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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Hulu appears to have picked up Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, which I mentioned way back when has a brief appearance by Colonel Jeffrey Wilder from Macross Frontier.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    When those shots were doing the rounds on Facebook IIRC it was mentioned that venue is in Chile... South America's got kind of a China-like reputation for not really giving a damn about IP laws, tho I have mainly heard that in relation to software and video piracy.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Bets on whether this ends up merged into the Newbie and Short Questions thread or Super Macross Mecha discussion thread? EDIT: Newbie and Short Questions thread it is! None that has been announced. Given that the YF-24 Evolution has never actually appeared except as a wireframe drawing in one very brief shot in Macross Frontier and the VF-24 production type has only ever been alluded to, it seems profoundly unlikely one will be made unless some future show should prominently feature New UN Forces troops from Earth itself. There is no story. It's mentioned in passing in an explanation of the YF-24's development history in the Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle (Technology Sheet 01P: Variable Fighter Development History 4). Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah talks briefly about the YF-24 and VF-24's development in connection with the VF-25's, but the total material is less than a page's worth of text on pages 18-19. Those two pages are mostly dominated by clean versions of the same line art used in the screencap above.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, he is... but Macross-11 is also quite literally Space!'Murica, so he's kind of pissing into the wind there. At least in Variable Fighter Master File, Macross-11 shows a very American enthusiasm for having the latest explody bits... they were early adopters of both the VF-19 and VF-25. Page 122 of the VF-25's volume has an exemplar from their forces, a VF-25S-6 from the SVF-188 Firestars. Weirdly, the ship they're said to be based on is instead named for a British Royal Navy Rapana-class merchant aircraft carrier (MV Acavus), which was a converted oil tanker operated by Royal Dutch Shell in World War II. (Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it's named for. The only alternative I can find for that name is a genus of air-breathing land snail native to Sri Lanka.) EDIT: Turns out it's both... all nine Rapana-class ships were originally named for genera of mollusc: Acavus, Adula, Alexia, Amastra, Ancylus, Gadila, Macoma, Miralda, and Rapana. Clearly Royal Dutch Shell had a sense of humor at one point... It never really comes up outside of the original series and Macross the Musiculture... so we're 50/50 on whether people realize total pacifism a dumb idea in-universe. (Funnily enough, @Jack Verse and I were watching the dub of Gundam Wing while we waited for our respective flights out after Super Dimension Con, and between Relina's endless carping about it and shouting for Heero to come and kill her it all became rather absurd. Decorum was lost completely when we realized General Septem is voiced by the same guy who did Nappa in Dragon Ball Z.) Kaifun was kind of his own worst enemy. Being a massive hypocrite and unlikeable bellend meant he was only able to find an audience after the war ended, and only then by riding Minmay's coattails. It kind of died out the minute she dumped him, though he was never particularly convincing as a kung fu guy who seemed to enjoy picking fights. The Neo Zentran movement in Macross the Musiculture clearly understand what's wrong with Serge Glass's policies, but Vigo Walgria tries to stupidly take responsibility for the coup attempt which he had zero actual involvement in, and instead ends up knuckling under to Glass's pacifism and going forward with an insanely stupid plan to try and shift the fleet's economy to entertainment media... through the Miss Macross contest, which most fleets already have one of.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't know we had one of those... Anyway, it only took a minute or two of judicious Google power user-ing to find out who our generally trustworthy friend on these forums who said that this was not an animation error. It was @Renato, in a post dated 20 January 2004. It sounds like it'd probably come up a few times before that, but those posts may have been archived or lost. If he has a print source for that statement, I'd be thrilled to know what it is. (I don't doubt him, it's just that if there's a print source with goodies like that hidden in it who knows what else may be in there? It may be an untranslated portion of a book we already have, since we do kind of neglect the crap out of the interviews in art books...)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    The 59th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet's government adopted a policy of total pacifism after getting swept up in a philosophical movement of "spreading culture to the galaxy". The fleet's population has a lot of people who moved there to get away from the fighting in other fleets, which colored their attitudes and political views accordingly. As policy goes, it was one of those idealistic arguments that sounds great on paper but fails in real-world application because of human nature. Making total pacifism, unarmed neutrality, and confrontation-avoidance into national policy swiftly rendered Macross-29 into the galaxy's doormat. With a willfully weak negotiating position, it didn't take long for their trade negotiations with their neighbors to become exploitative to the point that the Macross-29 fleet was nearing economic collapse due to a crippling trade deficit. (Macross the Musiculture's plot revolves around a rearmament movement called Neo Zentran which emerged in response to the fleet's high unemployment and other economic difficulties. Their main goal is to defeat incumbent mayor Serge Corvin/Glass in the next election so they can institute new policies aimed at rebuilding the fleet's military and renegotiating its trade agreements from a much stronger position. Unfortunately, idiocy prevails when hardliners from the Neo Zentran party try to launch a coup instead and the fleet government stubbornly tries to stick to pacifism and rebuild its economy through the entertainment industry instead.) Pretty much... the problems it causes are the crux of the plot in Macross the Musiculture.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    We have good cause for optimism... We know Harmony Gold's license expires on 14 March 2021. They've soured their relations with Tatsunoko Production in an arbitrated legal dispute over the royalties owed for home video licensing, complete with infuriating Tatsunoko with some stupid claims that they owned Tatsunoko-copyrighted IP from Southern Cross and MOSPEADA. Tatsunoko Production's parent company, Nippon TV, reportedly wants to keep its properties on a shorter leash. Tatsunoko itself has been conciliatory towards Big West lately as well.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It was a thought that occurred to me back when Macross Delta was in the runup to the series finale, when Deadfish subs included a translator's note that baselessly claimed Lady M was Lynn Minmay... which caused a great big ruckus. No existing character met the criteria to secretly be Lady M, the wealthy industrialist who founded Xaos as an interstellar communications firm in the wake of the First Space War. A new character's connections would have to be non-trivial, and when it was revealed that Mikumo was a clone that just sort of clicked. Meanwhile, Berger Stone is lurking in the back of the karaoke booth pounding glasses of oolong-hai with a pained "I told you so" expression... I'll be pretty damned disappointed if it has. On the one hand, it'll give me time to get my new project at least partly up to speed before I have to start contending with material from a new TV series. On the other hand, it means we're stuck with a sequel to Macross Delta... which is all kinds of totally unnecessary. Macross Delta's story might have just sort of lurched to a graceless, screeching halt in the TV series rather than coming gracefully to its conclusion, but it did in fact end and there wasn't really a story hook to build a sequel onto. Macross doesn't need a movie with an excuse plot so an idol group can have a two-hour animated concert. Moreover, Walkure emphatically does not need the help. Unlike Mari, Walkure isn't really bearing the onus of being the girls from that show, so for self-promotion they're not really dependent on Macross. They'll probably still be doing great when the Macross Delta series is inevitably forgotten in a few years.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    And they're all too polite to say anything about her tone-deaf caterwauling, so we can get a nice bunch of comedic reaction shots.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Oh hell yes. They need to do this... complete with clone!Mikumo gritting her teeth and cringing at how bad of a singer her gene-donor "mother" is. Bonus points if it occurs in a karaoke booth. ... does it really count as an arc if it never actually comes up and 99% of it occurs offscreen and utterly without explanation?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    First they'd have to actually sit down and decide who Lady M is... Delta's creators never determined an identity for her, Berger Stone's baseless rumor-mongering notwithstanding. (Personally, my suspicion is that Lady M is the original Mikumo Guynemer, the genetic donor whose DNA was merged with the Protoculture ruins DNA to create the Walkure member Mikumo.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    From what I can find on the official channel, it's just Build Fighters, 00, Wing, and Iron-Blooded Orphans. Google Play has only Iron-Blooded Orphans, Unicorn RE:0096, and 00. (For some reason, Fafner in the Azure shows up as a Gundam show on Play?)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yup... though, from the production art and animation model sheets, one might get entirely a wrong idea of what they were intending to do with her. (Someone on the art staff is definitely an ass man, and everyone on the writing staff is an ass, man.) ... not sure that's really a flashback, since the same image shows up in Berger Stone's little "Uta wa heiki" Powerpoint slideshow in episode 19. More an illustrative image, I expect. Or, since Mikumo was effectively a bio-android, a genetic memory of her original purpose encoded into her program. Still, that'd be hilarious. People were already accusing Macross Delta of ripping off Macross II... and that would put it beyond any hope of claiming the resemblance was coincidental.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    As far as which streaming services have which Gundam shows presently (US): Netflix Mobile Suit Gundam UC (OVA Ver.) Hulu Plus New Mobile Report Gundam Wing Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (OVA Ver.) Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096 Mobile Suit Gundam Seed (Remastered Edition) Mobile Suit Gundam: the 08th MS Team Crunchyroll Mobile Fighter G Gundam New Mobile Report Gundam Wing New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (Remaster) Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096 Gundam Build Fighters Gundam Build Divers
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Hulu Plus has 08th MS Team.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's Hulu and Crunchyroll that are doing most of the Gundam streaming... Netflix's decision to pick up Unicorn was a bit of a surprise.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Xaos. Macross still prints money even without Walkure. As a fellow member of #TeamMirage, I understand completely.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, they're still staying up above 6,000 copies an issue. If a barely-there niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche title like Robotech can still move 6,000 copies a month of a $4 comic, I don't doubt for a minute that you could move 10k or more volumes of a $30 artbook or tech manual for a better-regarded series like Macross.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    He likes to tell original stories each time... that's not necessarily the same thing as wanting to always move forwards in time. Maybe if they'd actually done something with the character arc they spent the first few episodes setting up vis a vis Mirage's feelings of inadequacy... Such as it is, she quit the New UN Spacy and she's working for a private military contractor that apparently can only muster a single squadron's worth of VFs from their flagship. Not a lot of room for advancement there even before you factor in the loss of contracts from their failure to defend the Brisingr cluster and having to drop over a year's operating capital on divesting themselves of Epsilon Foundation technology. If it weren't for Walkure, they'd probably have gone out of business.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, it varies massively... we're talking anywhere from zero to almost a thousand warships. The initial generation of emigrant fleets launched using the Megaroad-class emigrant ships in the wake of the First Space War only had a few dozen escorts. The only example I can recall to discuss fleet composition in explicit terms is in Master File, where 73 escort ships (9 carriers, 16 cruisers, 48 destroyers) was depicted as average-sized for an early emigrant fleet. The defense fleet for the New UN Government's colony in the Varauta system, established by SDF-14 Megaroad-13, was probably second-generation and must have been a very large fleet even before it was captured. Barely two years under Protodeviln control and it was an estimated 503 ships. The third generation of emigrant fleets, the first to use the New Macross-class (City-type) emigrant ships, seem to hover around a couple hundred ships. If you don't count the recreational ships and resource ships, the Macross-7 fleet had 186 warships (1 Battle-class, 45 Guantanamo-class, 20 Uraga-class, 120 Northampton-class)... 187 if you count the ARMD-class ship that shows up only in Macross 7 Trash. The fourth? generation emigrant fleet Macross Valiant (Macross-16) from Master File is noted to have led a fleet of approximately 900 ships. The fifth generation emigrant fleets Macross Frontier and Macross Galaxy both are noted to have unspecified, but large escort fleets spread out across dozens of light years of the ship's intended course. The only fleet of that generation that was explicitly identified in terms of escort fleet size was Macross-29... at zero ships, due to its idiot government abolishing their defense forces entirely (the consequences of which crippled their economy). Yes. Well, "both" is really the most accurate answer I suppose. Initially, the first generation emigrant fleets were making use of some classes of ship that were not fold capable. The fleet's fold-capable ships would have to carry the escorts that weren't independently fold-capable with them in their fold effects. Emigrant fleets commonly have small task forces of escorts scouting ahead to secure their intended course and make sure they don't accidentally fold into a dangerous region, an enemy fleet, or what have you. Those task forces, as well as any escorts that aren't operating in close formation with the emigrant ship would have to fold independently. There'll inevitably be some escorts operating in close proximity to the emigrant ship that can reasonably save some energy by riding along inside the emigrant ship's fold effect, but those are a small minority because the energy requirements for a fold increase both with the volume of space to be folded and the distance to be folded. Folding an enormous volume would reduce the effective range considerably, and folding a long distance would necessarily require minimizing wasted energy and keeping the fold effect as small as possible to reduce its energy consumption. Considering how absolutely colossal the Macross Frontier itself was between its gigantic dome and supplemental island modules, even an optimally efficient fold would have loads and loads of room in which you could park escort ships to conserve energy during a fold. The City-class is known to have had starship docks on its underside, but those were supposedly mostly for things like repairs, building new ships, and layovers to transfer personnel and equipment.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    What are you talking about? That's clearly a small moon. Just ask Obi-wan. He knows small moons.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming they're going forward. They may go sideways or backwards, like they did with Macross Zero.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it'd be a nice touch. I'm kind of surprised SoftBank hasn't started putting out English editions of the Master Archive Mobile Suit books at the very least, since Gundam does have a reasonably big following in the states. If they can get seven thousand-plus idiots willing to repeatedly pay money for a trash-tier atrocity like the recent Robotech comic... I think Macross would do just fine.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    You've piqued my curiosity. Care to share?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    What little is said on the subject of stealth technology for space warships in official Macross sources like Macross Chronicle is predominantly about passive stealth. The Northampton-class stealth frigate, Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, and many other types of stealth warship in Macross are designed to minimize the possibility of detection using a combination of passive stealth coatings that absorb radar and fold waves, and structural shaping that deflects incoming radar and cross-dimension radar pulses away from a sending station. Presumably they also incorporate technologies to reduce detectable radio, electromagnetic, infrared, and fold wave emissions. Various things that might disrupt their passive stealth like beam turrets are typically retractable and stored inside the ship when not in use. Electronic countermeasures like radar and radio jamming are also used to preserve stealthiness at times. There are a few isolated mentions of active stealth technology, though the dominant active stealth technology in the Macross universe is the complex and energy-intensive method of active cancellation. This method involves near-instantaneous analysis of an incoming radar pulse and transmitting a corresponding pulse of identical frequency and amplitude but an opposite phase back to effectively zero the net amplitude of the radar return received by the enemy radar via the wave superposition principle. The main drawback of this system is a dramatic loss of effectiveness the more powerful the enemy radar is. The emigrant fleets dispatched into the greater galaxy by the New UN Government are absolutely set on avoiding confrontations with rogue Zentradi fleets and other hostiles whenever possible, and being stealthy helps to a degree. The fact that the galaxy is a REALLY BIG place and space fold technology is inherently a pretty crappy way to explore the galaxy when it's essentially folded subspace teleportation that deprives the folding ship of the ability to observe anything occurring in the space between Point A and Point B until it emerges helps a lot too. Without following each other's fold communication, the chances of two fleets running into each other by accident is astronomically low. Even if you're right there when a ship folds, it's very difficult to track a space fold to its destination. Stealth technology for warships wouldn't have come out of how Vrlitwhai and Exsedol's branch fleet detected the Macross... that was a total accident when they just happened to be in precisely the right spot to detect the residual gravity waves of a defold event 10 light years away that occurred 10 years prior. (The Zentradi are shown employing a form of active stealth in the original series episode "Burst Point".)
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