Seto Kaiba

Yeah, more or less. Individual reasons for doing so may vary, but you can expect that most of the people who are actually familiar with Robotech and aren't members of its tiny-yet-fanatical fanbase will tell you not to waste your time on it. In practice, it's not THAT bad, but Robotech's dialogue and story were weak even when they were new, and they've aged like unrefrigerated milk. If you saw any or all of the originals beforehand, it's a safe bet you'll find Robotech somewhere between confusing and downright obnoxious. I'd still say you should watch a few episodes and see for yourself, but don't expect it to wow you. Pretty much... I still maintain that the reason they've switched to this method of late has been that the Masterpiece Collection finally bombed out, and that since the store's cluttered with extremely-limited-edition collectibles that have yet to sell out after a good 2-3 years in the store, they're putting the kibosh on making their own goods and just acting as a reseller for import toys while they wait and pray that Warner will just buy the franchise from them to eliminate the legal hurdles. Well come on... what were you expecting? These ARE the same people who told everyone who would listen (and a few people who wouldn't) that Paramount rushed Transformers 2 out the door for fear that the Robotech movie was going to steal its thunder, and have been claiming that every single event in Hollywood somehow has something to do with the influence of the Robotech movie. These mental cases were actually EXCITED that Sylvain White'd been shown the story treatment.

Probably not, IMO... having Masahiro Chiba as a writer does nothing to legitimize the content in the MAT book, so I can't see why having Kawamori in a vaguely designed role like "supervisor" would be any better. We don't even know if he had any input into the creation of the book's contents, and there's certainly no proof of any kind that he intended to use the book to retcon material from unambiguously official sources like Chronicle and the various art books. Usually, when a franchise produces something like a technical manual, it's non-canon no matter who's writing it. Star Trek is an excellent example of this, with a fair few tech manuals, all of which are non-canon, and many of which were written by major members of the production crew like art directors (Herman Zimmerman), visual effects artists (Doug Drexler), senior illustrators (Rich Sternbach), and scenic art supervisors (Mike Okuda). Unless someone can find a REALLY good explanation for it, the safest assumption to make is that it's a simple typographical error that didn't get caught until they'd already finalized the graphics for that sheet. That they tried to come up with a rationalization, and that it was that weak, smacks of a hasty attempt to amend their error by explaining that the VF-19S really is supposed to have superior performance to the VF-19F without having to delay the issue (for which the article was featured).

Has every error or failure to properly do research been corrected in Chronicle? Hell no. Have they released new sheets to correct art mistakes or fill in data that was omitted in stats blocks before? No. There's a not-inconsiderable body of things in Chronicle that we can definitively say are errors, and we've yet to see a corrected sheet for any of them. Assuming that they meant to do it all along because they haven't made a special exception and published a corrected sheet is unwise in the extreme. (Having an entire sheet misnumbered is a rather more severe error in the grand scheme of things, as that affects the way things are organized into the binders...)

Let's see... the alleged "correction" swaps a single digit in each thrust rating, but it uses the VF-19S's atmospheric thrust rating as though that were the engine's only mode of operation, it doesn't change the weight differential, and comes with a rationalization so poor even a grade schooler's knowledge of aerodynamics is enough to tell you it doesn't hold water. Really, it's hard to make an error MORE obvious without circling it in red ink and writing "VERY POOR. SEE ME AFTER CLASS " next to it. Just like the MAT book before it, the Master File is mechanical design porn. It's meant to be a lot of pretty pictures and some realistic looking diagrams for people who're into that sort of thing (in short, people like us). If they're trying to make it look somewhat realistic (and they are) then it's not going to line up with the animation perfectly due to the animation not always behaving in ways that are obvious and mechanically feasible from a real-world standpoint. I'd say more about the Master File's accuracy and reliability (or more precisely, lack thereof), but the distinction should be obvious and has been beaten to death already.

Yes, they could have... and according to Macek's earliest accounts of how Robotech came to be, such was his original intention. It was, according to him, the network executives they were pitching it to that decided that it wouldn't sell as an anthology series and that the three shows should be combined into a single story. Pretty much, yeah... even now the only part of Robotech that actually sells is Macross. It's just much more obvious these days. See the above... back before Macek got it into his head that if he told a lot of lies and pretended Robotech was the result of a grand creative vision instead of executive meddling, he was saying that it was the network executives who caused it to change format from an anthology series to a "unified" story.

Indeed... though if we take Macek's earliest account at face value, the attempt to broadcast the show in first-run syndication was what compelled the network executives to insist that the three shows be combined instead of having them run back to back as separate features.

Not really, no... the "VF-19E" is something the Master File's writers invented to explain what Basara's VF-19 Kai was customized from. Prior to that, the only mentions of a "VF-19E" I'm aware of are fan-fiction... one from some Japanese fansite circa 2002 (where the author states it's a non-canon variant of his own invention, created by an attempt to Photoshop VF-19 Kai wings and canards onto a VF-19F/S frame), some coincidentally identical work I did while helping a friend develop a setting for Macross RPG he wanted to run, and a "VF-19ES" kitbashed model (also non-canon) that appeared in Model Graphix magazine, and had the backstory of being a custom VF developed to break the speed record over C on a flight from New Edwards AFB on Eden to Edwards AFB on Earth using a prototype enhanced fold booster. To date, the only confirmed official variants of the VF-19 are the YF-19, VF-19A, VF-19F, VF-19S, VF-19 Kai, and VF-19P.

I think you're thinking of the YF-25 Prophecy...

This makes me RAGE Eh? Where'd you come up with that? When last I checked, Shadow Chronicles's teaser comic was a straight-up continuation/do-over of an existing part of Robotech II's comic book adaptation by Jason and John Waltrip. It's probably more accurate to say that Sentinels is pseudocanon... some of the events obviously HAD to still happen for things to be what they are, but deleting Sentinels from the continuity outright would irreparably screw over RTSC's setting and... *snicker*... story. To be brutally frank... what they're missing out on is some of the worst-written sci-fi outside of Battlefield Earth. The episode outlines in Robotech Art 3 are pretty awful, and mostly consist of what the writers no doubt fondly imagined would be gritty, pulse-pounding action and gripping drama. The plot can best be summed up as the continuing adventures of Rick Hunter, as he leads a crusade of saintly humans across the galaxy to liberate a bunch of backwards, cliche little planets from the domination of a pack of cartoonishly evil space lobsters and their henpecked leader. Part of the problem was, I think, that Harmony Gold insisted on changing writers early on. According to Macek, the writers Tatsunoko supplied for the project were completely baffled by Robotech and had no idea why anyone would combine three unrelated TV shows like that. It apparently became an issue and made it hard for them to understand how Robotech's sagas fit together, and they made the decision to call in (much less talented) American writers to do the job instead.

Then why did you respond? You could've just let it be instead of calling attention to it and trying to ensure you had the last word, and it would've gone away all on its own... Courtesy of Talos, I've been reading the bit about the GU-15(A) gun pod, and it's looking like they couldn't decide on a caliber, but they gave us just about everything else we'd want to know... muzzle velocity, range, and magazine capacity. Surprisingly small on that last note (a mere 150 rounds, if I read it correctly on my brief glance-through), but as Talos brought to my attention the magazine looks like a similar setup to the one off the FN P90. A strange choice, but it makes sense given the way the gunpod's set up.

Didn't we already have an answer for that? It's been a while, but I remember reading an explanation that said that the reason the VF-19F/S had a redesigned main wing and had an extra bank of verniers in place of the canards was to maximize its performance in space, where it was decided it would see most if not all of its combat usage.

Tell me, did you get the same weird feeling that we and the writers of this book seem to have been working from each other's notes? But that really does nothing to counteract the simple fact that the percentage of stuff that makes sense and is in line with other publications is utterly swamped by the sheer amount of stuff that isn't. The first volume in the series, the VF-1 Master File, had a few sections that were obviously reprinted from the old (and thoroughly unreliable) MAT book. When we find ourselves confronted with a host of sources that all generally agree on the details, and then one or two books that are out in left field contradicting just about everything else, determining which is correct ought to be a no-brainer. Consistency over flash every time. The Master File books are damn pretty to look at, and might be based loosely on official info, but I don't think we should go labeling them official. (The Wiki writers seem to be of the same mind, lumping the new stuff from Master File in the same category as magazine variants like the VF-25VJ Vajra Aggressor and VF-19ES Mystery Ship II)

Wasn't he also responsible for the godawful character designs used in Robotech II: the Sentinels?

Yeah, I know... sketchley already told me about it. It looks like they were unable to decide which year was the correct one, and decided to split the difference between the date derived from a literal application of "80 years later" (2090) and the date that the OVA's creators supplied via the official timeline made to connect DYRL, M2036, and M:ELS (2092). It's just another strange goof, like what they accidentally did (and then tried rationalizing) with the VF-19's thrust ratings. Really? That's bizarre... I wish they'd managed to do a Game and Advanced Valkyrie sheet for the VF-1 Attack Valkyrie and VF-4 Siren. Oh well...

Considering the state of reliability the last book shows, and this book's invention of several new variants we've never heard of before and are completely unprecedented in the animation and production materials, the whole book oughta fall under "fanfic", just like the VF-1 Master File and Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual. If it's 100 total, that's not so bad... 50 per side, if the packs are fairly large, is reasonable enough. After all, the VF-19 manages to squeeze what, 24 mini-missiles into each leg bay? (discounting Chronicle's inexplicable reduction) Last contents question (honest! mine's on order): Do they give us a cutaway of the gunpod that shows the feed system and internal view of the magazine?

No, the "Lancer's Rockers" sourcebook for the old Palladium Robotech RPG wasn't a bad book... it was a hilariously awful book. I laughed myself sick at the pictures of all the musicians trying to look "gritty" and "awesome" while wearing their goofy-ass Mars Colony uniforms and rocking out on 60's retro-futuristic musical instruments so silly and dated looking they could almost be rejected props from the original Star Trek TV series. Also... saying that Palladium's Macross II RPG has a few errors in it is truly a masterpiece of understatement. It's no exaggeration to say that there's more wrong than right in the core book, and the subsequent publications don't do the job any better. To be honest, I'm not sure what my favorite screw-up in those books is... but getting the year the OVA's set in wrong and representing the Macross Cannons at 1/12th actual size are definitely strong contenders... but that's more a function of them not having much access to the information, and then ignoring most of what they DID have.

Indeed... but the poor sod in question just doesn't want to accept that Harmony Gold has essentially disowned everything produced before 2001 except the "original" series. What he's been falling back on is some remark attributed to Carl Macek that says that all of Robotech's licensed materials are canon. Whether or not Macek actually said that remains to be seen. He's so desperate to convince me of this that he called Palladium's offices in Taylor to try and get them to back him up... which is kind of disturbing on several levels. As far as the actual authorship of the RPGs, that'd be Kevin Siembieda's handiwork. The info in the old edition was, according to him, a mixture of stuff translated out of the few art books they were able to get their hands on and wild guesses based on many long sessions of freeze-framing recordings of the episodes that were airing at the time. The old edition is so wildly inaccurate nobody could possibly mistake it for canon. The new edition is supposed to be better since it's allegedly being vetted by Tommy Yune before release, but even then a LOT of mistakes slip by. Tell ya what... let's trade places. You can deal with these fruit loops in my place for a while and enjoy all of their entertaining idiocy. I'm pretty miffed with the whole lot of them right now. One of the handful of RT fans I thought was actually an OK guy is acting like a complete bellend... throwing a goddamn hissy fit because he lost his admin powers on RDF-HQ. I have just two words to say to this: FUND IT. Raid nothing... Harmony Gold's staff just don't have a clue how to write. I've heard some noise about Tom Bateman having written a slightly less suck-ass story treatment for the movie, and that it was axed due to Tommy's massive ego. (alarmingly plausible cause of death, no?)

If the project hadn't met its conveniently untimely end thanks to the exchange rate crash, Matchbox bailing out, and Macek's ineptitude, who knows how much they might've ripped off? Obviously they couldn't be TOO obvious about it, since that'd invite a lawsuit. On an unrelated note, I've received a few e-mails from a Robotech fan who's got it into his head that the old (1st Ed.) Palladium Robotech RPG books are the last word on what is and is not canon. As a result, I got to hear one of the craziest conspiracy Robotech fanboy conspiracy theories of all time... This bloke (who I won't name) told me that the RPG is the last word because Macek said once that all the stuff made for RT was official, and that all the material in official publications like the Infopedia and AoTSC book should be ignored because it was all the result of the insidious influence of the Trekkies, who he thinks have essentially taken over Robotech.com. This guy is 7 1/2 beers short of a six pack, easy.

It most certainly did...

Of course... Robotech's creative process is based entirely on finding something relatively popular and either license it for rewriting or just steal parts of it in the faint hope that by assembling a "new" story from bits and pieces of stuff that don't suck and have nothing to do with each other, nobody will notice and the end result won't suck too terribly either. As I've said many a time, the only thing that changed over 25+ years for Robotech was the name of the show they were ripping off. It started with Sentinels trying desperately to combine parts of Macross and Star Trek: the Next Generation into something vaguely watchable. For Robotech 3000 they were ripping off the old Roughnecks: the Starship Troopers Chronicles CG series and Terminator (or possibly The Matrix). Now, in the 21st century, we've got Shadow Chronicles making a shamelessly transparent attempt to ape the story and tone of the Battlestar Galactica remake with some vague references to Macross. Somehow, it really comes at no surprise that Harmony Gold would attempt to rip off some parts of Transformers: the Movie. The popularity of the movie is one factor that Macek identifies as a cause of Robotech: the Movie's failure. Since it was quite popular, of course they'd attempt to steal what they could from it in hopes that they'd get away with using someone else's better-written material to disguise their own weak efforts.

Eh... wasn't the stated goal of the AVF project to develop a replacement for the VF-11 that could equip a pin-point barrier system and external fold booster? Are we talking about the same goofy looking set of super parts the VF-19F/S had in Macross 7, or are these something else? (Perhaps a close cousin or intended design predecessor to the packs in question?) Now THAT forms an odd mental image... How many are we talkin' here? More than 40? More than a hundred? We into VF-25 territory with 200+? Oddly, this is one of the designs I'm most curious to see... I'd always considered the idea of an ELINT/AWACS model VF-19 impossible due to the way it transforms, but they've apparently gone and made one... the guitar pick-shaped radome's an odd touch, and the designation is just BLEH. I'm assuming they probably parroted the line about which of the VF-19's variants were modeled on which version... I'm guessing they probably show or at least mention the VF-19C as being an upgraded VF-19A, and the VF-19E (which you said is the basis for Basara's machine) is a long-wing version of the VF-19F/S? Ordinarily, I wouldn't spend a dime on a non-canon (and thus essentially useless for my purposes) book, but these clever people keep doing such an exemplary job in making the master file books eyebrow-raisingly perplexing, thus parting me from my hard-earned money yet again...

Well, yes... but it bodes well if we can confirm the data presented by other means if we can't get our hands on the article that originated the description. Once I get back from dinner I'll check and see if we have the issue on hand. Then we can MAYBE remedy said lack of written information... (which is, of course, contingent on whether or not the magazine actually covers the mecha in any depth) EDIT @ 21:43: Nope, turns out I don't have that exact issue after all. Just the first three issues from that year.

So, the moral of the story is that the vocal Robotech fans are the biggest douches of all? I've lost count of the number of crackpot arguments for why Robotech is better... almost all of which either boil down to nostalgia, bloody-minded ignorance, or both. Of course... the Robotech story has always had all the depth of a teaspoon. Take away its basic nature as a story assembled from three unrelated stories, and you've got yourself a generic sci-fi action story about a pack of gormless soldiers fending off an invading force of evil aliens bent on humanity's destruction and/or the capture of some non-specific macguffin with giant fighting robots. (I just realized I've described what Avatar would be if the teams changed jerseys)

That was fast... I only mentioned the topic to you five minutes ago. Yeah, that's almost certainly the culprit... though I don't recall ever seeing it up close in battroid mode. (Convenient model and texture reuse, making it a khaki VF-25G)

's probably the khaki VF-25s we see during the final few episodes... I think I may have this issue. I'll check when I get home.