Seto Kaiba

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.

Ah, now that's the stance people should be taking where Harmony Gold is concerned. Between their downright pathetic track record and their marked tendency to distort the truth to cover their own failings, it's only natural that we should greet every piece of "news" from Harmony Gold with sincere skepticism. Now that'd be an interesting sight to see... though it's kind of funny that Tommy constantly shows only behind views in his "promo" and "concept" art. I'd suggest that he's one of those guys who's all about the ass, but I think Shadow Chronicles is a pretty good counterargument to that, what with every female lead showing nearly enough cleavage to hold up a Christmas tree. It was a particularly weak excuse... made all the weaker by the promo art being signed "Studio Yune". Oh, naturally... there are a few fanboys who still want to believe (or want others to believe) that things are still moving forward and that Robotech has a bright future ahead of it. Almost without exception, they're the sort of bottom-feeding trolls who think kissing the asses of Tommy Yune and/or Kevin McKeever is going to get pay off for them in employment or insider status. No surprises there... but you and I must get around in different fan circles, because I've yet to see anything I'd call "very cool" or even "mildly interesting" from the Robotech fandom. I've seen a handful of Robotech podcasts, but very few actually talk about Robotech while the majority are little more than gossip columns where the host can be an internet tough guy and insult people... secure in the knowledge that it'll only ever be heard by a few people. The few attempts at fan-films I've seen have all been painfully derivative and are almost invariably Macross-based... because the 49 episodes that came after the Macross Saga don't really matter, right? Fan art isn't much better... it's almost all Macross stuff. The only noteworthy new-ish Robotech fan site other than JT's Protoculture Times blog/podcast is an attempt to revive/continue the uRRG by one of its junior writers... but it's only worth noting in that its author is "expanding" the Robotech setting by "borrowing" material from unrelated Macross titles like Macross Zero, Macross: Flashback 2012, and Macross 7. Y'know, the kind of website that Tom Bateman didn't want to believe exists a few pages back...

Okay... that kind of warning isn't a good sign. Huh... that's a rare one for me, I'm not used to seeing someone praise the story and the characters when they talk about Macross Zero. The usual opinion I've seen (and agree with) is that Macross Zero is great mecha porn but mediocre in all other regards, with a severely disjointed narrative. Still, to each their own. Huh... you're the second person I've seen say that in 24 hours. Weird... but totally understandable. I, for one, wish the VF-11 had gotten a lot more love in the main Macross continuity. It's a little plain, but it's a nice design that adds something new to its classic roots. Ah, yes. You can't really measure the UN Spacy by the same yardstick as other, real-world militaries. In point of fact, Gamlin is actually only 19 years old. He joined the UN Spacy at age 15, and completed the three year pilot training sequence in only two years. Pretty typical reaction, all told.. Uh... you might want to take stock of the rest of Macross before you level that particular complaint. Quite a few of Macross's leading characters are "adolescent ace pilots". Hikaru was only 16 at the start of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, as was Max, while Kakizaki was 17 and Milia was 15. Macross II's Hibiki and Sylvie were both 17 during the OVA. Macross 7's Gamlin was 19. Macross Zero's Shin Kudo was only 18. Age-wise, the pilots in Macross Frontier were unremarkable. Alto and Michael were 17 and Brera was 19. Guys in their 20s, like Guld, Isamu, and Basara, are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to the main cast. Forgive me for saying so, but that's a rather odd complaint for someone who was "brought into the world of anime" by Gundam. Gundam's downright famous for its angsty teenage pilots in most of its universes... and I think it's safe to say that in terms of emoness or angst, Alto has nothing on the likes of a young Amuro Ray, Camille Bidan, Judau Ashta (in the second half), Uso Ebbing, Kira Yamato, Relina Peacecraft, Saji Crossroad, etc. It's an odd one, that's to be sure... an attempt to move away from the passively stealthy designs of previous shows, and odder for being a VF-1 that transforms like a VF-19. Not sure how Frontier could be said to suffer from "super sentai syndrome"... but I do agree on the subject of PMCs. They were trendy as heroes for a while, now they're trendy as villains... particularly in video games. It irked me to see the New UN Spacy portrayed as barely competent while swaggering mercenaries with all the latest toys wade nigh-invincibly through combat. It's hardly a realistic depiction of PMCs either... SMS is more like MITHRIL from Full Metal Panic! than anything.

News? About a new Robotech project? Come on, Keith... at least try to keep your expectations realistic! In the present situation, it's unlikely we'll hear anything on their "new" Robotech projects until at least 2012... if at all. I'd say the only kind of news we can expect regarding the LAM and Shadow Rising is a quiet notice of their cancellation a few years down the road. It would be interesting... but I doubt he has any to share.

Granted, under normal circumstances I would agree with you that the printed materials must bow to the anime when it depicts something that can't be accounted for... but this isn't one of those times. In this case, we have the consistently repeated official line from the hory froating head himself that most Valkyries can't operate their energy conversion armor in fighter mode. Even before Kawamori introduced this energy conversion armor stuff to Macross in Macross Zero, it was (and still is) a well-established fact that overtechnology-derived super alloys and whatnot are used in the construction of variable fighters... even without drawing on dubious materials like the MAT and Master File books. Mind you, it's the animation that further establishes that these super materials, like hypercarbon, are impressively tough stuff. Prior to this energy conversion armor silly-bollocks runaround, literally the only way to account for the impressive durability Valkyries exhibited in all modes was that more than just the frame was made of OTM super alloys. The new Master File books, despite being not terribly reliable, certainly seem to agree with that position. There's a small section about the use of OTM materials on p75-78 of the VF-1 Master File. In this, we have a reasonably logical explanation that has at least some small degree of precedent in previous Macross works AND doesn't contradict the official line of the hory froating head. That seems like a winner to me. ... and promptly close the proverbial door again by explicitly stating that the VF-0(A), VF-25, and VF-27 are the ONLY VFs capable of such a feat, for which specific reasons are provided ("Mighty Wing" capacitor, the use of Stage II reaction engines, and having four of the bloody things respectively). If there wasn't a pre-existing logical explanation for all this, then I would agree with you wholeheartedly...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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