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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    THANK YOU. I've been sitting here reading through the recent posts about how silly and completely un-serious Macross Delta is and going "wait, didn't this episode open with some dude suicide bombing a tram and the narrator telling us there's a literal epidemic of that kind of thing going on galaxy-wide?" Macross is known for being "lighter and softer" than many mecha shows, but even for Gundam the idea of an enemy that can override the will of large numbers of people and turn them all into psychotic spree-killers or willing suicide bombers at a distance is some seriously dark stuff. The only previous Macross title to have something like that was the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA, and even though it only worked on the specially-brainwashed Zentradi clone soldiers under Mardook control (and who were regarded as disposable equipment rather than people) the Mardook themselves regarded the use of that ability (the Song of Death) as grotesque overkill and being ordered to do so as their leadership having jumped off the slippery slope to such an extent that many of the fleet's song priestesses refused orders for the first time in their lives. Apparently whoever's pulling the strings behind the Aerial Knights of planet Windermere has no such compunctions... which would make him or her (or maybe it? we'll find out) the closest Macross has come to an antagonist who's a complete monster. (And that's saying something, considering previous antagonists include dictatorial despots, genocidal clone soldiers, and literal space monsters...)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Um... I'd have to say the reverse is probably true WRT production quantities. Some fleets have gone to using nothing but Ghosts in their air forces, but the older generations of VF were not exactly made in huge numbers. They only built a little over 5,000 VF-1's, and 8,000 VF-4's. The typical 3rd Generation long-distance emigrant fleet had around 2,400 variable craft of different types in its (New) UN Forces garrison and those are the medium-sized fleets now. With upwards of 59 long-distance fleets and 100 short-distance fleets launched, we likely have upwards of 150,000 variable aircraft in service at any given time starting in the mid-2040's. A 5th Generation VF that's been picked up by only a handful of fleets and/or planets as their next main fighter could easily push its production numbers past that of earlier-gen VFs. The one that's going to be all but impossible to top is the VF-171 Nightmare Plus... the last standard main fighter. There are probably 80-90,000 of those things kicking around the galaxy. Arguably, the planetary governments have always had the authority to arm their defense forces however they wished (within the limits of restrictions on arms exports). That's what a lot of the single-digit VFs were explicitly for... to be low-cost VFs targeted specifically toward newly-established emigrant world governments with limited defense budgets. The Varauta system's defense forces chose to arm themselves with the VF-14 instead of the UN Spacy's chosen main fighter (the VF-11), which is how the Varauta Army ended up with the Fz-109s, and by Macross the Ride and Macross Frontier the emigrant fleets are developing their own local variants of existing VFs AND producing original VF designs for their own forces and selling those designs to other emigrant worlds. ... well, we've kind of already reached that point too. It was in a serialized novel rather than an anime series, but one of the main characters of Macross the Ride gets an upgraded custom VF-0A as a mid-story upgrade. It's cobbled together out of an existing VF-0A airframe and an assortment of parts borrowed from the YF-25. (Never mind the replica VF-0's used on Uroboros in Macross 30, that are equipped with reaction engines... so I guess they're technically replicas of a VF-0+ instead.) Yeah, barring a few exceptions where FAST pack models were developed with the specific goal of being operated in the atmosphere (e.g. the ones on the VF-11, VF-17, and VF-19 near the end of Macross 7) they're generally meant to be used in space only. However, since Macross 30's one and only space level is the supposed-to-lose fight at the very beginning of the game, that's kind of gone out the window for gameplay's sake so you can equip pretty much any FAST pack in atmosphere. I remember that one of the many bugs in Robotech: Battlecry allowed you to keep the Super Pack for ground levels if you completed a space level without losing it.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I know Zero came after 7 in production terms, but I'm talking about the in-universe(s) continuity. Humanity hadn't quantified any of the things that would eventually provide potential explanations for the phenomena connected to Sara and Mao in throughout Macross Zero's story. Sara and Mao's abilities get stuck with the label of "magic" because the world the characters exist in was still about thirty years off from having an understanding of higher-dimension physics sufficient to start explaining what happened in purely scientific terms. Now, in Delta's "present day" of 2067, it seems like the understanding of a living being's ties to higher dimensions is still developing. Whether there's a physiological component to Var syndrome remains to be revealed, but we could be looking at what amounts to a weaponized sickness of the spirit... and since 7 suggested a person's natural higher-dimension energy can have a distinct polarity, it stands to reason that what can be used to heal could also be used to hurt.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I've done the analysis several times... and, apart from Plus, I get the same result every time. Macross Delta is very much in the mold of your typical Macross series. Older fans sometimes cling to this myth of the original series being a gritty war drama, something even Kawamori himself has refuted. As Kawamori put it, Macross is a love story which uses those battles as a backdrop. There's always been an air of strained realism and no shortage of silliness. I look at Delta's first episode and I see essentially the same thing I saw in the original's first episode. All the classic Macross tropes are present and accounted for. We've got a naturally talented but withdrawn young man who will join the military (or a paramilitary force, whatever Chaos is) to protect a young, slightly selfish girl who dreams of being an idol after falling into the cockpit of a transforming fighter at the outbreak of an interstellar conflict and gradually ends up growing closer both to that young girl and an older, professional woman who he serves alongside. Almost everything we see in Delta's first episode is building upon an aspect of a previous Macross story. Walkure is essentially another go with the Jamming Birds but with their sh*t together this time. Fold song is anima spiritia all over again, built on terms and tech from both 7 and Frontier. There are hints that the enemy is using songs to drive their ad hoc soldiers into a berserker rage ala Macross II. Delta Platoon's got the usual formula of The Big Brother, The Ace, The Clown, and The Natural, though this time there's two of that last one. Point is... the visual style has changed somewhat, but that's about all that has changed and it's no more than we would expect from a long-running series like Macross. They update the look to stay current with the times. The substance is very much Macross as we have long known it. The things people are complaining about are the same things we've seen in an assortment of previous titles, with just some slight differences in how the show presents them. You're entitled to your opinion, but I'll say that I have yet to see a cogent argument about why they're not the same. Lots of complaints and lots of demonstrably-flawed examples, but I haven't seen anyone table an actual reason for being so very unhappy with the show other than, perhaps, that it's not aimed at the 30 or 40-something "oldtaku" in the west who remember the original as being rather more gritty and dark than it actually was. It'd be easier to understand the other side of the argument if I had more to go on than just the erroneous carping about magical girls and some nitpicks that are explainable via technologies that are well-established in the universe of the shows. So I'm stuck sitting here going "you all loved this stuff and you suspended disbelief for it in previous shows X, Y, and Z, but it's not OK in this one for no clear reason?".
  5. Seto Kaiba
    LOL! I appreciate the thought, but I think I'll be OK. Macross Plus isn't a bad OVA by any means (in fact I think it's fantastic), but it's just not really on the same page with the rest of the Macross franchise on a thematic level. The rest of Macross puts the love story and the music front and center, while the war aspect is kind of an expensive sideshow there to inject drama into the romance proceedings. Macross Plus goes the other way, using the physical business of Isamu and Guld's personal conflict as the core of the story, and reducing the music and the love triangle to an afterthought. Instead of being important because of the power of song and communication, Sharon's important to Macross Plus because she's a crazy killer robot. Delta is much more in the mold of a traditional Macross show, with the music and the romance aspects front and center, and a more upbeat, optimistic tone. Some characters will die, and some will assuredly attend the school of hard knocks, but we'll have an uplifting ending at the finale. I'd have to agree there... Zero is the only Macross title in which we got "supernatural" phenomena without any kind of accompanying scientific explanation. It's probably related to fold song and/or spiritia, but they never actually make the connection... whereas in the later shows (chronologically speaking, Macross 7, Macross Frontier, Macross Delta) that sort of thing is firmly placed in the realm of science immediately after being introduced. Anima spiritia and fold song can produce some effects that seem magical to the uninitiated, but the shows are all very definite about them being quantifiable, controllable, phenomena that function on higher-dimension physics. They're associated with the presence and flow of higher-dimension energy that can be measured, stored, tuned, amplified, and can be repeatably used to achieve certain effects. Whether that constitutes "sufficiently advanced science" or "sufficiently analyzed magic" is a YMMV thing, but the shows lean quite heavily toward the former. I'll say that, in practice, anima spiritia and fold song seem to be pointing toward humanity and the other sentient races all having an intrinsic mental/spiritual/emotional connection to super dimension space, and some special individuals having the ability to actively tap into that connection and some individuals using artificial means to increase their ability to use that energy like biological amplification (Sheryl and Ranka) or technological amplification (Sound Force). It sounds kind of like The Warp from Warhammer 40,000 when if you think about it that way... though without the "it's kind of actually literally hell and monsters in it will eat your soul" part. Well, actually... wouldn't the Protodeviln be the soul-eating monsters part? Delta's Walkure seems to be pretty well-equipped to detect other individuals with similar abilities to their own... after all, Very similar, yes.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... we see both in the main Macross 7 series and in Macross 7 Plus's "TOP GAMRIN" that Gamlin underwent some g-force stress training as part of basic training, and some more when he became suitably PO'd about being shown up by Basara, but that was before Valkyries equipped with inertia controllers were the emerging standard. Alto got knocked about a bit during hard maneuvering in his VF-25, but it's worth remembering what constitutes" hard maneuvering". The ISC on the VF-25 has the ability to insulate the craft against g-loads up to 27.5G (per official spec), and the YF-29's is good for up to 30G. If he's feeling the strain, he's over the ISC's limit... which means he's potentially pulling the kind of g-forces that'd cause a VF-19 to break up in midair. The YF-30's ISC is supposed to be comparable to the YF-29's, and the VF-31's may be even better. We don't see Delta Platoon's VF-31's pulling any extreme maneuvers on the ground with Walkure's members around... they take it nice and easy until they're up in the air. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable that a VF capable of damping 30G's or more would be able to insulate a passenger from a low-speed low-altitude cruise at automobile speeds. ... I'll admit the showmanship on Delta Platoon's part is something we haven't really seen much of in Macross (barring some minor showboating on Alto's part and the on-the-ground antics of the Hamming Jamming Birds), but I'd like to point out the VF-31 does in fact have a gun pod. Like the VF-2SS, VF-14, VF-17, VF-171, VF-22, etc., its gun pod is stored internally. What the VF-31 does differently is that the gun pod is stored in the fighter's ordinance container (the big pod on the back) rather than in a leg or arm bay. We've yet to see it held in the hand in the show, but print materials have confirmed that it is in fact a hand-held gun pod. Kind of two-for-the-price-of-one, really... you get the functionality of a Tornado Pack when it's stowed, and a regular gun pod when it's not. For your convenience, the link below is to the cover of Figure King 215, showing Hayate's VF-31J holding the gun pod in its hand. http://st.cdjapan.co.jp/pictures/l/02/35/NEOBK-1898555.jpg Macross Plus is kind of an unfair title to compare any other Macross to, as Macross Plus is almost Macross in name only... it has so little in common with the other shows.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Oh yes, because we've never seen mecha be agile on the ground... like the bloody pro-wrestling moves that Britai and Hikaru were pulling on each other. You fondly imagine you've countered it... but that's not the same thing as actually countering it. In Macross Plus, they did show the effects of inertia and g-forces on the pilots... but we don't see anything even remotely that bad in the Macross Frontier series and movies even though those fighters are working with MUCH more thrust and maneuverability. They do show the pilots get rocked around a bit when the fighter is hit by multi-ton objects, etc., but in normal maneuvering we don't see anything like that. What we're shown in Delta is low-altitude, low-velocity maneuvers... almost like they're being careful not to over-exert the members of Walkure. Imagine that, eh? Your contention is that the Aerial Knights are flying their fighters without flight suits or helmets... but you've missed the point in your attempt to reply to my statement. As I indicated, there is no guarantee that us not seeing it means it isn't there. Brera looked exactly the same in his virtual cockpit regardless of whether or not he was wearing a helmet (and yes, he did go into combat without a helmet on several occasions, like the final battle sequence of the Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa film). Several pilots are shown operating VFs without a helmet, flight suit, or sans both. Basara, Mylene, Hikaru, Isamu, and Brera are just the easiest ones to name off the bat. What's being done here is not a departure from previous Macross shows. It's not even particularly unusual. Nobody is saying you don't have the right to have an opinion... but if you start complaining about Delta doing things that have been part of Macross for decades and aren't even being presented differently, it's rather hard to see those complaints as anything other than the trolling they are. So many of these complaints being voiced don't hold water that it's not surprising people would be sick of hearing them.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    A giant robot in Macross is highly agile and capable of human-like movement? How very unprecedented... Yeah! To pull that off they'd have to have some kind of proven technology that could manipulate inertia in order to insulate a fighter from g-forces by converting that energy into another form and storing it. Some kind of inertia store converter, if you will. Y'know... kind of exactly like what was installed in the Queadluun-Rau, YF-21, VF-22, YF-24, Y/VF-25, Y/VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30. Also, fighter pilots flying without a visibly-sealed flight suit and helmet? Madness! What kind of show would possibly have something like that on a regular basis...? You'd never see something like that all over Macross's original series, or at the finale of Macross Plus, or on a regular basis in Macross Frontier. Since the advent of the virtual cockpit in Frontier, not seeing a pilot suit is no guarantee that they're not wearing one... and restraint systems have typically involved docking the backpack and/or shoulders of the pilot suit to the chair. Very few VFs have a traditional harness. Some supplement the suit connectors with a lap belt, but that's about it. Speaking of virtual imaging... where's the magic? I see no sorcery here, sir. There's the ubiquitous holographic technology that we saw for the first time in Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and which has been shown to be portable and capable of some rather expansive effects from Macross II and Macross Plus on... Energy shielding that can be re-positioned on command? A barrier that can be moved to for precision - dare I say pin-point - interception of enemy fire? Surely that is a new and unprecedented idea in Macross. No? Drat. The only new wrinkle with the multidrones is that the barrier is generated by a multitude of smaller craft instead of one larger one... and who says Walkure/Chaos is the only user of this tech? They're the only ones we've seen so far, but that doesn't mean that it's unique to them. (Esp. likely, as we're told that the VF-31 is already a production aircraft.) So... a small number of state-of-the-art craft are shown to seriously outmatch significantly older fighters, but have to fight on an even footing against other state-of-the-art fighters? Once again, hardly a new trope... we've already seen this in Macross Plus (YF-21 vs. VF-11), Macross 7 (Fz-109s vs. VF-11s, VF-19s vs. Fz-109s), and Macross Frontier (VF-25s, 27s, and 29s vs. VF-171s). I know, right? To pull that off, you'd have to have a highly proficient operator and the controls of a VF and a modern Destroid would have to be essentially the same. We're explicitly two for two on that front... so what's the problem again? A great deal of context, apparently...
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Oh yes, Mr. Kawamori absolutely delivered the goods this time around. I remember back when Macross Frontier first started airing, I wasn't really sold on the series until the one-two punch of the fourth and fifth episodes had Alto grow the beard (metaphorically speaking) and took Sheryl from Queen B*tch to Defrosting Ice Queen. My first run-in with Macross 7 and the wandering, weak plot that we got in Macross Zero had left me kind of up in the air as to whether Macross still had greatness left in it. Frontier absolutely sold me on Macross's potential for future excellence and, IMO, Macross Delta seems to be set to continue living up to that high standard. I think I've warmed to Hayate, Freyja, and Mirage a good deal faster than I did to Alto, Sheryl, and Ranka. In general, they seem to be a little less angst-y than their predecessors. (Between Macross Delta, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, and the 30th anniversary of Five Star Stories, this is shaping up to be a fantastic year for mecha... and a terrible, TERRIBLE year for my wallet.) Yeah... the unbalanced love triangle was my biggest problem with Macross Frontier. Alto was as indecisive as you'd expect a teenage boy to be for most of the series, but it definitely felt like the participation on the part of the girls was uneven. Sheryl was the one putting in all the effort and having all the moments, while Ranka's only involvement for most of the series seemed to be lurking on the periphery so she could get upset whenever Sheryl decided to steal a march on her and get closer to Alto. Freyja Wion seems to be a lot more upbeat and driven, so I'm betting she shows a more initiative than Ranka did. I'm still rooting for Mirage though... and strongly suspect her stiffness will set her up to be a tsundere type.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    So far, so good... I was very satisfied with Macross Delta's first episode. Tone-wise, it feels very similar to Macross Frontier, which IMO is nothing but good. Hayate seems like he's less conflicted and passive than Alto was... Likewise, Freyja seems to have a lot more drive and confidence than Ranka did in Frontier, which IMO makes her much easier to like. Still very much in Camp Mirage though, but at least it looks like there'll be two actual contenders in this love triangle instead of one serious player and one hanger-on. (Yay!)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    The Macross Frontier Official Fan Book, and I believe the novelization of the series also describes him as having Zolan ancestry. Macross F 2059 Memories indicates that he has some Zentradi ancestry as well, which quite frankly means someone (or several someones) in his family really idolized Captain Kirk. "Cute alien girl, gotta get me some of that!"
  12. Seto Kaiba
    This was discussed in depth on the previous page... the short version being that a radio play overheard in Macross Dynamite 7's final episode has a line or two that suggests Humans and Zolans can't procreate because Humans don't have pouches (which, apparently, damn near everything on Zola does), but this may not have been accurate (or, in production terms, may no longer be accurate due to oversight or intent) given that Macross Frontier's Michael Blanc has a Zolan grandparent.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not necessarily... the character design aesthetic WRT ear shape as an indicator of species heritage lost some of its consistency in Macross Frontier. Prior to Frontier, the big Record of Lodoss War elf ears were a Zolans-only thing. That changed in the Frontier series, which gave Zentradi and part-Zentradi women (and only the women) a more subdued version of the elf ears instead of the Spock ears that were the standard from DYRL on for most Zentradi characters.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I await the outcome of that with great interest... even if it is just a video of Kawamori making a mad dash for the nearest fire door.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, I'd say the opposite is true... the Valkyrie II's Squire auto-attack bits are a good deal less advanced than the various drone fighters that can be controlled from, and operate in support of, Valkyries in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta. The Squires are bits that operate automatically in defense/support of a VF that serves as their mothership, but they're not capable of operating independently the way the main continuity's drones are. They're smaller, but their performance is lower and they have a lot less weaponry (no missiles). The VF-19 basically had disposable funnels (funnel missiles) already... they are WAY ahead of where the timeline of Macross II was WRT drone technology.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    The Sv-262's Lilldraken drones? I can't say I agree... they're physically connected to the airframe of the Draken "mothership", and used like a Ghost Booster until ejected. That'd put them more in the same category as the VF-0's Raid configuration from the final episode of Macross Zero or (most closely) the VF-27γSP Super Lucifer from the Macross Frontier movies. The VF-27γSP had the ability to detach its QF-5100D Goblin II booster for independent operation in the same manner. The VF-2SS Super Valkyrie II's bits are never connected to the airframe... they're launched separately, and aren't capable of being operated autonomously. By in large, they're bits in the Gundam sense except they're computer-controlled instead of controlled by psycommu (so sort of like the GN Fangs in Gundam 00). The VF-4ST Super Siren's funnels in the Macross II prequel video game (for PC Engine) Macross: Eternal Love Song did start out docked to the fighter, but they weren't autonomous either.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I feel a little better about not being able to make out all of it... Yes, I have... several times, in fact. Other than the apparent hint at an enemy songstress, I didn't really see anything that could be characterized as a distinct nod to Macross II... at least, not in the way Macross 7 Trash, Macross the First, and a handful of other official and fanmade titles have. Did you have something particular in mind?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, the Macross Chronicle coverage was separate for all of the Macross movies except Macross Plus's... no doubt because the differences between versions of the story were much less significant than usual. As far as Macross's ongoing continuity catching up to the time period of Macross II and its technology, we've already seen a couple examples of technological convergence... but I'm convinced those convergences are simply coincidental. It's mostly minor stuff like the portable full-body holographics, the pilot seat of VFs incorporating a powered armature intended to help combat g-force strains on the pilot, railguns as gun pods, or VFs that are modeled on Zentradi battle suits. (On that last note, the two timelines went with different suits... Macross II's are modeled on the Nousjadeul-Ger, and the ongoing continuity's on the Queadluun-Rau.) I doubt we will see anything overtly Macross II though... True... but after a while the problems can start to compound, like what seems to happen every few years in the American comic book industry when they reboot titles after sales-boosting crossovers result in continuity lockout and sales start to slip.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'm having a hard time making out some of the words, but I see "pod" (ポド) and "takeoff" (発進) in both, so I'm guessing that they're both identifying points where battle pods can be launched from the ship (the hangar in the rear and that black spot up top?). EDIT: As I was just reminded, the official trivia gives this craft three launch bays for battle pods... two centerline and one rear. 's not exactly a new position on his part... he's been using similar statements to justify Macross's broad strokes continuity for something like twenty years now. I think the only thing that's really different now is he's started explicitly including Macross II: Lovers Again in that... though its creators actually gave it its own self-contained continuity. It's not a bad approach, mind, since it gives him a free hand to do whatever he wants with any new Macross title without having to worry about the little details of previous works (he can either change their context of ignore them outright) and thus can handily sidestep potential continuity lockout problems and handwave all the various examples of zeerust that will inevitably occur as time passes.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted. Thanks for sourcing that. I don't have that album, I've only ever heard the bit that's in Macross Dynamite 7... Seems like they've decided to roll with their error, though... Macross Chronicle's Worldguide 13A "Various Planets" also notes that it seems possible for humans to mate with Zolans.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Very true... but not the inconsistency I was pointing out. The inconsistency is that, starting in Frontier, Zentradi and part-Zentradi females have sporadically been depicted with smaller anime elf ears rather than the Spock ears or rounded ears that had been used in every previous title. It's not a uniform change either... it's ONLY on the female Zentradi characters, and only on a few of them (Klan, Pixie Platoon, and Mirage). The others have all kept the Spock ears or rounded ears, even in titles that came out after Frontier (e.g. Chelsea Scarlett, Angers 672, and apparently Reina Prowler).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The bit about Zolans not being able to procreate with Humans is, IIRC, an assumption made by fans based on an overheard line from a Zolan localization of Romeo and Juliet that is briefly audible in Macross Dynamite 7. It doesn't actually say that "Zomeo" can't get "Zoliet" pregnant, just that she thinks they can't raise a child together because he's human and therefore doesn't have a pouch. (Zolans apparently share some traits with marsupials.)Macross Frontier's Michael Blanc is supposedly part-Zentradi and part-Zolan, so that would tend to cap the argument in favor of "Yes, they can"... though it's worth noting that the design aesthetic WRT the ears as a species trait is inconsistent from Frontier's designs onwards. Prior to Frontier, the aesthetic had been that Zentradi had the pointy "Spock ears", and the Zolans had the full-blown Record of Lodoss War "elf ears". That got muddied somewhat in Frontier and its related titles. Michael Blanc has a mixture of the elf ears and Spock ears, presumably because he's part-Zentradi and part-Zolan. Anri Mahlberg's pure Zolan and has the Lodoss War elf ears. Male Zentradi seem to have kept the Spock ears, but several female Zentradi (Klan) and part-Zentradi (Mirage) seem to have been given more subdued versions of the elf ears, and other part-Zentradi women like Ranka Lee and Chelsea Scarlett have rounded human-like ears.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I'm looking for multiple copies of those first two... I've already secured copies of that third one (Unified Forces 2) for myself and Mr March.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Can't seem to find a copy of the first one for love or money... got the second one. What's in the third?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    I have a brief question I wasn't able to find an answer to via searching... Has a release date been announced for a physical media version of the Ikenai Borderline single?
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