Seto Kaiba

... and here we go: EDIT: Gonna have to put 11-21 into a separate post after a little while, the forum keeps trying to merge my posts and it puts it over the limit of allowed quote tags. Just because the story of the Macross II OVA is set on Earth doesn't mean there's no colonization program... for a little over 50 of those 80 years, the Macross II alternate universe's UN Spacy was launching colony fleets on a regular basis using Macross and Megaroad-class ships. The colony fleets never got as big as the ones in the main Macross universe, but they did launch a lot of them. As I mentioned earlier, they only stopped after a colony fleet that'd just been launched in 2054 blundered into a massive Zentradi armada shortly after leaving the Sol system, and the Zentradi traced its fold jump back to Earth and attacked... leading to a second, massively destructive space war that decimated the UN Spacy's fleets. Now, as far as continuing to rely on the Minmay Attack goes... isn't that rather a case of the pot calling the kettle black? The UN Spacy and New UN Spacy of the main Macross timeline do it too. Macross 7's Sound Force had, as its origins, an attempt to improve the Minmay Attack's effectiveness (as a weapon), and spent the entire time trying to beat giant space monsters by rocking out in their general direction and, later, zapping them with a beam made out of songs. In Macross Frontier, the Minmay Attack was the first thing that Leon leaped to suggest when the Vajra attacked, and then eventually turned out to be what turned the Vajra against Grace in the end. Hell, Frontier even did the giant space hologram girl thing. This is laid out pretty bluntly in the OVA itself, but the answer is "Because the UN Spacy thought they were up against the Zentradi, and had therefore planned for the fight to be a pushover like their previous encounters had been." It was, as Hibiki and Dennis point out, mostly about the spectacle for propaganda purposes. Considering the ship had already been hit hard enough to have several massive, gaping holes large enough to comfortably fly a fighter into, I'd guess either an ammo storage area or power system blowing up... or perhaps the ship suffered another big hit. When did Hibiki drug her? He gave her a glass of water... it even helpfully says "WATER" on the bottle in English. (Oh, and the modern news media has never done ANYTHING creepy... no sir. They'd never hack the phone of a dead person and disrupt a police investigation into a murder, or, say, hound a famous person until they get into a car crash and die...) You're assuming she didn't go out the door... they don't, in fact, show how she got out, but Hibiki was plenty distracted tearing into Matsui, so there's plenty of opportunity for her to exit stage left by any number of means. Eh... there are a couple symphonies that I consider to be torture too, but that's beside the point. The music that sets her off like that isn't orchestral, it's initially and principally that idiot with the goofy hair's metal, mixed with other stuff from the televisions behind her. I don't see how you could even confuse the two genres of music. There's not a lot of middle ground between classical and metal. Exactly what it says on the tin? Seriously, the Macross may have been retired from active duty decades before, but it's still operational and its early warning systems are still active to some extent. The energy surges from the main gun occur when the ship's dormant early warning systems (still suffering from a little bit of the "booby trap") detect hostiles. Did you, perchance, miss the part where they say out loud that those monuments (or recreations thereof) are all in the same place? Culture Park is basically a monument to the history and culture Earth lost when the Zentradi flattened everything from orbit in 2010. They're within walking distance because they're all located in the same parkland area. This is not a new or revolutionary idea either, there's a place maybe twenty minutes from my house where it's perfectly possible to walk from Henry Ford's birthplace to Edison's Menlo Park (New Jersey) lab to the Logan county (Illinois) court where Abraham Lincoln used to work as a lawyer without breaking a sweat. At this point, it's looking like your grievances stem more from not actually watching it rather than legitimate problems with it. Oh yes, because the UN Spacy has never thrown any kind of public event to distract people from how the war's going (*coughMISSMACROSScough*) or concealed from the public that things aren't going great. Did you also take exception to it when they threw a big damn show during wartime in the Macross 7 and Macross Frontier series? Also, the Moon Festival is an annual event, not something the UN Spacy scheduled on the spur of the moment. Canceling it would've probably done quite a bit to damage the military's propaganda that everything is fine and the war is going smoothly. Also, who said the Gloria was new? It's not the flagship of their entire fleet either, just the 12th. The Metal Siren they showed at the festival isn't real either... it's a mockup. (Official materials state that it's a replica, literally naming it only as "METAL SIREN REPLICA".)

kk, I'll furnish you with the answers when I get back from dinner. Um... the UN Spacy in Macross II's alternate universe DID follow Global's orders to seek out and colonize other worlds... they never launched ships as colossal as those of the main universe, but they were launching colony fleets on a regular basis using both Macross and Megaroad-class colony ships for fifty years. They only stopped after the Zentradi caught one of their fleets shortly after it left the Sol system, and tracked it back to where it'd come from, leading to a second major Space War almost as destructive as the first one. Very likely, yes... had the Mardook not resorted to kamikaze attacks, the UN Spacy would probably have been able to use the massive firepower of their Macross Cannons to level the field considerably.

But the people doing the complaining still generally accepted that Macross 7 was a legitimate Macross title... while the Macross II OVA and its satellite titles still get the dismissive treatment it did ten years ago, regardless of quality, often simply because it didn't come from Kawamori. The worst part, at least in my opinion, is that a fair number of the criticisms leveled at Macross II's setting (as illustrated by Valkyrie addict) stem from having practically every piece of intermediate material connecting Macross II to DYRL fail to make it across with the series.

To a certain extent, you're right... Macross II: Lovers Again was not up to the level of previous Macross shows. The thing that really undermined it was that it was trying to follow in the footsteps of Macross: Do You Remember Love?, which is generally hailed as the definitive Macross experience, setting the bar pretty damn high to start. No matter how good it was, it was never going to live up to the way it was being promoted by the idiots in America, as they called it things like "the most anticipated anime sequel of all time" and generally built it up to sound like the single greatest achievement in anime's history. At that point, failing to meet expectations was the only option. It also didn't help that neither of its two prequels, and virtually none of the other material for it ever made it to audiences outside of Japan, who were left to flail in the dark and wonder how this OVA connected to Macross as a whole. Really, the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA isn't a bad series... under any other name, it would probably have done quite well for itself, but it was only an average series in a family where exceptional is the norm. Had Macross 7 not been the right show at the right time, we'd probably be tearing into it the same way for the various ways it falls short of the mark. Now, if those questions of yours are serious, and not just vitriol, I can answer them for you... many of them would have been answered for you already had the Macross II publications made it to audiences outside of Japan.

Pretty sure it was her ass...

Wait... are you actually being serious here, or are you just taking the piss? I have to ask, because I honestly can't tell. Really, if you're actually serious in complaining that the Macross II: Lovers Again Valkyries look like they're modeled on the original VF-1, then all I can do is shake my head in dismay and wonder how you missed that that was the bloody point. I don't see you bagging on Kawamori for doing exactly the same thing on no less than three occasions (the VF-11, VF-0, and VF-25) with much less justification in most cases.

's an odd thing to say, considering that the Metal Siren's design stands out fairly clearly from the other Valkyries in the OVA... and it does quite a few things differently like the completely-different cockpit design, the internal micro-missile launchers, dual gunpods, the way the wings are handled, etc. (I don't actually like the design much, I'm just trying to be fair to it... IMHO, it's a Valkyrie that's trying a little too hard to be a Gundam.) Oh, no denying the dub of Macross II was absolutely atrocious... that's why almost everyone I know refuses point-blank to watch Macross II in any format other than subbed or unsubbed in the original Japanese.

As soon as I can pin you down on MSN, that will change. I've been importing art books like mad to stay on top of things. (I've also got around 200 pieces of fan art that need to go up...)

Touche, sir... I was just curious whether this "news" came from the official Harmony Gold hype machine, or just the usual wishful thinking by their more deluded fanboys. If it's the former, there's at least a tiny chance that they might actually be doing something in the next decade or so. Barring the occasional isolated exception, the youngest Robotech fans out there are in their mid-to-late twenties if you were to go by the ages given on discussion boards and whatnot. That's mostly the crowd who were exposed to Robotech in the 90's by Cartoon Network, or by friends and family who'd rediscovered it in the early 00's shortly after Robotech.com went online. The majority of the Robotech fanbase is in its 30's and 40's by now, mostly all the 85'ers who rediscovered it thanks to the internet and the few remaining die-hards who've kept their death grip on the series since the 80's.

Hm... for me, that'd be the first time I saw the VF-1 transform while watching a borrowed copy of the Macross Saga. It was my first exposure to mecha anime, and kind of a "heck yes!" moment. A tie between the first time Minmei opened her mouth and Rebecca Forstadt's horrible canary screech came out with "Stage Fright", and the start of Ep37 "Dana's Story", when I realized that the remaining 49 episodes were going to have nothing to do with the characters and mecha I'd enjoyed so much in the first 36. (I remember being outraged at Dana dragging Max and Miriya/Milia's name through the mud by being a complete twit.) Is this an actual update, or is this just more of MEMO and Maverick's wild guesses posted as fact?

To be blunt, the Legioss wasn't a design that could carry a franchise period. It was never meant to have to carry the series it appeared in, but got "promoted from extra" when the sponsors decided they had to get in on that transforming fighter jets thing that Macross was making huge amoungs of cash on. It was second banana to the ride armors because that's the way it was supposed to be. (I mean, which one's in the bloody series title? It ain't Genesis Climber LEGIOSS after all...) Harmony Gold's thrown all their efforts into trying to make it "the new VF-1" because that's the closest they can get to the actual VF-1 for new works.

*shrugs* Maybe purple just looks naturally ominous or something? (The one real good counterexample I can think of is Misty Klaus from Macross: Eternal Love Song, who had purple hair and was a legendary powered suit pilot with a rep rivaling Milia's.)

Well, not that much bigger... mostly what I'm hinting at is the weird shape of the head makes a multi-laser arrangement a bit hard to carry off, and not terribly advantageous. 's from one of the Macross II: Lovers Again canon prequel games: Macross: Eternal Love Song. It was the first starring role for the VF-4 where it actually transformed (1992) and it had as an optional weapon a BIG beam rifle longer than the fighter mode's length that looked a lot like one of the BIG beam rifles from Gundam. (It was designed by a mechanical designer who'd worked on Gundam very recently.) Some bits of it stuck around, as a supplimentary/backup system for the production model... it's mentioned in Macross Chronicle and in the manga Macross Dynamite 7: Mylene Beat.

Gah! Now look what you've done! I'm going to be stuck hearing every one of sketchley's posts in the voice of The Blob from the old X-Men cartoon now... (C'mon, we're not that bad...)

It was... at least, according to the mooks currently running the show. The goal, as it were, was to make the Robotech series accessible and attractive to the younger "anime hobbyist" demographic. Harmony Gold's staff talked it up like they were serious about trying to make Shadow Chronicles more than just a film "by the fans, for the fans", but in the final analysis it looks like their only real effort to appeal to that younger audience was redesigning all of the female cast to have the same stripperific body. (It's an especially weird choice, because Tommy's early anime-esque concept designs would almost certainly have gone over better with that target audience.) Saying that the Shadow Chronicles instigated the decline of the fanbase is probably giving it too much credit. The Robotech fanbase was already in the early stages of its terminal decline before they even announced the project as "Robotech 2004". What Shadow Chronicles - and the reaction of Robotech's "veteran" fanbase to it - accomplished was dramatically accelerating what was already the inevitable outcome. The craziest of the crazy among the Robotech fans had already made their presence known before it came out, but they used it as a platform to promote their own particular brands of stupid... mostly by latching onto the anti-Shadow Chronicles uproar and becoming vocal supporters of the moderators doing the banning with the aim of ingratiating themselves and becoming "insiders". (Heck, I don't think anyone who was on Robotech.com at the time will EVER forget the thread that started it all, the year before they announced the Shadow Chronicles project, "WHO CAN BE THE ROBOTECH MASTERS!")

That's about the letter of it, yes... "Plagiarism" is the word you're looking for there, but really... moving things around wasn't Macek's idea. It was foisted on the project by necessity. To be precise, the necessity of appeasing Revell, who's beaten Harmony Gold to market with Macross toys and thus spoiled their plans to release a dub edition of Macross and support it with merchandise of their own. Well, obviously... they're holding out so they'll have the material handy to release another incrementally-more-complete product at the next milestone, and market it as something new and revolutionary. Betcha that the next soundtrack release, they conveniently rediscover the master tapes for all the tracks they had to have fans send them as mp3s this time around, and then throw in mp3s of another couple "missing" tracks that they haven't used yet. Harmony Gold and Robotech fans do... but, as I see it, that's the whole problem. Really, for a while now I've suspected that he never really thought that himself... it was just something Harmony Gold decided he should say because it'd serve their dual purposes of artificially inflating Robotech's perceived importance and diminish the fanbase's interest in the original shows.

Hrm... in that case, we'd better hide the VF-4ST, VF-11C w/ Armored Pack, YF-27-5, and VF-27... Wasn't the creator rationale for the VF-171 something along the lines of the VF-19 looking too much like a main character mecha? Anyway... I'm not entirely thrilled with some of the retro aspects of the VF-25 either, but the logic behind the in-universe adoption of the VF-171 is at least halfway sensible, so it doesn't bother me overmuch. (It helps that I kind of like the VF-171 design, but then I have a history of being fond of the underdog designs, so make of that what you will. ) It might just be me overthinking it or something, but I don't really see the point in the multiple rear-facing head lasers. When some can't rotate theirs forward (the VF-19F) and others just don't use 'em anymore, why bother having more than the one fixed cannon you'd need for defense? I liked the "one variant fits all" approach the VF-11 and VF-2SS had, rather than having special and distinctive variants for junior and senior officers. (There's nothing terribly safe or practical about making it obvious you're the officer in charge when you're on the battlefield, it just makes you a bigger target.) So, as I mentioned before, I could see a couple different variants... but because the laser/beam gun on the head is a fixed mount, I can't really see a plethora of alternate head gun configurations. Well, it didn't get shortchanged that badly... I mean, it was in Macross 7's series, the Encore episodes, the Macross 7 "movie", Dynamite 7, the D7 manga, the VF-X games, and even Macross the Ride. It might not grab the spotlight a lot, but it's got a pretty robust list of appearances.

An interesting thought... tho I can't imagine there would've been all that many variants of it, since the VF-22's primary focus was being as stealthy as humanly (robot-ly?) possible. IIRC, the VF-19 ended up with as many variants as it did because the initial mass production type (the VF-19A and -C) were all-regime versions that had some stability and control issues, while the second mass production type (the VF-19E?, -F, and -S) addressed that stability and control problem by simplifying the airframe design and changing the engine, while also optimizing it for use in space. There is a mention (in YF-24 material) of control issues under high g-force loads for the VF-22, so it's possible that there might've been a similar second production unit that addressed those problems. I admit, I can't really see the VF-22 with multiple head laser configurations like the VF-19's. Can't really see it with a radome either (the radome-equipped VF-19s in Master File looked goofy, IMO), and the RVF- designation seems to be something relatively recent in Macross Frontier's era (apart from a dubious variant in the VF-19 Master File). I could maybe see an -A/-B early type and -F/-S late type... not sure about a designated marksman version or a recon model. Considering what it's modeled on, maybe also a bomber type (e.g. the VB-171) along the lines of that "Jagdvogel" type in Model Graphix?

I said almost exactly the same thing when my copy of Macross the Ride: Visual Book Vol.2 rolled in a few days ago. ('s anyone else vaguely reminded of an Ingram Patrol Labor when they look at the VF-19ACTIVE's head?)

Well, it's been a while since I last re-watched Macross 7, but I vaguely recall the subject coming up in the Macross 7 Encore ep. "Which one do you love?". The one where Milia gets sick, and is convinced that she's dying, and goes a little crazy... and they conclude the episode by revealing that she's just got the space equivalent of the common cold. IIRC, at some point during that episode, Dr. Chiba says something about them not knowing how long a Zentradi's natural lifespan is. (Really, considering their usual occupation, I can't imagine "natural causes" is something that Zentradi die of very often. I know that the plot for "Blind Game" had Quamzin/Kamjin set things up by assigning a guy who due to be decommissioned to gunnery so he could justify hitting the Macross directly.) Supposedly, there are factory satellites devoted to cloning Zentradi soldiers out there... at least, according to Chronicle. She looks damn fine for a woman in her fifties, but that's not really a Zentradi thing... that's the aforementioned punny bit about "growing old is a state of mind for normal people, and he/she is a genius". I dunno if we can treat the movie/DYRLverse version of Boddole Zer as an example, since he was part of a huge freaking warship and was 120,000 cycles/years old.

Why does the Valkyrie II have intakes? Put simply, because it was originally conceived, both in-universe and from a production standpoint, as an all-regime fighter along the same lines as the original VF-1 Valkyrie. The original concept art for the VF-2, called the "VF-XS Valkyrie II" on the couple of occasions when it was trotted out for magazine promo pieces, was a more traditional design that had some distinctly atmospheric touches like air brake panels in the dorsal hull/chest plate. It was also designed with a set of Super Parts laid out like the VF-1's, with two large dorsal booster pack/missile launcher combo packs, forearm missile packs, and leg tanks. Later on, the designers introduced the concept for the VF-2JA (which inherited the "VF-XS" designation) and finished the design for the VF-2SS as what we're familiar with today... making it a space optimized Valkyrie with a less traditional set of space equipment. Four intakes are reaction engines. Can't tell ya what the intake lookin' things are in the bottom of the chest tho. According to the "VF History" piece and creator interview in B-Club 79, the VF-2 was originally designed and produced to be an all-regime Valkyrie (J and S variants are mentioned). The base VF-2S was modified for use as a dedicated space fighter, which was introduced in 2081 as the VF-2SS. The J-type was used as the starting point for development of a dedicated atmospheric VF, which became the VF-2JA and was rolled out in 2086.

Actually, a good translator's aim is to preserve the meaning and format of the original work while also rendering it in such a way that it flows as naturally as possible in the target language. Simply picking the first entry in the dictionary doesn't always do the original work justice. <_< *cough* I'm reminded of a statement about pots and kettles here... Yes, it'd be a logical enough assumption that the Vajra reclaim fold quartz from their dead, though since it's tipped as being the means by which the Vajra communicate in the series, it feels like a bit of an understatement to say that the Vajra need it to "fully participate" in their society. As far as what we were shown in the series, it was one of the large, red, adult Vajra types digging in an asteroid for a fist-size chunk of glowing pink stone. (The reference to social insects wasn't general, it was specific to their resource-gathering behavior... we both know full well the Vajra society isn't organized along those lines.) I've seen it defined as such, that's why I brought it up. 'cept in the series... y'know, that thing that all the written material is subordinate to. (Bilrer tells Alto the Vajra collect raw fold quartz from stars and other stellar material in Ep23 of the Macross Frontier series.)

Hrm... you've got a point there. I suppose the aesthetic beef with I have with it is mostly the cockpit interior... the block 6 type cockpit, with a nearly seamless wrap-around monitor of the sort we don't really see until decades later. Outside, it's pretty primitive by comparison. I still think I prefer the VF-1 tho. Very probably, yes... and a large part of that would be the affection Robotech fans have for Roy, and the way Robotech tends to exaggerate him to a Chuck Norris-y extent. I'll admit, I was slightly disappointed that the F-203 didn't make it into Macross Zero, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for me.

Yeah, yeah... and I did too. Right now, I don't have the luxury of being able to consult my binders, and have to make do with the cropped and partially cleaned-up scans that I made last year to use as art stock for future M3 updates. (It's a long story... circumstances beyond my control.) Anyhoo, the sheet in question is the Vajra world guide sheet. The one with the diagram of the Vajra life cycle on it. (Erm... telling you the publication, issue, and page number is pretty much the polar opposite of obfuscation. That's a proper citation format. There's really no need to get snippy, I'm just trying to reconcile my findings from Chronicle and the series with what you've found in a publication that isn't part of my collection. You usually bring good info to the table, and with M3 updates in the works, I just want to make sure we have the most accurate data we can get for the "Macrosspedia".)