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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, it's because this kind of straightforward question tends to get answered very quickly... so all questions of that type get merged here to spare the topic space for the really meaty questions we can dig into for tens of pages. Nah, the Google bot spiders this thread several times a day. So do Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, and a couple others. The keyword search on this forum software is also particularly robust.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    You missed the point with distressing completeness... Mikumo's actual age is just the cherry on the sundae of creepy-as-f*ck. The real substance of the problem is that Mikumo's inbuilt knowledge is narrowly focused to the point that her social and emotional development is way WAY behind for a person of her apparent biological age. Xaos's entertainment division is, for all practical intents and purposes, exploiting a developmentally disabled girl who has no legal guardian and isn't equipped to understand the social context and/or implications of the things she's being instructed to do so they can use her as a child soldier and to produce sexually-charged material. That's dodgy as f*ck and horrifying as it is... and then there's a nagging question of whether she's mentally capable of refusing an order or even allowed to do so, regardless of whether or not she can give informed consent. The best-case scenario here is they're sexually exploiting and endangering a minor. The worst is actual goddamn slavery. Macross Delta's creators obviously didn't consider the implications of attaching this bit of backstory to their Sheryl Nome knockoff. It's not often a fictional universe as upbeat as Macross's opens such an ugly can of worms... and it's an odd thing for the story to ignore since her clone status is literally her only real character trait. If the Macross Delta TV series is any indication, at least part of her time off the clock is spent floating unconscious in a big clear-glass tank like so many Rei Ayanamis. (That's what she was doing for the entire span of time that the other members of Walkure were looking for her, culminating in breaking into the hospital ship she was on.) There are several more interesting ethical, regulatory, and governmental questions surrounding her existence... How many people actually know that Mikumo Guynemer is really a 3 year old artificial life form and not the 17 year old girl she appears/claims to be? Is creating a clone like that even legal? Is adding unknown DNA from a Protoculture ruin to a clone legal? Is Mikumo the first and only one or is she simply the latest/most successful clone? If there are others, what became of them? Were they just destroyed, or are they being held somewhere? Who is the donor of the original DNA that the new Protoculture DNA was spliced into to create her, and does she know what her DNA was used for? She's clearly been programmed with basic knowledge, but what else is in that program? Did Xaos implant mind control in the knowledge they installed in her to make her easier to manipulate and stage-manage? Does she even have free will? Did Xaos appropriate an existing person's identity for her to use as a cover or did they weave an entirely-false identity from scratch? If the New UN Government doesn't know Mikumo's true nature, that makes it a near-certainty that what Xaos is doing is profoundly illegal since clones have full rights under the law. IMO that'd be a story worth delving into at least as much as the Aerial Knights backstory that never did make it into any incarnation of Macross Delta.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    When you combine it with her one piece of actual character development - being a 3 year old clone whose implanted programming doesn't include social graces - it crosses the line straight into being downright skin-crawlingly creepy. She doesn't have the social awareness to eat with other people... there is no bloody way she understands what she's doing vis-a-vis the sex appeal. Whatever writer came up with that plot twist needs to seriously reconsider his or her life choices. Oh, I agree it's not particularly bad or an uncommon thing to find in the anime industry. The reason it stands out as much as it does in Macross Delta is that Macross has rarely, if ever, been so crass and unsubtle about it. We've had fanservice of a sexual nature before and characters who were obviously designed around that kind of fanservice appeal, but Macross Delta was the first time it became an end in its own right (to the show and movie's detriment). Well, that and Makina was wheeled from background to background to show off her cleavage and occasionally gainax for the camera. I suspect I may be more annoyed by it than most, since one of my favorite things about Macross's writing has always been that it's never been shy about putting the women in its cast on an equal or greater footing than the men. Having a series where the women on the cast are largely, or entirely, decorative and the boys do all the heavy lifting just doesn't feel right to me. (I had such high hopes for Mirage, but it all came to nothing.) It's the second one... the story took a powder in favor of promoting Walkure. How many "Delta fans" are actually fans of Macross Delta and how many are just fans of Walkure? If I had to guess based on merchandise and media sales, I'd guess most are the latter. Oh my, no... they aren't even close. The oldest example I can think of was the original 90's Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon series, which had at least one openly lesbian couple in it (among the outer senshi IIRC) and a fair amount of ho yay in other places. I'm 99% certain there are examples older than that as well.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    At some point, I wanna polish my translation skills to the point that I can tackle the audio dramas... I have copies of the Macross Frontier ones, and I've heard they contain some fairly interesting stuff that isn't in the show, like Grace coming to the realization that she's started to genuinely care about Sheryl after looking after her for 11 years and having to edit her own personality in order to continue using Sheryl as a tool.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    In before the merge into the Newbie and Short Questions thread... That said, this isn't a question we get very often. Frontier is usually lauded for the strength of its writing. So... to summarize the plot here: (I don't think this really merits spoiler tags since the series is ten years old, but I'll do it anyway.) Trying to keep it short and roughly in-continuity, but it should make things reasonably clear. Yep, like Macross: Do You Remember Love? did for the original series, the Macross Frontier movies are a fairly different riff on the plot. You could read the plot summaries on MAHQ, I guess?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I like to think of Delta as Macross's version of Interstella 5555.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    A Macross project start to finish.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.)
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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...
  16. 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?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Precious little. It's mostly the usual statements of the obvious like "it can transform with the packs still equipped".
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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....
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the TV series was pretty much Walkure Delta, so it isn't too surprising the movie is more of same.
  24. 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.
  25. 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:
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