Seto Kaiba

The way it's written up, it does kind of have that vibe... albeit not from the New UN Forces side. Rather, it's Shinsei Industry who seem to be absolutely dead set on finding some way to make the VF-19 marketable no matter how long it takes. After the military's plan to transition to the VF-19A went down in flames and procurement switched to Special Forces use only, Shinsei still kept trying to find a way to fix the issues and make the VF-19 a viable 4th Generation main VF. They radically changed the design starting from the VF-19F, they swapped out basically every part they reasonably could, and while they managed to make it accessible to more pilots it never really reached the level of being a viable main fighter. Even as late as 2058, fully 17 years after the VF-19 bombed out of the Spacy's service, they were still selling their own management on plans to refine and improve the VF-19 like Isamu's VF-19EF/A. How much of that was a sincere belief in the design's viability and how much was simply sour grapes over having lost the main fighter contract for the first time in the company's history is unknown. General Galaxy definitely realized it was a sore spot for them, which led to some unsubtle trolling with the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army building a small number of VF-19C's under license for one of their elite units as a way to show they could build a better VF-19 than Shinsei could. Not as such. Project Super Nova wasn't set up to fail from the outset. The New UN Forces really did want those fighters. The program's cancellation came when the pro-unmanned fighter faction among the military brass won out and pushed for adoption of the X-9 Ghost instead... only to end up with enough egg on their face to kill an entire Zentradi main fleet through high cholesterol when Sharon Apple hijacked the prototype and went on a rampage through Macross City. It's almost like Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy were so preoccupied with chasing the highest possible performance to outdo each other that they forgot the aircraft they were developing had to have a pilot. They achieved stunning performance to impress the military brass and completely blew past the physical endurance limits of the human body. So once the dust settled on the VF-19's botched phase-in plan, the military threw up their hands and said "OK, maybe we went a bit nuts with the requirements...".

As ever, I am absolutely gobsmacked by just how consistently terrible HIGHSPEED Etoile manages to be. Bile fascination is the only reason I can keep watching this hot mess. It's not just that the full 3D CG animation looks like absolute arse and looks like an embedded video from a 20 year old console game, it's that the writing is if anything even more detrimental than the animation is. In a way, I guess I can commend it for being an unflinchingly accurate depiction of what would happen if a professional racing team decided to hire a teenage kid whose only driving experience was playing a console port of Forza. They'd do a pretty awful job, fail constantly, and probably crack under the stress. Having the main character be arrogant in a very dimwitted way AND incompetent to the point that failure is the ONLY option is a very strange way to write a sports anime. The audience is supposed to be rooting for the main character to grow and move up the ranks and become the champion, right? HIGHSPEED Etoile's protagonist seems to be actively getting worse as time goes on.

Hrm... that's a good question. I'd argue that it's possible for a design to be both as long as it meets the definition of both. I don't think there's a legitimate example in Macross, but I can think of at least a few from Gundam. True... the YF-19 was a hot mess. The four previous test pilots didn't exactly get to resign either... two of Isamu's four predecessors died in test accidents and the other two ended up so badly injured they couldn't continue to serve as test pilots on the project. Not to mention the No.1 prototype was damaged beyond repair and the No.2 prototype was smashed up badly enough to be sent back to the factory twice. (And if you take Master File's word for it, it didn't end there either with the No.3 prototype apparently having several loss-of-control related accidents.)

I'd assume any first-hand information about the questionable spelling probably vanished when Takatoku Toys went bankrupt and its assets were sold off. It's doubtful the people working on it expected to have native English speakers checking their spelling down the road. Odds are they didn't have anyone fluent in English and just sounded it out as best they could. The show's creators probably couldn't give them much useful guidance there either, since they seem to have initially done the same and spelled it "ICHIJOH" in the TV series artbooks and "ICHIJYO" in the animation itself before finally correcting it to ICHIJO in the movie. That's not surprising, given that the re-release was a reproduction of the original toy "warts and all"... but the packaging.

Fuel depot ran out of slush hydrogen and the pilot figured mountain dew slushie was close enough...

I don't think I've ever seen that shade of green used for it... the exhaust is usually drawn white with a tinge of either pink, blue, or yellow. Guld's YF-21 usually had a pink tinge, while Max and Milia's VF-22S's had blue.

Hell, it's a plot point for multiple characters that Basara is an incredibly good pilot. Gamlin has more than one miniature breakdown over how an unkempt and borderline unemployed rando like Basara is a better pilot than he is as a NUNS Special Forces ace.

Nothing about the definition of a Super Prototype stipulates that it can't be defeated by a sufficiently experienced enemy (or because of its pilot's own inexperience). But yes, the RX-78 Gundam codified the Super Prototype trope in the mecha genre. There was only one of them in the entire story, and its capabilities were far beyond any of the other mobile suits of its generation had. Zeon didn't have a MS that could rival its performance until the Gelgoog was introduced right at the end of the war. The Gundam had a special armor material that made it largely impervious to enemy fire, it had a special learning computer that made it get better at fighting the more it fought, it had the ability to swap out parts on the fly, it had a bunch of special weapons the other mobile suits didn't, etc. etc. It was power overwhelming to the extent that Zeon intrinsically knew that the White Devil's presence meant sh*t had gone off and it was rightly feared by the Principality's forces clear through to the end of the war. It's the same principle as the YF-29. You only see one in the story because one is game-breaking enough... even if there are potentially others doing the same elsewhere. "If." But he didn't, so it's not a valid point... and Basara's machine isn't a Super Prototype, it's a modified production machine. An Ace Custom. Per Macross Chronicle, it started its life as a trial production VF-19F. Here's the thing... the official writeups don't really support that assertion. Macross Chronicle, in fact, asserts the VF-22 was actually made faster and more maneuverable than the YF-21 thanks to the changes. Based on what's said, a sufficiently skilled pilot can still draw out that same level of performance or even better it... they've just abolished the risk of the kind of loss of control accidents from less elite pilots that scuttled adoption of the VF-19 and YF-21 in the first place. That's not quite accurate either... the refinements to the flight control software and engines that improved the VF-19's handling came in with the second production type, the space optimized one in Macross 7 (VF-19F/S type). The first production type exemplified by the VF-19A and VF-19C was a faithful reproduction of the YF-19 right down to the excessively finicky handling. Indeed, that was one of the factors that put the brakes on its adoption as Next Main Fighter. The start of model conversion training among the Earth NUNS was marked by a number of accidents caused by pilots losing control of the aircraft under high g-loads due to its excessively finicky handling. (The reason Isamu had to roll back the flight control software on his "Isamu Special" is because that started its life as a second production type VF-19EF. He wanted the handling of the original unstable software in all of its personnel-maiming glory.) Guld couldn't... but that has at least as much, and likely quite a lot more, to do with the fact that Guld Goa Bowman was a civilian scientist with a Valkyrie pilot's license and not an experienced combat pilot. Guld Goa Bowman was a civilian neuroscientist and engineer who was made test pilot on the YF-21 because he was the lead developer on the brainwave control system and the only one who could effectively troubleshoot it on the fly. The BCS was doing most of the heavy lifting for him, otherwise he would have been hopelessly outclassed by Isamu and likely many other pilots. And it's worth noting that there are several other pilots like Aegis Focker and Isamu Dyson who fought comparably powerful unmanned fighters using the VF-19 and won without incurring significant damage, never mind dying. Isamu defeated the Neo Glaug prototype in Macross Plus: Game Edition, and Aegis Focker defeated multiple AIF-9 Ghosts in the course of Macross VF-X2. The evidence doesn't bear your conclusion out, I'm afraid... esp. with Macross Chronicle itself contradicting key points of your argument.

Not really, no. What's being referred to here is the Gundam franchise's commonplace habit of giving its protagonist a one-of-a-kind mecha that is significantly more advanced and powerful than contemporary mass production versions and either flat-out cannot be mass produced or the mass production version is significantly stripped down and a lot less powerful. It was those early UC-era Gundams that more or less created the trope in the first place... which is part of why the trope is so commonly associated with the franchise. Given that the Fire Valkyrie spent the first half of Macross 7 accomplishing basically nothing on the battlefield, I'd question that assertion. That's not a nerf... by definition, a "nerf" is a change that weakens something to make it less effective. The refinements Shinsei Industry made to the VF-19 in the second production type didn't reduce its performance. It actually has higher performance than the prototype and first production type, but with improved handling that means that pilots can draw out that performance more readily without the risk of losing control of the aircraft. The instability of the prototype made it highly effective in the hands of the tiny handful of people who could actually handle it but was nevertheless a design flaw rather than a feature because the VF-19 not developed to be an elite special forces VF... it was intended as a main VF. In practice, it's more of a buff since it made the even-more-powerful second production type something that could be deployed in larger numbers. It went from "awesome but hilariously impractical" to "awesome but expensive". Just one or two things... and one is in "certain point of view" territory, TBH. Ironically, Macross Chronicle actually presents those removals as improvements too... crediting them with a significant cost reduction and reduced weight that improved the final aircraft's performance and operation rate. Despite the removals, it's also explicitly indicated to have performance comparable to, or superior to, the prototype... so I'm not sure it can be said the removals are a nerf with a straight face. Cutting out the free-deformation wing material doesn't seem to have adversely impacted maneuverability based on the descriptions in Chronicle, and scaling back the brain direct interface to a support system is noted to have reduced cost and weight and made the system itself stable enough to actually use, resulting in a net gain in performance not a loss according to Chronicle. It's not a nerf, it's explicitly a buff.

To be frank, you're massively overthinking it. As noted a few posts ago, Macross runs on Broad Strokes continuity. The answer to "which version of <previous story> the new story considers canon" is always "none of them". The creators pick and choose which aspects of design and stort they like best when referencing past stories, and freely mix and match between versions. That's why, for instance, Macross 7 has a TV Quamzin and movie Vrlitwhai in its docu-drama of the First Space War and its in-universe version of DYRL? has scenes that aren't in ours. Or why the Zentradi 33rd Marines in Frontier have a mixture of movie and TV equipment. Or why the Berger Stone's historical summary in Delta shows a TV version of the SDF-1 Macross's launch with DYRL?-style Macross and the Frontier TV ending with movie costumes and a YF-29. I could go on, but you get the idea... and Macross 30 is certainly no exception.

Pretty much, yeah. The VF-19 might've gotten the boot for looking too much like a "hero" mecha to be used as cannon fodder c. Macross Frontier's TV series, but the YF-29 Durandal was Macross's first real flirtation with the concept of a Gundam-style Super Prototype. Thankfully, there've only been two designs to fall into that lamentable category (the YF-29 and YF-30) and the only one to put in more than one appearance was the YF-29. Master File's explanation of the state of 6th Gen VFs and its explanation of the three different YF-29s seems to be a bit of an effort to retroactively NERF the other YF-29s and make their proliferation in Macross 30 and Absolute Live!!!!!! a bit less broken. Ah, that's not correct I'm afraid. Granted, Macross 7 did indulge in Ace Custom versions of the VF-19, VF-17, and VF-11... but that's different from the Super Prototype shenanigans going on with the YF-29 (and to a lesser extent, YF-30). However, claiming that the YF-19 was "so good that the production version had to be nerfed" is not accurate. The VF-19's first mass production type (variants A-D) was effectively identical to the final YF-19 spec, and the second mass production type (F, S, etc.) had significantly higher performance. Even the "monkey model" version used by the Frontier fleet's special forces in Macross R had performance comparable or superior to the YF-19's. Everyone knows. Like I noted, the ONLY source that talks about the mecha of the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! movie is Master File. That's it. That's ALL we got. There is no other source... and the part being referenced is very much just a minor expansion on things which were already stated way back in the extra features from the Macross Delta TV series. That's why I cited it. Bear in mind, that's all material from before Macross Delta and its materials started retroactively reclassifying the YF-29 and YF-30 as 6th Generation. It's also worth noting that this would hardly be the first time a generic label was assigned to a design in a movie and changed later. Isamu's VF-19 from the second Frontier movie got its name changed multiple times before they settled on one. The YF-29B designation from Macross 30 may be an informal one similar to the VF-31C/E/F/J/S types from Macross Delta. They've gone back and forth on it a few times. Initially, the Frontier fleet's YF-29 Durandal was treated as a one-of-a-kind aircraft because the exotic material requirements to build it were so impossible to meet that they had to leave the prototype incomplete for two entire years because the fold quartz needed to build a working fold wave system was effectively unobtainable by any normal means. Later, Macross 30 threw a few YF-29s in play with the excuse that Havamal was using fold quartz from the Protoculture ruins to provide its top aces with the YF-29B. The Delta-era explanation seems to be trying to reconcile the two conflicting explanations into something that also aligns with what it's trying to establish about the 6th Generation of Variable Fighters. The way they've done it allows for them to have exactly the same specs and still be different based on the different performance of their fold wave systems, esp. as it seems to be building up to the idea that fold wave systems are the wave of the future and power depends on their system efficiency. IMO, what they've done is actually quite clever, esp. in how it builds on what they were also establishing about the disparity in performance enhancement between the Sv-262 variants and the VF-31 customs. If memory serves, that was first mentioned in Great Mechanics DX16... but it's been repeated in official art books like the Official Complete Book for the second Frontier movie. Calling the unobtainably-pure fold quartz a "Philosopher's Stone" was a joke on how impossible the material was to obtain, and they gave each of the four pieces installed on Alto's YF-29 a name that referenced the various holy relics supposedly incorporated into the sword Durandal... possibly Luca's doing, he likes making references like that.

Finished the Tales of titles... and I'm pretty underwhelmed by both. Tales of the Empire in particular didn't really have much of the Empire in it. I guess "Tales of Generally Unpleasant People" or "Tales of Darth Vader Cosplayers" didn't have quite the same ring to it. It's three episodes of that one-shot villain from The Mandalorian and three about more members of the glowstick enthusiast society. There's maybe three minutes of actual Imperial characters in the whole six episode miniseries. The only one of the twelve episodes I think I really enjoyed was "Justice", the Count Dooku-as-a-Jedi story. As Lawful Good characters go, he's one of the rare ones who seems to think it's better to be Good than strictly Lawful.

Ah, yeah... I'm not surprised. The few of us doing translations are doing it in our free time, and each of us has a rather specialized practice. It's on my to-do list, but I'm literal years behind on that list thanks to day job shenanigans that started back around the first COVID lockdowns. I'm not aware of one, but the gist of it is... I'm sure the novelization is a more streamlined version of the story, since the game's version has a lot of side quests. It never really addresses the question of where various missing characters are in the present day of 2060... since the versions of them in the story are from the middle of the events of their respective stories instead. Probably won't get the anime treatment... if that was on the table, they'd probably have given us an OVA for Macross VF-X2 by now, given how important THAT story is to both the Macross Frontier and Macross Delta series.

@kajnrig, moving my response to your question here to avoid veering too far off topic in the Macross Zero topic. Thus far, we only have one book that talks about the mecha from Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! in more than the most basic detail: Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus. Max's YF-29 is referenced as part of the book's explanation of the challenges and roadblocks defense companies are facing in developing 6th Generation VF concepts. It defines three types of YF-29 as part of its explanation of the YF-29 in general and the difference fold quartz purity makes in performance in particular: the A-type, B-type, and C-type: Alto's YF-29 is treated as YF-29A, a one-of-a-kind aircraft that cannot be reproduced because the ultra-high purity fold quartz from Vajra queens used in its fold wave system is effectively impossible to obtain. All of the other YF-29s in the official setting are collectively designated YF-29B. Various customizations aside, they're all considered the same variant due to being one-offs with similar performance well below the original YF-29's as a result of having to use lower-purity fold quartz than the unobtainably rare stuff the original YF-29 had. The third one, YF-29C, is a Master File original variant that's presented as an attempt to make the YF-29 economical for mass production by substituting the purest possible synthetic fold carbon for fold quartz. It's said that its fold wave system only achieves 1% of the power of the original YF-29's at best.

I'll answer that one on the mecha thread to avoid getting too far off topic.

Hm? No, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is a part of the official setting. That's the franchise's equivalent of being "canon", meaning it's considered a part of Macross's overarching narrative and is in continuity with other official works. Macross 30 is at least indirectly referenced in subsequent works, as the YF-30 that developed on Uroboros and successfully tested during the game's story was later developed into the VF-31 that is the main fighter in Macross Delta. Another Macross 30-introduced VF (the YF-29B) shows up in Macross Delta's second movie.

As noted previously, Disney is just a sublicensee to the streaming rights... the companies working to localize and distribute the shows outside of Japan are the ones who licensed them back in '21. This should not pose any impediment to a home video release.

That's from the PlayStation 3 game (and light novel) Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy... one of the few non-animated Macross works to be explicitly part of the official setting. That different characters from past Macross titles keep popping up is a major part of the story, and there's representation from pretty much every animated title that existed at the time the game was made except for Macross II. Because the timey wimey ball is very much in play thanks to a temporal weapon, you get to see weird stuff like Sheryl meeting her grandmother (Mao) and her great aunt (Sara) when both of them are technically younger than she is, Mylene bickering with Quamzin despite him having died decades before she was born, or an SMS crew from 2060 sh*tting a brick when the SDF-1 Macross from 2009 suddenly appears in their vicinity carrying a crew of legends. For instance, that crowd of all the idols from past titles standing together at the end of the trailer is not something figurative... That is an event that literally happens in the story.

Most VFs are single seat, you're thinking of single engine. There is presently no art for, and no physical description of, the VF-5. What little we know about it is known to be loosely inspired by the F-5E Tiger II and F2Y Sea Dart. Specifically, the VF-5 draws inspiration from the F-5E in the sense that it was developed as a low cost fighter intended for export sale and from the F2Y in the sense that it was developed with water landing capability. Nothing is said about its physical configuration relative to either of those designs that inspired its description.

As far as we know, there are no single-engine Valkyries. The closest we have is the Sv-262, which mimics the appearance of a single-engine design by having one main nozzle in Fighter mode. Economic factors and cost-performance actually come up surprisingly often in the development histories of many models of VF. The only models that I know of where it wasn't a consideration were the YF-29 and YF-30, both of which were technology demonstrators and both were ultimately impractical due to their bank-breakingly huge price tags and never saw any kind of widespread use despite their incredible potential. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Generations all feature cost performance as a prominent concern in development and/or operation, and the entire 5th Generation could be said to owe its existence to economic factors. The 6th, as least as Master File describes it, is a pipe dream for cost reasons. Adoption of the YF-21/VF-22 was sunk in part because it was both more expensive than the YF/VF-19 and too expensive for widespread deployment. That's a bit of a catch-22, since active stealth is one of the most energy-intensive systems running in Fighter mode. Having only one engine would reduce the available generator surplus for the active stealth system and make it less effective, not more.

At about the halfway point of the Spring '24 season, I'm feeling pretty disappointed in most of the 25 titles I've picked up. The ones I'm following are: Compared to previous seasons, Spring '24 has a lot more variety in terms of genres and approaches to them. There are only a few genuinely bad titles in this season, but there are quite a few that definitely feel like they're a bit half-baked or needed more development before production. The best of this season, IMO, are Viral Hit, Astro Note, An Archdemon's Dilemma, The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, Vampire Dormitory, and As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World. Viral Note in particular is a very unconventional title that's kind of hard to watch not because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's both a lovingly rendered martial arts story with a fairly dark plot and a scathing critique of influencer culture at the same time. Its story of a young student who's bullied by his influencer classmates repeatedly and works part-time jobs to pay for his mother's cancer treatment learning to fight after discovering he can make a fortune livestreaming fights against his bullies is an underdog story that's easy to get into and more than a little depressing to follow. Astro Note, An Archdemon's Dilemma, and Vampire Dormitory are all light fluffy romance comedy fare with sci-fi, fantasy, and modern light fantasy spins. If you liked Ouran High School Host Club you'll probably like Vampire Dormitory. The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is both a slice of life comedy and a fairly honest portrayal of the toxic working conditions of Japanese celebrities at the same time, and it does a fantastic job of getting its audience invested in the characters. As a Reincarnated Aristocrat stands out especially prominently in its genre (isekai) with a particularly unusual take. It's not an accident that the really successful isekai titles are all ones that subvert the genre's core power fantasy themes in significant ways, and As a Reincarnated Aristocrat's subversion is especally odd and handled in an intriguing way. Ars's reincarnation superpower is authentically useless in almost any context. His ability to see the potential of other people expressed numerically means that the challenges he faces are resolved indirectly. Instead of solving problems himself through force or trickery, the driving force of the story is Ars needing to understand the situations of the people that he confronts and find the right way to persuade them to join his cause becuase they hold the key to solving some greater context problem his family faces.

So... I went and saw Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom when it hit theaters here in the US. Not gonna lie, if I were a Cosmic Era fan I might be feeling a bit cheated by the movie. It's beautifully animated, but it doesn't really do anything to take any of the characters in a new direction or develop them further in any significant way... and the antagonists are, well, ... As conclusions go, it felt pretty halfhearted to me.

Disney's a sublicensee, so the dubbing will probably be done by the distributors who licensed the shows from Big West.

Anyone holding out for universal agreement in a fanbase as large and diverse as Star Wars's will be waiting a VERY long time... I'd argue the more relevant point is the second one, that when the vocal Star Wars fans DO speak up about what they want what they're asking for usually lacks that all-important "general audiences" appeal... when it's not simply impractical or impossible. (For instance, doing away with the sequel trilogy.) I agree completely... but enough fans are into that kind of thing that it does demonstrably sell, though better practice would be to keep it to secondary media like novels and comics. 🤔

To be frank, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. On an individual level, many fans do seem to have a pretty clear idea of what they want from Star Wars. All you have to do is ask and many of them will tell you quite a lot about what precisely they want from it. They just can't manufacture a consensus because the fanbase is so bloody big and so heavily divided against itself. It surely doesn't help that what the die-hard fans want and what is actually marketable are often two very different things. Tales of the Empire is exactly the kind of writing which the franchise has historically used to pander to that die-hard crowd. Their whole "every single background character is the hero or villain of another story" schick is standard expanded universe writing and something that Star Wars frequently indulged in before Disney. So much so that even a filthy casual like me had one or two of the "Tales of ______" books. It might be weak writing to general audiences, but to the die-hard fans it's continuity porn.