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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Arad was Mikumo's partner when it came to Walkure's battlefield operations and it was his VF-31S she used as a mobile stage in the first episode. Messer was shown to serve as Kaname's support, Chuck had Reina, and since Hayate and Freyja joined at the same time that leaves Mirage and Makina. Mirage did occasionally end up as Mikumo's minder when Walkure was operating undercover in the field like they did on Al Shahal and Voldor, presumably because she was the most junior member of Delta Flight until Hayate joined and presumably Arad and co. had better things to do than try to shepherd little miss Attention Deficit Disorder.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, but the New UN Spacy isn't a space law enforcement or regulatory branch... it's the space warfare branch of the New UN Forces, and among its jobs is the space equivalent of sea control for protecting colonized worlds and fleets. They have no reason to be shy about using the big ships... and we know they had to have several. ... I'm pretty sure, in the final analysis, cost becomes a non-issue if the alternative to mobilizing the fleet is being conquered and having your democracy overthrown by an alien monarchy that takes a dim view of humanity in general, openly uses mind control to carry out terrorist attacks and control civilians and soldiers alike, and is widely suspected of having ended their last war with the New UN Gov't by committing a huge friendly fire incident with banned WMDs. The federal New UN Forces, maybe... but the local boys were shown to be taking Windermere IV's threat to the rest of the cluster quite seriously, especially after they conquered the first couple of planets. (Near the end, they were serious enough about it to order the destruction of the whole goddamn planet with a dimensional warhead.) This is nothing like that, though... Windermere IV was so hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with any kind of actual counterattack in force that Macross Delta is less real-world Cold War and more The Mouse that Roared. Even the handful of local NUNS troops who escaped mind control were able to wreck Windermere's sh*t so badly they were begging their homeworld for reinforcements all across the cluster. The only reason the show didn't end around Ep7 with Walkure and a huge NUNS flotilla showing up over Windermere to say "We heard you were talking sh*t" was because the writers had to inflict an enormous amount of author-induced stupidity on the cast to make the plot work and enable Xaos's crew from the Island of Misfit Soldiers to play at being heroes. I'd like to see a standard of writing in the new series that is at least good enough that we don't have a plot that depends on literally everyone being either suicidally insane or inexplicably on holiday as a way of making an otherwise laughable antagonist intimidating. Edit: Y'know, I like that comparison enough I'll likely start calling Windermere "The Duchy of Grand Windwick" from now on...
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Retrofitting something that big with zero-time fold system clusters would require an astonishingly huge amount of fold quartz. L.A.I. only managed to harvest enough to build a couple super fold boosters and one YF-29 during the Vajra conflict. Given that energy requirements for a space fold grow exponentially as distance increases, and it's implied they grow linearly with the volume of space to be exchanged, the maximum range of any fold system is limited chiefly by the ship's ability to generate large amounts of energy quickly and store that energy for long periods of time. I'd assume it'd probably be capable of jumps of up to ~1,000ly either way, though with a zero-time fold system network it'd probably be able to make much more efficient use of that 1,000ly range. (It'd also get there a LOT faster, since they say a zero-time fold system reduces travel times to a tenth of what they were with conventional space fold systems.)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I've got no idea... I'd guess the term is probably something like five to seven years, though there's some circumstantial evidence to suggest that HG didn't have the license finalized when they first announced that the license was transitioning from WB to Sony.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    None that I can find... from their uniforms the trio on the left seem to be hangar deck crew from the SMS Macross Quarter and the ones on the right are a boy from Mihoshi Academy and a girl from St. Maria's.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Why? They've the ones with the least stake in Robotech's connection to Tatsunoko Production. I mean, we've known for over a decade now that the proposal for a live-action Robotech movie is for a reimagined Robotech using only the portions of the IP that Harmony Gold owns free and clear. It's the one thing Robotech has going for it that wouldn't be impacted by a falling-out between Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, Macross Delta's creators declined to give a decent explanation of it beyond calling it an "optical camouflage system". That said, both the YF-27-5 and Sv-262's optical camo were both described as hiding the fighter's markings and paintjob rather than altering them, which suggests it was achieved by some means independent of the paint itself. I'd assume it's holographic in nature, projecting a matte stealth surface over the paintjob. (Given that the paint itself is an ablative anti-beam material, I'd imagine they'd want to keep its cost and complexity down as much as possible. Unfortunately we never see the fighters suffer damage while operating in that stealth mode, which would tell us for certain if it was paint or a projection on top of the paint.) That is the most likely explanation, IMO.
  8. 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.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    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.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    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!
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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