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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    If his public remarks are anything to go by, Mr. Kawamori's more of a "broad strokes continuity" kind of guy... but it would appear, via Macross Chronicle, that he and Big West at least agree on a rough continuity. Yep... god of time and all that, though it was originally built as a testbed for traversing fold faults and to explore the ruins on Uroboros.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly I'm fine with either interpretation. It's been a while since I played Macross 30, and the ending is a bit abrupt... but I don't believe they actually say one way or the other (in the game) that the time-displaced protagonists of previous Macross shows remember their trip to 2060. I would assume they do not, since that would otherwise cause a LOT of problems.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    On a lot of fronts, I'd agree with you on that. It's always a problem when an established science fiction setting throws in a plot where it's revealed that you can time travel, often with precision, using technology that's almost ubiquitous. It always raises awkward questions like "What's stopping any nameless schmuck in that universe from time-travelling for fun, profit, or malicious intent?", "Why don't we just go back in time and make crisis Y un-happen like we did with crisis X?", and "We need time police now, don't we?". Star Trek was a repeat offender there, with a dozen different ways to use transporters and warp drives to travel in time prior to the invention of ships and transporters for that exact purpose. I have less of a problem when the time travel is something that's either a fundamental part of the story (e.g. Doctor Who or Terminator), something which can happen by accident but in an unpredictable fashion and with horrific consequences (e.g. Warhammer 40,000, Five Star Stories), or something which can only work via lost technologies that can't be replicated and are usually lost again for good in the course of the story. Macross 30 is in that last category, since SMS Uroboros destroys the Protoculture bio-weapon responsible for the timey-wimey ball and, in so doing, unravel it... sending the displaced people home. It doesn't seem to have had any real implications outside of the extremely isolated world of Uroboros.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    All I can tell you is that, with Macross Chronicle covering it and Macross Delta having a main character mecha that's explicitly a derivative of the one from the game, it does appear that Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is part of the official continuity. Considering the game's time "travel" aspect was the fault of technology the ancient Protoculture left laying around, I don't personally find it that off-putting. Fold space has always been a place where time and space play by different rules than the material universe, and it would honestly be surprising to me if the ancient Protoculture HADN'T messed around with time at some point along the way to becoming "sufficiently advanced" aliens. Particularly in light of the fact that what ended their civilization's golden age was their own technological screw-ups. Compared to some of the other stuff they've done in other Macross features which was less readily identifiable as technological in nature, I have relatively little problem with Macross 30's plot... especially since Macross and realism have always had a slightly strained relationship. Based on all the overt references to Wagner's Ring Cycle apparently worked into Macross Delta, I would expect that more "sufficiently advanced" Protoculture technology is in the offing... as they apparently occupy the role of the gods in the Norse mythical references in Macross 30 and probably Macross Delta as well.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, the mecha you're thinking of is not a VF-4... nor is it even from Macross. What you're recalling is the Mars Colony AFC-01 Legioss transformable Armo-Fighter from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, which was adapted to become the so-called "New Generation" of Robotech. The specific model was the AFC-01H Legioss (AKA Eta Legioss) that was used by the show's main character, Mars 21st Battle Company 1st Lt. Stick Bernard.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno what the hell happened with mine... tracking says it went through customs in frigging Alaska, and yet somehow materialized on my doorstep only about eight hours later... and I'm in MI, about 4/5ths of the way across the continent.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    So... I guess I'm kind of in the minority in that I'm not upset with the Evolution Toys VF-2SS. I'm no toy collector, and I wasn't expecting Arcadia-level perfection from Evolution Toys. I adore the VF-2SS. It's hands-down my favorite Valkyrie in all of Macross, and knowing its design as intimately as I do after years spent chasing every last little bit of concept and production art that's ever seen print I'm actually reasonably satisfied with how the toy turned out. It's a slick design, one I've always compared to a streamlined race car, but the way it transforms in the animation just isn't an easy thing to adapt to a toy... especially the way the pelvic bar folds into a U-shape to bring the legs further inboard for Battroid mode. I won't say Evolution Toys knocked it out of the park, because they didn't, but it's a marked improvement over what we had before from the Bandai snap-fit kit and the final product looks sharp enough in fighter mode that I have no regrets about adding it to my collection. Like my DX's and my Arcadia VF-0S, I will likely never transform it out of fighter mode, so IMO it's all gravy. I fully intend to keep my preorder for the Fairy Platoon version and preorder the Nex Gilbert version when that comes out.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    She calls them "multidrones".
  9. Seto Kaiba
    All signs point to "official continuity" in both cases. (Macross 30 in particular seems to have a very high visibility influence on Macross Delta, as the VF-31 Siegfried used by Delta Platoon is apparently a production version of the YF-30 Chronos developed by SMS Uroboros' Major Aisha Blanchett and named for the callsign of the pilot who used the YF-30 to foil the Havamal plot to use the ancient Protoculture bioweapon to alter history.) Yes, it was. In fact, both had featured articles on the cover of various Macross Chronicle volumes. (VF-9 and VF-14 for Macross M3, YF-30 for Macross 30.) All told, humanity isn't very good at decoding the technology of the Protoculture. The Protodeviln were accidentally released by an ill-conceived experiment to figure out WTF the energy field on the Varauta system's ice planet was doing. Havamal was exploiting the ancient Protoculture ruins on Uroboros, but they'd spent years, potentially decades, sorting it out and dealing with the multitude of defenses the Protoculture left behind to keep meddlers out of their dangerous (rejected) weapon. Humanity had better luck with Zentradi overtechnology, which was deliberately kept simple and robust. I always felt Mylene Beat was stupid for precisely the reason you cite... they try to clone a Protodeviln and it ends exactly as badly as you'd expect, with a giant, uncontrollable monster rampaging around the fleet. The same problem occurred in Macross M3 with the botched bioweapon experiments on New Asia, where the base was quickly overrun by bugs the size of a Monster destroid.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well... yeah, I guess. If whatever it was were operating within the established principles of the Macross universe's technology, then I'd probably be OK with it. Having Walkure's members "surfing" VF-31's would be a little odd, but I suppose in GERWALK mode it'd be technologically plausible at least thanks to their obscenely high thrust-to-weight ratio. We saw the SMS Macross Quarter surf a chunk of starship into an enemy attack, and this is at least as plausible as that... Klan Klan's little stunt with the VF-25's SPS-25 Super Pack still raises eyebrows, because I've yet to see ANY kind of explanation for how she was able to control it... It's a silly explanation, but hey... Actually, the Macross: Eternal Love Song game was one of the two Macross II prequel games for the PC Engine, and the creators of the OVA were involved in its development. Macross 2036 and Eternal Love Song were the first "canon" games in Macross, though they belong to the "DYRLverse" of Macross II. The funnels on the VF-4ST Siren are basically a predecessor to the Auto-Attacker Bits on the VF-2SS Valkyrie II in the OVA's first episode. There's no psycommu, so they're computer-controlled instead, kind of like Luca's Ghosts in Macross Frontier or the GN Fangs in Gundam 00. The Gundam influence was a lot more evident in Macross II's timeline... the Daedalus II and Prometheus II were basically the Pegasus-class equivalent in Macross, and the VF-4ST also had a beam rifle that looked suspiciously like the one on the Zeta Gundam.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    ... and yet, the false parallels continue to pile up. Yes, automated warehouses exist... but they're not common by any means, and in case you missed it Hayate isn't stacking shelves at a supermarket or working in a fulfillment center for Space Amazon. Hayate's job is handling shipping containers at a space port freight yard. The handling and inspection of shipping containers like that is still done by humans with heavy machinery today. The reason for not going completely robotic there is easy to understand considering humanity's a bit gunshy about totally independent robots after the Sharon Apple incident and interplanetary security IS a concern. ... but it already is. The multidrones are just the latest expression of a technology that has existed at least since the First Space War. There are robotic litter-picking machines, robotic payphones, robotic vending machines, robotic security cameras, unmanned space fighters, and all manner of other implementations of robotic technology. Just because it's appropriate for some jobs doesn't mean it's appropriate for every job though. I think it's more to do with the fact that there are some jobs where you just want a human eye... like on the security of a space port that's handling interplanetary imports and exports. It's probably also somewhat more cost-effective to use the destroids that are relatively cheap than come up with a fully-autonomous cargo-handling robot. We're never not going to need ways to store energy... whether you call it a battery or a capacitor, that's a requirement that's going to carry on into the indefinite future. The Macross universe has vastly improved battery and capacitor technology over what we have today, capable of storing vast amounts of power (by today's standards) in a relatively small space... enough to provide megawatts of power for short spans of time. The problem with the multidrones is that, canonically, barrier technology consumes a HUGE amount of power. The YF-19's pin-point barrier consumes 60% of its total reactor output... that's a continuous drawof hundreds (if not thousands) of megawatts for a shield roughly the size of a large-ish dinner table. Now stop and consider that we're shown these multidrones roughly the size of a backpack working together to put out a barrier that spans what looks to be an entire four-lane street to an altitude of maybe two to three stories. That's a LOT of juice to keep a shield like that up. It's no surprise their internal batteries or capacitors or whatever don't last very long. There are all kinds of mentions of batteries and capacitors relating to mecha in Macross... like the VF-0's backup power it used for underwater operation, the "Mighty Wing" capacitor, the capacitors used on the VF-25's Armored Pack and Tornado Pack to power energy conversion armor and beam weapons, etc. etc. The Master File mentions of nuclear (or thermonuclear reaction) batteries that power various functions on the enhanced VF-1's like the VF-1P and -X... Oh, rest assured... you'll have to do a LOT worse to rustle my jimmies. You just raised my eyebrow a bit with this insistence that technologies that are well-precedented in the Macross universe(s) already are somehow eyebrow-raising NOW when they raised no eyebrows over the last three decades of Macross sequels. Because the original ones were cone-shaped with a gun barrel in the middle... they looked like a funnel, so they called them funnels. The VF-4 actually had funnels in Macross: Eternal Love Song and called them such.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    No, that claim on the Wikia is not legitimate... Roy calls up Max and Kakizaki's personnel files before introducing them to Hikaru, and they're both green as hell when they're given their assignment to Skull Squadron's Vermillion Platoon. IIRC they both had less than 200 hours of flight time to their names.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Y'know, I've yet to hear a sound justification for willful ignorance. With maybe one or two exceptions, the technology we're seeing in Macross Delta isn't new. By in large, it's not even being used in ways that are unconventional in the Macross universe. These are things we have seen before in the same context, so why people whining about it now when they were fine with it in the most recent previous Macross title? It's no more magical now than it was in Macross Frontier, Macross 7, Macross Plus, Macross II: Lovers Again, or Macross: Do You Remember Love?. You realize this stance borders on the nonsensical, right? "If it exists, everyone must have it" doesn't work in the real world, so why would it work in Macross's world? Nor, for that matter does "if it's practical for one very specialized job it's practical for all jobs" stand up to a rational examination. If a technology is prohibitively expensive, requires rare materials, is restricted by law, or of limited utility due to its specialized nature, then it makes sense that it won't be found in widespread use. It'll be used by the people whose needs it meets and who have the resources and legal authority to acquire and operate it... most of Walkure's equipment falls into one or more of those categories.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes and no... the human body can actually withstand a lot more than 40G in acceleration forces, but the structural problems are totally handwaved via overtechnology. The planes are simply built out of materials that are orders of magnitude better than the materials available today. Fair point, but those weren't sentient (or apparently even sapient), and they were nowhere near as powerful. I'm not sure that's actually part of the Evil series... and it has a cockpit, which makes it something more like the Birdhuman. Rather than an independent biological weapon, a piloted biological mecha. Even then, it was still much too dangerous to exist, so the Protoculture hid it and covered the planet they hid it on with murderous bio-technological insectoid guardians. Really? It's already a pretty damn rosy future if you don't count the Var... and this line of reasoning really is just sour grapes that fails to take into account some fairly basic realities. For one, almost everything we saw is not new technologies or concepts for Macross, and for two not everything that's used by the military can be made economically viable for mass market consumption. A personal jet, for instance, is certainly out of the question for most people... So, first... the multidrones are equipment belonging to a special forces unit with a highly-specialized operational profile. There's no guarantee that they could be mass-produced on a scale suitable to defending a large area (say, if the design requires rare or impossible-to-replicate substances such as a fold quartz crystal) or that they would necessarily compare well to a conventional alternative like a pin-point barrier system. As we've known for ages, barrier technology in Macross is fabulously energy-intensive.They clearly have significant shortcomings too... like the fact that they've got to depend on an external power source, and have a very limited operating time between rechargings. Why would he be able to? The microdrones don't seem to be capable of lifting much more than their own weight, it takes dozens to get Mikumo airborne at a low speed and altitude, and she probably only weighs about 60kg. Even when they lift her, she has to be physically harnessed to them. Hayate's job is shifting shipping containers weighing multiple tonnes, which kind of immediately says "Hey, that's not gonna work." Except, of course, that it's not actually doing the second part. Like all of Macross, it's doing "similar to life as we know it", but what's being done technologically in Macross Delta is demonstrably nothing new, or particularly unconventional in Macross's setting. Much of it has been part of Macross literally for decades both in universe and production history. Walkure's girls are no more magical than Sheryl, Ranka, Sharon, the members of Fire Bomber, or Minmay herself. Indeed, what they're doing is not really any different from what Fire Bomber, Sheryl, Ranka, (and maybe Sharon) did...The problem you're citing doesn't exist, except in the minds of the old fans who are determined to whine about Macross Delta because it once again the new Macross show isn't the gritty, hardcore military drama Macross never was to begin with. The whole argument falls apart under the slighest examination.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Does the New UN Government go around creating biological weapons for proxy warfare? No. They wouldn't make a new Evil series for the exact same reason they don't make legions of Zentradi soldiers to do their fighting for them. Yes, they have what's left of the ruined planet where they were made, and the special prison where they were kept, but that doesn't mean there was enough technology or research data left to recreate an Evil series. Even if they could, why would they? Who would approve trying to recreate the weapons that accidentally destroyed the last major galactic civilization... especially when they've already seen firsthand that they're utterly impossible to control? They're a lot of things, but they're not suicidal. What with there only being four Evil series left in the entire universe, and all four having left the galaxy, it's a very safe bet that Mikumo is no more a Protodeviln than the last character this theory was voiced about... Macross Frontier's Ram Hoa, who turned out to be a perfectly normal woman of Indian descent. Well, yes... that's Mylene Beat, but even in that their effort to recreate the Evil series left them with a berserk monster that was only prevented from destroying the fleet by Mylene (and a lot of explaining to do), and promptly left for parts extragalactic once Mylene had calmed it down. The Queadluun-Alma's astral system was only possible because someone pillaged bits of a Protodeviln's corpse.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    While it's perfectly possible that Mikumo either isn't human, isn't entirely human, or isn't entirely organic... the simplest explanation would be that, like the other members of Walkure, her actual clothes were an armored flight suit disguised by holography, and that her costume change was simply from one holographic costume to another. (Or that she did get scratched and the hologram that's presenting the illusion of bare skin is simply concealing it.) WRT "an alien with similar abilities to Protodeviln"... the Protodeviln weren't a natural species, they were biological living weaponry created for the Protoculture's civil war, infested by energy beings from another dimension. We've never seen a natural species in Macross with abilities like that so I'd say that's fairly unlikely... Wearable tech with gesture or haptic controls, most likely... remember that the other members of Walkure are also shown to be capable of manipulating the drones with simple hand gestures. Cybernetics were said to be relatively common in the Macross Frontier series, so it's certainly possible that she's a cyborg... though looking totally biological would mark her out as being very VERY high-spec for the cyborgs we've seen. On par with Macross Galaxy's tech from a few years prior. What we've seen for "consumer grade" cybernetics seem to be more obviously artificial... like Oscar Brauhitsch's artificial arm that looks like he stole it from Fullmetal Alchemist, or Nicolas Berthier's visible neural implants.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Said Valkyrie wasn't exactly going all that fast... so she conceivably could've done what she did even without the assistance of any kind of inertial damping or augmentation. Why do people keep suggesting this for every "mysterious-looking" female character? There were only seven Protodeviln to start with, three of which came down with a bad case of dead by the end of the Varauta conflict, and the remaining four left the galaxy after acquiring the ability to generate their own spiritia. Cyborg or "conventional" humanoid alien are possibilities, though. Or, as appears to be the case with the others, she may be a baseline human(oid) wearing holographically-camouflaged equipment that helps her function under the strain. Conversely, any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science... but what with fold song, that line is starting to blur a little. I don't know why anyone's throwing a fuss over any of that... the technology Walkure is using to do what they do isn't anything new, unprecedented, or particularly unconventional in Macross. We first saw holographic costume technology in DYRL? we saw it as an extremely compact, portable technology in Macross II: Lovers Again, and in Macross Frontier it was presented as the standard way of handling costumes and costume-changes for performers. Fighting via fold song is not a new concept either... that was codified and quantified in Macross 7 by Dr. Chiba, who proved that it's purely scientific and that it could easily be amplified, focused, and weaponized to fight the Protodeviln. Macross Frontier refined it further by introducing a way that singers could produce fold song at detectable levels without mechanical amplification, and now it seems that Walkure is simply weaponizing it a slightly different way. There is no magic here, and no "magical girls". You just have what's shaping up to be a five-girl group of singers doing what other singers have been doing in Macross for decades... the only difference is that they're out on the battlefield itself instead standing on the bridge of a warship, projected as a hologram out into space, or inside a Valkyrie.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Paid for my two at HLJ... gonna get 'em shipped, since other items I was waiting to batch aren't coming out until the month's end.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Well, perhaps... though I would say it's probably a stretch to say that tanks in mecha anime are depicted as heavy, slow moving, and imprecise. Outside of Super Robot shows, if the setting hasn't had robots completely replace tanks then it usually depicts them as being reasonably effective in combat but otherwise less versatile and/or less well-adapted to fighting whatever threat forced the development of giant robots in the first place. The less futuristic the tech, the more of a threat a conventional tank usually is. The robot's saving grace in shows like that (e.g. Full Metal Panic!, Mobile Suit Gundam: MS IGLOO, etc.) is usually its greater agility vs. the tank. When those settings have a tank that turns into a robot, it's usually depicted as having been stuck with the worst aspects of both... and it being a transformation with two modes that do the same job gets lampshaded by it being shown to be not as effective as either conventional vehicle.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, yes. In various print sources outside the "official setting" like Master File and Episode Archive, some of the NUNS planetary or fleet garrison forces were starting to upgrade to 5th Generation Valkyries in the early 2060's. I'd expect that the pace of adoption is varying throughout the galaxy based on the availability of fold quartz in different regions... and the perceived need to have the latest and shiniest toys. The sheer number of Nightmare Plus units that would need to be replaced would probably give the fighter another 5-10 years as the de facto main VF of the New UN Forces.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Staff Sergeant.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, we all know that's the real reason... 'cept maybe Mit... but because of that, Kawamori has constructed a setting where a transforming tank would be an entirely redundant thing. He's not alone in doing that either. Most settings where transforming robots exist would be ones in which a transforming tank would be a waste of resources on a machine that has two modes to do the exact same job. (e.g. Southern Cross, Eureka Seven, Mobile Suit Gundam, etc.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    All things considered, I'd have been a little bewildered if Al Shahal hadn't been using the Nightmare Plus in 2067. Sure, being so far out in the space boonies that it's literally in another galaxy might complicate the lines of supply for the Al Shahal NUNS garrison, but the Nightmare Plus still isn't that allfired old. It first flew in 2046, so if the VF-171's program followed the usual timing for this sort of thing, it likely entered mass production in 2048 and became the new main fighter shortly thereafter. Main VF service lifespans have been getting longer as the time gap between new VF generations grows, so I'd expect the Nightmare Plus's time as main VF to be at least as long as the Thunderbolt's (18+ years) before its inevitable replacement... especially since the 5th Generation VFs may have to cope with the scarcity of fold quartz slowing down mass production. At 19 years in service, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus is probably nearing the end of its service life in the wealthiest parts of the galaxy, but probably has a few years left as main fighter simply because of the sheer number of them that'd have to be replaced for a new fighter to become "next main fighter". (Not every fleet has 'em, obviously, but considering the sheer number of emigrant fleets and worlds out there and the size of their NUNS garrisons, it's highly probable there are close to a hundred thousand Nightmare Plus units in service. Replacing all of those is going to take a LONG time.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Yes. In fact, Macross 7's Gamlin Kizaki is a Martian... his personnel file lists him as being from H.G. Wells City, Mars.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The adequate substitute is called Valkyries and ship-mounted anti-aircraft guns and missile phalanxes. That ugly turd is from R******* and even they didn't end up using it because it's a completely redundant mess. (and once again you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for reference sites...) 1. Just because we only see the one small group doesn't mean they were the only ones... those fighters didn't have fold boosters, which means the fold effect they came from had to have a ship in it as well. When the average carrier holds upwards of 50 VFs... well... you do the math. 2. Incorrect. All indications are the Aerial Knights' Sv-262 is on par with a VF-31 or YF-29, which make them more advanced than the VF-27 and significantly more advanced than the VF-171 that was the garrison standard. 3. Where is it said that the ground forces have inadequate equipment or training? Nowhere. 1. Shin never engaged an Octos with his VF-0D's gun pod. He shot one underwater with the coaxial laser while running the entire VF on backup power. Even so, he destroyed its primary camera and disabled it long enough to get away. 2. Roy's VF-0S disabled one Octos and destroyed another with nothing more than its coaxial lasers. Yes, the Octos units destroyed the ADR-03-Mk.III Cheyenne units defending the village... with the advantage of surprise, superior numbers, and not caring if they destroyed the village. The only Valkyries that could not were the VF-0 and Sv-51, because they were powered by conventional jet engines. Every Valkyrie with reaction engines is capable of operating underwater. The only difference is how far down they can dive. You keep coming back to the D-50C Loto as though it offered some kind of support for your argument instead of being a perfect, explicit example of transformation offering no added value for a land warfare robot. The transformation so thoroughly crippled all aspects of the Loto's performance that the only way it could fight effectively was to ambush the enemy and hope it killed them all before they could fight back. Every time it got into something resembling a fair fight it got destroyed easily. The D-50C Loto carries significantly less weaponry than practically any destroid in Macross (except possibly the Octos). It has 2 missile launchers (24 missiles total) and one gun mount that can take either a machine gun too light to hurt a MS, a rotary cannon, or a pair of 120mm cannons. It's really not much better armed than the tanks from its own universe. Compare that to the Cheyenne II, which has two particle beam cannons, two 30mm rotary cannons, two missile launchers holding an unknown number of missiles, and an antipersonnel machine gun. And what enemy in Macross fights like that?
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