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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba

    Too many new Macross releases coming out! My wallet cannae take the strain, captain!

  2. Seto Kaiba
    No, that's only the case in The Show That Must Not Be Named. In Macross, Misa Hayase was just the only survivor from the UN Forces HQ complex located under Grand Cannon 1 in Alaska. There were other survivors that escaped the bombardment in Grand Cannon 3, Grand Cannon 5, and in space in moon bases and orbiting space colonies. The total surviving human population is said to be roughly 1 million people in total. There's not a hell of a lot of animal life in the aftermath of the bombardment, as you see in Macross Plus. Zentradi cloning technology was used in the nature regeneration project to restore some animal and plant populations using survivors and possibly corpses. (It's also probable that things like the seed vaults in Europe survived.) Depends which version of the story you're looking at.In the TV series version, the Zentradi were originally created as an all-male military for the Protoculture. The female troops were created later, to pilot the Queadluun-Rau series battle suits that were developed near the end of the Protoculture's civil war. Keeping the genders segregated was intended to keep the Zentradi and Meltrandi from engaging in activities not related to war and military duty, ensuring they'd remain an effective fighting force of basically disposable clones instead of developing into a culture in their own right. In the movie version, the Protoculture's civil war was along gender lines and not political ones... with the male faction creating the Zentradi and female faction creating the Meltrandi, with the intention of having the giant clone soldiers do all the actual fighting. They were seperate in the movie version because they were enemies. Because they were made to be a legion of disposable clone soldiers, who could fight the Protoculture's wars for them. They were not created to be a culture or civilization, they were created to be (essentially) living weapons of war.Unlike The Show That Must Not Be Named, the Zentradi don't destroy all civilizations they encounter for some malicious alien empire. They're an army of clones single-mindedly pursuing the annihilation of the foe their creators commanded them to destroy: the Supervision Army. The Supervision Army all but destroyed life in the galaxy once before, so there aren't a ton of planets in the galaxy that have sentient life. The galaxy is a big place, and Earth just managed to accidentally get the Zentradi Army's attention by having a beat-up Supervision Army warship crash in their backyard. Humanity seems to have been ahead of the game, technologically, even before an alien ship landed on Earth and knocked them ahead a few millennia technologically. The other worlds that were seeded by the Protoculture seem to have been pre-spaceflight before they encountered humanity, so they wouldn't draw attention to themselves easily. There were a fair few folks pointing out parallels initially, but most of the similarities are superficial (possibly/probably homages). That's a long story.The short version is that the UN Government and UN Forces were reorganized to decentralize authority somewhat and grant the colonies more autonomy, once it became apparent that Earth could no longer micromanage colonies located years away by fold. Trying to maintain the status quo was encourging armed conflict on some colonies and some abuses of authority from the military, so authority was devolved a bit and the military put on a shorter leash to satisfy all the parties concerned. It happened at some point around 2048-2052. Essentially, the UN Government was reorganized into the New UN Government and went from being something like the US Federal Gov't to the European Union, so the military was accordingly decentralized so that each member world/fleet is responsible for maintaining its own local forces (kind of like a militia or a national guard) while the New UN Government itself maintains its own military force of greater power and scope not tied to any one world or fleet. That's another legacy of The Show That Must Not Be Named that needs a correction. Max and Milia have eight children, not two. They have seven daughters they got the honest way, and one adopted daughter. By birth order, they are: 2011 - Komilia Maria 2017 - Miracle 2022 - Muse & Therese Mariafokina 2024 - Emilia 2026 - Miranda 2031 - Mylene Flare Their adopted daughter is Zentradi ace Moaramia Jifon. Komilia appeared in the original series as a baby, and has appeared as an adult in Macross II prequels Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song, as well as appearing as an adult in a group photo of the family seen in Macross Dynamite 7. Emilia appears in the Macross 7 movie, and Mylene is one of the main characters of Macross 7. Therese appeared in Macross VF-X2 under the alias Mariafokina Barnrose. Mirage Jenius is the daughter of Miranda Jenius, the second youngest of their seven biological daughters, who has thus far only appeared in the family photo seen in Macross Dynamite 7.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, we've had a couple fairly high-profile cases showing that the so-called "warp bubble" doesn't stop anything (like aircraft) from passing through it. As far as we know, just having a cockpit that's roomy enough for the system to fit... though, to the best of my knowledge, it's never been fitted in a VF-22. There have been several VF-19 variants with EX-Gear though. Collectively, "New Macross-class" refers to the combination emigrant ship design... presumably an acknowledgement of the Macross-class in either version of the First Space War narrative being either an ad-hoc city-ship (in the series) or a purpose-designed emigrant ship (in DYRL). Neither component part of the ships are referred to as "New Macross" on their own... they're the Battle-class and either City-class or Island Cluster-class. As to when they started naming the ships, that's not established for sure... and it doesn't seem to have been applied in any consistent fashion. It might have been a matter of individual taste by the colonists. Macross-16 (Valiant) is the lowest-numbered fleet I know of with a name, and Macross-29 the highest numbered fleet without one. Presumably because fold receptor factors strong enough to be usable against the Aerial Knights are rare enough even if you don't count that apparently it's not a trait confined to people who can actually sing... and, of course, the galaxy is a BIG place. If there are other tactical sound units, taking them all of the frontlines of their areas of responsibility to go fight Windermere would be an enormous risk. It'd probably help a lot if Windermere wasn't always using the same six knights who all have plot armor... or if the federal NUNS got involved. Right now it's the best the Aerial Knights have to offer vs. the local NUNS scrubs in last generation's hardware.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, it was obvious he was going to die... he's the only Aerial Knight besides Hermann to not get a profile on the official website, and not being a part of L'oreal Platoon makes it a pretty safe bet he's a goner. This sudden bout of characterization was just pathos. Let's be honest, he's basically Henchman #1 at this point. Buddy, I'll take what I can get... it beats wasting screen time on Fetish Filler like Makina and Reina. Oh, I agree with the first sentiment wholeheartedly... it's painfully obvious that a number of the characters on Macross Delta only exist to tick off a bunch of different fanservice character tropes on some producer's checklist. Makina is obviously Miss Fanservice, and her only characterization to date has been her girl-on-girl relationship with Reina and being the token Wrench Wench. Reina's got even less, being the Covert Pervert in the aforementioned girl-on-girl fanservice relationship and The Stoic. Kaname's sole character trait to date is being the Broken Bird. It's painfully obvious Hermann only exists so he can fall victim to the Mentor's Occupational Hazard and Bogue can totally lose his sh*t. The twins... well... let's just say Ouran High School Host Club probably predicted exactly what that's about for the fangirls. Until the last episode, Mikumo and Qasim were both Flat Characters. It's a shame we have all this baggage hanging off of what's otherwise one of the strongest leading trios in Macross history. Looking at how lackluster the mecha action has been so far, I have to draw the opposite conclusion you did... I think Kawamori wanted to do a love story without the mecha, and the sponsors or producers forced them to throw the mecha in because you can't have a Macross series without transforming fighters.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    You have no idea how many different dirty jokes are doing loop-de-loops in my brain because of that. I haven't had a chance to go look at the publisher's blog yet to see what's on offer, but it sounds like we're in for a good book with some new variants. We've got A-G then, at least... I think that may be the longest contiguous run of variant letters apart from the VF-25's.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Just finished watching this one after another work-related delay... and boy did this almost make up for the lackluster showing of the last few. Considering Basara was doing terrible things to realspace somewhere in the 500,000s range (amplified), Mikumo has to be in the seven figures or better for Protoculture tech to be exploding just from being near her.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Unless you count that one special head variant that, IIRC, was never used outside of model kits... they're pretty much identical except for markings.The special variant head for the VF-4G had a rear-facing beam gun in the same style as the VF-22's.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That was a VF-4A.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    AFAIK the D variant isn't new... that was the UN Navy version.The variants I recall (not counting prototypes) were the A, B, C, D, G, and S... with the SL as a custom. Edit: that's excluding the alternate universe VF-4S and VF-4ST.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Officially, that's pretty much exactly what it is.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Or they restrained themselves because there weren't supposed to be very many VF-0's.With 8,000+ VF-4 Lightning III's in service, I'd expect we'll get the usual combination of stock fighter, trainer, recon, attacker, and kooky custom unit in low volume production.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    We have data on what, six or seven variants of the VF-4 so far... I wonder if they''ll go in for creating new variants for the book or they'll toe the official line the way the VF-0 book did.Still, practically bouncing off the walls waiting for this one. August 10 can't get here fast enough.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    There are a few interesting wrinkles to fold space... other than it being the 10+ dimensional sub-universe adjacent to conventional reality that plays by a different set of physics. Perhaps the most interesting of them is that fold space is a realm in which a person's mental energy is a measurable quantity and can exist separately from their physical body. Apparently this disconnect between the body and mind can result in a variety of ailments. In many, it causes a sort of intoxication or mild high which results from the separation of body and mind. For the unlucky like our gal Sheryl, that can manifest instead as an ailment not unlike a bad case of motion sickness. For the VERY unlucky, that sudden separation between body and mind can be permanent and leave the body in a persistent vegitative state. Yep... it's not well-explained, but the fold wave system (or its big brother, the fold dimensional resonance system) use fold quartz to produce fold waves that interact with systems that use super dimension physics to enhance their performance. Putting together some superficially unrelated remarks, what one such optimization appears to be is that the fold wave system provides energy from fold space to power the fighter while the entire output of the reactors inside the engines is used for thrust production. The inertia capacitor already uses fold quartz, though. It was fold quartz which allowed the development of a more advanced version of the fold carbon-based inertia vector control system from the Queadluun-Rau and VF-22 to take place and achieve a level of performance that enabled it to protect a pilot from the insane g-forces VFs of the 5th generation can pull. Fold quartz itself is rare, yes... but not ruinously so. What makes the YF-29 and other fighters with fold wave systems and fold wave amps so expensive is the size and purity of the fold quartz required to make those systems. Small crystals like the ones in Sheryl's earrings of Hayate's pendant aren't too hard to come by, but the YF-29's fold wave system needs a super-high purity 1000 carat fold quartz crystal. Normally, the only way you can get something like that is from a Vajra queen or semi-queen... or maybe from a really REALLY big cache of the stuff in a Protoculture ruin somewhere. (If you think about it, that's like finding a rough diamond of gemstone level quality big enough to make a baseball-sized cut stone.) It's also possible the Windermereans didn't realize the value of the stuff at the time it was sold, since they don't need fold quartz to send and receive emotions. It's also possible the stones, which appear to have been cut and polished by the time the Nome family passed them down, were jewelry-grade stones left by the Protoculture for some reason. The novelization of Frontier puts it around 2043, shortly after first contact with the Vajra... and puts Critical Path Corporation as the potential innovator who discovered its applications.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Whoo... HobbyLink Japan just billed for the Nex Gilbert VF-2SS, the Faerie Platoon VF-2SS, and the Super Armed Pack for the Sylvie Gena VF-2SS all at once. Considering I was down for a Nex, three Faerie Platoon units, and SAP systems for the two Sylvies I already have, that HURT.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    At best, they're usually on the periphery of the battlefield... and focused entirely on fold songs to negate Var syndrome in the afflicted and protect Delta Flight from the obset of Var syndrome. They don't take any kind of direct role in combat except to defend themselves when attacked. Walkure makes relatively limited use of holograms... in fact, for most of their performances on the battlefield the only thing they use holograms for is costumes. They don't seem to use any kind of active or large-scale holograms when they're operating in close proximity to the battlefield, and the reason is probably the very one you just named: it's not something that they can target just the enemy with. The chances are equal or better that they'll distract a friendly pilot and get them killed. There's no in-story justification for it... it's JUST fanservice, nothing more.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, it's always been everywhere... practically every major system that was on the SDF-1 Macross used super dimension physics in some way. Why d'you think she was called a Super Dimension Fortress?It isn't all the same form of energy, though. Most of the more common examples of overtechnology like thermonuclear reaction generators (AKA "fold reactors"), fold drives, gravity control systems, barrier systems, super dimension energy weaponry, thermonuclear reaction and dimensional weaponry, etc. use a form of exotic matter that is produced by excitation of a special crystal resonator called "heavy quantum". (The resonator is made from a synthetic material called fold carbon in most applications... though some use a purer, more effective alternative refined by the Vajra and once synthesized by the ancient Protoculture called fold quartz, which would be familiar to you as the pinkish-purple crystals in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta. The higher-purity fold quartz produces heavy quantum and fold waves with different properties to those of synthetic fold carbon.) Heavy Quantum has a few unique properties... it exists simultaneously in both 3-dimensional space and 10+-dimensional fold space, and its mass is such that it would collapse upon itself and auto-ignite in a fusion reaction if not for that mass being almost entirely situated in fold space where physics plays by different rules. That intense mass and the gravitational force it exerts gets leveraged in the above-listed overtechnologies. The gravitational force which heavy quantum exerts is used to provide compression and containment of fusion fuel in fold reactors, and manipulated to change the curviture of space or to collapse a volume of space into fold space in gravity control systems, a fold drive, or dimensional warheads. Its tendency to fuse with itself when totally drawn into 3-dimensional spacetime is used in beam weapons, where that fusion explosion is simply focused and contained to form a beam of fusion plasma. Fold Waves are a different animal entirely... you could think of them as fold space's equivalent of the electromagnetic spectrum. Fold waves are the key to faster-than-light equivalents of radar and radio systems. Fold carbon or fold quartz are used to produce energetic excitations in one of the native spectra of energy which travel not at all unlike radio frequencies do here. The other forms of overtechnology that also manipulate fold space for their effects (in the list above) do also produce fold waves as a consequence of their function which can be detected. Where it gets a bit weird is that fold waves are also emitted by biological life forms... as it appears that living beings are in some way connected to higher dimension space, and their mental/emotional energy is measurable and quantifiable as a distinct spectrum of energy in 10+ dimensional space. The inevitable result is that some individuals can actually produce a fold wave strong enough to be not only detected technologically but to have an effect upon people or other life forms nearby. The discovery of song energy by Dr. Gadget M. Chiba was the first quantification of this effect, along with the discovery that some people could control the polarity of that energy (anima spiritia) and thus the polarity of the mental energy generated from it. The Vajra hive mind communicates through fold space using this principle (via a fold quartz helping hand). Some special individuals produce distinct fold waves that can have even more dramatic effects, like producing growth or healing in biological organisms... or cause injurious effects and manipualte behavior. Var syndrome is caused in part by a bacterium that increases a person's receptivity to biological fold waves, which can be used to manipulate them. Heinz, for instance, is able to produce biological fold waves by singing and those waves (after mechanical amplification) cause either mind control or uncontrolled hostile behavior. Walkure's members use similar means, but a different emotional content in the biological fold waves they transmit, to reverse the symptoms of Var syndrome. EDIT: Dammit Google Keyboard... stop autocorrecting me!
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Strictly speaking, given what's been established in prior Macross titles about the relationship between the human mind and higher dimensions this is not "magic" per se... what's going on here is arguably advanced and unconventional clinical psychiatry. Walkure is using the human(oid) mind's natural connection to higher dimension space as a means to deliver treatment for an artificial, biologically-induced mental disorder that causes extreme aggression. The treatment is nothing more than introducing an external brainwave that neutralizes the factor triggering the Var syndrome outbreak. I suppose, in a way, it's like shooting someone in the grip of depression with a dartgun full of uppers. I'd argue that, in order to be "magic" it would have to 1. defy technological detection and scientific measurement and 2. defy physics in some way (e.g. to violate conservation of matter and energy by producing a fireball out of thin air). This is doing neither, as the biological fold waves are traveling via a means that is well understood and scientifically quantified in the setting of the series, and it's operating entirely within the bounds of the physics that have been established for same. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology" as the inverse of a statement Clark made about sufficiently advanced technology. The number of authors who've cited the inverse is significant, so I don't know who precisely posited it originally... The problem with this rationale is that it doesn't fit with Walkure's tactics even slightly. This is the sort of thing you'd use against the Zentradi, that would play on existing culture shock tactics and their standing orders not to mix genders. Walkure doesn't intervene in combat directly like that. Their entire strategy is to neutralize Var syndrome via their fold songs. Their physical appearance has zero effect on the matter... it's all about the biological fold waves the girls transmit. They could be dressed like nuns and it wouldn't matter to the actual Var-neutralizing impact of their songs. There's no tactical advantage to what you're proposing, becuase people who're suffering from Var syndrome are too lost in their murderfrenzy to give a toss what Walkure are wearing. Plus, the only member of the Aerial Knights who has shown any adverse reaction to seeing Walkure is Bogue, and that reaction came not from seeing them practically naked... but seeing them, period. In show it has no impact, it's JUST FANSERVICE. Well, yeah... to those who didn't pay attention in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier it would be. To those who did, it's not even sufficiently advanced technology. It's just sci-fi technology. See my above explanation of why it's not.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That's the part that annoys me... there's no reason for the bodysuit to be transparent, or for the harness to look like underwear. It's pure fanservice. If the holographic technology can produce the appearance of bare skin through an opaque suit and a projector that appears to be no bigger than a cell phone jogging armband, why does the Walkure version need to look like underwear and have a clear bodysuit? It's not like this is effing Dirty Pair.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, we see the bottom of one that someone's set against the locker room wall in a later episode and it has two lift fans on the bottom.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, we haven't seen any applications of gravity control technology small enough to be worn or even ridden. Personal hover or flight gear like Air Blades or EX-Gear stay aloft by thrust the same as any modern hovercraft or airplane. Those chemical rockets are likely the most compact way to get the necessary thrust they could find...
  21. Seto Kaiba
    "Rule of Cool" is probably a pretty heavily player there... but as all the recent examples of that particular trope (RVF-171, RVF-25, VF-31E) have fold-wave radar systems in their radomes instead of conventional ones, the size and/or cost of a fold wave transmitter/receiver system may have a lot to do with the choice of a rotary radome. We know the radomes of the 1st Generation AEW/ELINT VFs were conventional. It's not clear if the radomes seen in Macross 7 are conventional or fold wave, but they don't rotate if I remember correctly. (The only radome I recall being identified explicitly as AESA instead was the one on the VF-19 in Variable Fighter Master File.) They do all use AESA layouts for their conventional radar systems though.
  22. Seto Kaiba
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the ultracompact hologram tech goes all the way back to DYRL? and Macross II: Lovers Again... but this is exactly what I didn't want to see in Macross Delta. It's pure fanservice of the most shameless variety. Like Makina, you can tell this was done pretty much entirely for the professional cosplayers and h-dojinshi artists to exploit.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I'm sure someone... most likely several someones... got read the riot act. We know the Venus Sound Factory and Macross Consortium took one on the chin as a result, what with Sharon Apple's music being legislated off the shelves for a few years and a ban being instituted on sentient/responsive virtuoids. Indications are, via Macross Frontier, that the dome is protected by some kind of low-level energy shield most of the time to compensate for it being less tough than the rest of the hull. I can certainly understand the RPG implications... my usual players treated the anti-ship cannons on the Strike Valkyrie and Super Valkyrie II as a "portable hole". This tendency found its fullest expression in an experimental MOSPEADA game late last year, where they seemed to be a bigger threat to brick or masonry walls than the Kool-Aid man. Considering there only appear to be a few hundred Aerial Knights at most... that would end badly for them without Heinz being able to Var everyone before the fight really begins. Windermere's military seems to be about the size of the typical emigrant fleet military thirty years ago. Even a medium-sized fleet like Macross-7 would outnumber them four or five to one. All told, it looks like Windermere's plan is to avoid doing anything that might lead to a direct confrontation with the Federal New UN Forces... they wanna mind-control the entire galaxy before the big guns can show up on their doorstep and demand an explanation. Let's be honest... having the Federal New UN Spacy wade in would make this show over.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    You buy your tickets through the Ticketleap website and print 'em off... then present the printout at the door. Couldn't be simpler. The different ticket levels only really affect the convention swag you get when you show up.
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