Seto Kaiba

Now that's one hell of an understatement... saying Robotech's "expanded universe" stories lack coherency is rather like calling a town that's just been carpet-bombed "slightly untidy". In the past, I've seen several fans attempt to sort the old comics into continuities, and it rarely ends well. Usually, the poor sods involved argue for a few months before giving the whole thing up as a bad job. On the rare occasion that they actually produce results, the usual breakdown is around seven or eight more-or-less self-contained continuities and a bunch of individual stories classified as "stand-alone" only because they don't seem to actually fit with any of the other comics or the animated series. In short, the old Robotech comics are a mess... which is probably one of the first things Tommy Yune did as part of his continuity reboot was to declare the whole confused mess non-canon. On balance, I think the Robotech universe is better off without them. True, they sustained the franchise during the release doldrums of the 90s, but many of them were exactly what they look like... shameless attempts to wring a few more bucks out of the rose-tinted memories of the dwindling, loyal, nostalgia-blinded Robotech fanbase. As to the whereabouts and goings-on of Jonathan Wolfe... who cares? In the only stories that actually matter (the "original" Robotech TV series, Sentinels, Shadow Chronicles) the man is a first-class sleazebag. If memory serves, he was cheating on his wife with Minmei during the Pioneer mission, and his one great act was to betray the troops under his command to the enemy in exchange for continuing to appear heroic.

Eh... you might be reading a bit too much into this... And we have absolutely no idea if they were originally like that, if they were modified to be like that after the fleet had accidentally released the Protodeviln, or if they were built from scratch based on the existing design. What evidence we have suggests that latter... so unless we're counting the Protodeviln's legions as a planetary government I don't think that holds for the VF-14. Well, there's no doubt that the Zola Patrol's VF-19P was a custom VF-19 intended to meet their specific needs, even prior to it being outfitted with sound booster technology, but there's no indication that the VF-19F and VF-19S were exclusive to the 37th Colony Fleet. Additionally, we shouldn't count the Sound Force birds in this, since all but the VF-11D were unique one-off machines, and all were designed to fill a specific and extremely limited combat niche. We've covered the VF-19P already... repeating one instance will not make it count for two. Also, do you have some kind of proof that the VF-5000G and VF-5000T-G weren't produced by the U.N. Spacy for the aggressor and training purposes mentioned in its Compendium article? We cannot assume that these VF-5000 variants were locally-produced customized units. Yes, but remember that it was exclusive to the NUNS forces attached to the Macross Frontier colony fleet, and was the product of development carried out aboard the Frontier fleet. You're making an awful lot of assumptions here, many of which are unsound.

Bah... it's not like there's anything worth saying about that bizarre compulsion some die-hard Robotech fans suffer from that forces them to make asses of themselves in public by trying to "defend" Robotech by trolling Macross fans. They're sad, sorry little attention whores who desperately need to take a good hard look at what's really going on in the Robotech franchise. Usually once they realize they're defending a franchise that hasn't produced anything of any real value in 25 years of trying, and is run by a company that tells them nothing and insults them for asking questions, they wise up pretty quickly and feel very foolish. Some, of course, just act even more juvenile as the truth nags at them and makes them question whether they really enjoy Robotech as much as they're trying to convince themselves they do. Which, in practical terms, means that people are waiting for something that will probably never happen... Business as usual... Harmony Gold is stringing the fans along and trotting out a handful of increasingly expensive toys of rapidly deteriorating quality, all while mouthing the same tired lies and vague, empty promises of continuing the Robotech story at some undefined point in the future. Honestly, I think that's what Harmony Gold wants... they want a legion of militant fanboys who will blindly accept any low quality product they happen to produce, even at ludicrous prices, because they feel that they're the chosen... the elect... the true Robotech fans. In short, they want clueless cattle who can be milked for as much money as Harmony Gold things they can get away with on a year-to-year basis. Sooooooooo... you're getting up in arms over Tommy Yune deviating from the events of a story that was only ever ambiguously canon when it came out, and was non-canon for years before Tommy decided to do something else? I'm really not seeing just cause for ire here. Insofar as the old comics go, I think it's probably a good thing that the only one that's still even ambiguously canon is the Robotech II: the Sentinels comic by Jason and John Waltrip. Sure, it was a crummy low-quality book drawn by two men who had serious difficulties with staying on model, and nobody denies that the story was written so poorly it could've given the original Star Trek a run for its money in terms of sheer campyness... but it's still the best of the original Robotech comics and the only one that had a halfway decent run. Unlike the others, it also had a purpose, whereas the rest were just created to wring a few more precious dollars out of the almost completely forgotten Robotech name. All the rest of the crap, like the Malcontent Uprisings and all of Robotech's attempts to imitate other, far more popular shows, are best forgotten... relics of a bygone age when Harmony Gold didn't give a poo and actually allowed its licensees some degree of creative latitude.

While there are plenty of rumors to that effect circulating among the fans, I don't think there's ever been anything on that note coming from Harmony Gold itself. After the relative success of the Robotech TV series, Harmony Gold only tried one more rewrite (Megazone 23 Part I) before jumping into developing original animation using characters and set pieces from Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada... and the resulting quagmire is where they've been stuck ever since. Since Tommy seems dead-set on trying to make Robotech "his" show, I can't see him giving the go-ahead to rewrite an existing show... particularly not now that the first example of what he fondly believes is his genius is out there on the market and "going gangbusters", according to McKeever. Under the present circumstances, Robotech fans who "misappropriate" material from Macross and other mecha shows are usually doing so for one of three reasons: Ignorance of the distinction between Macross and Robotech. The desire to expand the Robotech universe in the absence of new official material from Harmony Gold. To troll Macross fans. It must be admitted that, among Robotech fans, people who simply don't understand the distinction between the original Macross and the westernized derivative version in Robotech are much more common than we're all comfortable with. At least part of it is Harmony Gold's repeated attempts to write off Macross as an inferior series whose sole redeeming factor was its use in Robotech, and that none of the rest of the franchise is even worth the trouble of investigating. Of course, the Robotech fans who take this to heart then get all confused when they see Macross shows that're infinitely better than Robotech (in short, any of them) and can't understand how it all fits together because, in their worldview, Macross = Robotech. During my six years on Robotech.com, it was business as usual to get one or two questions a month with some idiot asking how a Macross show he saw clips from over on YouTube (usually Macross Zero) fit with the rest of Robotech. They'd usually take the title and assume it was "Robotech Zero" and ask when it was coming out in the US, only to be told that it had nothing at all to do with Robotech and never would. Now, as you're all already well aware... the principal idiots responsible for misappropriating material from Macross and attempting to shoehorn it into Robotech are the guys who run Robotech RPGs. Fortunately, this particular brand of idiot is a rapidly dying breed, and the overall piss-poor quality of Palladium's new Robotech RPG has done nothing to reverse that trend. Back in the days when there hadn't been anything new on the Robotech radar since 1987, Robotech fans turned to adapting mecha from other shows into their RPGs to expand their games and add interest... a practice encouraged by Palladium and its RIFTS system, which put (mis)information about the mecha from Macross II: Lovers Again right at the fingertips of the Robotech gamers. The rest of Macross (up thru Macross 7) was simply pillaged because the fans think Robotech and Macross are interchangeable, and the mecha are similar enough to the ones they're familiar with in Robotech to be easily adapted to the game. They occasionally pillaged other shows, like Gundam, and L-Gaim, and Orguss, and Megazone 23... but Macross was most frequently victimized by this behavior because of its status as Robotech's "nearest neighbor". The trolls don't really bear speaking about, so I'll spare you my usual diatribe on that.

Eh... even if Harmony Gold did fall back on their original practice of rewriting existing shows as a means of expanding the Robotech universe, I don't think it would go over well. That might've been considered an acceptable practice back in the 1980s, but ever since the public decided it wanted the same viewing experience the original audience got the practice of rewriting and "Americanizing" shows has been considered almost insulting. Yes, Harmony Gold could import new shows and rebrand them as Robotech... but they'd get torn a new apeface for it by the viewers and the industry in general. Let's remember that ROBOTECHFANPLUS also admitted that he didn't actually mean any of what he was doing, and that he was just trolling for yuks.

Yeah, but it's still technically a harem comedy because he (almost) never makes a move on Belldandy and spends a fair portion of his time besieged by the other girls as well. The same formula was used in Rosario + Vampire, where the protagonist decides what girl he likes early on, but is too much of a wuss to actually say it because he's either afraid of hurting the feelings of the other girls or is afraid that they'll murder him and cannibalize his body. As far as harem comedy goes, he subversions of the usual tropes are much more fun than the shows that stick to normal harem formula. Ouran High School Host Club is about a cold, indifferent ordinary girl besieged by a small group of absurdly rich guys with no common sense... all of whom she thinks are batshit insane. There's also The Student Council's Discretion, wherein the poor main character is avidly pursuing a small group of utterly disinterested women who treat him like crap because he's a h-game addict and wants a "harem end".

Not sure why you're asking... the sarcasm was so thick on Gubaba's post that you could cut it into blocks. Personally, I didn't pay much any attention to the discussions about the quality of the show, since it seems a bit on the premature side to start making declarations about a show's quality when only a handful of episodes have been aired. Granted, as in ANY anime series there are some minor, temporary lapses in quality due to budget constraints or deadlines, and that's ok... it's an unavoidable part of doing a weekly animated TV series. The few brief moments of low quality are offset by the show's generally high standards for quality and some truly exemplary moments like the battles in episode 7, 24, and 25. To be perfectly honest, I didn't like Macross 7 at all and I went into Macross Frontier expecting it to be more of same. Instead, what I got was a genuinely enjoyable show that exceeded my expectations considerably in almost every area, and actually had me waiting eagerly for each new episode to come out... which anyone who knows me can tell you is practically unprecedented. I would've liked a bit more originality in the mecha designs, but other than that and the PMC malarkey, I have no complaints about the show.

Why'd you bother getting them if you're not sure about the quality? 'kay then... Good stuff... a real return to form after the weirdness of Macross 7 and the WTF factor of Macross Zero. The tone's somewhat lighter than that of the original Macross series, with a "school life" backdrop for much of the time not spent in combat. Overall, the show's story is solid, with good characterization for the characters who matter. While the story does borrow a fair bit from previous shows, it's done in enough new ways to keep things interesting. The music is up to Macross's usual exemplary standards, and it's just as well, because the two principal girls in the compulsory love triangle are both singers. The background characters are a mixed bag, with some genuinely interesting or hilarious ones that are well thought-out (Ozma, Bobby, Cathy), and a handful of cliched cardboard cutouts present only to draw a particular fetish demographic's attention (Nanase (big tits, shy girl, glasses), Luca (shotacon), and Klan (lolicon, giant girl, tsundere)). The mechanical designs are impressively well-rendered, though somewhat anachronistic as we seem to have come full circle and gone back to the VF-1 and the VF-4, just with VF-19 and VF-22-style transformations respectively. The few large-scale dogfights in the series are still well-choreographed and genuinely exciting, so even if the mecha don't 100% fit your tastes, they'll at least keep it interesting for you. The only part of the story that is genuinely obnoxious is that Macross seems to have jumped on the trend of "mercenaries are awesome", by turning the New U.N. Spacy into complete poo and having an elite mercenary unit with the latest VFs have to come and bail them out every time a fight starts. On the whole, Macross Frontier is an exemplary series (in my opinion) with a few minor flaws that do little to detract from the enjoyment of the show as a whole. Whether you come for the characters or the giant robots, you won't leave disappointed. I've seen it, but it's not really my thing, so I'll leave the biases-based hate for what is otherwise at least a reasonably well-executed series out and wait for someone who does enjoy that sort of thing to give you the lowdown on it. Haven't seen it. Haven't seen the whole thing yet, but the impression I got was that it was rather like a cross between Hellsing and Trigun, in terms of the protagonist's palpable malice and the runny-shooty gun antics. Impressive as a spectacle, if nothing else. If harem comedies are your thing, you've hit the motherlode. If not, prepare for the usual tedium about an insecure Japanese boy pointedly not becoming romantically involved with any of the the bevy of eager women who live at his house, despite a fervent crush on one of them. As usual, it's set in a fantastical background to offset the usual logical issue of having a legion of attractive young women falling madly in love with a guy who blends into the wallpaper, in this case, the protagonist accidentally phones the "goddess help line" and ends up with a literal deity living at his house because he wished for a girlfriend just like her. I found it obnoxious as hell, but then again I've always wondered at the sanity of harem comedy protagonists, who seem to be almost SAINTLY in their ability to ignore the incredibly buxom women who are throwing themselves at them on an hourly basis. (Now, if you want a subversion of the usual harem show tropes, you might want to try Ouran High School Host Club (Ōran Kōkō Hosuto Kurabu) or The Student Council's Discretion (Seitokai no Ichizon)).

Oh, trust me... they tried. On several occasions, the old comics attempted to take marginally interesting one-shot characters from Robotech's TV series and expand their stories in much the same way that Star Wars's expanded universe did to everyone who appeared in the original trilogy. Tommy Yune continued that fine absurd tradition by having Robotech: From the Stars yammer on about Roy's backstory and show the origins of Vince Grant, Jan Morris, and a bunch of other people that nobody with their head screwed on straight gives a toss about. Similarly, Robotech: Invasion delves into the backstory of Lancer with heavy-handed retcons, expanding the character of the girl who rescued him from his crashed fighter, and tacking on an arbitrary Jonathan Wolfe-esque betrayal story, while also packaging a story about the demise of Karl Riber as a mini-comic. If you boiled it down to the actual thought processes behind their choice to use those characters and expand on them, it ultimately comes out as "they have almost no backstory, therefore we can do whatever we want with them and it won't cock up the story of the TV series". "Dr. Lang" was made into a super-genius scientist who discovered (and instinctively understands) protoculture because he spends most of the show out of the spotlight and has no character development whatsoever. Similarly Jonathan Wolfe's backstory is simply "he was a bigshot at the REF that Scott looked up to, he came to Earth, and did some stuff, then betrayed his friends", leaving his REF days wide open for exploitation as part of the Robotech II: the Sentinels story. In Mospeada, he was something of a hero to the Mars Colony people after his exploits in the minor conflicts between colonies. In Robotech, he was a big hero in the Expeditionary Forces who Scott looked up to and idolized, so his "fall from grace" was all the more painful for Scott. And he think we care about his six ACTUAL "lessoners" why? He does the same to me... usually once every week or two he checks my profile here. Most of them are just too farting stupid to use Wikipedia... and the rest usually buy into Harmony Gold's stance that there's nothing worth looking into in Macross and assume that Robotech.com is the center of the Macross fandom as well.

Eh... are we talking about a pre-new trilogy Boba Fett here? I was. In all fairness... while Jonathan Wolfe was definitely a one-episode minor character in Robotech's "original 85", the writers of Robotech II: the Sentinels intended to make him a major supporting character in the series. It turned out to be childishly easy to tie his Sentinels activities into his established backstory. Boba Fett, on the other hand, was never intended to serve as a main character or major supporting character. Jonathan Wolfe's activities are still generally wasted space, but he does serve a purpose in Sentinels as one of Minmei's new love interests, and the deus ex machina who saves Dana Sterling and the other surviving Masters Saga characters from certain death between the Masters Saga and New Generation, presumably because Tommy can't bear to kill off a main character who isn't from the Macross Saga.

Which is why I made no mention of the novels... At present, the Robotech II: the Sentinels "movie" and the continuation comics published under Eternity/Malibu and Academy Comics are the only parts of the Sentinels story that are still at least pseudo-canon. Thanks to the painful unoriginality of Tommy Yune, who used the unfinished Robotech II: the Sentinels Book IV as a jumping off point for Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles, the Waltrip bros. Sentinels comics are the only account of the whole Pioneer mission that can be considered even moderately reliable... as horrifying a prospect as that is for us to contemplate. Wow... that's... actually... a really good analogy. Just like Boba Fett in Star Wars, the Robotech's expanded universe garbage tried to make a one-shot character with half a dozen lines into a deep and interesting character by throwing him into constant contact with the core cast and trying to make him relevant to something other than the one actual event he participated in in the show. Admittedly, saying that the Robotech comics fart things up even worse than the series would be putting it mildly... the writers inevitably have to take a LOT of liberties with the existing story just to give themselves enough latitude to try and produce something that won't put the audience to sleep or turn out so campy the audience decides it's better off to use the book as lining for the bottom of a birdcage. Just look at Robotech: Invasion, where Tommy tried to expand on the backstory of Yellow Lance "Lancer" Belmont by tacking an arbitrary tragedy onto the existing story and setting him up as a one-man resistance against a nearby Invid hive and his insane former commander, and explain the evacuation of Mars Base prior to the first war by having it attacked by a rogue Zentradi ship captained by the world's most obvious copy of "Khyron".

Ah, okay... I'll have to pick the brain of someone more familiar with radar tech on that one later. I was thinking of how the small bits of metal debris from damaged aircraft will occasionally show up on radar returns, like they did in the TWA flight 800 crash, and that shell casings might cause a similar cloud of tiny returns on the more sensitive radars.

Well, the whole thing goes back to Genesis Climber Mospeada, where the 3rd Earth Recapture Force plans to use the electrically-charged particle warheads to wipe Reflex Point and a decent-sized chunk of the surrounding continent right off the map if they couldn't oust the Inbit by conventional means with their latest and largest assault. I guess the "writers" working on the New Generation didn't think this was dramatic enough, and decided to turn Mospeada's charged particle warheads into planet-killers, and tie Rick Hunter into the whole thing to add interest and hopefully tie Mospeada into Macross a bit more securely. I guess they were inspired by the science fiction version of the neutron bomb, since I can't imagine how they could think neutrons were charged particles. The whole business of the "Neutron-S" meaning "Neutron Star matter" and them being technology given to the REF by evil aliens was, of course, a retcon almost as blatant as turning the "shadow fighter" stealth system from passive to active stealth. Of course, one of the first things Tommy did with Shadow Chronicles was try to exonerate Rick Hunter of the guilt of ordering the destruction of Earth and its population by turning him into the unwitting stooge of the Haydonites. Damn, and here I was hoping to (further) scar you for life. Well, presumably they're not retconned out of the Robotech canon, their role in the ending has just been changed significantly. Tommy tried a comic series starring "Lance Belmont", and it didn't go over terribly well, and sold mainly because of the "Mars Base One" mini-comic printed as an extra.

Well, I'm no soldier and no expert on passive stealth characteristics... but eliminating the cartridge case from the ammo equation reduces the complexity of the firing mechanism somewhat by eliminating the need to eject spent cartridge cases from the weapon, and reduces the weight and cost of the ammunition itself. I would also think that not having a cloud of spent cartridge casings trailing behind the aircraft would do a bit for the passively stealthy aspect of the plane by keeping the aircraft's radar return as small as possible. There are some significant drawbacks to caseless ammunition as well, like having residual chamber heat cook off rounds before the trigger is pulled, and sealing issues which can potentially damage the bolt. Conventional Gatling cannons like the GU-15 would not suffer from either of those drawbacks, but would have a more complex firing mechanism to eject spent cases, and would therefore carry a bit more weight for the same amount of ammunition. It's a bit harder to quantify the advantages of beam weaponry since the technology in Macross is light years ahead of what we have here on Earth today. One would imagine that having almost no moving parts would do wonders for the unit's durability, but then you have to contend with the limitations of the internal power cell if it's an "energy beam" weapon, or the internal particle supply if it's a particle beam weapon. In the latter case, there's also the potential need for a power transfer system to actually operate the weapon, a sterling example of which can be found on the RX-79[G] Gundam ground type in Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS team. It's unknown if Macross's beam weapons suffer from drawbacks like thermal blooming or barrel erosion, but the former seems likely, if not the latter. Presumably the advantage would be significantly greater stopping power per shot and tighter accuracy, even if it means a much lower rate of fire. Oddly, no... it makes a distinct "beam" sound similar to the battleship beam guns and fires bright yellow-white beams that spread out slightly after leaving the barrel. There's no background chatter to indicate multiple rounds are being fired...

As to whether or not the production-model VF-22 Sturmvogel II can jettison its arms and legs like the YF-21 No.2 could, I don't think there's been any kind of declaration either way. I would assume that it could, since the VF-22's transformation didn't change that much from the prototype's. Now, as far as the VF-22's two models of gunpod go... calling the situation "unclear" might not do it justice. Until recently, the VF-22 was only known to have the one gunpod, the Hughes/GE GV-17L internal cartridge-less one. Presumably they meant "caseless" since the weapon appears to be a conventional Gatling cannon, since a "case" is the metallic container holding the gunpowder, bullet, and primer, and the term "cartridge" refers to the whole thing. You can read more about caseless ammunition here if you want. This second gunpod first came to light in Macross Chronicle, which identified the gunpod on Max and Milia's VF-22S's from Macross 7 as the "Howard BP-14D multipurpose gunpod". What makes it "multipurpose", I have no idea. The mechanic sheets in Macross Chronicle (Macross 7 U.N. Spacy #05A, and Macross Dynamite 7 U.N. Spacy #02A) list the BP-14D as the gunpod used on Max and Milia's VF-22S's, and the GV-17L as the gunpod carried on Gamlin's VF-22S. EDIT: It may be noteworthy that the GV-17L carried by Guld's YF-21 No.2 makes the expected Gatling cannon noise, as does Max's BP-14D, but the GV-17L on Gamlin's VF-22S in Macross Dynamite 7 Ep4 appears to fire single shots and makes a "beam" noise instead. I can't decide whether to assume this is a screwup on the part of Chronicle, which would seem to make "BP-14D" a logical enough designation for the beam rifle Gamlin's gunpod appears to be, and having the GV-17L as a Gatling cannon like it is in Macross Plus would make a great deal of sense. However, for reasons I can't fathom, while Gamlin's gunpod is making beam notes and firing single shots, the REB-22 converging energy cannons in his VF-22's forearms inexplicably make a Gatling cannon noise instead when he fires them in Ep4. Take it for what you will, but my guess (and I cannot emphasize enough that this is a GUESS) would be that Gamlin's gunpod is meant to be the "BP-14D" and is a beam rifle, while Max's is meant to be the production model of the GV-17L stealth Gatling cannon carried on the YF-21 No.2. It's the only way I can see to reconcile the situation.

Interestingly enough, in some depictions of Robotech II: the Sentinels the Pioneer mission fleet had scouting planets for future colonization as one of its secondary objectives. Just like their plans to stop the Robotech Masters from attacking Earth, colony-scouting seems to have gone by the wayside after the SDF-3 blundered directly into the Invid Regent's army on Tirol and got wrapped up in liberating half the bloody galaxy from his ridiculous legions. Presumably this is why all the old Angel-class colony ships spent their days gathering dust in a Space Station Liberty hangar bay before being repurposed as a delivery system for the massive neutron-s warheads. The Ark Angel-class ships that Tommy Yune created for the Shadow Chronicles story, which picks up right where Sentinels Book IV left off, seem to be pale-yet-ludicrous imitations of the Megaroad-class colony ships in Macross. On a completely unrelated side note, the character of the Invid Regent is my favorite in the entire Robotech II: the Sentinels story arc, and possibly in Robotech as a whole. He alone seemed to realize that Robotech had dumbed-down the source material immeasurably, reducing complex and well-written characters to dull, homogenized stereotypes, and resolved to stand out by acting every bit as arbitrarily evil as the villains in Captain Planet. But what really makes him shine is his reason for invading and oppressing the various other alien worlds in the novels and comics... he's doing it because he's sick of being henpecked and doesn't want to put up with his wife's shrilling about how she knows better while he cleans up the mess she made. In short, the Invid Regent is a man's man. He might be a giant talking lobster from outer space, but he doesn't take crap from his wife and he does things his own way. No, what's REALLY ridiculous in Robotech's half-assed colonization effort is the colony vessels themselves. The United Earth Expeditionary Force's new Ark Angel-class colony ships are 2.14km long not counting the fins and misc. antennae, but the specs for them in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles says they have a crew of 8,500 people and a carrying capacity of up to 750,000 colonists! That's cramming a three-quarters of a million people into less than a single square kilometer of space along with the ship's systems, weapons, supplies, and fuel. What're they doing, stacking the colonists in the corridors like cordwood? If we're conservative, that's a population density of a million people per square kilometer, 171 times the population density of metropolitan Tokyo. Fortunately, all but one of these badly-designed ships were destroyed by Vince Grant when he detonated the entire neutron-s stockpile at Space Station Liberty. To put that ridiculous number in perspective for you, that'd be like squeezing the population of two New Macross-class city sections AND two Megaroad-class colony ships into a single Thuverl Salan-class battleship. Which is actually a major plot point in Sentinels Book I... Brigadier General Edwards tries to destroy the public's confidence in the Hunters so he can assume command by leaking pictures of Rick and Minmei hugging in the corridor and claiming it was evidence they were having an affair (and bumping uglies) the night before his wedding to Lisa.

No conundrum at all... I answered this very question in my previous post. He wasn't. As of the Robotech II: the Sentinels series, it was Lisa Hayes who was in command of the entire mission, albeit under some kind of civilian oversight/advisement by Dr. Lang and others. Rick Hunter was in charge of the ground and air forces attached to the fleet and held the rank of Major General. Tommy Yune made an attempt to explain the screwball dialogue which refers to an "Admiral Rick Hunter" by having Lisa get incapacitated during a surprise attack and having Rick fill in for her for a year, after which she decides to retire. The dialogue which refers to "Admiral Rick Hunter" was probably just yet another harebrained goof caused by the writers working on multiple episodes and not bothering to compare notes, as they are said to have done by the voice actors.

Oh, you'd think that... but you gotta account for the fact that Robotech II: the Sentinels and Prelude both made Rick Hunter out to be the visionary commander of the Robotech Expeditionary Force. Actually, you're probably on to something there... most all of the surviving Macross Saga cast were given ridiculously high ranks by the time the SDF-3 launched. Originally, he wasn't even an admiral, Sentinels made Lisa the admiral, as she had already been handpicked for by Gloval, and made Rick the major general in charge of the fleet's fighter contingent. In Prelude, Tommy makes a laughable attempt to correct the disparity between Sentinels and the New Generation by having Admiral Lisa Hayes get seriously injured in a surprise attack and spend a year in a wheelchair so Rick could take over as Admiral, and she eventually retires at the end of Prelude to join the Sentinels council. On a fun side note... Tommy seems to have given the colony idea the shaft, since he retconned the neutron-s missiles into unused Angel-class colony ships that were repurposed as delivery systems for the neutron-s warheads, and had their replacements, the Ark Angel-class (yes, "Ark Angel", not "Archangel") destroyed in mid-construction when Vince Grant detonated the neutron-s warhead stockpiles on Space Station Liberty, leaving the sole example of the class to be repurposed as a warship because its shadow-tech systems weren't hooked up yet.

It definitely should be about the same size as Luca's AIF-7S Ghosts, since they were based on the Ghost X-9.

I don't remember the exact explanation, but it's explained that the Vajra harvest fold quartz or the materials necessary for its creation from interstellar debris, dead stars, and the like... so presumably fold quartz could be mined/produced without having to kill the Vajra to get it... to say nothing of the fact that there's probably scads of the stuff just lying around on the Vajra homeworld that Island-1 lands on thanks to the Vajra having been there do long. Rather more than one, actually... Brera's VF-27 was equipped with an external super fold booster system when he took it (and Ranka) to find the Vajra homeworld. It may or may not have been the same one Luca fitted Michel's VF-25G with, but either way that model was a prototype, which means they meant to make more.

Wasn't it "to a tenth" not "by a tenth"? At least, that's what I remember the dialogue saying... that the super fold booster eliminated the disparity between real-time and experienced-time during a fold jump, cutting the travel times to a tenth of what they were. Eh, if the enemy fleet has managed to bash its way through your fleet and orbital defenses, things have gone so brutally pear-shaped that shooting at them with a large ground-based beam cannon isn't going to accomplish much except giving them another target to shoot at. Why waste a huge amount of time, money, and effort on a weapon that, in the absolute worst case scenario, will only fire once, and in the best case scenario will never fire at all? It makes much more sense to focus on engaging the enemy away from inhabited planets with the Minmay Attack and the fleet. On average the Minmay Attack cripples the enemy's command structure and leaves their soldiers milling around in confusion... easy pickings for VFs armed with reaction weapons or a fleet bombardment. On a good day, the Minmay Attack reduces the entire enemy fleet to a legion of squealing fangirls and you don't have to bother shooting at them at all. You can just pack them off on their way with a Fire Bomber "Best Hits" CD or something. (In fact, it's so bloody effective that in the Macross II parallel world continuity the U.N. Spacy insisted on having their latest, greatest VF be optimized for space combat, and supplied their planetside forces with lightly-armed low-budget VFs because they weren't likely to ever actually need them) EDIT: Also, on more than one occasion it allowed the U.N. Spacy forces to win against absolutely ridiculous odds, with enemy fleets that outnumbered them by hundreds or thousands to one.

Because you'd destroy your own orbital defenses and fleet if you fired one? I'm not sure what the tactical doctrine is in the main continuity, but in the Macross II parallel world continuity the U.N. Spacy focused on stopping the Zentradi with the Minmay Attack and military forces well away from inhabited planets, since that's much safer than allowing them to get into bombardment position and THEN shooting at them with a big surface-based weapon.

Well... I can only speculate as to the initial motivations which prompted fans to obsess over the fate of Rick Hunter back in the 1980s, as the show started airing before I was born. As to why the fans STILL obsess over Rick Hunter, that's partly due to Macross being far and away the most popular of the three sagas, and as such its characters tend to be automatically regarded better, and that every major attempt to continue the Robotech story has centered on him or one of his relatives. The protagonist of Robotech: the Untold Story was originally going to be a relative of his. He was made into the visionary leader of the Robotech Expeditionary Forces in Robotech II: the Sentinels, the aborted plans for RT3-5 mention him or one of his descendants as being integral to the story, and Shadow Chronicles renewed the depiction of Rick Hunter as the visionary commander of the United Earth Forces, who singlehandedly orchestrated the formation of the present state of affairs. Basically, he is to Robotech's universe what Han, Luke, and Leia are to the Star Wars expanded universe... he was present or otherwise involved in every major event in the entire story... the occasionally-unseen glue that holds it all together and keeps people interested.

Honestly, is 25 years of mediocrity, ineptitude, dishonesty, and failure really the sort of thing the fans should celebrate? What today really marks is 25 years of Harmony Gold trying unsuccessfully to ride Macross's coattails all the way to fame and success. In 25 years, what have they really accomplished? One lackluster direct-to-DVD movie made entirely of characters and set pieces stolen from a failed sequel attempt, a handful of low-quality toys and other goods, and a slew of embarrassingly bad comic books that didn't sell. The only actual creative work the so-called "creative team" at Harmony Gold USA has done these past 25 years is coming up with new lies to tell their fans to exaggerate the popularity of their franchise, its influence on the anime industry, and their role in its creation. So yes... what they've done is laudable for its consistency, if nothing else. Here's to Robotech... 25 years of fraud, deception, and unfair business practices!

Like I said... "taking design tips from Rob Liefeld". 's pretty much the letter of things with every Robotech RPG. I know a fair few of the guys from Palladium, and they aren't bad people... they just care more about game balance than they do accurately representing the capabilities of the mecha or making things feasible... so you end up with things like the gunpods in their Macross II game, where guns only a few meters long have invisible 10,000 or 20,000 round magazines and a half dozen spares stored in some magical invisible compartment on the airframe. While nobody will deny Tommy is an uncreative hack, it might be more accurate to call the VM-9 Silverback a lack of statistics... he didn't bother coming up with anything for it himself, and it's glossed over in the official artbooks. Well in all fairness, I don't think there's much difference in effect between the two... after all, if they're anything like the silly-sounding armaments on the Super Cyclone, they were probably supplied by Fisher-Price. Not just that, but 2,000 100mm rounds are going to take up a drum every bit as big as the mecha itself... Ah, a real-world example of More Dakka in action!