Seto Kaiba
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It's an odd touch, for sure... in his B-Club 79 interview, Ken'ichi Yatagai elaborates on that a fair bit. The way he describes it, the UN Forces have an annual open, media-heavy audition/contest that they hold to choose the performer and song(s) that'll be that year's Minmay Attack if the military locates and engages any hostile Zentradi forces. The UN Forces in the Sol system also have their annual VF stunt-flying competition that's a major publicity event for them, and the winning pilots are the ones who end up in the idol propaganda role (this one's actually mentioned directly, early in the first episode).
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Actually, there's a guide to the recommended sorting practice for Macross Chronicle in its binders in each issue... IIRC it's on the inside of the back cover. I sort everything into binders according to that sorting scheme and I use the provided tabbed separator sheets to keep sections that share a binder apart. I had my separator sheets laminated, the same way I did with the previous ed., so they hold up a bit better and there's no possibility of ink transfer between the two.
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Dunno 'bout a binder for the covers... I've just been keeping them in an envelope because the only cover that actually mattered from the first edition was #50's, which had errata. I just cut that out and taped it to the back of one of my 1E binders. Yeah, I've always separated mine out into binders... that glue that they use to hold the issues together isn't meant for the long haul.
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Never had a problem with HLJ, either in communication or sales. Sure... doesn't HLJ have a listing for the binders themselves along with the issues? They did when I bought mine (didn't wanna get stuck in the same situation as last time, where binders became unavailable before I had all 5 I needed, so I got all mine right when I started). 'course, because the first issue comes with one, I ended up with nine binders when, AFAIK, I'm only supposedly going to need eight. EDIT: Yep, they have binders listed as In Stock: http://www.hlj.com/product/DIGWMSP/Boo
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It varies depending on the type of media, the operating system on your computer, and some other factors... but when it comes to DVD players, generally speaking the answer is "No" unless you have a region-free player. Most Macross releases don't have English subtitles, no... the forthcoming (is it still forthcoming?) box set of the two movies for Macross Frontier stands out because it actually DOES.
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Just got issues 48-53... just in time for 54 and 55 to go live for preorder on HLJ. Loving the cover piece for 52.
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Something with a bit more agility and grunt in the engine then... the max-tuned VF-0S Skull Leader type I was using definitely won't cut it.
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Okay... I figure this is the right place to ask for a bit of a tip on the Vanquish races. 's there a particular VF y'all would recommend for Vanquish races? I'm not too far into the game yet, and I'm having trouble hitting the time targets for certain blueprints and so on with the planes I have. Any pointers would be grand.
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You mean that unseen bloke who killed a Vajra with a pinpoint barrier punch in Macross Frontier's 7th episode? I don't think we've had anything about him in Chronicle. At least, I don't think he's mentioned on the Episode Sheet. 'bout the only thing I can recall is that one of the manga adaptations that was made for the series replaced him with a female officer named Ariela who did get at least a little face time.
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Not very... I think I'm on story mission 2-4. I've been taking my time about it, trying to get all the guild quests and fighter models and option packs as I go. Definitely makes getting the PS3 feel worth it though... I'm having a grand time. It's not my first run-in with the game's story though, the admin at the Macross MUSH I'm on got a copy, and had me help him through the menus and so on when he first got it. Y'know, you could've just said "In the foreword"... that would've been enough. Anyway... 's not the first time the creator of a series has said one thing and done something else entirely. Still, I don't think we're looking at a pair of mutually exclusive propositions. Kawamori's made it clear that he's only really concerned with the broad strokes of the story when he's dreaming up the next installment, and he and his fellow staffers have repeatedly put together beautifully detailed and comprehensive material that tells us how all the various Macross works in the official setting fit together, what happened when, and so on. Between Kawamori's position and Chronicle, we're all able to have our cake and eat it too...
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Eh? I haven't finished Macross 30 yet, but it's no mystery when it's supposed to be set. One of the first things Leon establishes is that it's 2060, and from the sound of things the dust has barely settled on the war with the Vajra in the previous year. Have they actually confirmed that yes, the events depicted in Macross 30 are part of the official Macross continuity? Just giving the date doesn't guarantee that it's actually part of the official setting's events/history. There are, after all, loads of games that aren't considered part of the official setting/chronology/canon and thus aren't on the official timeline either. As far as the Musiculture show goes, I don't think there are any conflicts keeping it from being official setting, but that at least is a narrative... basing Crossover Live on the movies is all well and good, but it's just the framing for a live concert. Either way, I can't quite see them including it, since the timeline thus far has stuck principally to animation or titles with animation (e.g. M3 and VF-X2). I suppose we'll know one way or the other by this time next year, when Chronicle finishes its run and we have the complete, updated version of the official Macross timeline. I'm really liking Macross 30 (I recently got a PS3 just to play it), so it wouldn't hurt my feelings even slightly to have it land on the official continuity.
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Could I get a specific example or two? Like publication and page number? I really am curious about this, and my collection of post-Macross 7 is mainly of the art books and roman albums variety. Still... like I said previously, you can call it whatever you like: "official line", "canon", you can even refuse to name it. It doesn't mean it isn't there, especially when they've consistently made a serious effort to decide how everything fits together and what the specifics of this stuff are and put in print in art books, magazine interviews, and Macross Chronicle going back as far as the original series. If they're telling us straight up what is and what ain't a part of the official, authentic Macross setting (AKA the story's "Universe"), they're telling us what is and what isn't canon. A rose by any other name... True, it might... or it might be that there's a consistent rationale in play going back at least as far as Macross: a Future Chronicle. Granted, the "Crossover Live" thing used the movies... but like Macross the Musiculture, is that actually part of the official Macross chronology? It's not looking like the stage musical and concert are. EDIT: Now if Macross Chronicle decides to include Macross 30 on the official series chronology, all bets are off due to temporal shenanigans...
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As far as the official Macross continuity set down in Macross Chronicle goes, he died... because the timeline there treats the series version of events as the true version, and the movies are something separate off in left field. I don't recall seeing it anywhere other than the disclaimer in the back of Variable Fighter Master File's five volumes... can you point me to some other examples then?
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Eh... that's a bit wide of the mark, ain't it? The term "official setting" is only used in Variable Fighter Master File, and only then as a way of explaining that the content of those books (which are written from an in-universe perspective) is not reflective of the official Macross chronology or its technical setting. The very way it's used implies the existence of a canon... a list of approved works and official information that is considered true or authentically part of the official Macross setting that Master File doesn't entirely fit with. If you wanna call it the "official line" or something else, that doesn't change that they've put a considerable amount of effort over several decades into defining what's what in rather specific terms. Going back as far as Macross: Perfect Memory, we've got official timelines and tech specs and the story pieces that fill in the gaps in the series and tell us what happened and how... even during the timeskip. Macross II's creators did their own in B-Club Magazine Vol.79's big piece about VF History and in Entertainment Bible 51: Macross II. Kawamori and co. did their own version in the Macross: A Future Chronicle thing that was put out with Macross Plus, that defined how DYRL fit with everything else. Hell, look no further than Macross Chronicle... the 1,600, going on 2,500+, page monument to definitively setting down what's what and exactly how things happened in the most unambiguous terms possible. Kawamori's made it clear he doesn't want to be bound to every little detail of his previous work while conceiving the next chapter of Macross, or waste time trying to rationalize away every little example of zeerust or changes in aesthetic, but there's no denying that there IS a canon at work here... and they've put a LOT of effort into its care and evolution (and a lot more into making us all buy it in 32 page installments at ~¥700 a pop). Personally, I like Kawamori's approach... there is a canon, but he's not going to sweat the little details when conceiving his next installment of the story.
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I've always felt the best explanation of the Frontier movies is that, like DYRL, they're propaganda-based movies released in-universe. In the series, the Macross Frontier fleet's administration (parts of it, anyway) were complicit in or actively a part of the conspiracy to basically overthrow the New UN Gov't using the Vajra and forcibly unite humanity into the implant network Grace had created. The Macross Frontier movies shifted virtually all the blame for the conspiracy and the ensuing war with the Vajra onto Macross Galaxy's administration, taking pains to make both SMS and the New UN Spacy forces look good. They tactfully gloss over the involvement of a ranking NUNS officer and SMS's owner, and reinvent history a little so that the Frontier fleet's government and military realize something is badly wrong much earlier on and take preventative action instead of being duped almost to the bitter end and having to have rogue SMS forces pull their arses out of the fire.
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Huh? I'm sorry, I'm not entirely sure if you're saying you've never seen Macross 7 in general, or you've never seen the OVAs and aren't sure how they relate to the series. (It's probably just me being all caffeine-crash-y.) The greater Macross 7 story arc doesn't include any recap titles or compilation movies... the Macross 7 OVAs generally fit somewhere within the actual run of the series itself, like side stories or extra-long episodes. Macross 7 Encore is two sort of "spare" episodes ("On Stage" and "Which One Do You Love?") that aren't explicitly placed in the continuity, but seem to fit smoothly between episodes of the series around Ep40 or so. The unaired episode "Fleet of the Strongest Women" is basically one long deleted scene. Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! is a "movie" that functions as an overly long television episode between episodes 42 and 43. Macross Dynamite 7 is a completely separate story set the year after the conclusion of the Macross 7 main series. Pretty much the only "recap" titles we've had are DYRL, the Macross Plus movie, and the two Macross Frontier movies... and the only one that didn't completely change the story up was the Macross Plus one.
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Eh? They've only done it, what, three times in total? Macross: Do You Remember Love?, the Macross Plus "movie", and the Macross Frontier films. It's usually one and done with them, Gundam's indulged in it more, and with a lot less original material thrown in the mix. You really can't count the Macross II: the Movie thing, because that's not really a compilation movie or a re-envisioning of an existing story, it's literally just the OVA's episodes put together without the opening and closing credits. Yeah, Kawamori says that it's a Schrodinger's continuity sort of scenario, but for a long time now we've had the official line that DYRL was really just a movie within the Macross universe... and the official encyclopedia Macross Chronicle has consistently gone with the stance that the TV series version of any given Macross story with multiple versions is the "correct" one for purposes of continuity and so on. It treats the movies and so on as being an existence separate from the actual official continuity of Macross. However... that doesn't mean that everything in the movies doesn't exist. There are plenty of cases where things from the movie versions have been established to also exist in the series continuity. Like how the DYRL VF-1 was identified as being a later block upgrade of the VF-1 Valkyrie, Exsedol's DYRL appearance in Macross 7 was chalked up to him restoring himself to his original giant stature and re-modifying his body makeup because of his fear of losing his memories, and so on and so forth. Macross Frontier's "Missing Birthday" and "Fastest Delivery", for instance, showed that Zentradi were using the series and DYRL versions of some of their equipment side by side. DYRL aesthetics seem to have supplanted a lot of original series ones in places with similar excuses. The Variable Fighter Master File book for the VF-25 does something similar with the YF-29, though that book is, by its own disclaimer, not part of the official Macross setting. I think the fans just like to play with the Macross Frontier movie ending more for fan-works because it's more open-ended than the series ending.
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's kind of a thing in the industry in general... the compilation movie phenomenon has been around for ages. Macross is kind of unusual in that the do-over isn't just a retread of the story in a condensed form, but usually really mixes stuff up and approaches the story from a completely different angle than the series did. Things like the Macross Plus movie are more in line with a more traditional compilation movie like the original Gundam films and the Zeta Gundam: A New Translation stuff, where it's mostly the same footage but the order of events is mixed up a little and some new material gets added to flesh things out or emphasize different aspects of the original story. They get to put out something new, and putting a new spin (whether a minor or major one) on an existing story takes less effort than creating a completely new story from the ground up... letting them go back and correct the parts they didn't like, or approach the story and character relationships differently, and so on. If you want the most cynical answer... that'd be "because it sells".
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Eh... remember, the status of Macross: Do You Remember Love? is that of an in-universe movie. Naturally, as such, it would have taken license with the performance of the VF-1's weapons to make things more dramatic/cinematic. That's like using Top Gun as a yardstick for approximating just how effective modern fighter-carried weaponry is. However, the Macross Chronicle mechanic sheets for the VF-1 affirm that the cutaway schematic from the Gold Book IS accurate to the fighter, and the Super Dimension Fortress Macross television series is considered by same to be the "more correct" version of Space War 1... which argues strongly in favor of the show's 30 shots, 30 kills statement. You've based your theory here around the art, and only the art, in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2. The problems with this choice are threefold. First, as sketchley and I have both pointed out, Master File's contents are not part of the official Macross setting (the books say that much themselves). Second, you're mixing assumptions by basing your missile measurements on the smaller HMM-03 micro-missile, which was not in use during the events of the series... Volume 2 is for the VF-1's service history ten years after the first volume was published. As noted in Volume 1 (refer to page 049), the VF-1's of the first space war were using the older, larger HMM-01 missile and (possibly) a different model of option pack for their NP-BP-01 OMS/RCS (Vol.1 calls it HMMP-02, Vol.2 calls it HMMMP-02). If these are, in fact, the same launcher system then the increase in the capacity that Master File identifies is likely down to the smaller size of the HMM-03 used in later decades. Also, you've mistakenly assumed that the missiles in the NP-AR-01 are the same model used in the NP-BP-01's HMMP-02 launcher... Master File and the official line art indicate that the arm packs take an entirely different model of missile. Mind you, the official stats seem to indicate that there is no difference between the series and DYRL arm packs that Master File has inexplicably drawn at two different sizes... Third, your conclusion that missiles got larger and less numerous goes against the text of the (admittedly non-canon) source you're basing all your conclusions on... which asserts that the missile count went up, not down, and that smaller missiles with better warheads were a factor in that.
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I'd have to go back and go over the footage myself to be sure of your count, but the fact is that the original Macross series does contain a number of inconsistencies in its animation... most even more glaring than this potentially is. Officially, the missile count for the VF-1 Valkyrie's FAST pack sits at 30... 12 in each HMMP-02 launcher in the booster packs, and 3 in each arm. Using Master File as a yardstick will always be a dodgy idea because it carries a clear and entirely unambiguous notation stating that the contents are not part of the official Macross setting on the credits page of each of the five books printed to date. Mind you, the Master File books do assert that, by the time Do You Remember Love? was filmed in-universe, VF-1's were using a different armament arrangement in their FAST packs. The problem is that it asserts that the missile count went up, not down, thanks to changes in the packs and a new, smaller model of missile (HMM-03). Another problem with your assumptions WRT missile capacity is that these launchers are not empty space, their innards contain (per Master File and the art) other things like sensors, structural reinforcement to connect the detachable option packs to the actual booster, and so on. That all takes up space, as does the feed system and individual magazines for the launch ports in the boosters. The dialogue supports the official line art count of twelve missiles per booster, while Master File states twenty a side for the improved, post-war models, which was something that a fair number of toys also did. EDIT: The two configurations that we've seen for the internals of the HMMP-02 missile pack and/or what Master File VF-1 Vol.2 calls the HMMMP-02 (extra M? Vol.1 uses HMMP-02, as does Chronicle) are four straight missile containers holding three of the HMM-01 each, and an almost-identical configuration on toys in which there's a second row of two missiles on the top and bottom of each side, feeding into the nearest launcher port, giving a configuration (from top to bottom, one side) of 2-3-3-2. The middle of the pack seems to be filled in with hardware in both cases. Thus far, I do not believe that the revised edition of Macross Chronicle has offered commentary beyond what the original edition did on the subject... though Master File has proved surprisingly helpful, as noted above.
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's an interesting analysis, to be sure... but if Hikaru really fired that many missiles from his arm launchers, that's more than the launchers contain by a factor of two. According to the official material and cutaways, the NP-AR-01 packs only contain three missiles and the NP-BP-01's HMMP-02 launcher pack contains twelve (three per port). Master File tries to rationalize this and a few other eccentricities displayed by various toys, citing missile counts of 20 for the NP-BP-01 in later service with a newer model of missile, and presenting an alternate wing design with three pylon stations instead of two. Yeah, that was the big cutaway from the Gold Book, IIRC.
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My theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I don't answer letters and you don't like my tie.
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HERESY! *BLAM!* Nah, I'm kiddin'. Anyway, were there actually new designs in Macross FB7 that merit mechanic sheets, or d'you reckon that'll be mainly character sheets like the Macross 7 movie? Once I get my ISP to behave itself, I gotta order a copy of FB7 for my collection.
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Freakin' beautiful cover... I'd buy that as a poster. 's another Macross Frontier series section for the titular ship then? I'm really curious to see what we're going to get for Macross FB7, since that's in the intro section but we haven't seen anything for it yet, and I haven't gotten a chance to see the film either.
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Yeah, it does... though it's worth remembering that (at least according to Master File) the actual engines are relatively compact and thus leave a not insignificant bit of empty space inside the legs of the larger Valkyries for things like ordinance. It'd be a tight fit, for sure, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility. That's what the bulge on the side of the leg is for, after all.
