Seto Kaiba

Weirdly, persistent login is still working for me on some devices, but not others... my laptop doesn't seem to be having any problem with it, but all my mobile devices won't stay logged in. I'll second what everyone's saying about themes though, the only one that seems to be working correctly is the Default theme. Both MWDark and MWDefaultWhiteBlue have a lot of missing images and incorrect formatting now.

Yes. Yep... the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series had some problems as a result of its animation workload being farmed out to a bunch of different studios, not all of which were up to snuff quality-wise. The chief offender is generally agreed to be the Korean studio StarPro, who had been engaged by Tatsunoko Production to help animate the series. (Other studios involved included AnimeFriend, AIC, Artland, and the forerunners of Gainax.) Without spoiling anything, that will be cleared up in dialog only... the scenes where the SDF-2 was supposed to appear were cut in the storyboard phase due to runtime concerns. The ship does appear in Macross: Flashback 2012 and put in cameos in other shows.

Had to sign in again today myself, and now the text alignments are all wonky and there are some missing background colors, like on the "back to [Category]" buttons in the mobile view.

To the best of our knowledge, there are six official variants of the VF-4. Three of those variants have actually appeared in Macross titles, and the other three are "technical materials only" ones. They are: VF-4A: First mass-production type, seen in Macross Flashback 2012 VF-4B: Two-seater version of VF-4A, used for training and attack roles. VF-4C: Improved VF-4A intended to be convertible for regime optimization. VF-4D: Modified VF-4C customized for UN Navy use. VF-4S: Economized version of the VF-4D for UN Navy use with unnecessary equipment removed, salt damage resistance measures added. Disarmed version "VF-4SL" seen in the Macross R light novel as an air racing unit. VF-4G: Final variant, with upgraded armor, avionics, engines, weapons, etc., seen in Macross Digital Mission VF-X and Macross M3 Close... the VF-4G's first appearance was in Macross Digital Mission VF-X, a couple years before Macross M3 came out. Both Yamato and Arcadia branded their transforming VF-4 toys as VF-4Gs from Macross Digital Mission VF-X. Officially, VF-4A, but just "VF-4" implies the [A]. I'd assume SVF-1 Skulls markings, if it's a FB2012 model... or maybe some of the other VF-4A paint schemes from This is Animation Special Macross Plus.

Not really... songs didn't acquire any kind of supernatural power in Macross until the Macross 7 series, which retroactively established that song energy was there all along even though it had nothing to do with Minmay's achievement in the First Space War. The impact of Minmay's songs was cultural and psychological in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and it didn't change in Do You Remember Love?... but it had a helping hand in that it was a Protoculture song and triggered some kind of genetic memory of their civilization in the Zentradi and Meltrandi (who, in that version, were genetically-modified Protoculture). Retroactively establishing that Minmay's songs also contained song energy was kind of an attempt Macross 7 made to keep her relevant after they established that Basara's songs could free people from brainwashing and give space kaiju a nasty headache. Otherwise Basara would've become the new most-important singer against whom everyone measured themselves.

When you get right down to it, that's a false equivalency. The Macross metaseries introduces a new antagonist and new setting in every major installment. Barring a couple of the Expanded Universe, the Star Wars metaseries has always used the same antagonist faction that just gets a change in pseudonyms and minor facelift between trilogies. All the "classic Imperial stuff" is more readily available because Star Wars only has the one antagonist and they use the same gear in multiple titles. Macross mixes it up more, and kind of has to since the Zentradi are kind of an impossible enemy to beat on any realistic scale.

Among western fans, that's so far from atypical that I'd almost call it The Standard Response to Basara Nekki. The usual (weak) defense of the character's overwhelming flaws is that he was more plot device than protagonist, meant to bring about character development in others rather than develop himself. Essentially, that he is The Mentor to Mylene and Gamlin, though that's a line of reasoning that doesn't quite work because he's demonstrably the main character. He's not actually a hero, he's just the Designated Hero. Kiichi Goto from Mobile Police Patlabor basically summed up what's wrong with Basara in one of his rants: "What do you think you're piloting? Great Mazinger? Dangaioh? For Pete's sake, this isn't some robot cartoon whose main character is an autistic kid or some punk." It feels rather tasteless to have to say it, but Basara is precisely the kind of autistic protagonist Chief Goto was talking about. Literally, it's very probable Basara is high-functioning autistic, considering his interests are restricted pretty much entirely to music and piloting for the entire course of the series, and he has so much trouble with social interactions. Well, it was a weekly anime series made on the cheap that veers into tokusatsu territory more than a bit... that much was probably inevitable. Ever since my second watch-through, I've always tried to discourage people from attempting to marathon Macross 7 the way I did on my first time through. The show is much easier to get through if you only do one or two episodes a day, and quickly becomes intolerably repetitive if you try to do more. There was definitely way too much show left at the end of the plot most of the time, and feels like it should've been a two-cour series. You have to remember, Macross might be a space opera but it isn't quite a Star Wars-type setting like Outlaw Star where there is actual goddamn space magic. The impact of music was never unquantified or unquantifiable in the Macross metaseries, they just had to come up with new reasons for it to be relevant starting from Macross Plus because they couldn't continue getting away with every alien species in the galaxy having no concept of music or positive emotion. That's why Minmay's songs messed with the Zentradi's heads... as clone soldiers that were engineered and educated for a life that consists purely of warfare and military duty, they didn't have the emotional or social framework to understand and process the concepts and feelings the songs were evoking. The only thing their leadership could equate the effect to was mind control, which is why they nuked Earth for it. From Macross Plus on, they constructed a variety of nested explanations for why songs had the power to sway emotions and mental states... starting with Sharon Apple manipulating the audience's brainwaves through her songs via biofeedback, and on to sort of a mild and generally benign form of the same kind of psychic shenanigans from Warhammer 40,000, with the "biological fold waves" essentially being a mild form of psychic ability communicating emotional states and other things. Kind of fitting, if you think about Macross's recurring themes of music as communication. For me, the bit that was infuriating wasn't necessarily that Fire Bomber was The Only Hope... but rather, that after establishing that it was equal parts natural ability and confidence, they proceeded to make everyone else with the ability either a disinterested spectator or running joke to prevent Fire Bomber from being upstaged. I loathed what the did to the VF-19, and how they treated the VF-11... for my money, the VF-11's one of the best looking main continuity planes, and it's the show's buttmonkey until Gamlin and Kinryu get in them.

Unsurprising, though I hope whatever he's moved onto is something he's significantly more knowledgeable about. He absolutely did more harm than good with that badly misinformed video of his about Harmony Gold's lawsuit against Catalyst Game Labs, Piranha Games Inc., and Harebrained Schemes LLC. The BattleTech/MechWarrior fans are all stirred up with false hope that the lawsuit is going to blow up spectacularly in Harmony Gold's face1 and thinking that soon "The Unseen" will be able to return to their original (copyright-infringing) designs. It's also got a lot of Robotech and Macross fans returning to wild and baseless claims like that HG's license is not legal/legitimate. Curiously, there's very little speculation out there about Harmony Gold suing Tatsunoko even though that has potential implications far more wide-reaching than BattleTech's latest cockup. Hm? I'm not upset about it. I'm amused by it. It's not every day you get promoted to being a Boogeyman without having to actually do anything. Plus I got to meet some really awesome people as a result of their unfounded accusations. Those guys from UEG Productions did professional animation work for the National Museum of Serbia, and a LOT of really awesome Star Trek fan art. It's a shame they got it in the shorts over their Robotech fan film, since they were really passionate about it... but legalities are legalities, and it's pretty easy to understand why HG would want them to surrender the rights to the film in exchange for endorsement. (Otherwise, if they wanted to use something out of it they'd be stuck in the same mess Games Workshop was with the minor Chaos Gods, or Paramount and the character of [Nic Locarno/Tom Paris], where they would get screwed on royalties and extra approvals.) 1. It actually might, but not for that reason. I've been looking at it, and I'm pretty sure the designs Harmony Gold contend are ripoffs of the Armored Valkyrie and Regult are actually the Dougram and H8 Roundfacer from the Fang of the Sun Dougram series and the Chiram Ishkick from Super Dimension Century Orguss.

We saw a couple new models of Zentradi hardware used by the New UN Spacy Marines in Macross Delta but those were all human-made. That new model of Glaug, and two new models of Regult. The one you're thinking of is, IIRC, the ZBP-104 which had a pair of Queadluun-Rhea arms grafted to it. Maybe if they ever give the new Zentradi mecha a model kit or two we'll get some more Zentradi art from Tenjin. The Macross II timeline's probably more your speed on that front... the different main fleets in that did have some major variations in kit, including differently-shaped mobile fortresses. The Neld and Burado main fleets had a new model of Glaug and a large number of battle suit variations. Production in the main Macross continuity is more standardized. Your supposition is on the mark, more or less. As Macross Chronicle has it, the Zentradi battle suit from Macross Plus is essentially an economized Queadluun-Rau used by the Zentradi Army... presumably to get around the problems with the actual Queadluun-Rau (cost, complexity, handling) that necessitated the Protoculture developing a better grade of pilot (female Zentradi). Chronicle's writers conjecture that they might've originally been developed during an insurrection on a Protoculture colony world independently of the normal R&D process.

Y'know, I've never been entirely sure. He and Maverick_LSC had it in for me for a while after they banned me from robotech.com for causing them "pain and suffering" by correcting them publicly on all the false information they were spreading about the Macross legal situation and its relevance to the recently-announced Robotech live action movie proposal. There were a few years there where they put a ton of effort into making me out to be THE evil baby-eating Macross purist out to secretly undermine the Robotech franchise. Hah! I should be so lucky. Nobody, really. Just a humble mad scientist currently in the service of a major automaker's electric vehicle R&D division, contributor to a bunch of SAE standards no sane human will ever read, and owner of an extraordinarily grouchy monitor lizard with a seemingly bottomless appetite. (Those of you around Mountainview CA, Kirkland WA, or Austin TX, if you get a chance to ride one of the Waymo Pacificas being tested there, do let me know what you think of it. I had a modest hand in its creation. Not something likely to land in the MW Automotive thread, I know...) Yeah, I'd love to be put out of business as a translator with all these books being made available in English. I can only hope Harmony Gold's working relationship with Tatsunoko goes to pieces so spectacularly that we don't have to wait until 2021. This kind of fighting over money, especially when Tatsunoko's probably not making that much on the Robotech license to begin with might well be the straw the breaks the camel's back.

It was derived from, and shares parts with, the Queadluun-Rau... including the Inertia Vector Control System. Eh... there's no denying that scientific exchange is a two-way street, given that practically every new development by rebel Zentradi groups has involved enhancing a current-gen VF with a lot more Zentradi overtechnology to produce something equivalent to a next-gen VF performance-wise. That said, cockpits are almost invariably designed with miclones in mind because a variable fighter with a giant-scale cockpit would tend to result in a prohibitively large mecha and the pilots themselves would be an incredible drain on resources for a terrorist group with limited logistical support. It's really not reasonable in-universe, especially since these groups are trying to be covert and the Zentradi Marines in the New UN Forces are mostly malcontents looking for that familiar Zentradi Army military lifestyle, so they'd prefer something a little closer to home. There are two designs that meet your criteria, though. One is the Mardook variable weapon that went unnamed in the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA which had kind of a half-arsed variable design. The other is Macross M3's Variable Glaug, which was designed for a giant pilot but due to size constraints the pilot had to be on the small side. It was later retrofitted for a lot more sensible and roomy miclone cockpit. Funnily enough, the Variable Glaug is based on a VF-4. ('s this one of those name problems like that whatsisname actor Sticklebrick Cumberbund?) Still, we won't see a "new" Zentradi mecha because we know the uncultured Zentradi don't develop new weapons and the cultured ones tend to use VFs.

Abso-fricking-lutely not. If I had that kind of pull with HG's legal staff or management, d'you think we'd still be having the Macross licensing problem? Closest I've ever come to having influence of any kind in Robotech's doings is when Tommy Yune would occasionally glean improvements for the Robotech.com Infopedia from discussions I had about Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA with him and a few other people... and I didn't even get credited for that on the site! (For the record, the only industry in which I have any real influence is automotive... and even then, it's only in alt-fuel, hybrid, and electric, which aren't exactly mainstream yet.)

From my own interactions with the creators of the Robotech: Genesis fan film shortly after HG nuked their project with a Cease and Desist notice1, the fan-film's Serbia-based lead animator seemed convinced that his project had been targeted because they were using the distinctly Robotech plot points of the "Masters Saga" and Robotech II: the Sentinels and had declined the HG request/ultimatum to surrender all rights to their work in exchange for HG promoting it on the official website. With respect to Valkyrie Project, I suspect they were more concerned about appearances... since it was a semi-pro Robotech fan film that was actively using Macross designs at a time when they were increasingly concerned about the possibility of Big West filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against them. The designs might've motivated it, but the basis for the shutdown of the film would've been the Robotech IP rights.

Goodness no... what would've given you the idea that those Cease and Desist notices weren't still valid? It's never been about the designs - except maybe the fear that if they endorsed fan films using Macross designs it might end badly for them vis-à-vis Big West - it's always been a product of brand protection. Harmony Gold doesn't own the designs from the original shows, but they DO own the Robotech name and all the aspects of their adaptation's plot which were not part of the original shows (e.g. the protoculture nonsense, the changed names). Use those in your fan film, and they have every right to slap you with a cease and desist, file a copyright complaint against your webhost, and shut you down. So, no... none of them are off the hook.

Why would they? The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series established that the Zentradi were not given the technical knowledge base necessary to make significant repairs to, or improve upon, the technology the Protoculture developed for them. Multiple titles also established that, barring battle damage, Zentradi overtechnology is incredibly robust and will run pretty much indefinitely (and in many cases has been for hundreds of thousands of years). That said, we did get new Zentradi mecha in several previous titles... the new battle suit type in Macross Plus, the Feios Valkyrie in Macross VF-X, the Queadluun-Nona in the DYRL? game for Playstation, the Neo Glaug and Variable Glaug from Macross Plus: Game Edition and Macross M3 respectively, and the Draug from VOXP. At least three of those are pre-human intervention designs. Been there, done that... and on no less than three separate occasions! The first one was the General Galaxy YF-21/VF-22 Sturmvogel II from Macross Plus, which was even built out of the same factory satellite as the Queadluun-Rau and Queadluun-Rhea. The second one was the Feios Valkyrie used by anti-government forces in Macross VF-X and Macross VF-X2, which is the love child of a Queadluun-Rau and a captured VF-11. The third was the Queadluun-Alma from Macross the Ride, a fusion of a Feios Valkyrie and Queadluun-Rhea that was the most advanced weapon in FASCES' arsenal. (Design inspiration-wise, the case could be made that there are actually four... though the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie from Macross II actually incorporates overtechnology from the Nousjadeul-Ger battle suit instead, as do all the other Macross II VFs.) Pretty sure there are YF-21/VF-22 pics in Third Sortie, so it counts!

... and just like that, you've lost me. Star Wars has respect for its bad guys? What Expanded Universe book was that in, because I simply must have missed it. Obi-wan's generous exaggeration of their abilities aside, Imperial Stormtroopers are literally synonymous with villainous incompetence and the old EU extended that to the entire Imperial military via the Thrawn trilogy by revealing that the only reason the Imperial Navy was an elite fighting force was because they had the Emperor using his crazy space magic to coordinate them without their knowledge. Everything I've read and seen to date suggests the only reason the Sith aren't extinct is the Jedi only have one alignment (Lawful Stupid) and the Republic is perennially left holding the Idiot Ball to enable them to be any kind of threat at all. Macross, on the other hand, has plenty of respect for the Zentradi Army. Only the revival of the Protodeviln was able to knock them out of the spot of #1 threat to galactic civilization, and that was only temporary. The reason they're not a recurring antagonist in every series is because the New UN Gov't knows full freaking well what happened in 2010 was a one-in-a-million lucky break and that fighting anything larger than a branch fleet is essentially suicide for any emigrant fleet or planetary defense force. Even a branch fleet is a threat that generally requires reinforcement from multiple neighboring fleets or planets. Even the Macross II timeline, where the Zentradi ARE recurring antagonists, still treats them as SERIOUS BUSINESS and the UN Forces get clobbered even by the smaller fleets that aren't really trying for the first couple decades... and even then they only really "win" by exploiting standard Zentradi tactics calling for retreat and regrouping if a battle group's flagship is sunk. Valkyries get the focus in Macross because they are the common denominator of humanity's defense forces.

The Zentradi Army hasn't really been a significant presence in Macross stories since Macross II: Lovers Again's timeline... or Macross 7's "Fleet of the Strongest Women" if you're willing to consider them being used for laughs. They're mostly background antagonists now, like how there was a rogue Zentradi fleet menacing one of Windermere IV's neighbors in Macross Delta Gaiden: the Black-Winged White Knight. Tenjin Hidetaka's Valkyries series of artbooks is a collection of the art he's done for things like model kit box art, magazines, and design work he did for Macross shows for the most part. He isn't doing a lot of new art for the books, so the title's more a result of the content than vice versa. Valkyries are, after all, the go-to mecha for Macross since Destroids are basically obsolete cannon fodder and the Zentradi Marines are relative newcomers to the main continuity's animation.

There are much better people to write that book than I. sketchley, Gubaba, or Tochiro could provide a much more diverse array of trivia. Still, now that I think on it, I would be rather happy if the next Macross series broke with tradition just a little and gave us some nods to all those minor works that do their best to expand Macross's continuity between the main shows and OVAs. I'd love to get a glimpse of, say, Macross the Ride's Chelsea Scarlett in her later career as the New UN Government MP for the Macross Frontier government1, or seeing a T-crush arena at a school2, or maybe having the Queen's Knights3 perform a flight demonstration before a concert. 1. Per the novelization of Macross Delta, Macross R leading lady Chelsea Scarlett seems to have gone into government. 2. The "extreme" sport from Macross 7 Trash. 3. A Sheryl Nome-themed unit from Macross Olympia in Master File. Edit: Further to my note about Kaifun, on review the bit about him living in Macross-11 is not in the English Fire!! album liner notes. I remember reading it, but I'm looking into sourcing that one definitively with the gracious assistance of Gubaba and possibly Renato.

The liner notes for the Macross 7 album "English Fire".

It's unlikely to ever get brought up in a proper Macross series since Kawamori doesn't like to return to old characters and plot points from stories he considers finished...

Unfortunately, US trademark law is written in such a way that it would favor Harmony Gold in any dispute over the ownership of those trademarks, being that they were the first ones to use all the trademarked terms and logos in US markets even though they do not own the show those terms and logos came from.

Offhand, I don't recall any Zentradi pics in it unless you want to count the Queadluun-Rhea in the background of a group shot. There are a few pictures of ships and destroids, but the majority of the content is devoted to Valkyries (as one might surmise from the title). Tenjin Hidetaka was responsible for much of the new art in Macross Chronicle, including the covers.

Eh... if this happened thirty years ago it might've had enough steam to keep going as an original property. Now? No way. More than one Robotech project has been sunk by the franchise's own fans for not directly tying into the events of their adaptation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Their one attempt at a totally original feature was so poorly received that it never got past the first teaser trailer before Harmony Gold management canceled it twice to make sure it stayed dead.

Emigration fleets have been depicted in more than one Macross series as operating in what passes for close proximity to each other in space fold terms. I would imagine that's intentional to at least some extent, since it would make it easier for the fleets to reinforce each other if one should come under attack. Macross 7 depicted the titular emigration fleet operating within reasonable fold distance of the earlier Macross-5 emigration fleet, such that they were able to plan a rendezvous with little difficulty and were the ones to discover Macross-5 had been destroyed by the Protodeviln's slave army. Macross Frontier and its prequel/side story Macross the Ride also depicted multiple emigration fleets operating within easy traveling distance of each other, such that regular tourism and sports tourism were both practical. Macross R in particular depicted the Vanquish League VF air races in a manner not dissimilar to modern auto races, in that the league's championship involves races in a number of different venues including other fleets/planets. The qualifying races at the start take place in the Macross Frontier fleet, but the regional championship was set to be done in a Riviera-class resort ship in the Macross Galaxy fleet. So, at the very least, there seem to be little clusters of mutually-supporting fleets moving in concert around the galaxy. They're obviously not ALL close enough to share trade links, but that's true of nations today as well. (Of course, it's worth noting that humanity has gotten much better at building fold systems so they can travel much longer distances in much less time.) I think that might've been true initially, but as the number of fleets increased and the scale and sophistication of each fleet increased along with the capability of fold systems it's gradually becoming less true as time goes on. After all, Richard Bilra is an interstellar cargo service owner and it made him so fabulously wealthy that he could afford to not only start a private PMC, he bankrolled an entire emigration fleet to pursue his twofold dream of finding Minmay and obtaining fold quartz. Macross Chronicle has kind of suggested that Misa's estimate of the time disparity during a fold jump (1 hour = 10 days) was a gross exaggeration born of humanity's inexperience with the technology. It asserts there is almost no difference between the subjective time experienced by the ship's crew and the objective time passing in realspace under ideal conditions... though things like intense gravity fields and having to detour around fold folds can greatly increase the difference between ship time and real time. Leon Mishima notes at one point the fold jump from the Macross Frontier fleet to Gallia IV would've been almost instantaneous if not for the fold faults between the fleet and the planet, which turned it into a day trip with a time loss of 172.25 hours. Fold quartz-based zero time fold systems are noted to be able to fold right through fold faults like they're not even there and have no difference between ship time and real time, which would be why Luca suspects Richard Bilra's aim might be a trade monopoly based on fold quartz-enhanced ships... his fleets would be able to ignore the galaxy's most common fold navigation hazard and get where they're going MUCH faster. Maybe so, but he wouldn't be nearly as effective as a dig at Carl Macek if he wasn't living in a New Macross fleet that's done up as a goddamn Eagleland.

Now that is an interesting legal question... one I'm not sure it's possible to answer unless we gain some additional insight into Tatsunoko Pro's licensing practices. Exactly what happens to the licensee contributions in a dub/sub type environment probably varies from license to license, though I would expect a licensee that was about to lose its license with no expectation of future renewal to at least try to sell the rights to its dub or subtitles to either the IP owner or the new licensee. I doubt there are many licenses drawn up such that the licensee gets compelled to transfer their work to their replacement if the license changes hands, since in typical setups the distributor doing the localization are the copyright holders on the subtitles or the dub's speech audio tracks. Robotech is an unusual case. It's not a proper localization, and its ungainly mishmash of its three component shows also contains a number of plot points and set pieces that weren't part of any of the original three shows. Harmony Gold would, theoretically speaking, retain the copyright on the original concepts they contributed to the show and ownership of the "Robotech" brand should the license they have with Tatsunoko expire. As a result of losing the distribution and merchandising rights to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, they would be unable to continue releasing the Robotech series around the world, including the original works they made which contain Tatsunoko-owned mecha and character designs like Robotech II: the Sentinels, Robotech: the Untold Story, and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Robotech 3000 would be safe, since the aborted trailer had no direct ties with the Japanese animation. Their licensees would be hosed, since their branded merch would become grey market or unsellable at worst (not that it's particularly sellable now, being largely overpriced trash). They should, however, be able to take those uniquely Robotech plot devices and construct a new series around them with no ties to the Japanese shows if they should choose to do so. They are already trying that, to a certain extent, via the live-action movie proposal which by necessity has to be completely unrecognizable to avoid being sued by Macross's owners for copyright infringement.