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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Aaaaaaaaaactually... I can think of a few cases where there are explicit comparisons drawn between human and alien mecha in Macross. One moment that leaps to mind was Klan Klan passing some remarks about how Zentradi mecha compare quite favorably to human equipment in some respects early in Macross Frontier. Macross II sources contain a number of remarks about how Zentradi mecha and VFs compare, including a few specific notes about where efforts were made to address those areas of deficient performance in subsequent designs. When main timeline official sources talk about how VFs compare with Zentradi mecha, they're usually speaking in pretty general terms... like Chronicle's assertion that the Regult is pretty rubbish when it comes to atmospheric flight and thus needs support from Gnerls for planetary invasion operations. Non-canon sources like Master File do spare a thought for those kind of comparisons as well... though the specific example I recall offhand refers to VFs having difficulty coping with Zentradi tactics. I think it's as much a matter of raw performance as it is humanity's attempts to improve their ability to fight the Zentradi on the Zentradi's terms. Well, the Regult is established to have better performance in space than atmosphere... and the VF-1 is described as having a couple significant issues with its flight performance in space, so we're halfway home already. I think part of the reason you don't see that play out explicitly on screen is most of battles in Macross take place in space, and the few that don't are usually fought between VFs and the Zentradi's best flight-capable mecha, the Queadluun-Rau. (You could take Macross 30 as throwing this a bone, since the Regults in that are pretty awful in the air... though the actual game mechanics of a canon game are never reliable.) Not initially... remember, for a decent span of time (most of the series!) they thought that humans might, just might, be their long vanished creators. They were basically subjecting the Macross to just enough pressure to make 'em sweat so the Zentradi had something to draw conclusions from. Once they concluded the Macross was an actual threat... well, things went to hell VERY quickly and everybody had cause to regret it.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... the VF-1's got a few officially-acknowledged deficiencies in space flight, the biggest being that its small airframe size limits the amount of fuel it can carry, and thus the maximum acceleration and sortie range. One of the bigger points mentioned with the VF-4 was, IIRC, something like a 40% improvement in space combat capability over the VF-1. Actually, a lot of the mecha which followed the VF-1 in either universe have some form of mention of "the VF-1 was deficient in X, Y, and Z, which were remedied on the new design". Nah, the UN Spacy was basically being subjected to the gentlest of love taps from the mostly curious Zentradi for the bulk of the war. The few times someone on the Zentradi side (usually Quamzin) got serious were the few times the Macross's crew were on the ropes and were often only saved by circumstances like the detonation of Salla base's reaction furnace, or a senior Zentradi commander ordering Quamzin to back off (sometimes at gunpoint). The Macross was barely surviving when Vrlitwhai and other commanders were sending just one or two ships at them at a time just to see what those wacky miclones would do next... In short... because the Zentradi were busy satisfying their curiosity about these strange miclones, and weren't earnestly trying to rub them out. Remember, wasn't one of Hikaru's first comments to Minmay after joining the military to point out that the internal announcements about how the last battle went were a load? When the Zentradi finally decided to take the kid gloves off, it ended badly for six billion people in just a few minutes.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I think JB0 has the right of it... these mecha were, by in large, developed for space combat and a "quantity has a quality all its own" philosophy of warfare. The UN Spacy might achieve a ten or twelve to one kill ratio over the Zentradi, but the Zentradi do tend to show up with a few thousand of their mates whenever they decide to start trouble.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    They can fly in a planetary atmosphere.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    *wince* Oh gods no... please no... at least they should wait a few more titles before they throw out another edition. My poor bookshelves can't take the strain!
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, you are... the series chronology that fills in most of the Macross II backstory was never made completely available in the US thanks to the Turbografx-16 failing to penetrate the video game market here, and the kind of scattershot hobby magazine market. There were a number of major Zentradi conflicts in the Macross II backstory between the end of the first space war and the Mardook invasion. The big ones were in 2036 (Macross 2036), 2037 (Macross: Eternal Love Song), and 2054 (mentioned only). The 2054 Zentradi invasion of the Sol system was stopped dead at Pluto's orbit by a UN Spacy defense perimeters, but it took quite a toll on the fleet... ending with the UN Spacy capturing a factory satellite.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Bloody hell, you're right! Well, I guess some things never change.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, it looks like I misread it when I mentioned it to Mr March... the Japanese version of the petition makes as little sense as the badly fractured Babelfish English we got here, but I got the essence of it right the first time. The gist of it appears to be that the poster wants the 35th Anniversary series to have a new Macross 7 story about Basara, set four years after Dynamite 7 and involving around Basara getting invited to a music festival on Earth, which turns out to be a trap by the Protodeviln that involves Minmay somehow. All in all, the whole idea sounds surpassingly awful... the kind of thing I'm glad Kawamori would never do, and something I would need to be reincarnated as a Hindu deity to have enough thumbs to show my disapproval of.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I'll second that emotion.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, the VF-2JA probably deserved to get the shaft... it's so frigging minor even though it's an unconventional and interesting design. It'd be like them giving a cover to any of the other one-scene wonders like that messenger plane from Macross Galaxy, or the construction Valkyrie from Macross 7. Still, nice to see a nice big version of the Metal Siren painting...
  11. Seto Kaiba
    No, I don't think I am... I think you're making a conclusion there's a connection when there's no evidence any exists. Also, VF-4? I thought your point of inquiry was the VF-X3 Star Crusader from Macross: Remember Me. We know roughly when Kawamori designed the VF-X3 Star Crusader... because it's stylistically almost identical to work he was doing for BattleTech's JP release, which was done at the same time he was developing the other original VFs that went into the FamilySoft Macross game series. Late 1992, early 1993. We can point to exact dates for when some of the other VFs from those games had their line art done... the Stampede Valkyrie was November 1992, for a game that debuted about a year later in 1993. The rough version of the finished VF-4 was dated March 1995... so that's not a likely inspiration either, though he'd roughed out some stuff regarding battroid appearance that Ohata and Fujita either didn't have or didn't care for, because their VF-4 from the Macross: Eternal Love Song game looked nothing like it. Without a time machine? Not likely. Remember, Studio Nue wasn't involved in the development of Macross II, so it's unlikely the concept work of Studio Nue's staff would've been available to the Macross II creators. Likewise, the original VFs designed to be included in the FamilySoft games weren't finished until November 1992 according to the dates on the art in Kawamori's Macross Design Works book, and that's a year after the VF-XS Valkyrie II's art was printed in Animage, and the same month the final (6th) episode of Macross II was released... by which point that ship had SAILED.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    By "published in", I literally mean the art was published in a print resource... in this case, it was part of a Macross II teaser article in the hobby magazine Animage, in the #11 issue for 1991. I wouldn't really call it a "line art compendium", and the VF-XS was not printed in any Macross II art book, but the magazine was definitely publicly available for a whopping 600 yen! (There's a copy on eBay for ten bucks right now.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Heh... nice. Some of my buddies are gonna be thrilled there's been some love for the Metal Siren.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Er... if I had to guess, I'd say the maintenance crew is probably responsible for painting the heraldry and markings of the units whose Valkyries they're responsible for. Most of the VFs in Macross seem to have pretty standardized markings, and custom paintjobs seem to be something only "elite" units like Skull Squadron do. If I had to guess, I'd say custom paint is probably either something restricted to the elite (as a "perk") or something the pilots have to do themselves. I can't imagine they'd be able to put in a work order for the kind of explicit decoration we've seen in books like the Macross Model Hobby Handbook and on Canaria's VB-6 and Maruyama's VF-171EX in Macross Frontier... unless the NUNS has the most lenient sexual harassment policy in the history of the galaxy.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    No, that's all me bro... just ask MEMO. I can't believe we've ended up with another thread devoted to "Look at what [Harmony Gold/Robotech fans] did this time, aren't they stupid?". Thought we'd got past this nonsense. The idiots thrive on the attention, deny it to them and the problem'll go away.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah... looking at the air date charts, the Macross Plus OVA got its second episode a few days before Macross 7 episode 12 went to air. Must've been some REAL mood whiplash going back and forth between Macross Plus's more serious tone and Macross 7 when Macross Plus episode 2. Just goes to show Kawamori and company's propensity for doing the unexpected and mixing it up. I couldn't begin to guess what we're going to get when the new series airs, but it'll be a fun ride for sure.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Technically, yes... but Macross Plus preceded Macross 7 in release order by what, about two months? (August vs. October?) That'd be a hell of a case of mood whiplash for someone going from Macross Plus episode 1 to Macross 7 episode 1.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Er... gents, isn't it a bit early to be boldly proclaiming what the next Macross series will and won't include? To be, trying to predict what Studio Nue will do with the next Macross series is a bit of a trick, since one thing Macross has made a habit of is dramatically mixing it up. They followed Macross Plus, one of the most serious and straightforward titles in the metaseries, with Macross 7... a hotblooded, over-the-top spectacle where a guitarist fights space demons with the power of rock. I don't see any point in forming convoluted expectations of the series when Kawamori and co. will almost certainly blindside us with something else entirely. As I see it, why look a gift horse in the mouth? We're getting a new Macross series, and I doubt it'll disappoint no matter where Kawamori and company take it.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    's part of a retrofit that was started on the Macross with the intention of bringing her up to spec with the mass-production Macross class ships (like the ill-fated Million Star), with the intention of returning her to active service with the fleet. The retrofit project was abandoned after another postwar influx of new overtechnology effectively rendered the upgrades obsolete. (Exactly which war was the one that ended the project, they don't say... the most likely candidate was the May-December 2054 war.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    No official word on that, AFAIK... but Macross II's creators stopped just short of bluntly declaring the Mardook to be a second big group of Protoculture who fled the collapse of their civilization to start over, like the ones who built the Altira in DYRL?, so it might have been the original Meltrandi systems on the Macross responding to her genome. According to Macross II's director, Ken'ichi Yatagai, the reason for that is that the Macross's alien early warning systems are still active, so the cannon occasionally discharges if it detects hostiles.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Yes... the Takachihof VC-079 Civilian Valkyrie, fighter and GERWALK modes only. In-continuity, it was actually the second non-military VF developed by the Takachihof group. SNN's is a modestly customized version kitted out with various camera systems, while the stock model is used for everything from a leisure craft to transportation to what amounts to a postwar DNR. Yep! The lucky survivors were the ones who were conveniently about six kilometers underground in Grand Cannon I (Alaska), Grand Cannon III (Africa) and Grand Cannon V (South America). Between the people who survived thanks to an underground hidey-hole and the people who survived thanks to being in orbital space colonies and on the moon, the survivors numbered a rough 1 million souls. That number was subsequently beefed up with mass cloning of humans that began about three months after the war (May 2010).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    But the -J type of the VF-1S was also a partial upgrade over the stock unit... so that makes no sense. "In your mind" and "In actuality" may not necessarily be the same thing. In this case, definitely not... -S variants being issued to "elite" pilots is a comparative rarity, not the rule. The toy companies are gonna make toys based on designs that already exist, for the most part, so if they were gonna do a Milia VF-4 it'd be her VF-4G from Macross M3, which is still damn nice. Any love for the VF-4 from the toy companies is a good thing.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Less than you'd think, actually... the majority of VFs don't indulge in that particular practice, both in terms of the number of VF models and the total number of VFs out there in-universe. The VF-1 is the only one of the UN Spacy's main variable fighters in Macross's main timeline that actually indulged in that practice. The VF-22S doesn't fit the pattern because the -S was the ONLY general production variant (the letterless VF-22 was a trial production model), and that was a limited production plane. The VF-0, VF-17, and VF-19 were all limited production fighters because they were test units, special forces units, or bounced from main VF status for various reasons (respectively). As of 2059, the New UN Spacy hasn't even adopted the VF-25 yet, since it's in low rate initial production and evaluation. The VF-1's successors, the VF-4, VF-5000, VF-11, and VF-171 don't indulge in that practice. Nor, for that matter, do many secondary VFs like the VF-9, VF-14, VA-3, VA-110, VB-6, VF-27, etc. Likewise, Macross II initially rolls with this idea, but it quickly tosses it after the VF-1 platform is retired, when -S variants like the VF-4S and VF-2SS ended up the default unit for everyone. *impressed whistle* Very nice.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Shin Kudo would put a lie to this in Macross Zero... he walks in his VF-0 in GERWALK. Ah, yeah... the GERWALKroid. Described in official material literally as a "poor man's Valkyrie", basically a VF without having a transformation mechanism. Close air support unit, kind of like a chopper, and loaded for bear with internal missiles.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Personally, I think a LOT of my fellow fans here would agree the VF-4 has been sorely neglected. I'm no toy collector, being that I own only four Macross VF toys (the WHAM SDF-1, DX Macross Quarter, Isamu's YF-29 DX, and the old Bandai VF-2SS), but I'd personally love to see some love for the following... though YMMV as to whether or not the ones I'm listing actually deserve it: VF-5000 Star Mirage (Either the Max/Milia -B type or the Liza Hoyly -G type) VA-110 Variable Glaug (Moaramia's from Macross M3... that was a player character mecha from a canon game) VF-1SR Attack Valkyrie (main character mecha from Macross 2036) VF-2SS Valkyrie II (duh) VA-1SS Metal Siren (also a main character mecha from Macross II) VF-19ACTIVE Nothung (main character mecha from Macross R) VF-1X++ Valkyrie Plus (same as above) VF-0 Kai "Zeak" (same as above) SV-52 Gamma "Oryol" (same as above) VF-XS Valkyrie II (just for the heck of it) VA-3 Invader (baddie mecha from D7, briefly a main character mecha from VF-X2)
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