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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I like to think of Delta as Macross's version of Interstella 5555.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno... I'm a pretty enthusiastic supporter of all things Macross and even I find the substance-less fanservice in Delta annoyingly gratuitous. ... after the fuss over fan edits of The Last Jedi, I'm not so sure that's a good idea. It'd probably end up being pretty short and dull, considering how much of Delta is basically a commercial for Walkure.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    If the Blu-ray extras are anything to go by, Macross Delta is leaning VERY heavily on the fanservice to make Walkure appeal to the audience as characters in lieu of all of the characterization the writers of the series couldn't be arsed to give them. (Knowledge of Mikumo's true nature causes it to frequently veer into intensely creepy territory, as a three year old clone whose implanted knowledge doesn't cover proper social behavior Mikumo is a developmentally-disabled teenager who is being sexually exploited by Walkure and Lady M.)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    A Macross project start to finish.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Plus started its development shortly after Macross: Do You Remember Love? came out, as a non-Macross project with the working title of Advanced Valkyrie. The plot was basically Macross Plus's minus the crazy AI angle, but the mechanical designs for the project were not the ones that went into the final OVA. Bandai ultimately withdrew their support of the project, and when Shoji Kawamori was invited back to Macross around the 10th anniversary Advanced Valkyrie was one of the two pitches he made for his next Macross feature. The designs he made for Advanced Valkyrie would be adopted into Macross in a rather scattershot manner, with the VA-3 coming into the franchise via Macross Dynamite 7, and the VF-9 and VF-3000 coming in via the video games of the late 90's and early 00's. Many of the rest were only formally adopted into the Macross universe with Macross Chronicle. Because he didn't want to do sequels. After Flash Back 2012, the animated realization of material originally planned for the final episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross was over and done with as far as he was concerned.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    "Lynn Minmay" is the official spelling that's used in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series and all subsequent works, as well as in pretty much all the merchandise (even in-universe, like Hikaru's poster of her that Misa turns upside-down). The only deviation I can recall is in Super Dimension Fortress Macross episode 5 "Transformation", on the sign on Minmay's bedroom door. Since she's living in her aunt and uncle's place over the Nyan-Nyan Chinese restaurant, the sign on her bedroom door fittingly uses the Chinese romanization for her name: "Minmei". (The letter addressed to her from "Olion Records" she shows to Hikaru in that same scene is addressed to "Miss Lynn Minmay", though.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It would be a nice gesture from them... especially since Macross Frontier apparently still has quite the following even ten years on, to the extent that we're still getting new singles from Sheryl and Ranka. I'd expect a Macross Frontier prequel would go over quite well. Macross Plus and Macross Zero got kind of a lukewarm reception initially, though audiences have warmed to both in the intervening years. Macross the Ride would have a bit of borrowed gloss from Macross Frontier, given that it's set in the same fleet barely a year before the events of the series and several characters from the series put in appearances.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That's one of the weirdly consistent things about Robotech stuff that ends in in regular retail stores... these things just sit on shelves collecting dust. My local game store has copies of the 2nd Edition Robotech RPG that've been collecting dust on the shelves for a decade. I got the last several books in that series for free simply after the owner made the decision to stop carrying the line and write it off as a loss.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    And yet Discount Char Seifreit Weisse never got to fly one... more's the pity. At least he got his red Imitation Zaku Bioroid, right? C'mon, it's Robotech... inaccuracy is practically its calling card. Points to Jaymz for being the only consistently correct one... but then, since he actually does his research (incl. the OSM) it's not surprising he got it right. By all means.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    After watching Passionate Walkure for the second time last night, I can say that at the very least I did come away from it feeling like the ¥8,800 I spent on the Blu-ray wasn't a waste. "Money well spent" might be pushing it, though. Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure doesn't really do anything new that would justify harsh criticism of the film... but, by the same token, it also doesn't do anything new that's particularly praiseworthy. It's just a compilation movie for a series that suffered from bad writing. If anything, the shorter runtime's a point in its favor since the faster pace doesn't give the audience a chance to dwell on the flaws that plagued Macross Delta's TV series. It doesn't fix enough of the show's flaws to be truly great, but the movie is fun for what it is. Hayate and Freyja are still a trip, which is nice, and Mirage is less of a bystander this time around. That said, it doesn't really feel like Delta earned or particularly needed a movie... like it was done out of deference to tradition or a contractual obligation. They got less bad. "Good" might be stretching things a bit, given that both sides in Macross Delta are third-string scrubs who only look like big fish because the pond's so small. She did things before! Like get vomited on... or yell a lot... or clean Q-Lulu's litterbox...
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Clearly an auditory hallucination caused by swamp gas... I mean, who would be foolish enough to go and bowdlerize the show while replacing all the classic Mari Iijima tracks with a noise that sounds like someone inserting a barbed-wire buttplug into a parrot?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Precious little. It's mostly the usual statements of the obvious like "it can transform with the packs still equipped".
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I'd like to watch it a second time before I render judgement on whether it was truly worth what I've paid for it... but what I will say is that, despite having gotten used to Japanese physical media costs, the only real factor motivating me to spring for the limited edition was that they've started limiting the mecha stats to the liner notes in what I consider the most erect of dick moves.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    TOS, mainly. Balthazar Edison can't have not existed in that era, since the events of Star Trek: First Contact was a causal loop (what Star Trek calls a "Pogo paradox") that self-resolved in the original timeline being restored when the Borg were successfully prevented from preventing First Contact. The events of Enterprise had always happened in the past, as Daniels indicated. There were some micro-scale alterations as a result of the Temporal Cold War but nothing that had far-reaching or damning implications, and even those may have been erased when Archer brought the Temporal Cold War to an end (if we can take Daniels's statements at face value). The biographical data that mirror Archer finds in the Prime timeline TOS-era USS Defiant computer core in "In a Mirror, Darkly Part II" pretty clearly indicates that Enterprise's events and characters do exist in the timeline that was leading up to TOS. Jonathan Archer passed away in New York the day after the Constitution-class USS Enterprise was commissioned in 2245, Hoshi Sato and her husband were among the victims of Kodos the Executioner, etc. The USS Franklin went missing and crashed on Altemid in 2164, stranding Captain Edison and what was left of his crew there to discover the life-extending energy transfer technology, the swarm, and the abronath 69 years before the Narada's unintended temporal incursion in 2233 changed history from that point forward resulting in the formation of a new parallel reality. Because they existed in the original timeline the Kelvin and Prime timelines branched from, they have to exist in both... and since that split occurred in both well after Edison became Krall, that raises the awkward question of what became of Krall, his minions, the swarm, and the abronath in the prime timeline. Nero's incursion dramatically changed history, so in the prime timeline they might've been found a lot earlier, or a lot later, but they were definitely still there to be found.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    AFAIK it's one-and-done... Passionate Walkure compresses the events of the series into a single film, with the same general ending as the series.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Seems to be a pretty clear downward trend to me... though I expect they were hoping switching back to the original Macross VF-1 design from their ugly fanart one was supposed to arrest the slow slide. The numbers are about where I'd expect them to be for Robotech... there's only ever been about six thousand or so devoted fans keeping the brand ticking along when it comes to merchandise. As has been noted previously... your tastes are unconventional to say the least. Interactions that revolve pretty much exclusively around jockeying for professional position and the occasional bout of irritation over not following orders... as characterization goes, it's so thin you can see daylight through it. If you were writing a new Robotech story? YES. The goal is to produce a story that people would actually want to read/watch, after all. Robotech's official continuity puts the introduction of ranged weaponry in the Invid forces after the invasion of Earth. Most of the Invid mecha with ranged weaponry were developed on Earth during the occupation in response to armed resistance by humans, some based on reverse-engineered human technology. The Robotech novels are non-canon... and historically haven't been well-regarded by Robotech fans. That'd be a great big "Nope" for any current Robotech production. Officially, the Invid were a peaceful and generally unthreatening species prior to the razing of their second homeworld by the Robotech Masters. It's not clear if they even had technology before the Masters attacked them, let alone mecha and starships. (The Regess's interest in evolution and the Regent's obsession with conquest were both supposedly products of coming into contact with the Robotech Masters.) Mind you, it's also not clear in the official Robotech continuity that the Zentradi even existed back then... That, I would argue, is the catch... their story didn't come to an actual conclusion in Robotech the way it did in Macross. Robotech ended it on a cliffhanger TWICE in the space of the 1985 TV series. Once with Rick and Lisa declaring their intent to go into deep space aboard the SDF-3 on a mission to the Robotech Masters homeworld (the subject matter of the canceled Sentinels series) and once with the SDF-3 inexplicably failing to return from that mission with the rest of its fleet at the end of the series. They resolved the second cliffhanger and immediately substituted another by having the ship be found and immediately go missing again in Shadow Chronicles. There's never been closure to their story arc in Robotech, and nobody seems to have the heart to tie off the whole bloody stump of a story arc.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Since the USS Franklin disappeared in 2164, well before the arrival of the Narada and Jellyfish in the past caused the timeline to diverge, one can only wonder what became of Balthazar Edison and the surviving crew of the Franklin in the prime timeline....
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the TV series was pretty much Walkure Delta, so it isn't too surprising the movie is more of same.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I move that we retroactively demote Xaos's Delta Flight to Cannon Fodder status, if only because they suck. I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of this... thing... as an Armored Pack. The defining trait of the Armored Pack has always been that it massively increases the defensive capabilities of the VF. That was the common thread of the PWS-0X reactive armor for the VF-0, GBP-1S Armored Pack for the VF-1, APS-11 Armored Pack for the VF-11, and APS-25A Armored Pack for the VF-25. This Armored Pack for the VF-31 (APS-31?) looks like it's ALL offense and negligible increases to defense. There are so many micro-missile launchers and so many missiles that it feels like the fighter would go up like a Chinese fireworks factory at even the slightest tap. The Armored Messiah was a much more balanced aircraft, I think. It did offer a significant increase to the VF-25's firepower, but it offered just as severe an increase to the VF-25's defensive ability via the ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor and capacitors to run the pinpoint barrier in fighter mode. It was absolutely a pack designed with close quarters combat with the Vajra in mind. I can't really suss out what this VF-31 pack was designed for... the way it's set up you'd swear it's made as an Attacker.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    For the impatient or curious, I've done a quick-and-dirty translation of the VF-31 Armored Siegfried specs in the liner notes here:
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Let's analyze! Flight Performance (vs VF-25 Armored Messiah) 4,500kg lighter (47.5t vs 52t) 20% less acceleration (12.5G vs 15G) 410kN (14%) less main booster thrust (2,530kN vs 2,940kN) 100kN more total thrust (6,280kN vs 6,180kN) Production spec VF-31 has 360kN less thrust (5,820kN) Thrust/weight ratio is slightly higher 13.48 for the Siegfried, 12.49 for the Kairos vs 12.12 for the Messiah Carries 500kg more booster fuel Armaments (vs VF-25 Armored Messiah) "Overkill" is a fundamentally meaningless word when it comes to Itano Circuses, and clearly someone at Surya Aerospace believes that Itano Circuses are the spice of life. The VF-25's Armored Pack had a whopping 274 missiles of various types, not counting its four optional pylon mounts. The VF-31 has an Armored Pack with an incredible 484 micro-missiles, plus the contents of its reaction missile pods. Beam-wise, the VF-25 Armored Pack added four 22mm beam machineguns and two ball turret 57mm beam guns. The VF-31's Armored Pack piles on a pair of 40mm beam cannons and a twin-linked 105mm beam cannon turret, definitely giving it the heavier armament. Curiously, despite being an "Armored Pack" nothing is said about the actual armor... which was a big talking point of the Frontier Armored Pack and the YF-29. Since the VF-31 is an economy model that does without the high-cost frills, and the Siegfried is just an uprated version of that, I suspect that the tradeoff here was additional armament instead of going all-in on massive defensive ability the way the VF-25 Armored Pack did with the adoption of next-gen ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    From the Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure liner notes booklet: VF-31S Armored Siegfried Developer: Surya Aerospace Armored Pack standard operating weight: 47.5t (incl. 15.5t rocket fuel, missiles, etc.) Maximum Acceleration: 12.5G+ Main Engine: SLE-9A/E x2 Main Engine Total Maximum Thrust: 2,530kN High Mobility Vernier Engines: Bharat SLE-1B The armaments section is really confusingly written... I feel like I'm missing something here. Armored Pack Armaments: Main Wing Leading Edge (both right and left sides) 1x Ramington close-range micro-missile launcher pod 22 rounds container AMC-22 1x 17 rounds container AMC-17 1x 40mm beam cannon Booster parts (both right and left sides) 3x Ramington micro-missile launcher (interior type) (15 micro-missiles carried) Additional outside large composition missile container (both left and right sides) 2x 14 round container AMC-14 3x 12 round container AMC-12 2x 12 round container AMC-12 (rear facing) 1x anti-ship reaction missile storage container 2x Ramington 35mm 6-barrel heavy machine cannon Uses explosive charge + railgun (TL Note: Like the SSL-9B?) 850 rounds in attached drum magazine Multipurpose Container Pack Parts Sentinel ASAWB-M55 105mm twin-linked anti-ship anti-aircraft/anti-warship rotating beam turret (autonomous firing is possible, powered by energy capacitor) Additional leg micro-missile launcher pod (both right and left sideS) 2x AMC-34 34 round container (on the outside of the leg) 2x AMC-16 16 round container (on the inside of the leg) The Armored Pack's micro-missile launchers use Hamilton MMM-21/A high-maneuverability micro-missiles with proximity fuses, the company's latest model. The reaction missile containers use compact missiles compatible with the container size, either the compact RMS-11 series or the RMS-10 series Mark 3 and later.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Strip out the little details and unnecessary effects sequences, and they're basically the same story... even the macguffin the plot centers around is virtually identical. The Federation Starship Enterprise is invited/drawn to an ambush on the edges of its territory by a dark mirror of its captain, who has spent most of his life living in isolation in a hostile environment and has decided an appropriate response to his discontent is to destroy the entire Federation as a means to exorcise his existential angst. To that end, he has a ridiculous plastic outfit and a bizarre, poorly-explained radioactive doodad which somehow selectively destroys organic matter at a level that isn't possible (as if quarks knew if the subatomic particle they formed was part of a living thing or not). He attempts to use that weapon against the Federation to depopulate whole planets, and only ends up being stopped when he loses a fistfight to the captain... which is the only fistfight the captain actually wins in his respective series. Bonus points awarded for both having indoor flying scenes, zero gravity solo maneuvering without a spacesuit, and Krall's "tainted veins" effect being basically the same thing Shinzon got, but in reverse. Admittedly, Krall/Balthazar Edison has even less of an excuse than Shinzon/Jean-Luc Picard (clone) had. Shinzon was driven mad by his slow deterioration. Edison was apparently just so stupid that he'd forgotten the only reason Earth won the Romulan War was because they got reinforcements from the Federation co-founders (Andoria, Vulcan, and Tellar). This kind of short bus-worthy writing is all over Star Trek: Discovery too... especially the second half of season one, with their hilariously stupid jaunt into the Mirror Universe. While that is well-reasoned and eminently accurate, it's not quite what I was getting at.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    No, they're just as devoid of personality as the clone troopers in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones... all they know is how to be a soldier. They're in the same tier of absent characterization options as the protagonist of the original Doom game. Where the alien characters had actual personalities and opportunities for character development... One of the porcupine's worth of points you're missing is that what you're describing is not a "war story" by any standard of measure. It can't even be called a fight with a straight face. It's just the Zentradi shooting defenseless animals. If the Invid were sentient I'd call it a genocide, but all the regular Invid are mindless brainless drones controlled by the hive mind. One of the other, bigger points you missed is that the characters are what people care about. The fans don't give a tinker's damn about the Invid precisely because they're NOT characters, they're a bland, generic piece of set dressing. The ONE THING that Robotech fans have been demanding of the franchise for the last three decades is "we want to know what happened to the characters who left on the SDF-3". Most Robotech fans seem to take a similar view... and are only supporting the comic because it has the R-word on the cover. The Inorganics have no ranged weaponry either... the only question is whether the turkey starring in the turkey shoot is alive or a badly-constructed robot.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The booklet for Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure does have stats for the VF-31S Armored Siegfried. I'll translate those over lunch.
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