Seto Kaiba

One thing it occurred to me to add, with respect to the UN Spacy having operational similarities to an Army Air Force, is that the UN Spacy fleet as it existed during the First Space War was developed and operated less as a fleet than as static orbital defenses. For instance, the ARMD-class space carriers were actually developed to be stationary space airbases situated in various orbits as part of Earth's planetary defenses. The idea to modify the design into a warship came after they'd already built at least one as the original design-intent space station: the L5 Frontline Station. The Oberth-class destroyers were designed as ships from the start, but the actual function of that basic, no-frills design is essentially a space-based ballistic missile silo. They park in orbit with the missile silos pointing outward and let rip if they're given a target. Is it, though? Most of its uses are kinda cringy these days. The only one that really gets taken seriously anymore is "Cyberpunk". Some terms like "cyberspace" are dated enough to be instantly associated with the 90's. (and I say that as a guy who has a degree in what used to be called "cybersecurity").

As far as I know, it's just an attempt to make an intelligible English word out of the kanji for "Space Forces" (宇宙軍) following the same pattern used in the kanji for "Army" (陸軍) and "Navy" (海軍). The other two end in -y in English, so if the Ground Forces are the Army and the Sea Forces are the Navy, then the space forces would be the Spacy/Spacey. Macross's creators have come up with a couple terms like that which unintentionally sound a bit silly in English, like the name the Unification Government gave to the alien starship that crashed in 1999. They called it Alien StarShip One... or ASS-1 for short. "Cosmo" is one of those prefixes like "Cyber" that just feels incredibly dated these days.

The Star Wars movie I want to see is the one where the Galactic Empire's human resources people try to send Darth Vader to take an anger management class in a vain hope that they can get him to stop using his space magic to murder his direct reports every time he's given bad news. I like to think the Imperial forces have their own version of the Peter Principle called the Vader Principle... that the most ambitious, least competent officers are systematically promoted to the place where they have the least opportunity to damage Imperial interests: the bridge of Lord Vader's flagship.

If they weren't clearly trying to take this mess seriously, this would be a god-tier work of self-parody by the Robotech franchise.

A lot of it is actually modeled on the United States Armed Forces... distinctly Japanese touches are surprisingly thin on the ground in the organization of the [New] UN Forces. The ability to transfer between branches without having to be discharged and reenlist is one of those distinctly Japanese touches, though the only officer we've seen do it is Isamu... and he doesn't appear to have been doing it voluntarily, being kicked around from the UN Spacy to the UN Navy, UN Air Force, and back to the UN Spacy over the course of a few years in the 2030s. So... the military ranks used in the Macross anime are the old school terms that were used by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy until Japan's military was formally dissolved under Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, and are now only used to address foreign soldiers. Nowadays, the JSDF's three branches each have unique terms that incorporate the kanji for their operating regime ("Land", "Sea", and "Sky" respectively). The old system used the same words regardless of branch except where it was prefaced by the name of the branch as an additional word. If a pilot were to transfer from the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the Air Self-Defense Force, he wouldn't be demoted but the rank term used to refer to him would change. The Japanese Self-Defense Force's three branches are organized as distinct commands united at the highest levels. Each of the JSDF's three branches has its own Chief of Staff: Chief of the Ground Staff, the head of the Ground Self-Defense Force Chief of the Air Staff, the head of the Air Self-Defense Force Chief of the Maritime Staff, the head of the Maritime Self-Defense Force They collectively answer to the Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff and his deputies, the Vice-Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, the Administrative Vice-Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, and a senior enlisted adviser. The Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff in turn answers to the Defense Minister (and his deputies) and the Prime Minister who acts as Commander in Chief of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. That said, there are a number of joint organizations in the JSDF that are staffed by a mixture of personnel from multiple branches administrated by the Joint Staff like the Regional Cooperation Headquarters, the SDF hospital network, and SDF Physical Education School. And f*cking proud of it.

Yeah, 宇宙軍 is what I was thinking of. There is a very slight etymological bias towards army in a stringently literal "Definition #1" rendering of the term itself, but "space army" sounds goofy as f*ck and I can't think of any translator who'd actually want to use that interpretation. An army is something intrinsically associated with land warfare, so to most a "space army" is a contradiction in terms. That kind of gels with the kanji actually used for "Army" (陸軍, literally "ground troops" or "ground forces") and "Navy" (海軍, literally "sea troops" or "sea forces"). The only reason that a "space navy" doesn't cause the same kind of cognitive dissonance as "space army" is because we've been conditioned to accept it by popular fiction's overwhelming bias toward the Navy organizational model for a space fleet. Write "space navy" in Japanese (宇宙海軍) and it looks every bit as wrong as it should sound in English. My personal preference has always been for the Navy organizational model. Because I was raised on Star Trek, that style has always felt more natural to me and it took a while to really get my head around the idea that a modern space fleet would fall under the administrative jurisdiction of the Air Force. With so much evidence that the ranks are meant to be translated as Army ones thanks to English text visible in the animation itself, info from liner notes, katakana spellings of ranks like the names of the Macross-class SDFNs, and official subtitles produced in Japan under the supervision of Macross's creative staff, my preferences have to take a back seat.

That is your personal feeling, not a hard fact. Frankly, I know a number of Navy personnel (some of them relatives) who would jump at the chance to serve on a spaceship regardless of what it entailed. I think the UN Government and UN Forces felt a former submariner was an ideal choice for command of a starship since they were more accustomed to three-dimensional thinking and being confined to a huge metal pressure vessel for long periods of time. The entire structure of traditional militaries had been turned on its ear already, so who was going to argue? This isn't applying Occam's Razor. The explanation with the fewest assumptions is that the mountain of consistent evidence we've been given over three decades is correct and the ranks are supposed to be translated as Army ranks. The Japanese term used doesn't say "Space Navy", it says "Space Army" or "Space Military". Moreover, why would we automatically assume that a space force with its own fleet would be organized along Navy lines? There's no rule saying it has to be, and realistically we know that space operations are the jurisdiction of the Air Force. The established trope we've got about "space navies" is a product of authors who had no concept of how space travel worked and wanted an easy analogy ("space is an ocean") or were lavishing affection on their personal obsessions (like Gene Roddenberry's affection for CV-6). The use of Naval ranks is often the only part of them that's recognizably Navy-inspired unless you go to into the hardcore military fiction. Realistically, you'd end up with something that's a good deal like the UN Spacy... a blending of whatever traditions and practices works for the situation, and to hell with where it came from, mixing Army and Navy traditions from multiple countries. The entire concept of "the death of the author" is academically cretinous at best... amounting as it does to a way to say "screw the evidence, I'm not wrong because I don't want to be". To pretend that there is nothing of the author's thought in his work is denial of the most basic nature of authorship.

So remember... regularly sand and repaint your old sailors to prevent corrosion damage! Y'see, I'm not so sure that this alleged Army bias in translation is actually a thing outside of machine translations and inexperienced translators. Both of those groups have a well-known tendency to default to whatever's the first definition in the dictionary for simplicity's sake or because they don't know any better. Experienced translators know to look for contextual cues that point them to a more correct translation. Sometimes these cues are flying out in plain sight, and sometimes you have to dig. Mind you, given the state of popular space fiction we would actually expect the opposite of your contention. Namely, a strong bias towards the use of Navy rank systems for most any work featuring starships or space fighters. Why? The most popular, mainstream works of space fleet-featuring science fiction in the US and in Japan prominently feature their space fleets organized as space navies. Star Trek has the Federation Starfleet organized as a space navy that borrows pretty much exclusively from US maritime tradition. The Star Wars universe has the Galactic Empire's starfleet literally called the Imperial Navy. Japan has Space Battleship Yamato, wherein the space fleet is a space navy. They've also got the Earth Federation Space Force of the Gundam franchise's Universal Century that's presented as a space navy. There are more examples of "Space Marines" than one can shake an entire forest's worth of sticks at. The overwhelming bias is towards Navy organization in fiction, not Army. Here's the thing... Macross's history is supposed to be essentially the same as ours up to 17 July 1999 0030 JST, when an intense energetic phenomenon (later known to be a defold reaction) is detected at lunar orbit followed by the detection of an object of significant mass on a collision course with Earth. Macross's creators have gone back and corrected their timeline several times over the years to account for events that occurred in the real world like the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. You'll find old timelines from artbooks like Macross: Perfect Memory make reference to West Germany and the Soviet Union still existing in the early 2000s. When the newly formed Earth UN Government established the UN Forces in February 2001, the four branches of service were mergers of the various Armies, Air Forces, Navies, and Marine Corps maintained by the nations which joined the Earth UN Government. The US's fingerprints are all over the UN Forces in practically every known aspect of their organization to date. When the government finally put together a dedicated Space branch of the armed forces, it was a slam dunk that it was going to be heavily influenced by the US's approach to space defense. Now, which branch has been in charge of military operations in space since the 1960s? The United States Air Force. They staked their claim early on, with the Blue Gemini project proposal and held onto it with a death grip ever since, even if the Outer Space Treaty in '67 kind of took the wind out of their sails. It would not be remotely surprising for the UN Government to round up all those Air Force guys who were part of the space commands of the various national air forces and say "you're a space force now, start figuring it out". Even in Star Trek, the Federation Starfleet's predecessor United Earth Starfleet was an outgrowth of the United Earth Space Probe Agency, a merger of the various national space agencies and space commands of pre-unity Earth. Likewise, Stargate was a fictional universe that hewed closely to our own history and are one of the few to depict a US-owned space fleet correctly as belonging to the Air Force. This chart is incorrect from O-7 (NATO OF-6) up... or should I say down given its directionality? Specifically, there appears to have been an offset introduced when the US Navy's version of "Commodore" was included... resulting in incorrect ranks in Japanese being given for the flag officers. A correct version of the chart would look like this, which I knocked together in Google Sheets real quick: You'll notice I've marked NATO grade OF-6 (US O-7) in RED. Japan's old Imperial Army and Navy, as well as the modern Japanese Self-Defense Force, don't actually have a rank in their organization corresponding to OF-6 (US O-7). They skip right from OF-5 to OF-7, which I've seen hints was something they might've picked up from the French via cultural osmosis or deliberate imitation. For parity with NATO forces, the Japanese flag officers treat their NATO grade as one lower than on this chart due to the absence of an actual OF-6 equivalent in their organization. Junshō is a rank, not a title, and thus is equivalent to what would be called Brigadier General, Rear Admiral Lower Half, or the rank of Commodore used by two dozen or so navies outside the US. (Gensui would typically be rendered as "Marshal" or "Field Marshal" in a Japanese context.) The title of Commodore as it is applied in the United States Navy is a title independent of rank held by the senior captain in a group of ship's captains who commands the group. I believe the equivalent term for the title of Commodore would be Teitoku (提督). Bruno J. Global's rank is given as Junshō in the dialog of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?. It's not his title, it's his rank. There are more examples than can be readily counted, to be honest. I'd actually forgotten another one - a cluster example - where the personnel profiles of half a dozen characters are on screen simultaneously and we see that all of them have bios in conspicuous English with legible ranks and vital statistics in Macross Delta: Second Lieutenant Sara Korat First Lieutenant Hilma Sandra Captain Hadley Fuller Second Lieutenant Attilio Missillier First Lieutenant Samuel Murdoch Captain Kuzma Sirotenko Quite honestly, I think the simplest explanation given that other two major Japanese sci-fi anime properties (Yamato and Gundam) are both all-Navy all the time is that this was done intentionally. The creators of the original Macross series were Gundam fanboys, and at least one of them (Kawamori) is a dyed-in-the-wool military aviation enthusiast. For them not to know the difference would be surprising to say the least. I don't think there's really a cogent case for "it's all accidental" when they've been so incredibly consistent about it over three and a half decades of material. I mean, we have at least five cases where Macross shows were subtitled with the direct or indirect cooperation of Macross's creators: Macross II: Lovers Again, Super Dimension Fortress Macross (Animeigo release, 2001), the Macross Frontier 30th anniversary Blu-ray set, Macross Delta, and Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure. On each occasion, the ranks are translated as Army ranks. Literally Army ranks in the case of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, since that was the only one to feature enlisted ranks rather than having every pilot depicted as an officer. US Renditions even had to account for the potential confusion stemming from having a character whose rank was Captain (Taii) in scenes alongside a character whose title is Captain (Kanchō), which was resolved by the dub giving Cpt. Nex Gilbert an informal promotion to Major. There are, to the best of my knowledge, only two instances of Navy rank terminology showing up in Macross. The first was the Viz Media translation of the Macross II: Lovers Again manga, which contained a number of errors including accidentally substituting Navy ranks in and referring to Nex as "Lieutenant" and Sylvie as "Sublieutenant". The second is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing in Macross Zero, wherein a handful of aircraft are shown with Navy ranks stenciled on the canopy frame. Poor LCDR Tim Baker dies like five times in the OVA thanks to being the name stenciled on the default VF-0A CG model's skin. Shin Kudo's F-14A++ Super Tomcat has his and Edgar's canopy stencils reading "LT SHIN KUDO" and "LT EDGAR LA SALLE". Later on in the OVA, the characters who are confirmed to belong to the UN Spacy at that point have no rank on their canopy stencil, only a "PL" followed by their name. We know Shin and Edgar served aboard the UN Navy's carrier Illustria prior to being dragooned into flying for Roy in the UN Spacy, and that Roy was essentially leading a model conversion training class to train pilots on the variable system prior to adoption of the VF-1. It's possible the unfortunate Lt. Commander Baker was one of the UN Navy's future trainers operating in Roy's ad hoc squadron aboard the Asuka II. You knew it was coming, so here it is... THE CATCH. We know Kawamori's a big aviation enthusiast who loves naval aviation. The UN Spacy's SVF-1 Skulls are his homage to the US Navy's (then VF-84) Jolly Rogers. This ain't news. However, Miyatake made some interesting Army-themed design choices for UN Spacy and Zentradi gear... a few of which I alluded to previously. If you examine the bodies of the destroids whose markings identify them as UN Spacy units, you'll find US Army-style bumper numbers and US Army World War II-vintage formation markings. That's what the Δ#Δ and several other numerical markings are. Division and Company affiliations, presented Army style. Curiously, the closest to a conventional aircraft carrier the Zentradi have - the Quiltra Queleual-class - is explicitly called out not as an aircraft carrier, but as an LST. Yes, they even helpfully wrote out "Landing Ship Tank" in English. As a point of order, the VF-1 Valkyrie was never exclusive to the UN Spacy. Navy-specific features like the nose landing gear configuration with catapult shuttle launch bars is a touch intended to accommodate users like the UN Navy and UN Marine Corps. We've seen, officially, units from three different branches of service with VF-1s (the UN Spacy, UN Navy, and UN Spacy Air Force), and it's indicated to have also been used by the UN Air Force and UN Marine Corps. The VF-1 was like the F-35... just, y'know, not bad. It was one fighter to rule them all, and by all accounts it was pretty damn good at it thanks to overtechnology. The same holds true for the models that followed, and even the one that preceded it. The VF-0 is one of the few VFs I know of to have a variant commissioned for a specific branch of service: the VF-0C was built for the UN Marine Corps, and the sole known user was VMFAT-203. This is actually something Variable Fighter Master File got from official sources. You'll find references to UN Spacy fighter squadrons using a modified version of the Navy-style squadron designation all the way back in the earliest art books like Sky Angels. The Air Force and Spacy Air Force use USAF-style markings and designations, while the Navy and Spacy use the Navy-style and modified Navy-style markings and designations, and the Marines and Spacy Marines use modified USMC-style markings and designations. The other overtly-Navy organizational touch we see is that the ships use US Navy-inspired (or directly lifted) hull classification symbols most of the time. Please note that my contention is not, and has never been, that there are not Navy-inspired touches present in the UN Spacy and New UN Spacy. Only that all evidence indicates that this space force uses Army-style ranks for its personnel. Amusingly enough, that is not consistently applied. If you look, in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series everyone has three stripes on their sleeve regardless of their rank. Visible rank markings weren't applied to character designs until Macross: Do You Remember Love?. The main rank markings were on the right side of the chest, though they did also have sleeve stripes that correctly line up to their rank. Macross II: Lovers Again carried this practice forward, but it went away in Macross Plus only to come back again in Macross 7, was inconsistently applied in Frontier (Cathy Glass's are correct, Leon's are not), and seems to have been abandoned again in Macross Delta. Again, more Army Air Force than straight Air Force... after all, the UN Spacy spun off an Air Force. Battroids are explicitly infantry units, and refer to the previous remarks about how UN Spacy destroids have US Army style armored vehicle unit markings. "FAST Pack" itself is an Air Force term coined for the F-15 if memory serves. They also explicitly indicate that the translation for shotai is "Platoon", an infantry term. More subtle nods to Air Force and Army Air Corps stuff are EVERYWHERE in Macross though. The VF-1 Valkyrie is named for a USAF Strategic Air Command prototype bomber (the XB-70) and Hikaru has a model of said bomber on display in his quarters. The next three main fighters are all named for USAF and USAAF aircraft as well: the P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt, and F-117 Nighthawk. The VF-1's manufacturers are bland name versions of companies known for producing aircraft and concept aerospace craft for the USAF and NASA: Rockwell International (AKA "Stonewell") and Bell Aerospace (AKA "Bellcom"). Other contributing companies are similarly Air Force-heavy. The QF-3000E Ghost's design is based on the USAF/NASA X-24A built by Martin Marietta. Roy's signature stunt plane was a Focker D.VII. Many of the character names reference aviation and particularly aces of various Army air services like aerial maneuver-inventor Max Immelmann (Max Jenius, who is also a nod to the "Blue Max" medal he won), high-scoring ace and general scumbag Hans-Ulrich Rudel (Bruce Rudel), Eddie Rickenbacker and Eino Juutilainen (Eddie Juutilainen), and so on. Macross Delta took this to an obscene extreme. I could go on like this for entirely too long, but I think you get the idea. Kawamori might've had Navy inspiration for a few things, but the Air Forces are all over the place. For the record, Alto Saotome is 17 as of the start of Macross Frontier. The UN Government and the New UN Government that replaced it after the First Space War apparently set the age of legal majority at 17 based on explicit dialog references in Macross Frontier. Alto's initial rank is an odd, but not entirely unprecedented case that is trope excessively abused by mecha anime over the last twenty or so years. Namely, in the rare instance that an officer trainee is assigned to field duty prior to the conclusion of their training they are sometimes given the provisional rank of Warrant Officer (Jun'i). Anime f*cking loves abusing this, because that way they can have young characters who only just joined the armed forces end up as officers very quickly by merit-based promotion. This goes back as far as the series Fang of the Sun Dougram but wasn't really flogged for all it's worth until the 2000s with shows like Macross Frontier. (I can only think of two cases where the rank is actually used in the way it's intended... Vato Falman in Fullmetal Alchemist, a man of indeterminate age who was at least in his mid-20s or early 30's and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant partway through the series, and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, wherein Suzaku Kururugi goes straight from a second-class citizen buck private meat shield to warrant officer in one fell swoop thanks to the patronage of Earl Lloyd Asplund and Princess Euphemia before being promoted directly to Major upon being knighted.) The current batch of writers, certainly... but the people overseeing it all are acknowledged to have a fair amount of actual understanding of how the military works. They're not ex-military, but they are what you might call military enthusiasts. Kawamori in particular is a military aviation enthusiast with a love of American military aviation. It would be ridiculous if he wasn't aware of the distinction. Moreover, he broke with Gundam and Yamato by using Army ranks rather than Navy ones. Surely it would have been easier for him to simply follow suit. Since there's a limit on the number of quote blocks, I'll split this post.

Yeah, that's a long one. The museum staff are making pretty good progress on the restoration work, considering how bizarrely out-of-the-way the USS Edson's dock is. As a donor I got to sneak into a number of parts of the ship that aren't quite safe for the regular visitors. I'm hoping the restoration work will be done in the next few years, though the upkeep on a thing like that has to be brutal. The next big item is they definitely need to strip the deck and repaint it. Michigan winters are NOT kind. (I did have a grand time watching my brother, who's never been on a military vessel of any kind, find every exposed conduit, steam pipe, and doorframe with his head. I'm almost 2m tall myself but I've long since learned where to duck.)

It's Robotech. Nobody thought it couldn't get worse. Getting worse is what Robotech does, and it has become exceedingly efficient at it.

The studio must be a believer in "if you build it, they will come". A cynic might suspect that they deliberately trotted out that sh*t-awful mess so the negative reaction would get everyone's attention and lower expectations for the final product.

Pages 18 and 19.

None, I'm afraid. It seems to exist only as a textual mention in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah's description of the VF-25's development. The only non-VF-25 pictures in that section of the book are of the YF-24-2, a VF-19F and VF-22S with NUNS markings, a YF-29 (incl. a version in SW-XA II colors), and a VF-27 in plain NUNS heraldry. (I saw that pic on DeviantArt... looks like a frigging Arwing from Star Fox. The other fun one that turned up on a Google Image search for YF-26 was the YF-27-5 Shahar-F from Macross the Ride misidentified as "YF-26 Seraphim".)

When you factor in that Grace essentially stage-managed the riots that got Sheryl's family killed, she's basically been running Sheryl's entire life from the shadows. Sheryl was kept implant-free and indicated to Alto that being "all natural" was part of her appeal, but that must have made her almost entirely dependent on Grace to get by in the Macross Galaxy fleet's heavily network-dependent society. General Galaxy would appear to have some plausible deniability there, and may not even have been directly aware what Macross Galaxy was planning. The way it's described, Macross Galaxy was a separate corporation that was founded by General Galaxy as a subsidiary... so it had its own corporate leadership who were appointed by General Galaxy's board and was technically responsible for its own decisionmaking. As such, since the identities of the Galaxy Executives aren't known, it's unclear how involved people at General Galaxy were in Macross Galaxy's shenanigans. Some or all of them may have been in the know, or Macross Galaxy might've been a true rogue corporation.

I've been reading some stuff about the Macross Galaxy fleet's technology lately, and it makes the place sound kinda... completely horrific. As you know, Macross Galaxy is a 4th Generation closed-system chemical plant-type emigrant ship constructed and launched under the sponsorship of General Galaxy. The whole fleet is run by a corporation rather than a civilian government and is more or less one colossal flying R&D facility for its parent company, General Galaxy. The fleet's advances to automation and labor-saving technology have left it with high unemployment despite overall high economic productivity, so large sections of its residential blocks have deteriorated into slums. Its citizens are almost uniformly cyborgs who are described as essentially living in perpetual cybernetically-enforced augmented reality. There are few, if any, entertainment facilities on its main residential ship and natural food production has been replaced by more resource-efficient synthetic foods. The augmented reality its citizens live in compensates for this, since it can be used to convert an empty space into a parkland in the mind's eye of the beholder and modify their sense of taste so that the synthetic food tastes good. The general populace there is being mind controlled on pretty much every freaking level to the point where they're not really in touch with objective reality anymore. The corporation is conducting all kinds of unethical testing and experimentation like using black ops to test new weapons, unlawfully creating cyborg soldiers and implanting battle AIs into civilians to turn them into soldiers without needing to train them, and even backing terrorists to intimidate opponents of legalizing cybernetic implants in the fleet. One of the few entertainment venues we know about within the fleet, the Riviera-class resort ship Evna (which may or may not be named for the capital city of the Land of Ev in L. Frank Baum's Oz series) was attacked and taken over by a splinter group leftover from Latence (the bad guys in VF-X2) in 2058. This whole fleet is straight-up Weyland-Yutani sh*t... except Macross Galaxy is actually good at it. It certainly explains why Sheryl was so in awe of the Macross Frontier's 5th Generation closed-system bioplant-type construction, since the fleet's residential blocks are much nicer places to live in than urban jungle of Macross Galaxy. People without implants in the Macross Galaxy fleet are effectively second-class citizens who lead harsh lives, since the entire community is heavily tied into the implant network there. Visitors can allegedly make use of AR goggles to interact with the network in a limited manner. It kind of has some horrific implications for Sheryl's childhood above and beyond her having spent some time living rough in the slums. She had no implants, so she was a second-class citizen cut of from most of what was going on in the fleet day-to-day. It's like Grace was raising her as a bird in a cage.

Development of the YF-25 Prophecy was undertaken within the Macross Frontier fleet as a joint venture by branch offices of Shinsei Industry and Legodt & Angeloni Industries (L.A.I.) that are located in the fleet. Shinsei and L.A.I. were selected by the Macross Frontier fleet government and the fleet's New UN Forces to develop the fleet's next-generation fighter prototype together. The Macross Frontier fleet government apparently had some pretty good ties with Shinsei given that they're also known to have built (under license) over 150 VF-19's in the late 2050s and Shinsei also played a role in the development of the Macross Quarter-class. The "Guld Works" is the Macross Galaxy corporation's in-house variable fighter development projects group. In practice, they're the equivalent of (and named for) the Lockheed Martin "Skunkworks" that handles development of that company's advanced development projects including both experimental aircraft and military programs. (Well, OK, they're also named for Guld Goa Bowman, the infamous General Galaxy civilian test pilot who bravely gave his life to defeat an out-of-control unmanned fighter on Earth in 2040, but the Skunkworks are what inspired the name format.) Macross Galaxy is an emigrant fleet governed by a corporation with the same name. They're a subsidiary of the General Galaxy corporation that was set up as a colossal flying lab to evaluate bleeding edge overtechnology... presumably intended as a way to compartmentalize questionable research and development programs that would have raised eyebrows or garnered unwanted attention and regulatory oversight otherwise. It's basically a flying private version of Area-51 in that regard. They didn't need to solicit any other corporation to help them because the Macross Galaxy corporation's portfolio included all the necessary resources to handle development of a next-gen variable fighter internally. I've only done a partial translation of the book, but I haven't seen any citation of a manufacturer for the YF-26. Presumably it was one or more corporations with local presences in the Macross Olympia fleet, though it's indicated that the YF-26 was developed to rather different requirements based on the fleet's interest in overtechnology from Protoculture ruins rather than the overwhelming focus on the Vajra possessed by the Frontier and Galaxy fleets.

This strikes me as a particularly bad idea... the writing in the Star Wars sequel trilogy is dodgy enough as it is, never mind J.J. Abrams's task of unf*cking the story after The Last Jedi is a battle that isn't so much "uphill" as "scaling a sheer vertical wall ten miles high". Leaking a bunch of fake plots for the movie exponentially increases the odds that they're going to put out a "leak" that sounds significantly better than the plot they end up going with.

It's mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. Macross the Ride bandied about (unsubstantiated) rumors of a YF-28 under development in Macross Galaxy, though that turned out to actually be the production-intent VF-27 that we know and love from Macross Frontier. (The YF-27 that appears in the light novel is essentially a deliberately underperforming unit trotted out to mislead as to the capability level of the production-intent design, while the rumored YF-28 was supposed to be an uber-VF on roughly the same level as the Frontier fleet's YF-29 program.) The VF-25 Master File book describes the VF-25's development as having been part of a three fleet joint 5th Generation VF development program called "Project Triangler". Each of the three fleets - Macross Frontier, Macross Olympia, and Macross Galaxy - was to develop, build, and demonstrate a prototype 5th Generation VF in a competition, the winner of which was to be adopted as the next main variable fighter of all three emigrant fleets. The YF-26 was Macross Olympia's prototype, which dropped out of the competition relatively early. Macross Galaxy wasn't exactly participating earnestly, so the winning YF-25 design ended up being adopted by Macross Frontier and Macross Olympia as the VF-25.

Nope, when the admins turned off the Upvote and Downvote options they also disabled displaying the post's number of upvotes, downvotes, and likes on the post itself and disabled the site's "Leaderboard" view that showed the users with the highest reputation scores. When you Like someone's post, they do still get a notification linking to the post in question informing them that someone liked the post and it still increments the reputation total on their profile. You can still see the number of upvotes, downvotes, and likes on your own posts in the Activity timeline view in your profile though.

The New UN Forces' assessment of the Vajra's capabilities after first contact was made in 2040 was far and away the biggest factor that determined the military's requirements for a 5th Generation Variable Fighter development program. Having capabilities sufficient to oppose the Vajra was the underlying goal of the YF-24 and YF-24 Evolution programs that were the basis for all other 5th Generation VFs, so it could be said that the VF-24, VF-25, YF-26, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, VF-31, and Sv-262 were all designed with anti-Vajra capabilities. Naturally a lot of their hardware was designed with that goal in mind as well. There is some circumstantial evidence that would suggest anti-Vajra grade munitions are not standard issue. In Ep.6 in Macross Frontier, as the fleet is preparing to launch its mission to rescue the fleeing Macross Galaxy NUNS ships from Vajra attack there's passing mention made to loading special anti-Vajra ammunition. Later on, the VF-171-II's operated by the Macross Frontier NUNS are suddenly scoring kills left and right on Vajra soldier forms with the weapons that had previously been ineffective against them in the first episode, suggesting that they too traded up to a more powerful grade of ammunition suitable for use against the Vajra. Of course, once 5th Generation VFs become the standard that grade of ammunition will likely become the norm.

Given it's Sideous talking, odds are it's no more true than his previous version. My apologies, sympathies, and so on. Jeez Rey, you can't just ask why someone's face looks like a scrotum! Have some manners...

... huh? When, in the prequel trilogy, did we get history on that guy? IIRC the only time he's even mentioned is a "legend" related by the galaxy's most unreliable narrator, Darth Sideous, who had already spend the entire trilogy lying through his teeth to all and sundry. This, for a franchise full of incredibly talkative dead guys... (Back before Disney sensibly chucked the entire Expanded Universe, Palpatine had made death into a bit of a revolving door hadn't he? I seem to recall his dumb arse coming back to life several times to continue acting like a goddamn Disney villain.) If that alleged leak is on the level, I'm going to get far more entertainment value out of watching Star Wars fans go to pieces than I am from the film. Either way, I'm going to need popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn. You've seen the kind of people Disney has let helm the franchise. If we're going to wish, let's at least keep our wishes realistic.

They made a Sonic the Hedgehog movie. SEGA and SonicTeam can't even make a playable Sonic the Hedgehog game.

In what regard? For what it's worth, I don't consider the sequel trilogy to be significantly worse than the prequel trilogy. They were both fully of sloppy writing, unnecessary plot devices, a romance sub-plot written by someone who's apparently incapable of relating to other human beings, and characters whose voices quickly became The Most Annoying Sound. Whatever he intends to do, it can't be as heart-stoppingly inane as the alleged plot of The Rise of Skywalker that was leaked online a week or so back.

Nah, he wasn't really whiny... just really obnoxiously insistent. The plot armor is something every force user gets, until they don't. Y'know... destiny this, foreseen that, yadda yadda yadda. He's really more Yoda's student than Obi-wan's... if he were following in Obi-wan's footsteps he'd have cut off three of Ben's limbs, set his ass on fire, and left him to live the rest of his life as a 7'2" asthmatic chunk of burnt, leathery bacon in a robotic gimp suit.