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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    They're fold-wave projectors for jamming the Vajra collective mind... also allegedly used to amplify the fold wave system's ability to enhance airframe performance.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, that old thing... I've got a couple copies of that one on the shelves in my study.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much, yeah... though even the non-monkey model variants had some performance smoothing and stability fixes put in which were intended to make the VF-19 less like the unstable nightmare that put two test pilots in the ground and two more into intensive care. The Macross Chronicle entry for the VF-19EF/A, which the novelization and apparently toy makers call the VF-19ADVANCE, says that the arms export restrictions make it particularly difficult to deploy the VF-19. It's mentioned in a bunch of different sources, and in connection with a few different fighters too... there's some discussion of it in the Macross the Ride materials pertaining to the VF-19EF Caliburn, some more in the Macross Chronicle sheet for the VF-19EF/A, some in Great Mechanics.DX 9 related to the redections in the YF-24 spec that was sent to the fleets. There's also some stuff in Macross Chronicle's technology sheet 1P about the UN Forces being reluctant to export the VF-19 to the emigrant fleets as a result of its demonstrated ability to break through Earth's defenses circa 2040. There's a couple high-profile planes where there's an excellent, excellent case for a .5 generation. The Valkyrie Plus, for instance, which was the later production blocks that incorporated engine, avionics, and sensor enhancements from the VF-4... or the VF-17, which started out a 3rd Gen plane, and then adopted the same engine tech as the 4th Gen planes. The VF "family tree" leading to the YF-29 isn't super consistent, but they generally agree that's a YF-24 derivative, so it probably belongs to the same generation as the other YF-24 derivatives. Dimension weapons on VFs weren't a new feature on the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30. It was just the first time they were deployed as gun pods rather than internal weapons. The VF-22's internal beam weapons were converging energy cannons as standard. Converging energy cannons were also an option for the gun port fixtures on the VF-19's wing glove. Actually, I put it on there because, while the YF-24 is official and all that, the VF-24 is only mentioned in Master File so far... it's not unreasonable to assume it'd be a thing, but it's not definitely a thing yet.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Before the First Space War, certainly... though English appears to have been the official language of the UN Forces, if not the UN Government itself, and the de facto everyday language seen in pretty much every series up until Frontier. We didn't really start seeing written Japanese in the series until around Macross 7 Trash, when Enika wrote a letter to Movado... the Frontier fleet seems to use as much Japanese as English. We see Sheryl leave a lipstick note in French for Grace, and some of the aerospace engineers at General Galaxy clearly know a bit of German... Officially (and by this I mean, "as far as the UN Government told its citizens") the UN Wars lasted from May 2001 to January 2007... about five and a half years. In actuality, the conflicts started before there was organized opposition to the UN Government in July of 2000 and the Chronicle chronology notes that the REAL end of the UN Wars wasn't until December 2008, a couple months after the nations backing the Alliance withdrew their support. Yep... all told, before there was organized resistance to the new government it was a series of little regional spats that started in the middle east.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Neat. I'll be sure to listen for it when I get to DYRL in my re-watch. Thanks.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Comparing the overall performance of the VF-19's main variants against the "monkey models" built for export is rather difficult... as much of the reduction in performance seems to have been in areas other than raw engine performance. Take, for example, the earliest of the monkey model variants... the VF-19P. Its engine output is marginally lower than the VF-19's 1st mass production type, but the real reduction in performance is said to be the result of limiters put into the avionics, the control software, and the weapons. The VF-19EF compares favorably to the VF-19A/C in engine power, but it's not as good as the other 2nd mass production variants and there are those naggingly non-specific limiters built into a lot of its systems. The only one which is explicitly said to compare favorably to the production model is the one-off VF-19EF/A "Isamu Custom", and that's more in terms of maneuverability than engine output (and only then because it was designed and built by Shinsei Industry's design team instead of by a fleet's arsenal, with one specific batspit insane pilot in mind). It's not like they were doing it for yuks... one of the primary sources of trouble for the UN Forces in the 2030's and later was having advanced weaponry from the emigrant fleets and planets ending up in the hands of terrorists and other anti-government forces, to say nothing of the occasional civil war. The government decided to restrict arms exports to the emigrant fleets and planets after a spate of particularly problematic fights with enemies wielding AVF-tier equipment, to ensure that if trouble starts the troubleshooters from the core UN Forces will have a technological and tactical leg-up on the potential hostiles. The weapons the emigrant fleets are getting are still quite equal to the task of defending the fleets from rogue Zentradi branch fleets and worse. All told, based on applied technologies, production timelines, and the charts in Chronicle, there look to have only been 5 generations as of 2059... (considering some of the terms they use, making the most recent generation the 5th is definitely intentional). Generation 1 (Initial VF generation) VF-0 Phoenix SV-51 VF-1 Valkyrie SV-52 Generation 1.5 (Late VF-1 blocks and SLEP variants) VF-1 Valkyrie Plus VF-1P/X Valkyrie Generation 2 (Regime optimization, VF's for emigration) VF-4 Lightning III VF-5 VF-3000 VF-5000 VF-9 V-BR-2 Generation 3 (Emergence of specialist craft, VF-1's true successor) VF-11 Thunderbolt VF-14 Vampire VA-3 Invader VB-6 Konig Monster VF-17A Nightmare Variable Glaug? Generation 3.5 (Gen 3 + some AVF tech) VF-16 VF-17D/S/T Nightmare VF-11MAXL Generation 4 (Advanced Variable Fighter) VF-19 Excalibur VF-22 Sturmvogel II VF-171 Nightmare Plus Feios Valkyrie? Generation 4.5 (AVF + Gen5 Tech) VF-19EF Caliburn VF-19ACTIVE Nothung VF-171EX Nightmare Plus Generation 5 (Evolution's children, fold quartz tech, "The Last Manned Fighter") YF-24 Evolution (VF-24?) VF-25 Messiah YF-26 VF-27 Lucifer YF-29 Durandal YF-29B Percival YF-30 Chronos Looking at it, I don't think we'd necessarily end up with the same number of generations as actual fighter designs... I could see maybe 3 generations, possibly organized around the final cockpit orientation. The first generation designs that have it smack in the middle of the torso (VF-0 & SV-51 right up thru the VF-11), ones where it ends up high in the airframe and/or on the back (VF-14, VF-17, VF-19, VF-22), and lastly ones where it ends up sandwiched in armor layers near the back of the torso, closer to the hips (YF-24 derivatives). Officially, the answer to your question is "Yes"... if the SV-52 Oryol is anything to go by.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    ... Portuguese? My curiosity is well and truly piqued. Where in Macross did we get written or spoken Portuguese?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, I know... the problem is that it never had any bearing on the matter at hand or any effect on the evidence. Seven branches are mentioned, in total... the UN Army, UN Air Force, UN Navy, UN Marines, UN Spacy, UN Spacy Air Force, and UN Spacy Marines. I don't recall seeing anything to that effect. The official profiles for the bridge operators of the original series have always used the Army/Air Force ranks... even in the liner notes from the Animeigo DVD release. Some of the very early official translations were, yes... and fan subs being hit and miss is just the nature of the beast. I don't really think Kawamori needs to weigh in on this any more than he already has through his work. He's repeatedly shown us, right there in the animation itself, how those ranks are supposed to be translated... going all the way back to the original series. There isn't any mystery here, the matter was settled in December 1982... so I'm not gonna belabor the point any further.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I'll do one better, here's a screen capture and the production art that goes with it. Like I said before, there are a lot of things you can do in the Navy, but holding the ranks of First Lieutenant or Staff Sergeant are not in the cards. That's 18:46 in "Blind Game". There are others, but this is the earliest high-visibility one. What the Navy calls anything is immaterial to the translation of shotai... in an aircraft context, it's a level of organization neither the US Navy nor the US Air Force use... being that it's below a Flight, organizationally. Platoon vs. Team is purely a matter of preference. The term can be read either way in the exact same context, but the Macross creative staff have demonstrated a preference for "Platoon", Gundam's for "Team". (As an aside, Mikimoto uses "Team" for the apparel that Skull Squadron apparently has...) Not wishing to be rude, but this isn't about etymology. This is about how Macross's creators intended for the neutral Japanese rank terms to be translated/interpreted... especially into English, since there's a lot of evidence to point to the actual in-universe language being spoken being English most of the time. All evidence is that it's meant to be Army/Air Force-style ranks in English... to such an extent that the UN Forces have a rank that the Japanese don't use (Brigadier General, which more than one character has held.) There may be some evidence to support this view in Isamu's personnel file in Macross Plus. (The same one that, in English, gives his rank as First Lieutenant... helpfully reprinted in a more legible form on pages 27 and 28 of the Macross Plus Archives booklet in the blu-ray release. Isamu is noted as having joined the UN Spacy, and holding the rank of First Lieutenant therein, but having an assortment of assignments ranging from deep space patrols to UN Air Force bases and even a stint on a UN Navy carrier. Shin Kudo also seems to have transferred from the Navy to the Spacy, though from his bio it appears he lost seniority doing so... though the record's a little sketchy on whether he lost rank doing it or not. It's far and away the most plausible explanation given the evidence... the reasoning behind it goes: For the previous twenty-odd years, Macross's creators have presented the UN Spacy's ranks in English as Army/Air Force ranks in the animation. The multiply-late Mr. Tim Baker (poor sod snuffs it at least four times by my count!) is the only who whose aircraft displays a rank marking at all on its canopy stencil... the pilots whose affiliation is explicitly the UN Spacy just have "PL" and then the pilot's name. That marks him out as being different from the other pilots. We know that the UN Spacy pilot trainees on the Asuka II were sharing space and training alongside members of other branches of the UN armed forces... including the UN Marines (whom Shin spars with, badly). Other sources like Master File helpfully assert that UN Navy pilots were in fact flying VF-0's from the Asuka II at the time, and we know that other branches did operate VF-0's at the time (the UN Marines even had their own variant, the VF-0C). It does matter... for two reasons. The first being that, if we're going to provide accurate translations, we should follow the demonstrated intent of the show's creators to that end. The second is that all indications are practically everyone in Macross is, beyond the translation convention, speaking English... and in English, y'don't call 'em shoi... you call 'em 2nd Lieutenant or Ensign, depending on what branch they're serving with.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Smart money says the YF-29... the "Strike Pack" cannons are, depending on whether you believe canon spec or Master File, either particle beam guns or laser cannons (respectively). The guns on the VF-25's Tornado Pack and YF-29 are dimension weapons... which are a megadeath nastier (esp. when they're MDE beam weapons). That's exactly what they did... the restrictions were imposed around the time the VF-19 and VF-22 entered production in many of those emigrant fleets, so they developed their own variants to meet their specific needs and cope with the legally-imposed power restrictions. That's how we got the VF-19EF, VF-19EF/A, VF-19C/MG21, VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30. The VF-19's are obviously local attempts to make lemonade with the stripped down VF-19 lemons they'd been given, and a few fleets and planets developed their own specific riffs on the YF-24 Evolution to meet their particular needs as well. The AVF genie was already out of the bottle, though, esp. after the VF-171's introduction in the late 2040's, so there probably wasn't much in the way of incentive to attempt upgrades to older craft... especially considering the amount of reengineering required to make it work, and the profound instabilities it tended to produce.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I would assume that the Vajra would be impossible to "possess" because they're not sentient in a conventional sense, being a hive-wide or species-wide distributed intelligence. That'd be at odds with their description in official chronology materials and Macross Chronicle... both of which assert that the Supervision Army (or Inspection Forces, whichever one rubs your rhubarb) was a force the Protodeviln founded using the brainwashed Zentradi and Protoculture from the planet where they'd been created.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    How? That guy dies at least twice in Macross Zero and his VF-0A is destroyed both times. (In fact, I think he actually dies twice in the same episode... #2.) (The late Lt. Commander Tim Baker is presumably a UN Navy pilot aboard the Asuka II there for VF adoption training on the VF-0 alongside the UN Spacy and possibly UN Marine troops as well. The name stencils on the UN Spacy pilot canopy frames don't put their rank, just "PL Pilot Name", as seen later in episode 2. You can see this on Shin's VF-0D in Ep.2, and his VF-0A and Roy's VF-0S in Ep.5.) Actually, there's no cause for confusion there... it's all explained right in the Macross Frontier series itself (in Ep.22-23, IIRC). After Leon Mishima became Frontier president with the death of Howard Glass, the order came down from above that SMS's forces in the Frontier fleet were going to be absorbed into the fleet's New UN Forces. The SMS Macross Quarter's crew, who suspected a good deal of foul play was involved in the change of power, chose to desert and take the ship with them. Alto and Luca did not, and made the transition from being NUNS-endorsed private contractors to NUNS fighter pilots. Alto got promoted and was appointed to lead a platoon of his own. Actually, there's very little about this that's subjective. We know the official translations of the UN Spacy ranks are Army/Air Force ones, because it's literally right there in the animation in perfectly legible English. We know the approved translation of shotai used in Macross is "platoon" rather than "team" thanks again to the copious use of English in the official merch and so on. While IJAAS and IJNAS squadron organizations were similar, the number and organization of aircraft presented is more consistent with being an Air Force layout (and modern Japan doesn't have any aircraft carriers anyway). Also, that it spun off an Air Force after Space War One kind of gives the game away... There's evidence of some limited adoption of Naval traditions... like referring to the ship's commanding officer as kanchou (often translated "Captain", probably better rendered "shipmaster"), the nod to the VF-84 Jolly Rogers, and the use of Navy-style hull classification symbols and squadron designations... but it pretty much ends at those cosmetic details.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    The Protodeviln are energy beings that are native to super dimension space... they were accidentally drawn into the bodies of the 7 Evil-series bio-weapons when the experimental bio-technological power plants intended to fuel the Evil series' combat abilities using energy from super dimension space overloaded during testing. The nature of their existence was such that they couldn't survive in lower dimension space-time without harvesting life energy (spiritia) from nearby sentient life forms (the Protoculture and Zentradi). Consequentially, they went on a bit of a rampage, brainwashed the spiritia-drained scientists who created them and the population of the planet the Evil series was built on, and launched an invasion of the Stellar Republic as the Supervision Army. They wiped out the vast majority of the Protoculture before individuals known as anima spiritia managed to capture them and lock them away in stasis. Yeah, as far as we know the mind at work is the energy life form's... the body is a high-mobility Evil series prototype intended for search-and-destroy operations. Whether or not the body had a mind of its own before it was "possessed"? Hard to say... they were definitely functioning before their possession, but we don't know if the trial-production Evil series was actually sentient or not on its own.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... not really. I'm just pointing out fairly obvious pieces of information from the production art and the shows and the occasional historical tidbit, the sort of stuff that would barely merit a "Related Matter" entry in Chronicle. Dunno, man... the radio call signs aren't really based on anything real-world, but the platoon-level stuff and squadron organization is based on real-world military organization. The UN Spacy has a mix of military traditions from Japan and the West. On the one hand they're shown to use a US-style Army/Air Force rank system with ranks that aren't used in Japan (the UN Spacy has an OF-6, Japan doesn't). On the other hand, their OF(D) is treated more like an actual officer along the Japanese model than a USAF OT, and their squadron organization is based on the IJA Air Service/JASDF traditions. It's not 100% realistic, but it's every bit as detailed as you'd expect from a military sci-fi show by a military otaku with a particular passion for aviation (and a particular love of Air Force prototypes).
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, all I can tell ya is that in Macross Chronicle there's no blue on that airframe... it's all light and dark grays. I kinda like the blue though, breaks up the monochrome feel a bit.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, and that's the real world... but in Macross, we clearly and repeatedly see radio call signs are rarely not indicative of how many aircraft are in a particular unit. It's that fun little fictional touch common in a lot of sci-fi. Take Frontier's SMS Skull Platoon for an example... its members are, respectively, Skull 1 (Leader), 2, 3, and 4 even though their modex numbers are SMS001, SMS003, SMS004, and SMS007 respectively. The same thing is in Zero, where the numbering is evidently arbitrary, and based only upon the number of pilots in the unit and their respective seniority. It doesn't seem to have any connection to the aircraft they're flying either... Alto's Skull 4 despite going through at least two VF-25F's. To be frank, it doesn't look like any Macross title followed a real-world callsign convention... That's not how it's done in Macross though. We consistently see that platoon callsigns when they're deployed as stand-alone units are in the form "Platoon Code - # based on the number of people in the platoon". When Hikaru was promoted to platoon leader at the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, he became Vermilion 1, and his wingmen were Vermilion 2 and Vermilion 3 when not operating with the rest of Skull squadron. There's really very little in the way of uncertainty here... the UN Spacy has never been presented as a "space navy", and there are very few, largely cosmetic references to Navy traditions and operations there. They use Navy-esque squadron designations and hull symbols, but in organization they're modeled a lot more closely on the JASDF or old Japanese Army Air Service at the squadron level.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Um... there's a problem with your reasoning... Recall, if you will, that the one and only org. chart we've seen for a Variable Fighter squadron has 15 planes on it. Also recall that, when Hikaru is given his first combat assignment in the original series, he is Skull 23. In Macross: Do You Remember Love?, the former Vermilion Platoon trio of Hikaru, Kakizaki, and Max are numbered Skull 11, Skull 12, and Skull 13 before Roy dies. So... if a normal Navy squadron is 10-12 aircraft and a normal Air Force squadron is 22-24, all roads do kinda lead to Air Force on this one. They do, however, use a pseudo-naval squadron designation system for the UN Spacy's fighter squadrons... the designation given for Skull squadron is usually SVF-1. What applies to a carrier deck on a planet does not necessarily apply to a recovery of a space fighter by a spaceship... especially those that do not use carrier decks or arresting wires for recovery like an ARMD. EDIT: Also remember that the original intent for the ARMD-class was to be a "space airstrip"... Respectfully, you can believe it... but that isn't the same as it being true. There's a good amount of evidence that Kawamori and the other Macross co-creators put a terrifying amount of thought into how this supranational military was going to work, and accompany that with a large number of hints that everyone is actually speaking English... and included the appropriate English Army/Air Force ranks in print in the show.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Okay, yeah... I was definitely on the wrong tack there. I thought you meant the dorsal stabilizers. The colored line art for Macross Chronicle on the aforementioned sheet shows that the ventral stabilizers are definitely two-tone... the body's white/light gray color and the same dark "cool gray" as the feet.
  19. Seto Kaiba

    The BDA sure made it hard to take screencaps from Blu-Ray discs...

  20. Seto Kaiba
    Super dimension space doesn't exactly play by the same set of rules as the material universe... so it's possible that there might not actually be a food chain in that reality either. All evidence of the series suggests that, under normal conditions, the Protodeviln were probably not at all malevolent... or, rather, that their ancient malice was a malice born of desperation. Gepernich's big evil plot was basically an effort to turn spiritia into a sustainably-farmed resource instead of going on another galaxy-wide rampage like the one that obliterated the Protoculture. They're not malicious by nature... but the same can be said of the whales and the Vajra. They have enough power to seriously mess an attacker up in realspace, but they're technical pacifists.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    We really don't know much about the life cycle of the space whales from Macross Dynamite 7 to know what they eat (if anything)... there are allusions to the Vajra sustaining themselves by pulling energy from super dimension space, so it's possible they might become accidental predators of the Protodeviln, if nothing else.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Based on this screen capture, the center of the tail is supposed to be the same color as the center fuselage... there's a blue tinge to the entire scene, but it looks like Macross Chronicle's coloring is right on.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Do they need one? The ones encountered thus far were perfectly benign energy lifeforms until they were accidentally trapped in realspace by the Protoculture's folly.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    It's either "Space Army" or "Space Military"... "Space Navy" would be written 宇宙海軍 (Uchuu Kaigun) instead of just 宇宙軍 (Uchuu-gun). Not wishing to be rude, but please re-read the post you quoted. The Spacy uses Army/Air Force ranks. Bruno J. Global's title is 艦長 (Kanchou), which translations almost invariably render as the word "Captain", but that is not a rank. It's a title that denotes someone who has overall command of a ship, much like the tradition that a person in command of a ship in the West is referred to as "Captain" regardless of his/her actual rank. It would be like calling someone "Shipmaster" or "Skipper". Global's rank as given in the dialog is 准将 (Junsho), a non-standard rank in Japanese that equates to Brigadier General. You say the SDF-1 should have been commanded by a Brigadier General, and, in point of fact, it was. We had capital space ships commanded by officers with Army/Air Force ranks, carrying fighters piloted by pilots with Army/Air Force ranks. There are a lot of things you can do in the navy, but holding the ranks of Staff Sergeant or First Lieutenant aren't among them. Seems perfectly logical to me, since the US Air Force Space Command is responsible for, among other things, testing and usage of reusable developmental space flight assets like the Boeing X-37. Unless there were a significant change in the organization of the military, we would expect a space fleet developed today to fall under the supervision of the Air Force.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Hey now, I thought everyone knew you had to say my name 3 times... like Beetlejuice. On consultation of Macross Chronicle, which has color line art of the VF-0A on Macross Zero mechanic sheet UN 02A, the center of the stabilizers are supposed to be the same mid-gray as the body... with the control surfaces the same light gray as the wing's control surfaces. EDIT: It's a "cool" gray... so there's a tiny amount of blue tone to it, but not enough to make it actually look blue.
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