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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I know... the animation is never infallible, and the animation of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series was off-model almost as much as it was on because of how it was done so cheaply. The animation model sheets, official art materials, and published specs are much more reliable and consistent, which is why they're the resource the Macross Compendium and Macross Mecha Manual use as reference instead of the animation. The animation inconsistencies diminish as budget and production quality increase, but they still crop up in unexpected places (like Klan Klan's mysteriously variable height of anywhere from 10m to 16m in Macross Frontier). So the Master File writers were left with a choice between the official spec that says 12 per booster and 3 per arm, and the toys which have 20 per booster and 3 per arm, and decided to turn it into a fix fic to explain why both should be a thing... which is fine, since in '94 Macross's creators totally did the same thing for the TV and Movie VF-1's. (If you look at it from Kawamori's perspective, Max and Milia's impossible missile stunt from the series is dramatic license on the part of whatever schmuck was handling special effects for that Space War 1 docu-drama... like how Hellsing's Alucard tends to fire well upwards of a dozen rounds from the Jackal before reloading, even though the gun only holds six shots.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    None that I recall, no... but Master File has been kind of cheating on that front ever since Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur. Master File's writers have been pretty vague on the subject of FAST Pack missile counts in all but the VF-1 Valkyrie books, really. The VF-1 books were the only ones to really get specific on that front, since the writers were using the book as a fix fic for the different missile counts in the line art and the various toys and model kits. Their take was that the missile count shown on the FAST Pack in official art (12 per booster, 3 per arm) is representative of the version used during the war, and the variant with twenty missiles per booster used in many kits and toys was developed after the war and uses a newer and slightly smaller micro-missile. The VF-4 and VF-22 books kind of ignore the subject altogether, while the VF-19 and VF-25 books dodged that question entirely by presenting a modular FAST Pack concept where the internal space of the booster had a bunch of partitions that could be used for either missiles or additional fuel tanks... allowing the propellant capacity and ordnance load to be dialed up or down according to the needs of the moment. The VF-25 book just cited a typical count, though the count didn't match a eyes-on count of the missiles in the art.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    ... huh, is anyone else flashing back to the old Aliens vs Predator 2 PC game from 2001?
  4. Seto Kaiba
    That's kind of a shame, really... I'd rather hoped that Ghost in the Shell would be the one to buck the trend of western live-action adaptations of anime being commercial disasters. Shōnen titles like Dragonball Z and Mach GoGoGo don't really lend themselves well to that kind of adaptation, but I thought Ghost in the Shell was mature and sophisticated enough that the source material's fundamental quality would shine through mainstream Hollywood's explosion-induced clinical inability to comprehend subtlety and the inevitable questionable judgment that casting would show by prioritizing ability to fill out a latex catsuit above everything else. More fool me, I guess, though what I gathered from the summaries of the box office take is that it actually did reasonably brisk business in Japan before falling flat in the West.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    ... so does this mean the reason Bishop and the later synthetics were fully Three Laws-compliant was because Weyland-Yutani switched to Intel/NVIDIA? "Caution: Always operate your David-8 or Walter series synthetics with adequate cooling! Overheating may lead to shutdown or failure of ethics coprocessors." (Gotta hand it to Michael Fassbender tho... he manages a certain distant look that's perfect for playing a robot. It almost borders on the uncanny valley and he's a certified human.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It'd make a certain amount of sense if they did, given that the Varauta Army got its start with the Nazi Germany-inspired transformable fighters with suspiciously Germanic-sounding names developed for the villain faction in Air Cavalry Chronicles (the ZaiBach Empire, who went on to be the baddies in The Vision of Escaflowne.) The designs even came with insignia that look suspiciously swastika-like. The fighters the Blue Rhinoceros Spec Ops unit use are even made by a company that's a reference to Messerschmitt.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, while both of the model aircraft Hikaru is shown with are the same aircraft, neither of them is a VF-4G. They're both the VF-X-4 prototype... the design of the production VF-4 Lightning III wasn't finalized until about three years after Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and debuted in Macross: Flashback 2012 in 1987. The production VF-4 didn't exist in-universe at that point in time either, the design wasn't finalized and approved for mass production until after the First Space War ended. (The VF-4G came along even later, being a later variant of the VF-4 that first appeared in the video games of the late 90's and early 2000's.) Nobody really mentions that models in Hikaru's quarters in DYRL? because they're kind of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing, like the XB-70 Valkyrie model in the foreground.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted... I looked at that name and went "Wha...?". Mauer, I figured, was a sane surname, but I wasn't getting any joy with Autol/Outoru on Wikipedia or Google. (At one point I considered it might be a bizarre effort at "Otto Mauer" or something like that, since Macross 7 did have a fair bit of "Engrish as she is spoke" kicking around the background, and would fit with Mauer being a Polish/German surname. The only other thing that kept coming to mind was "But he doesn't look like tuna meat...".)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Can't answer that, it's against the rules to link to (or ask for links to) pirated material. Please support the original creators whenever possible. Twice, that I can recall... both in the Macross 7 PLUS short "Spiritia Dreaming". The first enemy soldier captured in the main Macross 7 series, Irina Hayakawa, refers to him by name in the short. He's Captain [Autolmauer/Otorumawa]. I'm undecided how to actually spell that name, since it doesn't seem to conform to any known existing surname I can find. It's spelled オートルマウワー, which suggests the former at least.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Now that's putting it mildly... Prometheus set the bar so low it's a trip hazard in Hades' wine cellar. Huh. I was kind of watching Covenant's development out of the corner of my eye for fear that we'd get Prometheus Mk.II. This made me sit up and take notice more than any previous trailer or teaser for the film. If the movie fails to live up to the promise this shows, I'll be doubly upset. Garnishing a monster horror movie with a little existential dread? Please sir, can I have some more?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno why there's selective enforcement on that... but the mods seem to come down a lot harder on pirated media than pirated goods. Second verse, same as the first... at least with respect to price. The movies only run about $45, but even when you're looking at collected Blu-ray box sets like the ones for Macross 7 you can expect to pay almost exactly $63.50 per disc. Macross 7 was 8 discs, sold as two 4-disc sets for $254 apiece.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Erm... not that I'm aware of, at least in the short term. Mind you, the asking price for the Macross Δ "Special Edition" Blu-rays is only a few bucks more than the average asking price for any given single Blu-ray volume of about $63.50 (US). The movies average a bit cheaper at around $45 a pop, but all in all these are pretty typical media prices for Japan. This holds true for all of the Blu-rays, even the ones that are for decades-old shows like the original series or Macross 7, so I wouldn't expect the price to come down much (if at all). (Also, ixnay on the ootleg-bay... we don't talk about that kind of thing here.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not anywhere that I'm aware of, no. It's never depicted using any that I recall, but I would assume it has at least four, maybe six (probably two inboard of the nacelle, one outboard). There isn't really a firm distinction between them, honestly... the New UN Spacy is what the UN Spacy became when it was reorganized (and decentralized) along with the other UN Forces branches of service. Any aircraft that were still in active service would've had their markings updated as a matter of course. Reserve or test aircraft held in storage would have been updated either at the time of the reorg or if/when they were pulled out of storage for use. The only ones that would/should have missed it would be aircraft that were already earmarked for decommissioning and destined for either materials recycling at a boneyard or disposal sale to civilian buyers. (The Macross Frontier fleet was still in the process of selling off its old VF-11 Thunderbolts in 2058 per Macross the Ride, and there were air racers who'd managed to get their hands on VF-17Ds, so I would assume that they were updated to New UN Forces markings during the time they were still in service prior to sell-off.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Is new user registration disabled? There are some people on a Macross facebook group I'm on who are saying they can't register because it's saying new user registration is closed on MW.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Reasonably so, yes... and it looks like you spotted the detail that put me on to the correct order. The order in which the SYF prototypes seem to have been commissioned for customization and use by 3rd Fighter Wing, Delta Flight seem to correspond to the order in which they joined the outfit... not their callsign numbers. Chuck Mustang may be Delta-3, but he's been there longer than Messer. There are a few numbers in the middle that may not have ended up with Delta Flight, possibly being assigned to one of the other Flights aboard the Aether or Hemera or used as test aircraft. No kidding. It didn't make any sense that the VF-31's military spec, with its larger wing area, would have less pylon capacity than the custom forward-swept wing model. Granted, the VF-31A has the ordnance bays in the engine nacelles free to use for larger munitions instead of being filled by a rack for Cygnus multi-drone plates, but because they're on top of the wing that makes them only really useful for air-to-air ordnance rather than air-to-ground. Yep... though, admittedly, it is kind of a slippery slope since the same outfits (GAGraphic and SoftBank) have also done tech manuals for other properties like Mobile Suit Gundam, Galactic Drifter Vifam, etc.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Depends what you mean by "quality"... All of the books are loaded with with plenty of lovely pictures, though I think the VF-25 or VF-31 book might've got the best of that. For the broadest generally-informative coverage, I'd say the VF-25 book probably wins there. It doesn't delve too deeply into any one topic, but it covers a broad spectrum of the VF-25's feature content and the explanations are succinct and generally helpful. It's also the one where the non-canon variants are largely not Master File originals, which makes them a bit less ridiculous on average (a lot of them are nicked from the Macross Mechatronix series in Macross Ace). The VF-19 book probably has second place for being most broadly informative, though its original variants list gets a bit weird in places. For deepest, most technical coverage you'd probably want to get the two volumes of the VF-1 book, which go so deep into the spec as to give a full breakdown of all production blocks and even start talking about things like fuel consumption and the influence of overtechnology on material science in even mundane things like threaded fasteners. (It certainly explains why the sortie range for VFs being "unlimited"... a fighter with a power plant endurance measured in months!) The VF-0 book is arguably second-place for informative-ness, being the only book I know of to actually give separate stats for beautiful but almost-never-seen VF-0C. The worst books in the series are probably the VF-4 and VF-22 books, which all but ignore the official material and completely lose the plot about 30 pages in.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    As Master File would have it, the Shinsei Industry project teams have an obsession with evaluating technologies by building impractical one-off prototype aircraft specifically for that purpose. (This one was profoundly unnecessary and potentially confusing, given that Shinsei Industry had already built not one but two prototypes as a means to evaluate the ordinance container system that are covered in this book... the official/canon YF-30 and Master File-original YF-30B. It also shares a name with the VF-19ADVANCE, a one-off production aircraft that was not a technology demonstrator.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    With respect to the subject of new weaponry... the missiles and bombs and what have you in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried are newer versions and variants of the same munitions listed in the VF-25 book. The only noteworthy additions are the obvious ones, such as its heavy quantum beam gunpod, the rapid-fire railgun pods on the arms, and the modular container system. For the most part, the weapons on the VF-31 are derivatives of the VF-25's... even the micro-missile launchers in the legs are a newer variant of the same launcher in the VF-25's Super Pack. The only truly new weapons in Master File are a few new variants of the container system that include a YF-30-style micro-missile container (albeit apparently not double-sided like the YF-30's), an ECM pod, and a pod that unfolds into a beam cannon turret. They curiously neglect covering the standard container that the VF-31A uses, which is mostly identical to the Xaos Custom's version except it has sensors and an assortment of micro-missiles instead of a multidrone charger. There's also a VF-2JA-esque under-wing missile pod that holds half a dozen or so medium-range multipurpose missiles. They say almost nothing about the railgun mounts... nothing about ammo, feed system, nada. There's like one picture of the gun itself, and it isn't even a cutaway. I suppose if you don't say anything the nothing you say can't technically not make sense... so I guess they're in the clear there, right? The Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah book is, in my opinion, one of the very best books in the series for both completeness and for technical content. For me, it's tied for first place with the second volume of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie (and only then because the latter got into the nitty-gritty of fuel system endurance and the tank capacities of both the "naked" VF-1 and all the versions of FAST pack). Even its goofiest original variants are miles better than the ones in the other books, and it diverges from official material much less than the majority of the other books while also offering a bunch of fairly stealthy nods and in-jokes to half-forgotten projects like VF-Experiment.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be honest, that's the best damn picture in the book... The YF-30 is such a goddamn gorgeous plane that it felt almost criminal that it'd probably end up as a forgotten "super prototype" the way the YF-29 did... but Master File threw it a bone not once but twice! Once in the VF-31 book with some discussion of an improved military spec version of the prototype (YF-30B), and once in the VF-4 book with some passing references to the VF-30.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    I think he means what variant... which, honestly, I don't recall. It's after he came back to the Macross, so theoretically it should be his red-stripe VF-1S. (Though since Max was acting Skull Leader it may have been another VF-1A?)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    After watching the first two trailers, I have kind of a bad feeling about this one... maybe it's just that they're coming on hard and fast with shots of the standard xenomorph to prove it won't be another bait-and-switch tease like Prometheus was. Every time they announce a new Alien flick I keep hoping for a return to the subtle, claustrophobic horror of Alien and Alien: Isolation. To have hordes of xenomorphs running 'round in broad daylight and displaying themselves like anatomically abominable peacocks at every opportunity like Aliens and Alien Resurrection dilutes the shock value of the xenomorph itself. When there's enough of them running 'round to form their own baseball team, it stops being THE monster and starts being just "a" monster. Worse if the protagonists can kill them with guns, then they're just dangerous animals. The xenomorph was at its most frightening when it was this inscrutable, unstoppable killing machine that was somewhere nearby... picking people off according to its own agenda and not really in any hurry to be done with it. It just isn't as scary when the alien practically calls ahead to reserve dinner seating before chowing down the way this lot seems to be doing by jumping on people's windscreens. Not sure what to make of the spineburster(?) thing...
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Because the higher-capacity transit system - a public rail system - is situated above and below the topmost layer of Island-1's city. We see in the series that they have the same high-speed train system running through the dome and into the island modules that the City-7 had... that's how Alto and Sheryl get to the station at the apex of the dome, and then to Island-3 on their date. That same train system is also shown to run through the lower two layers of the city in the first Macross Frontier movie (seen for brief moments during Ranka's toy advert in Deep Akihabara.) I'm not sure if we can call it a subway or not, since it's below the ground of the top layer but above ground to the upside-down layer immediately below that. (Island-1's population of 5 million doesn't all live on the top layer... considering the bottom two layers are both highrise districts, it's probably not even most of them live topside.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Like most of Macross Delta, the VF-31 Master File could best be described as "disappointing" or "half-assed". Is it accurate? No. The writers apparently didn't pay attention to the creator interviews for Macross Delta, because they mention the VF-31A being in military service years before it was adopted by the NUNS. Is it useful? No. A good chunk of the technical material is slightly reworded or redrawn content lifted from the VF-25 book and key features of the VF-31 are ignored entirely or mentioned only in passing. Is it better than the VF-4's Master File? I would grudgingly have to say "Yes, it is". If only because the VF-31 book mostly concerns itself with official variants instead of ignoring them in favor of making up a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense. The book would probably be a good deal less useless if only the main characters weren't flying one-off ace custom VFs.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Not the first time they've gotten landing gear wrong, IIRC... didn't the VF-25 book cite landing gear from a model kit that got it wrong instead of the correct version from the animation? I'd wonder if they same thing happened there. Definitely miffed about #2 at least as much as you are... esp. since that was made out to be an equivalent arrangement to the modular ordinance bays in the engine nacelles of the VF-19. I'm not sure #3 is an error... it never did make sense that the milspec model would have less pylon space than the goofy, forward swept winglet version used by a PMC, especially given that the military model had more wing area and therefore greater carrying capacity. I'd characterize that as a correction rather than an error. I felt downright cheated that there was no detail at all about the railguns. That's a main weapons system and it's barely mentioned at all! Yeah, the series really kind of went off the rails starting at the VF-22 book... their coverage of the Sturmvogel was pure trash, the VF-4 book was just as bad, and the VF-31 book is kinda useless since roughly half to two thirds of its technical material is copied from the VF-25 book and the parts that talk about the VF-31 entering service don't fit with the series timeline and Kawamori's statements about when the VF-31 formally went into service. Really? That's what got you? Those didn't strike me as particularly unusual... though IIRC they got the idea of the disposable funnel missile thing from one of the VF-19 model kits or toys. I'm used to the idea, since Macross II already introduced computer-controlled funnels and bits to the equation, and one of the Mardook mecha had something along similar lines, though it was a micro-missile with four little laser cannons built into it for sort of a scatter-laser effect. Almost certainly not. They never did for the variants of the VF-25's FAST pack.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    That's a tall order... if we're trying to dream up a thirteenth labor for Hercules, that'd make the short list for sure. I'm not sure there's enough tape in the world for a task of that magnitude.
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