Seto Kaiba

Not necessarily... it's entirely possible that the producers originally intended to do what the producers of the "Birdhuman" movie did, and were using a modern variable fighter as a stand-in for the CG model of the period-appropriate fighter that would be inserted during post-production. Which still does nothing for obvious contradictions like the liberal use of scenes from DYRL in Macross Frontier's expository dialogue as though they were canon.

As you say, the implication of the Extra Report is that it takes place outside of the events of the Macross 7 TV series... that it is outside the normal continuity of Macross 7. There are (generally) three ways to classify material outside of the normal continuity: Expanded Universe (tenuously canon side story), Parallel World (functionally non-canon for the prime universe), and Non-Canon. In this case it doesn't really matter which, since my original point was that we can't take material from "Fleet of the Strongest Women" as being entirely reliable for the purposes of discussing what's what with the main continuity Zentradi (and/or Meltrandi) for that very reason... that it's outside the normal course of the series. An excellent proposal... admittedly not one that solves the contradictions in the depictions of Space War 1, but potentially useful for later Macross stories. Admittedly, that is the case in the TV series depiction... but like everything else it becomes somewhat awkward when we also consider all the areas where the events of DYRL and the TV series seem to occupy a "Schrodinger's continuity", where either can be canon depending on the director's preferences... like how the documentary of Space War 1 filmed aboard City-7 had Basara, Mylene, and their Vrlitwhai actor doing in DYRL style, but their Kamjin in TV style, along with Milia's TV VF-1J and TV flightsuit. Frontier didn't help matters by using Zentradi scenes unique to DYRL in their expository dialogue... Indeed... the creators of Macross II played with that idea when they were doing mechanical designs for the two canon prequel games (Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song) by creating a whole family of designs for specific combat roles based on the stock Queadluun-Rau and Nosjadeul-Ger. Not strictly relevant to the continuity we're talking about, but relevant in that the idea is not unprecedented in Macross as a whole even without the intervention of humans (as with the Queadluun-Rea). Possibly, but all other exemplars of the DYRL commander type have all been bald, even those seemingly much younger (though of unknown age). At the time DYRL was released, Vrlitwhai would've been (according to his TV series bio) about 56 years old. Definitely not too early for male pattern baldness, if the Zentradi are even susceptible to such a thing.

Well, if we take the stated intent of Macross Chronicle at face value, then the canonicity of the Macross works being covered wasn't necessarily a factor... if it was, then their decision to include Macross II, which isn't part of the main (ongoing) continuity's canon, is truly strange. Getting pack to this thread's original topic... Oh, I'd forgotten about that... though even if we exclude Chlore's fleet in FotSW there're still Milia's red DYRL-model Queadluun-Rau in episode 11. Which was the whole point... trying to construct a rationale is impossible because there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to their use of DYRL or TV designs aside from the personal preference of the director/writer/whoever.

What? The closest any incarnation of the Macross timeline has ever come to acknowledging the events of FotSW was a two-paragraph Extra Report included on one of the Macross Chronicle timeline sheets. It wasn't included in the airing order, and it isn't even really a part of Macross 7 Encore either. It's an extra feature tacked onto the last volume of the home video release of the series. Its omission from the broadcast run of the series and the timeline is telling enough without it essentially being a deleted scene. We can ballpark where the two actual Encore episodes take place, but all we can say about the unaired FotSW episode is that it has to be somewhere after episode 28... other than that all bets are off. The unaired episode "Fleet of the Strongest Women" is ambiguously canon at best. Realistically it should enjoy the same non-canon but acknowledged status as deleted scenes. (Were it something like Good Morning Mylene, where you could fit it in anywhere without disrupting other events it would be one thing, but FotSW's events are simply too big to handwave away like that) EDIT: Either way, it's only one small part of the whole "whose Zentradi is it anyway" situation... canon or no, there's enough conflicting material on the TV and DYRL sides to keep it entirely ambiguous.

FotSW being outside the normal continuity, the prime example is the occasional references to Milia as being Meltrandi, and the use of DYRL designs in their documentary about SW1... including showing Max and Milia's dogfight with Max in a VF-1S and Milia in a red Queadluun-Rau. It's not quite as clear cut as using one term to mean the other... there's a definite case of implying that DYRL is the more accurate depiction there... All the same, the whole matter of explaining which version of the Zentradi is "right" remains unsolvable due to the pick-and-choose nature of Kawamori's use of them.

Which sounds like retroactive arse-covering to me... but whatever, the end result is he's saying "don't think too much about it", which is sound advice. Warning! Incoming qualifying statement! Representations of the Zentradi, space fold, etc. vary in depiction in the main Macross continuity only. In the Macross II parallel world continuity, the presentation of the Zentradi, space fold travel, etc. is pretty consistent, which could easily be attributed to its use of DYRL as the sole, canon depiction of Space War 1 rather than the main continuity's mix-and-match approach. (Which is not to say that it doesn't contain some minor references to the main continuity, like an explanation for why the VF-1D doesn't show up, why the GBP-1 was first used on the VF-1J, and the UNS-remodeled bridge of Vrlitwhai's ship looking suspiciously similar to the TV series version)

All things considered, any attempt to compose a rational theory to explain away the use of designs from both the original Macross series and DYRL in newer main continuity material is always going to be a complete boondoggle so long as Kawamori doesn't want to be tied down to one version or the other. There's simply no rhyme or reason to his use of the designs from either series, since he's played mix and match with both on more than one occasion. Macross Frontier's "Missing Birthday" and "Fastest Delivery" weren't the most blatant contradiction, just the most recent one... Macross 7's documentary episode had a DYRL Vrlitwhai and a TV series Quamzin. There was also the use of the term "Meltran" in Macross 7 to describe Milia, whereas Macross Frontier has Klan Klan identifying herself as Zentradi instead. Macross 7 also supplied a rationale to explain why Exsedol switched from his TV series look to the DYRL redesign, seemingly implying that his TV appearance was the original one, but no rationale exists for the other occurrences of DYRL designs. EDIT: RedWolf raised another interesting contradiction... in FotSW, Chlore and her fleet are DYRL designs, but they act as though they were in a TV series-style relationship with the Zentradi forces... as their allies, rather than their rivals. Now that Frontier is playing silly frakkers and trotting out a heavier emphasis on DYRL, who knows what's what as far as the Zentradi are concerned? By all accounts they're using the DYRL designs just because they look cooler half the time.

Unfortunately, from what others have told me in their attempts to share the increasingly imbecilic goings-on of the usual crowd of Robotech.com trolls and wankers, that seems to be the case. Rhade and ShadowLogan could hold their own in intelligent discourse, if only they could be persuaded to drop their asinine, long-discredited pet theories and their insane defense of the indefensible. Other than that, the knowledgeable folks have pretty much been banned for "heresy". Quoted for truth, justice, and epic quantities of win. Which could easily be taken as a fair definition of the remaining fanbase... In the interest of fairness, this is probably the most active Robotech-related topic on any forum devoted to either Robotech or Macross, and it's almost exclusively facepalming and mockery.

Your guess is as good as mine... No, I don't think Macross Chronicle has covered it. The safest assumption is that the wings are being retracted back into the fuselage, and are likely stored in the layer between the passenger compartment and cargo compartment. You might want to consider adding context when you ask a question like this... earlier in the episode when Sheryl is shot down while operating Michael Blanc's VF-25G, she's wearing a spacesuit. If you meant later, when they're talking in the hangar... it's almost certainly a pressurized environment (unlike the flight deck itself). Insofar as Brera's VF-27, that's already been explained on the Compendium and in Chronicle, the brainwave control system links the cyborg pilot's brain directly to the controls. Presumably Brera's ability to remotely operate his VF-27 is a function derived from the same zero-time fold communications that Grace is presumably using to remotely operate the different bodies she uses in the series.

Excalibur. "Blazer Valkyrie" is an unofficial nickname for it... though, to be precise, the term "Valkyrie" passed into common usage as a common name for Variable Fighters. Any VF can be referred to as a "Valkyrie" (in much the same way that "Kleenex" is now synonymous with "tissue"), though the only variable fighters actually named "Valkyrie" are the original VF-1 Valkyrie, and the Macross II continuity's VF-1R Valkyrie Kai and VF-2SS Valkyrie II.

Always good... by all means, share your insights with us. Unsurprisingly, a fairly common occurrence... rather a lot of western Macross fans initially discovered anime and Macross through Robotech, though it's becoming a less and less common phenomenon among the younger anime enthusiasts who were introduced to their hobby by newer shows, and sidestepped the Robotech phase by seeking out the readily-available fansubs of all the shows Harmony Gold's been blocking. Cue the disillusioned "WTF" directed at Shadow Chronicles in 3... 2... 1... Aaaaaaaaaand... there we have it. Joking aside, this is an all-too-common phenomenon among what remains of the Robotech fanbase. Now that the Harmony Gold "creative team" has made it appallingly obvious that they will never produce anything of quality, fans of Robotech find themselves in a difficult position. The most rational fans simply accept that Robotech was just doomed to fail, and move on to other shows that actually have potential. They might retain a lingering affection for the show that introduced them to anime, or they might just walk off shaking their heads and wondering what the hell they were thinking. The more devoted Robotech fans, who've stuck with the franchise through two and a half decades worth of disappointment, will often work themselves up into a frenzy of denial over the current state of affairs. They'll spend hours or days trying to justify how Shadow Chronicles really isn't as bad as everyone says it is, and all the while it's painfully obvious that they don't actually believe the things they're saying and are just trying to retroactively justify 20+ years of wasted time to themselves. The most devoted Robotech fans, who are generally thick enough to actually believe Harmony Gold's hype, have been clinging to the franchise for so long that they've lost all contact with reality and actually believe that Robotech is a strong property and that Shadow Chronicles is a misunderstood gem. Oddly enough, this most devoted group of fans is also usually the group that knows the least about Robotech, frequently tripping up on simple stuff like what character belongs to what saga and the fact that not every minor one-shot character has a huge, elaborate backstory. This last group is Robotech's core constituency... the strange, mutant creatures whose completely alien concepts of "fun" and "entertainment" leave you wondering if they unwind by building databases in Microsoft Access. More often than not, they give their unwilling audience cause to wonder whether they're masochists, stupid, or both. In practice, nostalgia is about the only merit Robotech has ever had. Even as early as 1986, Harmony Gold was already gleefully proving that they hadn't a clue how to write original material of their own. Eventually, the nostalgia of the people will run out, and Robotech will finally die... albeit a far less dignified death than the one it should have had back in 1987.

As far as the whole "continuing Shadow Chronicles thing goes, they did at least have that dreadful draft which was floating around the internet. McKeever's loud protests that "on hiatus" doesn't mean they're not working on it aside, the remarks made by Richard Epcar at various conventions are most telling. He was very open about the fact that when he was contracted to lend his voice talents to a trilogy of new Robotech, of which Shadow Chronicles was to be the first installment. He also went on record to say that after he was informed that the project was on hold with a "don't call us, we'll call you" with regard to recording his lines, he didn't hear from them again. It definitely looks like nothing will ever get done on Shadow Rising, since Tommy is waiting for Warner to unfuck the franchise's reputation, and Warner is twiddling its thumbs waiting for the writers to produce something coherent as far as a draft. Unsurprising to say the least... no doubt Harmony Gold intends to play it safe with the live action movie. If it's a hit, they won't bother faffing about with Shadow Rising, and will do a new animated series based on it (ala Transformers Animated) while the property is hot. If it flops or gets canceled, they'll fall back on squeezing the die-hard fanbase's blue balls for more cash from the relative safety of their Shadow Rising safety net. Warner would have to be blind not to know that Macross is their best bet for a successful Robotech movie, yet they're going ahead with the idea of a reimagining to sidestep the litigious nightmare the original represents... and thus the end result will probably end up bearing no resemblance to the classic anime to which Harmony Gold has been desperately clinging these past twenty-five odd years. Oh, so Kevin McKeever's falling back on his usual trend of revisionist history and bullshit... charming. Either way, it comes right back to his long-time stance of "we'll do a new series if and only if we can get a network to give us an episode commitment". It sounds like he's trying to engage in some Carl Macek-esque buck-passing, to lay most of the blame for having no new properties out there on the doorstep of the big television networks, for whom the Robotech franchise is such a pathetic small-time outfit that it's barely worth their notice. Incidentally, it also appears that SPACE has taken Robotech out of the lineup entirely... it's not listed anywhere on their broadcast schedule, and the series page has no airdate listed under "next episode". I guess it was inevitable, since the series was put in a timeslot (Saturday @ 7:00am) that made it abundantly clear that the network probably thought it was a real channel-changer campfest and almost guaranteed nobody would watch.

Well, like I said... if it was an acrimonious parting they probably would've kept it quiet as a courtesy thing, and if it wasn't and they'd just had other things to do at the time there likely was never a reason for their parting of ways. Speculation is probably all we'll ever have on this note, since unless something goes seriously pear-shaped with a production, they don't usually talk about this sort of thing.

Episode 27 was originally going to be the finale under Big West's original plan, but after the first three episodes aired and became a runaway hit, they extended the show's run (only once) to 36 episodes.

Really, I don't think we'll ever know exactly why Big West stopped working with Tatsunoko. It may simply be that after Macross: Flashback 2012 they never thought they'd be making another Macross show again (Kawamori was saying that, for sure) and decided to part ways. Tatsunoko may simply have been committed to another project. At the general time Big West was working on Macross II, Tatsunoko was involved in Space Knight Tekkaman Blade and Irresponsible Captain Tylor. If it was an acrimonious parting, odds are nobody will know the details of it, since they tend to keep that sort of thing quiet.

Yes, Studio Nue started working on the show that eventually became Macross under the sponsorship of Wiz (Uizu) Corp., who wanted a ~48 episode series done as a comedy spoof of the highly successful Gundam series. Sort of right... Wiz (Uizu) went bankrupt/out of business and Studio Nue bought back the rights to the series and started shopping around for a new sponsor, eventually teaming up with Big West, who cut the run of the show down to 27 or so episodes, but agreed to let them do it as a serious story. Sort of true again... once Studio Nue had done pretty much all of the creative legwork and refined the series into its final shape and started to produce the animation, Big West discovered that it was going to run more than they'd budgeted for the series, and brought in Tatsunoko to help fund the animation process. They also found they didn't have the manpower to animation the whole thing solo, so Big West brought in Artland, while Tatsunoko brought in AnimeFriend and StarPro. An incredible oversimplification... basically, Tatsunoko only holds a copyright on the animation of the series itself, and has the distribution and merchandising rights to the show outside of Japan which they were given as compensation for their involvement. Tatsunoko only funded the animation process, and the creative work was done long before they got involved, so Tatsunoko has no claim on the intellectual property of the series, but does have ownership of the animation they funded the production of... (basically, they own the footage itself, but not the contents). Tatsunoko's contracts for DYRL were presumably drawn up much more strictly, because the confusion over who owned what never seems to have touched that title. Also, Tatsunoko is listed in the credits for Macross: Flashback 2012, but the degree of their involvement is unknown. Macross II: Lovers Again was the first title to exclude Tatsunoko from the production process. No idea... I don't think they've ever really offered any insight into it. It might have something to do with the creators of Macross II opting to use AIC and Onrio, and Macross Plus originally having been developed as something not related to Macross, but we'll probably never know for sure.

Which is really obnoxious, because I've explained it to most of them at least once... Um... not quite... we know Harmony Gold's rationale for delaying Robotech: Shadow Rising indefinitely, and it's all budget-related. Basically, as Tommy Yune explained it, Harmony Gold's management decided that they were better off waiting for Warner's live-action Robotech movie to raise the Robotech franchise's standing so their investors would be willing to give them more favorable terms, thus giving them a bigger budget to ensure that the continuation of Shadow Chronicles was a higher-quality product than the first installment. Take that for what you will... but at least some of it makes sense. Insofar as Carl Macek's return to the franchise in an advisory capacity, I'll wager that was intended to convince the fans that Harmony Gold's creative team hasn't just been sitting around picking their noses all this time, and make them think that big things are happening when in truth they're just sitting around waiting for Warner to fix their poo. Now, I've got no idea where you got it into your head that Shadow Chronicles was supposed to be a series... the Robotech 2004 thing's format was never announced, and by the time they'd gotten around to announcing details (right around the time it became Robotech: Shadow Force) it was announced that it was going to be a series of movies. McKeever's always said that they won't develop a series unless they can get an episode commitment from a network, so it's highly unlikely that they ever intended this aborted "Shadow Saga" to be a TV series. If they did, and managed to get an episode commitment, we'd probably have been celebrating Robotech's cancellation sometime around February 2007 instead of mocking a laughably bad movie. Harmony Gold has at least implied that the limited budget of Shadow Chronicles was because they weren't sure if the movie would be a success, and didn't want to risk scads of money from their investors on it, so they did the whole thing on a shoestring budget and called it a day.

The viewer? It's not just you. Definitely a classic "Oh poo" moment.

Even so... as long as the engines are running they're still going to be consuming fuel at some rate. No matter how gently those engines sip from the fuel tanks in atmospheric flight, they'll still run dry at some point. So, in practice, it's probably more along the lines of the fighter having more endurance than the pilot... by a considerable margin if Macross 7 is anything to go by. How many days were Basara, Mylene, and Gamlin stomping around on the surface of Lux before they returned to the fleet? Two? Three? In any event, the light fuel consumption rate goes right out the window in space flight since the VFs use the waste plasma from the reaction engines as ion thruster propellant in space flight, which would be the reason for the use of boosters and additional propellant tanks in the form of super parts. Would it perhaps be that the manufacturer is listed as General Galaxy rather than Stonewell/Bellcom? Or maybe the 3 barrel particle beam gatling gun? All things considered... the credibility of the VF-1 Master File was damaged beyond repair right around the time its writers decided to copy large portions of material from the long-discredited Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual. Stating that the VF-4 couldn't transform is the least of its problems where accuracy is concerned.

In my opinion, Jeebers is every bit as obnoxious as Rhade is... just for different reasons. Both Jeebers and Rhade belong to that bizarre subset of Robotech fans who actually know almost nothing about the Robotech universe and continuity, yet hold themselves up as devoted fans and experts on the franchise. Rhade just doesn't know that he doesn't know it all, and runs off at the mouth about things he doesn't understand and can't be arsed to look up. Jeebers, on the other hand, is seemingly incapable of understanding the distinction between canon and fanfiic, and thus brings his ineptly-made D20 Future Robotech game up at every opportunity as though it actually had some bearing on the discussions he interrupts... made all the more obnoxious by the fact that his RPG only vaguely resembles Robotech itself. It's a problem not helped in the slightest by his having seen one (and only one) Macross show and deciding the whole of Macross was completely batshit crazy based on some misconceptions he has about how the military works in the real world. Call a spade a spade... Macross's continuity isn't nearly the mess you're making it out to be... it's just a very big universe and its creators have adopted the method of giving us bits here and there rather than trying to tell one huge monolithic story, since that's an easy way to write yourself into a corner like Star Trek and Star Wars did... Good night Mr. van Winkle, we'll see you in about twenty years...

And they're right... after a fashion. Not just Macross... EVERYTHING. It's probably just that they're so used to following franchises that produce nothing new or interesting to be able to figure out a franchise that actually produces new content with some regularity... all those sequels and prequels confuse them...

When you get right down to it, there generally isn't much in the way of difference between being a fan of Robotech and just being ignorant. Some of the blame for their ignorance must fall on the heads of Harmony Gold's creative team, who have put a lot of effort into keeping fans ignorant of Macross, but we can't excuse their ignorance outright, as much of the basic information is still readily available online. Even among Robotech fans, whose ignorance and belligerent nature is common knowledge in mecha anime circles, Rhade is a somewhat exceptional case. Like many of the most belligerent and devoted Robotech fans, he seems to be completely out of touch with the franchise as a whole... and particularly the new material created by Tommy Yune as part of the continuity reboot. Admittedly, his tastes run towards the strange even for a Robotech fan, since he's an avid Masters Saga fan and thinks General Leonard was a great leader despite every single Robotech adaptation or continuation that featured him depicted him as an arrogant, xenophobic, team-killing bastard, and Tommy's recent work depicts him as also being a traitor to the United Earth Government and secret agent of the Anti-Unification League. He's also in with that whole pro-HG pro-Masters Saga fandom gang that harasses anyone who mob up on anyone who points out that Leonard being a xenophobic, team-killing, traitorous douche isn't opinion... it's canon. He's always thought he's smarter than everyone else, and tried to pull a couple fast ones on the other fans... usually accompanied by tall tales which get progressively more absurd the more he's confronted. It doesn't surprise me that once again he's spouting off about Macross without knowing what he's talking about.

Eh, given their endorsement of MEMO's behavior, I don't think they care if the income is disposable or not so long as they spend it on Robotech crap. What the Harmony Gold "creative team" wants is a blindly loyal fanbase whose desire to purchase the latest feeble Robotech merchandise borders on an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Oddly enough, when confronted with the facts of the Macross rights situation on Robotech.com's forums, Tommy and Kevin mysteriously clam up and refuse to comment, when ordinarily a challenge to their perceived success and authority would have them all over the thread like a kleptomaniac on a poorly attended table of iPods. After reading that, I wouldn't say they're trying to disillusion the kid... it does look like they're doing some hasty retroactive ass-covering to keep the guy from concluding that Robotech has just been riding Macross's coattails in the most inept of fashions since 1985. All I'll say is this... the authors must've been smoking a lot of "protoculture" when they wrote EotC.

Of course... which is why Harmony Gold has put so much effort into obfuscation and misdirection intended to convince the Robotech faithful that the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series is seen as inferior to Robotech and that the other Macross shows aren't worth looking into and take all kinds of pointers from Robotech.