit. "Marriage is a woman's happiness" feels a bit dated these days, but it was fair play back then. Not much of a character arc tho, esp. when she goes all gooey over Siefriet's mullet and he kind of takes over as the main character for most of the rest of the show. I guess there wouldn't have been as many shenanigans if they'd made a hardass like Sgt. Slawski the new CO. I actually sympathize with the poor guy, since he's the one who has to explain away all Jeanne's more eccentric moments... which is admittedly totally on brand for an XO. He's even comfortable enough around Jeanne to actually socialize instead of just snubbing her, like when they went to that movie together and he had a good time while she was sulking.

Was it actually a legitimate release? Argentina is well-known as one of the global hotspots for piracy/copyright infringement.

I've heard about that several times - the licensee was TOKYOPOP - but I've never been able to turn up any archived news posts or anything about that other than that its release was "indefinitely delayed" due to licensing issues. Admittedly, given what I've heard from current and former HG staff about how HG soured its relations with Big West it definitely has a ring of plausibility to it.

So... you're trolling, making a claim that's not only irrelevant to the discussion but also factually incorrect? I see. In any event, the reason fans are so interested in this news is because it does have very real implications for the situation here in the US... either in the form of importable English dubs from other countries, or a negotiated end to the deadlock we've been facing for a bit over 18 years1... not 30+. And let's be honest... there were workarounds already in place before the deadlock ever started. 1. 18 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days at time of writing. The relevant trademark was registered on 15 Oct 2002.

So, if you're not interested in the facts why are you here in a thread specifically devoted to discussion and analysis of the legal situation and its implications then? You keep insisting things which are factually incorrect, which does nothing to further the discussion. If you continue to be disruptive, that'll become a matter for the mods. Granted, I can understand why you might feel that Big West's legal victories abroad aren't relevant to you... but they mean EVERYTHING to this, and to an eventual victory where we can have Macross in the US. Big West's victories in the UK and EU probably won't matter too much to Harmony Gold because, as their own disclosures indicate, the market for their own Robotech brand was basically nonexistent there. But China... oh China... that is a wound that could potentially bleed the Robotech franchise dry. HG talked at length about how they were counting on China to grow the Robotech brand on their convention tour for years. Now they're facing direct competition against Macross in the market that was meant to save Robotech from the decline of its fanbase in the Americas. That's just the direct impact to their bottom line, though. These victories overseas are also going to shake investor and licensee confidence in the brand. Harmony Gold had placed quite a bit of hope in a live action movie revitalizing the brand, or at least the revenue stream from license fees until Hollywood got bored with the idea. Every one of these victories diminishes the value of that license considerably because it makes it less safe to potentially release a movie in that market and oh boy is Hollywood risk-averse. This would also hurt the prospects for future Robotech animation directly, since it complicates international distribution and licensing and increases the risk of litigation from Macross's owners... and HG has been surprisingly candid about spending a lot of money on having lawyers review everything it puts out to ensure it won't step on any of Big West's toes. It's not a quick fix, but this is applying a lot of pressure to Harmony Gold's position in the states. Pressure to either reach an accommodation with Big West, or sell Robotech. They might only see Robotech as a hobby, but they're not going to keep it going if it's no longer justifying the expense of its existence. No, I'm saying Tatsunoko's hands are NOT tied... it's the hands of the distributors that are tied. Harmony Gold NEEDS that license - and to be actively using it - in order to keep those trademark "roadblocks" in place and keep the Robotech franchise alive via Macross merch. Their entire position is dependent on retaining that license. As long as those trademarks are in place, other distributors can freely license other Macross shows but would not be able to commercially exploit them without facing the threat of litigation from Harmony Gold, making the licenses to the rest of Macross worthless. But if Harmony Gold were to lose the license either by revocation or by being outbid, their trademark "roadblocks" stop working because they can no longer demonstrate they're commercially using those marks. You could say everyone's hands are tied BUT Tatsunoko's. Tatsunoko just hasn't been presented with a compelling financial argument to drop Harmony Gold and license Macross's original series to someone else.

... is a complex matter that cannot be solely attributed to the influence of Harmony Gold and/or Tatsunoko Production, as it demonstrably predates the current deadlock. To pretend otherwise would be asinine and a deliberate attempt to misinform. Like it or not, you can't put the fact that nobody licensed Macross 7 or Macross Dynamite 7 for distribution outside Japan on this. As convenient a target as HG is for the fandom's ire, we can't legitimately blame EVERYTHING on them. Except that they haven't... except perhaps in their own minds. They are known to have a rather inflated opinion of their own standing. Quite aside from the point that legal arguments are literally the topic of this thread... legal arguments are what is literally helping Macross gain ground in markets outside the US right now. Legal arguments overturned Harmony Gold's trademarks in China and the UK, and are on their way to doing the same in the EU. Legal arguments that can effectively put Harmony Gold in a corner and potentially convince them that now is the time to sell their stake in Macross before Big West's challenges to their trademarks further erode the value of the remaining trademarks. Legal arguments are why Harmony Gold is suddenly so eager to negotiate with Big West. Legal arguments are what is most likely to bring us ultimate victory in this. Also, aren't you forgetting that there's literally nothing stopping Big West and its partners from just direct-marketing to us from Japan? Like how they put official English subs on several past DVD/BD releases including one package of the Macross Frontier movies, the Macross Delta TV series, and Macross Delta movie? Harmony Gold's trademarks can only stop distributors based in the region where the trademark registration is valid. As long as the sale happens in Japan, all Harmony Gold can do is run to the end of its leash and bark. Except that that's demonstrably not true either. Did you forget Big West has already overturned the Chinese trademark filings and is in the process of releasing all of Macross in China? The same is presumably going to occur for other markets where Big West has successfully overturned those trademarks. The US crowd is just stuck for the time being because US trademark law is in dire need of an overhaul.

You're still distorting things rather heavily, TBH. No, nobody things Harmony Gold is the owner, de facto or otherwise, of all of Macross outside Japan. Everyone knows they don't own squat. Harmony Gold has no power to grant licenses to the rest of Macross, and they never have. The only power they wield is the power to, in certain key markets, make the act of obtaining a license from Big West a wasted investment by threatening to sue for infringement of their trademarks. That's it. Harmony Gold didn't even have anything to do with us not seeing Macross 7 outside Japan. It was simply priced outside what anyone was willing to spend when it was new due to the cost of the music rights. If the demand for Macross in the west were huge, this would be the kind of problem where someone would force a solution. But it's not. It's a popular anime series, but anime is a niche entertainment market. There's not enough money in this for a distributor to be willing to bludgeon an extortionist Harmony Gold into submission with fat stacks of cash, nor even to convince Tatsunoko to abandon the revenue stream they currently collect on shows nobody would otherwise care about. You might not care about the legal facts, but the legal facts are why this is the way it is. Those are the facts that matter to the businesses involved. And it's not a question of Big West "allowing" Harmony Gold to do what they're doing. The way the law is written, they literally do not have a legal recourse to challenge it here in the US. It's a question of scale. Anime is a niche market outside of Japan, and not exactly one that's hugely profitable. If Harmony Gold were not an obstacle, this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that there's not enough money in it in the industry's current state for any interested party to want to go to the expense of having to fight that fight with Harmony Gold or to bribe them to go away. That's what Harmony Gold was originally counting on to protect Robotech from having to compete against the original Macross on an even footing. Now it seems to be what they're counting on while they hold out to inflate the value of the Macross rights that they have under license in the hopes of a big payday. Oh, absolutely it would. But remember, translation costs money. Printing costs money. Distribution costs money. Do you remember when I was talking about how much it actually costs to professionally translate a book? On a lark, I had three different professional firms quote me for a strictly text-only translation of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie. The average was over $25,000 to translate that 128 page book. To print and bind a book like that, based on my research, costs around $22 US per copy from a professional printer. If you want to print 5,000 copies, you need to make $135,000 on sales BEFORE you turn any profit. To break even, you'd have to mark each copy up by $25 to $47... and that's to break even on selling 5,000 copies. You'd need either a greater markup or more volume to actually turn any kind of a profit. And that's not counting distribution, or royalties to the original publisher, IP owner, license fees, etc. It's easy to sell five thousand copies. But selling enough to make a significant profit? That's harder. But it's not DIRECT income. Big West is collecting royalties on licenses. The financial picture has to work for the licensees and their sublicensees to get anything done. Macross is an "old" property, but so's Gundam. So's Yamato. It's old, but it's had new stuff coming out all the time... so it's not like it only has appeal to the over-40's the way that the Robotech franchise does. Who knows? Robotech's gotten out of the animation game, so maybe it'd just get ignored.

I hasten to add... there is an important distinction here in what Harmony Gold's trademarks actually accomplish. Harmony Gold cannot, in any way, prevent a distributor from going to Big West and saying "hey, sell me a license to the Macross sequels for <market>". They have no approvals or involvement in licensing decisions made by Big West. All Harmony Gold's trademarks do is make it effectively impossible to use those licenses in a commercial context in markets where they hold trademarks. It enables them to use the threat of trademark infringement lawsuits to make those licenses effectively worthless. If you can't sell the series on streaming, broadcast, or home video, or release merch for it without being slapped with a lawsuit, you've spent a lot of money for nothing.

No, everyone knows Harmony Gold CAN'T act as a gateway/licensor for all Macross because they have no access to Macross beyond what Tatsunoko does. All they can do is squat on those trademarks and wait for it to become enough of an embuggerance for someone to offer to buy out their trademarks. What they're perceived as is exactly what they are: a roadblock. No distributor is going to enter into negotiations with Harmony Gold vis a vis the rest of Macross because they know Harmony Gold has no power to grant licenses to that material, and they know that Harmony Gold's goal is to prevent the release of that material by all legal means available to drive up the value of the rights they're squatting on. That's why no distributor has tried... and the market here ain't big enough to be bothered going to the expense of a long legal battle over.

Quick, we need stats for the elite Spiral Cut Spetsnaz. Not quite... they actually say over 70% of the Earth's surface was destroyed. It's worth noting that only 29% of Earth's surface is land. (They also refer to the bombardment as "total destruction".) Sentinels increased the total official survivor count on Earth's surface by 100% in a retcon. It increased from 1 to 2. Just like in Southern Cross, there was nowhere for rival nations to come from.

To be honest, I think I did a pretty good job of explaining why anyone could've walked away with the rights but only Harmony Gold did in the post you quoted from. Tatsunoko's hands aren't tied. They could've taken their ball and gone home, or gone to play with someone else. The reason they stuck around is that they don't stand to actually gain much of anything from cutting Harmony Gold off. When it comes to Macross, Tatsunoko collects a share of the profits from domestic exploitation of the original series and also collects royalties on distribution and merchandising for that series outside Japan and merchandising for DYRL? outside Japan. The Macross license is, for them, a small but steady earner. If they were to pass on Harmony Gold's bid in the name of shopping the license around to someone else they're not likely to see a significant increase in revenues from that license because the show is so old. It'd free up Macross in the west, but at the same time they're not going to reap any additional benefits from it because they're not entitled to royalties on other parts of the franchise. It might drive a tiny spike in home video and merchandise sales at best. But that comes at a cost. Everybody knows that Macross is the only part of Robotech that actually makes money for its licensee Harmony Gold. Harmony Gold has no reason to want to keep its license to Southern Cross or MOSPEADA without Macross. Robotech is distributed as a single series, so Tatsunoko's collecting royalties on home video, streaming, and broadcast use of all three component shows. Essentially, if Tatsunoko cuts off Harmony Gold's license to Macross, they also lose the revenue stream from the Southern Cross and MOSPEADA royalties because HG almost certainly won't try to keep the franchise going without Macross. At best, the gains made from increased interest in Macross offset the similarly small losses from Southern Cross and MOSPEADA no longer producing royalties outside Japan. There's no obligation to renew on Tatsunoko's side. It's all about money and how much of it Tatsunoko stands to make from either approach. The way to lure Tatsunoko away from Harmony Gold would be to offer them some way to profit from the success of the greater Macross franchise beyond just collecting royalties from the original series. That's what they want, badly enough to have sued for it least once. The copyright/contract review in the Tokyo courts wasn't a hostile event... it was due diligence essentially required by both parties after Harmony Gold idiotically shot off its mouth in '99 claiming its license from Tatsunoko gave it exclusive rights to all things Macross rather than just the original TV series. Was it expensive? Yes. Time consuming? Yes. Totally obnoxious? Yes. Hostile? Not really, no. The closest it ever got to "hurt feelings" was a separate, but technically related, filing in which Tatsunoko argued that it ought to be entitled to a share of the profit from subsequent exploitation of the Macross IP due to their role in production of the original. The Tokyo court shot that claim down on the grounds that Tatsunoko had only bankrolled its animation production and not the development of the underlying IP itself. Tatsunoko would very much like supplemental revenue from a steady earner like Macross, because what production house wouldn't? They run on razor thin margins all the time. Even then, Tatsunoko has behaved utterly professionally about it. They've sent hearty congratulations to Big West and its partners on the success of various Macross properties, and so on. You're also forgetting one very important thing. We have a substantial body of concrete evidence that relations between Tatsunoko and Harmony Gold are poor. It was only a few years ago that Tatsunoko Production took Harmony Gold to arbitration on accusations that Harmony Gold was skimming from royalties owed to Tatsunoko for the use of the three shows in broadcast, streaming, and home video contexts. That proceeding was definitely acrimonious for both parties since it amounted to an accusation of theft, but also offered several inane sidebar discussions where Harmony Gold essentially attempted to assert it could now use Tatsunoko's IP without their consent even if the license was terminated... a truly asinine turn of events that would've had any competent lawyer fighting the temptation to vault the table and strangle opposing counsel. It's not really entrenched at all... it's all about making a dollars-and-sense case to Tatsunoko and give the "leave" side an actual monetary advantage. All HG really has going for it is that, while they hold the license, Tatsunoko is also collecting royalties on two other shows that it wouldn't otherwise be collecting anything on. You might be able to interest RightStuf in licensing MOSPEADA, but NOBODY wants Southern Cross.

Re:Zero just will NOT take off that cactus condom... I'm about seven episodes in, and Subaru has died an unreasonable number of times. This boy's spirit animal must be a lemming. He's been disemboweled what, three or four times now? He's been stabbed to death in an alley. He's died in his sleep (cause unknown). Most recently, he started to spontaneously vomit (poisoned?) and then got hit so hard by something that it not only apparently disemboweled him it took off one of his arms and seems to have split his skull too. As it is, this show is giving me a really weird vibe. It's like Death Note, except instead of examining a murder mystery from the perspective of the (supernaturally empowered) murderer pretending to be a detective, Subaru is basically a supernaturally-empowered murder victim trying to solve his own murder before it happens and being sent back to the start when he inevitably fails until he acquires enough out-of-context knowledge to succeed. It reminds me a lot of Kotaro Uchikoshi's writing for the Zero Escape series of escape room games1, both in terms of how death is the catalyst for time looping and how the solution always seems to be impossible without dying several times first to acquire out-of-context knowledge. Admittedly, Re:Zero hasn't become quite as dark as the Zero Escape trilogy yet... though I can't shake the feeling we're headed in that direction given that Puck has indicated that he'll destroy the world if Emilia dies. Thus far, my favorite character is definitely Roswaal. He's obviously evil, but it only seems to express itself as a desire to troll Subaru. 1. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, I Want to be a Good Person/Good People Die (localized as Virtue's Last Reward) and Zero Time Dilemma.

Ah, I see. That's fair... especially since that one was kind of meant to be over-the-top in the game it was created for. In all fairness, absolutely everything in the 2nd Edition Robotech RPG's Masters Saga sourcebook was a kludge-y mess. It's terribly difficult to build an official setting on existing OSM material when you could fit most of it on a paper napkin with room left over for some rude caricatures of Southern Cross's creators. One of the weirdest things about Southern Cross isn't just how stupidly large Glorie's totally unnecessary standing army is... it's how ridiculously inefficient the whole thing is. Each of the eight branches of service1 and each of the eight types of infantry squad operating under the auspices of the Tactics Corps2 (the ground infantry) is equipped differently. The Southern Cross Army has basically no two units sharing any equipment in common. Each has its own variant of the Arming Doublet, its own small arms, its own robot design, and duty uniform. Even the designation system used for the mecha is based on what branch of service they were intended for use by.3 The Auroran was developed exclusively for the Tactics Armored Space Corps, which does admittedly give a little legitimacy to the folks dragging it for being a space helicopter. Things didn't magically turn out for the best in Macross either... there was a whole story arc about that beginning at episode 28. The whole idea of EBSIS was a terrible attempt by Kevin to shoehorn in generic evil Russians to pad his page count. In Macross, Southern Cross, and Robotech, there's effectively a world government. There's not enough people to have nation-states springing up... especially not Evil Russian™ ones. There were about 9 million people on Earth after the war in the original Macross, but in Robotech the Zentradi were all wiped out and the human population was just what was on the SDF-1. How d'you have multiple nation-states when the total population of the planet could fit comfortably in Michigan Stadium with seating to spare?4 Moreover, how did nobody on the SDF-1 notice there were so many Evil Russian™ agents aboard, talking in stereotypically exaggerated Russian accents, calling everyone "Comrade", and trying to order borscht and vodka at the ship's Japanese restaurants while telling everyone how much better things are "in Soviet Russia"? (It's all so hammily done by Kevin that this is the only way I picture EBSIS and its various spinoffs in the later parts of the Robotech RPG... so hammy they might as well rename themselves the Honey Glaze Union.) As a character, Jeanne never really made a ton of sense... Marie mentions Jeanne is 17 years old while teasing her after discovering she'd been reading a fashion magazine during an important briefing instead of paying attention. Jeanne's rank, pre-promotion, is 曹長 (Sōchō, translated as Sergeant Major.) She's just 17, and she holds the highest possible rank for enlisted personnel. A rank that, in a real military, you'd only achieve if you had a decade of service under your belt with a near-spotless disciplinary record.5 Jeanne's a frequent flyer to the stockade on disciplinary matters, and a repeat AWOL case. Somehow, AWOL, brawling in public, etc. is less severe of an offense than hitting on a superior officer's wife? The latter got Charles busted all the way down from 1st Lieutenant to Private, They even promote her to 2nd Lieutenant after Charles gets demoted. It's enough to make you wonder what General she's secretly related to. Probably. It must've been something they developed before plans to colonize Glorie got underway... otherwise it's kind of weird that the Zor coincidentally have giant robots at exactly the same size after being thrown back in time. They must be confident to give everyone on their side a handicap of wearing what looks like a colossal metal diaper. The last thing you want to do in a unit that's meant for actual combat is wear a nice big sign that says "Shoot me, I'm an officer". 1. The Tactics Corps (ground infantry), Alpha Tactics Armored Corps (armored cavalry), Cities Defense Unit (militia?), Tactics Air Force, Cities Defense Flying Corps (Air National Guard?), Tactics Space Corps (the fleet), Tactics Armored Space Corps (space mecha pilots only?), and Glorie Military Police. 2. The Tactics Squads, Reconnoitering Party, Cold Squad, Desert Squad, Mountains Squad, Forest Squad, Marsh Squad, and Navy Squad (a slightly misleading name, they're basically the SEALs) 3. The Spartas being ATAC/01-SCA, the Logan being TASC/01-SCF, and the Auroran being TASC/02-SCF. 4. Robotech sources typically put the population of the SDF-1 at about 70,000. The official rated capacity for Michigan Stadium in its current form is 107,601. 5. The minimum time-in-service requirement for promotion to Sergeant Major in the US Armed Forces is 9 years.