Seto Kaiba

Like I said, he's long on rhetoric and short on sense... it's a sad affliction that far too many vocal defenders of Robotech suffer from. It is extremely fortunate that Harmony Gold can't use the original Macross character and mecha designs in new shows, it forces them to try to make something tolerable out of the weaker shows they added to Macross to get up syndication length instead of riding Macross's coattails even more shamelessly than they already do. This should be self-explanatory, but the reason that Harmony Gold ought to be crediting the people whose hard work and talent actually created the material that makes up Robotech is that they didn't make it themselves. It's not their work, it's them rewriting someone else's existing work. The original creators at Studio Nue, Artmic, etc. and the owners of those original shows should be credited because Harmony Gold is basing Robotech on their hard work and creative vision. Is that so hard to understand.

Okay, you were long on rhetoric and short on sense before... but now you've crossed the line into full-blown unintelligibility. I'd ask what you were talking about, but I'm not sure even you know anymore.

No, they did not. Big West and Studio Nue only gave Tatsunoko the distribution and merchandising rights to the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series outside of Japan. In order to forfeit their right to be credited for all their work on the series, they would have had to give up ownership of the material they created. Of course, since we have ironclad proof that they didn't do that, the people who created the shows that make up Robotech should've been properly credited for their work. That the people at Studio Nue, Artmic, et. al. whose talents actually made the material that Carl Macek and co. badly rewrote is just insulting, and smacks of an attempt to take credit for someone else's work. But, to date, not in the show... nor is anyone else who actually created those shows. Nobody gives a flip about the old Comico comics and the Robotech Art series... least of all Robotech Art 2.

Come on... is it really that hard to use the quote tag properly? It's really a pain trying to figure out where the quoted passage ends and your post actually begins. Nowhere... to date, I don't think any release of Robotech has ever properly credited the creators of the original shows for their work. The only concession they've ever made to acknowledging the real creators of the shows that make up Robotech is crediting Tatsunoko (and only Tatsunoko) for the production of the animation. One of the things I heard about RT25 was that they went out of their way to properly credit and acknowledge the real creators of those shows. To be blunt, it's not nearly that simple. Part of what kicked the whole legal tiff between Big West and Tatsunoko off was Harmony Gold's baseless and rather perplexing assertion that their license agreement with Tatsunoko covered all of Macross rather than just the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series. Obviously, the reason they've gone to the trouble of ensuring other companies can't license the rest of Macross for distribution is because they found out the rights they had for the original series didn't grant them rights to the rest, and they want to protect their Robotech franchise by keeping superior quality Macross goods and shows out of the hands of consumers unless they stand to profit from it too.

That, I can largely agree with... however... As this still isn't a Macross II thread in any way, I'm not going to spend time delving into every little thing that's wrong with what you're saying here. If you take the supplementary materials away from any Macross series, you're left with pretty tenuous connections to the other shows and borderline-nonexistent connections to the games, so citing it as a specific fault in Macross II doesn't hold water. For your other complaints, there are explanations in the canon materials, if you had the patience to look for them or the wherewithal to remember the last several times I explained them. If you need it explained to you again, feel free to send me a private message.

No, not forgotten... just classified. The whole affair's been declassified by 2059, and the inhabitants of the titular colony ship in Macross Frontier even film a historical drama about it. It is... but it's self-contained enough that it doesn't really affect anything that came after (chronologically).

By that standard, none of us are Macross fans then... not even you. You don't have to like every Macross show to be a Macross fan... you only need to like one. It's not like they're all set in separate universes or something. Now, this is a discussion that really belongs in a thread of its own... you're voicing a misconception that's fairly common among western Macross fans. To be brief, as to not derail this thread much more than it already has been, the guy you got into this argument with (Million Star) has the name of one of that universe's colony ships for his screen name.

Oh, I'll grant you that Robotech: From the Stars differs from Macross Zero in many details, but it's still taking a good many pointers from it and the aforementioned parts of Macross's timeline. Coincidence, is it, that shortly after Macross Zero debuts we get a Robotech comic miniseries about a pre-war Roy piloting a prototype of the VF-1 against Anti-UN forces? That's a little hard to swallow... particularly since there was no "Anti-Unification League" in the Robotech continuity prior to that comic. All they're missing is an Anti-Unification League VF and some technophobic islanders. Then in the second half, we get a weak ripoff of Macross's timeline circa 2005 when Anti-Unification League terrorists steal a reaction weapon-equipped ship and start nuking the UN forces. Sure, this time it's an ARMD instead of an Oberth-class destroyer... but it's still pretty obvious where these ideas are coming from. Honestly Tom, it's not like this kind of thing was a new or unexpected development in Robotech comics. The old comics made a habit of "borrowing" characters, mecha, and even whole stories from Macross or whatever else was popular back in the day. They were certainly adept at keeping their eyes on their neighbor's paper, that's for sure... and Tommy is no exception. Granted... but what about those sites that "borrow" material from other Macross shows like Macross: Flashback 2012, Macross II: Lovers Again, and Macross Zero? Even the uRRG, which is frequently mistaken for an accurate source of information by Robotech fans, draws on Macross: Flashback 2012. Right now, one of the uRRG's minor contributors is pushing a new site that (currently) borrows mecha and continuity from Macross: Flashback 2012, Macross Zero, and Macross Dynamite 7. There are also plenty of other Robotech fan sites that "borrow" from an astonishing array of Macross sources... even going so far as to pillage concept art from Macross art books. It's that kind of BS that I'm talking about. You're hard pressed to find a Robotech site that doesn't steal from at least one Macross source unrelated to Robotech. I guess you've been out of touch for a while then... I've met a fair few on that anemic ghost town we know as robotech.com just in the past few years. I've seen proposals to throw out Southern Cross and replace it with Macross II: Lovers Again and/or make Macross II a Masters Saga sequel/side-story. I've seen proposals to use Macross Zero as a Robotech prequel, complete with suggested changes to the story.

'kay... that's certainly a rare view, and admittedly not one that has a whole lot of relevance to the OP's particular line of inquiry. Of course, the same can be said for this entire love/hate thing we've got going with regard to the Macross 7 series right now. Nor do I... at least, not from a modern viewpoint. On the other hand, if you look at it in terms of the direction Big West was taking with Macross in Kawamori's absence and the current state of the continuity back then, then the addition of Macross Plus is about as awkward as it gets. To make it fit, they had to rewrite the continuity (again) to remove eighty years worth of history and make all of the removed material a parallel universe. It doesn't feel like an awkward addition to the continuity now because it has the support of the shows that came after it. That said, you both have a point. 'kay... that logic doesn't exactly work. You're implying: Macross II fans ≠ Macross fans even though Macross II ∈ Macross It does, actually... it fits quite well with DYRL (by intent, it's a sequel) and the canon games and other continuity materials created to bridge the gap between the two. Still, this is a big departure from what the OP wanted to know.

Huh... from an in-universe standpoint, that's a pretty good question. By the look of things, the reason that they gave the Mk.I version of the Monster a set of vaguely creepy hands was to provide it with the necessary stability to operate as carrier-mounted artillery and make fine adjustments to its firing position. That ability ended up on the chopping block in favor of beefing up the mecha's long-range armaments, and presumably the infinitely more mobile and nimble König Monster just doesn't need that extra support. Having hands on the same side as their missile launch tubes would probably necessitate a very awkward and unintuitive mounting for the hands, or the enlarging of the weapon arms themselves. There was already empty space on the back of the weapon arms, so waste not want not... it seems almost ideal for mounting a hand, since long-range anti-ship missiles aren't going to be much use against the same fast-moving targets the pilot would be shooting at with his/her AA guns. If we examine it from a production standpoint, the answer becomes immediately obvious... they made the König Monster first. Kawamori designed the VB-6 König Monster for Macross VF-X2, a game that came out for the Sony Playstation in 1999. Macross Zero didn't come out until about three years later, and presumably Kawamori didn't see any point in messing with a completed design when he was already tweaking several existing ones for use in Macross Frontier. After seeing it in the movie trailer at the end of Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime for the first time, my initial thought was "another fine customization by the Orkish Commission for More Dakka".

Ah... if only things were that simple. Unfortunately, thanks to the profound laziness of the Harmony Gold "creative team" and the work ethic of a few extremely resourceful plagiarists in the Robotech fanbase, things are a good deal more complicated than that. It sort of makes sense for them to use specs from the original show, albeit slightly modified, for Robotech. Still, the post-2001 "creative team" at Harmony Gold seems to find it a lot easier to continue to "borrow" from the setting and continuity of Macross instead of coming up with their own material. The comic miniseries Robotech: From the Stars is just a teaspoon-shallow knockoff of Macross Zero that borrows events from the year 2005 in the Macross continuity. The overwhelming majority of Robotech fan-sites "borrow" from one or more Macross shows to fill out the anemic post-Macross Saga Robotech continuity. The ongoing efforts of Harmony Gold and the robotech.com volunteer moderators to portray Macross as something that has no importance or popularity aside from its role as part of Robotech doesn't help in this regard, since it just encourages them to do things like this. Um... Tom? You do realize that you've just classified one of the iconic traits of the modern Robotech fan as some kind of mental illness, right?

It isn't that surprising, really... the importance of music to culture and its power to sway emotions has been a major plot element in Macross, and the music itself usually ends up being one of the show's selling points. All that really changed in the winning Macross formula when they made Macross 7 was that they took the music's importance to its (il)logical extreme. In hindsight, it was a shining example of the right show at the right time, since a break from the dark, serious business shows seems to have been just what the audience wanted. It gets flak from viewers over here for the same reasons that it was a huge success over there... its lighter and less serious story, and its tendency towards comedy and hotbloodedness. If you're the sort of person who insists on a series taking itself seriously, Macross 7 is usually a painful show to watch. It doesn't take itself seriously, so those who try to take it seriously end up with a headache. Those who don't mind suspending disbelief and cynicism for a while can usually find something to enjoy in the completely over-the-top, crazy-ass antics of Basara and company. (That last paragraph is, I suppose, the real answer I should direct to wastegate13's question about Macross 7) 'kay... we don't really need to resort to that, do we?

Sort of... it's not really a requirement, but it helps to have seen how previous Macross shows have built up the history and legend of the Protoculture before tacking Macross Zero. Each installment of Macross is technically a stand-alone title in that they're usually self-contained enough that you don't need to have seen the ones that came before it, but it really does help.

Your guess is as good as mine... the reasons for having the other two modes are fairly self-evident. Upon due examination of the VB-6 König Monster's few appearances in canon Macross, the best I can conclude is that it's probably there primarily to make the mecha somewhat less cumbersome when it's defending itself from smaller mecha, since at least the upgraded VB-6 König Monster has demonstrated that it has some kind of gun system mounted on the arms in battroid mode. For reasons unknown, the guns don't show up in the art for Canaria's VB-6 in the Macross Frontier series, but she's shown using guns in the mecha's forearms defensively during the final episode. The trailer for the second movie, Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye, shows a VB-6 equipped with what appears to be a pair of 30mm rotary cannons off the Cheyenne II instead of hands. I apologize for the large size of this screen capture, but it's in 1080p and I don't have Photoshop on this machine: That's exactly the kind of arrangement it has... though it's easier to spot on the original line art rather than the CG model. You can clearly see on the color-coded transformation guide that, just as on the Cheyenne series of destroids, the König Monster keeps its hands on the back side of its weapon arms. It has its uses... but it wasn't originally part of the design (from an in-universe standpoint). It was an accidental discovery and was made a feature because it had a few uses...

Oh, I'm sure that as technology continues to advance, it'll eventually be possible to do something like that... but I doubt it will ever be practical enough for anyone to want to.

Oh, really? Another Macekre? If that's true, we certainly don't need to worry about that being something that will actually lend Robotech a little much-needed credibility. That particular brand of disrespectful dubbing went out of style nearly twenty years ago, and is generally looked down on as bad practice. That's why companies like 4Kids are scorned even by the voice actors who work for them. I guess at least that way if the animation sucks, it's not Harmony Gold's fault. I wonder whose work they're pillaging this time, if that's the case. Drat... I was hoping for Robotech III: the Sentinels II (Ohio State: 0) or something ridiculous like that...

Y'know, I asked myself that question initially too... Macross Zero is a bit strange, but it's also fantastic eye candy where the mecha are concerned. The story's a bit on the confusing side, but it really does help if you watch the shows in rough production order, since they gradually build up the concept of the Protoculture in each individual series. Azrael put it best, that the whole birdhuman shenanigans is more an of application of Clarke's 3rd Law than actual magic. You'll find Macross Frontier adds a little bit to the understanding of that once you get around to it. Speaking as someone who enjoys pretty much all of Macross (though admittedly it took me a while and some improved subs to gain an appreciation of Macross 7), I think it's safe to say that if you avidly dislike it when a series like Macross does things less-than-seriously, you'll probably find Macross 7 slightly offensive. If you're someone who really enjoyed the occasionally insane, over-the-top blend of silly/awesome in G Gundam, you'll probably love Macross 7. Either way, give it a chance... and if you don't like what you see in the first couple of episodes, skip right to #22 or thereabouts and you should be in good shape.

Yes, I'm aware of that... but as I've already said several times (and you've studiously ignored), we only get to see a tiny slice of Macross's vast universe. You're trying to draw conclusions about the universe as a whole on the basis of an extremely small sample population and the (misguided) assumption that women are equally as numerous as men in the UN Forces, or any military for that matter. This is, again, not indicative of sexism at all, but rather that more men than women find the military an attractive long-term career option. More and more, I think that instead of examining the facts and then coming to a conclusion based on them, you started with the conclusion you wanted to be outraged about and tried to find only those facts that superficially fit what you're trying to say. I also can't shake the hunch that your beliefs about proper gender roles in a military environment are drawn more from Star Trek than actual knowledge of military affairs. Yet again, you conveniently omitted a significant number of women in positions of power and/or authority. Even if we discount the fact that most of the influential musicians in the Macross universe are women, we still have an interesting combination of characters to work with... such as: Myung Fang Lone: Sharon Apple's producer Akiko Hojo: Record label executive producer Sazapi (sp?): Television producer (helped Mylene launch her solo career) Sara Nome: Tribal religious leader Mao Nome: Leading xenobiologist, head of the 117th Research fleet's study of the Vajra Aries Turner: UN Forces (OTEC?) researcher, genius, pioneer of Protoculture research Ranshi Mei: Xenobiologist, Dr. Nome's research partner in the 117th Research Fleet Grace O'Connor: Xenobiologist, Dr. Nome's research partner, Sheryl Nome's manager/producer, presumed to be inventor of the galaxy-wide zero-time fold network concept, nearly conquered the galaxy. Canaria Berstein: Licensed doctor, combat pilot Milia Jenius: Mayor, City-7 Maria Fokina Barnrose: Leader of the Vindirance anti-government organization. Mahara Fabrio: UN Spacy pilot (retired), Coach of the Black Skull T-Crash team. Pasha: Manager, Black Skull T-Crash team. Luxor Jebiru: Top T-Crash solo competitor. I'm not denying that Ishtar and Sylvie are main characters too... but Hibiki is the focus of the story, like him or not. Yeah, there's no evidence of that... except in the misconceptions and (hopefully unintentional) omissions you've made in this thread. There's just no evidence of this chauvinistic agenda you're trying to tell us is secretly at work here.

I didn't exactly pay a lot of attention to the production process of Shadow Chronicles, but if I recall correctly it got pushed back at least three times for various reasons. If we use that to calibrate our expectations for whatever they're calling this latest project, then we can expect to see it in early 2013... assuming they actually manage to find a distributor who wants to carry that turd. I'm not sure, but I vaguely recall someone mentioning that Harmony Gold had burned some bridges with RTSC's distributor (FUNimation), and that they were unlikely to carry future Robotech projects.

If we were using the actual definition of officer status, then virtually every woman we see in the UN Forces is an officer. You seem to be confusing your impression of what an officer is (someone in command) with what actually constitutes an officer (holding a commissioned officer rank). Still, the majority of the female officers we see hold command positions anyway. And let's ask ourselves... how many ship captains figure prominently in the story of the various Macross shows? Five. The women have a 20% share there right off the bat. Still, you have to remember that Macross has a big universe, and we're only seeing a tiny slice of it. Just because we're not seeing them doesn't mean they're not there. It just means they haven't been given center stage yet. Women are, generally speaking, a minority in a modern military... I can't imagine any reason that would change significantly in a short period of time, especially after Earth's population was decimated. As I've pointed out once already, the bigwigs in the UN Forces Command at Alaska base were likely holdovers from the various national military forces after the formation of the UN Forces. The antecedent militaries would have been predominantly male, and as such it makes sense for the officers drawn from them to fill out the UN Forces top brass would have also been predominantly male. If Macross Plus's General Gomez is any indication, many of the top brass at the UN Spacy circa 2040 are veterans of Space War 1, where the military was (like in real life) predominantly male. In theory, if large numbers of women are enlisting too then we ought to see the genders start to balance out in the top brass circa 2059, but since everything's decentralized under the NUNS banner we never saw them contact Earth for help. No, quite the opposite. I'm trying to point out that in your increasingly desperate and nonsensical attempts to conclude that Macross's creators are sexist and/or chauvinistic, you're overlooking a lot of female characters in positions of power and authority. They're not military, true... but it's still relevant to your accusations that the franchise is somehow biased against women. Oh, there's no need to take my word for it... I can cite sources. I can even provide pictures if you'd like. It's not exactly a 50-50 split in terms of genders, but female pilots (incl. human female pilots) are a fair bit more visible in the DYRL-II parallel world continuity. Unfortunately, the only appearance the UN Spacy's general staff makes is in the Macross II OVA. Likewise, starship captains make very few appearances, since the UN Spacy largely uses captured Zentradi ships and builds very few ships of its own prior to 2055. The closest we get is a female flight controller from a Daedalus II-class carrier. The only captains who figure prominently in things are our good pals Vrlitwhai 7018 and Captain Balzae. Just nitpicking here... but if they have the option to wear trousers instead of a skirt and they make a conscious choice not to then that isn't sexism, that's choice. We've seen several examples of unisex uniforms available in the UN Spacy, and we've seen several female characters wearing them. They obviously exist, so saying that a female character wearing a skirt with her uniform has to be the result of sexism is illogical to the point of being downright nonsensical. You're drawing an absurd conclusion here in an attempt to justify jumping to the main misinformed conclusion you made back in your first post. Gender equality does not mean that everyone has to dress the same regardless of gender. But the main character whom the story centers on is Hibiki, which was my point. Yes, Sylvie is there and she's a famous female fighter pilot and a babe to boot (for added alliterative appeal), but Hibiki is the character who the action centers around.

But that's inherently misleading... as being the captain or executive officer of a starship isn't the only command position an officer can hold. The other bridge operators are line officers too, and they have command authority over various aspects of the ship's operation... the most obvious of these being the flight controller. In point of fact, there are far more command positions beyond simply commanding a ship or fleet. Restricting it to merely female starship captains (or the absence thereof) based on an EXTREMELY limited sample population drawn in large measure from shows that don't prominently feature the military cast smacks of an attempt to distort the facts to support the conclusion you want. But that's also extremely unfair to the female cast of Macross, since there are plenty of women in positions of civilian authority. You're arguing that Macross is sexist, and making a conscious effort to shift aside a sizable body of evidence to the contrary. Gee... if that's the case, kindly explain the presence of Macross M3 and Macross Digital Mission VF-X in the Macross Compendium's timeline. For that matter, both VF-X games and Macross M3 got covered in Macross Chronicle too. I think you might want to check your facts thoroughly before you start complaining again. Additionally, since you saw fit to include Macross II, you might want to take note that both Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song are part of its timeline too. They're canon, and the female pilots and officers who appear therein are quite applicable to this topic. And yet, that doesn't rule out the presence of women in fleet command roles or anything else... of course, in the modern day you don't exactly see 50% or more of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made up of women either. News flash... everyone had a pretty harsh military career during the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, and you yourself said that we have to sort of waive that one due to attitudes at the time. Obviously subsequent Macross shows are not at all averse to letting women kick ass and take names... e.g. Sylvie Geena, Canaria, Nora Polyansky. As I've said once already in this thread, you might want to check your facts before you post. In many nations (including the US!), the female variant of the standard service uniform includes a skirt with the option to wear trousers instead. This holds true for all five branches of the United States armed forces... and we're far from being the only ones who do that. Real-life female combat pilots wear skirts in many modern navies and air forces. It's not unusual or in any way sexist... they have the option to wear trousers and they choose not to. It's a safe bet that Kawamori and co. modeled the UN Spacy on the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and other real-world militaries, which makes their decision to make a skirt part of the standard female uniform perfectly logical and not at all indicative of the chauvinism you're trying to read into it. In all fairness, there's really no accounting for Klan Klang's high heeled spacesuit... but then again, anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that male sexual fantasy is pretty much the entire purpose for Klan Klang's character. Of course not... but let's also remember that the main character of Macross II was Hibiki, not Sylvie. Oh, don't worry... you could insult me until you were blue in the face with very little risk of actually offending me. The thing that's irritating is that a lot of your complaints largely stem from faulty assumptions and misconceptions on your part. You've gone off half-cocked and arrived at a misleading conclusion because you didn't thoroughly check your facts beforehand.

Is that so? Just my take on it, but to me it looks like you're complaining that Macross is sexist and that women are severely underrepresented among the line officers and pilots of the UN Forces based on incomplete information, several faulty conclusions, lack of context, and an apparent misunderstanding about what constitutes an "officer". I've already pointed out a number of women you overlooked who were officers, pilots, or both. In fact, I've already pointed out that virtually every female soldier we've seen in Macross has been an officer. Likewise, you missed several examples of a unisex uniform in Macross in your haste to complain about the uniform designs that have skirts. The real kicker is that you've somehow overlooked the simple fact that the only Macross series since the Macross Plus OVA to make UN Forces soldiers the focus of the story was Macross Zero. The stories of Macross 7, Macross Frontier, and their follow-ups all focus on the civilian population... with minimal representation from the UN Forces. You're drawing conclusions about gender representation in the UN Forces based, in large part, on shows where the military was not the focus of the story (or even prominently featured). Of course, I could also be lazy and point out the obvious... that Macross is a show about giant fighting robots. It's going to be primarily targeted toward a male audience, so it makes sense for them to make many of the characters who are the focus of the show's action the same gender as the target audience so they'll be easier for the viewers to identify with...

Part 2. Um... just pointing out the obvious, but that might have something to do with them having no knowledge of traditional gender roles or, for that matter, anything that doesn't involve shooting people and blowing things up... Considering they had literally zero experience with culture beforehand... I think you're judging them way out of context and far too harshly. Remember, we're talking about people who quite literally had no knowledge of any life outside of war, so when they got introduced to culture it would have come as quite a shock and been quite legitimately the biggest thing since sliced bread in their eyes. You also seem to have overlooked many ponts in Milia's career where she held positions of great authority... after her marriage, she joined the UN Spacy as an officer (2nd Lt.) and served as an ordinary fighter pilot, special forces fighter pilot, test pilot, flight instructor, the executive officer of a starship, and eventually rose to the rank of Major before becoming the mayor of City-7... and she did all that while raising EIGHT kids. As I've just illustrated, there's rather a lot less of one than you think... since your definition of "officer" seems to be a bit off, and you've missed a fair few canon titles that prominently feature female pilots and officers. Almost every military woman in Macross to date has been an officer, and there have been more than a few women who were also pilots. This would be a viable complaint if we weren't limited to a tiny slice of Macross's universe... we can't claim to have a complete picture of the UN Forces since most of Macross is set on colony ships out in the galactic boonies or in relatively small, self-contained events that don't involve a lot of people directly. To be blunt, there's no evidence that there aren't lots of women in the service and holding high-ranking positions. We obviously have at least one major exception in the most recent Macross title... you are, of course, also glossing over women in civilian positions of authority, like various concert promoters and managers, the Mayor of City-7, etc. The problem is you're drawing a false conclusion based on a VERY limited sample population, much of which is drawn from Macross shows where soldiers don't take center stage... Or could it be that not every sci-fi series set in the future has to establish gender equality by the way people dress? It's not like the species is going to abandon conventional notions of gender roles and human sexuality overnight just because Earth got shot up. There are plenty of women in positions of authority in Macross, and plenty willing to go out and get shot at... a disproportionate percentage of whom are held up as being much better at it than their male colleagues. Furthermore, you seem to have also overlooked that not all of the old variants of the UN Spacy uniform had the women wearing skirts... most prominent was the Macross M3 uniform, which was unisex and sported trousers instead. IIRC, Lucy Macmillan's uniform in Macross Plus was basically identical to Isamu's. I think it's more than a little bit chauvinist to suggest that women can't be credible authority figures without forfeiting their sexuality in the bargain.

Actually... there's not nearly as absent as you think. Also, not to split hairs or anything, but almost every female character who's in the military has held an officer rank. They might not be in command, but they're definitely officers by rank. Depending on how things pan out with Macross: the First, this may or may not remain the case... in any event, you have the bridge bunnies who all rank 2nd Lt. or better. The Macross's chief engineer presumably holds an officer rank since she's serving on a military ship. In all fairness, we only ever see the bridge crew of one UN Spacy ship in Macross II: Lovers Again, unless you're counting the time Sylvie's squadron borrowed that rescue ship. Given the character design art, all of the bridge bunnies on the Gloria were officers too. Of course, we've also overlooked the canon prequels to Macross II, and the female pilots they contain. Macross 2036 had Komilia Maria Jenius as a VF pilot, squadron leader, and main character to boot. Likewise, Macross: Eternal Love Song had two female pilots in the main character's squadron, plus the female flight controller on the Prometheus. Because we only really saw two pilots up close... Uh... what about Mahara Fabrio in Macross 7 Trash? She was a pilot and a commissioned officer, and she was one of the pilots trained by Milia (like Gamlin). IIRC, she was also a squadron leader or held some other kind of leadership position in her formation. Not sure about that Zentradi girl who worked for Colonel Bacelon though. Sound Force is technically a UN Spacy unit as well, since even if its leader is an uncooperative berk their gear is still developed and issued by the UN Spacy. Considering the UN Forces stay pretty much uninvolved in this one, that's not surprising... Unclear, actually... officially, that female marine (Katie) was assigned to the VF-0 team, so she may could have been a pilot. After all, the Marine Corps do have their own pilots too. Considering we only actually get three NUNS pilots who have names, and only two of whom get faces to go with it, that's not that surprising either. Cathy Glass was a commissioned officer though... holding the rank of 1st Lt. and working in the Joint Chiefs of Staff office. There's actually been a recent development on this front, since Grace's co-conspirators refer to her by not only her name, but the military rank of Colonel as well. IIRC, there were female pilots in VF-X as well... and Macross M3 too. More to come.. had too many quote tags.

Just throwing this out there... but this wouldn't exactly be the first time we've seen a New Macross-class's battle section discharge its Macross cannon at less than full power. In Macross 7, it's explicitly stated that the Battle-7 needed at least 150 seconds of prep time before it could be fired at 80% of its maximum capacity if the Macross cannon's auto-limiter was disabled. If we work backward from earlier dialogue in that same episode, it appears that under normal circumstances it takes 320 seconds to prepare the gun to fire at full power. (Macross 7 ep16) Based on the above and the observation that we never see the Battle Frontier charging its Macross cannon for more than a few seconds before firing, it seems logical enough to assume that they're being hasty about it and firing at very low power for various reasons. The canon stats would lend some support to this, since the movie has the Battle Frontier firing twice in a matter of minutes, and the spec says it needs 60+ minutes of downtime between firings (presumably meaning full-power firings). So... it's not necessarily an inconsistency. Okay, that I can't answer... the shield certainly isn't visible the way it was in the Macross Frontier series, so it's possible it was in a low power state or something in the absence of incoming fire.