Seto Kaiba

Wholesome, isn't it? The New UN Spacy gets to engage in some downright Starfleet heroism complete with a "Screw the rules, I'm doing what's right" moment, everyone makes it out alive thanks to some epic planning and technological shenanigans, and even the mercenaries who'd been hired to bodyguard VIPs volunteered their services at no charge in the name of saving lives. Ah, there's a reason for that. The Barbarossa was a ship from the planet Megara's New UN Spacy garrison force. When the General Staff HQ on Earth was looking for ships in range that could go observe the main fleet Macross Valiant discovered, they were the best-equipped ones in range.

All things considered, the fact that that amazing result was accomplished by a force where nearly 3/4 of the troops had never seen live combat before just makes it more impressive. One has to wonder how Major Corbeck and Captain Gados's VF-25s even get off their ground with their massive, massive balls aboard. EDIT: For those wondering, the Sentosa is named for an island off the southern coast of Singapore's main island. It's anyone's guess which Barbarossa the CV-455 Barbarossa is named for. My money's on the Ottoman Admiral.

Since I am tired, bored, and am heartily sick of arguing about shifter design... I'll summarize! The source is a piece in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah called Lost Children, that starts on page 96. Entertainingly, the article starts with a vaguely Douglas Adams-y reminder that Space is Big. It then goes on to note that, because humanity's growing mastery of fold technology has shrunk the effective distances involved considerably that the odds of running into something like a Zentradi main fleet are not as small as we'd like to think they are. In September 2061, the 46th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet Macross Valiant was sailing through the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way as it traveled around the galactic outer rim. This was thought/expected to be a more laid-back route than those of emigrant fleets charting courses through the galactic core (like Macross Frontier, Macross Galaxy, Macross Olympia, etc.), and the fleet had enjoyed an uneventful trip for something like twenty years. That did not last. One of the fleet's advance reconnaissance units discovered a Zentradi Main Fleet chilling out nearby. Further reconnaissance conducted by VF-171s confirmed that the fleet was a scant 4 million kilometers (about 11x the distance separating Earth and Luna) from a multi-million warship Zentradi fleet. At their relative cruising speeds, the two fleets would be in range of each other in ten days. Valiant Fleet President Lazarus Heiden declared a state of emergency and announced a plan for the fleet to conduct an emergency space fold in 72 hours. (This declaration apparently did quite a bit to calm the panic the populace had been feeling since the news broke.) President Heiden also notified the New UN Forces General Staff Headquarters on Earth about the situation and sought advice. A plan was formulated to jump to a point approximately a parsec away from the main fleet's current course, since the scale of a main fleet makes it's not possible to quickly gather the kind of reinforcements you'd need to actually fight it. To better monitor the situation, the New UN Forces Chief of Staff trawled through the list of available ships in range and dispatched the CV-455 Barbarossa for observation purposes. The Barbarossa had been on special assignment conducting field testing of new technologies, with around 1/3 of the ship's internal space devoted to equipment under development and data collection hardware for carrying out tests. The ship's crew was supplemented by a number of engineers from various firms incl. L.A.I.'s headquarters on Eden. Armed escort for those VIPs was provided by three VF-25s from SMS. Barbarossa executed a precision space fold and emerged a short distance from the Macross Valiant fleet, though it had not come to support the fleet or even notified the fleet of its impending arrival. The plan was that, since it was a single ship, if it were discovered all they had to do was... run away. At 1200 hours on 13 September 2061, Macross Valiant and its 900 ship fleet began their fold jump out of the danger zone. The Barbarossa deployed an experimental fold wave jamming device to mask the gravitational waves caused by such a large fold operation and it appeared the main fleet had been successfully avoided until the ship detected a mayday being broadcast from the vicinity of the main fleet. Due to some route miscalculation of a malfunction of its fold system, one of the Macross Valiant fleet's environment ships had defolded in the middle of the main fleet. The Barbarossa's captain, Colonel Darius Ilsen, sent an urgent fold communication to Earth asking for instructions. The General Staff's orders were to avoid contact with the main fleet to prevent the Zentradi from obtaining any information about humanity. Colonel Ilsen was then surprised to learn from the deck officer that Major Stanley Corbeck, the Barbarossa's flight commander, had ordered his troops to prepare to sortie for a rescue mission. Colonel Ilsen gave his consent, and at 12:50 the Barbarossa changed course to intercept the main fleet. The Barbarossa's goal was to rendezvous with, and evacuate the crew and passengers of, the Macross Valiant fleet's 97th Environment Ship Sentosa. A resort, ship, the Sentosa was lucky to have only a small number of employees and guests aboard because it was a weekday. Their goal was to approach under the concealment of electronic countermeasures, retrieve the civilians, and de-arse the area with the quickness. Because most of its internal spaces were given over to test equipment and data collection hardware, the 2,000 man capacity of the Barbarossa was cut in half and it was only carrying two squadrons (40 aircraft in total) of the new VF-25 Messiah. The evacuation was expected to take hours, since the Sentosa's crew had followed safety guidelines and instructed the civilians to take shelter in the ship's emergency shelters. Colonel Ilsen ordered the Barbarossa to conduct a short-ranged fold jump to within a few kilometers of the Sentosa, and immediately upon arrival began jamming Zentradi sensors with the Barbarossa's powerful ECM. The 40 VF-25s from SVF-173 and SVF-509 were launched to create a defensive cordon around the evacuation. The Zentradi ships nearby put two-and-two together and realized the Barbarossa was there to rescue the other ship's crew, and launched their own attack with over 100 Regults. The Barbarossa's VF-25s were outfitted with Super Packs in anticipation of a prolonged fight and area control was managed by a RVF-25 feeding data to Major Corbeck of SVF-173 and Captain Gados of SVF-503. Working in a flexible rotation to replenish ammunition and fuel, the defense network managed by the two VF-25S's and one RVF-25 were able to coordinate an effective and surprisingly low-stress defense. The three SMS members who'd accompanied L.A.I.'s engineers also participated in the operation despite being told that doing so was voluntary (and unpaid). At around 16:40, three and a half hours into the rescue operation, Captain Gados of SVF-509 asked permission to deploy reaction weaponry against Zentradi ships nearby. Colonel Ilsen declined, and instead requested the SMS platoon to rush the bridge of the nearest ship, where they were able to capture its captain and buy the operation another two hours. Near the end of the operation, a civilian from the Sentosa reported that his pet dog had been left behind after he was separated from it by one of the ship's emergency bulkheads and a member of SVF-173 volunteered to go find it before the Barbarossa's retreat. Using a fold booster, 1st Lt. Sato boarded the Sentosa's resort area to begin the search. Five minutes later, one of the Barbarossa's two VF-25Gs providing fire support reported having located the dog with his high-precision cameras, and the pet was safely recovered by Sato's VF-25C. With the evacuation complete and the enemy Regults falling back as larger Zentradi warships entered gun range, Colonel Ilsen gave Major Corbeck the order to destroy the Sentosa with MDE weaponry to prevent the Zentradi from acquiring any information about humanity from it. The detonation of two MDE warheads destroyed the Sentosa utterly, and caused the Zentradi to pause in their advance. The Barbarossa successfully withdrew from the combat area without further incident, with her two squadrons having secured a record-setting 482 confirmed kills during the 6 hour long engagement and with no losses of their own. Only two aircraft were damaged badly enough to require repairs, and those were minor enough that they were completed during the battle in less than an hour and the aircraft returned to the fight. It's noted at the end that despite the VF-25's price tag being as high or higher than the VF-19's, it has a good reputation for cost-effectiveness. 27 of the 40 pilots involved in the operation had never seen actual combat before, which was a testament to its ease of operation. All forty pilots were awarded either the Roy Focker Medal or Titanium Medal for their exceptional valor. It's noted that, despite the departure of the Vajra, the VF-25 shows clear promise as a new weapon to defend humanity. (It ends with a final aside that 1st Lt. Sato, later Cpt. Sato, was later gifted with one of puppies of the rescued dog.)

Hm... for a question elsewhere on the boards, I was looking into a section in the VF-25 Master File book that talks about one of the first combat actions of the VF-25 against something other than the Vajra. The "Lost Children" segment in the book mentions an engagement where Macross Valiant (Macross-16) is fleeing from a Zentradi main fleet it bumped into and one of her escorts - the CV-455 Barbarossa - goes off on a solo mission to rescue the passengers of an environment ship that wasn't able to get clear in time. The text describes a six hour engagement against the Zentradi while just forty VF-25s held off several hundred battle pods, racking up 482 confirmed kills with no losses while defending the Barbarossa's evacuation of 1,200 civilians and one terrified dog. (The reason I originally went looking for that section was because it described the New UN Forces blowing up one of their own ships - the environment ship in question - with two MDE warheads to prevent it from falling into Zentradi hands.)

One of thousands... there are, according to Exsedol, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 main fleets still active in the present day. Macross Chronicle suggests that there may have been 5,000 or more main fleets at the apex of the Protoculture's civilization. Where "millions" comes into it is the number of ships each main fleet theoretically has, assuming its logistical backbone is mostly intact and they haven't been too badly depleted by combat losses. Well, we can say with some confidence that clean pants would temporarily be in short supply. Being discovered by a Zentradi formation as small as a branch fleet (~1,000 ships) is Serious Business for an emigrant fleet or planet. The local New UN Forces protecting an emigrant fleet or planet are, at least in theory, equal to the task of containing a branch fleet-sized threat and either destroying it outright or convincing it to defect using the Minmay Attack. It's mentioned in passing in the Macross Delta gaiden manga White Knight of the Black Wing that there's an obligation for nearby fleets or planets to reinforce a neighbor under attack by the Zentradi or some other threat. (The losses sustained by the Aerial Knights reinforcing one of Windermere IV's neighboring systems against a rogue Zentradi attack was one of the things King Grammier felt made their membership in the New UN Government an "unequal treaty", since it didn't directly benefit Windermere.) It's doubtful the local New UN Forces of any fleet, planet, or region save perhaps for Earth could successfully repel a main fleet. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah, though not official setting material, relays a story about the Macross Valiant emigrant fleet finding itself in close proximity to a main fleet and executing an emergency fold to escape. From that story, it seems like the New UN Forces or New UN Government may have something similar to the Cole Protocol from Halo... given that the New UN Forces ordered that one of the fleet's environment ships that was unable to escape be destroyed with MDE weapons to prevent it from giving up any info on humanity. (That story is mainly about the daring solo rescue mission by the carrier Barbarossa to evacuate the 1,200 civilians and one dog aboard that ship before destroying it, and the critical role the VF-25 played in that mission.)

Well, we'll find out what other surprises the galaxy has in store when the new movie drops... As far as Var syndrome goes, I'd expect outbreaks have either sharply declined or ceased altogether after the events of Macross Delta now that the Windermereans have more or less lost the means to weaponize it.

Latence was defeated and disbanded after their failed coup d'état in 2051. There are some splinter groups like Fasces that carry on their ideals, but things have largely settled down in the wake of the Second Unification War. Which isn't to say it's entirely peaceful. Kaname Buccaneer's home planet Divide is implied to basically be Space Northern Ireland living its own version of The Troubles in the form of an ongoing civil war between pro- and anti-autonomy supporters.

So... not really? I feel like they might have their chronology or relationships a bit muddled? I don't believe General Galaxy has ever been (directly) connected to the authoritarian movement Latence that caused the Second Unification War. Their main backer, as established in the Macross VF-X2 game itself, was another defense industry company called Critical Path. Macross Frontier's novelizations do draw some minor connections between the Critical Path corporation and General Galaxy, but none that connect directly to Latence. Critical Path were pioneers in the study of fold quartz and bankrolled Dr. Mao Nome's expedition to study the Vajra. They also did some research into cybernetics and digitization of consciousness, and a digital copy of their CEO's mind recorded before his death fighting the VF-X Ravens became one of the "Cyber Nobles" who rule Macross Galaxy. Fasces... almost certainly not. I'd imagine General Galaxy probably wanted them gone, considering they were raiding the Macross Galaxy fleet to steal ships, fighters, and supplies to sustain their terrorist activities. Their final shenanigan was to hijack one of the Macross Galaxy fleet's residential ships, a Riviera-class resort ship named Evouna, in order to capture a secret Macross Galaxy Corporate Army research facility hidden in its sublevels. The Epsilon Foundation absolutely had ties to General Galaxy, but it's a major conglomerate megacorp in and of itself with subsidiaries in all kinds of fields from consumer electronics and tourist-y knickknacks all the way up to military hardware. The military hardware they sell definitely has some connections to General Galaxy, though. The ships they sold seem to be derivatives of the ones used by Macross Galaxy and the fighters are designed by a design team founded at General Galaxy and built by an Epsilon Foundation subsidiary.

So... The Dungeon of Black Company is basically one massive jab at Japanese corporate culture? I can dig it. It feels a bit like Turnabout Trial/Ace Attorney in that respect, since that series is a massive jab at Japan's court system. It's entertaining so far, though Kinji's definitely a bit of hypocrite when it comes to work ethic. It was rather entertaining watching him...

Finished How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. The animation quality took a noticeable dive in the show's last few episodes, almost like the animators got bored and gave up. I realize that most isekai is low-hanging-fruit otaku wish fulfillment, but the excuses some of these shows come up with to give the isekai'd protagonist a harem are starting to get rather flimsy. The story stuck with its unusual and oddly compelling premise, but got derailed pretty quick by a war story arc that has an ending that completely defeats the point of the whole thing and robs it of any significance or impact. I really don't feel like any of the characters besides Kazuya and maybe Poncho are distinct, too. All the girls surrounding him are pretty similar in looks and temperment... which means none of them really stand out unless they're acting out. Started The Dungeon of Black Company just a moment ago, and I have to admit I instantly like this protagonist without even knowing his name. He may profess to be a NEET, but he's got mad engineer energy. He put a gargantuan amount of effort and intelligence to work creating tools and optimizing processes to the point that he could remove himself from the process he'd created without negatively impacting it or sacrificing any of the benefits. That is the soul of engineering. If he didn't get isekai'd, I'd say this guy is going places... or not going places, since his stated goal is to be a NEET. Could've done without him soliloquizing about his brilliance in naught but a banana hammock, though. EDIT: I question his terms... a NEET implies he's not employed, but he's clearly the landlord/owner of the management firm for three highrise apartment complexes in Tokyo. That's employment. So he can't be a NEET.

Currently watching How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom... and it's pretty tedious. Granted, it's an approach to isekai that I haven't seen anyone else attempt but it's kind of surprising the inhabitants of this fantasy world survived long enough for Kazuya to arrive when their leaders are so blitheringly incompetent on every level.

Palladium's game system is clunky, sure... but Strange Machine's is way worse in that it's barely there at all and combines that with a punishing lack of accuracy with respect to the setting. Palladium may have phoned in the art, but Strange Machine phoned in everything else.

Maybe... or it might just be that Toy Galaxy did one short-ish episode on the whole Robotech/Macross thing without any dedicated/separate funding for that project specifically. Or it may be that Toy Galaxy used the absolute minimum amount of imagery from the animation. Using the minimum amount necessary for review is one of the standard criteria for a Fair Use defense. I'd imagine that most, if not all, of the stakeholders in Macross distribution have a dim view of crowdfunding after the Palladium Books Robotech Kickstarter scandal(s) too. We do know HG's absolutely death on crowdfunding between that and their own original epic fail, and I'd expect Big West probably wasn't happy about its IP being peripherally involved in Kevin Siembieda's financial misconduct either.

Shot through The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent in a single sitting. Short, but wholesome enough... even if it doesn't really have much to offer in the way of original thought. It's cute, at least. I can't help but look at Prince Kyle and think "wow, that's basically just Bogue... but being taken seriously by someone".

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.