Seto Kaiba

Yeah, it does... though since the VF-171 is a background mecha for almost the entire series, the gun pod it had before being upgraded to the VF-171EX (the GU-14B) rarely appears. One would assume that it has to be kept inside the leg, since we never see a stock VF-171 carrying one externally. The only time we do see the gun pod carried externally is on Alto's VF-171EX command spec., which has additional armor on the legs that likely blocks access to the gun pod's usual internal holster. There's not exactly a surfeit of art for the VF-171 either, so none of the art I'm aware of shows munitions bays in the legs... though there is an aperture on the inside of the knee which looks suspiciously like a pair of micro-missile launchers similar to those on the underside of the VF-22.

Yup... gonna have to second that emotion the same way Xx-SKULL-ONE-xX's did. +1 again. It breaks my heart to think of what Macross 7 could've been if Gamlin had just pulled the damn trigger!

Nah... wasn't splitting hairs to begin with, just dealing with some people who are ordinarily pretty sharp that seem to be having reading comprehension issues today. To (briefly) reiterate, this was never about who had the first concept art for the VF-4's transformation or anything like that. It was about who got their completed VF-4 design and name out first... Macross II's creators beat Kawamori to the punch by ~5 years. For reasons unknown, Gubaba misinterpreted what I said to mean that Kawamori had never intended the VF-4 to have a transformation until he did the Lighting III in 1995... which would, of course, be untrue had I actually said it. Then you jumped in in medias res and tried to make it a battle of who had the first concept art rather than who finished their version first. Somehow, we got way off track from my simple statement that I'm particularly fond of the VF-4 because it has a highly colorful design history that gives it one fighter mode, but two separate sets of transformation modes and names... the first being the "Siren" version from 1992's Macross: Eternal Love Song, and the second being the "Lightning III" version from 1997's Macross Digital Mission VF-X. That's all... nothing more than that.

lol wut? It's pretty obvious from just looking at the GERWALK mode art on p66 that it's the VF-X-4. Check the airframe's "neck" between the cockpit and the wing surface... it's not nearly long enough to be the VF-4 from Macross Flashback 2012. What's right above it is also indisputably a VF-X-4 from the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series... it's identical to the clearly labeled VF-X-4 on the bottom left of the very next page, it's even drawn from the same angle. EDIT: The same goes for your linked picture... it's clearly a VF-X-4 not the VF-4 from Flashback 2012. You provided a link to concept art... not a finished design. This is not, nor was it ever, about who had the first concept art.

Uh... the VF-X-4 and VF-4 aren't the same plane, for one. Please also note that I'm not talking about "ideas for transformation", I'm talking about a finished design. There's no denying that he obviously toyed with ways that the VF-4 could transform... I would be rather surprised if he hadn't. However, there's also no denying that the completed VF-4 Siren appeared five years before Kawamori's completed VF-4 Lightning III ever did... and a good three years before he finalized his version of the VF-4's battroid and GERWALK modes. You, me, and Gubaba are kind of talking past each other... you guys are raising objections to things that aren't even part of what I'm saying. I'm not talking about who had the first piece of concept art (Kawamori, duh), I'm talking about who was first to market with a finished design and an official name for the VF-4. The finished VF-4 Siren appeared in 1992's Macross: Eternal Love Song, while the finished VF-4 Lightning III didn't appear until 1997's Macross Digital Mission VF-X... this ought to be a no-brainer.

Huh... that could be a looooooooong list. To be honest, I can't say anything for or against the recent trend of 3D movies because I only rarely go to the cinema anymore. There's just too much flash and not nearly enough substance to warrant paying eight bucks, and I just don't see the appeal. If there's one technology I can say I have nothing but loathing for, smart phones would definitely be it. I could maybe look the other way if they were a "power toy" for executives with more money than sense or business owners who actually need to be reachable at all times... but they're not. I've yet to see anyone actually using their smart phone for business purposes. The only smart phones users I see are the spoiled teenagers and twenty-somethings who suffer from a crippling addiction to whatever the social networking flavor of the week happens to be, and as a result think every insignificant detail of their lives is of vital importance to all of the 6+ billion people on Earth. After seeing the way my kid sister behaved with hers when she bought one for herself, I'm seriously convinced they're a cause or exacerbating factor in ADD. Social networking sites and services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and whatever the flavor of the week is are all equally useless in my opinion. Every time I hear about one of my friends having a facebook-induced squabble with someone, I wonder how the sheer amounts of unnecessary drama those services accumulate doesn't just collapse on itself and form a black hole. The last annoying technology trend that really grinds me gears these days is the inexplicable popularity of the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Yes, it's free... but unless you have a super premium stereo in your house, the kind with a six-figure price tag, you won't hear any appreciable difference between FLAC audio and MP3 at 320kbps. The only appreciable difference is that the FLAC file is, on average, about three times the size of the MP3 for the same song. I realize that large HDDs are cheap these days, but there's no reason to waste space storing massive lossless audio files when they're utterly indistinguishable from last-generation lossy MP3 over computer speakers. It's a waste of time, bandwidth, and storage space.

Ugh... look, if you're going to correct me, I would really appreciate it if you made sure of your facts beforehand. For starters, that "fallacy" explanation you quoted off the Macross Compendium doesn't say anything like what you're claiming it does. At no point does it say that Kawamori had already worked out a transformation for his VF-4 design. All it does say is that he always intended for the VF-4 to be transformable, something that should be self-evident given its designation of VF-4... rather than the SF-4 or F-4 we would expect from a plane that wasn't transformation-capable. Go back and read my post... never once do I suggest that Shoji Kawamori did not intend for the VF-4 to transform. For two, the idea that Kawamori had the VF-4's transformation worked out from the get-go is thoroughly and completely ruled out by his own Design Works book. If you have a copy, please open it and turn to page 68. I'd like you to please tell me the date on the VF-4's transformation line art. For those of you unwilling to wait, the sketchy transformation line art is dated March 1995... as is the completed battroid mode. The complete GERWALK design sketch on page 67 is dated April of that same year. The earliest indication that he gave any thought to how the VF-4 would transform is a chibi-VF-4 sketch that looks like a VF-1 wearing goofy shoulder pads dated May 1990. The book makes no secret that the VF-4's transformation, and the final battroid mode and GERWALK mode designs were created for the 1997 videogame Macross Digital Mission VF-X... putting the finished design in the Game and Advanced Valkyrie section.

'k... I realize I'm dusting off an old thread that hasn't seen activity for a while, but this isn't worth making a new thread and it's strictly relevant to the above-quoted translation. That the production model VF-22 uses a limited version of the Brain Direct interface System for operator assistance came as a surprise to us when we first read azrael's translation, but it turns out it's actually not a new development. After my discussion with Talos about the VF-171's size, I was idly flipping through Macross Dynamite 7: Mylene Beat and happened to pause on the page where Gamlin is doing pre-flight checks on his VF-22S before going to look for Basara. Lo and behold, the four items on his pre-flight checklist were the fold booster, verniers, thrust vectoring flaps and the BDS. The collected edition was published in August 1998, so clearly this has been there for a while... maybe that's where Chronicle's writers sourced it from?

Likewise... and I doubt that racing will be all they do, since there's already been mention of a New UN Spacy special forces unit that uses the VF-19EF Caliburn. At this point, I think it's a foregone conclusion that they'll have some kind of combat in the story. I can't imagine it would go over well with the populace at large that they'd founded an expensive special forces unit with brand new VFs just to race the guys from SMS for kicks. This is just me guessing wildly, but I can't shake the feeling this whole racing thing with EX-Gear and possibly ISC-equipped VF-19s is a way of evaluating both technologies under operational conditions to further the development of the VF-25. Bah... not likely. You made a fuss even though I pointed out that there was no evidence of inconsistency, so I humored you and checked every source I could lay hands on to see if another number was offered... and found no evidence to support the "mistake or typo" theory. I do agree the size given is odd... but that's more a topic for another thread. Speaking of, I gotta go revive the Chronicle Translations thread for an interesting VF-22-related revelation.

Uh-huh... at least, according to the size comparison in This is Animation Special #5: Macross II.

Yeah, it does... and I think I might know why. Earlier tonight, I was having a chat with Talos about the VF-171 and how it looks like it should be more than just .02m longer than the VF-17, and while I was checking a couple different publications to confirm the size given in Macross Chronicle I noticed something unexpected. In the "VF Evolutionary Theory" article in Great Mechanics.DX 9, the commentary in the VF-25 section (pp16-17) mentions that equipping the VF-19 with an inertia store converter was expected to be economical during development of the YF-24. IIRC, the VF-25 and VF-27 keep their inertia store converters in the aircraft's nose... and since the VF-19EF is already equipped with prototype EX-Gear it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that it might also be equipped with a developmental version of the VF-25's inertia store converter, necessitating the remodeling of the aircraft's nose. Easily explained... it started with "Why a monkey model", and then a possible explanation emerged that the Earth forces keep all the best toys for themselves. Terrorism entered the picture as the obvious reason they started keeping all the best technology out of the hands of the colonists.

Because the VF-4's a wicked cool design that somehow doesn't get a lot of love from the powers that be? Personally, I not only like the design of the VF-4 in fighter mode... I love the unique and bizarre place it occupies in Macross's production history. It's the only variable fighter in Macross to have one fighter mode, but two totally different in-universe histories, names, transformations, and variant lists, both of which were created after it first debuted in fighter mode in Macross Flashback 2012. Until 1992, all we had was the fighter mode and the "VF-4" designation. Macross II's creators gave it its first transformation and a VF-1-like battroid mode, equipped it with a beam rifle and honest-to-goodness Gundam-style funnels, and dubbed it the "VF-4 Siren" for the canon game Macross: Eternal Love Song. Kawamori came back to the VF-4 and finished his version, the "VF-4 Lightning III" in 1995, and it first debuted in the 1998 main Macross continuity game Macross Digital Mission VF-X. Interesting food for thought... thanks sketchley.

Just about every Macross show has a faster pace than Macross 7, partly due to its greater length and partly due to it wasting about 22 episodes before they make any progress with the plot. This is, of course, not to say that Macross Frontier's pacing is perfect or even close to it. In the first half, the show has to be dragged kicking and screaming away from its school drama for some Macross-style woosh crikey fighter action. Near the end of the series, it's like the show's creators suddenly realized they were only doing 25 episodes and had to wrap things up with almost indecent haste. Still, it balances out better than 7, though I think I agree with the oft-voiced sentiment that ~36 episodes is the "butter zone" for a Macross series. 7 could've stood to be shorter, and the Frontier series could've stood to be longer. In my experience, the very arguments you've cited in defense of the Vajra concept are usually the reasons that people cite for not liking them. In order to empathize with a character, you have to be able to understand their motivations and interactions. The human(oid) antagonists in Macross have human-like emotions, react to things in human-like ways, and have motivations that are easy enough to understand from a human perspective. The Vajra are utterly inscrutable... their motivations are impossible to understand without a humanoid character "in the know" explaining them flat-out, and they have no personality at all. They're a faceless, voiceless, generally purposeless antagonist until Grace rolls in and takes over, giving them a set of motivations we can understand. We don't find out why they've been shooting up the Frontier fleet until the very last episode, when Ranka has to explain it to everyone.

Huh... yeah, I don't recall seeing that one before. What book/magazine is it from?

Alas... that one slipped by me. I didn't even consider the others, since I was thinking more about stuff after the Space War 1 era, but those are definitely worth noting as possible (or confirmed) electronic warfare units. I am curious... could you tell me which source mentions the recon-variant QF-3000? That's a new one on me. Technically, yes... their designations label them as recon planes rather than dedicated craft for EW/AEW/ELINT roles. However, the official specs do say the RVF-171, RVF-171EX, and RVF-25 are capable of filling both early warning and electronic warfare roles. The Compendium articles even describe them as being early warning or electronic warfare variants rather than straight-up recon planes. In the RVF-25's case, there's even mention of specialized hardware for electronic warfare use (an AE-35 custom electronic warfare system booster unit in the avionics bay). We do get to see them used in this capacity in the series as well... the first VF-171 we see is an RVF model operating as an early warning unit, and I already mentioned the time Luca's RVF-171EX was used for electronic attack operations in my last post.

Sure has... there are radome-equipped versions of the VF-11C, VF-17D, VF-171, and VF-25 that are presumably capable of pulling EW duty in addition to their usual recon/AEW and ELINT duties. We do briefly get to see the NUNS using RVF-171EX's conducting communications jamming to keep the Vajra from communicating data about their new weapons to the hive mind. Mind you, I don't think there's been a specialized EW unit since the VF-1's generation... the "Funny Chinese" and "ELINT Seeker" respectively. EDIT: On the non-canon front, there are two VF-19 variants mentioned as being radome-equipped... the VEF-19D and VEF-19E. IIRC, VF-Experiment was just an original design series that was never meant to amount to anything. They didn't really do anything with either one, and Kawamori has said that they aren't part of the series chronology.

Yes, I know... I said as much in my very next sentence. The point I was trying to make was that there hasn't been any official (in-universe) line that I'm aware of to explain why the VF-25 is the only fighter in the Macross Frontier series that doesn't have internal munitions storage of some kind. Eh... well, we never really get to see either the VF-11 or the VF-25 operating in purely atmospheric combat in animated Macross features. The vast majority of the show's combat takes place in space, so when we do get atmospheric combat it's usually preceded by orbital insertion... which kind of rules out carrying wing-mounted ordinance. On those rare occasions, combat was either not expected (Macross Frontier "Fastest Delivery"), or they've equipped it with atmospheric-use super parts (see here and here). Just because we don't get to see VF-11s and VF-25s using wing-mounted hardpoints doesn't mean they can't take them. I don't know if we've had anything on that note for the VF-11, but the VF-25 has six underwing hardpoints... they're just not used because they get in the way of all three sets of super parts. As Talos stated, the VF-11C's leg bays weren't originally part of the final design... they were included in Macross 7 episode #44 "Nightmarish Invasion" as a place for the VF-11 to store the reaction weapons they were supposed to be attacking the Protodeviln with. They never actually get a shot off with them, so it all comes to nothing. Depends... there are one or two cases where the "FAST pack" moniker fits, though in most cases the "sensor" part seems to be absent. The available cutaways and detailed descriptions from various sources indicate that most of the time it's just fuel and weaponry. The one exception that leaps to mind is the APS-25A/MF25 armor packs for the VF-25, which do include a compound sensor antenna in addition to lots of missiles and fuel. The term "FAST pack" generally probably doesn't fit though... which is likely why they stick to more purpose-specific nomenclature like "super pack", "armored pack", "aegis pack", etc. depending on what the actual equipment is.

It was foisted on them when they partnered with Revell in order to support the series with Macross merchandise.

Your guess is as good as mine... the only explanation I can think of to account for it is that Shoji Kawamori said he was trying to move away from the passively stealthy silhouettes of current real-world fighters. If there is an in-universe explanation for why the VF-25's airframe seems as much a throwback as it is a next-generation unit, I'm not aware of it. The logical assumption is that the extensive use of active stealth means that they just don't need to cram everything into the interior anymore to maintain stealthiness... and the various augmentation packs are certainly far more heavily armed than any internal bays could be.

Granted, Ozma is fairly contemptuous of the New UN Spacy forces in the Macross Frontier series... but he isn't anything like impartial, being that he's a former NUNS pilot who quit out of guilt and he's being snide from behind the relative safety of a next-gen VF with battleship-grade armor and enough firepower to let him fight the Vajra on an even footing. I doubt he'd be so cavalier about it if he were the one in flying the VF-171. Eh... at the beginning of the series, SMS is still using next-gen weaponry against the Vajra. They stick to the gunpods a lot, and by all indications we're talking about AP rounds of significantly greater power in a caliber nearly half-again as large as that used by the previous generations. The description of the VF-19 "monkey model" on the website for Macross the Ride suggests that it needed significant modifications to prevent the GU-17A's greater recoil from damaging the airframe... that alone speaks to a substantial increase in firepower. Oh, I don't deny it... SMS is one "allies of justice" complex short of being Mithril. All I'm saying is that the NUNS isn't incompetent, they're just hamstrung by bureaucracy and lacking the bleeding edge weaponry necessary to be big damn heroes like SMS. ;-)

To be frank, I think it's a question of the connotations attached to terms like "rebel" and "terrorist". The handful of anti-government organizations that figure prominently in Macross stories are almost invariably the "bad guys". I suppose that, in practice, the distinction between a "rebel" and a "terrorist" ultimately comes down to whose side you're on. The use of "rebel" can carry the connotation of someone fighting the good and noble fight against an unjust or oppressive government. By the opposite token, use of a term like "terrorist" or "insurgent" usually carries the negative connotation of having used cowardly and morally reprehensible tactics to oppose the legitimate government. In the end, the reason the various anti-government factions in Macross are called "terrorists" is because the story is invariably told from the UN's side... though the groups in question always do something that ensures they richly deserve that particular label.

Oh, totally... the one thing I can't tell you is why kids love cinnamon toast crunch. 'kay... nothing's been said here that's worth getting that upset about. You were right that what's hamstringing the New UN Spacy is an excessive bureaucracy, that much is easily supportable. The only problem was the few assumptions you made based on that... e.g. that the NUNS is an inexperienced, incompetent batch of idjuts with dated and inadequate equipment. Their problem (aside from all the bureaucracy) is that they're a well-equipped and highly versatile force that got stuck fighting an enemy that gave the galaxy's greatest civilization pause for thought and only the newest and most advanced weapons (the not-approved-for-military-adoption VF-25) had what it takes to fight them on a level footing.

Oh, it went right over my head too... he and I were talking on MSN at the time, and he seemed surprised that it wasn't immediately obvious. I had to browbeat him into explaining what he meant, since I originally thought he meant something to do with ace pilot Max Ritter von Müller, another Blue Max winner from Bavaria. You actually seem to have hit pretty close to the mark without realizing it, though the only way anyone would get it right off the bat would be if they knew a fair bit about religious demographics in Germany. As I understand it, the reasoning behind his suggestion that Max might be from southern Germany is based on the size of his family... since Roman Catholicism is far and away the most popular religion around Bavaria, and the stereotype is that Roman Catholics have huge families (e.g. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life).

Huh... I could actually see them being able to use it as a music unit, since Ishtar rides in the back seat of Hibiki's VC-079 a few times in the OVA and she's the show's main vocalist. Still, I'm really curious to see how the photo mechanic is going to work in gameplay... what'll a PSP set me back if I buy it new nowadays?

Eh... from a strictly canon perspective, the SNN Valkyrie is more unarmed than the VT-1. As a flight/combat training machine, the VT-1 could theoretically be fitted with live weapons if circumstances demanded it... however, the VC-079 Civilian Valkyrie used by SNN was designed from the ground up as a civilian plane, and has neither mounting stations to take weaponry nor the onboard hardware to support missiles and gunpods and all that good stuff. Mind you, the game isn't required to follow that to the letter, but I can't imagine why they'd try to have people dogfight in the far future equivalent of a news helicopter...