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.

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.

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.

You mean Colonel Maistroff?

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").

Let's just cross our fingers and hope it's the genesis of the end of their partnership.

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.

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.

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?

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.