Seto Kaiba

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!

I think I just threw up a little bit...

No idea... one would imagine the answer would be "no" in practical terms, but this is science fiction we're talking about after all. It does appear that the creative team at Harmony Gold might've been taking design tips from Rob Liefeld, since the gun itself has two barrels for some utterly arbitrary reason, no discernible ammunition storage or feed system, and is so huge it becomes impossible to believe that it could be mounted on a bike without tipping it over. Of course, they also seem to have forgotten little things like Newtonian physics, since the 70kJ railgun on the Super Cyclone has no recoil to speak of.

Um... actually, the Spartas's operator is exposed in two of the tank's three transformation modes. In the normal tank mode ("Sniping Clapper"), the operator is exposed from the chest up on all sides, and in "walking cannon" mode, the operator is exposed from the chest up on all sides, and has only the bicycle-grip-sized control yoke between him and the enemy at the front of the vehicle. Only in soldier ("Battle sniper") mode is the operator actually protected from such hazards as shrapnel and snipers. On balance, the VM-9L Silverback isn't any less idiotic in terms of operator safety, it just has one less mode to muck about in. Fortunately, Tommy half-assed it like he did with the one appearance of the VF-X-4, and didn't even bother trying to depict it transforming. Um... well... no. According to the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles RPG, which is the ONLY source of information on the buggering thing that I'm aware of, that's a twin-linked double-barreled railgun of the same general type as the one on the "Super Cyclone".

For great justice... also, it's about damn time. Um... haven't they already covered that? It must be either Graham's boat-turned-spaceship or the poacher support ships from Macross Dynamite 7. *yawn* Why did THIS get the cover and not the Metal Siren? Okay, so we ARE getting a B-sheet for her... must be her in her civvies. So, an unlikeable (literal) harpy who shrills the same three lines over and over again, and a canon Mary Sue who fills the requirements of a Black Hole Sue, Godmode Sue, and Jerkass Sue... delightful. Haven't these two already been covered to death (Basara Dies was a HUGE letdown... the pricks) and back again? And now for another exciting episode of... Tales! Of! Interest! Seriously, do want. I sense a theme here... is it "witty old men with mustaches"? lol, c'mon, when they half-ass it it's hard not to be a little miffed... especially when they devote a multiple issues worth of material just to Basara and Mylene. At least I have the good grace to acknowledge that my standards might be set are definitely set unreasonably high... Honestly, if they give me a thrust rating for the Metal Siren's engines and confirm its armaments, I'll consider it a victory. EDIT: Fairness...

Nah, what's REALLY messed up is that the enormous twin-linked railgun on its back is supposed to be a pair of the same model as the one carried by the "Super Cyclone", but is completely out of scale. We'll never know exactly what the VM-9L Silverback was meant for, since the damnable thing never actually sees combat in its sole appearance in the background of the 4th issue of Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Okay, so they've been taking pointers from the mechanical designers of Southern Cross... leaving the pilot exposed to everything from shrapnel to small arms fire.

Really, so was I... and let me tell you, if you're expecting epic levels of suck, you won't be disappointed. The "rough draft" designs are particularly lulzy... with everyone looking like a poorly-proportioned gorilla in spandex. The early draft of Scott Bernard has him with arms so thick that if he put them together they'd be thicker than his torso, and Vince Grant's "rough draft" version looks like The Incredible Hulk with different facial features and intact clothes. So... Voltron of the poo Universe?

Yep... the Proto Cola machine gets preliminary and final design art, while the "Super Shadow Fighter" gets a single image shrunk down so far that the battloid mode art is the size of a postage stamp, and the fighter mode art is roughly the size of a baseball card.

Impossible! If a reserved chap with a high tolerance for Robotech bullshit like me can't even get through the first 20 minutes without trying to throw something or yank the DVD out and snap it in half, there's no way any human being could marathon it over and over again without it ending in a murder-suicide. Y'know... in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, the "Protocola" vending machine gets better coverage in terms of actual production art than the so-called "original mecha" do.

Um... well, I guess I get to be the one to field this question since nobody else has a copy of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and Harmony Gold is holding off on updating the Infopedia to persuade people to buy the damned thing... According to the ridiculously brief article on the Super Shadow Fighter and Synchro Beta, which occupies around half of a two-page spread on pages 84 and 85 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, the so-called "Super Shadow Fighter" is pretty much exactly what the name implies... a VF/A-6X Shadow Fighter equipped with a Macross-style set of super parts. Almost no hard data on the packs is available, but the packs contain boosters, verniers, and missiles, and consists of a pair of dorsal packs mounted on the top of the wing root that look like slimmed-down versions of the VF-1's super parts, and packs on the forearm and outside of the lower leg. The vernier arrangement on the packs looks like it was drawn up by someone who had no clue what he was doing, as several verniers on the dorsal wing-root packs point directly inwards towards the fighter's built-in dorsal missile launchers... an accident waiting to happen. The so-called "Synchro Beta" was developed as a companion craft for the Super Shadow Fighter, and is officially the "Super Shadow Beta Fighter". Its only noticeable difference from a normal Beta/TREAD is that it has an atrocious black and purple paintjob and a small dorsal booster in the little "valley" between the upper two engines, which contains an internal missile launcher in the front that's so large it has to occupy at least 90% of the booster's internal space (leaving it little more than a nozzle), to which the synchro cannon attaches. Under normal circumstances, that synchro cannon points forward over the top of the shadow fighter from the depression between the Beta's two top engines. Oh, and I found where that stupid "VF/A-6ZX" designation for Maia's fighter came from... pg83 of AoTSC. They mention that the "squad leader" Shadow fighters have a Z-type head.

But...but...you didn't even MENTION Macross II... Gubaba raises an excellent point...

It's just another tragic example of how the Harmony Gold staffers in charge of Robotech have come to view the fans not as people to be listened to, but as a herd of gullible idiots who'll buy anything provided the word "Robotech" is on the box. Sadly, like their belief that nobody wants Masters Saga merchandise, they have good cause to think this way. The die-hard fans are so desperate for something new to validate their blind faith in Harmony Gold that they don't care if what they're buying has nothing to do with Robotech as long as the Robotech logo's on the box. Kind of surprised fans didn't cancel their preorders of the Maia MPC v2 when Harmony Gold went back on its word to have the unit manufactured in a different factory. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out where "VF/A-6ZX" came from, since it's not used in any of the promotional materials, artbooks, or anything else.

Or, knowing Harmony Gold, it could be a test market scenario where the product will bomb and Harmony Gold will quietly shift the blame elsewhere to keep the fans from realizing they aren't a bunch of incompetent bellends.

Um... those aren't beam cannons on the Defender EX's "arms", they're double-barreled railguns. In fact, they appear to be similar in size and design to the anti-ship railgun on the VF-2SS Valkyrie II's Super Armed Pack. That being the case, and the animation backing up their impressive range and firepower, it's likely that the Defender EX could serve double duty as an anti-aircraft platform and a mobile light anti-ship turret. The mechanical designers working on Macross II seem to have had a minor love affair with railguns. Just about every VF gunpod is a compact railgun, the Defender EX mounts four large railguns, and the Tomahawk II carries a pair of smaller railguns underneath its "forearm" beam cannons. I also know of a few sources that label the Giant Monster's (erroneously dubbed "Monster II" by Macross Chronicle) six main cannons as heavy anti-ship railguns as well. Well, wheeled ground mecha aren't exactly unique, so Kawamori and co. might've been inspired to use wheeled feet on the Cheyenne by another, more recent, show like Blue Gender... but they are the first instance of destroids using wheels to get around faster in Macross.

Well, the increased focus on wishful thinking and positive speculation about titles that will probably never see the light of day really is a function of Harmony Gold's ineptitude. It took their "creative team" so long to produce a continuation of the story, and that continuation was so short and insubstantial, that they've simply run out of things to talk about except wondering out loud about how great the next one will be... needlessly raising their own expectations to levels Harmony Gold will never be able to meet. Now, they're just dangling various hot topics over people's heads in hopes that the drama and ceaseless speculation will keep them excited enough to prevent their rose-tinted glasses from slipping off. So, in summation... Maverick_LSC came out of whatever hidey-hole he's been squirreled away in and said something profoundly ignorant and condescending intended to belittle everyone who isn't him... which is pretty much par for the course where that idiot's concerned. Just ignore it and it'll go away, like a door-to-door salesman or an annoying itch. Believe me, I wholeheartedly understand your outrage at the way Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have been using people and giving the decent folks in the Robotech fandom a bad name simply by association. Thing is, we all know that Maverick and MEMO are habitual liars so deeply entrenched in delusions of their own superiority and Robotech's popularity that nothing they say can or should be taken seriously. We already know they're stupid, arrogant bellends, so the only person you're really benefitting by ranting about it is them... because then they get the satisfaction of knowing their juvenile antics and "holier than thou" attitude towards the fans got a rise out of someone. So my advice to you is the time-honored adage "Don't feed the troll".