Seto Kaiba

It was the original YF-24 that had the hump that got it nicknamed "Camel". The Evolution version had a scaled-down, more mature version of ISC technology that fit into the aircraft's nose the same as the production ISCs.

But the VF-X-2, VF-X-3, VF-X-4, and YF-24 aren't... I was responding to the list.

Even if Kawamori were so inclined, it's highly likely that he would defer to aviation traditions and conventions and only assign names to the production aircraft. Experimental aircraft - the so-called "X-planes" - are almost never given actual names. This is partly because experimental aircraft tend to be built in very small numbers only and are prone to a high loss rate, so nobody really wants to get too attached. Of the few that do have names, most are just the government program name or an abbreviation thereof, as on the X-30 NASP, X-23 PRIME, and X-20 Dyna-Soar ("Dynamic Soarer"). Naming prototypes is a fairly recent trend, usually individual prototypes are unnamed or are given individual nicknames by their pilots like two YF-23s being Gray Ghost and Black Widow II respectively. Sukhoi, the designers of the SV-51, don't give their aircraft designs names either. Even the SV-52 орел is an affectation on the part of its pilot not an official name for the SV-52.

That has a fairly straightforward explanation. During testing, the USAF's YF-22 was informally known as the Lightning II between its rollout in August 1990 and the USAF's formal announcement that the production aircraft would be named "Raptor" in April 1997. Macross's VF-4 Lightning gained the III after the YF-22's informal nickname became public knowledge, but before the F-22 was officially named "Raptor". IIRC, the first time that the VF-4 appeared with the roman numeral III appeneded to its name was in Macross Digital Mission VF-X, which came out a little over one month before the F-22's name was officially designated "Raptor". Perceval may constitute a separate theme specifically between itself and Durandal, namely one of knights and holy weapons with Christian mythos basis. Durendal in The Song of Roland is a holy sword that derives its magical powers from four holy relics that were embedded into it (which the four pieces of fold quartz that power the YF-29's fold wave system are named for). One of the details that is frequently lost in later Arthurian mythos is that Perceval/Peredur possessed a holy weapon of his own... a magical eternally-bleeding spear strongly implied to be the Spear of Destiny (AKA the Lance of Longinus). In some versions of its myth, the lance itself also contains a holy relic (a nail from the true cross) and is otherwise follows the standard myth of an "invincible spear" that can pierce any shield or armor. The VF-3/VF-X3 actually belongs up with the mythological references... its other name, as indicated in the game's manual, was the Medusa.

He seems to be a big fan of giving everything a Meaningful Name... and I do mean EVERYTHING. Almost every placename, even the trivial ones, in Macross 30 have direct significance to their relevance to the plot. That's what happens when you let the fans name your latest design... previous contests resulted in VF designs with names like "Schneeblume" and "Schneegans". Kawamori has some esoteric tastes and is a noted student of aviation history. One has to wonder what he might've otherwise named the Su-27-inspired VF-25... as the second (third) coming of the VF-1 design maybe it would've been Tomcat II?

Sort of? Robotech's fans are paradoxical creatures at best. Their attachment to, or perhaps its would be more accurate to say "obsession with", the early 80's storytelling and art style of the three original anime series that were adapted into Robotech is completely and utterly at odds with their vocal disdain for anime and "anime-ness". They don't want Robotech to be anime, but they also don't want Robotech to ever do anything that would distance it from the 80's anime that makes it up. The "original" Robotech series has become the metaphorical sacred cow to its fans, something the franchise's owners can't mess with without infuriating the fans but also can't slavishly follow without being blasted for a lack of original thought. Robotech is not allowed to be anime, but it's not allowed to not be 80's anime either... so it stagnates by endlessly revisiting what can only generously be called its "glory days" with rehashes of its "original" series. The only Hell is the one you make for yourself... and Robotech is forever trapped in a Hell created by all of the lies Carl Macek told about its origins over the years. Carl Macek unwittingly set Robotech up to fail in the long term by spending so much time and effort telling anyone who would listen that Robotech was entirely HIS creation and nobody else's. He, and through him Harmony Gold, took credit for the writing of Sukehiro Tomita and Ken'ichi Matsuzaki, the character designs of Haruhiko Mikimoto and Yoshitaka Amano, the mechanical design works of Studio Nue and Studio Artmic, and all the rest. It gave fans completely the wrong idea about who was actually responsible for Robotech's quality... the many Japanese creators of the original shows. Even if Robotech's fans now understand that Robotech's quality is the borrowed gloss of the original shows, they've long since internalized Carl Macek's lies about having been the one responsible for everything they love about the series. Harmony Gold doesn't, and never had, the talent pool or the funding to create something anywhere close to the level of the SDF Macross series. All those years of hearing Carl Macek brag about Robotech being entirely his work have made the fans believe, at least on an emotional level, that they ARE capable of that level of quality. That makes every sh*t-awful effort to continue the Robotech story almost as disappointing for fans as it is embarrassing for us to watch from afar. Harmony Gold is cheap about Robotech because Robotech was never really commercially successful. It just BARELY justified the minimum effort necessary to make a movie and to try making a second season when it was new, and only then on a shoestring budget. But, of course, Harmony Gold's manic self-promotion is self-sabotaging. They tell their fans (and anyone who'll give them the time of day) that Robotech was a huge phenomenon that shook the industry to its foundation and created the modern anime industry in the US... and not the truth that it was an at-best middle-of-the-pack ratings performer with an unsuccessful toy line that was almost completely forgotten within five years of its debut. The fans rail against its perceived cheapness and the perceived incompetence of its "creators" now because they've spent decades living with a completely unrealistic idea of what Harmony Gold was capable of. It's unmistakably cheap and amateurish, but for the resources and talent pool Harmony Gold actually has they're not doing that bad a job. They're performing at a level you'd expect them to if you had a realistic view of their capabilities and the franchise's history. Fans don't, so they rail against the cheapness and incompetence they see in comparing Harmony Gold's actual work to the material borrowed from some of the anime industry's biggest names.

Ah, was that the reason? I was so put off by the radical change from actually-pretty-well-researched to total over-the-top nonsense that I never really bothered to look into why... I had just assumed there was some jumping, and that a shark was possibly involved. I'm behind on the anime adaptation, so I'm rewatching season one right now to start fresh.

Y'know how a series can have a solid ending that provides satisfying closure to the narrative while wrapping up all of the story's loose ends... and then just kind of forgets to stop? That. Big time. Freighted with one of the lamest soap opera twists imaginable.

Seconded... nothing of value is being lost.

I have recently been forcibly dragged into the Discord user community by my office's Overwatch team (yes, really), so I'd be game.

The vast majority of them fall into this category, to be honest... some of the more out-there sounding ones are just relatively obscure aircraft like the de Havilland Vampire or Vought Cutlass. "Messiah" was chosen as part of a promotional contest that allowed fans to name the VF-25. The actual intention wasn't religious, it was a reference to a lyric in Shao Pai Loon that referred to the film's hero as "a very messiah" (sic). Durandal doubles as a meaningful name considering the YF-29's insane abilities are enabled by four great treasures of fold quartz embedded in it... the way Durandal's supernatural powers came from four holy treasures embedded in it. The four pieces of fold quartz are even named for them in its official write-up. Kairos kind of fits with it being a derivative of Chronos. Chronos was the personification of linear time and continuity, suitable for a story about preserving continuity and linear time. Kairos is a "supreme moment", a point in time of great opportunity... which is kind of what the Kairos represents for the Brisingr Cluster's economy as their great moment to revive their fortunes by exporting a 5th Generation fighter. The Siegfried thing kind of ties in with the Draken's name... one of Siegfried's famous deeds was slaying a dragon, and Draken can be translated as "Dragon". There are a couple of references to Der Ring des Nibelungen in the series, though Macross 30 also spent a lot of time creating connections between the Protoculture and Norse/Germanic mythology. A lot of the placenames and so on on Uroboros were Norse in nature. The Nightmare's name was a play on the name of its inspiration, the Nighthawk. The Vampire's actually named for a real-world aircraft built by de Havilland during/after the 2nd World War. That last one is actually a typo... it's supposed to be Shahar, a Hebrew word for "Dawn" which is part of the Hebrew term that is translated as "Lucifer" in the Vulgate. Shahar was also a diety in the Ugarit pantheon, the god of the dawn. "Lucifer" is Helel bin Shahar, "Light-bringer, Son of the Dawn". Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, is the son of the Dawn. Shahar is Dawn, so the Lucifer (VF-27) is the son of the Shahar (YF-27). As references go, this one is OBSCURE. Took me ages to figure out "Shaher" was a typo. The model above was converted from a VF-31J kit.

Macross Delta seems to have been done on the cheap, likely due to the cost of the music production, so they don't seem to have bothered making a different ordnance container CG model for the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Flight VF-31s. At least one of the model kits I've seen for the VF-31 does give the military spec VF-31 a different ordnance container that contains micro-missiles and what looks like some kind of a camera system?

Ah, so they're taking the half-truth route... blaming the inability to release the issue now on the COVID-19 shutdown as a way to avoid discussing why it was delayed beforehand. That way they aren't technically lying and they look like they've answered the question even though they actually haven't. Oh, that's an easy one... both times Harmony Gold has tried to move the Robotech story past the end of the "original" animated series, the fans crucified them for it. Robotech 3000 was a catastrophic failure that the fans hated so much the series was cancelled after just one screening of the teaser trailer... and then cancelled again when Carl Macek unwisely attempted to revive the project as a traditionally-animated series. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was also a catastrophic failure that the fans hated so much, and failed so completely at its stated goal of introducing new fans to the franchise, that its failure not only got the OVA cancelled after only one episode... it also got all development of new animated Robotech works defunded. Nobody wants to try it because Harmony Gold's three failures have proved it's a high-risk no-reward scenario.

Have they actually commented publicly? I haven't seen anything from them about Robotech at all this month.

Kinda? The YF-30s that are pictured in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried are the military's YF-30B specification, not the original YF-30 Chronos technology demonstrator spec that Reon Sakaki flew on Uroboros in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. I haven't seen anything about how they differ, though. (Same as with the YF-29B in Macross 30 that presumably inspired it... all we know is that it's a superior version.)

Shinsei Industry's VF-11 Thunderbolt was actually pretty average for its time. The (New) UN Forces were looking for an all-regime main variable fighter, a "true successor" to the VF-1 Valkyrie's all-purpose operating profile in the wake of the more specialized VF-4 and VF-5000. It's got a gunpod, a rear-facing laser cannon to cover its blind spot, four underwing pylon stations, and it may or may not always have had a weapons bay in the side of its engine nacelles as seen in Macross 7. For the time it was developed, that was a pretty respectable armament that was augmented further with a Super Pack and Armored Pack. I think a big part of why it seems under-armed is that we never really get to see it using its wing pylons outside of Macross the Ride. The all-regime focus meant that it was more dependent on the Super Pack for space operations like the VF-1 was, so most of what we see is the Super Thunderbolt spamming micro-missiles. Master File has suggested the VF-11's Super Pack is heavily modularized, so that it can be reconfigured to accept different quantities of fuel and missiles depending on operational need, allowing it to potentially missile spam at almost a VF-25 level. Its facing competition in Project Nova, the VF-14, was a much larger and more specialized variable fighter. It got passed over for main fighter status because it didn't have the level of operational versatility the military was looking for... though it still got bought by a number of governments and enjoyed considerable popularity as a highly effective space fighter that was modification-friendly thanks to its roomy airframe. Even the VF-14 wasn't really much better armed, it just kept its dangerous toys on the inside.

Macross Chronicle is firmly in the "amazing missile countermeasures" camp on this one. Modern missiles already had to contend with a variety of countermeasures like lock-on detection and warning systems, chaff, flares, decoys, electronic countermeasures, and increasing adoption of passive stealth technology. Even in the Vietnam War, it was standard practice to fire at least two missiles with different types of guidance systems to improve the likelihood of a kill because the agility of aircraft was such that at short ranges an enemy aircraft could simply steer out of the guide beam for a semi-active radar homing system so SARH missiles were often followed up by infrared seekers as a one-two punch. The introduction of overtechnology made these problems substantially worse. Variable Fighters were substantially more agile than modern conventional fighter aircraft, making it that much harder to actually score a kill on one with a missile at any range and making semi-active homing all but useless. The real killer, however, was the quantum leap in ECM made by the invention of active stealth. Now that fighters could be all but invisible to radar at range, active radar homing missiles needed powerful (and expensive) ECCM to be effective and it fell to short-range missiles using guidance systems that were unaffected by active stealth tech like laser, infrared, and TV homing to reliably engage aircraft with active stealth. Firing a large number of small, short-ranged missiles in a saturation-type attack is a way to improve the odds of scoring a kill.

I've gone back and reviewed the (paltry) official coverage of the YF-30, and I couldn't find any mention of pylon mounts for ordnance. The only items listed under its armaments are its pair of 12.7mm beam machine guns, the heavy quantum beam gunpod, an assault knife (which is my bad, it does have one), and the ordnance container which contains all of its missile weapons in Macross 30 and in the novelization is later swapped out for a MDE beam cannon turret for the final battle. The best quality art I could locate for the YF-30 is in the Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy Visual Complete Guide, and it does appear to have a pair of pylon mounting locations on the forearms like the VF-31 does, but it's not listed or mentioned or alluded to in any way. The toy has four. I think the Macross Mecha Manual's entry listing six underwing pylons is a copy-paste error from the VF-25 page... because this thing definitely doesn't have six. The biggest sticking point there is the ordnance container itself. It has 36 launchers, but we don't know how many missiles each launcher has. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the armaments we can see in print or with our eyes on the toy exist... so the YF-30 has 36 micro-missiles and four underwing pylons. The YF-30's direct derivative, the VF-31 Kairos, outguns it despite being an economy model. The YF-30 has two beam machine guns to the VF-31's one, but the VF-31 makes up for it with two 27mm railguns. The VF-31's got 36 micro-missiles carried internally and four underwing pylons, but it also has two internal ordnance bays in the legs for large munitions or racks of micro-missiles. The VF-31's got a second assault knife. They've both got heavy quantum beam gunpods. The VF-31 does all that without its ordnance container, though, where the YF-30 has to sacrifice its missile payload to equip a radome or beam cannon. Then, of course, there's the VF-31's Super and Armored Packs. The YF-29, the YF-30's facing competition in ridiculously impractical technology demonstrator-ism, doesn't have any wing pylons to speak of but it has almost 3x as many internally-carried micro missiles (100 vs. 36) outfitted with the more deadly MDE warheads, its coaxial guns are firing MDE rounds, and it's got a built-in anti-warship grade MDE beam cannon turret. The YF-30 can take a similar turret, but at the expense of its micro-missile container, giving the YF-29 a 100-0 advantage instead. The VF-25, the VF-31's facing competition, has a pair of extra gun mounts on the hips for lasers or solid-ammo machine guns, six or eight underwing pylons (depending on which book you ask), an optional 55mm anti-armor railgun, and a multitude of FAST Pack choices including hundreds of missiles like the Super, Strike, Armored, Tornado, and Paladin packs. (FWIW, the RPG stats I homebrewed for the YF-30 give its container 108 micro-missiles... partly because we usually expect a micro-missile launcher to hold 3 or more missiles, partly because it's more balanced vs. the YF-29 that way, and partly because 108 has a pleasing significance WRT the Chronos's time-related implications... 108 being the number of times the temple bells at Japanese Buddhist temples are rung at the end of the year to finish the old year and welcome the new.) The interface in Macross 30 is probably not helpful for these purposes either, since two of the three boxes on the vast majority of VFs in-game refer to the same missile system firing in two different modes... one being multiple lock-on missile spam, and the other being single lock-on high rate-of-fire missile spam. The third Box is usually a built-in beam weapon of some description, most often the coaxial laser or beam guns, but sometimes another weapon like the VF-19's wing root/hip mounted guns or the YF-29's turret. (This can get weird on a few VFs, like the VF-11, where missiles seem to sprout from nowhere because they're not modeled with pylons.)

I'm not sure a toy is a good representative sample? Sadly, there isn't much art of the YF-30 Chronos to get a proper look at the underside of the CG model's wings. All I see on the CG model there is the seam where the wings fold for storage. Oh, handily... it's an ultra-high speed dogfighter with exclusively short-ranged armaments. Kinda what you'd expect given that it was built pretty much exclusively to fight the Vajra and Macross Galaxy completed it using development data from the YF-29 that was leaked to them by LAI. It varies by missile, and Macross's creators are usually quite vague about it for obvious reasons... the one time I recall seeing ranges stated explicitly was in the old Sky Angels book, for the ones used by the GBP-1S Armored Pack which are between 2km and 5km. Those missiles appear to be coming from the ordnance container. In GERWALK mode, if the ordnance container isn't deployed the launchers are facing left and right, parallel to the wing surface. That looks like missiles firing from the container on a trajectory to ensure they clear the wing and limbs.

Honestly? With the amount of trash the industry is producing lately, a couple month breather to reevaluate their life choices sounds like exactly what the industry needs... and it'll give them a chance to get older shows back into the broadcast rotation and maybe make up some of the losses on those older shows from royalties.

I enjoyed the hell out of Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess with only Destruction Flags's second episode over lunch today. It's an isekai series, but its premise is so totally different from the usual boring "oh noes, I am teh min-maxed godmode sue in a fantasy MMORPG world" fare provided by the billion different copycat shows that it stands out twice as much.

The 8th Son, That Can't Be Right! limped in with a second lazily-written yawner. This is western fantasy anime so generic you can practically see the barcodes.

Your decimal point drifted a bit... it's $27, not $2,700.

I'd look at it more in terms of the difference between the firepower the heavy quantum beam rifle or heavy quantum beam cannon turret container put out vs. the firepower of the eight or so thermonuclear reaction warheads the VF-25 can carry.

Nope... Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay's story reached its natural conclusion with Flash Back 2012. A story that's already over doesn't need a continuation, and we DEFINITELY don't want to see them dragged back and subsequently beaten down the way The Show That Must Not Be Named has done to them over the last three decades and change. Let them be. Their story is over and they've almost literally sailed off into the sunset. It's better by far for Macross to continue focusing on moving its story forward, with new people and new places. We've already had two different animated takes on their story (SDF Macross and DYRL?), a novelization by Sukehiro Tomita, several video game adaptations, and a modern manga adaptation (Macross the First). I think we're good.