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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    They had a brief face-to-face meeting in episode 8, when the members of Walkure and Delta Flight who stupidly went undercover on Voldor escaped after being captured. They each picked each other out as the other's rival pretty much right away, despite the fact that they had never seen each other outside of a VF before. Instead of fighting on the ground, Keith promised to finish him in the sky. I'm not sure it was convoluted... its story is exceedingly simple and a big part of its second half is largely cribbed from Macross Frontier. It's just badly laid-out and nothing is properly explained because there was no time to explain it. I mean, they're all third rate at best... this was a bush league conflict by any standard of measure. Messer or Arad would have to claim the title of "least crap", but of course Arad is perpetually out of focus and Messer was the one Keith singled out as his rival ace. That's got basically nothing to do with the actual show, and everything to do with the real idol group Walkure.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That show is just solid gold. Absolutely solid gold. The very first anime that ever got my broke-ass student self to open up his wallet and buy it on home video. I've been continuing to follow Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags… and it continues to be a surprisingly pure and genuinely funny show. I've always rather liked that kind of self-aware self-parody that you get in reverse-harem shows, and HameFura definitely delivers on that front. It's been a while since I've had a show that I'm actually looking forward to each week, and in these troubling times its lighthearted tone and content really just hit the spot. The Eighth Son? That Can't Be Right! is turning out more or less how I expected. It's a very generic, very by-the-numbers isekai story about a Japanese salaryman who is reincarnated in a fantasy world where he's an overpowered hero. It's also unmistakably being made on the cheap, even as anime goes, with some of the worst CG animation I've seen in years. The CG used for the golems in particular would've been awesome in 1994 but now just looks like some high school DeviantArt project. While catching up during this lean season, I started The Irregular at Magic High School. I can't shake the feeling I'm basically watching Full Metal Panic!: Wizards Edition. I get the feeling there's a LOT of content from the light novel that absolutely did not make it into the show, because there's a bunch of long contemplative sequences where it feels like there ought to have been an inner monologue or something. The main character just comes off as a boring, invincible, hyper-competent hero... like what I'd expect from a bad isekai series. I've been hosting a weekly watch party for some friends on Discord who haven't seen Jojo's Bizarre Adventure yet. We're a few episodes into Stardust Crusaders: Battle in Egypt, and it's every bit as good as I remember it being. Looking at possibly re-attempting Aldnoah.Zero, or starting on Eromanga Sensei, Himouto! Umari-chan, Today's Menu for the Emiya Family, or Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions. (Also rather looking forward to rewatching Golden Boy, since Crunchyroll seems to have stealthily picked that one up.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That's essentially why we predicted that Robotech Remix was going to fail when the series was announced... the Masters Saga is the fandom's un-favorite saga and she is generally considered to be the worst and most obnoxious character in the show. Making her the main character, even if they were transplanting her into a universe in which the Masters Saga designs never existed and everything is Macross-based, was taking an awful risk. A gamble that seems to have rather predictably ended poorly, given the apparent catastrophic existence failure of the series after just four issues.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I think I should make the distinction between what I mean when I say "main cast" and "main character". The Main Cast are the named characters who are actually directly involved in moving the story forward... the characters who do enough in the plot to actually merit being named, featured in the merchandise, etc. The Main Characters are a proper subset of the Main Cast, being the ones who are actually the focus of the story. Characters like Bruno Global or Ray Lovelock are undeniably not Main Characters, but they have essential roles in the story that are critical to the plot advancing.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Because they don't keep to themselves. To borrow a popular meme, it's like dealing with vegans or people who do crossfit. Nobody gives a tinker's damn about what they do when they keep it to themselves, but they seem to feel compelled to force it into any even remotely related conversation at the first opportunity. That's why a "No Robotech" rule is a near-universal thing found in almost any Macross fan community online. It was a bloody necessity back when Robotech fan were more numerous. Robotech fans were (and still are) notorious for their ignorance, and would butt into and derail discussions (often unwittingly) because they had no idea what the hell the rest of the participants were talking about and tried to relate everything to Robotech. Rules like that aren't as necessary now that there are very few Robotech fans left. Harmony Gold cultivated and encouraged that ignorance, of course, as a way of retaining their customer base... while blocking the release of real Macross in the west in defense of a property that was a commercial failure from the outset and which several court systems believe is kept around mainly to launder money for tax evasion. They're in business to make money, mate. If it sells, that's because people like it and want more. If you don't like it, take your cash somewhere else... that's the meaning of the free market. I, for instance, am a lifelong Star Trek fan. I loathe Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, so I don't support those parts of the franchise with my money. Rap, as a musical genre, is no less a viable platform for artistic expression than classic music, jazz, opera, or motown. And those other genres certainly had their fair share of mediocre acts who were transparently only in it for the money... it's just that, as time goes on, we only remember the greats and epic failures. All that middling garbage gets forgotten. As we've noted many times, you have a very VERY warped perception of what made Macross a success... your tastes are not at all in line with those of 99.99999999% of the fandom. Macross demonstrably performs better with general audiences when it emphasizes those aspects of the story you don't like. The optimism, the music, the love triangles, the things which were always central parts of the Macross experience. When they tried to go more gritty and action-focused, it didn't do nearly as well... like Macross II, Macross Plus, and Macross Zero. The same principle applies to Gundam too, actually. Gundam is known for being relentlessly grim, dark, and depressing... and when it's tried to break that mold, it ends up doing much worse than usual like Reconguista in G. Let's be honest here, the two dozen or so people who actually give a toss about Southern Cross aren't enough to matter... the vast, nay, overwhelming majority have no use for or interest in any part of Robotech except "the Macross Saga". That's why every effort to continue Robotech has been Macross-centric except for its two very worst failures... and let's just say that IS NOT a coincidence. MOSPEADA does have its own cult fandom independent of Robotech, mind you.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, several of those clones also had more solo screen time than Reina did. Yeah... having loads and loads of characters fighting for the aggressively limited screen time between Walkure songs definitely did not help the show's writing. Normally, a Macross series has around ten people in the main cast, plus assorted minor and supporting characters. Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Hikaru, Misa, Minmay, Roy, Claudia, Max, Milia, Global, Vrlitwhai, Exsedol, Quamzin (11) Macross 7: Basara, Mylene, Ray, Veffidas, Gamlin, Max, Milia, Gepernich, Gigil, Sivil (10) Macross Frontier: Alto, Sheryl, Ranka, Ozma, Michael, Luca, Brera, Cathy, Leon, Grace (10) Even the OVAs are pretty close in this regard: Macross II: Lovers Again: Hibiki, Sylvie, Ishtar, Nexx, Feff, Exegran, Ingues, Dennis (8) Macross Plus: Isamu, Guld, Myung, Sharon, Jan, Lucy, Millard, Marj (8) Macross Dynamite 7: Basara, Elma, Liza, Graham, Lawrence, Gamlin, whale poacher captain (7) Macross Zero: Shin, Sara, Mao, Edgar, Roy, Aries, Nora, D.D., Hasford (9) Macross Delta has: Walkure: Mikumo, Kanama, Makina, Reina, Freyja (5) Delta Flight: Arad, Messer, Chuck, Mirage, Hayate (5) Aerial Knights: Keith, Bogue, Hermann, Qasim (4) Windermere IV: Grammier VI, Heinz, Roid Brehm (3) Other: Ernest Johnson, Berger Stone, Laurie Malan (4) For those who are counting, that's 21. I left out Theo and Xao because they're glorified background characters who have no role in the actual plot and almost no interaction with other characters. Properly developing ten or so characters in the space of 26 22min episodes is a big ask, but not unachievable. With a cast twice that size like Macross Delta's, it's nearly impossible. When you have an Excuse Plot that's all about contriving flimsy reasons for an idol group to have live concerts at the drop of a hat, it's defnitely an impossible goal. The five members of Walkure, plus Hayate, Mirage, Keith, Roid, and Bogue... yup. There was the Hayate-Freyja-Mirage triangle and the Messer-Chuck's sister-Kaname one... what was the third? In this day in age? Yeah, I'd doubt it. These days, a lot of what seems to get made are 13 episode adaptations of light novels. Even a 26 episode series seems to be increasingly rare.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing fantastic... it won't be a momentous event, because almost nobody knows or cares that Robotech exists even now. It'll just be cause for a brief sigh of relief as the fandoms that've had to put up with the ridiculous shenanigans of Robotech's fanbase and "creator" realize they don't have to put up with if anymore. It's the same sort of relief that comes with being done babysitting someone's ill-behaved child or pet that won't stop sh*tting on the carpet. Nope... unlike Robotech, that stuff actually sells. And pretty damn well, at that. Looking at how it's currently doing, on its seventeenth animated feature and with Walkure and previous singers playing to packed houses while merch sells out while still in preorder, there's a pretty damned airtight case for Macross having been great all alomg. Goodness knows it's the one and only part of Robotech anyone gives a cr*p about. ;-)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yup. Xaos is an interstellar conglomerate with a weirdly diverse portfolio... it's like someone let Comcast have a private army, both in terms of how their business is split up and their general lack of competence. Oh, it's worse (and funnier) than that... the Aerial Knights, with the exception of Master Hermann, are a standard set of reverse harem genre character archetypes of the sort that you could find in practically any otome game. Someone somewhere in production was clearly hoping for shipping wars that never materialized. Keith Aero Windermere is the practically obligatory blonde-haired tragic prince character who comes from a wealthy/influential/noble but broken family and has been treated badly, neglected, or excluded because he's an illegitimate child the family head fathered with his mistress. Roid Brehm is the bespectacled stoic chessmaster with a manipulative streak and a hidden nasty temper who is the best friend and right hand man of the tragic prince character and runs everything from the shadows. Theo and Xao Jussila are the incredibly close identical twins who finish each other's sentences, who exist mainly to facilitate twincest and one-true-threesome ships. Qasim Eber-Hardt is the tall and intimidating, but soft-spoken, gentle, and considerate "wild" man type. Bogue Con-Vaart is the younger girly boy who was doted on and spoiled by his big sisters but wants to be a real manly man and overcompensates for everything as a result. Plus or minus a few little tidbits here and there, they're basically the main cast from Ouran High School Host Club recast as villains... which has been a source of unending entertainment to me ever since I noticed it. They're horribly underdeveloped expies of characters from previous Macross shows... except Hayate, who is arguably an improvement in likability. Arad Molders is Great Value Ozma Lee, a scruffy old veteran who left the New UN Forces after the grief from a personal loss/failure broke him and he compensated for it with a mild anti-authority streak and joining a private military contractor. Messer Ihlefeld is Dollar General Michael Blanc, the hotshot senpai who tries to keep the main character out of the service, is hiding an entire airport's worth of emotional baggage from a previous traumatic experience, is wanted by all the ladies and refuses to publicly acknowledge his romantic interest in a colleague until right before his untimely demise. Chuck Mustang is Five Below Hayao Kakizaki, the boisterous big guy with little-to-no indoor voice and a very relaxed outlook who's usually laughing, joking, or eating and wants to be a hit with the ladies but they all find him unappealing. Mirage Jenius is Daiso Mylene F. Jenius, the tomboyish girl who feels overshadowed and inadequate in the face of someone better but takes the family legacy very seriously and is constantly frustrated and at loggerheads with the more lackadaisical main boy. Hayate Immelmann is better Alto Saotome, a dreamer who feels lost and put-upon in the world and wants to chase their passion but doesn't get the opportunity until they fall into the cockpit and discover they're actually really suited for this fighter pilot thing, despite an anti-authority streak. Unlike Alto, he's not constantly moping and shouting and has well developed sense of humor, so he's easier to like early on. Walkure, as characters, are even less developed than Delta Flight, but are no less a pack of cliches... Freyja Wion is just better Ranka Lee. Mikumo Guynemer is a counterfeit Sheryl Nome who's stuck in Sheryl's abrasive "pro" mode 24/7 because she literally has no personality of her own. Kaname Buccaneer is the broken bird woobie, a pity sink who seemingly exists to fail and be sad. Makina Nakajima is just a fanservice character, who exists mainly to move a set of large breasts from scene to scene and gainax occasionally... to the extent that her boobs feel like more of a character than she herself is. Reina Prowler is the standard-issue short-haired sugar-and-ice girl with the troubled past who talks in monotone... what most call a Rei Ayanami expy. Is that really what Macross Delta was about, though? "Might"? Macross 7 actually developed its characters and its story. It stands head, shoulders, knees, toes, and a 50,000km Tsiolkovsky tower above Macross Delta in every category that isn't music. Macross Delta really REALLY needed more time and more opportunity to develop its characters. It could've been really interesting and engaging, but they just kinda fell apart after episode 4 or so.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I used to play Warhammer 40,000 on a regular basis... I've been looking at getting back into it. Some of my coworkers roped me into joining their Overwatch team, so I've been playing that competitively for about half a year now. I've also been coordinating watch parties on Discord with several coworkers and friends who are casual anime fans looking to sample various titles... we've been doing a weekly Jojo's Bizarre Adventure marathon and finally got to Stardust Crusaders: Battle in Egypt this week. My RPG group's on hiatus, but we've been taking a break from my heavily hand-edited take on Palladium Books's Macross RPG to play Dark Heresy and Pathfinder. I'm also involved as a volunteer researcher with a couple different local historical societies, and I'm a volunteer coordinator and judge for National History Day's events here in Michigan. ... and because it sort of meshes with my Macross hobby, I also sometimes do translations by request for Gundam publications like Master Archive Mobile Suit and artbooks from various other anime properties. I've also occasionally accepted commissions to translate doujinshi, which I've mostly stopped because there isn't enough brain bleach in the world to unsee the things I've seen. (It's not even the gore or freaky porn, some of the stuff I've seen makes Rob pecs-bigger-than-their-head help-I-can't-draw-feet Liefeld look like a master of anatomy.) I'm not sure if it necessarily counts as a hobby, but I also take in a lot of pets that people can't care for or can't take with them to a new home... I've ended up with a lot of weird critters part-time or full-time because of that.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I mean, we already kinda did that... it was called Macross 7. The Varauta forces are basically a second Supervision Army, created by the Protodeviln to help Gepernich pursue his more humane (but still pretty awful) plan to make a sustainable spiritia farm instead of nearly obliterating all life in the galaxy (again). Well, they used both the Megaroad-13 colony and later the captured Zentradi citizens of Macross-5... but as far as we know they never managed to link up with the Supervision Army they created in the ancient past.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Past tense... the Supervision Army was controlled by the Protodeviln. After the Protodeviln were sealed away by the anima spiritia, the brainwashed members of the Supervision Army lost the highest level of their chain of command. With neither side having anyone left who could call a halt to the conflict, the Zentradi forces and Supervision Army have continued to follow the last orders they were given and have waged 500,000 years of war against each other with no sign of stopping. Exsedol was afraid of the Protodeviln because they were essentially terrifying, utterly unstoppable monsters by the Zentradi's standards. It took anima spiritia, Protoculture who had special spirita like Basara's, to contain the Protodeviln and seal them away in the laboratory where they had been created. Initially, the Zentradi were unable to effectively oppose the Supervision Army because they had standing orders to not "interfere with" the Protoculture... and the Supervision Army's troops included vast numbers of brainwashed Protoculture. It wasn't until the order to not interfere with the Protoculture was rescinded that the Zentradi forces could properly fight against the Supervision Army.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    There's been no mention of any consequence like that... though the Supervision Army has more pressing concerns, like the Zentradi who've been hounding them with the intention of exterminating them for the last 500,000+ years.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Only one small portion of it was mentioned in a marginal note on one piece of line art from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. I noticed the connection during a discussion on another forum about Macross drawing inspiration from the US armed forces for much of the UN Forces. While I was looking for a picture to show an example of the old school Army bumper numbers I happened upon a picture that also had the AR-850-5 1942 formation markings visible and it just clicked. There are several other members here who have a better claim to that title than I do... and a few folks who don't come here anymore who'd also have a pretty good claim on it as well.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    When Macross was made, the US Navy's career path for pilots was Pilot -> XO -> CO -> CAG -> CO of a high-draft support ship -> CO of a larger ship Max's career followed a similar trajectory from pilot to squadron leader to XO and CO on an escort ship to CO of a Battle-class. Macross actually does an OK job of following formation organizations nicked from the US Armed Forces... there are fairly few distinctly Japanese touches to its organization, it's mostly American.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not entirely sure what you're asking? The presence or absence of a dedicated unit command variant doesn't really have any implications for squadron or air wing organization, modex numbers, etc. In the real world, all that sets a CAG bird apart from the rest of the squadron is that (if certain permissions are obtained) it can have the squadron colors instead of the standard low-viz paintjob. Macross is a bit more lax about low-viz paintjobs and such, so all that would really set a CAG bird apart would be its modex number.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    The only member of the Jenius family who got screwed over was Mirage... who had to deal with feelings of inadequacy because she was merely Above Average in a family that not only literally defined what excellence meant as a VF pilot, but also dominated in politics and professional music.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Macross borrows a lot from US Armed Forces practices and systems, but it doesn't always follow those systems to the letter. For instance, the SVF-1 Skulls have a weird aberrant modex number set that starts with a leading 0. The Destroid formation markings are borrowed from World War II-vintage US Army regulation AR-850-5, though they're missing division-level numbers. As to why Hikaru's VF-4A and Roy's VF-1S had a squadron commander's modex (x01) instead of a modern CAG modex (x00)... Macross's usage of the term CAG seems to be more in line with the original context of the title from World War II. Back then, the CAG was simply the most senior squadron commander currently embarked and functioned as a department head under the ship's captain while continuing to lead their squadron directly. It was after the war that the post of CAG evolved into a dedicated administrative billet for a senior officer who had "graduated" from squadron command on a career path towards being made captain of an escort vessel.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Unless there's been a run on 20-grit sandpaper, I doubt anyone would want to use something quite that unpleasant.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Nope... the Fold Dimensional Resonance system is only shown piercing a fold fault once, and that was a fold fault barrier produced by the Fold Evil. It got stuck on its first try too, until Basara boosted it with song energy. It's not clear how the Fold Dimensional Resonance system would have facilitated overcoming fold faults, unless perhaps it was intended to work in concert with a regular fold booster to help it operate like a super fold booster.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Part of it is, as @sketchley said, a convenient contrivance of the plot. Having Reon Sakaki get shot down in orbit of Uroboros while on a mission to hand-deliver a YF-25 Prophecy from the SMS Sephira branch to the Uroboros branch was very convenient to the plot, since it set up a combat tutorial vs. Rod's YF-29B, introduced Reon's rival (Rod Baltemar), and being shot down put him in the position of having no choice but to take a position with the Uroboros SMS and participate in the plot after the Uroboros Aurora flares up and blocks all fold travel to and from the planet while he's in hospital recovering from the injuries he sustained in the crash after he was shot down. There is also an element of secrecy to it. Strategic Military Services and its parent company Bilra Transport chose Uroboros for its remoteness as a place to develop the YF-30 Chronos as clandestinely as possible. It was an extension of Mr. Bilra's mania about finding a way to overcome fold faults. Parting out an existing, unneeded aircraft would be one way to conceal having acquired the Ariel II "Brunhilde" airframe control AI system from the YF-25. Otherwise, attempting to acquire a new one from the manufacturer would potentially draw unwanted scrutiny to the top secret project... one doesn't simply place an order for bleeding edge military avionics and expect it to go unscrutinized.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the factory satellite seen in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series indicates that factory satellites have a fleet of robot ships they use to mine the necessary resources to facilitate continued production. Presumably there is some "recycling" involved as well, given Quamzin's allusions to "retiring" elderly Zentradi and what we see of biomatter recycling in Macross Frontier.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... though in practical terms there isn't actually much difference between the YF-25 and VF-25 outside of its monitor turret and tandem cockpit. It might as well be a VF-25B with a different head. Mind you, the whole reason Reon Sakaki was ferrying that YF-25 from Sephira to Uroboros was so that the SMS office on Uroboros could part it out and use some of its more useful bits (like its Ariel II airframe control AI) in the YF-30. Presumably Sephira was not willing to part with a production aircraft on the altar of Major Blanchette's ambition. The idol group Walkure was extremely well-received in Japan and still enjoys considerable popularity there today. I'm not sure I'd be willing to argue that the Macross Delta series itself was particularly popular or well-received outside of its role of promoting Walkure's albums and live concerts. The show's merchandising is pretty limited outside the realm of Walkure character goods. There's the obligatory novelization, manga adaptation, PSP game, and DX Chogokin toys, and then there's two brief gaiden manga titles, a technical manual that's mostly copy-pasted from a previous Macross Frontier book, and some model kits in various scales. There's very little in terms of character goods for Delta Flight or Darwent High School Host Club The Aerial Knights except for some Mirage stuff (a lot of which is her cosplaying a Walkure member) and even a fair number of the kits are Walkure versions of various mecha even though exactly none of the Walkure characters are pilots. The kit for Roid's Sv-262Hs had to be advertised with Mikumo on the box instead of Roid, and come with a huge Mikumo sticker that covers a lot of the plane. Roid's not the only one getting shorted either, Bogue and Keith are the only two members of the Aerial Knights to get kits and actually appear on the box art. Theo, Xao, Hermann, and Qasim apparently don't count. So yeah, I'd say Macross Delta was well-received and quite popular in Japan... but it's mostly because of Walkure. (Not gonna lie, I love the setting, I've got all of Walkure's albums, and the VF-31 and Sv-262 are some of my favorite later Kawamori designs... but if you tried to make Macross Delta stand on the merits of its heavily-derivative and obviously phoned-in story and the horribly underdeveloped cast, I wouldn't rate it much higher than I did The Price of Smiles, Tatsunoko's ill-fated attempt to get back into mecha anime for its anniversary that didn't so much go down in flames as find the elevator in Hell's sub-basement was out of order.) We don't really know any details, do we? I mean, we know the title is Absolute LIVE!!!!!! and that's about the end of it.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It's possible some did... but if there were any, we haven't been told about it. As to "why incur the extra development costs", in part it's to get yourself something better than a half-complete YF-24 and partly to have something you can sell in export to turn your own profit on it... as the Macross Frontier fleet is alleged to have done in various sources like Master File (and implied to have actually taken place via Macross 30 showing a VF-25 from Sephira) and the Brisingr Alliance was explicitly planning to do in Macross Delta with the VF-31A Kairos.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    That is something that Master File came up with, independent of the official setting.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the YF-24 is the common ancestor of all 5th Generation VFs so far... and likely will remain a common ancestor to all of them, since the technology that defines the 5th Generation was developed on and for it. The gimmick the last two shows have done where the shiny new VF is only available to a non-military group of elite mooks who are picked to test it because they're legally expendable is overdone. The whole PMC schtick is overdone too, though at least Xaos was closer to the reality of PMCs than SMS was... what with Xaos being mostly made up of people who couldn't hack it in the military's ranks. All they were really missing, since Lady M constitutes corrupt corporate management, was having the ranks packed with the kind of pasty, out-of-shape, military-cosplaying militia nut the real military didn't want, convinced they're living out the plot of their very own Call of Duty game. I'd like to see a return to something closer to the original series, where the protagonists were the actual military and there wasn't a unit of elites doing all the heavy lifting with VFs a generation newer than everyone else's. Or, hell, let's go towards the realistic and have the PMC be the bad guys... or maybe an underequipped PMC can save the day, like in Terrestrial Defense Enterprise Dai-Guard. (In the last Macross RPG campaign I ran, the villain was a megacorp with its own PMC, the Canaries.... and the Canaries are, yes, based on the ones from Red Dwarf in every respect.)
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