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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, I know... but those are issues unique to the Eureka Seven setting. Your other examples are all cases where the robot mode's role was nothing more than "a tank that walks", making the transformation pointless and impractical. Your other examples fall into that exact problem... in their own shows, the transformation was pointless and made the mecha less effective, not more. As I pointed out previously, the D-50C Loto's transformation explicitly made it less effective than either a traditional mobile suit or a conventional main battle tank. The tank mode was just plain unnecessary in a setting where almost every warship can transport a number of full-size mobile suits and mobile suits are perfectly capable of walking, jumping, or flying under their own power. That's why SNRI gave up on the design as unfeasible just a few years after Unicorn... so please stop pretending it's an example of the idea's practicality. ... they didn't. What the heck do you think the Cheyenne II and Super Defender destroids are for? (To say nothing of the Beatrice 8x8 armored fighting vehicles and EX-Gear suits...) Of course, if the enemy has already reached the surface of your planet you have already screwed up horribly, so most defense is focused on keeping the enemy away from your planet or fleet in space. That was the point... to economize the ground forces by producing one multi-role Destroid that could perform the interrelated and highly similar functions of three specialist units. There's no practical advantage to that... inside of a ship or in a surface city, something as large as a Destroid is not going to escape notice by anyone. The power of the weapons being used is such that buildings are not going to provide meaningful protection from enemy fire, and Destroids are designed for ranged combat so getting close to the enemy (especially an enemy like the Zentradi) is handing the enemy the advantage on a silver platter... Not to mention the transformation increases the cost of the mecha, which means the defenders would be able to field fewer units to confront the enemy. Just because all he fired was his gun pod doesn't mean that was all he could fire... just that that was all that was advantageous to use when a missile detonation could've brought tons of rock crashing down on him as easily as Roy. That's debatable. The problem with this line of thinking is that a VF's energy conversion armor is very expensive... and so are the high-output reactors necessary to power it. If you build a variable ground mecha with energy conversion armor and reactors fit to match a modern VF's capabilities, you haven't built a transformable destroid... you built a crippled Valkyrie. Once you've gone that far, it's much more practical and cost-effective to just send the Valkyrie (and maybe strap some Armored Packs to it) rather than replace the cost-effective, simple, easy-to-maintain Destroids with expensive, complex, high-maintenance transformable substitutes.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    's kind of my point, really. Mit is pointing to examples of transforming tanks in other mecha anime series as examples of how effective a transforming robot tank could be... apparently in blissful ignorance of the slight problem that, of his examples, only Eureka Seven depicts applying transformation to a ground vehicle as producing a result that isn't somewhere between moderately ineffective and entirely redundant. If you have a tank mode and a robot mode that are both for land warfare, you have a lot of unnecessary complexity in the design. Even in Macross, the idea quickly takes one on the chin from the simple fact that, after the UN Wars end, there was no real benefit to a variable ground mecha... as in Gundam, it's adding unnecessary cost and complexity in an attempt to fix what isn't broken. There's no real advantage to changing the height profile if the enemy is either 10m tall or piloting a 10m+ tall robot, transforming won't improve land speed when a destroid can already run at 180km/h and will only limit what terrain it can cross, it limits, rather than expands, the armaments the unit can carry... etc. Millennia, really... most of the base designs go back to the Schism War or earlier, ~500,000 years before Macross's present day. Though it's worth noting that even the Zentradi mecha drive home the point that a design should only be as complex as it needs to be to get the job done. Writeups for the Regult and many other units emphasize that their excellent maintainability and reliability springs, in part, from the simplicity that makes them easy to produce on a colossal scale.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty sure it's your fingers doing the talking on this one... because Great Mechanics.DX 9's "Variable Fighter Evolutionary Theory" article has a heading titled "Accidentally Discovered GERWALK" that describes it as a mode resulting from a failure in the fighter's transformation system. ... what about it? The F-50D Guntank in Mobile Suit Gundam F91 was a prototype built for a canceled program... the transforming Mobile Suit-Tank concept's (Formula 50's) last gasp before SNRI and the Federation concluded the idea wasn't workable. The one that appeared in the film was a dismantled prototype that Roy Jung salvaged in UC 0107 and rebuilt for his museum on Frontier IV. Not to mention the Ghosts don't have fleshy meats inside, so if they lose one there's no loss of life (on their side) and they don't have to train a pilot to fly it... which contributes to keeping pre-flight and non-combat operation costs down. (After all, in peacetime you don't have a bunch of pilots cooling their heels at the pub and drawing a salary...)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    As some have pointed out already, there's no reason for a variable tank because a Destroid and a tank perform essentially the same battlefield role... and the destroid does it better (in-setting). If both modes do the exact same job, why bother with the extra expense and maintenance headache of transformation? The Valkyrie's transformation is justified (in-universe) by the fact that each mode is ideal for a different job... Fighter for multirole fighter operations, GERWALK for attack helicopter-type operations, battroid for ground combat, and (in one rare instance) Gundroid for space dogfighting. (Even in Gundam, the idea of a transforming robot-tank combo was a flop... SNRI's D-50C Loto proved to be pretty much useless in anything resembling a stand-up fight because the design concessions to make it transform from tank to mobile suit, two modes that did the same job with the exact same weapons, had a significant negative impact on its performance... so significant that it was not capable of fighting modern non-transforming mobile suits on an even footing, and was thus relegated purely to ambush tactics and long-range fire support. Considering those jobs could be done just as well or better by normal mobile suits, the transforming tank-MS concept got canned by SNRI.) But there is already a universal Destroid platform that does the jobs that were originally done by several different Destroid models... it's called the Cheyenne II, and it functions as a Main Battle Robot and Surface/Air Defense Robot. The only Destroid roles that the Cheynne II doesn't fill are the heavy artillery role (unnecessary) and the hand-to-hand combat role (taken by Battroids). It does the jobs of three different families of Destroid without any need to transform... which keeps the costs down, and lets the New UN Forces field a lot more of them. Yes, the cost of Valkyries doesn't put the UN (later New UN) Gov't off buying them... but they do make efforts to reduce their overall cost with less expensive models (e.g. the VF-5000, VF-5, VF-9, VF-171 etc.) or offsetting the cost by reducing the number of VFs in their air/space forces and operating increasing numbers of unmanned, non-transforming fighters (Ghosts). Some entire fleets have gone to using air forces that are made up entirely of Ghosts. The chief virtue of the Destroid is, like the Ghost, that it is considerably cheaper than a Valkyrie and therefore can be made in much larger numbers for roles where numbers matter more than versatility (like air defense or land warfare).
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Well... insofar as Macross's ongoing continuity concerns itself with matters of canon ("barely at all"), the Macross: True Love Song game does not appear to be part of the official setting. As far as their use of VF-19's and VF-22's... I'd assume that they just built new fighters to replace whatever they were launched with and/or subsequently upgraded to prior to the VF-19 and VF-22's adoption by the UN Forces. The Macross-7 fleet started to do this with the VF-19 and VF-22 in the second half of the show (which is how we get Emerald Force, and a host of reasons to want to see Gamlin give Docker a swirly). Little known? They're not the focus of attention, but they're not exactly obscure... several Zolan or part-Zolan characters have been in titles after their introduction in Macross Dynamite 7. (Incl. Macross Frontier and Macross the Ride.) Examples include Michel and Jessica Blanc from Macross Frontier, and Anri Mahlberg from Macross the Ride. They're an intelligent, humanoid species from the planet Zola... one capable of interbreeding with Humans and Zentradi, which is a slam dunk sign that they're another species the Protoculture re-engineered in prehistory. Based on one unique physical trait which Zolans possess, it's suspected that they were originally something like a marsupial. The when of their discovery isn't clear (likely the 2020's or 2030's), but it seems they were discovered by an emigrant fleet... their planet was capable of supporting human life, but microorganisms originating in the galactic whales made it unsafe for the human colonists to settle there so there doesn't appear to be a permanent human presence on the planet. Zola's culture and level of technological development is said to be roughly equivalent to that of a developed country in the first half of the 20th Century (1900-1950), and what we see of their society in Dynamite 7 is largely agrarian. They have, however, obtained an assortment of advanced technologies like spacecraft and variable fighters from their human allies. They don't seem to possess any video media in daily life, but radio seems to be big there... particularly with cultural exports from human fleets like Macross-11, which apparently supplied Zolan adaptations of popular music and radio plays of classics like Romeo and Juliet (adapted as Zomeo and Zoliet). They seem to be pretty big on non-violence (or at least keeping necessary violence non-lethal) too. Zolans living out in space with humanity seem to have little-to-no trouble blending into human society. The only particular details of their physiology that have been discussed are that they have pouches like marsupials, and that they have a symbiotic relationship with an animal called a cat-snake, which is worn around the neck and which is intelligent enough to apparently read and translate for them (one is shown providing interpretation guidance of a dead version of the Zolan language), though we've seen some without the cat-snake.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    In the novelization, IIRC they draw a connection between Manfred Brando and the 117th Research Fleet... though I don't recall the particulars. He was backing the fleet financially, I think.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    We already had a "Nothung"1, which was Siegfried's sword in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen... though that was a Valkyrie, not a Destroid. Dunno... between Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and Macross Delta it seems like Kawamori's coming at us with a lot of Norse mythological references. Macross 30 was set on Uroboros, the plot and placenames of which were absolutely rife with Norse references for Protoculture-related ruins and caves. (Many of the regular military bases taken over by bandits have Greek names.) Factions Gefion - SMS Uroboros' headquarters, named for the Norse goddess of foreknowledge (appropriate considering all its visitors are from the past). Havamal - 815th Independent Special Command, named for a collection of poems relating to Odin's exploits and advice for living, conduct, and wisdom. Yuria Archipelago (places) Mimir (cave) - named for a Norse god who was beheaded, and whose severed head whispers advice and secrets to Odin. (appropriately, this is the location where Leon trains to qualify for his Hunter's License.) Raratoskr (cave) - named for a Norse mythical beast, a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree (Yggdrasil) to deliver messages between Nidhoggr and the unnamed eagle. (There is a massive tree on the island where this cave is.) Baleyrg (ruins) - one of Odin's (200+) pseudonyms/titles, meaning "Firey-eyed". Volundr (cave) - named for a legendary master blacksmith in Norse mythology, who forged the sword Sigurd/Siegfried uses to slay the dragon Fafnir. (This sword is Gram, also known variously as Balmung or Nothung.) Niddhog (cave) - named for the dragon who gnaws at the root of the world tree Yggdrasil, who chews the corpses of oath-breakers and other contemptible criminals. Vafudr (ruins) - named for another of Odin's titles, meaning "Wanderer". (This is where the first of the time-lost singers' song energy is collected.) Sierra Desert (places) Heithrun (cave): named for the Norse mythical beast (a goat) who produces mead for the einherjar. (IIRC this is where Mina finds the cure for Sheryl's illness.) Sanngetalll (ruins): another of Odin's names, meaning "Finder of Truth". Alv (cave): named for the Elves of Norse mythology. Thrudheim (fortress): headquarters of Havamal, meaning "World of Strength" and named for the home of Thor. Dverger (cave): named for the Dwarves of Norse mythology. Helblindi (ruins): named for one of Loki's brothers, Alfathr (ruins): another of Odin's names, meaning "Father of All". Grotti (cave): named for a magical millstone in Norse mythology that could create wealth (and soldiers). Madis Glacier (places): Gladsheim: Havamal's last fortress, where the superweapon they've been trying to unlock is, named for the realm in Asgard where Odin's hall of Valhalla is. Skuld (city): named for a Norn (a diety that controls the destiny of gods and men) in Norse mythology, the name means "Debt" or "Future". ... still workin' on this map's origins. All told, my money's on the VF-31 and Sv-262's names being more than just something they thought sound cool... there have been entirely too many plot-significant Norse mythological references already. My money is on the Aerial Knights being in the role of Fafnir from Norse mythology and/or the Ring Cycle. They killed someone to seize a cursed treasure (technology?) from the gods (Protoculture?) and then became a dragon (Draken!) to protect that treasure with an eventual ambition to overthrow the gods (Protoculture) before being slain by Siegfried (Delta Platoon). We even have a Freyja being forced into an arranged marriage at the outset... this works a little TOO well. 1. Specifically, that was a modified VF-19EF Caliburn that was being used as a technology evaluation and demonstration airframe in the development of the VF-25 Messiah. It was designated VF-19ACTIVE, and flown by Chelsea Scarlett in Macross the Ride prior to her mid-story upgrade to a YF-25 Prophecy.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    If the numbers on the chart art distances, the most likely candidate is Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    As I (and others) pointed out on MechaTalk last time you asked this question, the reason that Macross doesn't bother with variable ground mecha is obvious... the majority of combat takes place in space, where ground mecha in general are practically useless. Also, it's adding unnecessary cost to a part of the military's operations where numbers matter more and there's no bloody need for such a thing.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I don't believe we've really had a very detailed explanation of their role in the New UN Forces, honestly... What we can surmise from their equipment and designation is that they're a dedicated all-Zentradi unit in the NUNS Marine Corps, which may be using segregated units like that to either help Zentradi soldiers acclimate to culture more gracefully or as a way that they can ring-fence and provide for Zentradi who are unable (or unwilling) to adapt to civilian life like the 33rd Marines. (This would not be the first time in Macross that the UN Forces provided that kind of environment... in Macross II's timeline, there were even dedicated models of VF built for units like that.) Well, sort of... The UN Forces did absorb units of Zentradi defectors in the aftermath of the First Space War, but they had some problems keeping certain Zentradi mecha operating in sufficient quantities due to the availability of parts and so on. The Queadluun-Rhea battle suit's one unit that came about as a result of problems maintaining their fleet of secondhand Queadluun-Raus, designed with some major improvements to pilot survivability (because the UN Gov't doesn't regard them as expendable). Since we see a Queadluun-Rhea in the 10th's forces, I doubt they're using antiquated machinery. I suspect the Type-104 Regult and other new designs are the results of attempts to improve the survivability of the Regult and Glaug to a level the NUNS considers acceptable. The kitbashed Regult-Rau hybrid may be an effort to create a more economical or ground operations-friendly Queadluun alternative. Probably from the period around 2040, when the Q-Rhea first came out. What I suspect is up with the 10th Assault Battalion in Macross Delta is that they're a garrison force like the 33rd, though since they ended up on a fairly populous planet I suspect they're probably a unit of "I feel more comfortable in uniform" types rather than that sort of willful malcontent the 33rd was a dumping ground for. They seem to be an awfully laid-back and peaceable bunch before outside intervention drives them berserk. There are still a couple thousand main fleets kicking around the galaxy... so there's no shortage of Zentradi yet to encounter human culture.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    That's the 2/2016 issue of Animage, IIRC... dunno 'bout the contents. Great Mechanics G and Figure King have been lavishing no small amount of affection on the mecha of the series, so it may be a case of targeted marketing?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    That's a possibility, yeah... Or, to look at it another way, fold quartz may have become common due to an outside factor. We could be seeing the result of exportation of fold quartz from a planet or planets with large caches of the stuff (e.g. Uroboros or the fmr. Vajra planet). It's also possible someone found a way to refine/purify the stuff the way Vajra queens do, or found a way to produce fold quartz or an acceptable synthetic alternative material without needing the raw material. There is, after all, an enormous political, economic, and military incentive to increase the availability of fold quartz. On the other hand, if fold quartz is still a rare and precious commodity then we have the possibility that the Aerial Knights are obtaining it through other means, like black market transactions, outright theft, or potentially something as reckless as poaching Vajra from a hive that's in the vicinity of their home world.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, really. It's the mecha that Mikumo jumps onto. It has the distinctive canisters on the back of the right shoulder and a back-mounted impact cannon. Really, it's inevitable that their fighter would have to have a YF-29/YF-30 grade ISC, otherwise the VF-31 would absolutely eat it alive. As far as where they got the fold quartz... there are a LOT of possibilities there.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    My money's on modern variations... the UN (later New UN) Government has had an Esbeliben automated factory satellite in orbit of Earth for a good 55 years now, so they've had plenty of opportunity to come up with their own improved versions of Zentradi mecha with which to outfit the Zentradi forces in the (N)UNS Marines. There's a Queadluun-Rhea mixed in with the Var syndrome-induced rogue troops in the episode, so it seems likely they're operating human-designed variations of traditional Zentradi mecha. Considering the Sv-262 has demonstrated several capabilities in common with the YF-29 already, my guess would be that they've gotten their hands on the YF-29's specs and developed their own fighter based on them (with the YF-29's improved ISC). (We do know, via Macross the Ride, that the YF-29 spec was leaked by LAI nine or ten years before the events of Macross Delta, which definitely makes it plausible.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, she was highly popular (and perfectly legal) right up to the point where Marj went and installed an illegal/restricted bioneural processor in her that made her self-aware. (I vaguely recall reading something about virtuoids being not-uncommon in the wake of the Sharon Apple incident, but they're all restricted to the "all flash and no substance" non-interactive/non-learning type by law.) They had colonies on the moon and space colony clusters at the Lagrange points too... so I'd wager a lot of stuff probably survived. The familiar-looking cars could also potentially be excused by the fact that the entire Macross Frontier emigrant ship is basically a huge, deliberately retro recreation of various areas from prewar Earth (San Francisco, Shibuya, etc., allegedly for psychological reasons), and that dedication to the prewar Earth aesthetic may have carried over to the automobile designs on offer in the fleet. Though I'd expect the resemblance to modern cars is probably superficial... the one car we see up close (Ozma's replica Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione, circa 1992!) has visible vernier thrusters and other bits of hardware that were definitely not available on the original, and is likely using a hydrogen engine like the cars in DYRL? for low emissions. (Or it may be battery-electric or using a fuel cell.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    She says "一〇四式リガードちゃん" Literally "Type One Zero Four Regult-chan". (Yes, she is reading the digits individually... if she'd said "Type One Hundred and Four Regult-chan" it would've been 百四式リガードちゃん.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    As I see it, there are three potential explanations for the glow around the members of Walkure, in what I feel is a descending order of likeliness. Artistic license - Kawamori and co. just want the songstresses of Walkure to be highly visible to the audience against busy and/or dark backgrounds. It's holographic - the way the members of Walkure each have an aura surrounding them in a color that matches each member's dominant color is a consequence of the active holographic projections used for their costumes and backup dancers on the microdrones. It may also be intentionally calculated to increase the visibility of Walkure members, as above, because they perform in the combat area... which is seldom a high-visibility environments. It's a fold aura - we saw something similar in the shared mindspace where Ranka cured Sheryl's v-type infection in the finale of Macross Frontier, which makes it potentially possible that the auras surrounding the members of Walkure is a visible manifestation of their biological fold waves (probably as a result of mechanical amplification of those fold waves like what Dr. Chiba produced with the song energy amplification for Sound Force). This might explain why the aura is occasionally absent when the singers are interrupted during their performance. I doubt it's a manifestation of a practical, defensive technology... if it were, they wouldn't need the microdrones to generate barriers. Yeah, I've been working with a material scientist at my day job to suss out how, exactly, energy conversion armor might be using electromagnetic pulses to improve its resilience. We've got two working theories on it right now based on its apparent nature as magnetostrictive: That the electromagnetic pulses are acting on the structure of the laminate component of the armor, such that its rigidity is increased until mechanical stresses exceed a certain level... at which point it returns to its elastic state to dissipate the impact energy across a larger area. (Making it sort of a magnetically-triggered shear thickening response... the armor's laminate layer gains viscosity when exposed to the EMP, and experiences localized loss in viscosity when the magnetic response is changed by an impact so that the more liquid pseudo-plastic can disperse the energy over a wider area, as the plastic layers in bulletproof glass do.) That the electromagnetic pulses are acting on the structure of the composite component of the armor, in a way that the armor is becoming more elastic and behaving like a magnetic shape memory material... allowing it to reversibly deform slightly under impact and regain its original shape, allowing it to displace more energy into the laminate layer without a fracture occurring.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, I know what the M3 Macrosspedia entry says (because I helped write it). The way it's described in Chronicle, the laminate's a component part of the armor, rather than a separate substance applied to the armor. Something like the plastic layers in bulletproof glass or the elastic layers in Chobham armor.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    The energy conversion armor technology isn't "boosting" armor... it is the armor. As explained by Macross Chronicle, the energy conversion armor is a type of layered, laminated overtechnology armor material that becomes more resilient when subjected to specific types of electromagnetic pulse. It's so named because excess energy from a Valkyrie's engines is converted into increased armor strength... and it requires a LOT of juice to achieve results.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Considering that holographic costumes have already been the standard for at least eight years by this point, and that we've seen the technology is easily able to change the appearance of a person's hair as well, if Mikumo's hair isn't simply handwaved as artistic license then it's highly probable that it's a special effect that's being applied courtesy of the holographic costuming. (As a longshot, the ridiculously long hair may not even be her real hair... it could be a simulation or a mobile fiber wig of some kind.) Oh sweet machine god, did I just postulate the existence of the cyber-weave? I think can handle any of the above possibilities... as long as the men from Windermere don't start squealing with girlish glee and spraying theatrical glitter all over hell's half-acre the way Freyja was. Actually, same scene as before... the wings rotate 180 degrees along the seam visible in the wing so that the wing edges touch. That's how they form the square.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, we've already seen the pretty flyboys (and their not-so-pretty leader) start lighting up... it definitely seems to coincide with the individual's mood (most likely excitement).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The "square with nozzles" is just a drone with its wings folded (see timecode 15:34).
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure that "jamming" is the right word for it. Walkure seems to combat Var syndrome by using an externally-generated fold wave (via song) to correct some kind of imbalance in a person's natural (biological) fold waves. At this point it's not really explained whether Var syndrome is a communicable disease, or some form of adverse reaction to certain types of fold waves (like a super dimension allergy?), but whatever outside agency is manipulating Var syndrome for its own ends is definitely either causing the syndrome or at least exacerbating the symptoms with some manner of inimical fold wave/song. At this point, Macross seems to have established a relationship between living beings and super dimension space not dissimilar to living beings and the warp in Warhammer 40,000. The mental or emotional states of living beings seem to have a measurable presence in super dimension space as fold waves, which apparently can be affected by outside sources. Mechanical amplification and transmission is apparently also possible, as Chronicle suggests that spiritia and song energy are a form of fold wave as well. Var syndrome would seem to be a physical manifestation of an attack on a person's ethereal/mental body in fold space. On that basis, it seems that Walkure is effectively Sound Force 2.0... a unit of people who can (consciously or not) manipulate the polarity of their natural fold waves (making them Anima Spiritia) and, with appropriate assistance, broadcast them at other people to achieve various effects. (Sheryl and Ranka may also be capable of this, but they seem to be a somewhat special case... since their bodies were modified via the v-type infection to broadcast a particular type of fold wave other than their natural one (the zero-time fold waves the Vajra use for communication).
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing of significance at this time, no.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted, thanks for confirming that guys! (... aaaaand order placed!)
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