Seto Kaiba

That's just an electron orbiting a hydrogen nucleus in a water molecule on the very tip of a continent-sized iceberg... It's Neflix... so almost certainly not. They'll likely include at least the two language audio options, and probably two dozen different subtitle options. These are the same people who - no joke - offered a Klingon subtitle option for Star Trek: Discovery.

That would've made it easy to explain... but they appear to have been in service concurrently. The CV-339 Bruno J. Global was commissioned at some point in the 2030s, and the SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global wasn't lost until 2048. The "not considered official" part was a fan theory posited by its vocal critics, and was refuted by Kawamori himself... which, amusingly, silenced a lot of the people who despised it because Kawamori hadn't been involved in it. Well, that last part's going to be a bit of a problem. As an OVA that didn't sell particularly well initially, Macross II: Lovers Again didn't get the same depth and breadth of coverage that other Macross titles got after-the-fact in official art books. Its coverage is more in line with the average level of coverage given to most mecha anime of the period (read: Gundam) in that it generally stops at dimensions, mass, and the armament with the occasional nod to other details like verniers and reactor outputs. There was, at least, a reasonably good look into development history in Macross II's parallel world timeline published beforehand in B-Club Magazine Vol.79. Owning to its status as the main VF of the UN Forces in the OVA, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II got the most coverage. The Takachihof Corporation's1 VF-2SS Valkyrie II was a derivative of the company's all-regime VF-22 optimized for use in space that was adopted by the UN Forces in 2081. It stands 14 meters tall in Battroid mode (to the crown of the head, 14.5m with the beam cannons), and was approximately 13.5m long in Fighter mode3. Fully loaded, it weighed 19,100kg. It had three times the generator output of the VF-1 Valkyrie4 and the normal maximum output5 of its two main thermonuclear reaction turbine engines is 25,600 kgf (251.05kN) and its two secondary thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are estimated at 11,900kgf (116.7kN). Both its improved generator output and overall improved durability are attributed to it adopting technology from the Zentradi battle suits to its design. It has a crew of one, in a g-support armature that acts a bit like a powered exoskeleton to help the pilot function in high g-force loads. Its only internal armament is a pair of coaxial anti-aircraft laser cannons on the monitor turret, since most of its armament is tied up in its Super Armed Pack. Its Super Armed Pack adds an amount of additional fuel, extra verniers, a communications pod, and the bulk of the Valkyrie II's armament including: an anti-warship railgun, three large missile launcher pods (each holding 2 large/long range missiles), 18 small missile launchers (each holding 3 small/micro-missiles), a medium railgun gunpod stored in the left arm's pack, and support from five Squire auto-attack bits6 slaved to the Valkyrie II's FCS (each of which has 2 beam cannons). Cpt. Nex Gilbert's VF-2SS has a special heavy railgun pod on its right leg pack in place of the four missile launchers. 1. Named, in-setting, for company founder and VF-1 lead development engineer Dr. H. Takachihof. Dr. Takachihof was also responsible for leading the engineering team that had embarked aboard the SDF-1 Macross in 2009 to carry out space trials on the VF-1 Valkyrie and its option packs, and organized the engineers from the various manufacturers into the team that created much of the Macross's improvised designs during the First Space War including the VE-1 ELINT Seeker. In real world terms, both the Takachihof Corporation and Dr. H. Takachihof were named for Haruka Takachiho, the pen-name of Kimiyoshi Takekawa, one of Studio Nue's co-founders and the creator of Crusher Joe and Dirty Pair. 2. Never seen, only described. The VF-2JA is also a derivative of it, optimized for atmospheric service. 3. Based on the size comparison published in This is Animation Special #5. This figure has been disputed by things like the 1/250 scale collection toy. 4. Either 3,900 megawatts or 10,200 megawatts, depending on whether you look at new sources that just say 650 megawatts for the VF-1 or older sources that cite 650 megawatts per engine as standard operating power and 1,700 megawatts per engine as the rated maximum. Given the respective dates, I am personally inclined to favor the latter. 5. It's worth remembering that actual maximum thrust is the Overboost setting which clocks in at at least 200% and has historically been as high as 240% (on the movie type VF-1). 6. Yes, like Gundam... except computer-controlled instead of by psycommu. I guess that technically makes them more like the GN Fangs from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. The Macross II timeline's version of the VF-4 had funnels (also computer controlled), and one of the Mardook mecha has funnel missiles like in Hathaway's Flash. If you look at Mikimoto's art for Hathaway's Flash, Hathaway's pilot suit should look VERY familiar. He and Hibiki apparently shop at the same space outfitter.

Granted, but a little consistency would be nice... especially since there really wasn't a reason to downgrade the Strike Pack's RO-X2A beam cannon to a laser, or down/upgrade the VF-4 to have laser machine guns and then a converging energy cannon. True, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2 was an in-universe publication from 2030. The VF-1 Valkyrie was still in the process of being phased out of frontline service by the New UN Forces at that point in time, so I guess that's motive enough on its own to want to keep some details of its technology under wraps. I'm not completely sold on the idea that the VF-1 was still being presented as a viable frontline combat unit c.2060 though... what we know of the VF-1X++ (via Macross the Ride) was that it was favored for clandestine operations due to the VF-1's ubiquity in the secondhand market (presumably thanks to the VT-1C and VF-1C). You'd think "you go on a watchlist just for asking" would be reason enough.

No end of trouble from that director Yawamori guy, eh?

It almost certainly will. Even Mari Iijima has publicly commented that she's pretty sure Kawamori has no interest in bringing back any of the original trio, and Kawamori himself has been adamantly maintaining that the story of Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay ended with Flash Back 2012 for decades. The most likely outcome is that Lady M will either turn out to be a "remember the new guy" character who was alive during the First Space War1 or will be an alias used by something other than a single person2. There's no existing character who could be Lady M, a wealthy industrialist who's been researching the power of music since the First Space War ended. 1. As was the case of most of the senior and flag officers in Macross Plus, Macross 7, etc., as well as Richard Bilra in Macross Frontier, Naresuan in Macross the Ride, and Timothy Daldhanton in Macross VF-X2. 2. Like an artificial intelligence, a committee, or an inherited title passed down from one person to another.

Here's an odd musing... Two different New UN Forces warships were named in Bruno J. Global's honor: the postwar Macross-class SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global and the Uraga-class CV-339 Bruno J. Global. We know that the naming convention for the Macross-class SDFNs was that they were named for leading [New] UN Forces generals and that, at least before the war, the UN Government was naming a few of their aircraft carriers for its heads of state like the ARMD-01 Harlan J. Niven and ARMD-14 Robert A. Rhysling. Bruno J. Global was the de facto commander of the [New] UN Forces after the First Space War, so it's not surprising that he had a mass production Macross-class named in his honor. That a separate aircraft carrier was also named in his honor raised a rather interesting question... did he rise all the way to prime minister after retiring to go into government? (It's rather interesting that the New UN Forces would have two ships with effectively the same name in service at the same time... the General Bruno J. Global of course appeared in Macross Frontier, while the Bruno J. Global is mentioned in This is Animation: Macross Plus as the home carrier of the SVF-41 Black Aces and appears in a Tenjin Hidetaka painting for the Hasegawa 1/48 VF-19A from the SVF-569 Lightnings.)

Yup, that sounds about right. I get the same treatment all the time from my colleagues in Turin. Thinking on it, there's an even weirder problem with their explanation of the RO-2A... They assert this deuterium fluoride infrared gas dynamic chemical laser system has as its core the gravity and inertia controller and reaction chamber from the FF-2001 engine. Why isn't this a heavy quantum reaction beam weapon instead? They've got a compact fold carbon coil there producing and storing heavy quantum that's being used to control the gain medium flow in their laser version. It should be easier to cut out the additional hardware that the laser would need and react the heavy quantum for production of a fusion plasma beam. This is made extra weird by the VF-4 Master File doing exactly that with the forearm-mounted beam guns of the VF-4. If the RO-2A was a more or less contemporary program with that, it doesn't make sense to not exploit the more powerful technology. Well, they are presented as mass market civilian publications in-universe... though I can't imagine what the military would stand to gain by obfuscating the performance characteristics of a twenty-plus year old aircraft.

That is the research fleet Dr. Mao Nome led into Vajra space in the 2040s to study them, with her assistants Grace O'Connor and Ranshe Mei (Ranka's mother). The fleet was wiped out by the Vajra and its wrecked flagship - SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global - was brought down on Gallia IV. As the existence of the Vajra was still classified at the time, the New UN Government covered up its loss by swearing the survivors to secrecy and putting out a cover story that the fleet had been destroyed in a fold accident. Based on Alto's matter of fact recitation of the cover story and what Macross Chronicle said about the hazards of space fold travel, this was a plausible cover story in part because this kind of loss is a rare but not unheard of phenomenon. I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late! If we go any further down that rabbit hole we'd better see if we can trade that cigar in on a blunt...

To be fair, I did indicate I was going from a memory of something I'd seen in the book last time I skimmed it. Cheers for doing a full translation of that section so swiftly tho. Master File's handling of the RO-X2A high-powered beam cannon pod really is kind of a mess. How did they put an RO-2A in a 2012 movie that was filmed before development of the RO-2A even began? That doesn't make any sense no matter how I look at it. It's right up there with that weird VF-19 goof they copied from Macross Chronicle about the VF-19 command variant having less thrust and more weight yet still somehow having a faster rate of climb and top speed. WTF. Though the real nitpick I keep having with Master File books is their weird blind spot when it comes to particle beam weapons. It's like they've forgotten those were a thing in Macross, or even in general, so they present every beam weapon that isn't a dimensional energy weapon as a laser. The RO-X2A was their first victim, so it got demoted from particle beam weapon to a gas dynamic laser system. Deuterium fluoride is a weird choice for spacecraft-mounted laser weaponry. It's a powerful real-world laser gain medium used in real world weapons-grade infrared laser systems... but the catch is that the reason it's advantageous in the real world is the longer micrometer wavelength infrared laser it produces suffers less attenuation from atmospheric gases. There's no benefit to a deuterium fluoride laser in a space-exclusive application, and I have no idea why they're claiming the system releases toxic waste during operation because that's just not true even with today's most powerful applications. I'm not sure what to say about saying that mirrors and lenses can't focus a multi-megawatt infrared laser because that's not really correct either... we use these systems TODAY at power levels exceeding a megawatt for missile interception. An unfocused laser is just a waste of power. The bit about not being able to use it for anti-aircraft uses feels like crossing the line all the way to critical research failure. This is a laser system... the epitome of relativistic point-and-click. The one part that really strikes me as well-considered was using the GIC system from the VF-1's thermonuclear reaction turbine engines as a reaction chamber for the infrared chemical laser. With that kind of compression force, dozens of megawatts likely would be lowballing it. This would be a VERY scary weapon. The bit about using the GIC to drive a gas-dynamic chemical laser system because the VF-1 had inadequate electrical surplus to brute force a more powerful diode-pumped alkali laser system is also reasonably well thought-out.

They're all still separate companies, but they all do business with each other through Section23 Films... which functions as the distributor. A.D. Vision was too monolithic to absorb periodic losses and as a result it eventually went bankrupt. In practice, what they did when they liquidated A.D. Vision's assets was reorganize from a monolithic company to an ersatz keiretsu. They set up a new distribution company (Section23 Films) to be A.D. Vision's successor and spun off each of A.D. Vision's divisions as its own separate company with the understanding that each would distribute exclusively through Section23 Films and then essentially sold the assets to themselves. That way, each of the new organization's genre-specific companies is a separate entity and if one goes under it doesn't take the whole group with it. Their anime licensing arm - ADV Films - was divided up and spun off as three separate companies: Sentai Filmworks, Maiden Japan, and AEsir Holdings. The division handling the live-action Japanese shows and films was divided up and spun off as two separate companies: Switchblade Pictures and Kraken Releasing. ADV Kidz, the group handling children's shows, was spun off as Sentai Kidz. A.D. Vision's hentai branch didn't even change names, they just established a new company using the same name as ADV's existing label. They never recombined, they just have an arrangement where all of those companies spun off from A.D. Vision use A.D. Vision's successor company Section23 Films as their primary distributor. Granted, the result is almost a distinction without difference. They're legally separate companies but they act more or less like divisions of a single company. It's legal. One might say that it is not entirely consistent with the spirit of the law, but it does abide by the letter. One of my former employers, Ford Motor, does something like this every few years with the supplier Visteon... the regifted fruitcake of the auto industry. Their supplier relationship never changes, but whenever they get into financial trouble as a solo outfit Ford buys them and when they get into trouble under Ford's umbrella Ford spins them off again. It lets Visteon get into debt and shed debt in reorganization over and over again. That'd be both parts of option 2.

By the time the New UN Government declassified the fact of the Megaroad-01's disappearance, Minmay had already been out of the spotlight for so long that it wouldn't have been cause for significant outcry. It didn't take all that long for the realities of long-distance fold travel to become a part of basic public knowledge. Losing contact with an emigrant fleet wasn't a unheard-of calamity anymore, it was just a thing that sometimes happens. Like with the 117th Research Fleet. It was written off as destroyed in a fold accident and nobody questioned it because it's one of the risks you take traveling by space fold. Zentradi like Richard Bilra wouldn't be hung up on her disappearance if she'd had a clone continuing her career after she left. Personally, I suspect the Megaroad-01 stuff in Delta is a red herring. Lady M is just some Richard Garriott-esque crazy CEO who insists on being called "Lady M" the way Garriott likes to style himself "Lord British".

... ... ... Well, yeah... that much is obvious. I was talking more from an in-setting technical perspective.

I've not found any official statement from Netflix that identifies their reason for redubbing Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most of the speculation, both from those in the industry and the general public, centers around the two most likely explanations: 1. Netflix was unable to secure the original ADV Films English dub audio tracks, either because... ... the successor companies who divided up and purchased A.D. Vision's assets when the company went under aren't certain which of them, or which combination of them, own the rights to those audio tracks. ... the actual physical media for the English dub audio tracks was misplaced during the division and sale of A.D. Vision's assets. OR 2. Netflix made a conscious decision not to use the ADV Films dub audio tracks, either because... ... Netflix believes they can independently produce a higher-quality, more accurate dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion. ... Netflix is unwilling to complicate its release plans for Neon Genesis Evangelion by having to enter into a separate set of licensing agreements and royalty obligations just for a dub audio track. As a businessman and lifelong cynic, my suspicion is 2b... that Netflix doesn't want the added cost and complexity of a separate license for the dub audio. I could also see a case for either version of explanation 1 though. Frankly, I never much cared for the English dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion so this is kind of a non-issue for me. Though in all fairness I defected to Team Subs early on, and tend to find most dubs painful to listen to these days.

Wow... talk about "Never Trust a Trailer". Watching this, you'd expect Neon Genesis Evangelion to be a fast-paced mecha/action series... not the slow, depressing, character-focused deconstruction of standard mecha anime tropes filtered through the experiences of mecha anime's most pathetically passive protagonist: a young boy with more daddy issues than a football stadium full of porn stars. I'd expect most people watching it will already know full well what they're getting into, but anyone who doesn't is going to be feeling a little bit lied-to when they discover the series is much more about Shinji being depressed than giant robots fighting monsters.

It's even almost the same size as the later Ghost models. You're missing nothing... it's pretty meh.

Well, that's Kawamori's current view... how applicable it is seems to vary from work to work and it's occasionally contradicted by other explanations that predate it. To a certain extent, the zeerust in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier is a justified trope in-universe. The designers of many emigrant ships apparently designed the habitat areas of the ships with a pre-First Space War aesthetic to invoke a sense of psychological security in the civilians who would be living there for years if not decades while searching for a new home planet. Macross Frontier, however, was the only one to explicitly make ALL of the zeerust intentional in-universe as a deliberate aesthetic choice on the part of the titular fleet. The population was apparently committed enough to the fleet's theme of retro Earth cultural preservation that they not only deliberately recreated iconic parts of several major prewar Earth cities on the Island-1, they deliberately engineered highly visible consumer tech like cars to appear period-appropriate even if the technology under the hood wasn't.

The slightly amusing part is that, the way it's described, a Battroid maneuvers almost like a First Person Shooter video game. The pilot is setting direction, posture, speed, and so on but pretty much all the actual fussing over how to achieve that is done by the airframe control AI. Aiming is handled by optical pointing instead of mouselook, but it isn't all that different in principle. Exactly why the VF-171AS and VF-25G do that isn't clear... the SSL-9 Dragunov 55mm railgun has an independent sensor tied into the FCS in addition to the enhanced optical sensors mounted in the monitor turret. They shouldn't need to assume the same firing posture as a human marksman.

Hm... it's an interesting prospect to say the least. Disney definitely got a sharp wake-up slap from Solo: a Star Wars Story bombing at the box office. Whether they've actually learned anything from the experience won't be known until Episode IX comes out this December. I don't think there's any real risk of it not performing at the box office giving that it's a main series Star Wars film, so Disney will likely chart a new course for Star Wars based on how much IX exceeds its budget by if they're really committed to the idea that Episode IX will be the last movie of the main Star Wars storyline. Rogue One: a Star Wars Story demonstrated beyond dispute that the Star Wars setting works quite well even after taking a few steps back from the Skywalker legacy and focusing on a new, original cast of characters. I'd call it a viable proof of concept for the idea of putting even more distance between future Star Wars stories and the three trilogies. As long as they go far enough out that they've got no overt connections to any canon characters from the trilogies they should have the freedom to do whatever they want without causing too much butthurt among the die-hard Star Wars fanbase. Benioff and Weiss absolutely know how to make a huge, intricate, highly stylized setting that actually FEELS huge and highly detailed, so they should have little difficulty knocking it out of the park if they're given a relatively free hand.

Or console sales, when people start chucking the damned things in frustration. Still, I'm glad Cuphead is getting broader exposure with this Switch port. It's one of the better cases for Games-as-Art in recent years, being a beautifully-executed tribute to vintage western animation that doubles as a controller-snapping monument to the frustration of old-school "Nintendo Hard" games.

"Continuity? We just wanted to sell robot toys FFS."

It looks like most, if not all, of the issues have been remedied.

Honestly? I forgot. Macross Plus: the Movie has so little to distinguish it from the OVA that the two tend to run together in my mind.

... oy, this sh*t again. Give it up, @Mari-ja... even if you weren't pissing up a rope hoping for Kawamori to do the one thing he's adamant he'll never do, it's taken you like three years to get 200 signatures out of your own goal of 500. Stop spamming this nonsense already.

Yeah, they're behind some kind of polarized cover like most sensor systems. SoftBank and GAGraphic run on moon logic, so I couldn't begin to guess. I mean, what kind of sadistic jerk announces a Full Metal Panic! Master File book that covers only a version of the mecha that appears in a five second blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment as cannon fodder in the main series, then puts the hero version on the obi to give it the illusion of being on the cover when it's not? Unfortunately the gunpod details are very sparse... apart from briefly contradicting the official setting spec that says the VF-11B and VF-11C versions are two variants of the same gunpod by claiming they're GU-15 and GU-16 respectively, though that also conflicts with the VF-19's official setting spec that makes ITS gunpod the GU-15.

Well, yes and no. Hydraulics and pneumatics have had their lunch eaten by electromagnetic actuators, because when you're casually throwing around hundreds of megawatts of electrical power why the hell not? Power transmission kind of depends on how much juice you're trying to move. On the one hand, you'll end up with high-voltage wiring running everywhere unless an astonishing amount of juice is needed to do something in which case we've got plasma conduits. Data transmission by wire - fiber optic in this case - is kind of preferable given the incredible amount of EMF going on inside of a VF. Between the high-powered radar, communications antennae of various types, the active stealth system, the EMP generators that made the energy converting armor go, the actuators, and enough high voltage wiring to barbeque most of western Europe, the last thing you'd want to do is attempt wireless radio control over EMF hell. There's a thread for that, complete with a not-entirely-joking accusation that it was an AMA for me. A surprisingly infrequent occurrence... things tend to get blown off instead. It's all about fuel efficiency. By using the waste heat of a thermonuclear reaction to heat intake air in a turbine made out of super-tough materials, you can create astonishingly high pressure in the engine and thus incredible amounts of thrust with a surprisingly small amount of fuel. This is, in fact, Truth in Television according to NASA who estimate that powered a turbine engine using a fusion reactor can get you fuel efficiency in the vicinity of almost 90,000 kilometers on a single kilogram of fuel. The engine's propellant is the very atmosphere you're flying through. Rockets, on the other hand, are extremely inefficient but powerful means of getting around. You can't leverage outside propellant, so all the reaction mass you're flinging out of the back of the engine has to be kept aboard the vehicle, leading to a delicate balancing act regarding the mass of the craft and its fuel vs. the amount of fuel you need to get where you want to go. It's the delicate calculus of modern space flight. You have to lift not just the vehicle, but the enormous amount of fuel you're burning to get the vehicle aloft. So, where a VF in atmosphere can fly for almost a month between tank-ups by using the gravitational field of its reactor to repeatedly pinch the fuel and keep fusion going without needing to keep dumping fresh fuel into the reaction and thus achieve hilariously low fuel consumption on the order of 0.28mL/sec by using air as propellant, in space you've got to fling plasma from the reactor out the back of the engine as propellant like a Star Trek impulse engine, which is burning your fuel supply exponentially faster.