Seto Kaiba

Bingo. There are books I have more than two of... but that's mostly because they're old enough that finding a pristine copy for scanning is difficult or if I screw up and accidentally win multiple copies on YJA. Incidentally, the terribly mysterious website's servers are up but haven't been populated with webpages yet... so I can at least say the project's official name is Macross Historica.

Oh ho! Maybe the comic book collectors. Collecting the larger publications is comparatively easy since publishers can't get away with just changing the cover a bit and re-sell the same book as a new product the way that toy companies can redeco an existing mold and call it an all-new product. They have to actually come up with new content or people won't buy their book. For the record, I have two personal-use copies of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1S Roy Focker Special on order... one for my own use, and one for scanning and archival. Same as all the other volumes. We know the Master File for the "Roy Focker Special" isn't going to be a reprint of an older book. It's gonna be something akin to the Master Archive Mobile Suit: MSV Ace Pilot Log book that was done for Gundam, talking about the career of a particular ace pilot more than the actual mecha. Though, admittedly, even I wish they'd put their energy into a volume about something other than the VF-1. There are enough VF-19s floating around to do a VF-19 Vol.2, or maybe a VF-31 Vol.2 that actually talks about the production VF-31. Or a book for the VF-17 and VF-171. Or, shock, maybe a book about the SV-51 or Sv-262, or the SV Works in general. I don't expect anything great or particularly interesting from the Roy Focker Special book. Likely a lot of fuss and noise about the VF-0S, VF-X-1, VF-1A-1, and VF-1S-4, with some side notes about the F203 and probably F-14A+ to go along with a general biography of Roy and probably a featurette about the other units who drew inspiration from the SVF-1 Skulls like Max and Milia's Dancing Skulls, Ozma Lee's SMS Skull Platoon, etc.

Should we start a pool? Take bets on whether it'll be July, August, September, October, etc.?

Offhand, I don't recall Kawamori ever giving a specific reason for modifying the VF-1A's monitor turret design for the movie... but I'd assume he wanted to make it somewhat more visually impressive-looking since it was going to be (however temporarily) a main character mecha. The TV version VF-1A head is kind of flat and undetailed looking. The far more angular movie version looks a lot more impressive and dynamic. There was no need to mess with the VF-1D head since it wasn't appearing in the film (replaced by the VT-1), and both the VF-1J and the VF-1S already had that certain je ne sais quoi that makes them stand out as main character mecha even though the J was only getting a glorified cameo. I suspect the VF-1A head was the only one he set out to retool. But only one of those was done by Kawamori... he made some slight tweaks to the J-type head to modernize the design for Macross the First. The D-type head design was done by Hidetaka. Macross the First is its own alternate take though, and the revamped designs haven't been seen outside of it. Even Macross Delta, which was made well after Macross the First, uses an unmodified TV series VF-1J head. Since Macross the First is cancelled (again), I doubt we'll see any more of those designs. Personally, I think you're jumping to conclusions here and making a lot of unfounded assumptions of intent by the notoriously airy-fairy Kawamori-sensei who hates being pinned down to anything. Bandai would keep pumping out new versions every few years no matter what happened... they're Bandai, it's what they do. As to there being no way of knowing what head is correct... that's not correct. Excluding the VF-1A, there's only one official monitor turret design for any given variant. The VF-1A's two monitor turret designs are BOTH correct, given that the TV version officially corresponds to VF-1A's from Blocks 1-5 and the DYRL? version to Blocks 6 and later. They gave that explanation way back in Variable Fighter's Aero Report. ... as Gavil might have said under the circumstances, "The Beauty of Marketing to Collectors". They've got you lot over a barrel and they freaking know it. Yup... though there's a fun little asterisk there in that the "Movie-type" VF-1 was actually in service before the end of the First Space War. The TV version of the VF-1 is representative of the VF-1's first few production blocks (1-5), and the Movie version of the entire rest of the VF-1's production run (Block 6 and up). The SDF-1 Macross's VF-1s were mainly Block 4 and 5 aircraft, but there are a few sources (like This is Animation: Macross Plus) that put Block 6 VF-1s in operation not long after the First Space War began. It mentions a UN Spacy Marine Corps training squadron - SVMAT-102 - was equipped with the Block 6 VT-1 Super Ostrich and began a three month assignment to ARMD-04 Clemenceau in October 2009 (around the time the Macross reached Mars in episode 7). Yes, that's what the production block numbers denote... minor variations in hardware, software, and feature support made while a particular model or variant of aircraft is still in mass production that wouldn't, on their own, be enough to constitute a new variant. New aircraft are built to that updated standard, and older models are updated to it as resources and time permit. You may have heard in the news about the US Navy's recent delivery of the new F/A-18E/F Block III Super Hornets, and plans to update all the old Block II's to Block III level. The last TV version production block was Block 5, and the first Movie version production block was Block 6. Variable Fighter Master File, though not official setting material, follows this line religiously and asserts that Block 8 was the current standard in production when the Zentradi wiped out everything on Earth's surface. The reason given for the VF-1A's monitor turret design changing was an update/improvement/refinement in the design of the sensor cluster that went hand-in-hand with the various avionics improvements for operations in space that were also part of Block 6.

Yes and no... Production I.G. was originally I.G. Tatsunoko Limited, a satellite production house that Tatsunoko Production set up to help it retain talented staff in '87. They bought out Tatsunoko's 20% stake in the company and went solo in 1993 to become Production I.G., and now own an 11.2% stake in their former parent company. Indeed. Eh... it wasn't really something they were actively trying to do, it just kind of happened because their plans to release their bowdlerized localization of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series were shot to hell by Revell and they had to start over from scratch and invent ways to tie Macross into two other shows on the fly to meet the new demand for a series long enough for first-run syndication. They didn't plan a damn thing, they were very literally making it up as they went... which is why there are so many inconsistencies and outright errors in their version. Oh my, no... the previous staff, by which we mean Carl Macek, absolutely had the guts (and the necessary lack of creative integrity) to do exactly that. Every pitch he made for a Robotech project, save one, was built on Macross and making Robotech more like Macross. The few ideas he had that weren't shut down by the lawyers at Harmony Gold and/or Tatsunoko Production for being dangerously close to, or actually, infringing on Big West's copyrights were shut down by his own incompetence. Robotech II: the Sentinels was the closest he got, a story about the Macross cast and a new generation of characters who were all just thinly disguised knockoffs of Macross characters, using the closest he could get to a VF-1 (the Legioss) and a bunch of imitation-brand Macross mecha that were meant to be distinct enough to not incur a lawsuit while looking enough like designs from Macross to be familiar. Fortunately for him, his own ineptitude flew the poorly-funded project into the ground before the exchange rate crash administered the coup de grace before most of the potentially-infringing material could be animated. The one time he got away from his obsession with trying to "Macross-ize" Robotech was the biggest flop in the franchise's history prior to Robotech Academy... Robotech 3000. Since he wasn't allowed to rip off Macross the way he wanted to, all he could do was bash it in interviews like a petulant and deeply disingenuous man-child. The current staff aren't any sharper, but they ARE aware that there are alternative media formats where they CAN get away with that kind of thing because of the way their license is drawn up. That's why the flagship title for the rebooted and relaunched Robotech franchise in the early 2000s was a collection of Macross-based comics. It's likely no coincidence its first title was a prequel about the development of the VF-1... conceived around the time Macross Zero promotional materials started doing the rounds online and published the same month as the debut of Macross Zero's first episode. The one non-Macross comic they did had to have a Macross mini-comic in it to sell it. When the time came to do animation, the same legal constraints were applied and they had to go for a more Macek-level attempt to Macross-ize the MOSPEADA ships and mecha... and as with Macek, a lot of their proposals ended up rejected by legal for "are you trying to get us sued?" reasons. Apart from the "original" series, Robotech's history is a nearly-unbroken continuity of "how can we be more like Macross to make people like us?". Same reason they were constantly banging on about the live action movie license and insisting it was not only practically a done deal but set to be a tentpole franchise for a major studio... trying to drum up enough interest to actually get funding to do something. Well, we now have Diamond Comic Distributors' cancellation lists for both June and July (there is no May list due to the shutdown)... and there are some new minor developments on that front. Robotech Remix #5 is still listed as cancelled, and as of June Robotech Remix #6 is also officially listed as cancelled with Status 2 ("will resolicit"). The series is still absent from Titan's release schedule through the end of the year. With issue #5 now almost six months late, it seems highly probable the series was quietly cancelled due to poor sales or some other issue that Titan doesn't want to draw attention to. The total silence makes me suspect legal problems. Titan's trade paperback editions of Comico's Robotech comics also showed up on the list with status 2, though in that case it appears to be a multi-month delay with Titan's release schedule now showing the next volume as planned for 2020 Week 38 (the week of September 14-20). Nope... not unless they import it and resell it in their own store. Harmony Gold's license excludes Japan, so if a Japanese company decides to license the property to make merchandise intended for sale in the Japanese domestic market HG has no involvement at all because that's all occurring outside the scope of their license. Likewise, if that product intended for the JDM should happen to be sold internationally by a store in Japan... Harmony Gold can't do a damn thing to stop it because it's a Japanese product made under a Japanese license and and the sale technically occurred in Japan. They wouldn't receive any percentage of the sale... which is why toy collectors should only buy authentic Macross and MOSPEADA merchandise from Japan, and not the stuff made by Toynami and KidzLogic under licenses from HG. That's also why Harmony Gold can't do anything to stop stores like HobbyLink Japan, Amazon Japan, Mandarake, etc. from selling Macross goods outside of Japan. Those stores are still based in Japan and thus the sales technically occur in Japan, where Harmony Gold has no rights to the property and therefore no legal standing to bring a complaint. Unlikely, Macross is Robotech's money spinner... MOSPEADA toys and goods don't sell anywhere near as well for them. They're still trying to offload Toynami MOSPEADA stuff they made over a decade ago..

The official website doesn't offer much more detail than that... they just mention that they've made a new head mold based on a new interpretation of the design that differs from the one they did for the movie version. Must be... This does appear to be basically that... Bandai changing things simply for the sake of changing them, since the VF-1S's head is supposed to be exactly the same.

And there it is!

Both, for the record... but in the VF-0's case, Roy Focker's role was much less because he was a replacement for the original lead test pilot D.D. Ivanov. Ivanov defected to the Anti-Unification Alliance and took the VF-0's development data with him, which was what allowed Sukhoi, IAI, and Dornier to rush their SV-51 to completion. Roy was D.D.'s protege of sorts, and one of the lead test pilots on the VF-X-1. It's never really been clear why so much merchandise insistently calls it the "Roy Focker Special"... because there was never anything special about it in the show except the fact that it had a wicked cool paint job and sentimental value to Hikaru after Roy's passing. It's not an ace custom or anything like that. It's an utterly unremarkable, bog standard, Block 4 VF-1S Valkyrie identical in every way to the twenty-nine other VF-1S units the SDF-1 Macross carried during the First Space War (TV ver.). The only significance it had was that it was Roy's aircraft, and later passed down to Hikaru as a memento of him. Yeah... though even the oldest technical materials clearly indicate there were 29 others, Roy's is the only one we see because the SVF-1 Skulls are the only squadron we ever get an up-close look at. I assume he's referring to the fact that a lot of art of the VF-1S is subtly incorrect - particularly around the neck area - when compared to Kawamori's original line art. There is, after all, only one set of art for the VF-1S's head... it's the same in the TV series and DYRL.

A few years ago, I might have said "Roy". Now that I'm managing a larger group with way more responsibilities and have gained a few problematic subordinates along the way... I find it a lot easier to identify with Vrlitwhai and all the crap he had to put up with. It could not have been easy to be Quamzin and Laplamiz's boss and the man constantly on the back foot thanks to humanity's bullsh*t approach to space warfare.

So, bets on how long this one gets delayed? It says due out June 2020... they're rapidly running out of June.

As far as I am aware, there are none... the line art for the VF-1's S-type monitor turret is exactly the same in both Macross Perfect Memory and the Macross: Do You Remember Love? Data Bank book. And I mean EXACTLY the same, as in "it's literally the same art reprinted". Can you offer more detail about what they claim to be doing? I am not a toy collector by any stretch of the imagination.

Gave Eromanga-sensei a try, and it's actually turning out to be OK if a bit cliched... not as fanservice-y as the title made me think. It does feel a tad suspiciously convenient that every light novel author seems to be a junior high or high school student though... where are all the adults? Especially the guardians who would have to be present for these characters to be working as professional novelists and artists?

Oh no, no... Tatsunoko Production would LOVE to get their foot in Macross's door again. They want a piece of that action REAL bad. So bad that they went to court to try to claim they were owed royalties from subsequent Macross works because of their involvement in funding production of the original series. The courts shot 'em down. It's not hard to see why that would appeal to them, though. Like every animation production house, Tatsunoko has to cope with the razor-thin profit margins of the anime industry and therefore nothing would be quite so appealing as having even a modest percentage of the steady revenue stream produced by a fairly consistent earner like Macross. Of course, with Kawamori being a bigshot at Satelight there's basically no chance that Tatsunoko will ever get to be involved in a Macross production again. Kawamori, for his part, does still seem to be averse to the idea of direct sequels.

All I really remember is a lot of tedious talk about space politics... like it was C-SPAN Space.

IIRC, they have been having a rough couple of years... not a strong downward trend like this year, but a downward trend nonetheless. Until that report that they're down 89%, there wasn't really cause for anyone to notice since lean years are normal for an animation production house given the fickle anime industry and the notoriously razor-thin profit margins that come with working in it. If nothing else, they probably weren't referring to Remix. That's an alterniverse story, not a reboot. Harmony Gold likes to talk a big game, but as you know talk is all it ever turns out to be. Rebooting Robotech would require a major outlay... the kind of cash that neither Harmony Gold nor any of its partners or licensees has NEVER been willing to invest in the series. It'd require them to throw out the original three shows and create all-new material to replace it... and even doing a crap job on that scale costs a lot of money. Money the franchise does not have, and never did. Every Robotech production has been done as cheaply as possible because nobody has ever really been convinced that a new Robotech development has the potential to succeed. Tommy Yune only got his sub-million dollar budget for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles because it was the flagship animated property in Robotech's plan for a reboot and "comeback" in the early 2000s and because he swore blind that it would elevate Robotech into the ranks of mainstream anime and bring in investors that'd bankroll all of the subsequent installments. That support never materialized, so funding never materialized and the next title had to go beg for money on Kickstarter in order to bankroll a pilot for a new series that looked even more amateurish than Shadow Chronicles did. TL;DR: There's nobody out there dumb enough to put up the kind of money Robotech needs to do a reboot... not even in Harmony Gold itself. Is that what they're saying these days? No, the reason that the Shadow Chronicles OVA was cancelled after just one episode was that a budget for Part II never materialized. Tommy Yune had to make some fairly grandiose promises to get Harmony Gold to put up the rather paltry budget they provided to produce the first episode and Shadow Chronicles failed to deliver on all of them. The most critical of those was that the success of the OVA's first episode would attract investors who would bankroll the rest of the episodes. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was released directly to home video and promptly ignored by basically everyone who wasn't a Robotech fan or actively mocking Robotech fans... so it never elevated Robotech to the ranks of mainstream sci-fi anime, it never brought in that new generation of fans, and it certainly never attracted any investors. Even Robotech fans hated it. So Part II was put on indefinite hiatus because it had no budget. There were none of the promised outside investors clamoring to put their money into Robotech, and Harmony Gold wasn't willing to sink any more money into what was looking increasingly like another Robo-flop. Harmony Gold did have some trouble with Funimation later on... but that was when they were negotiating a license renewal for Robotech and went into the negotiations on a colossal ego trip like they thought they were doing Funimation a huge favor by licensing them a property to rival Gundam instead of practically begging Funimation to license a series that's a laughingstock and borderline nonentity in its own genre. Funimation opted to pass on renewing the Robotech license in the face of Harmony Gold's ridiculous posturing. I'm sure it probably privately amused Funimation to see Harmony Gold come crawling back years later with a much more appropriately humble attitude... though I'm equally sure they're far too professional to let it show on their faces. With a few minutes of poor quality original animation thrown in to tenuously connect it to Robotech, yeah. Harmony Gold's licenses exclude Japan, so it won't have any impact on anything Tatsunoko or its licensees produce for MOSPEADA in the Japanese domestic market...

That's a significant drop... Tatsunoko must be having a really rough year. Like every studio, they're going to take a nasty hit as a result of the coronavirus lockdown but they've been in a rough patch for a while now and this can't be helping. The animation studios run on really narrow profit margins even when times are good. Whether or not one of their new titles is a hit right out of the gate can be the difference between finishing the year in the red or in the black, while it takes years to recoup the costs for the shows that don't take off (if they ever do). They've got one show running right now, but I can't find any data on average viewership. Maybe it's not doing well. Yeah, lean years are nothing unusual for an animation production house like Tatsunoko... though if it becomes a multi-year trend they might be in trouble. I understand they bet a lot on Egao no Daika and it massively did not pay off.

That, IMO, is one of the things that makes Hikaru easier for the average viewer to relate to than Roy, Isamu, Basara, or even Alto... Not only is our boy Hikaru completely clueless when it comes to girls, he's not The Best or The Ace. He's a talented but otherwise normal guy out there doing his best, and he does occasionally get completely REKT for his efforts. He's also not really given much in the way of special treatment, except plausible stuff like getting a leg up in training because he is already a highly trained stunt pilot, and he flies the same VF that the rank-and-file grunts do (more or less). I know it's not as action figure-friendly, but I really dislike the way most protagonists in Macross after Macross II have essentially been flying Ace Customs in spirit if not in actual practice. One of the things I've really enjoyed about some of the video games, manga, and homebrew RPG materials is there's a lot more attention given to those neglected main VFs that are not getting their due in the animation. The VF-11 finally became a main character's main mecha in 20-freaking-12 and the Macross Delta prequels actually gave us a proper look at a VF-171 squadron.

SAME. This is one of the reasons I'm not a bigger fan of Gundam, TBH... entirely too much of that franchise falls into the category of "bleh characters in omnipotent mecha". It takes all the drama out of a fight if the main character's mecha can tank entire magazines of anti-mecha machine gun fire while the enemy mecha explode if anyone so much as coughs in their immediate vicinity. New Mobile Report Gundam Wing was probably the worst offender, with Leos seemingly exploding out of pity even if Heero missed them with his big beam rifle by a clear 50 yards. Fortunately, my regular gaming group are a pretty laid-back group who are more interested in interesting roleplay and an enjoyable game session than powergaming or any kind of coolness one-upmanship. Some of the other gaming groups I've been involved with haven't been so fortunate. That Macross MUSH I was on lost about 3/4 of its playerbase after a sysadmin decided his character was The Main Character and went full Mary Sue in a way that had practically everyone rolling their eyes. Realistically speaking, there's nothing at all stopping a space fighter from being as garishly painted as its pilot desires... because space isn't as well lit as sci-fi would have us believe... clown car paint is just as stealthy in space as matte black. So it's totally realistic for VFs to be painted like they're headed to an airshow in the course of normal duty. Macross Chronicle did establish that the VF-17 also has an active stealth system, but it's a generation older than the state of the art 3rd Generation active stealth systems developed for use on the VF-19 and VF-22. The VF-17 went for passive stealth to complement its active stealth system because 2nd Generation active stealth was less effective at concealing a VF at short ranges or from powerful radar systems. Every little bit helps, y'know? The VF-19A/B/C/D and VF-22 were also designed around passive stealth and support that with an advanced 3rd Generation active stealth system that can make them virtually invisible to older model radars even at short ranges as seen in Macross Plus. It definitely isn't far outside what'd be considered normal specs-wise for a 3.5th Generation or 4th Generation VF. Ah, I see. Yeah, there wouldn't really be much in the way of counters for the Gigamesh's high-speed combat claws on a typical VF would there? Look at it this way, nothing you've designed has caught fire or had part of it explode. I cannot make the same boast. (Government projects and high voltages, y'know...)

Well, not everybody... I've been doing the GM thing in my own RPG sessions, playing in others RPG sessions, and as staff on a Macross MUSH for a long time... and oh boy could I tell you stories about the kind of garbage I've seen. So many players who want a custom VF for themselves in game want the kind of swaggering, completely over-the-top invincibility that's normally found among the titular mecha in a Gundam storyline. I've often spoken about how disappointed one of my friends was when I told him bringing an accurately-statted Legioss (RT: Alpha) from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA into the Macross setting was a suicidal idea, but most of the ones I've seen have been more on the Wing Gundam Zero side of the scale. I recall a player on the Macross MUSH I was on submitted a request for a custom VF for his character which entailed his character gaining mentat abilities (yes, from Dune), performance that exceeded most 5th Gen VFs in a setting where the 4th Gen VFs were still new, and combat capabilities somewhere around the Wing Gundam Zero's level of blithe invincibility and overwhelming firepower. (Oh, and in Camille Bidan fashion he wanted to be its designer in-universe too, and keep all the specs in his mind so it could never ever be duplicated or reverse-engineered.) The other GMs and I just sort of stared at the application form for that one in quiet disgust, and resolved to bury that sucker like evidence of a dreadful crime. That would've been back before they brought up the subject of active stealth technology and how it makes the VF-19 and VF-22 more stealthy than the VF-17 even with bombs and missiles hung on their wings. Names associated with the unquiet dead are usually associated with unmanned fighters in Macross... the Ghost being the obvious one, though one of the non-official setting game series had one called the Phantom as well. The QF-5100D Goblin II kind of breaks the pattern a bit tho. We've kind of reached that point in-universe though... the YF-29 had 100 internally-carried missiles, and most Super Packs now have several hundred. Ah, the "blade below the shoulder" kind of thing? Eh, no worries... one thing I know about artists and model builders and musicians and so on is y'all are your own harshest critics. Designing a transforming mecha is HARD, even for professional artists.

Yeah, it always sucks when a campaign gets derailed after the story really gets going. Can't say too much, since some of my players read these forums... but there are a lot of conflicting agendas in that emigrant fleet. Partly it's due to the interplay between the reform movement's push for rearmament conflicting with the establishment's desire to maintain their pacifistic stance, but there's a fair amount of outside influence as other governments see opportunities to profit from someone else's suffering. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions... but I guarantee no matter how bad you think it is, I have absolutely seen FAR worse. All in all, it actually looks OK to me. There are some obvious design concessions that had to be made as it's a kitbash, but it looks OK to me in terms of the physical model. Well, you're in good company on the concept front... Kawamori's SW-XA1 and SW-XA2 from his "VF-Experiment" series in Character Model were basically exactly that. New stealth fighters intended to complement/supplement the VF-17 since the VF-17 was mostly only good for long-range attacks in space. Name-wise, I can't pretend that I thrill to "Wraithverge" but it's definitely no worse than many fan fiction designs I've seen over the years. Hm... all told, assuming it's comparably sized compared to a VF-19 or VF-22 that's actually not far outside the realm of reason. The gunpod's basically a GU-11A and we know THAT works. Internal storage probably wouldn't work out with all the other stuff you're putting in there but otherwise... The micro-missile count ain't bad either. The spec from the VF-19F/S on the toy packaging was for 48 micro-missiles in the legs, though that was later taken back down to 24. The VF-31's got 36 in a 2x3x6 configuration. The YF-29's got 100. The beam gun specs are all borrowed from existing VFs (e.g. the VF-17) so no issue there. The arm bayonets might be a bit much, and there's a lot being stored in the legs, but otherwise it all looks more or less OK. Macross the Ride had a VF with an experimental barrier like that, though it was based on Protodeviln biotech.

Because it takes many years for a military to fully transition from using an older model of fighter to a newer one. Even in 2067, the New UN Government member governments that were early adopters had only recently begun the phased replacement process that would see the 4th Gen (or older?) VFs their New UN Forces were flying gradually retired and replaced with 5th Generation VFs... a process that would easily take a decade or more. Other New UN Government members were still in the process of evaluating prospective 5th Generation main VF candidates and wouldn't have a workable design ready for introduction for years. The Frontier Government's New UN Forces were still in the process of retiring and decommissioning their VF-11's in 2058, ten years after the introduction of the VF-171 and during the evaluation of their 5th Gen replacement for the VF-171. Earth was only just starting the process of adopting the VF-24 in 2059 when the Vajra situation blew up, and both the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet and the Brisingr Alliance were 2-3 years from the start of production on their respective 5th Gen main VFs at the start of their respective series in 2059 and 2067. Despite a commanding lead, Earth likely won't be finished transitioning its forces to the VF-24 until 2069-2070. That'd be the point where they MIGHT loosen restrictions on the VF-19. Many other governments likely won't finish transitioning to their new fighters until the late 2070s or beyond.

Generally speaking, what makes information from an anime or hobby periodical like Newtype, Great Mechanics, Dengeki Hobby, B-Club, etc. authoritative is who that information came from rather than the publication itself. A lot of these magazines run promotional pieces that are interviews with, or written/co-written by staff from the anime they're covering. A lot of the Macross articles about mecha are written or co-written by the franchise's mechanical setting coordinator and original tech manual author Masahiro Chiba. Kawamori's interviews on various shows are often goldmines of details about the show's non-mechanical setting. Of course, Ken'ichi Yatagai's big feature in B-Club was THE source of timeline info for Macross II: Lovers Again, etc. What sets the Variable Fighter Master File books apart is that, despite being nominally supervised by Kawamori and having some contributions from Chiba, each volume has a disclaimer on the book's credits page (like the one below) that specifically states that the book's contents are not official Macross setting material. This one is from Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1.

Just gonna say... not only can I not find any artbooks with art of the opposing side in Crest of the Stars or Banner of the Stars, I can't even remember what they looked like and I've seen the bloody show.

Yup... our original format was playing at a delayed rate on a phpBB bulletin board. In fact, that's what the domain that now hosts the Macross Mecha Manual was originally created for. We moved it to Skype, and later to Discord, because we were able to actually make our scheduled sync up for a while. Unfortunately, the worst offender in terms of availability happens to be the GM thanks to the department I oversee at my day job being critically understaffed in the middle of launch season with no ability to interview candidates to fill all the vacancies thanks to the pandemic. It probably has something to do with the uncomfortable (and probably late) realization that they'd written themselves into a corner after they arranged Isamu's cameo appearance. His appearance raises a TON of questions if you look into the setting even a little bit. Isamu was, last we heard from him, a Major in the New UN Spacy Reserve and still living/working somewhere in the New UN Gov't core systems (Earth/Eden) given that he was tapped to demonstrate the YF-24 Evolution to the New UN Forces in 2057. Why, just two years later, is Isamu now flying for SMS tens of thousands of light years away? When Macross Frontier debuted, it was established that there were severe export restrictions on the VF-19 Excalibur because of what Isamu did that combined with the VF-19's high operating costs and other factors meant that the VF-19 was never widely adopted and its manufacture and operation are heavily restricted to the point that the emigrant governments can only manufacture them in small numbers at reduced capability for elite troops. How then, did private citizen and SMS employee Isamu Dyson obtain a VF that is normally only available to the most elite New UN Forces Special Forces squadrons? At the time (2059) the second Macross Frontier movie is set, the VF-19's standard production variants hadn't looked like the YF-19 for almost fifteen years. Why does Isamu's shiny new VF-19 look like a twenty year old variant? Moreover, why doesn't his shiny new VF-19 look like the variant of VF-19 it's actually based on? Most importantly, Isamu is a private citizen in 2059 who somehow possesses an apparently-unique VF-19. How in the nine hells did he pull THAT one off? Who paid for that? The VF-19 is supposed to be a fighter so expensive most emigrant fleets balked at the price tag. Where did he get that kind of cash? Casual Frontier viewers who haven't seen the rest of Macross aren't going to know that brief scene is even a cameo, never mind who it was and what the significance is. The die-hard fans are the ones who read the articles in Newtype and Great Mechanics and Macross Chronicle that explained why the VF-19 wasn't a thing in 2059. They're also the ones who were going to recognize that cameo for what it was and could be expected to know the significance of it because they've seen Macross Plus. Those fans are going to ask those questions, because they're very quickly going to notice something doesn't tally up... so they needed to come up with an explanation. Enough to keep Isamu from getting dishonorably discharged, apparently...

Oh, undoubtedly... the VF-11 Thunderbolt did just fine against the Zentradi when the odds weren't stacked too heavily against it. The VF-19 was a massive step up in performance compared to the VF-11 it was intended to replace. That, of course, was a big part of the problem. Shinsei Industry built a VF that almost nobody could actually fly and (if you believe Master File) seems to have spent the next twenty or so trying to rework it into something that didn't kill its pilot and/or destroy itself before the enemy even got the chance. Well, the cheaper ones anyway... the Queadluun-Rau battle suits do have a nasty habit of shredding VF-1's in bulk. Yeah, gaming is a lot easier when you're a kid and you don't have all those responsibilities... long gone are the days when I could organize weekly sessions. I'd be interested to hear about your custom-designed VF. Yeah, I've tried to flesh it out pretty extensively so the players won't be on rails... with three different emigrant governments poking their respective oars in, plenty of political intrigue, and some shifty corporations, I think I've created enough latitude that this game could probably run for at least a year's worth of weekly sessions. When we left off, there were seven distinct factions squabbling for control of the fleet's government and its decommissioned military assets. Nostalgia is a hell of an equalizer. Yeah, Isamu went to some pretty extreme lengths to convert the VF-19EF - a 2nd Mass Production type VF-19 like the VF-19F and VF-19S - into something that outwardly resembles and performs like the YF-19-2 or an early 1st Mass Production type VF-19 like the VF-19A. I like to think Dr. Neumann spends several minutes breathing heavily into a paper bag whenever Isamu's name is mentioned, and that he probably keeps Isamu's file photo on a dart board in his office. Isamu tortured the crap out of him during Project Super Nova.