Seto Kaiba

To be honest, I'm fairly certain what that says about the fanbase is that there really isn't much of one anymore. Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, Michael Chabon, and the other drooling incompetents currently running the Star Trek franchise (into the ground) boldly doubled down on the mistakes of J.J. Abrams and created a new kind of Star Trek that appealed to nobody. That's why they have almost no third-party merchandising support for the new flagship Star Trek series. Seriously... look at the audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes: Star Trek: 88% Star Trek: the Animated Series: 80% Star Trek: the Next Generation: 90% Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: 86% Star Trek: Voyager: 75% Star Trek: Enterprise: 77% Star Trek: Discovery: 42% Star Trek: Picard: 56% Star Trek: Lower Decks: 36% Now, my two degrees might only technically be in mathematics but I'm pretty sure I see a trend here... all-original Kurtzman Trek does frankly terrible, and Kurtzman Trek that leans on beloved characters from much better previous shows do significantly better but still nowhere near as well as Star Trek shows made by people who actually "get" Star Trek. When a video about a cat who'll be guest-starring on the latest season of Discovery has TWENTY TIMES the number of views as its new main cast member, that should tell the creators something about how well-received their work is. Even Garrett Wang and Ethan Phillips, the actors behind two of Star Trek's most loathed characters, have almost three times the view count of the new leading man in Star Trek: Discovery, and the two of them played characters so unpopular they were almost killed off to appease the audience.

Yeah, I'm pretty damn pleased with what we got. I was expecting something more along the lines of Master Archive Mobile Suit: MSV Pilot Log, a book that has majority biographical content and only marginal levels of detail about the mecha those pilots famously used. I've got some time tomorrow, so I'll be taking a whack at several small sections of the new book then. I really wanna do the ANGIRAS section, but it's kinda long and detailed... definitely more than I can tackle in an afternoon.

To be honest, a lot of the explanations for why things are the way they are in Southern Cross feel like the staff came up with them after the fact to talk their way around how disorganized and blatantly derivative the show's development process was. Their body armor - the Arming Doublet - definitely works with the idea that the Southern Cross Army was mostly for show, but that's because that armor was designed back when the series was going to be about space samurai. The mecha came along much later, and in something of a hurry, when Tatsunoko decided it'd rather have another go at cashing in on the success of Gundam and Macross, and consequently don't fit the same aesthetic. The only mechanical design that dates from around the same time as the Arming Doublet is the Zor Lords mothership, being the foundation of their earlier flying castle design with the castle itself removed.

Got my copies of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1S Roy Focker Special today... and there's some good sh*t here. The book's basically mistitled, there's only about 20 pages about Roy and his aircraft. The rest is tech bits omitted from other VF-1 books. I did a full review in the Master File thread in the Books section, but the bits I'm REALLY looking forward to doing are the ones about the actuators in the VF-1's tranformation system, the bits about the structural materials used in various parts of the VF-1, the section about ANGIRAS, and especially the section about the BLCS sub-intakes.

My copies came in early... props to FedEx for going above and beyond again for no clear reason. After skimming the contents, I have to say this book is mistitled. This is Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1.5. Only about 23 pages of this 128 page book are actually about Roy Focker and fewer still are specifically about Roy's VF-1S. There are a few pages about Roy's Fokker D.VII stunt plane, a few about Roy's F203 Dragon II, a bit about the VF-X-1 prototype and VF-0S, and that's kind of it. The real attraction here is the other stuff. There's a section in this book that looks promising about the manufacturing of the VF-1 Valkyrie, a two-pager that revisits the "Streak Valkyrie" altitude test mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1, and some amazing art showing how the VF-1's control surfaces operate incl. the double slotted fowler flaps, the spoilers, and ruddervators. Some good stuff about changes between the three main production groups (Block 1-5, 6-8, and 9-17, see my posts in the Mecha Funtime thread in the TV and Movies section for more), a REALLY excellent section I'm very excited about that shows how the VF-1's boundry layer control airflow system is set up, some decent detail on the airbrake behind the cockpit, some VERY nice material about how the actual transformation system actuators are set up and how the VF-1 holds its shape during transformation, a fascinating section that shows what structural materials are used in which sections of the VF-1's design, a section about how the ANGIRAS airframe control AI works (you have no idea how excited I am for that), diagrams that show where the VF-1's optical sensor systems were, some details about the design of the mintor turret including how the motors to rotate the lasers are set up and the configuration of the main camera eyes, some repeated content about the change in cockpit design between Blocks 1-5 and 6+, a section about the GERWALK mode, some brief material on the orbital booster, and some low detail filler about the Cat's Eye and Ghost. TL;DR... if you're buying just for the pretty pictures of CG Valkyries, this book probably won't satisfy, but if you're buying it for the technology porn you're in for a treat. I am definitely looking forward to translating several sections of this book.

FedEx claims I should be getting my copies tomorrow, along with the HJ Vintage issue about the old Macross kits. Since I've been binging translations of various sections of the Master File books over the last few days for fun, it'll be interesting to see if there's anything of actual interest in this one.

This season's offerings have been kind of a snore. I legit stopped watching 'em a week or so and I literally cannot remember the names of any of the characters or what the hell is going on in any of their plots.

As clunky as that prototype looks, beggars might want to give choosing a try...

Damn it all, 2020... The Venture Bros was basically the best piece of original programming [adult swim] had. I put my name on one of the petitions to have the show picked up by a streaming service. It'd be infuriating to have the show end now when fairly half of Season 7 was spent setting up Season 8. I expected the plot thread about Rusty being a clone to be The Unreveal since he knows what the learning beds are actually for due to having used them himself as a kid, but they ended with The Monarch having finally ranked up to the point of being able to arch the newly-rich Dr. Venture again, both The Monarch and Dr. Venture learning that they're half-brothers, Hank heading off to find his biological mother, most of the B-cast trying to rebuild the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and the whole rivalry with the Peril Partnership heating up to the point of extortion and murder. They had, at most, maybe two more seasons of material in the show... but cutting it short HERE is a dick move.

Genesis Climber MOSPEADA: Magazine for Anime and Hobby Fan Genesis Climber MOSPEADA Color Graffiti Genesis Climber MOSPEADA File for Animeca Fan (sic) MOSPEADA: Complete Art Works and other books... it's literally just the exact same paragraph reprinted verbatim every time. WRT the earlier discussion of the Condor armo-soldier... you should NEVER expect accurate information from a Robotech website. That fanbase just isn't interested in accuractely documenting anything, they're just out there to write their fanfics. The safest assumption WRT anything you find on a Robotech site you haven't seen before in the OSM is to assume it's BS.

Nah, that part is just in his official bio.

Yeah, the FF-1999 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine has the dubious honor of being the first actual production-model thermonuclear reaction engine to be mass produced for the Earth UN Forces. I'm inclined to doubt that it's different-enough from the FF-2001 that was used in the VF-1 Valkyrie to constitute a different generation of engine since their adoption is separated by less than two years (2006 vs 2008) and Master File's take seems to be leaning hard towards Sky Angels's old stance that they were very similar engines (to the point that early VF space tests used the FF-1999 when the FF-2001 was delayed). Nah, as noted in my last post those are described as 3rd Generation engine technology... that's what set me wondering what the 2nd Generation was. Initial-type thermonuclear reaction turbine engine (1st Gen) -> ? (2nd Gen) -> thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engine (3rd Gen) -> Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engine (4th Gen) There's gotta be a missing piece to the puzzle here somewhere, since Master File's writeup of the FF-2550 talks about the engines of the 2nd and 3rd Generation VFs (the VF-4's FF-2011 and VF-11's FF-2025) as being mechanically the same as the VF-1's final FF-2008 engine but different-sized to suit the needs of the target aircraft.

So... looking into the FF-2550 and FF-3001... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur has some interesting things to say about how the FF-2500 series. One interesting detail that's mentioned is that the FF-2500 series was described as being developed with practicality of maintenance and servicing in mind. Shinnakasu, P&W, and Roice apparently packed the design team off to a New UN Forces warship to work on maintenance of engines in the field. It does erroneously describe VF engines as being fueled with deuterium and helium-3 in the engine section, where in other sections it correctly mentions they're using slush hydrogen. I wonder if the writers goofed and forgot that they weren't working on Master Archive Mobile Suit. Among the mentioned improvements made in the thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines are: Higher-purity fold carbon produced using an improved synthesis process allows for higher reaction temperatures. A next-generation OTM alloy-based thermoelectric cooler/generator system - the HamiltonX-Ash4 power generation system - was implemented to offer improved generator output and engine cooling. (Interestingly, this technology was noted to have been discovered in 2020 but not implemented until the late 2030s.) In addition to containing the fusion plasma with artificial gravity fields, a cyclic gravitational field produced by the GIC is used to artificially extend the thrust-increase stage by slowing down the plasma and air moving through it to allow it to pick up more heat from the plasma stream until it's able to escape the gravitational field, where it meets the airflow that bypassed the thrust-increase stage and triggers a second explosive pressure increase while also reducing the temperature of the exhaust to a level that the heat-resistant turbine blades can withstand. (This may be the "burst" in "thermonuclear reaction burst turbine".) The engine used for the 2nd Mass Production-type VF-19 is noted to have had further improvements made to its cooling systems and improved heat-resistant materials are used for its turbine blades, allowing for even higher temperatures inside the thrust-increase stage. Somewhat interestingly, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah's coverage of the FF-3001 engine mentions that the thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines were a third generation engine design. One has to wonder what technically constituted the second generation, since in official materials there are only three types of engine mentioned: the initial-type thermonuclear reaction turbine that was the standard from the VF-1 to VF-17's first variants. One thing that is again noted as a key to breakthroughs in thermonuclear reaction engine technology is improvements in the purity of synthesized fold carbon. It's noted that the development plan had three basic steps/goals: Phase 1: Development of improved heat-resistant materials to facilitate increased reactor temperatures. Phase 2: Development of a more efficient thrust-increase stage using GIC. Phase 3: Review and revise the propellant inflow inside the engine. Apparently one of the things that caused issues for the YF-24 program was the lack of a method to synthesize fold carbon at the requisite level of purity. LAI made the breakthrough they needed with the development of FC.5 fold carbon that enabled the production of the more powerful GIC system. The improvements in the GIC system apparently required that the design of the interior of the engine be revised. Improved engine control systems were needed to moderate the significantly increased output, necessitating the installation of a transmission on the high-pressure turbine. Other noteworthy changes include: Secondary compressor increased from two blades to four, with a larger leading blade used to propel bypass air for cooling the exterior of the engine. Compact thermonuclear reactor size was decreased, but reaction temperature was increased to 400MK. The thrust-increase section is enlarged relative to previous generation engines. Reintroduction of the MHD dynamo as a secondary power generation system to supplement the H-APG thermoelectric generator/cooler. The thrust-increase section contains multiple, separate airflow paths. The flow path closest to the core is hotter and drives the high-pressure turbine and the outer flow paths help reduce the temperature of the exhaust drive the low-pressure turbine. (This is apparently where "Stage II" comes from.) Two separate turbines, one high pressure and one low pressure, are connected to a transmission to allow for fine adjustments in the intake air pressure rather than allowing just the high pressure turbine to drive the compressor, making output more stable.

It's a dangerous condition... fortunately, I have a LOT of books standing between me and doing something crazy like building a death ray and trying to conquer the world. Based on a quick skim, the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines do seem to involve pulsed output... but surprisingly it's not from the thermonuclear reactor. It's pulsation in the GIC system that handles plasma containment in the thrust increase section of the engine. There are a few other minor details where the writers seem to have come down with a spot of amnesia and forgotten they weren't working on Gundam, like misattributing the fuel material of previous-gen engines as deuterium and helium-3 instead of the slush hydrogen that earlier books cited.

So, I got a little bored today after some plans fell through and decided my unprofitable boredom could be spent sussing out something that's bugged me since it first appeared in the first volume of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie. Namely, why the VF-1 is described as having three different engines during its mass production run and what the differences between them are according to Master File. This information came to us in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie. As you know, in the official setting the VF-1 Valkyrie only had the FF-2001 engine during its mass production run (2008-2015) but picked up several performance improvements starting with Block 6 upping its maximum output to 240%. I was given to wonder if these new engine types were an attempt to explain why these performance changes occurred. One nice touch I noticed is that this diagram of the internals of the Shinnakasu/P&W/Roice FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine is an updated version of the diagram from the original Macross Journal Extra: VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition "Sky Angels" book. It's a much higher quality drawing, but mechanically they preserved the original engine design the 1984 doujinshi presented. The engine-savvy among us might notice that the engine is actually missing its turbine stage and is therefore not technically a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine. They actually make an effort to explain this, both in terms of the reason for the lack of a turbine and WHY it's still called a turbine engine. Specifically, their stance is that the manufacturers didn't have access to a suitably strong heat-resistant material to make turbine blades from, and that it's still called a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine because later improvements to this design that made up the majority of the production run did add a turbine stage. This art, like the original art, omits the superconducting ram-air precompressor stage that's farther up the VF-1's leg. We can see that the secondary high-pressure compressor there is driven by an electric motor, which runs off electricity generated in the MHD dynamo farther back in the engine. The reactor sits directly behind that, allowing compressed air from the intake to pass over the reactor housing and then into the accelerator stage where it can pick up heat from the reactor and from the reactor's waste plasma (which is confined by Gravity and Inertia Control systems). Thrust control is achieved by vanes that control the amount of air directly exposed to reactor housing and plasma exhaust. Master File contends that the FF-2001 was only used on the very earliest blocks of VF-1 Valkyrie (Blocks 1-5, AKA the "TV" version) and was hastily replaced because it wasn't very good in space operations. When the VF-1 Valkyrie was updated to Block 6 - AKA the "Movie" VF-1 Valkyrie - in Master File's account it received a new engine: the FF-2006. This engine is presented as a derivative/improved version of the FF-2001 that could be called a continuing parallel development that went on while the FF-2001 went into production on the Block 1-5 VF-1 Valkyrie. How did it improve on the FF-2001? To improve control in low output scenarios, they reduced the number of blades in the secondary high pressure compressor from 6 to 4. Adjustments were made to the volume of the compact thermonuclear reactor and thrust-increasing stage to more efficiently transfer heat to the intake air. To address durability/lifespan issues in the original FF-2001's MHD dynamo resulting from its continuous exposure to high-temperature plasma, the MHD dynamo inside the thrust-increase stage was replaced by a thermoelectric converter. A secondary air inlet was added behind the second compressor stage, allowing the engine to function like a ramjet in high speed flight by bypassing the compressor to allow ram air to enter the engine directly without passing through the compressor. This is noted to have improved the top speed and high altitude performance of the VF-1, to the extent that it actually increased the VF-1's service ceiling. Then there's the FF-2008, the engine that Master File asserts was the standard for the VF-1 from Block 9 to the end of mass production. As you can see, the FF-2008 keeps a lot of the refinements introduced on the FF-2006 and finally adds that long-missing turbine that makes it a turbine engine. Master File calls this the true start of the history of the full-scale thermonuclear reaction turbine engine. The superconducting motor to drive the high pressure compressor was abolished and the compressor is now driven directly off the turbine stage. Improvements made to the compact thermonuclear reactor and GIC maintain plasma containment more effectively even at hypersonic wind speeds, allowing the FF-2008 to operate as a scramjet in addition to its existing low-bypass turbofan jet engine, ramjet, and fusion plasma rocket modes. Improved GIC function allows the engine to retain plasma-heated air for longer, allowing the thermoelectric converters to collect more energy and reducing the temperature of the engine exhaust in battroid mode (and the potential danger to the surrounding environment and nearby ground personnel). My next little boredom-motivated investigation is gonna be how exactly thermonuclear reaction burst turbines and Stage II engines differ from the standard thermonuclear reaction turbine engine nominally embodied by the FF-2008.

I wouldn't expect much on that front from this volume, mainly because all the fun stuff that modelers might find very useful like unit paintjobs, markings, variants, armaments, etc. is in the four previous VF-1 Valkyrie-focused Master File books already. I'm interested to see how they'll fill 128 pages talking about Roy and the VF-1S given that Roy's career wasn't that long and he only flew two models of VF... the VF-0S and VF-1S.

Still waiting for HLJ to confirm they've got my copies in... but, all in all, I don't expect much from this book. If it's anything like the MSV Ace Pilot Log, it'll be a solid but unremarkable entry in its series.

Probably, yeah... like how the UN Forces weaponized the overpowered radar system on the SDR-04-Mk.XII Phalanx Destroid. At the very least, short-burst irradiation at that level would make the target pilot horribly ill. Even with the limiters in place, the New UN Forces had so many problems with loss of control accidents thanks to the excessively high performance of the VF-19 and VF-22 that they had to abandon them in favor of something less insane.

Nah, those were in the original Southern Cross... Robotech II: the Sentinels called them "pollinators", implying they were somehow connected to the magic flowers everything revolves around in Robotech. They were cat-sized in the original Southern Cross and Sentinels shrank them down to around the size in this comic. Given how devoted Robotech is to the One Steve Limit, he's probably "new" with sarcastic airquote emphasis. Since Remix is dropping a lot of references to Robotech II: the Sentinels, this guy's probably either this timeline's version of Robotech II's incredibly derivative B-cast protagonist Jack Baker or a previously-unmentioned sibling of same like Robotech II's Vince Grant was to Robotech's version of Claudia La Salle. Nah, that kid's guitar looks to be a fairly standard Gibson Flying V. Basara's everyday-use electric guitar looks to have been based on a Jackson Soloist, while the one in the Fire Valkyrie's cockpit appears to have been based on a Jackson Rhoads.

Assuming you had a transmitter that could actually handle that level of power without going up like a roman candle, yeah... the amount of power it'd take to induce disabling voltage spikes in a shielded military aircraft at a range of hundreds of kilometers would be incredible though. Way beyond anything we'd call ECM. Now that's an interesting thought... did the Vajra independently evolve their active electronic countermeasures in their natural environment as a defensive or offensive measure or did they evolve that capability later on after making contact with the Protoculture and/or Zentradi in order to be left alone? Actually, that's kind of a frightening line of thinking in its own right. The ancient Protoculture created a lot of their overtechnology based on what they learned from studying Vajra biology and bio-technology, which suggests the Vajra ALREADY HAD things like energy conversion armor and heavy quantum beam weaponry when the Protoculture discovered a space-faring intelligent species already existed. Why did the Vajra need such incredibly powerful combat capabilities? Did the Vajra evolve these weapons and defenses to prey on some other naturally spacefaring species in their native habitat? Is there some other species out there in the Vajra's natural habitat that's nasty enough to prey on the Vajra despite their incredible combat abilities? Do the Vajra occasionally fight each other the way rival swarms of social insects do? It'd make sense if the Vajra evolved their powerful ECM after making contact with the Protoculture and their Zentradi, who are dependent on things like radar systems to detect and track objects in space, though I do rather like the idea that there might be some naturally spacefaring species out there that evolved a biological radar system similar to how animals here on Earth use echolocation. Given what happened to Guld when he disabled the safety limiters in the YF-21's airframe control AI software, that's not even an exaggeration. Poor bugger turned himself into a flight suit full of chunky salsa in order to save the day. (Made somewhat less poignant by Macross Plus: Game Edition having Isamu run into another Sharon Apple-controlled, next-generation unmanned fighter on his way to the Macross not long after leaving Guld to take care of the Ghost X-9.)

Well, my Private Warehouse on HLJ should be getting a workout soon.

Old news, mind you... and let's just say given what usually happens to Robotech titles that go "on hiatus" I wouldn't take it as granted that they'll actually resume publication. Normally "on hiatus" is Robotech code for "we cancelled it but don't want to admit we cancelled it yet because some people still care and it'll look bad". It's also worth noting their excuse for why it went on hiatus is a really blatant, easily fact-checkable lie. Remix #5 was already two months late and counting before the industry started halting operations due to lockdowns and before Brenden Fletcher got sick with what he presumes was COVID. Whatever delayed it, it wasn't the pandemic. One of the writers is an old fan. It's the only way HG can get anyone to cover their mostly burned-out dumpster fire of a franchise (short of releasing blatantly false "news").

Well, yeah... the Vajra definitely wouldn't understand the basic concept. The Zentradi were shown to have some pretty effective communications decryption technology going for them back in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, but it's doubtful they would know how to apply it to something like hacking a remotely-operated vehicle. The Protodeviln would probably be the ones most likely to understand it since they had to have some pretty good understanding of the Protoculture's overtechnology given that they were able to fairly swiftly apply some to the tech captured in the Varauta system to produce their improved versions of the local VFs and warships, as well as all the spiritia-related gizmos they use. Yes, I know... the whole point of a stand-alone hardware firewall is to filter incoming and outgoing communications to make sure that any modules that have outward-facing network communication are isolated from the rest of the vehicle's data networks and authenticate and sanity-check any data that's being sent between the vehicle's outward-facing networks and internal network. I have quite a bit of experience with them from my day job. Yes, as noted the AIF-7 Ghosts used by the Macross Frontier New UN Forces are operating with a semi-autonomous AI system. Like their predecessor, they're dependent on the mothership to direct them to the combat zone and provide them with mission parameters. The jamming they encountered from the Vajra was extraordinarily intense, enough that it not only blinded the radars of the warships monitoring the action and severed communication links with the Ghosts headed into that area, it also caused visible electric arcing and disrupted or even disabled the Ghost's onboard systems. (That suggests this was closer to an EMP attack than actual jamming.)

To be fair, the OVA is pretty clear about the YF-19 having a pretty excellent claim to the title of "deathmachine" itself. Shinsei's YF-19 team had already lost two test pilots in fatal accidents, seen two more hospitalized with serious injuries, totalled one of their two prototypes, and seriously damaged the other even before Isamu was assigned as their latest victim test pilot. Depending on the version of the story, he became the third test pilot to sustain serious injuries. On Hayate's VF-1EX, the training support AI that was under the remote control of the instructor aircraft (Mirage's VF-1EX) was something that could be switched off from the trainee aircraft's side. That was a dedicated training aircraft, though. The remote control an EX-Gear suit has over a VF is noted to be pretty limited and pretty short-ranged. Presumably it's disabled if there's an EX-Gear suit already connected to the aircraft (with the apparent exception of a direct physical plug connection as in Frontier Ep7. I'd imagine there's also some pretty hefty cryptographic protections on that function as well to prevent unauthorized individuals from remotely operating a VF. Windermere hijacked the pilots themselves, not the controls... and Sharon never seemed to actually be in control of the YF-19 itself, just messed with the communication system's holographic displays. Ideally, you'd want to isolate the aircraft controls from outward-facing communications systems for exactly that reason. (Cars and other vehicles with connectivity to outside networks usually have a hardware firewall between the protected vehicle network and the outside world that is set up to filter communications from the outside world so that only legitimate data for very specific purposes is gated through to the protected network... unless you're Tesla, then you just leave your sh*t open to the goddamn world so that hackers can gain access to every car your company has ever sold.) The original QF-3000's AI was noted to be somewhat flaky and as a result the early Ghosts were run almost exclusively in semi-autonomous mode only. The Sharon Apple-based autonomous AI developed for the AIF-X-9 Ghost had its own issues, and government restrictions in the wake of Sharon's little psychotic break meant that an improved version of the QF-3000 Ghost's AI was used for most modern Ghosts. (Excl. Luca's, which used a version of the banned Sharon Apple AI in the form of the Judas System, and the AIF-X-8S prototypes from the audio dramas that used personality AIs modeled on Skull Platoon members Luca Angeloni, Alto Saotome, and Michael Blanc.)

If Macross Delta is any indication, even single-seaters used for training purposes are replete with all kinds of instructor controls over the student's interface.