Seto Kaiba

In the interest of saving you a couple bucks, the first six Ciaphas Cain novels and a handful of related short stories have been put into two big omnibus editions... Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium and Ciaphas Cain: Defender of the Imperium. There's also a seventh novel that just came out entitled The Emperor's Finest. If you're the cautious type, you can catch extracts of both omnibus editions and the new book here, here, and here respectively (in PDF format).

The source materials in question, for one... they're pretty unambiguous about saying that all but the newest VFs don't have the surplus energy kicking around to run their energy conversion armor when operating in fighter mode, with the sole (known) exception of the VF-0A for reasons already given in earlier posts. Eh... it's been common knowledge for ages that variable fighters are made of far tougher stuff than modern fighter aircraft are. The logical assumption would be that the super-materials used in their construction are responsible for the unusual level of durability they exhibit even when operating in fighter mode without the benefit their energy conversion armor. Personally, it's confusing stuff like this that makes me long for the clear-cut simplicity of Macross II and its timeline... there's no energy conversion armor there, VFs are tough because they're made from ersatz-Gundarium and that's the end of it. As far as why main continuity VFs can't run their energy conversion armor in fighter mode, I think sketchley has the right of it. When running the engines for propulsion, a lot of energy is being lost as heat by necessity, limiting the amount the mecha can convert to electricity to operate other systems.

Nope, I haven't... I had the chance to attend a midnight screening of Deathly Hallows, but I don't have a whole lot of use for Harry Potter and I had work in the morning. I handed my ticket off to my girlfriend instead, and this morning she gave me the rundown on the flick. She seemed to think Deathly Hallows was pretty well, even for a Potter flick, and that's saying something after borderline schizophrenic mess that was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Nah... all you really need is a basic understanding of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. It might help to know a bit about some of the factions from the game (mostly the Tyranids), but it's not really required.

Eh... it's all a bit of a mess, really. Information on how this all fits together is kind of sparse, since prior to having a mass-production version appear in Gundam Unicorn the Delta Gundam only existed in the MS Graphica book. If I'm interpreting this correctly, it looks like the Delta Gundam predates Camille's design for the Zeta Gundam... and that Anaheim shelved it because the frame wasn't strong enough to handle transformation. They revived it once they'd seen Camille's design for the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam, and used the design to develop the non-transformable Hyaku Shiki to test the use of movable frame technology and wing binders. They also built the Methuss around the same time as a test of the transformation system, before building the Zeta Gundam prototypes and then the completed unit delivered to Camille. From here, it gets much clearer, in that Anaheim apparently went back and reevaluated their Delta Gundam design while they were trying to sort out a mass-production version of the Zeta Gundam (the Zeta Plus), and built the Delta Plus at the same time (circa UC 0088-89). So, I think the design evolution goes something like this: Delta Gundam (concept) -> Zeta Gundam (design) -> Hyaku Shiki & Methuss (test units) -> Prototype Zeta Gundam (3x) -> Zeta Gundam (one-off) -> Delta Plus & Zeta Plus (mass-production types)

Updated MSN-001 Delta Gundam actually... 's called the MSN-001A1 Delta Plus. The design backstory for it puts it and the Hyaku Shiki as having a common ancestor in the original MSN-001 Delta Gundam design (which was never completed).

Personally, I've never been able to get into the more serious SF like Frank Herbert's Dune or Issac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Usually when I sit down to read a book, I'm trying to relax and unwind... and tend to lean towards the lighter stuff. The one new series that I've been following and really enjoying is the Ciaphas Cain series of Warhammer 40,000 novels. I actually looked into them after reading the TVTropes article about the series. The stories are presented as chunks of the titular character's autobiography, which takes a little bit of getting used to, but the author approaches it all in a style that reads like a halfway point between Blackadder and Flashman. It's a funny little deconstruction of all the grimdark SF tropes 40K relies on, particularly in making the main character a self-effacing, cowardly Commissar who achieves victory and fame through a mix of opportunism, unabashed cowardice, dumb luck, and his aide's horrific body odor.

Shhh... don't tell anyone, but it's really the formula for a special medicine that makes newtype kids stop angsting. I haven't actually gotten around to seeing Gundam Unicorn episode two... that's on my to-do list for this weekend.

Oh, I'll agree it's not for everyone... it doesn't exactly rank high on my list of favorite Macross titles, but I revised my opinion of it upward slightly after getting my hands on a higher quality fansub. It's just my take on what you've said, but it sounds like at least part of the reason you dislike the Macross 7 series is a matter of rationality... specifically, trying to reconcile the goofier aspects of it (Protodeviln, sound energy, spirita) with the somewhat more serious titles that make up the rest of the continuity. If that's the case, then I certainly can't blame you... I have that same problem with it. Liking it or not liking it doesn't make anyone any more or less of a Macross fan... but I do think that people should give it a fair chance and decide for themselves instead of letting other people tell them "No! It's horrible! Skip it!", as I said in the early pages of this thread. The thing about marathoning the series... well, in my experience the first instinct of anyone who downloads a series in batch form is to dive right in and watch as much as they can. There are a lot of shows where you can get away with that, but Macross 7 is definitely not one of them. The first twenty or so episodes are so monotonous and samey they doing that is probably the single fastest way to learn to hate the show.

Eh... honestly, I think "advanced technology did it" is still probably a more plausible explanation for a fantastic occurrence than "a wizard did it". Granted, it's not meant to be entirely realistic or 100% plausible... if it were, it wouldn't be SF or nearly as entertaining. Yeah... I got that too, to a certain extent. It never made me feel particularly unwelcome (it was the "you're a Macross II fan? That show sucks!" sort of behavior that did that), but after a while that sort of thing did get a little tiresome. I've only rarely had people give me grief for criticizing Macross 7 though... and a lot of that was, I admit, mostly an attempt to get me to give the show another (fair) chance... which I only got around to doing with the recent re-release of the series. I'm still not fond of it, but I no longer think it's completely without redeeming qualities. In my experience, Macross 7 rarely goes over well with serious-minded people. It's the same type of show as Gurren Lagann or G Gundam where you have to suspend rationality for a while and just appreciate it for the crazy, pointlessly hot-blooded, completely over-the-top spectacle that it is. If you can make that leap and ration yourself to 1-2 episodes per day, you can usually find Macross 7 at least halfway enjoyable. It's definitely not a show that's meant to be marathonned, and I'm inclined to suspect that that's the reason behind at least some of the more profoundly negative impressions of the series. Bah... there's plenty of divisions in the Gundam fandom as well. Just look at all the hate heaped on Gundam SEED by western fans... or Gundam Wing... or for that matter, Gundam ZZ.

No... no, you definitely aren't. I've always thought that was a bit weird too, but I confess I'd always assumed that a lot of any VF's reactor output in fighter mode was spent heating intake air and running the ion thrusters in flight to provide the impressive levels of thrust most VFs put out. I forget which publication it was, but I remember one of the pieces translated by sketchley mentioned that reaction engines are real light on fuel consumption in atmospheric flight because of the way they flash-heat intake air to provide thrust... that might be why.

Granted, that would be the usual assumption... but the "VF Evolutionary Theory" piece in Great Mechanics DX 9 indicates that surplus output from the VF-25's reaction engines can be used to run a built-in light form of energy conversion armor around the engines, cockpit, etc. in fighter mode. The heavy ASWGA energy conversion armor used on the Armored Pack and powered by the pack's internal capacitors is something else entirely. This is also bolstered by further mention in the VF-0 section... which also says that improvement in engine power, the latest VFs can partially operate their energy conversion armor in fighter mode. Okay, that is a mistake on my part... thank you for the correction.

Excellent question... To the best of my knowledge, the answer to your question is "no" in almost all cases. It fighter mode, it seems that most of the reactor output was needed to provide thrust for flight. I would guess, given what's said about the VF-25 in Great Mechanics DX 9, that the trend continued as the thrust ratings of reaction engines grew, and increased the burden on the power plant. It wasn't until the VF-25 and VF-27's Stage II reaction engines were introduced that VFs had enough of a power surplus in fighter mode to operate energy conversion armor in even a limited fashion. In the case of the VF-25, there's enough spare juice that it can operate a light form of energy conversion armor around vital areas like the engines and cockpit. Having four engines, the VF-27 has a sizable enough surplus to allow it to run both the energy conversion armor AND the pinpoint barrier in fighter mode. EDIT: The armored VF-25 can draw on the capacitors built into the armored packs to run the energy conversion armor built into the packs for an unspecified amount of time... but the beam guns built into the packs share the same capacitor. EDIT #2: The VF-0 did have a large capacitor that allowed the fighter to operate in "mighty wing" mode, wherein it could run its energy conversion armor in fighter mode for a short period of time. That system was apparently not carried over to subsequent models. EDIT #3: Ironically, the variable fighter with the highest known reactor output, which would presumably give it more than enough juice to run energy conversion armor in fighter mode, belongs to Macross II: Lovers Again... a continuity where energy conversion armor doesn't exist and VFs have conventional armor made of supermaterials (ala Gundarium).

Yes... it is. Both characters are voiced by Megumi Toyoguchi.

Oh, but of course... though the important thing to remember there is that the new designs made for Robotech II: the Sentinels weren't made in-house by Harmony Gold the way the ones for Shadow Chronicles were. They were created in-house by Tatsunoko staffers Ippei Kuri (aka Toyoharu Yoshida) and Naito Anmo, who designed all the new characters and mecha respectively. This was, after all, the same project where they had to fire the writers Tatsunoko provided and bring in writers supplied by Harmony Gold because they couldn't figure out why anyone would combine three totally unrelated shows or wrap their brains around the moon logic used to make them fit together... something even modern Robotech fans frequently have a hard time with. I'd say that, with that kind of confusion in play, it wouldn't be hard for them to make that kind of unintended gaffe... especially after they had only just finished DYRL a year or two prior to the start of work on the Robotech II project. If it was out and out "borrowing", then they probably figured (as with other vaguely familiar designs), that it was far enough away from the original to make litigation unlikely. Presumably they would both end up in court together... Tatsunoko as the licensing agent who provided Harmony Gold with the license and would be accused of misrepresenting or failing to communicate the limitations of its license to the licensees, and Harmony Gold for committing the actual violation.

But you missed the point there... at his Robocon 10 interview, Carl Macek made it clear that Harmony Gold knew that they couldn't use designs from Macross back when they first started work on Robotech II. The lawsuits that went down in the early 00's almost certainly have no bearing on it. Those designs were created for the specific purpose of providing something that looked vaguely similar to Macross without being similar enough to get them sued for copyright infringement. Just given their behavior, I would assume their reasons for killing or otherwise banishing the remaining Sentinels versions of Macross characters was, as you assume, probably done to ensure there was zero chance of drawing unwelcome attention from Macross's creators and their lawyers.

Yeah... that was jokingly suggested so often that some Robotech fans actually started to believe it. That's about when all the humor went out of suggesting that might be the case. Tommy's artwork and remarks seem to point toward it being a MOSPEADA-related feature, which Astro Plan definitely isn't.

Uh... it's a nice theory, but it falls short on the grounds that they already animated it. Carl's big red turd was a design created for the failed Robotech II: the Sentinels series, and does (briefly) appear in the animation they salvaged and made into a "movie" after the project's collapse. Carl's remarks at Robocon 10 make it clear he and Harmony Gold knew that Macross designs were off-limits, and that the designs done for Sentinels were a deliberate attempt to make things look similar to the familiar Macross designs without being similar enough to land them a copyright infringement lawsuit from Macross's creators. Eh... you might have a point there. They were certainly aiming to keep things as low-poly as humanly possible, and that'd be all but impossible with the original SDF-3 design. However, given the sheer amount of pandering to the long-time fans Tommy did in Prelude and Shadow Chronicles, I think the chief reason for blowing it up and redesigning it was to get rid of another much-maligned Sentinels design and get the ship in line with the design aesthetic of the other lightly redesigned repainted ships. lol... somehow I can't see that working. (the transformation, I mean) Indeed it was. Repeatedly...

Uh... it's been a while since I last bothered reading/watching anything Robotech, but haven't they already done that at least twice with generally poor results? If I recall correctly, their first attempt was the SDF-3 in Robotech II: the Sentinels... a design so breathtakingly bad that even those strange mutants who thought that Robotech II: the Sentinels was a great idea have little use for it. Tommy Yune apparently felt the same about it, since one of the first things he did in the Prelude miniseries was blow the damn thing up so he could replace it with something that didn't look like a colossal crimson bowel movement: Mind you, the end result of all this wasn't a hell of a lot better... just boxier and more in line with the utterly generic MOSPEADA ship designs: and who could forget this godawful thing...

Eh... your guess is as good as mine, since I don't think they ever really bother to explain the markings found on destroids in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. It seems like a reasonable assumption though. Not that I'm aware... the line art for the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series and Macross: Do You Remember Love? only ever shows that "D" insignia. The only exception to that I can think of is that is a Mk.XII Phalanx that shows up in one cut in episode 27, which has a palm tree and slogan in place of the usual logo. If there was an insignia specifically for destroids stationed on the Macross itself, it's probably the one you've got there... but I'm not aware of any official line on the matter. Some... there's a bunch of "nose art" type stuff that was published in the old Macross Model Hobby handbook, and I think there's some newer stuff in the same vein for Macross Frontier in either Model Graphix 2009 #1 or Macross Frontier Archives.

If they're bootlegs, then you already know the answer to your question... of course not.

Huh... didn't they actually attempt that one on Mythbusters? IIRC, they actually succeeded. In Harmony Gold's case, I think it's really more a matter of them just not having the creative talent necessary to make something halfway presentable out of the festering corpses of Southern Cross and MOSPEADA, and that to even attempt it means running a gauntlet of senior executives who know better than to let them try. Their own faults are compounded by the franchise's miserable reputation, which all but guarantees that no self-respecting network in North America will actually carry a Robotech title in any timeslot where there's a chance someone will actually see it.

Hmm... to be honest, the Macross show I consider my favorite and the one I consider the best overall aren't one and the same. I guess that makes me weird, but whatever... lol This's probably no surprise to anyone, but my favorite Macross title is Macross II: Lovers Again. It was the series that first got me into real Macross, and I think that its mechanical designs are some of the best in Macross... with the noteworthy exception of the Metal Siren. I didn't mind at all that it stayed very close to DYRL in its story and themes, since I absolutely love DYRL too... and the more I dug into its back story, the more I liked its somewhat more Gundam-like continuity. (no doubt partly influenced by the presence of Char's Counterattack and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam staffers on the project) But if, as some have done, I were to rank the Macross shows I've seen in terms of which was the strongest show overall, it would look like this: (excl. FB2012 since it's more epilogue than anything else) SDF:M > DYRL? > Macross Frontier > Macross II & Macross Plus > Macross Zero > Macross 7 (Admittedly, I feel one part of this bears some explaining... while I feel that Macross Plus was, in most regards, an exceptional show, the story felt kind of scattered and only superficially like Macross. Were it not for that, I would probably have put Macross Plus above Macross II for overall quality instead of on the same level)

It's the first time I've seen a hero mecha intentionally squash an enemy pilot like a bug... but there is one scene around the middle of Eureka Seven where Renton's Nirvash stomps on an enemy KLF repeatedly until he sees a broken and bloodied arm from the smushed pilot sticking out and starts puking.

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.