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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... for the first time, I've had to tender a Neutral vote. This episode was good, but it didn't feel like a cohesive story... I had the same impression here that I had when my girlfriend dragged me to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Namely, that what I was watching was bits and pieces from two different stories inexpertly stitched together with no regard for tone. The first half was so happy-go-lucky that the second half feels jarringly out of place by comparison. On the own, each could've been a 22 minute episode... but made into a single episode, it feels like two plots, neither of which got the attention it deserved. Even Keith hung a lampshade on the distressing lack of transformation in these dogfights... they're beautifully choreographed, but I'd like to see them remember that the V in VF means "Variable".
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It certainly appears that the micro-missile launchers are an externally-mounted conformal pack on the Draken III based on the official art on Macross.jp. Yep. Per Macross Chronicle, the big dorsal booster is a QF-5100D Goblin II drone which can be detached from the VF-27 and operated remotely via the brainwave control system.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    's hardly the first time a Variable Fighter has used an attached drone as an ersatz booster pack for its Super Parts... this concept previously appeared in Macross Zero as the VF-0 Phoenix Special Attack Spec. and in the Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa movie as the VF-27γ's Super Pack. The original generation of Option Packs (e.g. Super Pack, Armored Pack, Strike Pack) were developed as a way to work around the shortcomings of the VF-1's design that were imposed, in part, by constraining the fighter's size to roughly the estimated size of an alien infantryman and to expand its operational versatility. For instance, the Super Pack was developed to address the VF-1's low endurance in space flight via extra, bolt-on fuel tanks for the main engines and a pair of hybrid rocket boosters to supplement their output and reduce their utilization. In later generations of variable fighter, these issues had already been addressed in the fighter's "naked" configuration and option packs became more about extending armor, armament, and maximizing performance. With conventional (read: space use) Super Parts, it is generally expected that a VF will purge the option packs before entering atmosphere... but not always. Several types of option pack have been designed to be used in atmospheric flight. The first (production-wise) was the VF-1改 Refined Valkyrie's Super Pack II in Macross 2036, which was presented as an all-regime Super Pack. Macross Plus and Macross 7 also presented all-regime versions of Super Packs for the VF-11, VF-17, and VF-19 (seen during Operation Stargazer). Macross Frontier's movies added three more: the VF-25's Tornado Pack, the VF-27's Super Pack, and the YF-29's Super Pack. The Sv-262 Draken III seems to be taking a lot of pointers from the YF-29, so it's not altogether surprising that it's using its Lilldrakens as atmospheric flight boosters.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Macross FB7 kind of satisfied this need, didn't it?
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately that's a question we can't answer at the present time... without the official specs, we can't tell you how they compare in objective terms. We're probably a month or two out from having official specs published, since they usually come with the packaging of the model kits or toys. My entirely non-objective wild-arse guess on the matter would be that the Sv-262 is likely marginally less advanced than the VF-31, and certainly less versatile. The Siegfried feels like a true multirole fighter thanks to the ordinance container, wing pylons, etc., while the Draken feels more like it's meant to be an air superiority fighter. I'd wager the Draken's probably an inferior aircraft to the Siegfried on its own... and that superior Windermerean reflexes and physical abilities are making up the difference.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle does assert that the ancient Protoculture did have their own version of inertia capacitor technology implied to be superior to the inertia vector control system they equipped the Zentradi Army's Queadluun-Rau with, but the human-made inertia store converter technology is a relatively recent innovation that took about 17 years of development to get right. The YF-24 was the testbed for the technology's development, and the later YF-24 Evolution prototype was the means by which the technology was disseminated to the emigrant fleets and planets. EX-Gear is not strictly necessary for an Inertia Store Converter-equipped Valkyrie, but you could argue that it's a near-ideal complementary system. Its g-proof seat functions while docked to a VF allow the pilot to more easily withstand the g-forces inherent in operating a variable fighter, and the improved control system helps pilots more readily adjust to new aircraft and get the most out of any aircraft they happen to fly. (It bears remembering that ISC technology obeys conservation of energy - the g-forces it buffers are not lost, they're stored temporarily and then slowly returned to the airframe in a controlled fashion. You could say that it clips the peaks and fills the valleys in a graph of the g-forces a VF is subjected to, so that the g-forces never reach an intolerable or injurious level for the pilot or a damaging level for the airframe. EX-Gear lends a helping hand with the g-forces that the pilot is still experiencing.) It's also worth remembering that, while it is probable the Sv-262 Draken III uses an inertia store converter, we don't know for sure that it does... the Windermerean superior physical abilities may permit them to go ahead and tank those high g-forces without assistance, or perhaps with assistance from the cheaper and less-capable inertia vector control system. The Japanese websites I've been perusing lately suggest that the detonation of the dimensional warhead (dimension eater) at Scarfell/Carlyle cracked the fabric of space-time in that place... though with what consequences we don't yet know. It's not going to be anything good, though... it never is when something bad happens to space-time. On a fun aside, I have a notion about Windermerean runes...
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well... yes and no. To be precise, the same principles were applied in an earlier and less effective form of the technology that humanity acquired from the Zentradi after the First Space War. That's the Inertia Vector Control System that humanity encountered on the Quimeliquola Queadluun-Rau and later applied to the YF-21/VF-22 Sturmvogel II, which presumably uses fold carbon. The more effective Inertia Store Converter technology was developed from the Inertia Vector Control System and has the requirement of fold quartz to achieve the high levels of g-force protection that make it possible for a flesh-and-blood being to operate a 5th Generation variable fighter to anywhere near its full potential.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Finally got to sit down and watch this one... had to wait a few days after my computer decided that the best way to let me know it'd decided seven and a half years in service was enough was to set itself on fire. Armed with a new computer and a 4K display, I waded into the latest episode and was reasonably pleased by it. We finally got to find out WHY Messer has a stick up his arse, though Kaname hasn't made a serious effort to give him a stick-ectomy yet... and we got the first inkling of a Hayate x Mirage romance, which it looks like next episode is going to elaborate upon further. My one pet peeve about this episode is Messer's reaction to Var syndrome. It was enough to have the creepy popping veins and psychotic leer, he did NOT need to Hulk out. The VF-31 is a 5th Generation variable fighter... clearly it's not that hard to get 'hold of, since you can't build an ISC or fold wave system without the stuff.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It's probably a different microorganism... the V-type bacterium associated with the Vajra caused debilitating illness and eventual death in humans (and human-like organisms) because it took up residence in the brain. The fold bacterium that's causing the Var syndrome doesn't seem to be killing anyone except by driving them berserk.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of... it's not really a steady upward trend, it zig-zags a fair bit with severity varying depending on what performance attribute you're talking about. When we finally get specs on the VF-31 we'll know for sure what the trendline looks like, but it seems like the same kind of disparity between the regular and special forces Valkyries in the 3rd Generation, where you had a well-rounded but not terribly high-spec main VF and higher-performance specialized VFs for the special forces. In this case, I think the VF-25 and VF-31 represent your "well rounded" VF, while the VF-27 and YF-29 are your high-spec low-volume types. The VF-19 was actually the one with better engine power overall, a better thrust-to-weight ratio in both regimes, and better operational versatility thanks to its less severe emphasis on passive stealth and ability to carry ordinance both externally and internally. In most other respects they were pretty much on the same level, having been developed at the same time, side-by-side, to the same standards.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    "Carat" with a C is a unit of mass for measuring gemstones equivalent to 0.2g."Karat" with a K is a unit of fineness for measuring the percentage of impurities in gold, equivalent to 4.166666667% per karat.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    1,000 carats.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. The engineers who developed the fold wave system very likely came by the idea the same way the ancient Protoculture's engineers did... through the study of the Vajra's ability to produce vast amounts of power through fold dimensional energy conversion. It's probable the Protoculture had already managed to successfully tap super dimension space for energy via a purely technological approach before developing bio-technology to do the same job, though I wonder if their initial bio-technological effort was made with fold carbon or if, when that experiment was done, they had already discovered a process to produce synthetic fold quartz like they used for the Birdman. It's probably not a technology that's going to see widespread adoption in the New UN Gov't until someone rediscovers a process to synthesize fold quartz. The fold wave system on the Durandal uses a prohibitively massive chunk of fold quartz to achieve what it does.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Also the Sv-51, sort of... it doesn't stay perfectly parallel, but it only moves maybe 45 degrees. Ray and Veffidas had a tandem-cockpit training version... which would've had more room regardless.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure it's genetic, since there don't seem to have been any identified cases of Var syndrome or anything resembling it until around the time Windermere's royals decided to launch their war against the New Unification Government. The Zentradi fighting instincts didn't need any help to make them violent, and they'd already been conditioned to obey the Protoculture. They wouldn't have needed pharmaceutical assistance, or the mind control aspect to get the job done. I suspect that the combination of the polyphenols in Windermere apples and the unique bicarbonates in water found around Protoculture ruins is something the Windermereans discovered at some point in their own history. I bet that, especially since they're supposedly mildly empathic, the Windermereans regarded the Var syndrome as a curse on those who didn't properly respect/revere the Protoculture ruins on their world. Since the Windermereans seem to think that human society is somehow unclean, it would strike me as poetic justice in their eyes to combat an unclean society with a "divine" curse. We've got a lot of mythological symbolism kicking around in Macross Delta, and apples figure prominently into both Greco-Roman and Norse mythology. In Latin, the word for apple is spelled (and pronounced) almost identically to the word for evil. In Greek and Norse mythos, apples are the source of immortality for the eater... which seems a rather ironic twist here, when instead of granting immortal life the apple turns you into a doomed, psychotic killer. I've picked the brain of my youngest brother, who has some experience and training in organic chemistry by way of his vet-med study, and he suggested that the chemical that apparently triggers Var syndrome (seiznol?) is a form of endocrine disruptor that triggers excessive secretion of norepinephrine, adrenaline, and a few other monoamine neutransmitters. Apparently the symptoms of excessive release of several of those (especially norepinephrine) line up well with those of a Var syndrome sufferer... aggression, anxiety, headache, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, excessive sweating, etc.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    We can only hope... IIRC the Macross Modelers pamphlet for the VF-31A was done with GAGraphics's help, so I guess you could say they've already gotten a start.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    That's an excellent question... based on what Hermann said in Ep.8 and what's been said in the manga, it sounds like a Windermerean's runes are sensory organs (albeit minor ones). I'd imagine a male Windermerean losing one would impair their ability to sense the emotions of other Windermereans (IIRC that's what they're established to be for in the manga), though not severely so as they have two. In his close-up in Ep.1, Hermann only seems to have one rune... so it's possible he may have lost the other at some point.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The real cause of Windermere's war... they're sick of micropayments.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Keith saves his most lethal wind for burrito day in the Aerial Knights commissary. Take out the "song" part and you're there... the Vajra are powered by fold quartz dimensional energy conversion, not an entirely dissimilar approach to what the fold wave system produces in the YF-29. Kawamori's Aesops are usually drawn from current events... the Nazis aren't the only contentious cultural group to use "fatherland" for their home. There are a couple middle eastern languages that do that too, and the Aerial Knights so far smack rather obviously of a xenophobic religious extremist group. Has it actually been officially confirmed that Makina is related to Raizou Nakajima? Last I heard, that was just a wild, unfounded fan theory. Mirage is Max's granddaughter, but the Jenius family is essentially the one recurring exception to the rule when it comes to having recurring characters. With them as pretty much the sole exception, Kawamori doesn't generally indulge in having characters in his new Macross shows be related to those in previous ones. Often there's no association at all, except that some have become well-known historical figures or are simply famous. Considering that Hayate supposedly resembles someone Arad knew, and how everything keeps coming back to Windermere, I'm betting ...
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I'm flat amazed that Kawamori resisted the temptation to include a cyborg in Macross Frontier who had a gun or two stashed away inside their limbs... the blade Brera has is frankly low-key compared to some of the stuff in Ghost in the Shell, for instance.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... debatable, bordering on unlikely IMO. We see, in Ep.8, that Walkure brought their professional apparatus with them when they came down to Voldor's surface. So, presumably, the "sound stage" they usually use is what's providing the holographic costumes and mechanical amplification of the fold songs of those Walkure members whose natural fold receptors aren't powerful enough to do the job alone like Mikumo and Freyja's can. Implant technology is legal in most of the galaxy, but the kind of cybernetics sophisticated enough to convincingly imitate the appearance of the organs they're replacing are outside the reach of most civilians and require some fairly extreme surgery to install. Civilian market implant tech, as seen in Macross R, is more obviously artificial. Oscar Brauhitch's prosthetic arm, for instance, is a high-performance replacement for his lost limb but looks like something from the desk of Winry Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist. You'd think they'd have mentioned it if Freyja went in for serious, invasive surgery to install implants in her brain and/or a number of other places. I doubt any of Walkure's members have implant tech. Reina seems to need a visible holographic interface and physical gestures to do her hacking, which points to her not being a cyborg. Likewise, they wouldn't need visible displays from what I'm guessing are press-on fingernail computers if they had implants... then they would just project it directly to their optic nerve.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    My impression of Messer is the sort of stick-up-the-arse soldier boy who, like Sgt. Sagara from Full Metal Panic!, has no sense of humor and believes military ration packs are the very height of cuisine.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    In previous episodes, he seemed rather susceptible to the song that causes Var syndrome... which seems to work better against people who already have some manner of aggressive tendencies, like Zentradi.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-25 is hands-down the weakest of the 5th Generation designs thus far unless there have been some serious cutbacks in the VF-31's production... but it's also probably the most economical of the lot. The VF-25's two engines individually have more power than the VF-27's (1,620kN vs. 1,377kN) but the VF-27 has four of them offsetting its 43% greater mass to give it a thrust-to-weight ratio that's 19% higher than the VF-25's. The YF-29's main engines are significantly more powerful (+30%) than the VF-25's, and its two secondary engines are more powerful (+6.75%) than the VF-27's engines, which, combined with it being slightly lighter than the VF-27, give it a thrust to weight ratio that's 31.6% higher than the VF-27 and 56.4% greater than the VF-25's. The VF-27 with Super Packs is said to be roughly equivalent in performance to a YF-29 in stock configuration. The YF-30 has a refined version of the YF-29's main engines (a very slight 0.2% improvement in output), but a mass that's lighter than the VF-25 (by 4%), giving it a thrust-to-weight ratio that's 36% greater than the VF-25's, 14.2% greater than the VF-27's, and 87% that of the YF-29's. The inertia store converter technology on the VF-25 and VF-27 was rated for 27.5G loads, the improved models in the YF-29 and YF-30 were rated for loads of 30G or possibly more. In terms of generator output and defensive ability, the VF-25 has enough excess power to run a light form of energy conversion armor in fighter mode, while the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30 can all operate their energy conversion armor at full power in fighter mode due to the excess output of four engines, fold wave system, or both. The VF-27 and YF-29 have also been confirmed to be capable of operating their pin-point barriers in fighter mode, and the YF-30 likely can as well. In terms of actual armor strength... well, it's off the hook here. The VF-25 and VF-27 seem to be roughly on par for armor strength, though the VF-25 has the light armor FAST pack option of the Super Pack and the heavy armor option of the Armored Pack, while the VF-27 only has the Super Pack. The YF-29's armor was said to exceed that of the VF-25 w/ Armored Pack thanks to improved materials, the fold wave system, frame reinforcement, and just plain doubling the armor's thickness. The YF-30 is supposedly comparable in defensive ability to the YF-29 as well... making both of them effectively more heavily armored than a typical cruiser-class space warship. Weapons-wise, things are a bit fairer. The VF-25 has very few built-in weapons, but everything's modular and it's got three or four pylons per wing (depending whose stats you trust). Its Super Pack and Armored Pack make it the ordinance leader of the 5th Generation by a VAST margin with a stonking insane missile capacity of over two hundred micro-missiles in either option, more than double what can be carried by the YF-29 or YF-30, while still leaving four other stations open for longer-ranged party favors. The YF-29 only carries 100 micro-missiles in its many internal launchers, and augments that with a couple dozen carried inside its Super Packs. The YF-30 carries an estimated 108 micro-missiles, has no known Super Pack, and just four under-wing stations (that we know of). In gunpod terms, the VF-25 might get the short end of the boomstick vs. the heavy quantum reaction, heavy quantum beam, and micro-dimension eater beam gun pod units available to the VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31 though. It's unclear if the VF-31's can do beam grenade mode, but the others all can. The VF-25's Tornado Pack and YF-29's beam turret also give them a bit more punch in the gun department than the VF-27, YF-30, and VF-31. Oh my, no... the YF-29 Durandal/Percival, YF-30 Chronos, and presumably VF-31 Siegfried are a cut above the earlier 5th Generation Valkyries. This is due to improvements in engine technology (+30% output vs. the VF-25), inertia store converter technology (+9% vs. the VF-25), armor and weapons tech, and the introduction of performance-enhancing technology like the fold wave system and fold dimension resonance system. The VF-27's performance was significantly higher than the VF-25's, to the extent that a flesh-and-blood pilot cannot operate a VF-27 to its full potential even with an inertia store converter. The YF-29's performance is noted to be roughly comparable to (or slightly better than) the performance of a VF-27 with its Super Pack equipped. The YF-30 rivals the YF-29 in almost all respects, except the YF-29's superior thrust to weight ratio and the YF-30's superior fold wave system.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    As long as he brings the nosecone and that bit that becomes the front of the upper chest back, I think he's probably OK... that ought to be where most of the fold quartz is, if it's built anything like the YF-30 or YF-29. Whoever's in charge of ordering spares for the manipulators probably hates his guts though... he's lost how many arms now? 2? 3? Sitting perfectly still and trusting the pin-point barrier to take all of the beating is not paying huge dividends. (In musing on that, my brain is flashing back to DBZ Abridged with Piccolo bellowing "DODGE!") EDIT: Spelling...
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