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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    1,000 carats.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. The engineers who developed the fold wave system very likely came by the idea the same way the ancient Protoculture's engineers did... through the study of the Vajra's ability to produce vast amounts of power through fold dimensional energy conversion. It's probable the Protoculture had already managed to successfully tap super dimension space for energy via a purely technological approach before developing bio-technology to do the same job, though I wonder if their initial bio-technological effort was made with fold carbon or if, when that experiment was done, they had already discovered a process to produce synthetic fold quartz like they used for the Birdman. It's probably not a technology that's going to see widespread adoption in the New UN Gov't until someone rediscovers a process to synthesize fold quartz. The fold wave system on the Durandal uses a prohibitively massive chunk of fold quartz to achieve what it does.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Also the Sv-51, sort of... it doesn't stay perfectly parallel, but it only moves maybe 45 degrees. Ray and Veffidas had a tandem-cockpit training version... which would've had more room regardless.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure it's genetic, since there don't seem to have been any identified cases of Var syndrome or anything resembling it until around the time Windermere's royals decided to launch their war against the New Unification Government. The Zentradi fighting instincts didn't need any help to make them violent, and they'd already been conditioned to obey the Protoculture. They wouldn't have needed pharmaceutical assistance, or the mind control aspect to get the job done. I suspect that the combination of the polyphenols in Windermere apples and the unique bicarbonates in water found around Protoculture ruins is something the Windermereans discovered at some point in their own history. I bet that, especially since they're supposedly mildly empathic, the Windermereans regarded the Var syndrome as a curse on those who didn't properly respect/revere the Protoculture ruins on their world. Since the Windermereans seem to think that human society is somehow unclean, it would strike me as poetic justice in their eyes to combat an unclean society with a "divine" curse. We've got a lot of mythological symbolism kicking around in Macross Delta, and apples figure prominently into both Greco-Roman and Norse mythology. In Latin, the word for apple is spelled (and pronounced) almost identically to the word for evil. In Greek and Norse mythos, apples are the source of immortality for the eater... which seems a rather ironic twist here, when instead of granting immortal life the apple turns you into a doomed, psychotic killer. I've picked the brain of my youngest brother, who has some experience and training in organic chemistry by way of his vet-med study, and he suggested that the chemical that apparently triggers Var syndrome (seiznol?) is a form of endocrine disruptor that triggers excessive secretion of norepinephrine, adrenaline, and a few other monoamine neutransmitters. Apparently the symptoms of excessive release of several of those (especially norepinephrine) line up well with those of a Var syndrome sufferer... aggression, anxiety, headache, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, excessive sweating, etc.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    We can only hope... IIRC the Macross Modelers pamphlet for the VF-31A was done with GAGraphics's help, so I guess you could say they've already gotten a start.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    That's an excellent question... based on what Hermann said in Ep.8 and what's been said in the manga, it sounds like a Windermerean's runes are sensory organs (albeit minor ones). I'd imagine a male Windermerean losing one would impair their ability to sense the emotions of other Windermereans (IIRC that's what they're established to be for in the manga), though not severely so as they have two. In his close-up in Ep.1, Hermann only seems to have one rune... so it's possible he may have lost the other at some point.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The real cause of Windermere's war... they're sick of micropayments.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Keith saves his most lethal wind for burrito day in the Aerial Knights commissary. Take out the "song" part and you're there... the Vajra are powered by fold quartz dimensional energy conversion, not an entirely dissimilar approach to what the fold wave system produces in the YF-29. Kawamori's Aesops are usually drawn from current events... the Nazis aren't the only contentious cultural group to use "fatherland" for their home. There are a couple middle eastern languages that do that too, and the Aerial Knights so far smack rather obviously of a xenophobic religious extremist group. Has it actually been officially confirmed that Makina is related to Raizou Nakajima? Last I heard, that was just a wild, unfounded fan theory. Mirage is Max's granddaughter, but the Jenius family is essentially the one recurring exception to the rule when it comes to having recurring characters. With them as pretty much the sole exception, Kawamori doesn't generally indulge in having characters in his new Macross shows be related to those in previous ones. Often there's no association at all, except that some have become well-known historical figures or are simply famous. Considering that Hayate supposedly resembles someone Arad knew, and how everything keeps coming back to Windermere, I'm betting ...
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I'm flat amazed that Kawamori resisted the temptation to include a cyborg in Macross Frontier who had a gun or two stashed away inside their limbs... the blade Brera has is frankly low-key compared to some of the stuff in Ghost in the Shell, for instance.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... debatable, bordering on unlikely IMO. We see, in Ep.8, that Walkure brought their professional apparatus with them when they came down to Voldor's surface. So, presumably, the "sound stage" they usually use is what's providing the holographic costumes and mechanical amplification of the fold songs of those Walkure members whose natural fold receptors aren't powerful enough to do the job alone like Mikumo and Freyja's can. Implant technology is legal in most of the galaxy, but the kind of cybernetics sophisticated enough to convincingly imitate the appearance of the organs they're replacing are outside the reach of most civilians and require some fairly extreme surgery to install. Civilian market implant tech, as seen in Macross R, is more obviously artificial. Oscar Brauhitch's prosthetic arm, for instance, is a high-performance replacement for his lost limb but looks like something from the desk of Winry Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist. You'd think they'd have mentioned it if Freyja went in for serious, invasive surgery to install implants in her brain and/or a number of other places. I doubt any of Walkure's members have implant tech. Reina seems to need a visible holographic interface and physical gestures to do her hacking, which points to her not being a cyborg. Likewise, they wouldn't need visible displays from what I'm guessing are press-on fingernail computers if they had implants... then they would just project it directly to their optic nerve.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    My impression of Messer is the sort of stick-up-the-arse soldier boy who, like Sgt. Sagara from Full Metal Panic!, has no sense of humor and believes military ration packs are the very height of cuisine.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    In previous episodes, he seemed rather susceptible to the song that causes Var syndrome... which seems to work better against people who already have some manner of aggressive tendencies, like Zentradi.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-25 is hands-down the weakest of the 5th Generation designs thus far unless there have been some serious cutbacks in the VF-31's production... but it's also probably the most economical of the lot. The VF-25's two engines individually have more power than the VF-27's (1,620kN vs. 1,377kN) but the VF-27 has four of them offsetting its 43% greater mass to give it a thrust-to-weight ratio that's 19% higher than the VF-25's. The YF-29's main engines are significantly more powerful (+30%) than the VF-25's, and its two secondary engines are more powerful (+6.75%) than the VF-27's engines, which, combined with it being slightly lighter than the VF-27, give it a thrust to weight ratio that's 31.6% higher than the VF-27 and 56.4% greater than the VF-25's. The VF-27 with Super Packs is said to be roughly equivalent in performance to a YF-29 in stock configuration. The YF-30 has a refined version of the YF-29's main engines (a very slight 0.2% improvement in output), but a mass that's lighter than the VF-25 (by 4%), giving it a thrust-to-weight ratio that's 36% greater than the VF-25's, 14.2% greater than the VF-27's, and 87% that of the YF-29's. The inertia store converter technology on the VF-25 and VF-27 was rated for 27.5G loads, the improved models in the YF-29 and YF-30 were rated for loads of 30G or possibly more. In terms of generator output and defensive ability, the VF-25 has enough excess power to run a light form of energy conversion armor in fighter mode, while the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30 can all operate their energy conversion armor at full power in fighter mode due to the excess output of four engines, fold wave system, or both. The VF-27 and YF-29 have also been confirmed to be capable of operating their pin-point barriers in fighter mode, and the YF-30 likely can as well. In terms of actual armor strength... well, it's off the hook here. The VF-25 and VF-27 seem to be roughly on par for armor strength, though the VF-25 has the light armor FAST pack option of the Super Pack and the heavy armor option of the Armored Pack, while the VF-27 only has the Super Pack. The YF-29's armor was said to exceed that of the VF-25 w/ Armored Pack thanks to improved materials, the fold wave system, frame reinforcement, and just plain doubling the armor's thickness. The YF-30 is supposedly comparable in defensive ability to the YF-29 as well... making both of them effectively more heavily armored than a typical cruiser-class space warship. Weapons-wise, things are a bit fairer. The VF-25 has very few built-in weapons, but everything's modular and it's got three or four pylons per wing (depending whose stats you trust). Its Super Pack and Armored Pack make it the ordinance leader of the 5th Generation by a VAST margin with a stonking insane missile capacity of over two hundred micro-missiles in either option, more than double what can be carried by the YF-29 or YF-30, while still leaving four other stations open for longer-ranged party favors. The YF-29 only carries 100 micro-missiles in its many internal launchers, and augments that with a couple dozen carried inside its Super Packs. The YF-30 carries an estimated 108 micro-missiles, has no known Super Pack, and just four under-wing stations (that we know of). In gunpod terms, the VF-25 might get the short end of the boomstick vs. the heavy quantum reaction, heavy quantum beam, and micro-dimension eater beam gun pod units available to the VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31 though. It's unclear if the VF-31's can do beam grenade mode, but the others all can. The VF-25's Tornado Pack and YF-29's beam turret also give them a bit more punch in the gun department than the VF-27, YF-30, and VF-31. Oh my, no... the YF-29 Durandal/Percival, YF-30 Chronos, and presumably VF-31 Siegfried are a cut above the earlier 5th Generation Valkyries. This is due to improvements in engine technology (+30% output vs. the VF-25), inertia store converter technology (+9% vs. the VF-25), armor and weapons tech, and the introduction of performance-enhancing technology like the fold wave system and fold dimension resonance system. The VF-27's performance was significantly higher than the VF-25's, to the extent that a flesh-and-blood pilot cannot operate a VF-27 to its full potential even with an inertia store converter. The YF-29's performance is noted to be roughly comparable to (or slightly better than) the performance of a VF-27 with its Super Pack equipped. The YF-30 rivals the YF-29 in almost all respects, except the YF-29's superior thrust to weight ratio and the YF-30's superior fold wave system.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    As long as he brings the nosecone and that bit that becomes the front of the upper chest back, I think he's probably OK... that ought to be where most of the fold quartz is, if it's built anything like the YF-30 or YF-29. Whoever's in charge of ordering spares for the manipulators probably hates his guts though... he's lost how many arms now? 2? 3? Sitting perfectly still and trusting the pin-point barrier to take all of the beating is not paying huge dividends. (In musing on that, my brain is flashing back to DBZ Abridged with Piccolo bellowing "DODGE!") EDIT: Spelling...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's probably safe to say that, apart from Mirage, none of the characters are going to turn out to be relatives of any existing ones. Kawamori has a very admirable tendency as a creator to try to make every Macross series or story as stand-alone as humanly possible, even on those occasions when two stories are both set in the same location and around the same time.1 Even Mirage, the first of the Jenius grandchildren to appear, is the child of one of the Jenius daughters who hasn't appeared in a Macross story. That old "long-lost relative" twist is seriously lazy writing at the best of times... 1. Such as Macross 7 and Macross 7 Trash, which occur at the same time and in the same fleet, but there's almost no cast overlap apart from some peripheral involvement on Max's part and a brief cameo by Milia. Or the Macross Frontier and Macross the Ride pair, where there's basically no overlap in cast despite being set in the same fleet less than a year apart and more than one of the main characters being current or former SMS staff.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, we've got enough data to make some reasonably sound educated guesses about the VF-31's specs. They're almost certainly a Shinsei Industry product, given that they were developed from the YF-30 Chronos prototype that was a joint venture between Shinsei Industry, L.A.I., SMS Uroboros, and the Uroboros A.W.D.A.P. station. For physical proportions, I'd say we're looking at ~19m in length and a ~15.5m wingspan... possibly closer to 16m wingspan on the conventional delta-wing type. Empty mass is probably somewhere in the vicinity of 8,200kg. Seems a safe bet the engine's either the FF-3001/FC2 or some variant thereof, which would give it over 2,100kN of maximum instantaneous thrust per engine. There's also an excellent argument, based on last episode, that the VF-31 units employed by Delta Platoon are equipped with either a fold wave system (off the YF-29) or the YF-30's more refined version (fold dimension resonance system) given the way it reacts to the fold quartz pendant Hayate's wearing and Freyja's song. Maybe it's just this recent episode practically shoving the gun barrel into the camera, but the VF-31's forearm guns seem to be a VERY high caliber. It looks almost like Freyja could fit her entire fist down the barrel. Probably somewhere in the 50-60mm class. Since it forfeited the missile container off the YF-30, I'd guess the leg launchers probably hold around 6-8 missiles apiece (that's approximately how many the YF-29's held, averaged per port, depending on whether the shoulder bays factor into this). Yep... active optical camouflage for Valkyries first appeared (chronologically) on the YF-27-5 Shahar-F in 2058.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Apart from that first episode, Roid seems to be supervising from headquarters when he's not obviously somewhere else. Safe bet it's something custom-built specifically for Walkure's use in the event of a Var encounter in space.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I'll be honest... after Bogue's behavior today, I totally want Freyja and Bogue's next meeting to be her kicking him in the d*ck and him spending the entire rest of the episode on the ground foaming at the mouth.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Oh my... here we go.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, this is an existing technology... it's not used very often, but the YF-27-5 Shahar Female from Macross R had this same capability. Macross Galaxy's army used it on the YF-27 for similar reasons to the Aerial Knights of Windermere: to operate clandestinely under circumstances that would be patently illegal.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    That's what the videogames do... Macross M3 gave the VF-4, VF-5000, VF-9, VF-11, and VF-14 some much-needed spotlight while filling in several gaps between Flashback 2012 and Macross Plus; Macross Digital Mission VF-X and Macross VF-X2 did it for the period after Macross 7; and of course Macross 30 for after Macross Frontier (which also gave the VF-11 some more love by making it the ride of one of the game's main trio).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    We see all of the Drakens coming from a single fold effect... so I'd assume that there's a carrier there that we just don't see emerge. If the fighters each had their own fold booster, we should've seen six smaller fold effects instead.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, apart from being mentioned in a cutscene where the YF-30's developer (and head of SMS Uroboros) is rhapsodizing about the new fighter's features to its new test pilot, there really isn't much acknowledgement of the system in-game until just before the final boss... when the YF-30 gets stuck in a forming dimension fault (a fold fault pulled into realspace) and it's the fold dimension resonance system amplifying Basara's song that breaks it out to start the fight.I didn't use the YF-29s much, but IIRC or two of them may have had the fold wave system as a BOX-3 weapon, that provided a temporary performance buff. It probably didn't help the smoothness of the ride that Diamond Force was pushing their fold boosters beyond the rated limits of the design. The FBF-1000A fold booster was only rated to do one fold jump of 20 light years or less. Later designs naturally improved on that, but at first the fold booster was a painfully limited thing. Isamu's ride was relatively smooth, as he was only travelling the 11.7 light years separating Earth and Eden.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    What gave you that they could fold on their own? No VF in Macross to date has an internal fold system, that's why fold boosters are a thing. They can ride along inside a ship's fold effect (as has happened by accident and by design many times in prior shows) or they can travel on their own with a booster, but they can't fold on their own. The YF-29 and YF-30 did not have built-in fold boosters... the YF-29's fold-wave system and YF-30's fold dimensional resonance system are fold wave amplifiers that, among other things, operate as performance-enhancing technology that improves the effectiveness of other devices on the aircraft that use super dimension physics in their operation (like the engines, pinpoint barrier, some of the beam weaponry, etc.). The VF-17 was not developed with native support for fold boosters... that functionality was patched in in a later upgrade. The YF-19 and YF-21 were the first VFs designed to natively support the use of fold boosters.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    They might be able to get away with it in the Frontier fleet, since SMS's parent company Bilra Transporation has a LOT of clout with the government there... or they may get a pass on it if the Master File stance that SMS's OPEVAL VF-25's were partly built with inferior materials due to supply chain problems and didn't have that second seat due to extra test hardware is valid.
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