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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Tough call... Macross as a whole has had some REALLY good casts. For me, it's probably a toss-up between Roy Focker and Sheryl Nome. Roy's that cool big brother figure everybody wanted to have growing up, and he was such a badass as a pilot that they named medals after him and being "Skull Leader" is a mark of badass status in and of itself. Sheryl... well... IMO, she's the most well-rounded of Macross's leading ladies. She's everything audiences loved about Misa, but in a more outgoing package.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Perhaps if Macross were military conspiracy-theorist wank material like Metal Gear Solid... but surprisingly you don't find that kind of paranoia in US or Russian allies who are frankly glad to be able to purchase (or even customize) export variants, even if they're for previous-generation fighters. It's often a lot cheaper than trying to develop new aircraft on their own. What makes you assume that emigrant fleets have ever used (or felt entitled to) "the best gear"? Look to the early years of the emigration program and you see that they don't use the latest and greatest equipment. What they're used to is using equipment that lets them get the job done the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. That's the reason for the existence of the VF-5, VF-7, VF-9, VF-5000, and so on. Comparatively inexpensive to produce, easy to maintain using limited resources, and effective enough to do its job well. The story behind the VF-171 is practically identical... what it brought to the table wasn't the latest uber-high performance, but rather all the same bells and whistles that went into Shinsei and General Galaxy's unstable superstars at a fraction of the price, and with a level of performance that surpassed their previous fighters without becoming unmanageable. That made it the "Goldilocks" fighter that became the next main fighter alongside the AIF-7/QF-4000 Ghost. Fleets can build more potent aircraft if they really want to, but most of them don't seem to really see the need to have Earth's latest bleeding-edge toys. The 37th Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet (Macross-7) didn't bother with AVFs at all until five years or so after it was decided that the VF-19 would tentatively become the next main fighter... and even then they only built a handful on a trial that ended up assigned to the Special Forces. Um... did you forget that Earth as a whole was collectively prepping for a potential alien invasion? If they didn't have the help of the UN Forces, they'd need to defend themselves if Earth were attacked. Yeah, maintaining a comparable level of military capability to the UN Forces gear was part of it, since the Alliance was hoping that they'd be able to preserve the soverignty of whatever nations were backing them, but that turned out to be a pipe dream anyway... since those nations pulled out of what quickly became an unwinnable war. They had a city full of civilians living there, and it was possible to move there for nonmilitary purposes like Minmay did... so smart money says "No, except during the initial investigation", which was, by the way, carried out before the UN Government existed. OTEC was a multinational research and development organization... not a direct organ of the UN Gov't. No, it's explicitly the deaths of her family and the wound she suffered in the UN Wars. That is the only incident that has been mentioned or otherwise described, and it seems to have been very atypical for the UN Forces... no doubt because of the high stakes involved in a dangerous terrorist group that had already showed it was not above nuking heavily populated cities off the map with reaction weaponry (like they did to St. Petersburg, Russia in 2006) or ambushing evacuation fleets to prove a point. Letting advanced alien technology like the Birdhuman fall into the hands of an organization with that little in the way of tactical scruples would be rather dangerous. None have been mentioned in connection with the UN Forces, no. No, the UN Government was a government formed by the common consent of the nations of Earth, drafted via the old United Nations. The UN Wars were brought about by separatists/partisans in various member nations who were opposed to such things as the formation of the "one world" government, the particulars of its constitution, the mandated dissemination of technological gains from OTM research and the uneven dissemination thereof, and a variety of other minor factors for which one nation or ethnic group dislikes another. (It may be a factor that, as noted in Macross Chronicle, the UN Government's most influential backers were the more affluent, developed nations in the West like the US, Britain, France, and Germany... while the Anti-Unification forces' support was strongest in Eastern nations, apparently including parts of Russia, Israel, and Germany. This was only about nine years after the fall of the Soviet Union, so a divide in terms of East-West is not altogether surprising, though it's worth noting that Russia was a founding member of OTEC as well.) Barring Kaifun, who was a massive hypocrite, there don't seem to have been many folks who genuinely felt that way. He had some short-lived shows of support from people who were having trouble coping with the stress of living on post-apocalyptic Earth, but that's about all. Gee... couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that most of Earth's surface was a barren and sterile wasteland, with poor air quality and possible radiation contamination... with little or no access to food, fuel, medical care, etc. If someone wanted to go live in the reactor housings of Chernobyl, you'd stop them too. Anyway... it's telling me I have too many quote blocks, so I'll deal with the rest of the questions succinctly in plaintext. "Why was the origin of the ASS-1 changed? Was it to be some form of disinformation to the masses?" Explicitly, it was done to draw a line under the severity of the Zentradi threat. Where did the idea for the Altira come from? Was it suppose to be an acknowledgment of the Mayan Islands? It isn't said, probably just a nod to Atlantis myths, and a way to work the Protoculture's role in Earth's current situation home without getting into genetic theory. Like those of in Mayan, are there any other known Protoculture ruins site? Are they being investigated/preserved? Yes, the ones on Uroboros, the Vajra home world, Varauta 3198XE's 4th planet, and Lux before it got blown up. Some of the YF-30's technology comes from the Protoculture ruins on Uroboros. What is the UN Forces doing with Biological Weapons research in the past & at this time? Not biological weapons in the modern sense... think more "bio-weapons" in the sense of the Zentradi being "biological weapons". The UN Forces' exact motivations there are unclear. (April 2030AD-MC) The YF-11-2 with equipped fold booster rescued Chairperson Lawrence Yun Kemal. This shows that an AVF-grade is not needed for said missions, though it would make it easier. Would the VF-11MAXL or VF-17 do better if needed to do so in the future (since both can get back into orbit)? The YF-11 didn't have a pinpoint barrier, production-model fold drive, etc., and didn't have the stealth capabilities or defensive ability to carry off a surprise rescue. It ended up being a full-on battle, against heavy opposition. The goal of the AVFs was to do that without needing to blast your way through the enemy's front lines first.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, and this particular shortcoming is acknowledged openly in the Master File materials. While it's true that "bendy-beam" technology does exist in Macross, it's not available on a fighter scale. Like the previous generations of Strike pack, the VF-25's Strike pack isn't really intended to be used against small targets like VF's and other mecha. It's intended to be used against enemy warships and other large targets, so it not being available with the VF in battroid mode is not really a big issue. Please leave your political views out of this discussion, it's very much against the rules. You've gone off half-cocked due to not checking your facts again... First and foremost, the arms export restrictions (which mirror those of the real world with respect to the US and its allies, or Russia and its allies) didn't come out of the blue because "a few hostile took action". They were introduced as the result of the following VERY worrying actions: The YF-19 and YF-21 prototypes, aircraft designed for decapitation strikes and able to be armed with a high-yield thermonuclear reaction or pair-annihilation reaction warhead, were able to independently break through the orbital defenses of Earth, the most secure planet in the UN Government. Internal strife on emigrant planets and between emigrant planets and the UN Government were becoming much more common. (Isamu's service record shows he fought in half a dozen such conflicts already.) An anti-government group staged a coup d'etat that culminated in them hijacking the flagship of the Earth defense fleet, and disaster was only averted by the intervention of another anti-government group and the UN Spacy special forces. Second, the restriction of arms exports to the emigrant fleets and worlds, combined with changes in political policy, did ultimately reduce the frequency and severity of inter-colony conflicts and anti-government groups without hampering the ability of emigrant worlds and fleets to defend themselves. Buying a variable fighter isn't like buying a gun, it takes a lot of effort, resources, and no small amount of money to maintain a high-performance variable fighter. The civilian market variable craft were already limited in performance by design, and if it's only export monkey-models available outside the core military, that means even mecha that are acquired through illicit channels will be comparably detuned to the versions used by the military. Third, you have a massive false parallel in your second point. The Anti-Unification Alliance had the ability to independently make their own military-level VF's because they had 1. stolen the latest VF research when UN Forces soldiers defected, so most of the legwork was done for them, and 2. they were effectively an unofficial national military supported by multiple nations (including an amount of support under-the-table from a superpower or two). The effective anti-government forces that appeared later were a mixture of former soldiers supported by defense industry megacorporations under the table and ones backed by a group of high-ranking officers inside the military itself. The rest of the "hostile actors" really couldn't fight the UN Forces on an equal footing. Fourth, the (admittedly detuned) equipment being supplied to the New UN Forces garrisons in the emigrant fleets and so on is at, more or less, the discretion of the local government. However, the level of equipment used on average is more than sufficient for dealing with the primary threat to everyone's peace and wellbeing (rogue Zentradi forces). There's not that much actual distance between what the "monkey models" give the emigrant forces and what the core military is using anyway... and, in practice, being detuned thus may actually have made them more usable for their intended purpose of defending against the Zentradi by making those advanced weapons less hard on the pilot. That the Zentradi Army largely uses the same space warfare tactics and mobile weapons they used 500,000 years ago during the Schism War and the war against the Supervision Army is broadly true. Zentradi exposed to human culture and proper education do demonstrate that they're as intelligent as any human, though it does bear noting that we don't know the actual origins of the Variable Glaug, and the "Enemy Battle suit" from Macross Plus is actually equipment dating back to the Schism War 500,000 years ago. (From the description, it sounds like an attempt to make a budget Q-Rau for large-scale deployment to the Zentradi forces.) The Variable Glaug may have been (likely was) developed by a defense industry manufacturer or fleet arsenal covertly. That's an awfully paranoid interpretation... considering the history leading up to that point, the Project Super Nova VF's being made specifically for decapitation strikes and hostage recovery would've been a godsend in an age where internal conflicts among worlds settled early on were on the rise. The ability to settle a civil war decisively and with the minimum possible loss of life sounds like an exceedingly humanitarian policy. True to form, that's exactly how we see the VF-19's being used by the Special Forces... quick in, quick out, to bust up terrorists on sparsely populated worlds and prevent small conflicts from exploding into large civil wars after diplomacy has failed. If this were the military industrial complex run amok, we'd be seeing the exact opposite... large occupation forces being deployed. Actually, from the descriptions, it sounds more like the conflicts alluded to in Isamu's service record were internal to, or between emigrant planets. There were anti-government groups, but they mostly fell into the "take hostages and smash sh*t up" category, which the VF-19 and VF-22 proved ideal to addressing without blowing up entire towns. That argument doesn't really hold water... the VF-17 Nightmare was almost entirely dependent on passive stealth, and was not at all suited to the kind of operations the VF-19 and VF-22 were. It would not, as delivered, have been even remotely capable of what the VF-19 and VF-22 were. The key difference between the Ghost X-9 and the successor units based off it (AIF-7S, AIF-9B/V) is hardware, not software. The X-9 prototype used the illegal bio-neutral processing hardware to give it the ability to behave in a truly unpredictable fashion... identical to the final modification made to complete Sharon Apple. The AIF-9V and AIF-7S don't seem to have used that hardware, so even if they had identical software the performance wouldn't be the same. ... they did. That's what the Neo Glaug is. All things considered, I don't think there's anything to his speculation there... this is Macross we're talking about, not Metal Gear Solid. It's fundamentally an optimistic setting, being that the military stuff is mostly window-dressing for a love story. 's that how that went? I know the UN Government banned the construction and development of sentient virtuoids, and attempted to legislate Sharon Apple's music off the shelves altogether (though it didn't last). Macross Chronicle doesn't say much of anything about the legality of the Judah system except that it's unofficial... which means that Luca and co. likely didn't have official sanction to be operating it like that, or if they did that it was an off-the-books/covert affair likely obtained via LAI or Bilra Transport Co.'s immense wealth (esp. since the latter basically owns the Frontier Government).
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I couldn't say for sure without knowing exactly how both aircraft were loaded, but there's no doubt they'd used most of what they were carrying before the Ghost attacked. Isamu, in particular, was probably almost down to foul language before the fight ended... he'd expended 2 of his 3 GU-15 magazines, and lost the gun pod with the (fresh) third magazine in it and his rear-facing laser in a single attack. He'd shot off at least half of his micro-missiles and two CHM-2's, before he ended up losing the leg FAST packs. At most, he was down to the wing-glove laser guns and maybe two more CHM-2's. Guld, it's harder to say, but he definitely shot off most of his internal micro-missile count and probably most of his gun pod ammo when he engaged the Ghost, but that still left him with the bidirectional and rear-facing laser guns, some missiles, and the gun pods before he sacrificed the limbs.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Or a way to justify "new abilities as the plot demands".
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... that's the problem with the later VF's that had modular internal armaments. You can have the same VF, with no visible changes outside, carrying two totally different weapons and you wouldn't know it until it starts shooting. This same issue also exists on the production model VF-22, the VF-171, and VF-25.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The first time we see the YF-19 firing from the wing glove gun ports, the guns are twin-linked, firing bright red beams at about 120-180rpm... but we see Guld's YF-21 doing the exact same thing, which makes it likely that, for that test, the guns mounted there were the laser machine gun option. The YF-21 prototype's armaments never included the converging energy cannon option.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's hard to say for certain, since the weapon isn't discussed in deep detail in any source... the way Isamu uses it, it seems to have a very low rate-of-fire, maybe 60 discharges per minute, but that's pure guesswork on my part. As powerful as converging beam cannons are, one hit is probably all you need for most targets. On the other hand, the one laser weapon to have a stated rate-of-fire of 6,000 discharges per minute.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the Macross Plus animation, I would guess that the rate of fire difference is probably more severe than that...
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That's an excellent question... one I don't really have a complete answer for. If the usual pattern holds, the one thing we should be able to say with reasonable certainty is that a converging energy cannon is going to do a punch quite a bit harder than a laser or particle beam weapon of similar scale. The trade-off for the additional stopping power would presumably be a diminished rate of fire and increased power requirements. (Possibly also some increased cooling requirements affecting rate of fire, since the gun is shooting a beam of extradimensional fusion plasma.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Looks like the web host suspended the account again... I wonder if it's just that time of year, or if it's a bandwidth overrun. If sketchley needs or wants somewhere to host his site in the meantime, it'll be our pleasure to make space on M3's servers for him.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I've translated some of those parts myself, though I don't recall anything being said about Myung's post-Plus status in there...
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... most of them are. The YF-19 and VF-221 are the first Valkyries mentioned with the option of having converging energy cannons as their fixed-forward internal guns and/or coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret. 1. Specifically, the YF-19 prototype and VF-22 production model. The VF-19 production model and YF-21 protoype are not mentioned with this option.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Quite a bit of in-series overtechnology taps into or otherwise uses the physics of super dimension space to function: Space fold systems/boosters Fold communications (incl. jamming systems like the Jamming Sound System) Song Energy systems (incl. sound boosters) Fold-wave/cross-dimension radar Pin-point and Omnidirectional barriers Thermonuclear reaction power systems (incl. heat pile systems, reaction furnaces, engines, etc.) Super dimension energy weaponry under its various pseudonyms- Super dimension energy cannons - Converging beam cannons - Converging energy cannons - Guided converging beam cannons - Guided assembled beam cannons - High-angle beam cannons - Heavy quantum cannons - Macross cannons - MDE beam weapons Thermonuclear reaction weaponry (in the trigger mechanism) Dimension Eater (and Micro-Dimension Eater) weaponry Gravity and Inertia Control technology Fold Wave and Fold Dimension Resonance systems (for VF performance enhancement on the YF-29 and YF-30) There's also another form of fold-based power generation that humanity doesn't use yet called fold dimension energy conversion, which appears to be what the Vajra, and possibly Birdhuman and Protodeviln use. The only one I've never heard is the SSL-9 Dragunov 55mm railgun using fold technology to dampen the recoil... Yep... though there are a LOT of weapons of that type in Macross. The smallest are guns that were mounted internally on the YF-19 and VF-22, the largest being the Grand Cannons and the big guns on Zentradi mobile fortresses.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    When they're extended, the antennae are freed up to broadcast the fold wave jamming signal or to receive and amplify fold song. Exactly how it ties into the fold wave system's enhancement of the engines, power plant, etc. isn't 100% clear, but it appears to simply amplify the effects of the system's efforts to optimize output.
  16. 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.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, that old thing... I've got a couple copies of that one on the shelves in my study.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Neat. I'll be sure to listen for it when I get to DYRL in my re-watch. Thanks.
  21. 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.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    ... Portuguese? My curiosity is well and truly piqued. Where in Macross did we get written or spoken Portuguese?
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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