Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13064

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... 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.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The liner notes for the Macross 7 album "English Fire".
  5. Seto Kaiba
    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...
  6. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    We've yet to get a really good look at how inter-fleet and interplanetary commerce works under the New UN Government in the 2050's and beyond, but from what's been said in-setting about many of the companies that handle interstellar commerce and finance it's not much different from a modern economy. In theory, each emigrant fleet and planet is nominally self-sustaining in terms of the essentials for living. "Reality ensues" in that that theory doesn't always hold up in practice. Local governments under the New UN Government trade with each other for all the same kinds of things that various countries trade in today like food and drink, raw and processed materials, luxury goods, personal and military technology, exotic pets, and cultural exports like movies, music, and games. A wide array of the little things that make life more interesting than simply surviving. Some of it is done through licensing designs to local companies. A lot of it is done with fold-capable cargo ships like the one that unwittingly brought Freyja Wion from Windermere IV to Al Shahal after she stowed away in a consignment of apples destined for export. (SMS's parent company, Bilra Transport, is one of the major players in the interstellar shipping business.) The economics of trade have come up in passing in a few Macross titles before. Macross 7 made the first real mention of cultural exports via the galaxy network, with Fire Bomber's music being a major hit across the New UN Gov't's sphere of influence. Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! got set on a planet that was home to a sparsely populated mining colony harvesting a rare mineral for export. Macross Dynamite 7 had a fair amount of cultural and technological imports shown on its main setting planet of Zola, with the native Zolans adapting human media for their audience (like their own spin on Romeo and Juliet) and purchasing export model or civilian market VFs for both defense use and personal use. Macross Frontier and its spinoffs really delved into it for the sake of background, establishing that Earth is arguably the leading technology exporter and that Frontier was nominally on the hunt for supplies of fold quartz at Richard Bilra's behest. Sheryl's music is, naturally, a cultural export of Macross Galaxy where her label is headquartered. The Brisingr globular cluster from Macross Delta is established to be kind of an economically stunted region as a result of its isolation, and Windermere IV's main grievances against the New UN Government are economic in nature... their world is rich in fold quartz, but trading in it is strictly controlled in the name of preventing dimension weapons proliferation, so they're stuck with agricultural exports as they don't have the infrastructure for anything else. (Variable Fighter Master File contends that at least two of the three Project Triangler partners - Frontier and Olympia - legitimately intended to sell the new 5th Gen VFs they were developing to their economic and political allies... and official sources suggest that, at the very least, Frontier and Galaxy did. Macross Olympia provided some processed materials for the VF-25's construction in the Master File accounting.) Macross the Musiculture only had a small number of publications cover it, and they don't really go into the nitty-gritty details of the fleet's economic woes. The level of detail sufficient for the plot's progression seems to be pretty general, saying only that the fleet government's pacifism left them with a very weak bargaining position in trade negotiations.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    You mean Colonel Maistroff?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Claudia's position, per Macross Chronicle, was "Ship Coordination"... which apparently covered a lot of ground including navigation and weaponry. Vanessa Laird was the communications officer (her station is marked "3D CAPCOM").
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Let's just cross our fingers and hope it's the genesis of the end of their partnership.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I think there are several areas where we could draw some broad conclusions based on the relatively small set of knowns for the Sv-154. I could, of course, go off into left field and suggest that, like the British tanks and tea, the Svard's cockpit is equipped with a dispenser for apple juice. I like this idea. Headcanon accepted. In the interest of giving an answer that isn't simply the verbal equivalent of a shrug, I would contend that as a 4th Generation-equivalent VF the Sv-154 Svard is likely broadly comparable in performance to the Block II VF-171 Nightmare Plus used by the Brisingr Alliance's NUNS. Windermere IV's government seems to have an extreme fixation on atmospheric combat, they would probably have insisted upon a fighter that was optimized for atmospheric use. Thus I would expect the Svard to exhibit higher atmospheric performance than the Nightmare Plus in combat, but lower performance and endurance in space combat just like the Sv-262. We don't know that the Sv-154 Svard was built specifically for use by Windermere IV the way the Sv-262 is implied to have been. I would assume that its anti-VF combat abilities are a bit better, since it IS a design from the SV Works, which specialized in developing VFs designed to fight other VFs. Whether it's actually able to take full advantage of the greater abilities of a Windermerean is anyone's guess, but I would assume not since Windermere IV was at best stalemating their own planet's New UN Forces garrison. (It does seem that experience paid bigger dividends, since the relatively green Windermereans were losing a lot of pilots to the NUNS even in the fighting on Windermere IV's surface.) Almost certainly not. At the time the Svard was in service, the mining of fold quartz was almost entirely done under the supervision of the New UN Government due to restrictions on trade in the material (as seen in Macross Delta: the Black-Winged White Knight). They didn't gain full control over the fold quartz resources of their planet until after the New UN Forces withdrew following their disastrous attempt to destroy the Sigur Valens with a dimensional bomb.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    As the emigration fleets are referred to by the designations of the actual emigration ships they're formed around, it refers to both the 29th New Macross-class emigration ship and its support fleet, the 59th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigration Fleet. It's the setting for Macross the Musiculture. The Macross-29 emigration fleet is a troubled one to say the least. The fleet's government, under the useless Mayor Serge Glass1, is incredibly weak as a result of its leader's timidity and its adoption of a pacifistic philosophy that made it kind of a doormat to the rest of the New UN Government. Consequently, the fleet government's approval rating is very low, its economy is in shambles, and it's beset by rising anti-government sentiment2 from the Zentradi activist group "Neo-Zentran" advocating for rearmament of the fleet.3 Unfortunately, the fleet's government doesn't seem any saner at the end of the story, aiming for economic revitalization through the entertainment industry4 (specifically, selling concert recordings)... which probably won't work considering the fleet's trade relations and bargaining position suck and they're not pushing anything wealthier fleets don't have more and better of. 1. Brother to Howard Glass, the now-deceased President of the Macross Frontier emigration fleet government. 2. Against the Macross-29 fleet government, not necessarily against the New UN Government as a whole. Nor, for that matter, are they anti-culture or anti-human. They're just political activists, mostly. 3. Under its leader Vigo Walgria, the Neo-Zentran movement is effectively a political activism group intending to affect governmental policy changes by the simple expedient of getting elected to public office and changing the policies through the entirely legitimate democratic process. Their main goal is to revitalize the fleet's economy through rearmament, with a particular focus on using the rearmament to rebalance trade relations with the other governments who'd been taking merciless advantage of the Macross-29 fleet under the confrontation-adverse Glass administration. Some of the group's more hardline members advocate a more violent, less democratic form of regime change, and attempt as much in the musical's second act only to be foiled by the usual Power of Song thing since they idiotically decide to take over a goddamn Miss Macross Contest venue. 4. Which proves only that the mainstream Neo-Zentran activist movement are the only sane people in the fleet, since everyone else is apparently now banking on an entertainment industry Hail Mary to save the fleet economy.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    The only part of it I really enjoyed was that the Sentinels arc was so badly written in every one of its iterations that the Invid Regent, the arc's Big Bad, ended up as a scenery-chewing, delightfully hammy, "for teh evulz" antagonist in the fine tradition of Ming the Merciless, Skeletor, Dr. Hell, or Emperor Daibazaal. The comic book version devoured the scenery with such gusto that he'd fit right in in The Venture Bros as a member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. Alas, despite my best efforts, no I had not forgotten that hilariously corny robot cat or the robot noodle people that accompanied it. Kind of off-message for an alien race that found inorganic technology offensive and unnatural. I'm totally on board with Titan's earlier assessment that this series probably won't get far enough to have to worry about it... if it actually makes it to its final (12th) issue I will be quite surprised. Barring the incredibly lame attempts to make it darker and "gritty", I think this will be the same by-the-numbers revisit of the Macross Saga as every previous attempt, which means maybe Minmei is going to take up a different genre... think she's got it in her to do death metal?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Doubtful, IMO. As long as the Zentradi Army is still around and operating several thousand Main Fleet-scale forces in the galaxy, pretty much every fleet and planet needs to be prepared to fight enemy forces that will certainly outnumber them and almost certainly outgun them as a result by even the most optimistic assessment. The idiots who don't believe they need to be prepared for that - like Macross-29 - are few, far between, and certifiably too dumb to live. (Macross-29's status as a fleet in which the local government has adopted a philosophy of actual pacifism has earned them the acknowledged status of The Great Galactic Doormat in all matters political, economic, and strategic. They're suffering for it, though they haven't been attacked by outside forces yet their economy is on the brink of collapse in 2062.) Sort of. Var syndrome is a fold wave-induced mental disorder brought about by the fold bacterium that exist symbiotically with sentient life.1 The chemical compound formed by combining a protein from Windermere's Exdel apples with the dissolved minerals in the bottled water obtained from the Protoculture ruins accelerates the reproduction of the fold bacterium and makes people much more sensitive to biological fold waves of beneficial or inimical varieties. As the fold bacterium in question seems to be something that most, if not all, sentients have in at least small amounts, King Ketchup's ability to influence and control people using fold song is more dependent on amplification than anything else. Using seidznol to boost the receptivity of his local Brisingr Alliance audience via tainted foodstuffs just reduced the burden on him by making all his victims more susceptible to his song. 1. Berger Stone's periodic outpourings of exposition to Xaos's staff contain enough inaccurate information and outright contradictions to safely assume he's bullsh*tting them and our designated heroes are either humoring him to see if there's any unguarded observations buried in that extraneous waffle or, more likely, being military washouts and people who couldn't hack it at real PMCs they're too goddamn dumb to realize Berger's spinning a yarn. He would have them (and the audience) believe that fold song is something new that came about as a result of the Vajra conflict... which doesn't fit at all with the explicitly-stated fact that fold singers were present on Earth TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS before humanity made first contact with the Vajra in 2040, and that Dr. Gadget M. Chiba had (re)discovered biological fold waves in the early 2040's via fold songs ("song energy"), invented a means of mechanical amplification, and successfully weaponized it years before the V-type bacterium was even identified by the 117th Research Fleet's study of the Vajra.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That's putting it mildly... IIRC, it was only the "Jack McKinney" novels that included that bizarre stable time loop plot wherein the SDF-3 and its crew were catapulted back in time to become the origin of the Robotech Masters and their Zentradi slave army. Minmei being treated like garbage and serving as the nonthreatening equivalent of a Goldfish Poop Gang is shared by all of them, though the extent of the abuse she suffers varies by version. In the novels she only really got ignored and neglected for the most part. The comics tried to make her a "Miss Fanservice" by giving her a HUGE set of knockers before making her, in rough order: a crazy and obsessive ex-girlfriend, the SDF-3's village bicycle, the destroyer of Jonathan Wolfe's marriage, a recurring threat to Rick's marriage, and the love interest to a complete and utter psychopath (T.R. Edwards). The official canon version kept most of the comics abuse, and added her being abducted and tortured by T.R. Edwards in an implied "Why won't you love me?!" sort of thing that ended with her being badly enough hurt for her condition to shock a platoon of career soldiers into silence and permit the series to put her on the metaphorical bus for good. Well, the Robotech version's kind of useless and annoying... basically being the Macross version but without any character development or redeeming qualities. They really put her through such a total wringer in the Sentinels arc in Robotech that it's hard NOT to feel bad for her on some level. There's being the woobie, and then there's that. Does it count as child abuse if you're abusing your own inner child?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Even the fleets in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier didn't get that kind of dismissive treatment. Other than being ugly and having a fold fault barrier like the Vajra Queen, it didn't really do a lot. There probably are a few like that. Macross Chronicle did indicate that there are several New UN Government member nations that abandoned manned air forces altogether in favor of the Ghosts and other unmanned craft instead of adopting the VF-171 Nightmare Plus. (I can't help but wonder how many of them are suffering a bit of buyer's remorse seeing what the 5th Generation VFs are like performance-wise after demolishing their pilot training programs.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    From my experiences with their "creative" staff I'm quite certain that Harmony Gold does not, in fact, have anything remotely resembling a "story [they] really wanted to tell" anymore. They've given up (again, and justifiably). It's not for want of effort, mind you. HG's RT staff have tried several times over the years to put together their own original stories and brought out the results of their brainstorming to show the world. The result is, always and without fail, a shabby mess that bears more resemblance to the worst submissions on fanfiction.net than professionally-written SF anime. The reasons are rather straightforward: they're writing with an astronomical number of legal restrictions on what they're allowed to do and use, the audience they're writing for adores "the Macross Saga" and views the other 49 episodes with something between disinterest and dispassionate loathing, and the actual staff working on it has historically been a collection of incompetents and bloviating hacks. They're stuck in a hilariously ironic vicious cycle. For all their efforts to deride Macross for having made music a central plot point, Macross is the only part of their story their audience cares about, so they're stuck endlessly rehashing it and being punished for any significant deviation while their own attempts at original stories die on the wire because they're not Macross-y enough while their audience also refuses to move on to Macross proper because they're invested in the propaganda about HG's version being better somehow. Like Oscar Wilde said, "There is no Hell other than the one we make for ourselves on Earth". HG made theirs, now they're stuck in it.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I did rather oversimplify things, in an effort to avoid getting into the politics of it. Here's hoping whatever story we get for the new series doesn't try to cheat by having all of the big warships mysteriously absent for its war. It was really jarring how Delta had a globular cluster that was settled by multiple emigrant fleets, and yet there wasn't a single New UN Spacy warship larger than a Uraga-class carrier and the largest gunship was the Stealth Cruiser Northampton subclass.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Similar age isn't all of it... Macross's protagonists have always sort of following the tone of the times in an effort to have them evoke the same sort of feelings that similarly-aged teens might be feeling at the time the show aired. Hayate's pacifist, borderline anti-military attitude is part of this. Japan's currently grappling with the psychological paradox of needing to build up their defense forces and being morally opposed to militarism after what happened last time. It's definitely to make the characters more relatable to the audience. I don't think any reason has ever been given for why the UN Government, and later New UN Government, set the age of majority at 17 instead of the more traditional 18 or 20+.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Two of the pictures are drawn by Shoji Kawamori. The middle picture in your first photo, with the Super Valkyrie on a greenish background. The Super Valkyrie spacewalk picture in your last photo.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Too late do I realize they skipped the one letter that would let me make a "She wants the D" joke. The most noteworthy improvement other than the slightly larger shells and more modern ammo incl. MDE shells is muzzle velocity. Those 58mm armor-piercing rounds are headed downrange at upwards of 4km/s, twice what the GU-11A was accomplishing. It's also had some significant improvements in durability, EMP-resistance, accuracy, and cooling.
×
×
  • Create New...