Seto Kaiba
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Ah, thanks! I figured it would probably turn out to be Master File after I failed to find anything about it in the usual sources. It really is a crying shame that those Master File books aren't part of the official Macross setting, there's some fantastic stuff there... and some WTF-y stuff... and even a couple Macross II references... Seems pretty logical to me, actually... I mean, it doesn't look like the VF-19's head-mounted beam gun has wide enough range of motion to get fully horizontal (or lower) the way a VF-1, VF-2, or VF-25's can... and rotating the whole wing surface in battroid mode simply to bring the lasers to bear on a ground target in battroid mode would probably cause some problems with hitting the arms and/or walking. Mounting a laser on the chest like that seems like a pretty good way to make up for that particular shortcoming.
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Unless you also point out that Carl Macek himself said that Harmony Gold had to have faux-Macross designs made for Sentinels by Tatsunoko because they couldn't use the ones from Macross series at his Robocon 10 interview, transcripts of which were printed in multiple Robotech comics from that year... then they run to the moderators for a banhammer.
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By all means, if you do find an explanation of that from an official source, I'll add it to the stuff I'm pulling together for updates to M3. It's not surprising... most transforming mecha rely on "anime magic" to make all the moving bits work out smoothly, and the VF-19's certainly no exception. Transforming toys, on the other hand, don't have that luxury, so they can't replicate the transformation 100% accurately. I skimmed through the Variable Fighter Master File VF-19 Excalibur and didn't see anything about those bits jumping out at me. If there is something in there, sketchley would probably know, since he's gone over those books in greater detail.
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No idea what they are... but given the line art, they're not exposed on the underside in fighter mode. If you look at the color-coded transformation diagram, they're actually inside the main body of the aircraft in fighter mode, and only become exposed in the other modes, when the engines swing down to become the legs. If I had to guess something other than "just an aesthetic touch" I'd be inclined to guess they're probably some kind of structural point for fighter mode. Whatever they are, they were left out of the F/S.
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Variable Fighter Master File VF-1 Valkyrie Vol. 1
Seto Kaiba replied to sketchley's topic in Movies and TV Series
Yeah, I'm not fond of that idea either... the thing that made Roy's "Skull One" special when it was passed down to Hikaru was that it was Roy's old plane, a sort of tangible symbol of his being forced to grow up and fill his senpai's shoes. After all, Roy's VF-1S was one of 30 assigned to the Macross, it didn't need a unique development history to make it special. IMO, what they're trying to do with Roy's VF-1S there is more in keeping with Robotech than with Macross. HMV still has it in stock, IIRC. HMV has the book in-stock, along with the other two if you want. -
Easy, their motivations are something other than a fear of improbable copyright-motivated retribution. If it really was a fear of having Macross's creators take them to court, they would be putting the kibosh on ALL fan-film projects. As Darkwater illustrated, there are plenty of potential reasons for them to do so, including the hilarious-as-hell fear that people might mistake the fan-project for official Harmony Gold product and/or a failure to kowtow to Harmony Gold's specific and unreasonable demands.
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No, why would you think they would? If it came to that, all Harmony Gold would have to say is "No, it's a fan film, take your complaints up with the fans who made it." and that would be the end of their involvement in the matter. It likely wouldn't even get to that point, for two reasons: the first being that Big West's lawyers aren't stupid people, and would definitely check into it before pursuing any legal action; and the second being that Big West isn't in the habit of pissing on fan projects... that's Harmony Gold's thing. Even if the quality of Harmony Gold's production deteriorates to the point where a fan-made animated project can be mistaken for official material by someone with a working brain, a fan-film likely wouldn't bear fairly important touches like Harmony Gold's logo, and/or be mentioned/advertised on robotech.com's news section the way an official product would. Only a blithering idiot would immediately leap to filing a lawsuit without first checking to make sure their complaint is a valid one, and the lawyers working for Big West are demonstrably pretty sharp people. Also, as I've already said, it's infinitely more likely that the creators of a Robotech fan-film would be receiving threats from Harmony Gold than anyone from the Macross franchise. Yes, because the animated intro to the game would be part of the game.
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Eh, in all fairness... that's probably a very real and very serious concern from Tommy's perspective. After all, if the Robotech fanbase can't tell the difference between Robotech material created by fans with more nostalgia than sense and the low-quality trash that the franchise is producing on his watch and his employers notice, then they'll quickly run out of reasons to keep him on the payroll.
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As do I... but in order for that to happen, Harmony Gold is going to have to come to grips with the reality that Robotech never was the wildly successful, genre-defying, industry-shaping masterpiece they want to believe it is. Once they've done that, they can finally lay that turd to rest once and for all and get out of the way of Macross licensing in the Americas. Yeah, I can't see them doing it either... at least not these days. As far as I've heard from people who've asked him directly, he's just lazy.
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As if... it'd be generous indeed to even suggest that Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION's desperate delusions about Warner's plans for a Robotech live action movie had even the most tenuous basis in reality. All that garbage about how Paramount must be quaking in their collective boots and that they rushed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen out for fear of having to compete with the Robotech live action movie is just that... garbage. If Paramount ever actually saw the crap they're saying, they'd laugh themselves sick! Sure thing... I can take a stab at it. I wouldn't recommend even talking to MEMO if you can help it, any debate would be you having a battle of wits with an unarmed man, and that's just not fair. Y'see, for some reason MEMO doesn't understand that copyrights are respected worldwide under international laws and treaties, which leads him to take something Alan Letz said about the early rounds of the legal tiff between Big West and Tatsunoko having essentially no bearing on Harmony Gold's Robotech franchise and their licensed rights to the original Macross series. MEMO is "creatively misinterpreting" Mr. Letz's factual statement to mean that the disputed copyrights on the Macross source material were somehow only valid in Japan, and that Harmony Gold had somehow copyrighted those designs in the Americas. As you can tell, that's an idea with more holes than a colander. He also appears to be claiming that it was Tatsunoko who sponsored the show during its development, that it was Studio Nue who contracted with Tatsunoko to make the series, and that as such Tatsunoko is owner and author of the original Macross series and everything it contains. This, of course, is patently untrue as even a glance at Wikipedia could tell you... it was Big West who picked the series up after its original sponsor (Wiz) went under, bankrolled it, and contracted with Tatsunoko AFTER production of the series had already started, which is why Big West is the owner of the Macross franchise as a whole. He's also making a false claim that nobody knows any details of the contracts between Big West and Tatsunoko, or Tatsunoko and Harmony Gold, and that the substance of his previous claims are the reasons why Tatsunoko has the distribution rights to the SDF Macross series outside of Japan and Big West doesn't. The whole thing is complete crap, and just goes to prove that ignorant short-bus seatwarmers that robotech.com made moderators have never, EVER known what they're talking about.
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Yup! By the look of things, it didn't take Maguire Entertainment long to figure out that Robotech is a property with extremely limited niche appeal and put the project on the back burner in favor of films with broader appeal and better prospects. I doubt it... I'm more inclined to suspect that Warner Bros bought the live-action Robotech movie rights just to keep them out of Paramount's hands.
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's just the facts of life... Mass Effect is a competently-managed property and Robotech is not. I'd hazard a guess that it's probably not helping that the continuation of Robotech's animated series is on indefinite hold pending progress on a live-action movie that's been stuck in development hell since it was announced because its producer keeps finding better things to do (like four other movies, at last count).
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I haven't exactly been keeping up with it (since my copies haven't arrived yet and the blasted plugin doesn't like my system's security setup), but I would imagine the YF-25 probably isn't participating in the race... they also mention military-service Valkyries and NUN Spacy special forces in the descriptions for other fighters (VF-19EF), so I would assume that the YF-25 is probably filling the role it's been described in in the past... that of a test machine-turned-EX-Gear training plane. At the very least, according to the timeline the YF-25 ought to have had its first flight the year before.
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I believe it's on his character sheet... to be honest, I haven't translated the blasted thing myself since I too have been focusing on the mechanical and technology sheets rather than character sheets, but when I fielded this exact same question a couple pages ago with the information from 2059:Memories, Gubaba helpfully chimed in with that tidbit.
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Macross Chronicle says he's part-Zentradi with some Zolan ancestry as well.
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Almost certainly not... at least, the majority of Robotech fans aren't likely to notice or care that there are no new New Generation toys coming out this year. I'm sure there will be some pissing and moaning among those fans who are deep enough in denial to believe that the Masters Saga and New Generation actually matter to Robotech.
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Eh... I'm definitely with Jasonc on this one, why isn't there a third option for those of us who'd find either option acutely unpleasant? It's the same pathetic low-budget "Yuney Tunes" faux-anime either way, so you're not really even offering us a choice here. All we get to choose in this poll is whether we want an embarrassingly bad Mospeada knockoff to be set before or after the series. What about an option for those of us who don't want to see another B-movie quality Robotech sequel with all the originality of Space Gundam V? Where's the option to take Robotech out behind the shed and finish it off, Old Yeller-style, so it can finally be safe from the depredations of Tommy Yune while it finishes its long slide into oblivion?
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's just par for the course. By their usual standards for technology-related Robotech news, this is actually pretty big. Time was they'd make a huge fuss every time robotech.com's ancient server started to bog down and Steve had to call the tech support guy to have it band-aided back into operation, and that was practically a biweekly occurrence. When they finally knuckled down and replaced that damn thing after like four years of problems, it was front-page news and easily the biggest news item for Robotech that year (2005).
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IMHO, that's probably just an aesthetic touch included to make the pack more streamlined, and probably doesn't serve any useful purpose beyond looking cool in action. Nah, the Valkyrie II's attack bits are too large to physically attach to the fighter... each one is roughly the size of the fighter's cockpit block, and they're deployed with it in groups of five. In the very first episode of Macross II, we see that the attack bits are launched from the carrier a second or two after the fighter, and just catch up to it and take up station around it in flight. Presumably they get "assigned" to a fighter before launch, and link up with it after launch as shown in the series. Almost certainly an idea inspired by Gundam... given that both of Macross II's lead mechanical designers had previously worked on Gundam shows, and certainly took some stylistic pointers from their past experience with Gundam when making Macross II and its prequels. In a couple of places, they even indulged in some fairly blatant references to the original Mobile Suit Gundam series and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Kazumi Fujita had previously worked on Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ, and Koichi Ohata worked on the mechanical designs for Char's Counterattack.
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Jack squat, to be precise... at least, since a lack of news and blatant jackassery from the idiot brigade on robotech.com is hardly a new development. Granted, the Macross fandom enjoys a wide variety of ways to get around Harmony Gold's attempts to keep Macross out of the west, though it still hacks off those of us who'd like to see proper English-language releases of these books and magazines for everyone to enjoy instead of just those of us who can read Japanese.
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Exactly, and I don't imagine repairing/maintaining the Super Armed Pack is all that hectic since it's basically just verniers, fuel tanks, weaponry, and a communications pod. It doesn't have any big booster engine systems in it.
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No problem. Ah, yes... but still comparatively downtuned from their application in the VF-19 (661.95kN vs 774.24kN), apparently because the VF-171 wasn't designed for the extremes of performance that made the VF-19 and VF-22 such problematic aircraft. Yeah, I do seem to pop up when my name is mentioned, like some kind of extremely Macross-themed take on Beetlejuice. Yup, pretty much... but there are indications in B-Club v.79 and elsewhere that the Valkyrie II can carry its medium-scale railgun on occasions when it's not equipping the Super Armed Pack. The thing to remember is that the VF-2SS is a dedicated space valkyrie, and its Super Armed Packs are essentially permanent equipment rather than optional gear for special missions. The VF-2SS isn't going to be sent into combat without it, because it further enhances the already space-optimized Valkyrie II's performance in space, and it packs a lot more firepower into a much smaller package than equipping the plane with a set of conventional and disposable super parts would. Short answer... for easy maintenance, since keeping the externally-mounted hardware modular means it's that much easier to get the stuff off of and onto the airframe when you're performing maintenance and repairs. Mind you, there's no indication that the SAP system can be ejected in the field the way conventional super parts are in Macross's main continuity. The main Macross continuity's VF-11 is a product of a different design philosophy altogether, being that it's an all-regime plane with an apparent focus on atmospheric performance. Its laser is essentially useless unless the enemy is behind it, and it doesn't have any forward-facing beam weapons like its contemporaries do, so its ONLY offensive option is its gun pod in that case, and that can run out of ammo fairly swiftly. DEFINITELY not the auto-attack bits... those are about as big as the Valkyrie II's cockpit block, so there's no way they're going to fit into its right forearm pack. Exactly what's done with the storage compartment in the right forearm pack is unclear. IMO, the pack is probably either left empty to counterbalance the mass of the enormous railgun barrel above it, or stores a second medium railgun, since carrying two gun pods isn't exactly unheard-of in Macross II.
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Exactly. Continuing to belabor the point will only make them feel gratified when they finally drop the banhammer on you for "heresy", so the best thing you can do is to rob them of their fun by refusing to rise to their bait. Robotech isn't worth it, and it never will be. Shameless plug is shameless. Because the truth hurts, and Steve and Tommy's feelings are particularly delicate. Robotech's creative process being what it is, it's the only way they have to feel like they're in charge and in the right. Kinda hard to take pride in being a leech, subsisting for decades by clinging to the coattails of Macross's creators.
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Really, how do you talk about the general lack of news about new Robotech productions and how pointless it is to make all of the promotional materials convention-exclusive without involving McKeever and his inevitably childish and unprofessional behavior. I honestly don't see how it can be done, since he's the mook in charge of marketing for Robotech. I'm not sure whether I should admire your optimism or pity you for your naivete here dude... you ought to know from long experience that there was no way you were going to get anything like a rational and mature discussion of the issue from those people. It's just not how they do things, and it hasn't been for a very long time. For McKeever, it's easier by far to pretend that the fans who are vocal about their concerns and complaints are just troublemakers trying to troll a perfect system. Honestly though, I don't think McKeever would be sharp enough to know that badmouthing people in person is a bad idea... sure, he's an internet tough guy who likes his ability to smite anyone who disagrees with his views, but he's not that quick on the uptake either. In the end, you're really better off taking your disposable income and your business elsewhere. From what I've heard, MEMO's perfectly literate in person... he just types like a loon because he's lazy. I admit, I still have trouble believing it, but I kinda have to take people who've met him at their word on this one. I would if I were you. There's nothing to be gained by continuing this farce with MEMO and McKeever, except that they might feel they won a bigger victory if you made more of a fuss beforehand. Better to just ignore them and let them enjoy the Robotech franchise's slow slide into oblivion together.
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Hm... I'll second that emotion. If they're not the worst fandom ever, they're certainly in the running for it. He's probably still bitter about being banned from here years ago. Welcome to the club... I'm amazed you even bothered to try a reasoned appeal. Harmony Gold isn't exactly known for listening to its fans.