Seto Kaiba

Eh... not The End, but arguably a step in its direction. Let's be honest, the movie-going experience was never all that great and has been losing A LOT of ground to home theater for the last 13 years or so. There's precious little charm to be found in paying ten bucks or more for the privilege of sitting in cramped, uncomfortable seating in a room where every surface is liberally caked in congealed soda with a dusting of crushed popcorn with a bunch of other people after dropping fifty bucks on concessions just to see a movie. That was the only way to do justice to a film back when your average patron's home television was a grainy 28 inch 480i CRT. Now that the average television in service is a 40+ inch 1080p flat panel and the average new television is a 52+ inch 4K flat panel, that brief period of theatrical exclusivity is about all that's keeping the cinemas in business. Why go to the theater when you've got a nice big, vibrant screen in the privacy* of your home, where you can watch in a room that is as clean or filthy as you please**, in a comfy chair, where that same popcorn you paid $20 for at the theater costs $0.46, and where you can technically hurl problematic moviegoers from the room without incident. Now that that... charming... moviegoing experience also comes with the possibility of catching the plague and dying, it's not surprising studios are looking at going directly to home theaters with streaming. I'm just surprised it was Warner Bros who made the first move. I expected it'd be one of the companies in worse financial straits like Paramount that'd be the ones to call AMC's bluff and risk a potential chain-wide boycott of their movies * Not available in homes with children. ** Or can tolerate.

So... I could practically hear my name being called to answer Part 1 of this question. Yes, official Macross publications (e.g. Macross Chronicle) acknowledge three different VF-1D paintjobs in the series: Hikaru's VT-102 from the first few episodes, the VF-1D that's commonly referred to as the "Virgin Road Valkyrie" which Max and Milia flew in in "Virgin Road", and the VF-1D's in mass production colors seen in the wedding procession. It isn't well-drawn, but I do not believe that it is an animation error given that it's referenced in Macross Chronicle. Very few VF-1D's were ever built, but the Macross was noted to have enough for a training squadron (12 aircraft) when she launched in February 2009. The VF-1D was not used in space if it could be helped, because the modifications to fit the second seat into a standard cockpit block involved compromising some of the space-use survival systems. It was quietly discontinued and replaced by the VT-1 starting in Block 6. That one scene in "Virgin Road" might constitute an appearance of as much as 20% of all VF-1D's built.

Even if we take the safer assumption that it's the flyaway cost, it's not especially useful in context since we don't know what the VF-171 actually costs. The closest we've ever come to that was Sky Angels giving an actual flyaway cost for the early block VF-1 Valkyrie of $126 million. That was an absolutely outrageous sum in 1984 when the doujinshi was written, between five and nine times the cost of a then-current (4th) generation fighter jet. Reality ensued, and it turned out to be an actually pretty reasonable flyaway cost for a wholly conventional 5th generation fighter jet.

Thereabouts, yeah... assuming that Windermere IV's military (the Aerial Knights) had a total strength approximately equal to a 3rd Generation emigrant fleet. It's not clear how large Windermere IV's military actually was, given that they were able to capture twenty or so inhabited planets in the Brisingr cluster through a combination of surprise attacks and mind control of the defending forces but were apparently ill equipped to deal with an actual coordinated counteroffensive from what remained of the Brisingr Alliance NUNS. Yeah, that's one of the few comparisons with respect to cost that is made in later Macross materials. The AIF-7/QF-4000 Ghost is approximately one-third the cost of a VF-171 and comes without the need to risk the life of a flesh-and-blood pilot, which made it a very attractive option as a first-wave response unit to feel out an attacking enemy's capabilities or, in some fleets, as a wholesale replacement for manned Valkyries. That the Lilldraken is smaller than the current-gen Ghost is not necessarily a guarantee that it's cheaper... initial cost and cost of operation are a delicate balance of many factors. The Lilldraken definitely has less weaponry than the Ghost does and appears to be a single-engine unit, which would definitely result in lower cost, but it's also got some features that add cost and complexity like its ability to dock with the Draken III physically and be used as a booster and drop tank or the fact that it's got its own energy conversion armor (which is only active while docked, but still).

TV Hikaru knew exactly what that felt like... in "Kung Fu Dandy", Misa botches a Daedalus Attack because she's distracted and the missile salvo meant to sink the attacking Zentradi ship downs him instead. That was what cost him his second (and final) VF-1J and left him confined to a hospital bed for the next two episodes to have the trippy clipshow dream we see in "Phantasm" and miss the defensive battle where someone in Milia's unit lethally wounds Roy in "Pineapple Salad", only to finally get back on his feet in the next episode ("Burst Point") and promptly lose Kakizaki too. That boy had it ROUGH right around the halfway point of the TV series.

Given Hikaru's questionable taste, that could end poorly... Misa: *sees a canopy cover marked H.I.❤L.M.* Hikaru: Um... oh... er... that stands for Love... Misa. Yeah, Love Misa! Followed immediately by the sound of a man being pounded into the deckplates like a tent peg with his own photo album by an irate flight controller.

If I had to guess, my guess would be that Hikaru's VF-1S was given a red canopy cover to make it more visually distinct from the other two VF-1S units that appeared earlier in the movie. Y'know, to make it more obvious that this was The Hero's mecha since it otherwise shares a design with the VFs flown by supporting characters. (It's also possible that the final color scheme wasn't set or was changed late, after the point that the artist had drawn that box art and the toy's color scheme had been set.)

Probably at least twice as many LD-262S Lilldrakens as they had Sv-262 Draken IIIs... likely more than that, given that they would have expected to have a higher loss rate for the unmanned support fighters. Every Sv-262 Draken III operating in space was outfitted with a pair of LD-262S Lilldrakens to offset the Draken III's comparatively low onboard fuel capacity by serving as a combination of drop tank and booster. The only times we see Draken IIIs without Lilldrakens is when they're operating on Windermere IV itself. Hard to say... matters of cost are almost never discussed except when something is either too expensive, or they're trying to frame something as comparatively inexpensive like the QF-4000/AIF-7 vs. the VF-171.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't... the YF-30 was never intended to be a competitor to the YF-29. It was sheer dumb luck that the gone-rogue VF-X Special Forces unit Havamal decided to locally build a small number of YF-29s on Uroboros at the same time that the YF-30 was under test by SMS on the same remote planet. (Even dumber luck that Odin-1's pilot and Siegfried-1's pilot happened to be former best friends and wingmen, making their duel as brutally level-handed as possible.) The Sv-262 Draken III used a different system than the YF-29 and VF-31 Siegfried type called the Fold Reheat. Both the standard (Ba) and command (Hs) variants have the fold reheat system, but the command variant's fold reheat system is more powerful thanks to using large fold quartz crystals provided by the Windermere royal family. The fold reheat system used by the Sv-262 could be called a more specialized derivative of the fold wave system. Instead of providing a modest increase in engine performance and performing other functions like providing additional energy to the VF via fold dimensional energy conversion, the fold reheat has and only one job: MORE THRUST. Consequently, it produces a greater improvement in maximum thrust than the fold wave system does because all of its output is focused on that one thing. It gets 25% improvement in maximum thrust (30% on the Hs type) compared to the Siegfried's fold wave system's 15%. Macross 30 was a trip, and no mistake. It got me to break the habit of a lifetime and actually buy a DX Chogokin toy. All we know of the YF-29B Perceval is that it's an improved, military spec version of the YF-29. Its only evident improvement is higher stats in-game and a bayonet attached to its heavy quantum beam gunpod. Variable Fighter Master File, the tech manual series, is what mentions a military spec YF-30 designated YF-30B (in a fetching shade of Barbie pink oddly enough) and a VF-30. Macross Delta's official setting materials make it pretty clear the VF-31 is an economized YF-30 without the proprietary hardware meant for mass production. On the list of unsavory things the Macross Galaxy fleet did, creating technically-illegal cyborg soldiers is on the tame end. The Galaxy Executives went beyond the bounds of what might be called "usual evil" and did some pretty damned inhumane things over the years in their efforts to mass-manufacture cyborg troops. Ever seen Universal Soldier? They clearly have. Ghost in the Shell too...

As far as we know, the VF-27's Super Pack wasn't intended to match the YF-29... that was more a happy accident. It was described in Macross Chronicle as being intended to further enhance the VF-27's maneuverability and armor, and the ability to match the YF-29 in combat was attributed more to the Brain Direct Interface's precision control and the high degree of parts commonality between the two aircraft. I would assume they are roughly comparable in power for most purposes... and the YF-29's beam gunpod was depicted with a rapid fire mode in Macross 30. It's unclear how many micro-missiles the VF-27 Super Lucifer had. We know the YF-29 had 100. There are some oddities in the YF-29 spec. While it appears to have the wing root gun mounts from the VF-25 and VF-27, no weapon actually listed as being mounted there. In what is perhaps a stealth nod to plans for the original VF-1, the YF-29 doesn't have beam guns on its head... it has a pair of 25mm machine guns of the same model that can be mounted on the VF-25 and VF-27's wing root. So, all in all, it has its heavy quantum beam gunpod, its MDE beam cannon turret, 100 internally carried micro-missiles, and the two 25mm machine guns on its head. (The doodads on its forearms are verniers of the same type mounted on the forearms of the VF-25's Armored Pack.) The VF-27's armament is less clear, since its micro-missile launcher capacity is not discussed. It has the head-mounted 20mm beam machine gun, the wing root-mounted 25mm gun mounts, the 35mm beam machine guns in the engine nacelles, and that heavy quantum beam gunpod. When you get right down to it, they're pretty comparable in most respects... the VF-27 is even technically a derivative of the YF-29 completed using illicitly obtained YF-29 development data. It just compensates for its extreme performance by hardening the pilot's body instead of developing a more powerful ISC with higher-purity fold quartz that wasn't available in sufficient quantities for mass production. The VF-27 has the major advantage that it can be mass produced, where the YF-29 cannot... though mass production carries ethical and legal concerns WRT the cyborg pilots. (Macross Galaxy having a rather casual attitude towards human rights abuses and what could arguably be called technological necromancy.) The YF-30 is noteworthy for four main reasons: It is the only known VF with a higher unboosted thrust-to-weight ratio than the YF-29. (53.085) Unlike the YF-29, it was not constructed to be used in combat... it was a technology demonstrator. The technology it was built to demonstrate, the Fold Dimensional Resonance system, is a more powerful version of the YF-29's fold wave system. It is the only VF to score a documented kill on a YF-29. All in all, it demonstrated the ability to go toe to toe with the upgraded New UN Forces spec YF-29B Perceval and win due to its greater performance and flexibility even though it was not as heavily armed. Macross Chronicle, though not official setting material, asserts there was an improved military spec (YF-30B) produced and that a VF-30 was also developed... though likely without the proprietary Fold Dimensional Resonance system and with either derated or different engines. Yeah... like the VF-27, the Sv-262 can be mass produced. This is partly due to Windermere IV having large deposits of high purity fold quartz that the Kingdom of the Wind's royal family went to war with the New UN Government over mining regulations of. There are more than just a few squadrons of them. The Sv-262 Draken III was the main variable fighter of the Kingdom of the Wind during its 2067 war with the New UN Government. Most, if not all, of its VF pilots were flying them. Even if they only have the military strength of a single medium-sized emigrant fleet, that's almost 2,000 of them. Their heavy quantum beam gunpods seem to have near-identical firepower to those of the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30. Its 27mm railguns are comparable to the military spec VF-31's, being the same basic model (LM-27). Their firepower is unclear, though it's worth noting that it's a stupidly safe bet they're firing similar anti-energy conversion armor rounds to what's used in more traditional machine guns. As solid ammo weapons, that would put them on similar terms to the YF-29's ES-25A machine guns, but in a higher caliber and possibly with greater muzzle energy as either a railgun-assisted traditional projectile or a true railgun round. The YF-29's armor is heavier, but if remarks about the Draken III's fold reheat are accurate then it may actually be able to out-perform the YF-29 in a dogfight if they're both boosting. It may also be to the Sv-262's advantage that it normally sorties with two Lilldraken units that function as additional boosters and drone aircraft. I was actually thinking more of the VF-25's Super Pack and Armored Pack... but that works too. In all three cases, we're talking at least twice the number of missiles the YF-29 has to work with, with various other additional weaponry. Raw thrust is not necessarily a great metric to work from. Thrust-to-weight ratio is a better indicator of how much engine power will actually affect performance because that accounts for the mass of the aircraft the engines are pushing. The YF-30's FF-3001/FC2 engines have the highest rated thrust of any thermonuclear reaction turbine engine thus far at 2,110 kN. The YF-29 is runner up, with its FF-3001/FC1 main engines being rated at 2,105 kN. The Sv-262 has a lock on third place with its FF-2999/FC2 engines rated for 1,955 kN. The YF-29 does indeed have the most raw engine power available, a whopping total of 7,150 kN... but it's also far and away the heaviest modern VF at an empty weight of 15,620 kg, almost double that of the typical mass production 5th Generation VF. The VF-27 is in second with 5,508 kN of total thrust, but it's also the second-heaviest at 12,080 kg making it half-again as heavy as a typical mass production 5th Gen VF. The YF-30 is in third, with 4,220 kN, though its much lower mass of 8,106 kg means that it boasts the highest thrust-to-weight ratio by a considerable margin. The Sv-262 Draken III is in fourth, with 3,910 kN and a slightly high airframe mass of 9,782 kg. In terms of thrust-to-weight ratio, the YF-30 is tops with 53.085. The YF-29 is in second with 46.676. The VF-27 is in third with 46.493. The Sv-262 is in fourth with 40.758. If you factor in boost systems, at least WRT the VFs equipped with fold wave or fold reheat systems, that potentially takes the YF-29 to 49.554 but puts the Sv-262Ba over it at 50.948 and Sv-262Hs over it at 52.834. That would leave the unboosted YF-30 in first, the boosted Sv-262 in second, the boosted YF-29 in third, and the VF-27 in fourth. Well, the YF-30 is often described as a descendant of both the YF-24 Evolution design and the YF-29 Durandal design... though what it takes from the Durandal is mainly just the fold wave system that it improved into the fold dimensional resonance system. The mass-production VF-31, not so much... though several of those were given aftermarket customizations to install a fold wave system into them. Strictly speaking, I don't think we've actually seen a "stock" YF-29 since the YF-29 was rushed to completion using appropriated VF-25 parts in Macross Frontier. Of that, I am not so sure. Macross Delta was kind of a de-escalation in a lot of ways. As I've argued in the past, the stock VF-31 Kairos was not really much of an improvement on the nearly ten year old VF-25A-1 Messiah. The Xaos custom "Siegfried" type wasn't able to sustain the kind of performance the YF-29 or YF-30 enjoyed simply because it wasn't designed for it. They were customized VF-31As that were designed for much lower engine outputs and Hayate was admonished several times for the damage that simply flying that custom VF-31 without kid gloves was causing to it. The Sv-262 Draken III was only slightly better in its unboosted state, and while its boost could also take it into similar territory with the YF-29 and YF-30, that was noted to have unpleasant effects on both aircraft AND pilot and the comparatively lower levels of training and practical experience on the part of Windermere IV's armed forces meant that in a level fight even the previous generation VF-171-II was shown to be able to overcome the difference that existed in their base performance thanks to the NUNS pilots having more experience and training. The Aerial Knights were running mainly on natural talent and luck, rather than skill and experience. Delta Flight's new VFs were ace customs that were themselves fairly bank-breaking affairs, though not to the same extent as the YF-29 due to their more sparing use of fold quartz... and barely able to withstand that lower level of performance as it was. I'd expect that if they're the ones to fight this new threat, the new threat will probably not be any more intimidating than the VF-27 or Sv-262 on paper. The YF-29 was an irreplaceable Super Prototype... a weapon of awesome power that was simply too difficult to complete and too impractical to actually use until there was literally no other option left on the table.

Huh... so, it took me a hot minute there to figure out what exactly you were asking since I'm not a toy collector and don't follow the toy threads. I usually only post there when specifically summoned to answer a question. In DYRL?, Hikaru's (011), Kakizaki's (012), and Max's (013) VF-1A Valkyries all have their armored canopy covers painted in the pilot's color... red, green, and blue respectively. Roy's VF-1S has always had a black canopy cover. The bone of contention here why the VF-1S that Max was flying during the dogfight with Milia after becoming Skull Leader had a black canopy cover while the one Hikaru gets at the start of the final battle scene when he is acting as Skull Leader is painted red? In Macross, as in most mecha anime, there is almost never any evident rhyme or reason behind the specific character color schemes. It seems to be down to the pilot's personal preference most, if not all, of the time. The only instance I can recall where that was specifically not the case was in Macross II: Lovers Again. It's never referenced in the anime, but in the OVA's artbooks the VF-2SS Valkyrie IIs flown by pilots other than Sylvie and Nex are supposedly color-coded by the pilot's gender. The VF-2SS with green trim is captioned "For male pilots", and the VF-2SS with yellow trim as "For female pilots". Of course, since Sylvie and Fairy Platoon are the only female pilots ever shown on screen this may be more a case of an elite unit and the Spacy's two most elite pilots having special color schemes to mark them out as the elite. (Fairy Platoon's colors are reversed for the Moon Festival, all red or all yellow with white trim, though the holographic? light trails they're trailing during the airshow are the original Skull platoon's colors: red, green, blue, and yellow.) In Macross 7, there is an isolated case where accent color seems to reflect organizational intent... though it's hard to say if this is an actual organizational requirement or a choice intended to honor the memory of a deceased mentor. Diamond Force's VF-17s were matte black with a colored trim stripe. Their default accent color was white, though Captain Kinryu had gold/yellow trim on his VF-17S. It's possible this was his personal preference and a play on words, since he has the kanji for "Gold" in his name. As the series progressed, Kinryu was replaced by Milia (who repainted Kinryu's VF-17S red but retained the yellow trim) and then Gamlin (who repainted it black but also kept the yellow trim). When Docker, one of Gamlin's wingmen who was incapacitated way back in the first episode, returned to duty and was given command of Emerald Force he also went with white trim for his wingmen's machines and gold trim for his VF-19S. It's not made clear if this use of yellow trim is something actually mandated for the command units or simply a personal touch by their leaders (who both served under Kinryu).

Hm... "Yes and no", would have to be my answer. On the one hand, the YF-29 is arguably the strongest Variable Fighter to appear in a Macross story so far in terms of its combination of flight performance and armament. On the other hand, the YF-29 is Macross's first Gundam-esque Super Prototype that's effectively impossible to mass produce due to its cost, complexity, and the difficulty inherent in obtaining enough fold quartz at the necessary level of purity. There are other 5th Generation VF designs that rival or even exceed its flight performance, and there are other 5th Generation VF designs that can rival or exceed it for raw firepower. One of those, the YF-30 Chronos, is a less super Super Prototype that boasts an even higher T/W ratio than the YF-29's (46.676 vs 53.085). The production Sv-262 can get to 50.948 with its fold reheat, and the production VF-27 Super Lucifer is also noted to be able to rival the YF-29 in flight performance. Several other 5th Generation VFs can rival the YF-29 for firepower with Option Packs that give them 2-3x the number of missiles to play with. The Queadluun-Alma, a rogue mecha belonging to the anti-government organization Fasces can put in an unusual claim as it boasts supreme defensive power via its Astral system that can supposedly tank hits from a Macross Cannon. Essentially, whether or not the YF-29 is the strongest Valkyrie to yet appear depends on what criteria we're considering.

Yup... Star Trek: Discovery's creators are getting dragged pretty hard over how ridiculous that looks. IMO, some of the complaining is unwarranted. There's no hard and fast rule that says that warp coils have to be energized by plasma direct from the warp core. As long as they've got some means of either getting plasma over there or sending energy to generate plasma over there there shouldn't actually be a reason why detached nacelles wouldn't work at warp speeds. Funnily enough, the crew actually tried that back in season two... it failed due to interference from the AI protecting the sphere data. I'd like to dismiss it on those grounds too... but they've obviously building towards it in season three's story.

One minor correction... the VF-4's six engines are a pair of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, a pair of thermonuclear ramjet engines, and a pair of (conventional) hybrid rocket engines. Not really, no... the closest we ever get to that kind of complexity is the König Monster's combination of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and plasma rockets. At the very least, we know that the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and hybrid rocket engines are designed to operate concurrently. The VF-4's Master File book, while not official setting material, suggests the answer is a very definite "maybe". It contends that the thermonuclear ramjet engines in the wings only operate at airspeeds of Mach 3 or above, at which their output is high enough for them to effectively take over for the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. So, official materials indicate the VF-4A-0's FF-2011 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines were good for 14,000kgf (137.3kN) at 100% power. It's worth noting that, on those older specs, 100% was not the actual peak power of the engine... the actual maximum rated output was 200% on the early block VF-1's and 240% on later block VF-1s and later models. That would make their actual maximum power was 33,600kgf (329.5kN). No thrust figure is given for the ramjets, AFAIK. Master File is the only source to list a thrust for the rocket engines, which appropriate to their reduced size is significantly less than the NP-BP-01's 120,000kgf (1176.8kN) at a mere 18,560kgf (182.0kN). The ramjet engines were a way to improve high-altitude performance and increase maximum cruising speed.

Nah... unless Q gets involved the writers won't stand trial for it in-universe. Besides, we've seen (in Voyager) that bad writing is a civil matter, not a criminal one. All told, while I expected that the writing would take a dive again around the middle of season three like it did in the previous two seasons... the refit of the USS Discovery is one of the things I think I'm the least happy about. The Crossfield-class USS Discovery was already kind of an ugly piece of crap almost literally rescued from Ralph McQuarrie's trash can. It was with good reason that Ken Adam and Ralph McQuarrie's rough draft of a refit Enterprise created for Planet of the Titans was scrapped in favor of something that more closely resembled the iconic Matt Jeffries design. Reviving the design with Discovery's obsession with digital VFX just made the ship look simultaneously ugly and too advanced for the era of Star Trek's history it was supposed to belong to, along with a registry that suggested the ship was MUCH older than it was. After moving on to the 32nd century, the show's writers had a pre-prepared excuse to abandon the unlovely and unpopular Crossfield-class design and have the crew take possession of a less-ugly modern Starfleet ship with all the latest bells and whistles that 32nd century Starfleet can provide. This was actually important to continuity, since the Short Treks episode "Calypso" indicated that they abandoned the Discovery in some remote region of space in its 23rd century form. Instead, we got this. I'll give the writers one thing. I agree with their decision to change the ship's registry. Starfleet Command officially listed USS Discovery as destroyed with all hands back in 2257. Since, in Discovery's timeline, time travel was banned after the conclusion of the Temporal Cold War it makes sense that Starfleet would make at least a token effort to disguise the fact that this ship had unlawfully time traveled from the distant past by registering her as a different vessel that just happens to have inherited the older ship's name and registry. Unfortunately, that's the beginning and the end of my ability to take this thing seriously... because all I see when I look at the redesigned USS Discovery is a Starfleet ship that's been riced out. It looks like they took the already unloved and unlovely Crossfield-class CG model and decided that the only way to make it look more futuristic was to add the spaceship equivalent of ground effects.

They pardoned Burnham... they ARE a political joke. Now that I think on it, it's kind of weird how quickly the crew of the USS Discovery get over their displeasure at having to work with Burnham after her conviction and her dishonorable discharge. Everyone but Detmer and Saru seems to take having Starfleet's Public Enemy No.1 aboard ship in stride. You'd expect she'd meet a reception as frosty as what the other convict crew like Ro Laren and Tom Paris got, especially when they get introduced to officers who aren't aware (or don't care) about her pardon and alleged redemption like Reno and Pike. (And the idea that her crimes vanished from history just because she was pardoned and her record expunged is a bit odd too... it's not like Starfleet can just order everyone to erase the memory of her trial and conviction from their memories. Once the 32nd century Starfleet figured out who she is, you'd have expected them to react more unfavorably to a woman who was, in her time, the worst criminal in Starfleet history.)

Yup, there's that mid-season plot snarl I was talking about a few posts back... we've hit the middle of the Season 3 and, for the second time, Star Trek: Discovery's writers revealed that they will always fall back on their bad habits to the detriment of the series and franchise as a whole. Eh... in all fairness, this wouldn't exactly be the first time that the Vulcan scientific establishment collectively folded their arms and refused to consider any explanation that didn't line up perfectly with their preconceived notions of how the universe works. "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible." Remember how well that proclamation aged? Once they started preaching the impossibility of time travel to Starfleet officers, it took Starfleet barely two years to serve up physical evidence of time travel and not quite three years for Starfleet to have one of its ships actually travel in time. Three years and they had the Science Directorate eating their words and quite possibly their own robes in frustration as a human they'd previously dismissed as crazy undermined thousands or maybe millions of scientific papers and punched gaping holes in Vulcan's understanding of the universe. If the Science Directorate still exists in the 32nd century, I can hear their complaining now... "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that getting the humans involved is cheating". That said, one would almost expect that the reason the 23rd century Discovery crew are the ones being assigned to figure out what "the burn" was and why it happened is because everyone else in that future has grown up with the consequences of it and really isn't as invested in solving it as they are. ... yeah, definitely not Saru's smartest moment. "Let's promote the raw ensign who has barely any qualifications and no social skills over the heads of dozens of more qualified candidates. That's a great idea that in no way, shape, or form will smack of favoritism or come back to bite me in the future." It's not the all-time biggest failure to judge character in the series, though. That belongs to the unnamed Federation President c.2257 who pardoned Michael Burnham.

Hmm... I'm now especially interested since it appears to include stuff Kawamori designed for non-canon Macross games.

As noted previously, Macross II's creators stuck with a more typical mecha anime level of detail when laying out the stats for the OVA's mecha. That unfortunately means we don't have concrete numbers for things like the firepower of different weapons. When it comes to the railguns, all we really get are relative statements of power like the VF-2SS's standard/medium railgun gunpod, Nex's custom heavy railgun, and the anti-capital ship railguns mounted on the Super Armed Pack and Defender-EX Destroid. Energy weapons aren't really commented on in the published stats except to note number and type. Both the UN Forces and the Mardook seem to have abandoned laser weaponry in its various forms in favor of more advanced and powerful beam weaponry in Macross II. The Mardook's improved Nousjaedul-Ger was the odd man out as the only mecha with other types of energy weaponry, having retained the original design's impact cannon and plasma cannon.

Well... in some ways, they are. In others, not so much. For instance, the progression of things like engine power in Kawamori's timeline is much more rapid with VF thrust-to-weight ratios shooting into the double digits from the 4th Generation onwards where it stays in the single digits in Yatagai's timeline. The usage of unmanned aircraft as wingmen and the widespread adoption of railguns in lieu of conventional cannons is way more widespread in Yatagai's timeline than Kawamori's.

There was no real announcement that they'd officially given it a designation... it just showed up with a designation one day on the old official Macross portal's Flash interface. I'm not aware of any source that gives an explicit statement of the thrust available from the sub-engines... though if the remarks about the VF-2SS having three times the output of the VF-1 apply here, it'd be around 8,900kgf or about 77% of the output of the VF-1's engine. We know the VF-2JA has lower performance than the VF-2SS as a result of being a lower-cost rear echelon planetary defense aircraft rather than a frontline main VF. Though it is helpfully noted to be non-trivially faster than previous-generation main fighters and sacrificed unneeded fuel capacity as a dedicated atmospheric fighter for further-increased armor. Admittedly, the pace of technological development in Macross II's timeline is slower than in the main Macross universe that came along after it. The Valkyrie II's "fully loaded" thrust-to-weight ratio with the Super Armed Pack is slightly better than the original VF-1 Super Valkyrie but that higher performance is more sustainable since it's not dependent on short-lived rocket motors to make up the difference. Performance-wise, they're about on par with the 3rd Generation VFs in Kawamori's timeline.

Eh... personally, I doubt it. We've seen - via Prometheus - that material from the Alien setting doesn't go over nearly as well with fans or with general audiences when it's divorced from the xenomorphs who are the franchise's iconic namesake. The Colonial Marines don't really have any story to offer that doesn't involve ending up as Weyland-Yutani brand Xenomorph chow. Similarly, we've seen how Predator fared poorly when its story tried to be something more than just "clicky bois on safari hunt the most dangerous game" and made an ill-advised effort to try to tie their activities into a less malicious motive. It'd also be facing competition from the aesthetically and thematically-similar, but more action and cast-survival-friendly TV series adaptation of Halo: Combat Evolved that is set to air on Showtime starting in Q1 2021.

... well, let's hope that's not true. Otherwise, it seems like they're about to Terminator: Dark Fate themselves out of a job.

Macross II: Lovers Again actually did get a fair amount of detail... the problem, from the fan perspective, is that that the bulk of the information was never collected in any one publication after the fact. Like you'd expect for a sequel to a popular anime series, the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA got a fair amount of attention from the hobby press when it was in development and production. There were the usual creator interviews, the teased designs for various characters and mecha, the articles talking about various aspects of the story and setting, promotional tie-ins, and all the other odds and ends. Where that became a problem is that that information was never consolidated the closer they got to release. It was a series of exclusives for the various hobby magazines like Newtype, Animage, and B-Club. If one of those hobby magazines wasn't in your spectrum of interests - like a scale modeling magazine would be to a casual anime hobbyist - then you just missed the one and only publication that talked about subjects X, Y, and Z. And this was back before the internet, so the only way to know about that was to either be already subscribed or see some kind of advert, and the only way to get it if you missed it was to go do the crawl of your local stores for unsold back issues. The one that I think really put a dent in Macross II was that the one and only article to give in-depth coverage of Macross II's timeline and the development of its mecha was an exclusive in Bandai's B-Club magazine. Of course, even then, the level of detail behind Macross II's mecha wasn't as high as the obsessive level of detail Kawamori and Chiba put into Macross's original series. It was more in line with what was being done in the rest of the industry. Macross's creators aren't exactly aloof to the series... Haruhiko Mikimoto snuck several nods to Macross II into his later work for the franchise like Macross 7, Macross 7 Trash, and Macross the First. Some would argue Macross Delta was Kawamori borrowing its take on an alien foe who weaponized songs for mind control purposes. Macross II: Lovers Again was also ahead of the curve when it came to a number of trends that emerged in later Macross titles and setting materials like: Future generations of Variable Fighter after the VF-4 incorporating Zentradi overtechnology to improve performance and durability. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting starting in This is Animation Special: Macross Plus.) Next Generation main Variable Fighters based on Zentradi battle suit technology reverse-engineered from a captured factory satellite. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting via the YF-21/VF-22 in Macross Plus and Macross 7.) VF designs being optimized for usage in space or atmosphere. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting starting in This is Animation Special: Macross Plus.) VF cockpits with controls incorporated into a g-force resistant armature to help pilots maintain control under high g-loads. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting via Macross Frontier's EX-Gear.) VF designs with four thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting in Macross Frontier.) VF designs that leverage high generator outputs to replace conventional guns with railguns. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting in Macross Frontier, Macross R, Macross Delta.) VF designs with beam gunpods. (Incorporated into the main Macross setting in Macross Frontier.) As an unrelated point, the Metal Siren didn't have a designation for a very long time. It was just "Metal Siren". The "VF-1MS" thing is something that Palladium Books invented, which obviously doesn't work as it implies the Metal Siren is a variant of the VF-1 Valkyrie. The official Macross website finally gave it a designation of "VA-1SS" around the time production started on Macross Frontier, and that's the one that stuck ever since.

Yup... but it preserves more dramatic tension to have humanity be unable to kill the monster without having to resort to extreme measures like teaming up with the other monster (as in AVP) or just flat-out nuking the entire area (as in AVP:R). There's no tension left if Johnny Testosterone-Tits and nine of his best mates can just roll up with pulse rifles and convert swarms of the nasty buggers into piles of picante salsa verde with chitin chips in barely enough time to boil an egg. There's even less tension when the eminently bullet-absorbent monster feels compelled to stop and pose for the camera in all its mutilated glory every five minutes. "Where is it? Oh, it's over there posing impressively." I regret that I do not have an adequately strong way to express my approval of this statement. "QFT" will have to do, for now. Alien: Isolation understood what made the alien scary. That it is something unseen and unstoppable, hunting you with profoundly lethal intent but in no hurry to actually finish the job. If this new Predator movie can get back to Predator's roots by making the titular Predator into an unseen and decidedly malicious hunter that's messing with a crew of certifiable bad*sses for funsies with every expectation and ability to kill them without breaking a sweat, then it might be worthwhile.