Seto Kaiba
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Well, right off the bat I'd say the VF-171 does qualify as an improvement on the VF-17 by being a plane that even average pilots can operate well in multiple roles. Being easier to manufacture and less expensive to produce and maintain is an improvement too, if you're looking at it from an operating costs perspective. It's also mentioned that the VF-171 had improvements made to its canopy field-of-view, aerodynamics, maneuverability, avionics, and operational versatility without sacrificing the payload capabilities or the durability of the original VF-17. The production model in service at the end of the 2050s is explicitly described as surpassing the original VF-17... Admittedly, there's something to be said for that, since the VF-171 isn't especially high-performance... at least, not compared to the VF-19, VF-22, and YF-24 derivatives. Based on the "VF Evolutionary Theory" piece in Great Mechanics.DX 9, it would appear that the VF-171 was adopted in part because the UNS/NUNS didn't see the need for a super high-performance fighter until the Vajra threat materialized, and that the YF-24 and its derivatives were pushed ahead because of the (apparently justifiable) fear that the combat performance of the Vajra would exceed even that of the VF-19. So, on balance, it's not so much that the Nightmare Plus is an under-capable plane as it is that excessively high-performance VFs are necessary to match the capabilities of the Vajra. Given what's said about the VF-171 in Chronicle and elsewhere, I'd expect a 2059-model VF-171's performance to exceed that of the original VF-17 in at least some respects... not in acceleration or top speed though, given that the VF-17 is lighter and has marginally more powerful engines.
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Oh, granted... there's something deeply wrong with the Robotech fans who are willing to defend a corporate toady who abuses and insults them on a regular basis, but I'd expect nothing less from the Robotech die-hards. After all, the minute magna_mozz69 said Robotech would need the support of the casual fans and Macross fans to thrive, it was pretty much inevitable that the fanatics would be coming out of the woodwork to decry it as madness and heresy. The fanatics see themselves as Robotech's "one true fandom", and would naturally resent the idea that their support isn't enough for Robotech to be successful. Defending McKeever is more like collateral damage from the process of defending Robotech from the idea that it's not doing as well as Harmony Gold claims it is.
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Hm... well, I can't speak to why they shot it down, but I do remember Tommy mentioning that Harmony Gold had tried to sit down with Big West and hammer out some kind of licensing agreement, and that Big West politely but firmly declined. When it happened, they didn't say, but since they were apparently involved I'm going to guess sometime in the early 00's.
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Macross Official Setting and the Expanded Universe
Seto Kaiba replied to sketchley's topic in Movies and TV Series
But taking this as an absolute directive runs into a fairly glaring problem... specifically, that what Kawamori says about continuity and what he does with it don't line up. The idea that all Macross productions and media are just dramatic interpretations of history fails to hold water when Kawamori-san starts defining certain titles as belonging to "parallel world" continuities, helps pen an official series chronology that links many Macross titles together into a single timeline, or attaches his name to a publication that explicitly states its level of canonicity, etc. The soft details are interesting too, but they don't mean much if you don't have at least a reasonably clear idea of their context, and regardless of his statements about "dramatic interpretations", Kawamori hasn't exactly been a slouch about offering details of continuity. -
I'd agree with you that the legs on the VF-171 Nightmare Plus look a little too slim to accommodate the GU-14B or MC-17C gun pods internally the way the VF-17 Nightmare did. Still, since the VF-171 is a background mecha that doesn't get oodles of screen time, we don't really get a chance to see them using the gun pod in battle more than once or twice prior to the EX upgrade. The stats do say it keeps its gun pod inside the leg, and IIRC the only one we see with a ventrally-mounted gun pod is Alto's VF-171 with the extra armor mounted on the legs (and presumably obscuring the gun pod's loading door).
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Pretty much, yeah... as jasonc said, they don't really have any logical grounds for thinking that's the case, it's just that they're casting about for any excuse they can find to pretend that Robotech still matters. Robotech's die-hard fans aren't exactly known for their logical thought processes. You're right, Robotech's very nature prevents the Legion of Dim at Harmony Gold from distributing it in Japan, so as a result it's a virtual nonentity over there. Some of the Wikipedia articles for Macross mention Robotech, but for the most part Japanese Macross fans don't seem to know what Robotech is. I once tried to explain Robotech to a friend of mine from Japan who was familiar with Macross, and her response was one of bewildered disbelief that anyone would intentionally combine three totally unrelated shows for purposes other than fan-fiction. So, never then? Really, Robotech has precious little that it can call its own. Quite a bit of it is either taken whole cloth from the originals, or "inspired" by whatever shows its creative director happened to be watching at the time.
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Oh, it is... and it wasn't just the fans making absurd claims about Macross imitating Robotech as "proof" that Robotech is relevant and popular. Carl Macek himself fielded an obviously bullsh*t claim that Macross's sequels were all influenced more by Robotech than by the rest of Macross, and that in particular they were de-emphasizing the musical aspect of the franchise to be more like the Robotech series. It just underlines how arrogant and ignorant Macek and Harmony Gold were (and still are) when you notice that when he made those comments the most recent Macross sequels out there were Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7.... neither of which is exactly putting less emphasis on the music. Some of the more obtuse Robotech fans have continued making comments in that vein, mostly about Macross Frontier supposedly trying to ape the visual stylings of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles with CG planes, the glowing missile exhaust, and hundreds of other things that're downright ubiquitous these days. As you say, they're just grasping in the dark to make Robotech appear to be exactly the kind of industry-leading masterpiece they've spent 20+ years pretending it is. Heh... so, they're treading old ground again. I'd complain, but that's the status quo for Robotech. Yeah, Soruji (Sera) was only made into a humanoid about halfway through Mospeada/New Gen, so she wouldn't be present in those events. I can only assume that this is being told as a flashback, with Lancer narrating his exploits to a version of Sera who looks like a pencil that's been stuck through two grapes.
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No, it doesn't seem to have one. I've certainly never seen one mentioned in connection with it, or its reaction engine-equipped mass production version (SV-52) either. Macross the Ride gives a name to the heavily customized SV-52γ flown by the Vistula & Oder race team in 2058, which is Oryol (lit. Орёл, the Russian word for "Eagle"), but that may or may not apply to the production model SV-52 of the late 00's. I'm no expert on the Russian military, but from what I've read they don't seem too keen on giving colorful names to their combat aircraft. So, the lack of a nickname fits, given that the SV-51/52 was developed in part by Sukhoi (also IAI and Dorneir).
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More or less. It was only a couple of months after Shadow Chronicles dropped that Tommy made the announcement that a sequel was already in production at the 2007 New York Comic Con. News of the live-action movie licensing deal came out soon after that, and from then on the hype focus was on the live-action movie rather than Shadow Rising. Then, once it became apparent that they had royally screwed the pooch by indefinitely suspending work on Shadow Rising while they waited for Warner Bros to act on those live-action movie rights and improve the animated Robotech's standing by association, the focus of their hype shifted first to having Carl Macek back on board in an advisory capacity, then to his untimely death, and finally to this side-story project that was allegedly Carl's last big idea for Robotech. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that most of the hype they've been throwing out regarding this side story is meant to distract Robotech fans from the lack of forward motion on Shadow Rising and the LAM. Somehow, this doesn't surprise me. I guess just decided to massage the numbers a little so he could tell his new employers what they wanted to hear, eh? Nah... they got themselves a Twitter feed, but that's about it. I've spoken to McKeever about the lack of updates and modernization over on robotech.com a few times, and the answer I've received has always been the same. It's always something to the effect of "Why would we spend money on something that doesn't make us any money?". Why pay for what you can get for free? Maverick_LSC has never really given any indication that he's after a job, all he wants it to get the inside track on whatever's new with Robotech so he can use it to get the respect he's not getting for being a moderator. MEMO's the one who fancies a job at Harmony Gold. Neither one really has any relevant abilities to offer to the franchise. McKeever can at least pretend to be qualified for his job because of his production experience, but Maverick and MEMO's only qualifications to work on the Robotech franchise are being shameless suckups and fanatic followers of the company line.
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So... business as usual then? Really, I have no idea what you were expecting if having McKeever threaten you with a ban and then shut the thread down came as a surprise. The last thing the idiots in authority at robotech.com want is for someone who's halfway knowledgeable to come along and puncture the wishful thinking and unwarranted optimism of the Production forum with a dose of realism and unpleasant facts. Yeah, robotech.com really isn't a decent source of information. Then again, there really isn't any Robotech site out there that could honestly claim to be a wealth of information about it. It's sad, but the best site I've found so far for actually talking about Robotech without having to deal with the spin and the fandom politics has been the Palladium Books forums.
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Hm... if I were you, I'd hold off a little longer before I started taking bets on how the Legion of Dim (Tommy, Steve, Kevin) and their cheering section (Maverick, MEMO) will react when Harmony Gold either tires of their BS and fires them, or comes to their senses and decides to stop wasting time and money on Robotech when most of the world stopped caring about in 1987. So long as the prospect of a live-action Robotech movie by Warner Bros isn't a completely impossible prospect, Harmony Gold is going to keep clinging to the idea that Robotech isn't dead and that they can make it relevant again. Oh, I expect that most of them will probably remain hardcore even after Robotech has finally fallen apart. Steve might actually get to stay on after Harmony Gold axes the Robotech team, since he's apparently also involved with managing their licenses somehow. Tommy and Kevin will almost certainly do exactly what Carl Macek did after the collapse of Robotech: the Untold Story and Robotech II: the Sentinels, and hit the convention circuit to exaggerate their involvement in the creative process, to try to convince people that all of their mistakes were really part of some greater artistic vision, and to tell a couple of extravagant lies about how influential their work is in the Americas and how well-regarded it is in Japan. The Legion of Dim's cheering section will probably continue to "keep the faith" by running RTX (into the ground), censoring anyone who criticizes any aspect of Robotech and promoting the show as being the single greatest cinematic achievement in all of human history. It's a safe bet they'll probably also string the most hardcore fans along with self-made rumors and false anecdotes about how other companies are eyeing Robotech as a highly successful property and intend to pick it up and resume the story. I'm inclined to say it's a little from column A, a little from column B... he doesn't seem to be all that aware of what's going on, and he probably doesn't like having to come in and try to cover up the occasional bouts of honesty from people who outrank him. Nah, if you take Tommy's original remarks on the note at face value (which IIRC were later "Clarified" by McKeever as being just a rough estimate), RTSR should've been out in '09 or thereabouts. Frank Agrama's still CEO, as far as I can tell... Tommy's just the creative director for the Robotech franchise. I'd assume that Kevin's kept his job despite his tantrums because Tommy's even worse at lying than Kevin is, and nobody in senior management gives a flip about Robotech... (especially since their perpetually low budgets seem to reflect a distinct lack of confidence in Robotech on the part of senior management).
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Nah, it's not that remarkable... after all, there are innumerable people in marketing and middle management who've all managed to hold onto their phony-baloney jobs through this recession. Harmony Gold clearly doesn't hire people for the Robotech franchise on the basis of their qualifications, but rather on who they're related to (Steve) and who sucks up the most (Kevin). I can't imagine they would have much chance to hire qualified people anyway, since who wants to have an albatross like that dangling from his resume when applying for a job? I've never really been the convention-going type, but to me this policy of only showing promotional materials on the convention tour smacks of an attempt to get someone, anyone, to actually give a flip about the convention tour. Almost every photo I've seen of the panel audience on their little tour has been of a mostly-empty room with a handful of bored-looking 30-somethings, hardly the big, vibrant following McKeever keeps saying Robotech has. Making their promotional materials convention-exclusive is a somewhat underhanded way to get more of an audience than just the people trying to grab a good seat for the panel after theirs; and with the future of the live-action movie looking grimmer by the day, Harmony Gold needs all the help they can get to make it look like going forward with the LAM isn't a massive waste of time. Y'see... it doesn't seem like McKeever has had any kind of formal education in marketing. He doesn't seem to grasp the idea that lying to your customers only works if you take the time to come up with a believable lie. McKeever's approach to marketing is more along the lines of trying to sell seats on a ship that sank years ago. Trying to spin the facts to make the company look good is just typical PR, but fibs like that only work when it isn't painfully obvious that you're lying through your teeth and your default response to being questioned isn't "WHO TOLD YOU THAT? THEY LIE!". According to Kevin McKeever's staff bio on robotech.com, his official title is "Marketing Coordinator". Yes, it is true that he used to try to troll MacrossWorld... IIRC he got the boot when he started in with some unpleasant race-based remarks.
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So, it's just business as usual then? It's not like it's anything new or unusual to have the saner Robotech fans voicing doubts and questioning the veracity of McKeever's claims. That's been happening on a fairly regular basis since at least 2004, and there's no sign of that situation changing anytime soon. The fans have long since learned that nothing McKeever says can be trusted, as his usual response to anything that shows Harmony Gold or Robotech in a negative light is a reflex denial. By the look of things, fairly nine-tenths of his job is trying to cover the "indiscretions" of more important staffers when they accidentally tell the truth to the fans during a convention panel. He's annoying not just because he's a spin doctor... but because he's an inept spin doctor. Oh yes, that old chestnut... I guess I should brace myself for another spate of podcasts telling all five Robotech fans who listen how I'm secretly making all these rumors. Oh, that's easy! It's a lot more cost-effective to claim that you're working on a new series and then piss away a couple of years while your low-rent creative team puts together another B-movie effort by calling everyone who questions the company line a liar and then banning them. So, they're competing against themselves then? Admittedly, that would explain a LOT. Yeah, it was Tommy who said that the higher-ups put the brakes on Shadow Rising while they waited for WB to raise RT's brand awareness and improve its reputation so they could get better sponsorship deals. Essentially, he's calling Tommy a liar to cover something that doesn't look good for Robotech.
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Wait... what? Is the so-called "creative" team at Harmony Gold so intellectually bankrupt that the best they can do for new material is recapping a story they did as a comic miniseries just a couple of years ago? Hell, when Robotech's creativity is concerned the bar's set so low it's a serious trip hazard in Satan's wine cellar, and somehow they still find ways to disappoint. It's things like this which leave me wondering if Tommy starts every workday by asking himself how he can be more like the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.
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No, I don't believe they are... but then, it's not like Amway's the only company out there that relies on dishonest and dubiously legal practices to keep itself in business. Harmony Gold's questionable business practices and tenuous grasp of ethics makes perfect sense when you remember that its CEO, Frank Agrama, has ties to wonderful role models like Silvio Berlusconi. Hm... given Harmony Gold's track record, what makes you think they'd give a damn if a Macekre of Macross 7 came out looking like crap? Robotech's creative process has never been about making a product that looks good. If that was what they cared about, we would never have seen Robotech: the Untold Story, Robotech II: the Sentinels, Robotech 3000, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, etc. The one strategy Harmony Gold has stuck with through most of Robotech's long and sordid history is to make new shows as cheaply as possible and with as little original material as they think they can get away with. It's much easier for the show to turn a profit that way, and it doesn't require actual creative talent. Oh, it's easy enough to understand... some people are optimistic or naive enough to believe that a well-reasoned, evidence-driven argument will make the fanatics stop acting like complete idiots. It ends in one of three ways: they get frustrated enough to call the idiots some unflattering names and get banned, they give up and go do something else, or they grow out of their naivete and leave the Robotech fandom on the grounds that it's a lost cause.
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Uh... your wording's a little vague, but what you're asking is "Did the UN Spacy ever build more than one Grand Cannon?", right? In the original Macross, the UN Spacy broke ground on no less than five Grand Cannon systems between 2001 and 2007... though they only managed to finish one of them in time. Construction started on Grand Cannon I only two months after the theory behind the weapon was finished in 2002, and was followed in short order by Australia's Grand Cannon II and Africa's Grand Cannon III in 2004, the moon's Grand Cannon IV in 2006, and South America's Grand Cannon V in 2007. Grand Cannon I was finished in January 2010, only a month before the destruction of Earth's surface, while Grand Cannon II was destroyed by Anti-UN forces in 2005, and Grand Cannons III thru V were left incomplete when the Zentradi attacked. (If we take the ~8yr construction time into account, the Zentradi might've taken one hell of a beating if they'd attacked in 2015 and gone up against four completed Grand Cannons and a somewhat larger space fleet.)
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Italian.
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Ah, my mistake... thank you for the timely correction. Eh... that's from the video game adaptation of Macross: Do You Remember Love? for the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation. It was the mail-in gift for the game that originated the whole "black hole" thing, though it's pretty much guaranteed not to be canon to either official Macross continuity. Macross's main continuity regards DYRL? as being an in-universe historical drama/propaganda film that debuted in 2031, and Macross II's parallel world continuity doesn't recognize that game as a part of its continuity. Uh, there's a problem with that theory. Specifically, the problem is that the game doesn't belong to Macross II's parallel world continuity, and that the Mardook (correct spelling) don't exist in Macross's main continuity. Also a problem is that Ishtar believing the Macross was the Alus had nothing to do with its appearance (and mind you, it looks NOTHING like the Alus that appears in her "visions" or the Megaroad-01) but rather what Hibiki and his friend Mash told her about the ship's history after she saw the ship's early warning systems triggering its main gun to fire. Another slight problem is that the Macross wasn't unique in Macross II's timeline either, except in the obvious historical capacity. The UN Spacy built several Macross-class ships for its colonization program, as outlined in the continuity materials from Macross II's creators, and were launching them as late as the 2050s. That premise is ENTIRELY Robotech's and has nothing to do with Macross... ... and to be honest, it doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with the official Robotech continuity either. The business of having Robotech's "SDF-3" go back in time was a plot device concocted for the finale of the non-canon Robotech novel series by James Luceno and Brian Daley. It was never part of the canon Robotech continuity.
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Eh... there are in-universe explanations for some of the most obvious changes, like the DYRL VF-1 being a newer production block of the VF-1 (the TV series version being Block 5, the movie version being Block 6+), and having Exsedol return to his former size and realter his body makeup because he was afraid of losing his memories. In Macross Frontier we also see material from the TV series and DYRL being used side-by-side... the Zentradi in the 33rd Marines use a mixture of TV series and DYRL uniforms. By the opposite token, we see Milia using the same type of pilot suit from the original series in Macross 7, and in that same series seeing an actor playing the DYRL version of Britai standing next to a TV series version of Quamzin, and IIRC there's a TV series ARMD that shows up in Macross VF-X as well. On the whole, they just seem to like the DYRL designs better... and so use them instead of the TV series ones when they come up.
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Macross Chronicle's timeline sheets do consistently favor the series/OVA version of events over those of a movie version for continuity purposes.
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But isn't that in keeping with Harmony Gold USA's core values? Something along the lines of "Never tell the truth when a lie will do." or "Dishonesty is the best policy." sounds about right. I'd try... but I can't shake the feeling that envisioning yourself as a clueless prat with no common sense and no pattern recognition skills to speak of is the kind of thing that lands you a seat on the short bus. If it weren't for those clueless fanboys who'll buy anything with the Robotech name on it and breathlessly wait years for a weak Mospeada knockoff, there would be very few Robotech fans in the world. Harmony Gold deliberately cultivated a fanatic mindset in what remains of the Robotech fanbase specifically because that way they have a loyal repeat customer base that will cheerfully buy anything they make, regardless of quality. It keeps the franchise alive, if you can call it "alive", and it ensures that Tommy and friends still have their phony-baloney do-nothing jobs at the end of the day.
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Didn't realize what game you meant at first... but yes, the Playstation 2 version of the Macross: Do You Remember Love? video game was developed by Sega AM2 (Sega Amusement Machine Research and Development Department 2), the same developer that did Virtua Fighter and Shenmue.
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Tricky question... y'see, it was originally assumed that the change from "UN" to "New UN" was the result of the 2051 coup attempt depicted in Macross VF-X2. Kawamori then kind of torpedoed that idea in an interview when he said that the change from the UN Government to the New UN Government was more of a gradual affair that resulted from the UN Gov't's inability to effectively govern the increasingly spread-out masses of humanity, and the growing discontent with the centralized government... making the coup attempt more a symptom than the cause. So, at some point in the early 2050s, a combination of factors including the attempted coup and having the government reorganize itself somewhat resulted in the military reorganizing and changing its name too. Mind you, there's a little confusion as to when the names changed, for two reasons. 1.) Macross Frontier sources slip a few times and refer to the "New UN Spacy" or "New UN Government" in the early 2040s, even though neither term was used in the shows from that period. 2.) The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series referred to the re-established UN Gov't as being the new UN Gov't (with a little 'n'), though the "new" got dropped fairly swiftly and the UN Spacy never picked the "new" up in its name either, so they just kept calling themselves the UN Spacy and UN Government. The official bio information for Isamu, Gamlin, et. al. as belonging to the "UN Spacy", not the "New UN Spacy".
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More on the "have become" side... but yes. It originally just meant the thermonuclear kind, but the "modern" usage of the term in Macross also covers pair-annihilation weaponry.
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Nope... reaction weapons started out with the full name of thermonuclear reaction weapon and antimatter ones were developed later on, as per the Compendium and later Macross sources. It's a broadening of the term as technology advanced and new forms of reaction weapon were developed.