Seto Kaiba

Okay, yeah... I'll admit that was awesome, even though I have no bloody clue what was going on... I lol'd IRL when I noticed that the gunplay portion of the fight choreography starting at about 2:30 in is... move for move... copied from that weak Christian Bale movie Equilibrium... right down to the pose they do with the pistols before going on a shooting spree.

IIRC, it was one of the earlier issues of Mecha Press... and it was not terribly edifying. The one they really dug into on that front was the mega-particle weapons in Gundam, since even back then there was a boatload of data on Minovsky physics.

Indeed... and this particular problem isn't necessarily limited to only those Macross titles created by Kawamori and company. Even though the VF-2SS Valkyrie II's anti-aircraft lasers face forward like those of the VF-1, we almost never see them used in combat. The only noteworthy occasions were in the OP and the first big battle scene, and otherwise they seem to prefer the more visually impressive railguns and Itano Circus-style missile attacks for drama's sake. ... the only noteworthy main timeline exception to which being the VF-27 and its crazy huge beam rifle. Even in the Macross II parallel world continuity, when slugthrowers were in danger of obsolescence they were replaced with more powerful and advanced slugthrowers in the form of railguns instead of the beam weaponry they had toyed with on the VF-4ST some fifty years prior. Not that I'm aware... sketchley might know, since he digs into a wider variety of stuff than I do. There may be an answer for that question in Macross Chronicle Technology sheet 06A, but I don't think anyone's tackled that one yet. I'll dig it out and check in a little bit. EDIT: No... doesn't look like it offers any significant detail on that front. Sorry. Some do, some don't... it depends on which model of powerplant the Octos was equipped with. Early in their production run, they were equipped with composite armor and powered by diesel turbines and fuel cells, and later models were equipped with energy conversion armor and powered by thermonuclear reaction turbines. It's unclear whether it was only the ones produced by the UN Spacy after the war had reaction powerplants or the later Anti-UN models did too. Either way, they seemed to have enough juice to fuel a pair of 12.7mm beam machine guns.

Eh... the visual evidence in the various shows is generally pretty favorable as far as the effectiveness of head-mounted laser weapons goes. Admittedly, they don't get a whole lot of use after Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?, but that's mainly because they changed roles slightly and from around the VF-5000 on they were chiefly concerned with covering the VF's blind spot and providing it with a way to strike back at an enemy on its tail in a dogfight. We seldom see them used in that capacity, but when they are they generally make whoever was doing the tailing get the hell out of the way (be it Guld or the Vajra) at the very least. When we see them used offensively, they seem to do a good job cutting holes in starship hulls or shooting down Zentradi pods. Something we're all too aware of... see the notation under the entry for "Laser" in the Macrosspedia... or TVTropes if you're in the mood for humor.

There's no arguing necessary there... the Octos units that'd been equipped with reaction powerplants did have energy conversion armor. It's unclear if the ones that we see in Macross Zero did, but remember that Roy's VF-0 is working from a significantly less capable powerplant than the mass-produced VF-1 was. They're shown to be at least effective enough to shoot down missiles on the fly, so their reduced power in a test machine isn't all that much of a hindrance. Destroids don't have to worry about keeping themselves light enough to fly, so they can also afford to take much heavier composite armor even if they don't have the powerplant necessary to run an energy conversion armor system. Not necessarily... we seldom actually see variable fighters using their beam weapons in combat, since there are very few models that carry them, but we have seen at least a few instances of rapid fire beam weapons. The one that leaps most readily to mind outside of Macross Frontier is Gamlin's little shooting spree against all those VA-3s the Galactic Whale poachers used in Macross Dynamite 7. In Macross Frontier there are a few that are explicitly identified as either "beam machine gun" or "rapid fire beam gun", which would mean their use as a rapid-fire weapon is to be expected... like the engine nacelle guns on the VF-27, or the hip/intake guns on the VF-25 and the ball turret guns and supplemental hip/intake guns on its Armored Packs. Um... the VF-25 doesn't have any laser weaponry. Excluding its gun pod, the guns built into the airframe are all beam weapons... at least before the Anti-Vajra MDE retrofit when the hip/intake beam machine guns were changed out for high-speed conventional machine guns. It's established in the series (and then harped on at some length) that the Vajra adapt to the weapons used against them... so that conventional beam weaponry doesn't work very well against them is no surprise, as they'd been having similar weapons used against them by the fleet's VF-171s and Ghosts since way back in episode 1... if not further.

Eh... I may be a fairly recent addition to the Macross Mecha Manual's contributors, but I think I can offer the clarity you seek. To be precise... it wasn't a decision on Mr March's part to use "beam gun" or "beam cannon" in the M3 entries for Macross Frontier's mecha. It's that those were the terms used in the official material that provided the stats for the show's mecha... including Macross Chronicle. Given that the terminology for previous models of VF went unchanged and that the specs for the VF-19 present a case where it's clear that they're not two names for the same technology, this appears to be an intentional change in technology rather than a shift in terminology. To illustrate, the terms are generally spelled out in kana... the "laser machine gun" used on the VF-0 gets spelled (レーザー機銃), while the "beam machine guns" used on the VF-27 and such are spelled (ビーム機銃). The choice of terminology there was on the part of the writers rather than the translators. Nah... we've seen some pretty small-scale ones in the past. Putting aside the question of the Tomahawk's two big beam guns, there's the beam guns on the VF-4, and the ones on the YF/VF-19, and those fitted to the head and forearms of the VF-22. They haven't exactly been super-common on VFs in the past, but they have been at scales usable by VFs for a while now. I dunno about that... the Mauler RÖV-20 anti-aircraft laser guns on the VF-1 were reasonably effective against Zentradi mecha in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. In, I think, the third episode of the TV series we see Roy destroy a Regult with nothing but a short burst from his VF-1S's four laser guns. This is my impression of things, but I would guess that the VF-0's laser machine gun probably wasn't all that effective in use against the Octos because of the limitations of the VF-0's powerplant more than anything else. After all, those VF-0s don't have the colossal 1300MW power supply provided by the VF-1's two reaction engines to draw on.

Yeah... it's the logical suggestion for a question like that. The problem is that it only covers the most prominent flying KLFs in the series, the ones used by named (and plot armored) characters and United Federation's grunt mecha. The handful of other sources I was able to turn up on short notice either confined themselves to using text-only descriptions of the main mecha, or only covered the ones used by the Gekkostate rebel movement in excruciatingly brief detail.

Unfortunately, no... the only website I'm aware of that makes even a token effort to cover the mecha of Psalm of Planets Eureka Seven is MAHQ, and their coverage of the series is spotty at best. The "Ground KLF" you've found isn't a design they have listed for the series, and I haven't been able to find any description matching the mecha you're inquiring about on the Japanese wiki. Admittedly, it's been a while since I last saw Eureka Seven (entirely intentional... I hated that show), but I don't recall seeing anything like that in the series proper. If it is actually a mecha from that series, it may only show up briefly... or it might belong to one of the Eureka Seven videogames that hasn't been covered by MAHQ yet. On your behalf, I popped over to a few image boards and took a look through their Eureka Seven content in the hopes of finding both the original picture you're inquiring about and a name for the mecha. While I was unable to find a name to attach to that particular unit, I did find the original picture and a second image that I believe might be its robot alt-mode, or at least the alt-mode of one of its close relatives. I'm just guessing here, but it looks a little bit like an early version of the Mon-Soono series brightly colored wake-boarding KLF, which would fit... since that thing in the foreground of the robot mode image is the prototype version of the main character mecha "Nirvash typeZERO". The one in the background behind the robot-mode mecha in question looks to be the Terminus typeR909. Yeah... it's not much of a stretch to say that Psalm of Planets Eureka Seven draws rather heavily on Neon Genesis Evangelion for "inspiration". The three principal characters of the series (Renton, Eureka, and Anemone) are, to be honest, thinly camouflaged copies of Evangelion's leading trio (Shinji, Rei, and Asuka respectively), and based on my impressions of the series the story draws on a lot of the same sort of themes and plot devices too. About all that made it tolerable for me was that the leader of the renegade former soldier surfer group (Holland Novak) kicks the crap out of Renton for being a whiny, cowardly, self-righteous little snot on more than one occasion.

It'd certainly be a nice change of pace if the idiots who've been put in charge of the Robotech franchise had the wherewithal to either make a significant investment in Robotech and turn it into something worthwhile that can stand on its own merits, or give up on Robotech and sell their rights to the original shows to a more competent distributor. What's keeping the Robotech "creative team" at Harmony Gold from either staging a comeback for Robotech or having it go out in one last blaze of suck is that everything they do has to go through their senior management for approvals. They'll never do anything drastic because drastic things might imperil their safety net of fanatic fans and their ability to keep their main competition out of the market by sleazier means.

Y'know... I'm really glad you chose to qualify that statement with "or later", though it probably would have been more accurate to say there might be something new coming maybe. It would hardly be the first time that a new Robotech animated feature was announced and then died a humiliating death. In practice, I suppose it'd be the fourth... the fifth if you're in the mood to count the indefinitely-stalled Shadow Rising as another failure. To put it bluntly, there's no guarantee that this as-of-yet unnamed side story is even going to come out. That they put a "coming soon" button on their website and run the same useless hype over and over again doesn't mean much. Even if they do somehow manage to see it through to completion, that just means they've succeeded in wasting a fair bit of time and money on a smokescreen to disguise their lack of forward motion in same story that they've been spending the past 25 years trying and failing to tell. Granted, a documentary "commemorating" the editing process that shat Robotech into being is about as close to inevitable as it gets for Robotech releases... but that's not a sign that they're trying to drag the whole Robotech franchise back from the brink, that's a clear indication that they have no idea how to move forward. It wouldn't be a stretch to call the Robotech franchise a washed-up old mess that spends its days reminiscing about the good old days when people actually took it seriously.

Eh... given the "testimony" of an infinitely more reliable and straightforward Harmony Gold employee from around that same time, I don't think there's any room for doubt over the actual meaning behind Tommy's typically awkward and misleading choice of words. Tommy has always fallen back on awkwardly worded answers whenever he's put on the spot. He's a lousy public speaker and a worse liar, and that makes it pretty easy to find the truth buried in the waffling cr*p if you know not to trust him. I think Jason had it right when he said:

No... but coincidentally that is on the list of titles I was looking at watching in the near future. Hulu won't stop pestering me about it whenever I go there. Certainly a vehement denunciation of the second series...

Eh... sorry to say this, but that's just plain incorrect. In point of fact, it wasn't until after their legal scare tactics started that series of copyright confirmation lawsuits between Big West and Tatsunoko Pro. that Harmony Gold contacted Tatsunoko and discovered Tatsunoko was sitting on DYRL's merchandising rights, which they then licensed. The source of this anecdote was Tommy Yune himself, in one of the convention panel videos on YouTube. The reason they went back and got the rights to do merchandise for DYRL is obvious... they wanted to keep other companies from doing an end-run around all their bullsh*t by distributing DYRL VF-1 toys instead.

I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not... But yeah, it's like they say... "variety is the spice of life". It's not the first time I've overdosed on mecha shows either... back around January a few friends and I tried to marathon through the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise's Universal Century timeline. 'round about the time we got to Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, we were ready to quit because of the recurring themes of grimdark and whiny teenage boys. This time it was just being overcome by stock cliches common to almost every mecha show... Seitokai Yakuindomo (lit. "Student Council Staff Members") turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. It's kind of lewd, as comedies go, but it doesn't do it to excess and it's mainly a play on how hormonal high school kids generally have filthy minds than anything else.

Eh... really? I think that might be pushing it a bit, as I rather enjoyed The Big O II. Right now, I'm feeling kind of burned out on mecha shows. I'd only just finished re-watching Genesis Climber MOSPEADA when the first batch of decent-quality subs for Macross Frontier: the False Songstress came out, and after going through that five or six times at the behest of various people I'm kind of in the mood for a change. For now, I'm setting off in search of some lighthearted comedy. Kinda struck out with Fate/stay night - Unlimited Blade Works... anyone who wants to complain about the way they handled the pacing of the story in Macross Frontier: the False Songstress really ought to give the Unlimited Blade Works movie a try so they can see what it's like when you REALLY screw up a compilation movie. Unlimited Blade Works is a compilation movie so poorly put together that any viewer who hasn't played the game and/or seen the anime series has pretty much zero chance of understand what's going on. The story flows as smoothly and naturally as a river of bricks. Its unnerving habit of leaping from one major event to the next with no intermediate context leaves the whole affair feeling like you're watching a YouTube collection of video game cutscenes than a coherent movie. The shifts between scenes occur with an almost audible "clunk", and compressing seven days of events into two hours has the sun rising and setting so often in the void between scenes that you'd swear the days are at most fifteen minutes long. Great animation and action sequences, but about the only way to understand the film is to already know what's supposed to be going on. Right now, I'm finishing up a comedy called Seitokai Yakuindomo.

QFT Nah... it still has its uses... even if it is just repeating the same answers to the same questions every couple of months. Eh... if you take Harmony Gold's account into consideration, that's exactly what they say happened... that all the Macross licensing in the mid-90's slipped right by them uncontested because nobody was minding the store. I'm personally more inclined to think that they never honestly thought that their license to the original Macross show granted them rights to all subsequent productions... I've always suspected that it's a claim they made up on the fly to facilitate the legal scare tactics they later used on importers of Macross goods, and that they didn't expect anyone woul ever actually challenge it.

Yes, you do remember correctly... I didn't think we were counting ancillary stuff like that though. I'm not going to comment on them at length, because the ensuing rant will be worthy of a small novel, but I will say that in terms of their content it would be a stretch to call any of the five volumes an actual Macross II release.

Last time I checked, those two shows didn't even belong to the same Macross continuity... which isn't really the point I was making anyway. The point was that it was the creators of Macross II: Lovers Again (and its prequel games) that introduced those design innovations to Macross anywhere from 2-16 years before Kawamori used them in his designs. No... this is the pose from the TDK t-shirt, albeit recycled with the addition of an awkwardly-drawn Minmay so it could be reused as promotional art for their convention tour. No clue where Xx-SKULL-ONE-xX got his avatar from... I really wish we had official art for this one... I know someone out there (I think it was a MW member) did his own design for the VF-5 based on the Convair F2Y Sea Dart a while back. If we actually had anything on the VF-5, I might cast my vote for it too...

's just an occupational hazard of dealing with well-meaning Macross bookworms like me and sketchley... don't worry about it. Eh... I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. There's no denying that Macross II: Lovers Again and Macross 7 are both somewhat polarizing Macross titles and the subject of no small amount of contention, but most of the fans here on MacrossWorld don't raise a fuss about either when they're being talked about. No sense in letting the griping of a few rude folks ruin your enjoyment of any Macross title you like. Still, as something of a Macross II expert myself, I have to say a good deal of the complaints about the OVA I've run into tend to have their roots in misconceptions about the setting... and understandably so, since the pair of prequel games and most of the published materials explaining the setting never made it outside Japan. It also didn't help that the well-meaning licensees in the US (US Renditions, Palladium) resorted to wild guesses when the tiny fraction of the official information they had access to didn't tell them what they needed to know. Nah... no need, you've covered all the major ones from the main Macross continuity. That's plenty to work with right there. You had a reason for leaving the Macross II ones out, so I'll cast my vote for the Stonewell/Bellcom VF-4 Lightning III on the grounds of its unconventional airframe design, being the first to implement beam guns instead of a gunpod, having those semi-recessed missiles, and having three separate main engine systems, all of different types... (which isn't quite as messed up as noting that it's the only VF in all of Macross that has two completely different canon names, battroid modes, and transformations designed by two different people)

Hey... what gives? Where are the Macross II Valkyries? Some of the design innovations that show up in the main continuity's VFs first appeared on the fighters created for Macross II: Lovers Again and its videogame prequels... like a support armature in the cockpit to help pilots function better under high g-force loads, the ability to control multiple drone fighters from a single VF, mounting two gunpods on one VF (and using them both at the same time), using a beam rifle as a gunpod, making railguns standard equipment on VFs as gunpods and heavy cannons, mounting a second pair of reaction engines on a VF for improved performance, application of Zentradi overtechnology in a human-built VF, etc.. At the very least, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II and VA-1SS Metal Siren ought to have made the list, since they did almost all of those things first... (kudos for first beam rifle and first use of remote weapons on a VF goes to their predecessor, the VF-4ST Siren). (If they can't be added due to topic constraints, I'll cast my vote for the VF-4 as the first VF to mount beam weaponry in lieu of a gunpod, the first to have hull-conformal missiles, and the first to use more than one type of engine system... reaction engines, rockets, and ramjets.)

Not really... at least not as far as I can recall. Transformers was kind of scattered affair anyway, which made it rather hard to credit any one person or group of people for it entirely. It's not quite like Macross or Gundam or even Star Trek and Star Wars, where there was one person or one specific group of people who could be easily picked out as a very prominent figure in the creative process... (Kawamori, Tomino, Roddenberry, and Lucas respectively). I try very hard to forget him... You've known me for seven years and you can't spell my screen name right? Also, no... my avatar is EFGF Colonel Corematta from Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO 2: The Gravity Front.

Dude... if you're gonna drop acid before you post, at least give us a little warning. That's one bad trip you're on.

United States of America Super Dimension Fortress Macross - Japanese Audio / Subtitled (AnimEigo, 9 DVDs) - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (ADV Films, 7 DVDs) - Aborted English Dub (Harmony Gold, VHS) - Aborted English Sub (Streamline, VHS) Macross II: Lovers Again - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (Manga Ent., 1 DVD or VHS) - Translated Official Manga (Viz Media, 10 issues) - "Micron Conspiracy" Spinoff (Viz Media, 5 issues) Macross Plus - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (Manga Ent., 2 DVD?) - Japanese Audio / Subtitled (Manga Ent, 1 DVD)

Yes, I do... ever since Tommy let slip that senior management put the brakes on Robotech: Shadow Rising while they wait for Warner to make a move, they've been under pressure to get something out there to convince the fans that their fears of a backslide into the release doldrums of the 90s are baseless. This fly-by-night attempt to put together a side story on the cheap is exactly the sort of thing I would expect them to do to produce the illusion of progress. Remember what they did back when Shadow Chronicles was delayed for the third or fourth time? They tried to distract the fans by trotting out a badly animated (and hilariously ill-timed) PSA supporting the United Nations. Even people who are ordinarily reliable can be wrong... or spreading misinformation, which Harmony Gold puts rather too much enthusiasm into.

Uh... yeah, let's put no faith in hearsay and "friend of a friend" tales. I'll admit it sounds very plausible, but until they actually announce it as such or it becomes obvious by other means (e.g. screen captures or trailers) then I think I'll hang onto my skepticism over the whole Love Live Alive dub hypothesis. It just doesn't jive with what's shown in the only piece of promotional material we've seen for it. If they were advertising Love Live Alive as an idiotic side story for Robotech, why advertise it with a picture of Sera carrying Invid weaponry? Just knowing who's left active in the online Robotech fanbase, there's going to be one hell of a fight over how that'd fit with the revamped continuity. Rhade would probably poo out a kidney trying to make a case for how they could fit it in. Name me one attempt to revive Robotech that HASN'T come off as at least a little bit desperate.