Seto Kaiba

Yes, I know... I said as much in my very next sentence. The point I was trying to make was that there hasn't been any official (in-universe) line that I'm aware of to explain why the VF-25 is the only fighter in the Macross Frontier series that doesn't have internal munitions storage of some kind. Eh... well, we never really get to see either the VF-11 or the VF-25 operating in purely atmospheric combat in animated Macross features. The vast majority of the show's combat takes place in space, so when we do get atmospheric combat it's usually preceded by orbital insertion... which kind of rules out carrying wing-mounted ordinance. On those rare occasions, combat was either not expected (Macross Frontier "Fastest Delivery"), or they've equipped it with atmospheric-use super parts (see here and here). Just because we don't get to see VF-11s and VF-25s using wing-mounted hardpoints doesn't mean they can't take them. I don't know if we've had anything on that note for the VF-11, but the VF-25 has six underwing hardpoints... they're just not used because they get in the way of all three sets of super parts. As Talos stated, the VF-11C's leg bays weren't originally part of the final design... they were included in Macross 7 episode #44 "Nightmarish Invasion" as a place for the VF-11 to store the reaction weapons they were supposed to be attacking the Protodeviln with. They never actually get a shot off with them, so it all comes to nothing. Depends... there are one or two cases where the "FAST pack" moniker fits, though in most cases the "sensor" part seems to be absent. The available cutaways and detailed descriptions from various sources indicate that most of the time it's just fuel and weaponry. The one exception that leaps to mind is the APS-25A/MF25 armor packs for the VF-25, which do include a compound sensor antenna in addition to lots of missiles and fuel. The term "FAST pack" generally probably doesn't fit though... which is likely why they stick to more purpose-specific nomenclature like "super pack", "armored pack", "aegis pack", etc. depending on what the actual equipment is.

It was foisted on them when they partnered with Revell in order to support the series with Macross merchandise.

Your guess is as good as mine... the only explanation I can think of to account for it is that Shoji Kawamori said he was trying to move away from the passively stealthy silhouettes of current real-world fighters. If there is an in-universe explanation for why the VF-25's airframe seems as much a throwback as it is a next-generation unit, I'm not aware of it. The logical assumption is that the extensive use of active stealth means that they just don't need to cram everything into the interior anymore to maintain stealthiness... and the various augmentation packs are certainly far more heavily armed than any internal bays could be.

Granted, Ozma is fairly contemptuous of the New UN Spacy forces in the Macross Frontier series... but he isn't anything like impartial, being that he's a former NUNS pilot who quit out of guilt and he's being snide from behind the relative safety of a next-gen VF with battleship-grade armor and enough firepower to let him fight the Vajra on an even footing. I doubt he'd be so cavalier about it if he were the one in flying the VF-171. Eh... at the beginning of the series, SMS is still using next-gen weaponry against the Vajra. They stick to the gunpods a lot, and by all indications we're talking about AP rounds of significantly greater power in a caliber nearly half-again as large as that used by the previous generations. The description of the VF-19 "monkey model" on the website for Macross the Ride suggests that it needed significant modifications to prevent the GU-17A's greater recoil from damaging the airframe... that alone speaks to a substantial increase in firepower. Oh, I don't deny it... SMS is one "allies of justice" complex short of being Mithril. All I'm saying is that the NUNS isn't incompetent, they're just hamstrung by bureaucracy and lacking the bleeding edge weaponry necessary to be big damn heroes like SMS. ;-)

To be frank, I think it's a question of the connotations attached to terms like "rebel" and "terrorist". The handful of anti-government organizations that figure prominently in Macross stories are almost invariably the "bad guys". I suppose that, in practice, the distinction between a "rebel" and a "terrorist" ultimately comes down to whose side you're on. The use of "rebel" can carry the connotation of someone fighting the good and noble fight against an unjust or oppressive government. By the opposite token, use of a term like "terrorist" or "insurgent" usually carries the negative connotation of having used cowardly and morally reprehensible tactics to oppose the legitimate government. In the end, the reason the various anti-government factions in Macross are called "terrorists" is because the story is invariably told from the UN's side... though the groups in question always do something that ensures they richly deserve that particular label.

Oh, totally... the one thing I can't tell you is why kids love cinnamon toast crunch. 'kay... nothing's been said here that's worth getting that upset about. You were right that what's hamstringing the New UN Spacy is an excessive bureaucracy, that much is easily supportable. The only problem was the few assumptions you made based on that... e.g. that the NUNS is an inexperienced, incompetent batch of idjuts with dated and inadequate equipment. Their problem (aside from all the bureaucracy) is that they're a well-equipped and highly versatile force that got stuck fighting an enemy that gave the galaxy's greatest civilization pause for thought and only the newest and most advanced weapons (the not-approved-for-military-adoption VF-25) had what it takes to fight them on a level footing.

Oh, it went right over my head too... he and I were talking on MSN at the time, and he seemed surprised that it wasn't immediately obvious. I had to browbeat him into explaining what he meant, since I originally thought he meant something to do with ace pilot Max Ritter von Müller, another Blue Max winner from Bavaria. You actually seem to have hit pretty close to the mark without realizing it, though the only way anyone would get it right off the bat would be if they knew a fair bit about religious demographics in Germany. As I understand it, the reasoning behind his suggestion that Max might be from southern Germany is based on the size of his family... since Roman Catholicism is far and away the most popular religion around Bavaria, and the stereotype is that Roman Catholics have huge families (e.g. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life).

Huh... I could actually see them being able to use it as a music unit, since Ishtar rides in the back seat of Hibiki's VC-079 a few times in the OVA and she's the show's main vocalist. Still, I'm really curious to see how the photo mechanic is going to work in gameplay... what'll a PSP set me back if I buy it new nowadays?

Eh... from a strictly canon perspective, the SNN Valkyrie is more unarmed than the VT-1. As a flight/combat training machine, the VT-1 could theoretically be fitted with live weapons if circumstances demanded it... however, the VC-079 Civilian Valkyrie used by SNN was designed from the ground up as a civilian plane, and has neither mounting stations to take weaponry nor the onboard hardware to support missiles and gunpods and all that good stuff. Mind you, the game isn't required to follow that to the letter, but I can't imagine why they'd try to have people dogfight in the far future equivalent of a news helicopter...

Nah, that's definitely Sylvie Gena in the screen captures there... but if this one turns out to have a full Macross II campaign, I may very well finally shell out for a PSP. Yes, yes it would... I've got no idea how they're going to fit the SNN Valkyrie in there though. It's unarmed and doesn't even have a battroid mode, so I can't imagine there'd be much shooting going on with it. I really doubt we'll see the Macross Cannons as playable mecha though... after all, the bloody things are 6 kilometers long in cruiser mode.

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.