Seto Kaiba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not anything revolutionary, but it's definitely a lighthearted breath of fresh air in a world otherwise inundated with bad news.

My read on it is that it's basically his version of a classic muscle car as he heads into an early midlife crisis. It's not bleeding edge performance, but for him something like an Inertia Store Converter probably counts as cheating.

I like to think General Gomez, the man who was dead-set on killing the Project Super Nova contest in favor of the Ghost, likely had to be forcibly restrained during Isamu's debriefing. It's official. The "space trucker" bit was revealed at the aforementioned official Macross concert, and the thing about him sinking his life savings into the VF-19EF/A "Isamu Special" is taken from the Mechanic Sheet for the VF-19EF/A "Isamu Special" in the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle. Ouch... my group is similarly on hiatus, due to furloughs from our various offices dumping more work on us. We were in the middle of a campaign that's playing with the aftermath of the rather weak ending of Macross the Musiculture.

Y'know, I don't know... I don't recall them ever offering an explanation for what the military said to explain away the presence of the YF-19 and YF-21.

Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags confirmed for a second season. https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2020/06/20-1/my-next-life-as-a-villainess-all-routes-lead-to-doom-continues-dodging-death-flags-in-2021

Unfortunately, that's all I was able to find... most of the character designer's published artbooks are just collections of storyboards from Banner of the Stars.

Trying again, as attachments,

Sorry, something about how I pasted the images into the post didn't go over well with the forums. I'll re-upload them as attachments.

Unfortunately, most of his published Design Works volumes are just storyboard collections. Here's some reasonable color reference I turned up in a collection of DVD booklet scans:

Wow... did NOT expect this request for art reference to be as hard to fulfill as it turned out to be. The only content I was able to turn up is from the sequel, Banner of the Stars. The following is from character designer Keisuke Watabe's Design Works Vol.4:

If you stop and think about what the consequences for Isamu's offenses likely was, he's basically Macross's Kou Uraki... saved from the firing squad by the government covering up the circumstances of the incident he played such a pivotal role in.

This season's one cour shows are drawing to a close this week... and I have to admit, I won't miss most of them. The 8th Son? That Can't Be Right! deserves special acknowledgement. Not just because it's the most blatantly half-assed and lazily-written Isekai story I've ever seen... but also because its final episode seems to give even fewer f*cks about the story than the audience does. The climactic confrontation between the protagonist and his evil oldest brother - an event that the entirely of the last two episodes was spent building up to - lasts a minute and ten seconds and consists of one thrown punch followed by immediate obliteration by holy magic. It's over so fast there's literally 2/3 of the episode left when it's done. If this were One Punch Man they'd make a joke out of how short the fight was, but this is played completely seriously and treated like a major accomplishment and the remainder of the episode is spent watching the King's court argue over his reward for it. The ending reveals his grand plan for all that land he just inherited by killing the previous heir is to... make a miso and soy sauce factory. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I had just been trolled. I am hoping for better from Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags when its final episode hits Crunchyroll tomorrow.

Oh, it cost him a lot more than that... he sank his entire life savings into that VF-19EF/A. Assuming, of course, that Spaz Platoon can keep its undiagnosed ADHD under control long enough to actually deal with its assigned objectives... One has to wonder... Isamu isn't exactly a stable individual by any stretch of the imagination. He's a meatheaded adrenaline junkie with poor impulse control and little-to-no respect for authority. That's why every part of his career in the New UN Forces was punctuated with disciplinary hearings, administrative punishments, and multiple punitive reassignments. Even a major achievement like having defeated the out-of-control AI Sharon Apple after it seized control of Earth's defenses was tainted by the fact that he stole a heavily armed top secret VF and a fold booster test article, destroyed part of a hangar complex at New Edwards Test Flight Center, incurred some pretty hefty expenses for the Eden NUNS chasing him in his stolen VF and trying to shoot him down, attacked and destroyed part of Earth's orbital defense network, and caused all kinds of property damage on Earth beforehand. He took his retirement from the New UN Forces to avoid being pushed into an administrative position where he'd have to behave like a responsible adult, blew his life savings on a VF after attempting to buy a banned-for-export VF one part at a time in an illegal transaction, and took a job as a space trucker with Bilra Transport. If Myung is still with him, she's probably aging at ten times the rate he is from the stress of dealing with him. If they were together for any length of time, my bet is she dumped him or divorced him after he nearly got arrested for trying to buy VF-19 parts under the table and blew his entire savings on a VF before running off to live as a space trucker in the sticks.

That should have landed Isamu in prison, had Dr. Jan Neumann not covered for him.

As I hinted at in my previous post, nomenclature is a bit of a sticky wicket when it comes to the VF-19 that Isamu flies in Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa... and I'm going to try to put this in approximate chronological order by publication: January 2011 The light novel Macross the Ride starts serialization in Dengeki Hobby magazine, and its first chapter "Deep Space Warbird" establishes that the branch of SMS operating in the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet had several platoons equipped with a locally-developed VF-19 "monkey model" variant designated "VF-19EF Caliburn". The VF-19EF Caliburn is a 2nd Mass Production type VF-19 modified for all-regime operation, and to a limited extent is used for data collection for the YF-25 program. 26 February 2011 The movie Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa debuts in theaters, incl. a brief cameo scene featuring Isamu Dyson flying an aircraft that appears to be a 1st Mass Production type VF-19 in colors identical to his infamous YF-19-2 from Macross Plus. 31 March 2011 Ukyo Kodachi's novelization of Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa is released. The text identifies Isamu's VF-19 as the "VF-19ADVANCE Excalibur Advance". 16 April 2011 The Official Complete Book: Theatrical Version Macross F: Sayonara no Tsubasa is released. Isamu's VF-19 is mentioned only in passing, and referred to only as a "VF-19 SMS Ver." in the text. 13 May 2014 Issue 69 (nice) of Macross Chronicle's revised edition is published, including a Mechanic Sheet for Isamu's VF-19 which refers to it as the "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special" and specifically links it to the monkey model VF-19EF Caliburn from Macross the Ride. June 2015 Bandai releases the DX Chogokin toy for Isamu's VF-19. The packaging uses the movie novelization's designation "VF-19ADVANCE". March 2017 Hasegawa releases a 1/72 scale kit of Isamu's VF-19. The packaging uses the Macross Chronicle designation "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special". 17 March 2017 SoftBank releases Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried, which includes the offending statement that refers to the "VF-19 Advance" as being a catch-all name for modernizations and refurbishments of the VF-19. So you see the problem... Isamu's VF-19 from the movie has been very inconsistently named... the movie's official artbook just calls it "VF-19 SMS Ver.", Macross Chronicle and Hasegawa's kit call it "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special", and the movie's novelization and Bandai call it "VF-19ADVANCE Excalibur Advance". In any event, prior to SoftBank walking in and trying to change the context of "VF-19 Advance", the term referred to a very specific unique aircraft built for Isamu Dyson and not some family of VF-19 modernization programs. Hence the weird disconnect with that thing in the VF-31 Master File that seemingly has a VF-25's nose, a YF-30's multipurpose container, and the VF-31's tail. Yeah, the VF-19EF Caliburn was a new design in Macross the Ride... one of several special VF-19s to appear in that story (also the only one of those that was a mass production unit). The VF-19EF Caliburn was a VF-19 variant that the Macross Frontier fleet independently developed based on the reduced capability export specification for the VF-19E Excalibur. Like the YF/VF-25, it was a joint venture of the fleet arsenal, Shinsei Industry, and LAI. Modifications were made to the design to improve its atmospheric performance from the VF-19 2nd production type that had been optimized for space use. They built 156 of them, which were divided up between the fleet's New UN Forces, a New UN Spacy special counterterrorism unit called "Round Table", and the fleet's branch of SMS. There were three variants developed... the base VF-19EF, a command variant informally designated VF-19EFs, and a reconnaissance/AWACs variant designated RVF-19EF. A few were converted into the VF-19ACTIVE Nothung technology demonstrator specification. Some were outfitted with EX-Gear. The first couple of trial production VF-25s were entering service when the VF-19EF was being used by the NUNS and much of SMS in Macross the Ride.

IIRC that's in the Blu-ray liner notes... alongside the remarks about the original plan for the series having been 13 episodes and a movie until early in its development. There are a number of one-off errors like that Mirage VF-31C error on page 007... though if you look on the very next page, you'll notice they got it right in every other picture in that section. All told, I suspect there are just too damn many versions of the VF-31 and they got them mixed up because they're trying to focus on Xaos Valkyrie Works' VF-31 Siegfried in place of the much better-looking production model. The book is, at least, not using VF-31A and VF-31S interchangeably... it very clearly differentiates the two, but it spends a LOT of time trying to explain how they're different while not really giving much attention to the VF-31A that's tipped to be the next main fighter of the Brisingr Alliance NUNS. It's a bit frustrating, since this book outright contradicts the series itself about the origins of the VF-31 customs that Xaos uses... trying to pass the forward-swept winglets and so on off as alternative prototypes instead of an aftermarket custom job. As to Master File's "original" variants... they tend to fall into three basic categories: Accidental duplication of things that already exist in Macross's official setting... e.g. Master File's VF-1N is essentially the exact same thing as the official setting's VF-1A+ and its VF-1G is essentially just a VEFR-1 drawn in a less cluttered style. Sensible things which almost certainly exist offscreen in the official setting... e.g. model conversion training variants for the VF-19 and VF-25, a VF-19 AWACS variant, a bomber variant of the VF-22, and so on. Ridiculous-looking garbage that the authors conceived of seemingly without regard for feasibility, which exist mainly to pad a book's page count. The way it seems to work with Master File, the less official setting material there is for a particular design the more likely they are to pad the book out with original variants and thus the more likely it is that they'll start throwing in stuff that belongs in that third category. I don't think it's a coincidence that the three worst books - VF-22, VF-4, and VF-31 - have a lot of those out-there original variants in them and are HEAVILY padded to cover for a lack of research. The very best books in the series, the VF-19 and VF-25 books, also have lots of variants, but they're more sensible ones that were clearly given a fair amount of actual thought and the few out-there ones they have mostly aren't original. Nope... at the very least, the writers of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried remembered that the VF-31 was a further development of the Shinsei/LAI/Uroboros YF-30 Chronos from Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. They do make several mentions of an improved YF-30B along the way as well, in a similar vein to the YF-29B that appeared in Macross 30's story as the rival's VF. That little blurb on page 028 about a "YF-19 Advance" is somewhat unhelpful from an official setting viewpoint since there's already a specific aircraft called "VF-19ADVANCE" in the novelization of the Macross Frontier movies (which is also variously known as "VF-19 SMS Ver." in the official artbooks and "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special" in Macross Chronicle). What it describes is the term "VF-19 Advance" as an umbrella term for a number of different modernization and refurbishment plans that've been applied to the VF-19 over the years by the Jan Neumann design office at Shinsei Industry. This one in particular is described as a refurbished model (presumably post-2060) that includes new nose sensor windows, a new tail design, and the multipurpose container unit from the YF-30. To be fair, it may well be that the default configuration is meant to be similar to the YF-30's where the gunpod was stored in a conventional centerline weapons station instead of on the container itself (as it is when Delta Flight equips the fold speaker container early in Macross Delta). Having the beam gunpod on the container kind of apes the MDE beam cannon turret that the YF-30 had in the novelization of Macross 30.