Seto Kaiba
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Maybe you can help with this... I was looking at said replacement chief engineer just the other day with Talos, and we can't agree how her surname should be romanized. Is it "Bartlow" (British) or "Bartolo" (Italian)?
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Yeah, there is... it's just a matter of catching up to Mr March and cornering him long enough to get him to either build the new section out with the material I've collected for him, or at least give me the go-ahead and .psd files to do it myself. What I've got "on deck" right now in terms of art stock and/or translations includes: New Article Material in the Queue (Pending!) VF-25F w/ Tornado Pack VF-27y w/ Super Pack YF-29 Durendal YF-29 Durendal w/ Super Pack EX-Gear (SpecOps? movie ver.) Macross Quarter-class (MF25 movie ver.) Macross Quarter-class (Macross-17 ver.) Macross Quarter-class (Macross-23 ver.) Battle Frontier (movie ver.) Battle Frontier (Vajra ver.) VF-19EF "Caliburn" VF-19ACTIVE "Nothung" SV-52y "Oryol" [Eagle] VF-1X++ Valkyrie "Double Plus" Hakuna Sp. VF-19A Excalibur Brauhitsch Sp. VF-4SL Lightning III VF-9E Cutlass Berthier Sp. YF-25 Prophecy YF-25 Prophecy w/ SPS-25P/MF25 "Paladin" pack YF-27-5 "Shaher Female" ADR-04-Mk.XV "Super Defender" VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei VA-100/VBP-1 Variable Glaug (actually a Neo Glaug) VF-0 Custom "Zeek" VF-11D "Thunder Focus" Queadluun-Alma Heaven-class cemetery ship (tentative, M7T) QF-3000E Ghost manned conversion (tentative, M7T) VF-1 Custom "Refined Valkyrie" (tentative, GAV) Daedalus II-class space carrier (tentative, GAV) VF-1 Valkyrie (DYRL-II alt. history ver., tentative) 216 new fan-art pieces by Flaming Guantlet Article Updates in the Queue VF-2SS Valkyrie II VF-2JA Icarus/Ikaros VA-1SS Metal Siren VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie VC-079 "SNN Valkyrie" Defender EX Phalanx Custom Tomahawk II Giant Monster GERWALKroid Actually, that's another thing for which improvements have been talked about... specifically, cleaner, higher-quality scans of the mecha from Macross Frontier. Speaking of... if anyone knows of a publication that contains reasonably large, clean art or CG models for Michel's VF-25G w/ Tornado Packs and/or the version of the VF-171 Nightmare Plus w/ the EX version's super packs from Sayonara no Tsubasa, please shoot me a PM telling me what book or what magazine and issue so we can import that in the near future.
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I'll level with ya here... I have no bloody idea. Actually, this is (part of) a topic that's come up a lot lately in my chats with other Macross Mecha Manual contributors. I've been importing the relevant art books and other materials to put together sections for the Macross Frontier movies and the new stuff from Macross the Ride, and trying to stay on top of things with my own translations, but I'm uneasy about the idea of editing M3 without first getting the go-ahead from Mr March. It's his site, after all... I just provide the administrative services and some of the translations and art stock and the like. It's been a few weeks since I last talked to him, but when I do I'll be sure to raise the subject and see what we can do. I've got the site design know-how to do most of it myself, but the art side of things (like image clean-up) is entirely beyond my skill set. There's also been a little talk about how to treat stuff from manga like the Macross 7 Trash series or Macross the First. I've also put a little time in against the task of going over M3's existing coverage to see what needs to be updated/revised, and there are a bunch of other updates that are basically ready to roll... enhancements to the Macross II section, and a whopping 216 pieces of fan art by Flaming Guantlet that are long overdue to go up.
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Well, for starters, Variable Fighter Master File isn't part of the official Macross setting... the note on the credits page at the back of the book says as much. As far as Skull squadron's status in the official setting is concerned, all I've got for you is a great big shrug. Hikuru's skull squad is, AFAIK, still MIA along with the rest of the forces attached to Megaroad-01. Certain other squadrons were likely named after it later on, such as Max and Milia's "Dancing Skulls" and S.M.S.'s Skull team, but I don't think we've ever seen anything of the real Skull squadron since Flashback 2012.
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How does that old saying go? An infinite number of monkeys working at an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare? The rest of them are writing Robotech scripts.
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They can't connect the dots because there aren't any dots to connect, so they "manufacture" a few to get conversation rolling and provide what they fondly imagine is a passable imitation of progress in the Robotech franchise. Ah, thank you. The vast majority of them are 30+, yes. IINM, isn't the average age of an active Robotech fan over 32 now? What little's left of their fanbase in the wake of Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION's purges of anyone who has an opinion or is even a little knowledgeable about Macross are the vestiges of the '85er crowd and the South American contingent. Unfortunately, ailments like being a conspiracy nut with poor pattern recognition skills or just having a terminal case of the stupids aren't age-bounded behaviors.
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Meh. In the unlikely event that the live-action movie does come out at sometime in the distant future, it'll likely be the same kind of low budget, direct-to-video atrocity as Starship Troopers 2. No idea. A few years ago, there was a rumor going around that Harmony Gold's contract with Maguire Ent. over the live action movie rights had a short fuse expiration date that already passed, but I don't know if there was ever anything to that.
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According to Macross II's creators, it's set in 2092. Macross Ace wasn't the first publication to get the date wrong for the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA either. In the early 90's, the American licensee distributing Macross II got it into their heads that the OVA was set in 2089, a number which was picked up by the authors of the Macross II role-playing game (Palladium Books) and the distributors of the Macross II manga (Viz Media). In Macross Chronicle's timeline sheet for Macross II, the date is also listed incorrectly as 2091... which might have been a joke at the OVA's relationship to Gundam, by placing it in the year 0079 on the New Era calendar.
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Yep, that's the impression I've gotten from my talks with various people in the fandom and on the business end of things. They did pretty well for themselves with the Legacy set and the extras-free collected edition of same, "Robotech Remastered" wasn't selling worth a damn, the "Protoculture Collection" enjoyed lukewarm sales primarily because of the extra features from the old Legacy set that somehow got missed out of "Remastered", and now the A&E edition isn't selling worth a damn because almost anyone who would've ordinarily bought a copy already owns one of the previous remastered editions and isn't willing to spend another $80 to buy the same damn thing in a slightly different box with minimal new content. In my more recent interactions with active Robotech fans, the general opinion of the set seems to be "It's not worth it"... which tends to be motivated by the knowledge that even though it has more "features", it has less actual content. Ouch... yeah, that seems like a pretty damning indicator of "Not selling". Out this way, in Palladium's backyard, the few stores which carry anime haven't even bothered to stock the A&E edition. The few of them that carried Robotech DVDs have unsold copies of Robotech Remastered and the Protoculture Collection sitting on their shelves gathering dust. The same copies, I'm reliably informed, that have been there since those particular releases came from the distributor. Seven years? That's peanuts to a die-hard Robotech fan. After all, the true faithful waited almost two decades for Robotech to fart out a single, anemic direct-to-video "movie" to continue the disjointed collection of plot holes and spelling errors they all too often mistake for an actual story. Considering what happened in the intervening time, I'm not sure if that's patience or a lack of basic pattern recognition skills, but if they're still hanging on after almost thirty years with nothing to show for it, another couple years shouldn't dissuade them overmuch. More times than any sane person's brain can recall without shutting down in protest... it helps that the people doing all of that speculating are somewhere on the spectrum between "spectacularly dense" and "brainwashed and crazy". From the public announcement that the live-action movie rights had been picked up? Five years next February or thereabouts. On balance, it's really not all that surprising that they've developed a bad habit of posting uninformed speculation and trying to blur the line between their wild guesses and fact. It's the only way they can maintain interest in the project and the franchise in the absence of any actual progress. Yes, they lie and distort the facts... all in an effort to convince themselves that Robotech isn't a complete non-entity that the world forgot sometime around 1987, and that they haven't wasted years (decades) waiting patiently for a comeback that isn't coming.
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Oh, I don't doubt it... what I doubt is that the ones presently making a fuss over the "large Alpha" will ever be among them. The Robotech fans raising that particular stink are fairly dead-set against the OSM, to the point where some seem to find the idea of Robotech drawing on OSM stats and such deeply offensive... which is bloody stupid in my humble opinion.
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Color me baffled, but it's taken this long for you to realize that Maverick_LSC is a complete and utter moron? I would've said you'd only need two or three of his posts to be completely convinced that he's a lead paint-drinking imbecile. That post of his on RobotechX was the first time I'd bothered paying any attention to that passel of idiots, and I have to say I'm almost disappointed. He's so far gone he actually thinks that parting shot was witty. As far as the content of his speculation is concerned, the desperation is so thick on his post that you could cut it into blocks. Like all avid Robotech fans these days, he has no real way to maintain interest in the franchise except by wildly speculating. Engaging him at all isn't worth the effort, it'd just be having a battle of wits against an unarmed man. There's just no sport in it. Even verbally abusing him for his stupidity seems like a waste of effort. That his increasingly unrealistic hopes will all ultimately be dashed feels like punishment enough for his jackass behavior. Other Robotech fans at least occupy themselves with behavior that's less idiotic, though no less futile. In the absence of any actual developments from Harmony Gold, the Robotech fans have once again turned on themselves in a desperate last-ditch effort to convince themselves the series is still viable. This time, the complaint du jour is that Harmony Gold has neglected all manner of viable "official" designs that could set Robotech apart from the original shows... basically meaning they just wanna canonize more animation errors. Right now, the error they're saying should be a real thing is the scene from the climax of the Genesis Climber MOSPEADA series where a Dark Legioss is accidentally drawn larger than it should be. It's kept them busy arguing that a whole new class of jumbo "Alpha fighters" needs to be added to Robotech's continuity. Just the story treatment, IIRC... they've never gotten beyond that or indicated that they'd even chosen a treatment out of the ones that they hired writers for.
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Well, the whole "DYRL is a movie within Macross" thing comes, in part, from the Macross 7 television series... the cast party for that "Lynn Minmay Story" docu-drama they're filming in-series makes reference to it (visually), and there's a mix of designs from DYRL and the original series present as well (DYRL Britai next to series Kamjin, etc.). Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! had posters for the movie show up in Emilia's "house" as well. A couple of print sources also talk about it, giving details of when the movie was filmed in-universe and, to a certain extent, how it was filmed... a West Point-class training ship standing in for DYRL Boddole Zer's mothership, etc. As far as the mixing of DYRL and original series design aesthetics, I don't think "the powers that be" have ever really given any kind of comprehensive answer. I'm not sure if Macross 7 was the main source of it, but there are several official answers as to why certain DYRL visuals were adopted... such as Exsedol's DYRL appearance being used in the series, or the series version VF-1 being an early production block and the DYRL version being a later block. I don't think we really need a statement direct from the hory froating head for this one... it happens too often and in too many titles on the official timeline for there to be any doubt as to whether that's the case. (After all, we started seeing designs from the original series and DYRL used side-by-side back when we saw DYRL Nousjadeul-Gers holding series VF-1Js "hostage" on the target range in the Macross Plus OVA, and the tendency to mix and match designs only got more blatant and prolific as time went on.)
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Yeah, they have... 8km x 3km, IIRC.
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Uh... what? As Talos pointed out a few posts back, there is no VF-19C in this movie. Isamu's VF-19 from his brief cameo in Sayonara no Tsubasa is never referred to as a "VF-19C". It's never referred to any more specifically than "VF-19" in the movie's Official Complete Book, and the blurb about it in Great Mechanics DX.17 refers to it as a "VF-19 S.M.S. Isamu [Version/Spec]". The novelization refers to it as the VF-19ADVANCE Excalibur Advance. To date, the only VF-19C's we've seen are the one in Master File (not official setting) and the Macross Galaxy fleet-specific model in Macross the Ride. -
The VF-24? The YF-24's the one all the information's about... which comes from a variety of sources, incl. Great Mechanics DX, Chronicle, and some magazine articles. I don't think there's been any hard data on a production model of same except what's in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. Master File mentions up thru a VF-24A, but that's not canon. In part... it's mostly to do with the New UN Gov't not wanting to let the best toys fall into the hands of the colonies. That's why they were given a partial YF-24 Evolution spec and told to run with it, resulting in the VF-25 and VF-27. IIRC, that info comes from Great Mechanics DX.9 and/or Otona Anime #9.
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Eh... it's actually a lot clearer than folks here are making it out to be. Kawamori's notoriously evasive on the subject of the whole Series vs DYRL thing, but the official publications do a lot to offset his reluctance. In the past, his general position has been that the "truth" of Space War 1 is somewhere between the two versions we see... tho the timeline published in Macross Chronicle indicates, for the most part, that the series version is "correct" at least for continuity purposes. There are explanations in-universe for why some of the DYRL designs supplanted their TV series versions, such as the Macross w/ ARMDs being the result of a repair/retrofit operation (and later, the mass production type), or the VF-1s from the series and movie being the early and late production block versions of the same aircraft. When it comes to the design aesthetics, both versions are typically "correct" and can even be seen side-by-side in the animation in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier. Macross as a whole takes a fairly flexible approach to continuity and canon, but there's usually a good deal of overlap or some kind of explanation when there are multiple versions of a particular story. (As a side note, Macross II: Lovers Again and the other titles of its "parallel world" continuity are the exception to the rule. Theirs is, appropriately enough, a more Gundam-like approach to defining continuity with no ambiguity as to which version of the Space War 1 events is the right one.)
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That's a very important point, because HG has really been taking advantage of this and people generally don't care about the differences. Yeah, that's an ongoing problem with Robotech... and it's a misconception that Harmony Gold has put a fair amount of time and effort into cultivating, partly because it gets them kudos they don't deserve and partly because it discourages the people who're unaware of the truth from exploring real Macross. It just goes to show that ignorance is about the only thing that kept Robotech limping along since 1987 or so...
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Kind of... that's how it was back in the 90's, back before there was anything like official information on Robotech. Lots of fans (mistakenly) treated the Robotech RPG as a sort of encyclopedia and technical manual for the series, mainly because back in those days it was pretty much the only publication providing any level of detail about the Robotech setting, characters, mecha, etc. It wasn't until the Robotech fandom went online that they started to get alternatives... the uRRG and, later, the Infopedia. Nowadays, the "mainstream" fandom doesn't see the Palladium RPG as a valid source of information at all... even though the new books have supposedly been vetted for accuracy by Tommy. Most fans adhere to the popular position that the only stuff that counts in the rebooted Robotech continuity are the "original" series, the Shadow Chronicles movie (and related material), and the Wildstorm comics. They've cottoned onto the uRRG's stance that the RPG is nice, but completely unreliable when it comes to what's what because of all the liberties taken with the material in the name of game balance... if not because of the contradictions that crop up between even the new, vetted version and the official materials published around the same time.
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But they already have Palladium Books. Ugh... no, the problem with Palladium Books isn't as simple or straightforward as being a creatively and/or ethically bankrupt outfit trying to keep a decades-old bad idea limping along on life support in an industry they don't understand. Based on my experiences with them, Palladium Books isn't a bad company by any means. IMO, their main problem is a mixture of laziness, overestimating their capabilities, and phenomenally bad luck. QFT. Odd coincidence, I was actually having a discussion about exactly this with Talos just the other day. I've never been a fan of Battletech and/or Mechwarrior, mostly because the fecking awful mechanical designs put me off the prospect. The designs I remember were uniformly awful. Like the kind of thing a middle school kid with a surfeit of graph paper might draw if he were really bored and short of artistic merit.
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Emulating alien technologies in Macross
Seto Kaiba replied to RedWolf's topic in Movies and TV Series
Hm... I think you've got the right idea, but rather the wrong culprit. As miles316 pointed out, the old man was a geneticist who studied the people of Mayan. The defector with all the VF know-how was Roy's mentor, D.D. Ivanov. Totally... esp. since Macross Chronicle teased us a little by throwing several of the Advanced Valkyrie designs into the Variable Fighter "genealogy" chart, incl. the VF-X-7. I'd prefer it to be in a canon source, but I'll cheerfully take something like Master File if they do it first. -
Emulating alien technologies in Macross
Seto Kaiba replied to RedWolf's topic in Movies and TV Series
IIRC, it only talks about the specific development, capabilities, and service history of the SV-51 itself... Which is all well and good, but doesn't address the actual point of contention... namely, the circumstances under which the UN acquired the variable system. Nora isn't saying that they developed a working VF before the UN did. She's saying that the UN "obtained" the technology that makes the transformation possible and/or the design concept from some company or group with ties to the AUN. Nothing you've quoted there renders that assertion impossible. -
Emulating alien technologies in Macross
Seto Kaiba replied to RedWolf's topic in Movies and TV Series
Eh... I don't think we can definitively say that Nora was lying or twisting the truth here. Granted, OTEC was the agency responsible for researching the alien technology from the Macross... they just weren't the only ones developing practical applications of their discoveries. It's entirely possible that she's telling the truth, and that the variable system was developed by a company either in her homeland or one of the companies involved in the development of the AUN's mecha, and was legitimately appropriated by the UN for its weapons development programme. As a national separatist, Nora'd definitely be inclined to see it as theft because she's opposed to the UN and thus any technology-sharing initiatives it may have initiated. -
Well, duh... drop a bombshell like that in a place like this, and it's pretty much inevitable someone'll call you a madman. Still, in all seriousness, the plot outline for Shadow Rising and the eventual conclusion of what we'll call "the Shadow saga" isn't a particularly enlightening read. A lot of what's in it is just facepalm-worthy, in all the worst ways. (I particularly love how the freshly reincarnated Zor's solution to the whole plot is "I'll build a big damn gun!".)
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Emulating alien technologies in Macross
Seto Kaiba replied to RedWolf's topic in Movies and TV Series
Blew your mind, did I? D.D. and Nora say otherwise in Macross Zero... in one of their conversations in the OVA, they say something to the effect that the UN didn't develop the variable system on its own, but rather acquired it from its original creators. I'd have to dig out my M0 Blu-Rays to be sure of the exact line, but that's probably what Kurisama is talking about. No problem. -
Eh... really, calling that leaked document a "script" for Shadow Rising is obscenely generous. It's actually nothing but an outline of the story for "Shadow Chronicles Part II" that covers and conveys the salient bits of the story. The leaked document also had some brainstormed plot points for the conclusion of the OVA (Part III and/or IV), which gives the impression that they were trying damn hard to imitate Macross. The whole affair is only like five and a quarter pages long. Buddy, that alone makes you certifiable.