Seto Kaiba

You might not have said it explicitly... but you were certainly heading that way. The VF-171 was neither as old as you claimed, nor is it merely an upgrade of the existing version. There were some fairly significant changes between the VF-17 and VF-171, including (but not limited to) a redesigned airframe with better performance in atmospheric flight, better stealth and defensive systems, and improved ease of control. But for the having the engines downtuned, the relationship between the VF-17 and VF-171 is more like that of the F/A-18C/D Hornet and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Oh, the series does explain why the New UN Spacy forces attached to the Macross Frontier fleet aren't taking center stage... and that ain't why. Luca and Michel's dialogue in episode 4 explains that the reason the gov't keeps sending SMS to do everything is that mobilizing SMS involves a lot less red tape than mobilizing troops from the NUNS garrison to do the same job. That is why they keep giving missions to SMS. Bureaucracy, not incompetence or a lack of capability. Once the NUNS upgrades its gear for greater effectiveness against the Vajra, they prove they're just as capable as SMS (if not moreso, numerical advantage and all) at wrecking the Vajra's sh*t.

Uh... I know this is a bit of a non sequitur, but you're misrepresenting things a bit. The VF-171 isn't an upgrade version of the VF-17, it's a new aircraft developed from the VF-17. It's also not twenty years old. The Nightmare Plus's first flight was in 2046, and by all indications it didn't enter service until the 2050s. It's described as highly versatile and cost-effective, with balanced performance and outstanding maneuverability. It's hardly the discount clunker you're painting it as. It got punk'd by the Vajra because they're every bit as painfully uber as the next-gen VF-25 and VF-27, not because it was substandard.

An interesting question to be sure... but unfortunately one I don't think we have an answer for, unless they're going to provide one later in Macross the Ride. Personally, I'm inclined to suspect that this whole "Earth forces keeping all the best tech for themselves" thing is a fairly recent development in the Macross universe. The first we hear of this is in the VF-25's generation, which emerged after the decentralization of the UN Gov't gave the colonies autonomy and the marked upswing in anti-government terrorist activity between 2048 and 2051. The only unit developed prior to that that we could honestly label a "monkey model" is the VF-19P... at least on the basis of its downtuned engines, changes in armament, etc.. (though Master File has more to say on that note, indicating that there were also functional restrictions were imposed on the avionics, and the target acquisition rate for the micro-missile launchers was slowed) Vindirance's 2051 coup attempt was probably a pretty big factor in the governmental reorganization even tho Kawamori says it wasn't the actual cause, so I'd be inclined to suspect the reason the Earth forces started to keep the best technology for themselves was because they got sick of seeing their own hardware being used against them by anti-government terrorist organizations. Switching to a policy of giving the now-independent colony fleets less capable export models would be the best way to ensure they had a leg-up if it were ever to happen again. Even though there's bound to be some customization and variation in the locally-produced VFs prior to that decision, we've never seen any prior indication that the main variable fighters used by the colony fleets were less capable than their Earth forces counterparts (e.g. VF-11B and -C). It'll be interesting to see how it turns out... most of the novels are retellings of events from the animation, but this one might be more along the lines of Macross 7 Trash if it doesn't conflict with the established (and minimal) backstory of the Macross Frontier series. I wouldn't mind seeing this animated if it really does take off... though I'm still hoping against hope for them to animate Macross the First.

's not what I meant... I thought it was clear, but what I was talking about was the way Harmony Gold wants to profit from Macross licensing even if they're not the licensee via that trademark on the Macross name and logo in the US. Oh... that. Yeah, that thing's in the book under "Invid Overlord", but it's only a sidebar piece with a single comic book panel and the line art shrunk down to postage stamp size.

To be honest, ever since I first heard Tommy Yune's own (brief) account of how Harmony Gold came to Big West to talk about licensing for the rest of Macross and was turned away, I've always suspected that their chances of cooperating successfully with Big West were nixed long before they ever proposed it. After all, they did ignite a costly legal battle that raged for years between Big West and Tatsunoko over ownership of the original Macross series and the sequels. Considering the general sleaziness of Harmony Gold's business practices, I'm far more inclined to suspect that it was more an attempted Mafia-style shakedown than a negotiation... something along the lines of "If you want to distribute your product on our turf, you gotta give us a cut". Eh... some of it is, but a most of what you've listed isn't. The book does contain the color sketches and other concept art for the characters... on the other hand, there's no art for (or mention of) a hover cyclone concept, transforming Ark Angel, Robotech Factory, "Gosamu", or the Gamma Fighter. If you went solely by that book, you would expect that the designs for the Shadow Chronicles movie were shat into being and then endured only minimal revision before the final product.

Dunno... it's supposed to be a serialized novel, so I would expect it to be no more canon than any of the other Macross novelizations, which generally aren't.

Granted, this transforming Ark Angel concept is a good deal boxier than the Battle-7... as one would expect of a design that attempts to blend into the boxy bland-a-thon of Genesis Climber MOSPEADA starship designs. It's an odd resemblance, but there's definitely some Battle-7 to be found in the ship's arms (particularly in the shoulder and hand) and a fair bit of the Macross-class to be found in the rest of it. Either way, there's no denying the Ark Angel concept is definitely an attempt to make Robotech's New Generation less of a bore by making it more like Macross. Unless the source of that rumor has access to some character concept art from Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles that never got published, I don't think there's any basis for that. Just for yuks, I dug out my copy of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and had a look at the concept art for the characters. On examination, I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no concept art there that bears even a passing resemblance to our man Gamlin. The preliminary sketch for Scott Bernard was the closest to Gamlin's appearance, but it still looks infinitely more like a Rob Liefeld sketch of Stick Bernard with bedhead and an anatomically improbable body. There's no way it was Alex Romero, since his preliminary sketch was a big fat guy with a flattop. Marcus Rush's prelim. art looks like he watched Star Wars and decided he desperately needed to have Luke Skywalker's hairdo. Maia Sterling has purple hair, but that's about as close as you'll get... and I'm pretty sure Gamlin wasn't a D-cup. No, I don't think so... by the time Harmony Gold announced the existence of what was then known as Robotech 2004, the most important parts of the legal dispute had already been ruled on and the dispute itself was nearly five years old. They had to have known, going into it, that the rest of Macross was beyond their reach. I doubt they would've planned for that, when to pull it off they would need the cooperation of a company they'd already severely pissed off by starting the whole legal battle with their jackassery.

Bleh... on the advice of a friend, I decided to add Ladies versus Butlers! to the list of lighthearted shows I was watching to break up the monotony after I burned out on grimdark "war is hell" mecha shows. In hindsight, it was almost certainly a bad idea. This is almost certainly going to turn into a tirade about excessive fanservice nudity... so if hearing someone say that there is such a thing as too much nudity really chafes your willy, don't feel that you're under any obligation to read the rest of this post. Now, I want to start by saying that I'm no prude... and I'm certainly no stranger to the whole "harem comedy" genre of anime. I don't mind if a show busts out a little bit of T&A for comedic effect or whatever, so long as it advances the plot a little or at least has some relevance to what's going on. Hell, I'll even look the other way when the show's premise makes it clear that it's supposed to be a lewd comedy, since that can occasionally be pretty damn funny (e.g. Seitokai Yakuindomo). I guess maybe I'm spoiled by shows like Tenchi Muyo!, but if I'm sitting down to watch a harem comedy one would assume that it's because I want to see comedy that results from a highly-implausible love polygon... if I want to see women spontaneously undressing for reasons which vary from "unclear" to "makes no goddamn sense", I'd watch Cinemax in the wee hours of the night. This is a line of reasoning that the creators of ToLOVERu and Ladies versus Butlers! just can't understand. Ladies versus Butlers! is not a harem comedy show... at best, the harem comedy aspects of the show are little more than a vehicle for the delivery for excessive amounts of completely pointless nudity. If I had to guess, I'd say the reason the fanservice is so excessive is that it's there to hide a knowingly flimsy and downright anemic story. The plot is thus: freeloading relative Akiharu Hino enrolls in the "servant ed" program at a special high school that specializes in educating both rich upper-class kids and their future butlers and maids because they won't make him pay tuition, and due to circumstances ends up caught between a sociopathic girl who used to bully him as a kid and her drill-haired tsundere snob of a rival. Hino is the only character in the show who has any depth at all, and defies the usual harem formula by being unduly assertive and having neither interest in, nor patience for, the bullsh*t of the two squabbling girls (Tomomi and Selnia respectively). The show spends rather too much time coming up with increasingly contrived reasons to show the female cast getting naked... to such an extent that the creators clearly said "f*ck it" and included a character who will strip naked in public for no reason at all in every scene she appears in, regardless of who's watching or the scene's context. For its entire twelve episode run, Ladies versus Butlers! straddles the line between lewd comedy and softcore pornography. Apparently when the time came to do the DVD version, they decided they hadn't made the show enough like a porno... so the DVD extras are basically just porn. It's not often that I watch a show that's SO bad that it passes "so bad it's funny", slides right off the end of my critical spectrum, and dives headfirst into the cold, cloying void of dispassionate loathing. Ladies versus Butlers! doesn't bother with that middle-of-the-road, C-student kind of bad... this is going for the gusto. This is a show that's all bad, all the time... to the point where it gets rather worrying. It left me wondering if they'd originally planned to make a porno, and a significant portion of the staff never got the memo.

No... it's another piece of rejected concept art from the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie, like the "VF-13 Gamma Fighter". Like the Gamma fighter, it doesn't appear in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles either...

Yeah, it totally does... when Talos pointed it out to me, I had one of those "I can't believe I never noticed that before" moments. Max's background is listed as European too, I wonder if he's from Germany or somewhere around there. Yeah... there are actually a couple of Star Trek references buried in the episodes of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. The one that leaps to mind most readily is in "Blind Game", where a status screen from a Star Trek computer game flashes up on the bridge... mentioning Klingons, photon torpedoes, and the Enterprise. The two most noticeable Gundam references are that the back of Misa's overhead monitor is labeled RX-78-2 (the designation of the original Gundam), and the bridge's radio callsign ("Gunsight") is the name of the fanzine published by the Gundam fanclub Kawamori, Mikimoto, and Oonogi founded at Keoi University.

Glad I could help... you're not alone in not making that connection. It never even occurred to me until a friend of mine (Talos) pointed out the potential connection to me about a year couple years ago. There are actually a fair few in-jokes and references in the original series that'll slip right by if you're not looking, incl. references to the original Star Trek series and Mobile Suit Gundam. EDIT: Got corrected by Talos, lol.

Precisely... for as long as there have been Robotech sequels, the people in charge of Robotech's ongoing story have relied on increasingly tenuous connections to Macross to keep the fans interested. Even though the final version of Robotech: the Movie was made using Megazone 23 and Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, both the original and final versions of the film's story ultimately revolved around Macross. Robotech II: the Sentinels was even more blatant about it, selling itself as the continuing adventures of the surviving Macross cast. The one thing that hasn't changed about Robotech in 25+ years, other than the absence of progress with the story, is that Robotech still relies on Macross tie-ins to sell itself. Far and away the biggest bullet point in all of their hype about the Shadow Chronicles story arc was that they were going to finally reveal what happened to the surviving Macross cast. Between all the changes Tommy made to the Robotech continuity and setting, and faux-Macross designs like the Super Shadow Fighter and transforming Ark Angel concept, it should be easy for anyone to see what he's doing... Tommy's trying to make Robotech as much like Macross as he can to make it and his Mospeada-based Robotech continuation more palatable. Exactly... the new "Super Cyclone" is just a slightly tweaked version of a piece of Mospeada concept art you can find in the Imai Files, and the "Super Shadow Fighter" is just an ordinary AFC-01 Dark Legioss equipped with a set of faux-Macross super parts modeled on the VF-1's. There is actually a picture of it in "battloid" mode in the book (pg.85), but it's one that was originally printed elsewhere and was shrunk down to the size of a postage stamp for the official art book. That's hardly a new circumstance... it took them over 20 years to get a viable Robotech sequel released in the Americas, and even then it was scorned by many fans and ignored by everyone else. The blame always lies in someone else when they screw up. The failure of Robotech: the Movie was blamed on everything from the way the distributor said it needed more action to the release of Transformers: the Movie. After Sentinels tanked, no mention was made of the many problems with the production had, and it was all blamed on the exchange rate and Matchbox suddenly getting cold feet. Robotech 3000 tanked and it was blamed on Netter Digital... with no mention of the way the fans almost universally hating the teaser trailer. Now it's Warner getting the blame for the lack of forward motion on Shadow Rising, even though it was Harmony Gold's decision to suspend work on Shadow Rising while they wait for the LAM and pray that it lands them better sponsorship deals. Untold Story, Sentinels, Robotech 3000, and Shadow Chronicles prove one thing... Harmony Gold doesn't have a clue how to make an animated continuation of Robotech. The only thing they're good at is milking the licenses they have for expensive, low-quality toys and low-quality, limited edition comics. Understandable enough... I don't blame them for using the "Alpha fighter" and whatnot in Shadow Chronicles, I just wish they'd made an effort to be original with the new designs they were introducing instead of recycling Mospeada concept art and knockoffs of Macross designs as new material.

Eh... personally, I wouldn't be so quick to excuse it. You could maybe excuse the "Gamma fighter" concept since he's drawing on a relatively obscure Mospeada design, and you could maybe look the other way on his recycling Mospeada concept art and passing it off as new... but Robotech left transforming battleships back in the "Macross Saga". The only reason the SDF-1 transformed in the Macross Saga was out of necessity, and none of the ships that came after showed any kind of transformation capability. The ONLY explanation for this sudden return to having transforming warships is to ape Macross. The reasons for doing so are fairly obvious... but in hindsight it's kind of funny how Robotech's current creative team is both busily denigrating, and seeking to imitate, Macross.

Huh... oddly, I'm disappointed by this. I don't know why, but I was hoping that at some point Tommy would've produced something that wasn't painfully and obviously derivative... y'know, something that's actually original. This... thing... you've posted is clearly just another one of Tommy Yune's "original" works made by ripping off a design from another show, in this case it's obviously the Battle-7 from Macross 7. Honestly, I think that VM-9L Silverback jeep thing with the transformation that doesn't make sense is his only original design that's actually original: his VF-13 Gamma fighter is a transforming AF-01 Combat from Mospeada, his "new" cyclone is a slight modification of a concept piece from Mospeada, the Alpha fighter prototype in his "From the Stars" miniseries is just the Vector concept from Mospeada done up in Skull Squad colors, the Haydonite fighter is an ersatz Cylon raider from Battlestar Galactica, and the new Rick Hunter design looks for all the world like a knockoff of Hideo Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig. Honestly, the more I see of Tommy's "original" work the more I think he has even less artistic integrity than the creators of Astro Plan. I'll wager the reason that design ended up rejected is that they were afraid that it would give Studio Nue and Big West good reason to come after them in court. Dunno... but taking the rest of the design into consideration, I would guess that he watched one of the UC-era Gundam shows shortly before drawing it.

Almost certainly not... the Japanese Wikipedia article for Excalibur spells the name of the sword Caliburn as カリバーン, which is the same spelling used on the Dengeki website's section about the VF-19EF. "Caliban" (as in the character from William Shakespeare's The Tempest) is spelled キャリバン. "Caliburn" fits well enough as both a play on the "Excalibur" name for the non-stripped-down version, and it ties into the name NUNS Special Forces squad "Round Table", who got the VF-19EF's that SMS didn't snap up according to the website.

The name they give for the informally named VF-19EF/ES appears to be a kana rendering of "Caliburn", one of the older names for Excalibur derived by "Latinizing" Caledfwlch, the original Welsh name for the sword. The term "monkey model" is a nickname given to simplified (and inferior) export versions of (Soviet) military hardware. For more, see this Wikipedia article.

Almost certainly fuel tanks for the assist booster systems on the back.

Sure thing... I'll do my best to answer your questions as completely as possible. Huh... well, I don't think we can say that they were always intended to have pointy ears. The first time pointy ears show up on Zentradi (and Meltrandi) characters is in Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and their use was continued in subsequent Macross titles. DYRL's status in the main Macross continuity is that of an in-universe docu-drama released in 2031, but the depiction of history in the Macross shows themselves frequently uses a mixture of elements from DYRL and the original series. There are also a fair few cases of DYRL designs simply supplanting their TV series counterparts because Macross's creators like them more... sometimes they give an in-universe reason (e.g. Exsedol's appearance), and sometimes they don't. I'd guess that Macross's creators simply decided they liked the pointy eared designs in DYRL and decided to run with it, presumably to make Zentradi and part-Zentradi characters easy to identify among the masses of human cast members when the story won't permit them to stand out by being ten meters tall. Tricky... not all VFs have lasers or other beam weaponry mounted on the head turret (e.g. VF-4 Lightning III), and those that do don't always use them for the same purpose. After the VF-1's generation, many models of variable fighter moved the head-mounted beam weaponry onto the back of the airframe to cover the fighter's blind spot, and left the role of forward-firing gun to the fighter's gunpod (e.g. VF-11 Thunderbolt) or filled that function with a new set of fixed-forward beam guns (e.g. VF-17 Nightmare and most subsequent designs). In the case of most designs with a single center-mounted laser or beam gun (VF-5000, VF-11, VF-19A/F) it would appear that they can crank the gun forward in battroid mode to a certain extent, but not enough to get it fully horizontal. The center-mounted beam gun on the VF-25A/G seems to have enough play in its mounting to get fully horizontal. By the opposite token, the beam gun on the YF-21/VF-22's head doesn't have a pivot point at all. For the ones mounted on the sides of the head (VF-17, VF-19S, VF-25F/S), it's pretty much a given. Mind you, I'm only talking about battroid mode here... the rear-facing lasers obviously can't point forward in either fighter or GERWALK modes due to where the head sits in those modes. Yes, the UN Spacy is a military... and the only real reason I can offer for Max's long blue hair is the "because it's anime". In most cases, fictional militaries tend to be a bit looser on the dress code than the real thing, and the blue hair... well, it's anime. That his hair is blue is probably part of an in-joke about the Pour le Mérite (AKA the Blauer Max in German, Germany's highest decoration for valor in WW1 and a medal notoriously awarded to the legendary ace pilot Manfred von Richthofen), or the 1966 film The Blue Max, about a pilot who sets out to win that medal after joining the German Army Air Service. There aren't many human characters in Macross with odd hair colors... the ones that get them tend to be awesome pilots though, like Maximilian Jenius (blue), Gamlin Kizaki (lilac) and Alto Saotome (blue).

Just noticed this... Talos suggests that it may be intended to be read as "Caliburn". EDIT: An interesting conflict emerges... the "leader" model is informally known as the VF-19ES, the same designation as the project phaeton fold booster custom model. Probably not canon, since it's a novel and all, but interesting nonetheless... having these VF-19EF/ES Caliburn units with prototype EX-Gear being used not only by SMS (who got most of them), but also by NUNS Special Forces from the Frontier fleet... a special squad called the "Round Table". Guess that solidifies the "Caliburn" name a bit, doesn't it?

Eh... to be honest, I think the only reason we can say that Tommy Yune's "original" mechanical designs "aren't that bad" is that the previous attempts by Naito Anmo (Robotech II: the Sentinels) and an unnamed designer at Netter Digital (Robotech 3000) were disgusting failures. Tommy's mechanical designs get a bit of slack because they're merely mediocre and derivative instead of wholly original and genuinely awful. His new designs fit well enough with MOSPEADA's original ones... but then again it's kind of hard to screw up "bland and blocky", which describes pretty much every human mecha in MOSPEADA that isn't a ride armor. Can't say much about the design being "better" sight-unseen... but I'd wager the decision to dumb it down to the Ark Angel's present form was intended as a cost saving move. The more complicated the design, the more time it'll take to animate it... and they were supposedly already cutting corners pretty heavily on the animation process, as the finished product all too readily attests. Dunno... he might, as anime52k8 suggests, be trying to justify his continued employment to Harmony Gold. It may also have been motivated by the usual Robotech fan affliction... a crippling fear or avid dislike of things that aren't part of their heavily rose-tinted childhood memories of Robotech from the 80's.

Oh, I'm well aware of that... but while there's no denying that Richard Bilra probably has a significant influence on the Frontier government as the fleet's sponsor and SMS's owner, he and his little private army still ought to be answerable to people who contracted with them in the first place. Mind you, in the series they at least make one or two token efforts to establish that SMS is answerable to the Frontier government and the New UN Spacy. They briefly mention how they're testing the latest VF-25 for the military and how there were issues with the government that needed to be resolved for SMS to be allowed to launch the Macross Quarter. We never see Bilra pull strings or going over the president's head... and later on he's bowing to the president's authority when they integrate SMS into the New UN Spacy. Even so, SMS gets rather remarkable latitude in its operations... they never seem to need the military or government's approval, they just do what they bloody well want. Their disregard for authority reaches absurd levels in the movie, as they launch a rescue mission over the objections of the government and military... to rescue a fleet (correctly) believed to be responsible for the Vajra attacks that have cost hundreds of lives... using a ship that's at least partially government property... and all at the behest of a private citizen who's under investigation for espionage. I can't really think of a way for that to get significantly more irresponsible. It'd be one thing if SMS were a super-secret "allies of justice" type outfit, or even some kind of special forces outside the authority of individual colonial governments... but the story makes SMS out to be a private military contractor that repeatedly blows off the wishes and directives of its client government with impunity. It's only natural that someone in the armed forces would find the way Macross Frontier dismisses real soldiers as uniformly incompetent, cowardly, and incapable of matching the efforts of a PMC staff they probably outnumber over 1000 to 1... never mind that the depiction of PMCs is so far removed from the facts that it would almost be easier to believe Bilra telling a robot to find "five teenagers with attitude". (Don't get me wrong, I love Macross Frontier... I just don't like the way it treats the military or the way SMS is so openly dismissive of real soldiers)

Eh... granted, it would be nice if Kawamori supplied a reason why energy conversion armor wasn't available in fighter mode for most VFs. All the same, the lack of a long and wordy explanation for it doesn't make the hory froating head's official line on the matter any less official. Odds are there's a suitably wordy reason for it all in the Master File books, even if it is unreliable at best and non-canon at worst. I doubt that's it... the only times that capacitors are mentioned when talking about energy conversion armor is for the VF-0A's "Mighty Wing" mode and the VF-25's Armored Packs. In particular, the description of the Mighty Wing says that those are non-standard components that were not retained on subsequent models, and in the case of the VF-25 Armored Messiah the capacitors are built into the armored packs to run its tougher 2nd Gen armor in all modes and power its built-in beam weaponry. Well, there's gotta be some kind of explanation for it... since Master File seems to toe the line with it at least in part. I know it's not exactly official/reliable, but the section for the VFA-19A "Assault Calibur" mentions that the greater output of the FF-2550J rev.2 reaction engines can permit it to operate its pinpoint barrier during fighter mode flight if it reduces the power feed to other systems to the bare minimum necessary to sustain flight. It's interesting to say the least, since the pinpoint barrier is known to need 60% of battroid mode's energy output just to operate. Clearly a lot of that energy has to be going to propulsion and other systems, if siphoning off enough to run the pinpoint barrier in fighter mode with enhanced-output engines requires putting everything else into a minimum power state.

Indeed I do... but I can't vote for it because none of the mecha from Macross II made the list. Personally, my favorite gun pod is the compact medium-scale railgun used by the VF-2SS Valkyrie II. It's a sleek little gun that neatly fits into the Valkyrie II's forearm pack, and it packs one hell of a wallop. The heavy railgun on Nex Gilbert's Valkyrie II isn't bad either. The one I like the least is the stealth gun pod on the YF-21/VF-22S, on account of its rather odd and topheavy shape and the inconsistencies in its depiction.

Eh... seeing as Valkyrie Driver's profile lists him as a current serviceman in the US Air Force, his attitude toward private military contractors is understandable enough to me. Most of the currently active and retired soldiers I'm acquainted with tend to take a dim view of PMCs as a whole. In light of all the problems with Blackwater, I don't think it's hard to see why they dislike them either... nor is it that hard to understand why Valkyrie Driver would find it irritating that Macross Frontier's protagonists belong to a Mithril-esque private army whose employees are openly contemptuous of real soldiers while they swagger around nigh-invincibly in next-gen mecha. Now, I'm no soldier, but I've had enough close friends in the service where I can definitely understand how he might find that irritating. It's entirely a matter of his viewpoint... that you don't understand it doesn't make him wrong or unreasonable. In most cases, the paramilitary organization who shows up to save the day when conventional forces just won't cut it is a either a wholly secret organization operating outside the law or some form of government sponsored enterprise. SMS may have a contract with the Frontier Government, but they sure as hell aren't answerable to it... just look at the Macross Frontier movie, where they blow off the government's objections and send all their forces (incl. a carrier partly owned by the government) on a rescue mission to save a potential enemy over the objections of of the fleet's government and the New UN Spacy because some civilian cut them a big check.

Ah... that would make sense too. Like I said, the data I was working from was a bloody mess, and in a couple places it was even internally contradictory.