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Seto Kaiba

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  1. 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.
  2. 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.)
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.)
  7. 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.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's a ways off! Can't we hope for something nearer term, like now (the 35th) or the 40th?
  9. 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.)
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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".
  14. 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.)
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    ... wasn't there already one admittedly terrible attempt at a live-action adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender?
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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...
  22. 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...
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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