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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Nope, the ADR-03-Mk.III Cheyenne was an original design by Junya Ishigaki for Macross Zero... it had no prior appearances. It became the "default" Destroid from Frontier onwards due to it having an existing CG model that could be reused instead of having to model a new Destroid from scratch. EDIT: For the curious, Junya Ishigaki's sketches for the Cheyenne can be found on pages 93 and 94 of his artbook Junya Ishigaki: ROBO no ISHI. The Cheyenne art is mostly dated February and March 2003.
  2. Yeah, that's what I was getting at... asset reuse is a pretty common, widely accepted, and usually-effective way to save money on a production that uses computer animation. Whatever overworked, underpaid animator did that scene grabbed an existing art asset without even taking the thirty seconds to see if this was an aircraft that was even designed to be launched from an aircraft carrier. Macross has been reusing art assets wherever they can get away with it to save money since the switch to computer animation. Macross Frontier reused the Cheyenne CG model with a few tweaks as the Cheyenne II which was then reused unaltered in Macross Delta. Macross Delta also reused the Island-1 CG model from Macross Frontier for the much smaller cityship on Ragna, and reused the NUNS ships essentially unaltered, while putting some minor repaints and cosmetic alterations on the Macross Galaxy fleet's ships for Windermere IV's use. The best cases of art asset reuse are the ones that make perfect sense in context, like the reuse of those ship designs. The Cheyenne II required some mental calisthenics for Frontier's creators to explain its existence, but a lot of the other stuff just works.
  3. Ah. I've never been the podcast-listening type, so that slipped right past me. Yeah, it's a weird set of anachronisms... So, from the profile, this is obviously a Prometheus-class aircraft carrier. As far as we know, the Earth Unification Government only completed one of those: CVS-101 Prometheus. The old Sky Angels technical manual and Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 have both suggested the UN Government had at least two more pairs of Prometheus-class carriers and Daedalus-class assault ships under construction at the outset of the First Space War, but those ship were not set to be completed and delivered until late 2009 or early 2010 and were presumably destroyed before or shortly after completion when the Zentradi bombarded Earth's surface. These, on the other hand, are obviously Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptors... and it obviously doesn't belong where it is, for several different reasons. First and foremost, the Lockheed Martin F-22A can't operate from aircraft carriers. They were designed for Air Force use only, and lack the necessary hardware for CATOBAR, like the launch bar on the front landing gear and tailhooks for arrested recovery. There was originally a proposal for a Navy variant, but that proposal was scrapped in 1991 and these lack a key design feature that was unique to the F-22 Navy variant proposal... variable-sweep wings. Hypothesis: some schmuck animating this on the cheap appropriated an existing F-22 CG model and threw it in without even bothering to consider whether this was a naval aircraft. Secondly, the F-22 would have been obsolete before it ever had a chance to enter military service. The real world F-22A entered service in December 2005, but in Macross's timeline OTM-enhanced fighter designs like the McNell Douglar F203 Dragon II would've been in service for two years already by the time December 2005 rolled around. That's why the UN Forces were using things like F203s and OTM-enhanced F-14s instead of F-22s or F-35s. The 5th Generation jet fighters had their thunder stolen by the 1st Generation Variable Fighters. Tanks are not my forte, but this thing appears to be a UralVagonZavod T-90 main battle tank... the standard MBT of the Russian Army since 1992. I may be wrong in this identification though, so if someone out there really knows their tanks please chime in with your expertise. That's a Stonewell/Bellcom VF-1A Valkyrie. Those didn't enter service until December 2008, after the end of the Unification Wars... why is he here? ... well that's a Viggers/Chrauler MBR-04-Mk.VI Destroid Tomahawk. Not an initial trial production model either, its visor appears to be green instead of red. The first Mk.VI units didn't come off the line until November 2007. ... but this guy's wearing a Unification Wars-era pilot suit model that was designed for use on the F-14++ and VF-0 and flying what looks to be a VF-1A-4. ... then there's this a-hole, who shouldn't be here at all. Why are you here, Regult-san? Your presence is an anachronism. Hotboxing in your Valkyrie's cockpit is, of course, unsafe and probably a violation of regulations. They say something at the end about the end of this century... but, Regults aside, this would have to be occurring in December 2008, eight years after the last century ended. Having Regults present just doesn't work with everything else, chronologically.
  4. I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed... you'd think they'd at least put in enough effort to come up with some original combat choreography or something. The VF-1 launch sequence is just a reanimation of the launch sequence from the Sega Saturn Macross: Do You Remember Love? game, minus the carrier getting torched from orbit by a Zentradi ship, and a lot of the rest is borrowed from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross OP. When or where is this even supposed to be? You've got a place that looks like it's supposed to be the Middle East and fighters like the F-22 that were only used before the First Space War, but also Regults and Valkyries?
  5. So... as long as I'm adding notes to things, I found another one. Turns out there's a typo in the Macross the Ride coverage of Hakuna Aoba's mid-story upgrade, the VF-0改. The Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.2 romanizes its name as "Zeak"... but it's actually supposed to be "Zeke", a reference to the Allied reporting name for the Imperial Japanese Navy's famous/infamous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter.
  6. Added a note to my remarks on the SDF-3. While the Macross Frontier animation and print sources like Macross Chronicle have taken the stance that SDF-3 was Megaroad-02, Kazutaka Miyatake has privately expressed support for the idea that the SDF-3 is Vrlitwhai's ship and that particular detail from Sky Angels is also referenced in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 on page 120 in the entry for SVF-789.
  7. Alas, no... it's mentioned only in passing, as a forthcoming next-generation unmanned fighter tipped to replace the QF-3000 series that took such heavy losses in the First Space War. Variable Fighter Master File mentions a similar postwar upgrade to the Ghost that was designated QF-3100.
  8. Well, this old book predates Macross: Do You Remember Love? by a month and change... it was printed 27 May 1984, and DYRL? made its theatrical debut on 7 July 1984. It was the first real in-depth Macross technical publication, and its take on various things hasn't exactly aged well since its non-fictional details are based on the current state of affairs in 1984 before a lot of the stuff surrounding the US Advanced Tactical Fighter program and almost a decade before the Joint Strike Fighter program. For instance, the VF-1's bank breaking program price tag of $50 billion and flyaway cost of $126 million per aircraft - more than triple that of even the most expensive US fighters of the period - are now cheaper than US 5th Generation fighter programs (even the YF-22's development cost was $86.6 billion and the flyaway cost was $150 million). It originated a few terms that didn't really gain widespread acceptance in Macross works until ~2011 like the name of the airframe control AI ANGIRAS that was finally brought into the official setting for good with Macross the Ride or ARMD being short for "Armaments Rigged-up Moving Deck" that finally made its way into Macross Chronicle. There is also a reference to Gundam in the mention of the VF-1 having an AMBAC system. It talks about later SDFs as well, specifically the SDF-2 as being a Macross-class ship (which it was until they made Macross: Flash Back 2012) and SDF-3 as being the designation given to Vrlitwhai's ship after it joined the UN Spacy fleet... which could've remained official until Macross Frontier identified SDF as the hull classification symbol of the Megaroad-class (meaning SDF-3 was Megaroad-02). The book also has some brief asides about the QF-3000E Ghost, SF-3A Lancer II, and some of the ships involved in its operation like the ARMD-class, Daedalus, and Prometheus. It's where we get the stuff about the Lancer II's weapons, the Ghost's AI, and it even mentions a replacement program for the badly depleted stock of Ghosts designed QF-5000.
  9. As @sketchley has indicated, that kind of information is extremely rare in Macross publications. The only source I know of that puts anything like an actual operational range on any OTM-based missile is the VERY old Sky Angels VF-1 tech manual doujinshi that Masahiro Chiba put together back in '84. Prior to Macross Chronicle and Variable Fighter Master File picking it over for ideas and content, it was the sole source of a lot of esoteric information like the meaning of the acronym ARMD, specs for the SF-3A and QF-3000, fighter complements for various ships, and what the SDF-3 actually was. Some of that info has been superseded by more modern, updated versions (e.g. what the SDF-3 is), while some got repeated very nearly whole cloth in those newer publications. Missile ranges, unfortunately, are not one of those details that got cherrypicked and either updated or reprinted. The AMM-1 Arrow (which this older book calls AAM-1 Arrow) is given an operational range of 50km... quite a bit better than the medium-ranged missiles that were public knowledge when the book was written, like the AIM-7E. Bear in mind, this book was published in 1984 before Macross: Do You Remember Love? even came out, and some of the details it offers did not age well... like the VF-1 Valkyrie's then-bank-breaking $126 million price tag which is less than many 5th generation fighters today. At the time, that would've made the VF-1 between three and five times as expensive as a normal fighter. EDIT: As an addendum to the above, while print sources like Macross Chronicle indicate the SDF-3 is now the Megaroad-02, Macross mechanical designer Kazutaka Miyatake is noted to support the older stance on the SDF-3 being Vrlitwhai's ship.
  10. That's about all the backstory there is to Macross-11, apart from its supposed connection to the "Zomeo and Zoliet" radio play heard in Macross Dynamite 7 and the novelization(s) of the Macross Frontier story having the fleet be near-ish to the Macross Frontier and Macross Galaxy fleets and (in the movie novelization) the Battle-11 being sent to reinforce the NUNS on the Vajra planet only to be disabled by fire from the Queen Frontier. Outside of the novelizations, Kaifun's unauthorized cover band is about the only noteworthy thing the fleet has.
  11. Cats was a Lovecraftian horror show... a wound upon the real, a furtive glance into a nightmare realm of Things Which Should Not Be. Watching it was like taking a day trip to Innsmouth while on some particularly bad shrooms.
  12. From the diagram shown in the original series, the fold system was located in the central module of the ship.
  13. As unpleasant and dangerous as space travel apparently is in the Alien franchise, I can kinda see why that might be the case. I mean, it'd take a certain sort of gung-ho or desperate idiot to voluntarily spend months or years of their lives in cold sleep aboard a slow ship going nowhere important... especially if that ship is overseen on its voyage by cold, unfeeling, amoral AIs programmed and directed by a megacorporation famous for its cavalier attitude towards health and safety violations, worker rights, and basic preventative maintenance. Doubly so in the case of these colonists, who are headed on a one-way trip to a newly discovered planet. If the survey crews are as sloppy as the Covenant's crew, they might've just missed an alien virus that causes apocalyptic diarrhea in humans or that it occasionally rains sulfuric acid. Even if everything goes fine you're still stuck with Big Brother the Computer, an android with a timeshare in the Uncanny Valley, and a bunch of similarly gung-ho or desperate idiots on some barren rock months or years away from help. (If you're lucky, your boss is Captain Hollister from Red Dwarf, though... like the LV-426 colonists in Aliens had.)
  14. Y'know, I have no idea... I don't recall it ever being mentioned. Most of the Macross's original alien hardware survived its crash landing intact and was restored to working condition by humans... so presumably that space was similarly empty in the ship's original operating context. We have no way to know for certain. Maybe it was a cargo bay, or a hangar space?
  15. Oh, my friend, you are in for a TREAT. Alien: Isolation is the first Alien story since the original (or Aliens if you're being generous) to make the xenomorph truly TERRIFYING. It's not that jump scare BS either, it's genuine claustrophobic horror in the true spirit of the original Alien that lovingly recreates the "used future" aesthetic of the first movie as well. As far as I'm concerned, there are only three titles in the Alien franchise... Alien, Alien: Isolation, and Aliens. Everything else is just a sad imitation. Prometheus's high level concept was basically riffing on the book Chariots of the Gods, the wellspring of Ancient Aliens BS that also gave rise to Stargate and a few other pieces of middling science fiction. They dialed the philosophy and religious references way back in the final version, presumably to avoid driving away an audience who expected to get yet another space monster horror movie from the creator of Alien and not a treatise on man's inhumanity to man delivered by an eight foot tall albino in a cybernetic gimp suit. (Not that the incredibly anvilicious aesop of "faith makes you stupid" was much better in that regard, given that it was delivered with all the subtlety of a half-brick to the head.) They really could and should have gone with Prometheus as straight sci-fi with a horror twist. Making horror the dominant genre in the film pretty much mandated that the entire cast act like suicidal idiots who had no clue how to do the jobs they were allegedly experts in... like the geologist/cartographer who gets lost in a space he just mapped, that field biologist who fails to recognize an obvious threat display, or literally everyone taking off their helmets on an unexplored alien world with who-knows-what in the atmosphere and surface water, never mind the explicitly toxic atmosphere. Alien: Covenant was just a terrible error, since it tried to bring Prometheus properly into the Alien fold by doubling down on all of its worst plot decisions.
  16. How about "the Wayward Zentradi"? My vote would otherwise be for "the Wandering Zentradi"... though IMO "Lost" can have connotations that better fit the fact that these Zentradi are not merely living nomadically, but are living a deprived life without culture. They are lost in more senses than merely geographical/astrographical. Eh... for me, it was more "so bad it's awful" most of the time. Voyager took a long time to find its stride, but it got better with time. Discovery seems to get worse with each half-season.
  17. Would it? The Engineers in that material do seem a bit hypocritical what with their habit of destroying worlds they've engineered if the local flora and fauna don't meet their exacting standards... but couldn't it also be a result of life on Earth being derived from proto-Xenomorph mutagens? It's not like those critters are friendly, after all. It's possible that some reasoning like that lurks under the Last Engineer's (how he was referred to in the script) almost literally Holier Than Thou attitude. A lot of it is drawn from the dialog in released Prometheus scripts that didn't make it into the final film, inscriptions translated in the script that weren't fully translated in the film, and remarks by Ridley Scott regarding the motivations of the Engineers in a podcast he did for one of the major news outlets. IIRC, wasn't that kind of the problem? Wasn't Prometheus originally trying to distance itself from Alien and be its own thing?
  18. It makes you wonder... did Windermere IV ever consider getting into the liquor industry to help boost their economy? With so many orchards, I bet they make a fierce hard cider or apple schnapps. Most VFs are not, strictly speaking, VTOL capable in Fighter mode. They can, as @sketchley noted, use their high-thrust verniers to "hop" high enough into the air to facilitate switching to GERWALK mode if the situation calls for it. Hikaru does this in his VT-1 Super Ostrich in Macross: Do You Remember Love? during the escape from Vrlitwhai's ship (~43:35). The SV-51 is noteworthy for its ability to employ true vertical takeoff in Fighter mode due to its ventral lift fans. It's worth noting that practically every VF is capable of Short TakeOff and Landing thanks to a combination of their high thrust-to-weight ratios and various powered lift technologies like boundary layer control systems and blown flaps that can improve lift characteristics and manipulate drag. Their preferred short runaway solution would probably be getting a low speed takeoff going and immediately going vertical at full power as the F-4, F-16, and F/A-18 have done with famously trollish pilots at the stick.
  19. Last we heard (c.2045-7), Kaifun was living in the 41st large scale long distance emigration fleet "Macross-11" where he managed the unauthorized Fire Bomber cover band "Fire Bomber American".
  20. I think it was mostly in service of the story concept that Scott and Lindelof were developing for Prometheus, which had some very strong pseudo-Christian messianic themes alongside its themes of unwanted pregnancy and so on. The whole concept probably wouldn't have worked if the engineers weren't a humanoid species. The concept being developed was that the Engineers were a long-lived, highly evolved species that had lost the ability to reproduce biologically. They were going to be worshippers of a sort of proto-xenomorph like the Deacon that was born from an Engineer that got a facefull of alien wing-wong, and were using the preserved blood of their proto-xenomorph messiah to seed worlds with life in the hopes of giving rise to an intelligent species like themselves to be their children/successors. They failed to recreate the proto-xenomorph's mutagenic properties scientifically, but turned their failed experiment into a weapon (the black goo) to destroy those worlds that did not meet their exacting requirements. Earth was the only "success", but humanity failed to meet expectations due to its inherent violent tendencies and after much consternation and several failed interventions the Engineers decided to just wipe the slate clean with a bombardment and start over until their mission was stalled by a containment breach. The Engineers were going to be the gods who made humanity in their own image in the biblical style. A lot of that messianic stuff got left on the cutting room floor, however... but that's probably the reason the Engineers are humanoid now. It's possible, but I doubt that was ever a major consideration given Ridley Scott's chosen direction for the story.
  21. Perhaps, but when have you known me to NOT consider even the most trivial detail of Macross mecha worthy of interest? I just don't see how that interpretation fits the definition... particularly in connection with the third sentence about how c.2045 there has never been an example of them accepting peace with humankind. The Zentradi who made up terrorist groups like Quamzin's are Zentradi who did accept peace with humanity until they were unable to overcome their mental conditioning and fighting instincts. Chlore's fleet, who encountered humans exactly once, are cited as an example of Zentradi who are arguably no longer "lost" just from that one encounter that ended on good terms. Even Quamzin was not immune to the lure of culture. I don't recall any of the various Zentradi terrorist groups that sprang up after the First Space War being referred to as "lost Zentradi", that was a term for the ones who'd never really been exposed to culture and were still living a nomadic existence in space. (If you have additional context from other sheets/sources, please don't hesitate to share it. I know that I'm quite stubborn, but I'm always open to changing my view in the face of more data.) Let's not mention THAT steaming turd if we can at all avoid it... As I've indicated, I do not agree with your interpretation of the definition of "Lost Zentradi". We agree on the rest of the particulars, I just don't see how Zentradi who HAVE been living among humans (often for an extended period) fit the mold of the "Lost Zentradi" who haven't adopted any Earth's culture or lived peacefully among humans for any length of time. We know Zentradi anti-government groups are capable of producing their own goods, but those aren't "lost" Zentradi... those are Zentradi who've been living alongside humans for a long time, their entire lives in some cases, who are rebelling against the gov't for various personal reasons. They're not lost, they're just bastards. Macross Chronicle doesn't support the contention that this battle suit was made by post-contact Zentradi either. As I had noted previously, the Mechanic Sheet for it declines to give a specific origin for the design. It echoes remarks from older publications about the design being used by the remnants of the Boddole Zer main fleet which fled the loss of their command ships at Earth, and suggests the design was created by the ancient Protoculture during their civil war 500,000+ years ago (as equipment in the inventory of those Zentradi would have to be). They do throw in a remark about it being used by dissident Zentradi too, and the coverage does entertain the possibility that this specific example was modified from its base specs by dissident Zentradi too. Please do note carefully that I indicated that was fan speculation from the outset... what I consider a not-unreasonabe inferrence based on the fact that this battle suit is explicitly described as being structured like a Nosjadeul-Ger but armed like a Queadluun-Rau, and with overall combat performance that compares favorably to the VF-11. We know that the Queadluun-Rau was too expensive (too complex and resource-intensive) for widespread adoption and that the Protoculture built a better pilot to handle its over-the-top specs due to the standard Zentradi not being up to the job. If it's built for standard Zentradi comfort like a Nousjadeul-Ger, armed like a Queadluun-Rau, and with less extreme performance, one could conclude fairly that it is probably an economized Queadluun derivative meant for use by the rank-and-file male Zentradi the way that the Queadluun-Nona was for the females. It would not be the first time there were two different takes on the same idea between two different versions of a Macross story... like the Macross II Valkyries and VF-22 both being examples of VFs heavily modeled on Zentran/Meltran battle suit technology.
  22. As far as we know, they are not guns. What they appear to be is the same model of high-maneuverability vernier mounted on the VF-25 Armored Pack's forearm unit.
  23. I've seen nothing of interest WRT new teaser content for Absolute LIVE!!!!!!.
  24. The Zentradi don't think like that, as far as we know... someone who started getting funny ideas after exposure to the miclones would probably be judged "contaminated" and killed like what was going to happen to Vrlitwhai, Quamzin, and Laplamiz's fleets. Looking at that definition you translated, I don't see any reference to the Zentradi who lived on Earth. The ones who lived on Earth were ones that made peace with Earthlings, even if it was only a temporary peace. This definition only references the remnants of the Boddole Zer main fleet that retreated from the combat area after their command ships were sunk - and therefore were only exposed to the Minmay Attack - and the various Zentradi forces scattered around the galaxy that have not encountered humans or human culture yet. It says there are no examples of them accepting peace with humanity yet (unless we count Chlore), which means this can't refer to the Zentradi who sided with humanity and then become terrorists because those groups didn't flee Earth with the scattering of the Boddole Zer fleet and DID briefly make peace with humanity. Well, sure... the ones who made piece (however short-lived) with humans and lived on Earth were being trained in things like manufacturing. The ancient Protoculture prohibited the Zentradi from having knowledge like that to keep them dependent on the Protoculture-controlled factory satellites, so the ones who didn't live on Earth and thus never received that human education would find the idea of making something new to be a completely alien concept. To quote your own translation of Worldguide 10A "The Zentradi":
  25. Macross Chronicle declines to specify where the enemy battle suit was produced. It just echoes remarks that previously appeared in the Macross Plus liner notes and This is Animation Special: Macross Plus book about this model of battle suit being used by the remnants of the Zentradi Boddole Zer main fleet. Logically, the "Lost" Zentradi couldn't have developed and produced this mecha themselves. They're the Zentradi who retreated after their command ships were sunk, so they've never had the opportunity to live on Earth and learn about how their technology actually worked or how to repair and maintain it from humans. They have the Zentradi's "black box" view of technology, and therefore wouldn't be capable of developing or building a new model of battle suit themselves. The only Zentradi who've been depicted developing original weapons are the ones who've lived among humans for a time and learned about the principles of their technology like the Macross II timeline Quamzin in Macross 2036 and Eternal Love Song, Algus Selzaa in the Macross Plus and Macross 7 backstory, or the Zentradi rebels who created the Variable Glaug, Feios Valkyrie, Queadluun-Alma, etc.
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