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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    What corrupt NUNS officer? The Macross Delta TV series sort of halfheartedly tried to make Major Valan look evil or at least duplicitous... but the actual story undermines that pretty thoroughly with the repeated reveal that the local NUNS brass are just way better informed about the scope of the threat than Xaos is and kept it close to avoid causing a panic as they worked on countermeasures. Even their shadiest move, deploying that dimensional warhead during Windermere's first war with the New UN Government, turned out to be a well-intentioned and strategically sound move which only became a controversial disaster because they didn't realize that the elite pilot selected for the mission had been compromised. (Incidentally, manually setting your text color to black makes it hard to read when the default board style has a very dark grey as the background color.) I'd bet against this one, though a new FAST pack seems to be almost a given. They haven't finished doing DXs for the TV series designs yet. (It'd be hard to explain Xaos getting a new VF the way SMS did, since the Brisingr globular cluster's whole schtick is that they're broke and economically underdeveloped. The whole reason the VF-31 was developed was to stimulate their economy by keeping development local instead of buying an export model 5th Gen VF. Maybe if Xaos hadn't already been flying Ace Customs...) With who, though? Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure ended with the Kingdom of the Wind's forces retreating from Ragna and proposing peace talks. Maybe the New UN Forces are going to come knocking now that they know Xaos and Lady M have broken interstellar law by creating and weaponizing an illegal clone (Mikumo). Maybe better drones... their ethos is all about the aerial dogfight and close-quarters combat, so I can't see them going in for a heavy Armored Pack. Maybe something along the lines of the YF-25 Paladin Pack, which focused on a lance for close combat? There are few bets safer than that one. Didn't she say in the series and movie that her parents are dead? (IIRC it's the village mayor of her hometown who was trying to marry her off when she skipped town and the planet on a cargo ship.) The novelizations will scratch that itch for you, that I can guarantee... We'd all like that, yes. Seems unlikely, IMO. She's only really valuable to the story as a one-woman Omniscient Council of Vagueness that dispenses exposition by proxy. Macross Delta's creators never determined an identity for her either, and Berger Stone's whole story doesn't fit with other info about her, so it's unlikely she'll be anyone we already know. If she does put in an appearance, I'm betting on a "remember the new guy?" like Millard Johnson, Timothy Daldhanton, Naresuan, or Richard Bilra... a new character whose backstory puts them as present for the events of the original series. She'll be back to her VF-31C.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Eh, I'd call some decent art or scenes of the Sv-154 Svard a nice consolation prize.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I know five or six volumes of Variable Fighter Master File already have been fan-translated into Chinese.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'm definitely not getting my hopes up until I see some news of actual substance. IMO, Macross Delta's concept and cast weren't bad... they're just badly presented. If we get different (read: "better") writers, this movie could be something worth getting interested in. Bring back Hiroyuki Yoshino to clean up Toshizo Nemoto's mess and you'll really have my attention.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's not unheard of... they did it in '94 with Macross Plus and Macross 7.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    We're almost certainly headed down the recycled design rabbit hole. Maybe a new FAST pack, but I wouldn't count on anything else.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That's just the way new Macross project announcements are... we usually don't get any meaningful information until the second or third event where the project is teased. That's what I kept pointing out WRT a new series... that the pattern from the last few meant that we wouldn't expect them to even admit they were working on one until late September, reveal the title in October, and we wouldn't actually see anything substantial about it until November or December. Since a new Delta movie is about the most disappointing announcement they could possibly make, I'm really hoping this topic is not mistitled and there will be a new (non-Delta) series developed in parallel. Given that Walkure is the real money spinner and Macross Delta itself seems to be mostly a footnote to the group's self-promotion, the concerts are probably to keep the gravy train going.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The recent Walkure live event, which announced this new movie and two crossover live concerts. ANN has a brief article about it. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-09-23/macross-franchise-gets-new-delta-film-new-crossover-concerts/.137201
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Worldwide? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could sell ten thousand copies of a licensed Variable Fighter Master File volume's translation no problem. Such as it is, I'm not likely to ever get a license due to the ongoing legal reasons and not owning a publishing company, so instead my humble circle of amateurs are focusing our attentions on just doing it for love of the game. Those who attempted this year's Super Dimension Convention's collectibles panel will have heard that we're working on a complete translation of Macross Journal Extra: The latest version of SKY ANGELS: VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition. The original plan was to have that one done and ready for uploading by SDCon to promote our new website project, but life got in the way when one of my day job's projects got moved up a full year without warning so now it's targeted a launch title for 1/1/19. I just got to the bit about the engines (page 38) last night.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I hope not. I'd like to continue to live in hope that we'll get a new Macross story with a competent writing staff behind it. Macross Delta didn't deserve the first movie, let alone a second. The Macross Delta TV series had enormous potential that ended up almost completely squandered by the sheer ineptitude of its writers and their bloody-minded insistence on promoting Walkure over telling a coherent story. The compilation movie Passionate Walkure exacerbated a number of the writing problems that were dragging the series version down (like its inability to focus on telling the actual goddamn story) and only improved the story in the sense that it's less agonizing to watch because there's so much less of it. I could maybe work up some enthusiasm for it if this new, all-original Macross Delta movie shares no writers in common with the previous film and TV series. If it's the same lot of idiots, then it's a virtual guarantee the movie will be a barely coherent Walkure commercial with a plot so thin you could see daylight through it.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the quote came in at $24,575 and four months turnaround time... an amount that's nothing to sneeze at even in the 1st world and not really that much faster than my group can do it on our own. We inquired out of idle curiosity, and that princely sum was enough to convince us to inquire no further. It wouldn't be so bad if we had a license to commercially exploit a translation, since that cost could be spread across the sales of a few thousand books, but it's too steep for doing it simply for the love of the game.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I will... but between the amount of stuff in the To-Do pile and the estimate that each volume of Master File will take 4-6 months to complete, it'll be a year or two before I get there.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It was the first planet outside of our solar system to be colonized, yeah.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    If you are, so are the rest of us... so you either aren't, or you are in excellent company. The only sections I've done out of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur so far are the variants list, block numbers list, and some stuff way at the front of the book about the cockpit and mobile seat. I would assume, given that the events of Operation Phantom Sword are dated late 2041 and it says they were using the FBF-1000A fold booster, that the VF-19As are equipped with two of them because they need to: Fold a distance of greater than the 20 light years the FBF-1000A was rated for, either by making two fold jumps or having those fold boosters work together. They needed to generate a larger fold effect for a single jump to carry something (as Basara tried in Macross 7 during the attempt to rescue the captured Macross 5 civilians in the spiritia farm. They want to make a return trip without being serviced by the carrier, since the FBF-1000A was rated for a single use only. Eden was stumbled upon by a short-distance emigrant fleet, one of the ~100 that ended up exploring space within a few hundred light years of Sol. It was discovered between the launches of Megaroad-01 and Megaroad-02. Both fleets were basically flying into Vajra space intentionally... Frontier was pursuing Richard Bilra's dream of freeing the galaxy from the limitations imposed on fold travel by fold faults, where Galaxy was pursuing Grace O'Connor's implant network theory. By the time of Frontier, fold boosters were longer-ranged, more reliable, and good for multiple uses. Alto appropriated Michael's because it was handy, since he didn't have time to go hunting for the one he'd left up in orbit with his Super Pack (which may not have even survived the dimension eater detonation).
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Offhand, I don't recall any particular reason being given for Megaroad-01 and its escort fleet setting a course for the galactic core. (Considering where Sol sits on the Orion-Cygnus arm, the vast majority of the Milky Way galaxy is in the general direction of "towards the galactic core".) やさしさSAYONARA ("Farewell to Tenderness"), which shares its title with the episode itself.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    When it's not telling you Kawamori's hovercraft is full of eels... (It's getting better, but every now and then I see it produce something spectacularly wrong.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Odds are there's probably at least a little lithium in the reaction as it is, as a consequence of decaying Beryllium-7 produced by fusing Helium-3 and Helium-4.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I wouldn't expect much to change outside of maybe getting Macross on one or more of the popular streaming services (Google Play, Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). Big West and Bandai have at least proven on a conceptual level that cutting out the middlemen and having the Japanese head office market translations directly to westerners is a viable tactic through the Macross Delta series and Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure movie. I'd expect to see them keep expanding on that approach, and having a growing selection of direct-from-Japan media presented with an English option.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Individually, yeah... the only way to make that tenable would be for a professional distributor to do a translation with intent to sell, or to crowdfund it. Since neither option is likely to pan out in the near future, I'm just gonna keep slowly plodding away at 'em. True, though since those often include staff/cast interviews, production info, and other goodies on top of the art, being able to read them definitely adds value.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Most folks, yeah. I'm kind of weird in that I specifically got into collecting them with research as a goal (to fix the many errors in the old Macross II RPG). There's just too much coming too fast for fan translators to reasonably stay on top of things, so the percentage of material made accessible to western fans is presently quite low. (On a lark I got a price quote on what it'd take to get something like Variable Fighter Master File volumes professionally translated and it came out to a bit under $25k per book.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    "A lot like Gundam" would be the honest answer. Due, in no small measure, to Macross II, Macross 2036, etc. having drawn on staffers from the various recent Gundam titles. Macross II was a very "safe" sequel, typical of the anime industry in that it took the bare minimum number of risks, pushed no envelopes, and stuck close to a proven formula. Macross in general is rather atypical in the extent that it reinvents itself and mixes up its formula in each successive installment.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's a ways off! Can't we hope for something nearer term, like now (the 35th) or the 40th?
  23. 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.)
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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