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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's a ways off! Can't we hope for something nearer term, like now (the 35th) or the 40th?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The initial generations of Armored Pack were intended as enhancement for land warfare, but once things moved to space they were mostly used for improved defense while operating in an anti-ship role. As far as attacking a ship with a VF-31... I'd say it should do OK in an attacker role provided it has a couple thermonuclear reaction warheads to throw around. Hey man, they're the best!* * In their budget category. Dogfighting is a pretty atypical use of an Armored Pack. I was rewatching Macross Frontier on my flight back from Super Dimension Con, and noticed Alto actually remarks on that during his initial sortie in episode 7. (He's surprised by how Ozma is dogfighting in such a heavy armored pack.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That a fusion reactor wouldn't need fuel is a surprisingly common misconception... likely due to the most frequently-cited example being the colossal self-sustaining thermonuclear fusion reaction we orbit (the sun). What that example almost inevitably forgets to mention is that the sun is, in simple terms, a ball of fuel so massive that the compression force of its own mass started a thermonuclear reaction and exerts enough pressure to keep it going. So, yes... the compact thermonuclear reactor at the heart of a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine in Macross does require an external fuel supply. Unlike modern fusion reactors that use electrostatic fields, magnetic fields, or high-intensity laser pulses to trigger thermonuclear fusion, the OTM-based compact thermonuclear reactors use a Gravity and Inertia Control system (GIC) to compress the fuel using intense artificial gravity.1 Fuel compression by artificial gravity enables the reactor to extract a much greater quantity of energy from the same amount of fuel2 and making the engines extremely fuel-efficient in atmospheric flight.3 Heat from the thermonuclear reaction is harnessed using advanced thermoelectric converters and magnetohydrodynamic generators to generate electrical power and also replaces burning jet fuel as a means of heating up intake air to provide thrust, enabling the engines to produce more thrust than a conventional jet turbine and simultaneously cooling the reactor. They're much less efficient when operating in space4, because they're operating more like a fusion plasma rocket and venting the plasma from the reaction out of the engines to produce thrust. That's why, in space, they often mount conformal fuel tanks to increase the fuel available to the compact thermonuclear reactors in the engines5 and supplement those engines with hybrid or liquid-fuel rockets. I suspect it has more to do with the number of stages a fusion reaction can be pushed through using hydrogen as a starting point. You can wring a LOT of energy out of multistage hydrogen fusion that way. (It may also be somewhat advantageous from a logistical standpoint, reducing the number of types of fuel a ship or base needs to stock since it can also be used as fuel in liquid-fueled rockets.) 1. Amusingly, the oldest iterations of Macross's technical materials gives the name of the control system that moderates the GIC system inside the engines as the MAtrix of Gravity and Inertia Control... MAGIC, for short. 2. Using the Proton-Proton Chain at the very least, and possibly the CNO Cycle. Continuous compression like that also makes the reaction more efficient by reducing the amount of fuel that isn't taking part in the reaction. 3. Available data suggests the VF-1 is consuming its slush hydrogen at a rate of approximately 0.28 milliliters per second per engine, or roughly 2.0143 liters per hour, giving it approximately 700 hours of continuous operating time in atmosphere. 4. Available data suggests the first generation of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines consumed its fuel 4,200 times faster in space... at about 2,350 milliliters per second. The same amount of fuel that would have provided 700 hours of flight in atmosphere only lasts ten minutes at max thrust in space. 5. The VF-1's FAST Pack extends the VF-1's onboard fuel capacity to almost 5x what it can carry in its basic configuration, greatly extending the maximum operating time of its engines in space.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's one of the things I would dread about Macross becoming as prolific as Gundam... it would probably mean the end of Macross radically reinventing itself with each new incarnation in favor of an overly formulaic series composition like Universal Century Gundam. Oh, I'm sure they've had their eye on expanding westward for a good while now... but I suspect that their own success might prove to be just as big an obstacle as HG unless they decide to go without licensing out to someone else. The music rights are expensive! That was rumored to be one of the things that kept Macross 7 out of the west in the late 90's... that the music rights were made into an all-or-nothing thing that priced the series beyond the reach of any prospective distributor. Undoubtedly... though I imagine he's likely just as frustrated with the various people taking credit for his work instead of crediting him. Killing two birds with one stone would probably make him happy.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    None as an individual, AFAIK... Macross is jointly owned by Big West and Studio Nue. He is, for all practical intents and purposes, The Man in Charge of Macross in his official capacity as the franchise's supervisor on top of being involved in various aspects of production including story composition, mechanical design, storyboarding, and directing and serving as executive managing director of Satelight.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Whether Mikimoto will finish the series the second time around is anyone's guess, but most fans will probably agree it would look nice as an OVA... even if actually becoming an OVA seems unlikely due to Kawamori's aversion to revisiting stories he considers "done".
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Arguably... but there's a massive difference in scale there. Gundam is an enormous corporate merchandising powerhouse which sustains itself by continuously releasing new animated material, and hasn't really taken a year off since that brief hiatus that came between the original compilation trilogy and Zeta Gundam. There are very few properties out there that can afford to be even half as prolific, using the strength of their merchandising and/or massive fan followings. Macross is an auteur creator/designer's personal pet project that brings forward new material mostly on anniversaries or when Kawamori is moved to do so by some inspiration. Naturally it doesn't have content coming out nearly as frequently, though since Frontier took off like a shot it's been a lot less infrequent. (I wonder if Kawamori is facing pressure from Big West and its partners on that score, to make Macross run more like Gundam.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Gundam is a lousy choice for a yardstick... it's hands down the most prolific anime franchise in the mecha genre, if not overall.
  9. Seto Kaiba

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Seto Kaiba replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Thought they already did that, back when they announced the Arad VF-31S? I distinctly remember seeing a teaser for the Armored Pack on their website.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    ... wasn't there already one admittedly terrible attempt at a live-action adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Y'all keep forgetting that we shouldn't be expecting to get any news of the new series for at least a few weeks yet. Both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta largely kept mum about production until the September before their release and didn't have any substantial news until the end of October. Also, the idea that Kawamori would break the habit of a lifetime and do a direct sequel is a bit on the silly side... he's been dead-set against it for over three decades. Your tastes, as noted previously, tend to be rather... "specialized" might be a nice way to put it.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    A point of order... it has never been established that the VF-2SS can't equip its gunpod in its "naked" configuration, though it only rarely operates without the Super Armed Pack (which is more a semi-permanent add-on than a disposable FAST pack). The VF-2SS and VF-2JA were both developed from the base VF-2 Valkyrie II all-regime fighter... so presumably it does have pylon attachment points that it just doesn't use (often) due to the Super Armed Pack being semipermanent standard equipment. Macross Ultimate Frontier did depict it as being able to, for what little that is worth. Mind you, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II is a variable fighter designed and intended to be used predominantly (almost exclusively) in space, so not being able to equip the Super Armed Pack in atmosphere would not be any real issue as the UN Spacy in Macross II has the VF-2JA as a dedicated atmospheric fighter. The VF-2SS isn't flawed, you're just making a comparison between an all-regime fighter (the VF-1) and a fighter optimized for space combat. This kind of regime-optimization has occurred many times in Macross, though Macross II was the first to do it. The UN Spacy in the Macross II timeline had, not unreasonably, concluded that overwhelming strategic emphasis needed to be given to repelling Zentradi attacks in space before they get anywhere near Earth given that the Zentradi don't care about holding terrain or landing troops on the planets they're attacking. So they developed their latest fighter (the VF-2SS, which, despite its number was actually their sixth main fighter) for optimal combat performance in space based upon that logic. Several later Kawamori designs reflect the same logic, such as the VF-4/VF-5000 pairing and the later material that describes the VF-4 as kind of lackluster in atmosphere, the VF-19F/S and VF-19A, and to a lesser extent the VF-14 and VF-11.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    No, the only Macross II: Lovers Again VFs that could conceivably fire their railgun pods in fighter mode would be the VF-2JA Icarus and VA-1SS Metal Siren. The former mounts its on the underside like the VF-1, and the latter has a pair out on its wings. It's easier to see in the cleaned-up Macross II Blu-rays... they're firing the beam cannons mounted on the monitor turret (head) after they stop firing their anti-capital ship railguns.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Rewatched Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure again with @Jack Verse the night before Super Dimension Convention, and it still failed pretty spectacularly to impress. Tried to round up a few more folks for a screening, but unfortunately most of the folks I could find to invite were locals who were driving in the next morning. On this rewatch, I think the thing that struck me the most was how jumbled the film is. Half the film feels almost completely disconnected from the story. It kind of reminds me of the way I felt after watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince... like I'd watched two unrelated movies starring the same actors that'd been inexpertly stitched together. All the scenes with Walkure are so jarringly different in tone from the scenes that advanced the actual plot that the Walkure bits felt incredibly out of place. Saturday Night Var Syndrome doesn't have quite the same ring to it...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Sorry, I meant to reply to this the other day, but between Super Dimension Con and meeting up with friends before and after the event it kinda slipped thru the cracks. Well, not one on an official basis... the New UN Spacy Special Forces 815th Independent Squadron VF-X "Havamal" effectively used the YF-29B Perceval as their 5th Generation special forces VF. That was likely only possible because Havamal was operating out of Uroboros, a planet unusually rich in Protoculture ruins and fold quartz. I'm not surprised we haven't seen a dedicated special forces model in the 5th Generation. Part of what let the idea of a special forces VF gain traction was filling niches which weren't properly covered by existing models. The earliest proper example, General Galaxy's VF-17 Nightmare, was developed to fill an uncovered niche in the 3rd Generation VF lineup: that of a stealth fighter-bomber for long-range attacks. The VF-22 Sturmvogel II and, later, the VF-19 Excalibur ended up as special forces fighters in part because of how much the New UN Government and New UN Forces had sunk into the Advanced Variable Fighter program before tripping at the finish line thanks to the excessively high specs putting them out of the reach of average pilots and revised arms export laws that effectively killed widespread adoption after mass production had already begun. Repurposing the VF-19 and VF-22 to special forces use was a way to make lemonade with those lemons, and presumably avoid both a lawsuit for canceling the contract with Shinsei Industry after mass production had begun and to avoid admitting that six years and untold billions invested in the Advanced Variable Fighter project wasn't a waste after they changed gears and adopted the VF-171 through an entirely separate program. As far as we know - and it must be admitted that isn't that far - there hasn't been a 5th Generation Variable Fighter program that was passed over for widespread adoption but was also delivered in a condition where it could reasonably be adopted anyway. The YF-29 Durandal was simply too expensive and too resource-intensive for even limited mass production to be feasible, and the only other one that's identified as having been a failed prototype was Macross Olympia's YF-26 (from Master File) that lost out to Macross Frontier's YF-25 in Project Triangler. At least, until some New UN Government member (read: "Earth") finishes sussing out how to synthesize fold quartz at the necessary purity and size inexpensively enough to make it viable for mass production. Until that point they have to work with whatever they can find in Protoculture ruins, old Vajra nests, and the like... which limits them to smaller pieces at purity levels insufficient for something like a fold wave system. I can't imagine the federal New UN Forces have need of anything even more uber than the VF-24 at present...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    The YF-29 is a bank-breakingly expensive aircraft... the Macross Frontier fleet could only muster the materials to build the one, due in no small part to the fold wave system requiring a large amount of ultra-high-purity fold quartz of a type that could only be found in the bodies of Vajra Queen and Semi-Queen forms. Mass production was basically impossible due to the scarcity, and difficulty of obtaining, the necessary materials. The VF-27 Lucifer is basically the love child of Galaxy's YF-27 and Frontier's YF-29, with capabilities scaled back to the point where the aircraft could be feasibly mass produced. Unlikely. The fold quartz for the fold wave system doesn't just need to be large, it needs to be extremely pure. It's not a common combination to find. Even leaning on the government of Uroboros for support, Havamal was only able to produce a handful of YF-29B Percivals for its top aces... and Uroboros was literally crawling with Protoculture constructs AND Vajra. We won't see something like that until someone figures out how to artificially refine fold carbon into fold quartz at the extremely high purities required. Earth is allegedly working on it, though it's unknown if their work has produced any concrete success. It would ultimately destroy the market value for mined fold quartz and put a pretty big dent in the economies of the Frontier fleet, Uroboros, and Windermere IV. Fold quartz export restrictions will likely put the kibosh on that... especially now that Windermere's back-channel for exporting the stuff has turned on them and sold them out to the New UN Government.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    True, but for pretty much the entirety of their dogfight Alto is on the defensive by choice because he didn't want to have to shoot him down and kill him. A missile lock is hardly a guarantee of a hit, much less a kill, in the real world... to say nothing of the Macross universe where fighters can outrun, outmaneuver, intercept, or hide from incoming missiles.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    You may find the Super Macross Mecha Discussion Thread helpful and informative... even if has, not without reason, been jokingly referred to as an AMA directed at me. Next year, I'll be launching a site on which I'll be publishing my own translations, which should complement sketchley's translations on a number of fronts.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    CBS registered two new trademarks around the time they announced the Picard series: Star Trek: Reliant and Star Trek: Destiny. That first one, Star Trek: Reliant, makes me suspect we're headed for a "young Picard" prequel about his service as a newly minted Ensign aboard the USS Reliant. I don't even want to think about the other one, thanks to that title's previous use on the novel miniseries that ruined the Borg forever.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Looking back at the VF-31's specs and performance, I'd say it's not even that... it's more like the Apple strategy: "Yesterday's technology at Tomorrow's prices!". The stated goal of the VF-31 as an internal project initiated by the Brisingr Alliance was to be an economic stimulus. Instead of buying a foreign fighter and sending money away to their allies outside the cluster, they wanted to do it themselves and have something they could potentially sell on. They built their fighter using parts that'd been state of the art ten years previously, technology that'd already been proven on the battlefield, to keep development and production costs down so they can rake in more money on each aircraft sold. The hip-mounted guns on the VF-25 were supposed to be its light, fighter-mode default gun. They didn't see much use because they were designed for typical enemies like rogue Zentradi rather than monstrously up-armored enemies like the Vajra. Once the modular gunmounts exchanged the beam machine guns for solid ammo weapons firing MDE shells they were much more effective. The VF-31's railguns don't seem to be powerful enough to be a serious threat or a main weapon, and the ones on the Siegfried customs are noted to have been derated for safe use in close proximity to civilians. It's less capable than the beam gunpods on its predecessors, lacking both the MDE upgrade and beam grenade mode. But that didn't translate into actual performance gains because the slight improvement in engine output was more than canceled out by the greater airframe mass. You wouldn't be able to retrofit a VF-25 to take an ordnance container... the YF-30 and VF-31 had to have airframes and transformations specially designed around having it. That said, the VF-25 was already in widespread service before the VF-31 ever entered testing. Odds are it'll be much more widely used than the VF-31, likely already received many if not all of the upgrades that went into the base model VF-31 as block upgrades, and will likely continue to enjoy an advantage over the VF-31 simply because the governments which bought it once the Macross Frontier fleet started exporting it are wealthier than the Brisingr Alliance and its allies and can afford to keep updating them with the latest tech. The VF-31 is likely to see widespread use in the poorer regions of the galaxy, where the ordnance container system can be leveraged into better individual cost-performance at the expense of combat performance for its buyers who won't need to splurge on mission-specific variants to replace craft like the RVF-171. Both the VF-25 and VF-31 are likely to remain in service with the various regional New UN Forces in the galaxy through the end of the century.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Plus invested heavily enough in developing its characters that the audience actually cared about what became of them. Their personalities were particularly importance, since they drove most of the actual plot. Macross Delta had this enormous cast, but so few of the characters were developed at all that it was hard to care what happened to them. Like when Messer died in the TV series, the attempt to devote an episode to eulogizing him like he was a beloved Roy-esque mentor figure to Delta Flight fell hilariously flat because the ONLY interactions he was ever shown to have with anyone except Chuck's younger brother Zack were antisocial, angry, contemptuous, or all three at once. Trying to play it off as "see, he really cared!" by showing off a diary that he'd kept full of his nitpicking criticisms of his coworkers just hammered it home that he was hopelessly unsympathetic. His whole "carrying a torch for Kaname" thing came out of freaking nowhere in the series, since he'd always made excuses to avoid her and Arad... so much so that I genuinely thought he was gay. Same story with Makina. "Oh no, she's been shot" fell flat because... well... what the hell does she even do besides fill a large bra and periodically remind us she's a lesbian? So many of them have no bearing on events that it's hard to give a damn what happens to any of them. The processor that Marj installed in her was biotechnological, but yeah she stands apart for a bunch of reasons... perhaps my favorite being that she is a dark mirror of Myung, her id granted independent life by an accident of technology. She's barely a character in her own right since she's not even properly intelligent until near the end, but as part of Myung she's endlessly fascinating because of the sharp relief she throws all of Myung's issues and insecurities into. Eh... I've seen a lot of compilation movies that were worse. This one, at least, didn't feel like pulling teeth.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    We don't know which parts specifically, no... The aforementioned "protective weapons that guard the ruins" are the Dyaus, a technorganic species the ancient Protoculture created to keep people out of their abandoned facilities on Uroboros. The smaller Dyaus forms are vaguely insectoid, roughly the size of a large truck, flight capable, and armed with beam weaponry. There are two known larger forms, one which is a larger version of the small form that is several times the size of a battroid, and a "Mother Dyaus" which looks more like a giant flying fish that is the size of a frigate. Settlers on Uroboros refer to them as "Guardians" for obvious reasons. There are also regional variations in coloration between regions in Uroboros, which fill the role of your standard palate swap RPG baddies. The small Dyaus forms are autospawned enemies on the three worldmaps in Macross 30, which usually appear around their nesting sites (which can be destroyed for item drops), the large form is a miniboss, and the mother form is a straight-up boss. Really, it'd be hard to argue that the VF-31 represents a significant improvement over the VF-25 in any respect... The VF-31A Kairos shares so much hardware with the VF-25 that calling it a VF-25 in a different-shaped container is barely an exaggeration. I'd question whether the VF-31's weapons are actually better than the VF-25's, since it has half as many pylons, but includes internal micro-missile launchers and an internal weapons bay. Whether the forearm railguns and the beam gunpod actually represent an improvement in firepower vs. the VF-25's modular gunmounts and conventional gunpod is hard to say since the VF-25 could improve firepower by swapping ammo types. I think the VF-25 is arguably a more flexible aircraft in terms of armament, where the VF-31 is more flexible in terms of modification for special mission roles like reconnaissance due to its ordnance container. There's no evidence of better fold capability on the stock VF-31. Mind you, this comparison is drawn between the VF-25A-1 Messiah (2059) and VF-31A-1 Kairos (2067)... the VF-25 would probably have had several minor upgrades between then and "now".
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-27 needed a Super Pack - which was really more of a Ghost Booster - to even keep up with the YF-29. (Which is amusing in a way, since Macross Galaxy's final VF-27 design was completed using development data from the YF-29 program that Macross Galaxy illicitly obtained through back channels at LAI.) That's Rod Baltemar's YF-29 from Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. The NUNS special forces squadron Havamal gave YF-29B Percivals to their ace pilots according to Macross Chronicle. The VF-31 was developed from the YF-30, though the directness of that relationship is unclear. There was almost certainly a YF-31 between the YF-30 and VF-31 in the development process, though some sources like Master File may put additional intermediate developmental models in there like a YF-30B NUNS-spec Chronos. A lot of people came to that same conclusion before specs for the VF-31 were made available. The YF-30, like the YF-29, was basically a super-prototype too awesomely expensive and resource-intensive for mass production in the form we see it. The relationship between the VF-31 and YF-30 is a bit like the relationship between the GM and Gundam... it's an economized derivative model that scales back the high performance and removes a bunch of expensive and complex systems to make the unit cheap enough for mass production. Performance-wise, the VF-31A Kairos is on par with the VF-25. To give you an idea of how severe the cutbacks were, the Siegfried customs used by Delta Flight use detuned YF-30 parts in their upgrades that put them a little bit below the "naked" VF-27 in terms of performance. (The VF-31's backstory is a case of "real life writes the plot", with its development essentially paralleling Japan's attempt to develop a domestic 5th Generation fighter jet.) Not that I recall? The VF-27 is very agile, but the YF-29 is working with 32% more output without its fold wave system boosting things... and has more armor and weaponry. "Mulched" would sum it up nicely. The VF-19EF/A "Isamu Special" is a custom tuned VF-19 monkey model. The key areas of its customization are actually deliberate downgrades of the fighter's aerodynamics and its avionics, to restore the unstable performance of the YF-19 that Isamu was so fond of. It has uprated engines and a few other improvements, but it's still mostly a VF-19EF Caliburn export model and has little chance of winning a dogfight against any 5th Generation VF since it lacks an inertia store converter. Reon Sakaki had the advantage of MDE weapons on his YF-30 and the Fold Dimensional Resonance system that outclassed the YF-29's fold wave system.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    People here are quite open to legitimate, thoughtful criticism of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and/or Macross Plus. It's kind of easy to view the stuff you posted as obvious bait... which, of course, won't get much in the way of positive responses. If the painfully dull, repetitive dogfights in Macross Delta weren't the #1 complaint about the series they were easily in the top three. They use exactly ONE maneuver for the entirety of the series, and almost never use the transformation system. Plus had enough variety that the dogfights never got samey. Keith vs. Messer, regardless of version, is a one-trick affair... it's like the scissors is the only maneuver they know. It's an ugly, graceless kludge of pieces of previous CG models. (No, really... it's made out of parts of the Tornado Pack, Cheyenne Destroid, and VF-25 Armored Pack.) IMO, it feels almost like a fan design. Like someone was picking and choosing pieces of previous, iconic designs from older Macross features and sticking them together. It's so over the top that, to me, it kind of feels like what I'd expect to get from a min-maxing munchkin in a Macross RPG if I let them design their own custom FAST pack. You've got the heavy quantum beam cannon turret from the Tornado Pack, the VF-25 Armored's CIWS launchers, the VF-171EX's reaction missile containers, that movie trailer-exclusive Konig Monster's forearm-mounted rotary cannons... all on one design. Specs-wise, I have a hard time even thinking of it as an Armored Pack. The defining trait of the Armored Pack is that it offers a substantial boost to the VF's defensive strength with additional layers of reactive armor, energy conversion armor, better grades of energy conversion armor material, and on later models supplements to the pinpoint barrier system. I don't see that in the VF-31 Armored Pack. It's ALL offense, all the time. I would have called it something else, like a Stampede Pack, Storming Pack, or Attack Pack. ... ... ... Ah, No. Just no. There have been a lot of silly things said to try to defend Delta, but this takes the cake. Macross: Do You Remember Love? is the quintessential Macross experience. Its mechanical and character designs set the tone for the entire franchise to follow. It gave us the #1 song in all of Macross. It's even a famous and highly influential film inside the universe of Macross. It has NEVER depended on nostalgia for its appeal. There is a reason that EVERY major Macross series since DYRL? came out has referenced it... it's just THAT good and that beloved by fans. Nobody needs to put DYRL? on a pedestal... it BUILT the pedestal, and the Macross franchise while it was at it. As far your analogy... I can only think of one Gundam show that would've been less appropriate, and that's G-Reco. I've never seen anybody rank ZZ highly... to every Gundam fan I know, it's "that one show" that everybody watches ONCE out of obligation but nobody really likes and is regarded as memetically stupid. To most fans I know, it was Gundam's worst show until Reconguista in G came along and became the new hate sink. Depends which standard you're using to measure good-ness. As a Macross feature? Not really. As an anime movie in its own right? Kinda, yeah. It's a fun but forgettable popcorn movie. One of its biggest problems is that the word Macross is in the title... so it's marked to MUCH higher standards than it would otherwise have been. If it didn't have to live up to that name, folks would be a lot kinder to it.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Plus's story had some real substance to it, even if it was a much darker story than Macross's usual fare on account of the cast being older and containing several individuals with serious psychological baggage. All the same, every main character in the OVA was well-developed, believably flawed, and interesting enough to hold the audience's attention. The only real weak point the OVA had was the weird, experimental music that didn't bring enough memorable tunes. Passionate Walkure's biggest problem was its source material. Macross Delta suffered from appallingly poor writing. There's just no excuse for so completely forgetting to develop the antagonists as characters that it's left to a standalone manga to give them any development at all, or that ninety percent of the protagonists don't even get that much. The movie does nothing to fix that... they just plow ahead at a pace that makes it harder to notice that the story's a lazy knockoff of Frontier's and that all but three or four cast members barely get the same development Fire Bomber's missing member cardboard standees got in 7. It's "fun", but completely forgettable and utterly devoid of substance outside of its music. For that reason, I can't bring myself to take seriously any ranking that would put Delta above any competently-written Macross title. If you don't have engaging characters who develop as events progress, you don't really have a story.
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