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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it probably helps that everyone from space in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA seems to wear a leotard. Genesis Climber MOSPEADA suffered from some executive meddling, but not to the extent that I'd call it a "troubled production". I suspect you might be thinking of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross... Tatsunoko Production's other attempt to make the Macross lightning strike twice, which did so poorly that the series was earmarked for cancellation after just 16 episodes and ended prematurely 23 episodes into a 39 episode run.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The impression I always had was that they wore the Riding Suit over their normal clothes.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    There are only two base insignia seen in the official materials... Mars Base's triangle-M logo: and the much less commonly-seen Jupiter Base's heart-J logo that is only seen on the art for the VR-038 and AFC-01Z:
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Apart from the mechanical refinements to the transformation system mentioned previously, a big part of it would have to be simply to accommodate the shapes of the airframes of the various models of variable fighter. The various defense contractors developing new models of variable fighter are constantly experimenting with different airframe designs to see what will best meet the military's needs in quantifiable areas of performance like speed, maneuverability, climb rate, stealthiness, payload capacity, and so on. That has led to some radically different airframe designs over the years to meet the military's latest set of demands for platforms that cover a variety of different roles. So it's partly a "how do we get from here to a giant robot?" question for the design teams as well. The more unconventional the fighter mode, the more unconventional the resulting battroid mode will likely be to accommodate it.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Well, we can't speak for the Zentradi's long-extinct creators... but humanity's rationale for constructing such large examples of super dimension energy weaponry seems to be based on the understanding that they will always and forever be fighting the Zentradi at a significant numerical disadvantage. Your typical emigrant fleet/planet government's defense force has anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred warships at its disposal, and anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand variable fighters, attackers, bombers, and what have you. Even the very largest emigrant fleet described thus far (Macross Valiant) is only about 3/4 the size of a Zentradi branch fleet in terms of the simple number of ships. The superior firepower offered by thermonuclear reaction weaponry and those large-scale anti-fleet super dimension energy cannons like the Battle-class's Macross Cannon level the playing field a bit. Macross II: Lovers Again's Macross Cannon-class gunships and Macross 7's Varauta fleet flagship space carrier are perhaps the most excessive examples of this. The former is basically a massive flying gun battery made up of four Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleships and their heavy converging beam cannons massively uprated to a level where they can wipe out hundreds of ships with a single shot. The latter is simply an exercise in excess, with eight Macross Cannons and eight anti-fleet multi-warhead reaction missiles that are each outfitted with 24 10-gigaton reaction warheads. The Minmay Attack will usually only disorient and confuse a rogue Zentradi fleet, but if you wipe out their command ships while they're dazed and confused they'll retreat and if you wipe them all out your problem is solved at the outset. Having the firepower to do that to branch fleet-sized forces is a good way to ensure your civilian population survives as that's the size of force you're most likely to encounter. Basically, yeah... the remaining Zentradi fleets in the galaxy are still fighting the same war they were fighting while the Protoculture's civilization was collapsing around their ears, and thus far they seem to attack on sight. They and their enemies have been the only show in town for so long that presumably it doesn't often occur to them that there might be other groups that aren't aligned with them or their enemies. Thanks to mass production on an unfathomably huge scale, the Zentradi are still very much occupied fighting the same foes they've been fighting for half a million years. Vrlitwhai's branch fleet stumbled across Earth on a search and destroy mission chasing a fleeing Supervision Army (or Meltrandi) warship. Others simply stumbled across emigrant fleets due to sheer bad luck. In Macross II's timeline, two more main fleets met their end in the Sol system thanks to Zentradi who'd survived the First Space War but not made peace with humans trying to finish what they'd started with progressively less luck as humanity got better and better at dealing with Zentradi forces.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's only the larger warships like the Zentradi and Meltrandi mobile fortresses, Macross II's Macross Cannon-class gunships, and the main Macross continuity's New Macross-class gunships and Varauta fleet mothership that have heavy super dimension energy cannons of fleet-busting proportions.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Presumably no more or less so than their Zentradi counterparts. Heavy converging beam cannons don't have quite that level of firepower on ships of that scale... like the Macross's main gun, they can wipe out one ship with a direct hit or near miss, maybe two or three if they're flying in close formation, but not dozens in one go. The long charge-up and cool-down times between shots make them rather less of an overwhelming advantage than you're thinking, and the space that would otherwise have gone to mecha, guided beam cannon turrets, and missile launchers is taken up by the cannon so the ship is probably somewhat more vulnerable than the average ship of the line.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Remodeled, more like... the line art for either version of the design still has the bridge tower, but in the case of the Meltrandi it's not the only class of ship to have one. Presumably the original bridge was laid out more along the lines of what we see of Milia 639's ship.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Well, their original interest in it - the reason they pursued it to the Sol system - was that it was a ship belonging to their enemy. It was a Supervision Army gunship in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series and a Meltrandi gunship in Macross: Do You Remember Love?. After discovering what'd become of it, their interest shifted from pursuit of an enemy to wondering what the hell they'd just found when they noticed the ship had been rebuilt and the locals started shooting at them with weapons based on lost technology. That got them perplexed enough to decide they needed to capture the ship instead of destroy it.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well, in Macross: Do You Remember Love? the alien warship that became the SDF-1 Macross belonged to the Meltrandi... but as to its age, it's highly unlikely it's anywhere near that old. The war between the Zentradi and Meltrandi that destroyed the ancient Protoculture civilization had been raging for 500,000+ years at the time Alien Starship One crashed in the South Pacific. Both sides had automated factory satellites constantly providing them with replacement ships, mecha, and troops to offset combat losses. Even the Zentradi Boddole Zer Main Fleet's mobile fortress - a core fleet strategic asset - wasn't that old. Boddole Zer's mobile fortress had only been active for ~120,000 years. A regular ship of the line like the one that became the Macross would not have lasted anywhere near that long because it'd be getting shot at on a regular basis. Odds are it was somewhere between a few years and a couple decades old.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    That'd certainly explain a lot. I think that's my favorite interpretation of this so far... one of those largely fictive "based on a true story" type productions with a budget so low they have to raid the studio's props warehouse for anything that looked remotely right. (In the context of that last part, like how G-Saviour raided the props warehouse for SF props and came away with a lot of stuff from Starship Troopers.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, sorta... Kawamori's official stance on canon is basically broad strokes continuity. Except for the Regults and that bit at the end where they talk about "the end of this century", it theoretically fits the existing timeline... it just feels sloppily-made. Say what you will about Kawamori's Schrodinger's canon, but when he does something it's usually tight and consistent within itself.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    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?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    From the diagram shown in the original series, the fold system was located in the central module of the ship.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    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.)
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