Seto Kaiba

So... that's not quite accurate. Development of the Evil-series started in 2865 PC (c. 497,135 BCE), but because they were unable to resolve the problem of the incredible energy demands that the biotechnology used in the designs called for they were never able to complete them. Three years later, the Protoculture developed the first prototype super dimension energy converter and they began considering the technology's potential to address the excessive energy requirements of the Evil series. Three years after that, in 2871 PC, the Protoculture completed their first seven Evil-series prototypes (one of each type/class) using the new biotechnological super dimension energy converters and the first practical tests resulted in disaster with the seven prototypes being possessed by energy beings from super dimension space that ultimately became known as the Protodeviln. The seven Protodeviln seen in Macross 7 are the seven original Evil-series prototypes and, as far as we know, there were no others constructed.* I have no idea why this fan theory comes back SO MUCH. This happened with Frontier too. For some reason, there's this part of the fandom that assumes that any remotely unconventional-looking character who isn't explicitly identified as a Zentradi or whatever is a Protodeviln. When Frontier was airing, people were assuming that Macross Quarter bridge operator Mina Roshan was a Protodeviln because her design had dark skin, dark eyes, and a red mark on her forehead. The actual explanation... she's just Indian. But they were CONVINCED she was a Protodeviln. It's like fans can't remember that there were only ever seven Evil-series, that four of them died in Macross 7, and the other three ****ed off to parts unknown at the end of the series. * Not by the Protoculture, anyway. The non-canon manga Macross Dynamite 7: Mylene Beat has a faction within the Macross 7 fleet's New UN Forces attempt to clone an Evil-series with an eye towards mass producing an Evil-series weapon for Humanity's defense. The prototype predictably goes out of control and becomes a battleship-sized space dragon, but thanks to Mylene's intervention its rampage proves to be short-lived and after gaining the ability to generate its own spiritia is promptly disappears into the deepest reaches of space the same way the Protodeviln did. The Fold Evil in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and the Birdhuman in Macross Zero are some kind of related development, but with a perfected version of the super dimension energy converter technology that doesn't result in a living weapon possessed by a starving energy vampire.

They were basically useless on the ground, since the Zentradi didn't do ground warfare, but they found some utility as a long-ranged anti-capital ship turret able to deliver low yield thermonuclear reaction warheads.

Only for the HWR-00 Monster, as it's the only one of the original Destroids that's truly configured for long-ranged engagements (excl. the non-canonical LDR-04 Maverick from the FamilySoft Macross games). The Monster's 40cm cannons are able to bombard targets up to 160km away in indirect fire under gravity. Its ground-to-ground missile launchers have a 300km+ range. For the most part, Valkyries are also set up for visual-ranged combat or very close to it because the Zentradi come in numbers far too great to rely mainly on beyond-visual-range engagement and a combination of passive and active stealth measures has reduced the effectiveness of long-ranged missiles.

One thing that keeps me from rewatching Patlabor is how little effort went into the writing... there are whole plots that get recycled four or five times over in quick succession, the most blatant case being the "there's a manmade kaiju preying on Labors" that culminated in WXIII.

Funimation Crunchyroll's dropped its lineup for next season. It's a pretty weak lineup so far, that's pretty heavy on isekai shovelware. The only standouts I can see are Jujutsu Kaisen's continuing 2nd season, Dr. Stone's second cour, Goblin Slayer II, and OVERTAKE!. There are still seven shows to be announced, though. I've caught up on a few titles... The Undead Girl Murder Farce still seems to be this season's standout for me, with one episode left to go and the promise of a season two on the horizon. The Misfit of Demon King Academy S2, Classroom for Heroes, Yuri is My Job!, and My Tiny Senpai have all limped to fairly sub-par finishes. I also finished Buddy Daddies, which was an absolute mess to the very end.

Yeah, that's kind of the kicker... the difference between a passive sensor system and an active one. Active sensors like RADAR, LIDAR, LADAR, and fictional equivalents like fold wave RADAR work by shooting a beam of radiation into the surrounding area in the expectation that it'll bounce off of nearby objects and then looking for the reflected energy. They can examine the amount of reflected energy and the amount of time it takes for the energy to return to the receiver to estimate size and distance, and by tracking the object between sweeps of the radiation beam they can determine directionality and velocity. These systems can be defeated in a few different ways: Jamming: Essentially, barraging the receiver looking for reflected energy with energy of the same type and frequency so that the system and its operators can't differentiate reflected energy from maliciously transmitted energy. This blinds the sensor, but it also lets everyone know they're there just not specifically where you are. It's also rather unsafe to do if the enemy has anti-radiation missiles with track-on-jam capability, which will simply pursue the largest local source of radiation in the relevant spectrum and destroy it. Destructive interference: As described above, broadcasting a targeted antiphase wave to cancel out the reflected energy's amplitude. Still the realm of fiction as far as we know. Passive absorption and deflection: What modern stealth aircraft use. The airframe is shaped in such a way that it minimizes the amount of the radiation beam's energy that's reflected back towards the sender, and also coated in a material that absorbs that particular type of radiation and converts it into another form. Radar absorbant material (RAM) is a paint that is a suspension of fine metallic particles that absorb radar waves and convert them into heat. Another approach to deflection is chaff, an explosive-driven cloud of reflective fragments that interfere with the path of the radiation beam and may temporarily obscure objects on the other side of the chaff. Anti-radiation munitions: Blow it up using missiles that home in on radiation sources. Also lets the enemy know you're there, and very hard to pull off if the enemy has anti-aircraft defenses. Passive sensors, like optical cameras, infrared cameras, gravity wave detectors, and fictional equivalents don't send out any kind of radiation. They're just waiting to soak up any radiation they encounter in the target spectrum. Their ranges are generally more limited because the range of the sensor is generally directly related to its physical size and the sensitivity may be tied to size and other conditions like how cool the sensor can be kept (as on some high-end infrared setups). There are really only two ways around them: Emission mitigation: Don't get caught emitting the type of radiation they're looking for. Whether this means keeping radars off, having a low vis paintjob, or finding ways to avoid letting off a lot of waste heat, the goal is to avoid tripping the sensor for as long as possible. Distraction: Flood the area with so many emission sources that the system can't discern the legitimate/threatening detections from the distractions. This isn't often done with optical or infrared, except in the form of flares as a way of evading infrared-guided missiles. The infrared sensor in the seeker head is simply looking for the hottest object around, so flares serve to distract it by offering a moving object that's emitting more infrared radiation than the engines of the target aircraft in the hopes that the seeker will pursue the flare instead.

Not an entirely unreasonable thought, since most sci-fi takes a more futuristic/less realistic approach to stealth. When most of us think "active stealth" we're thinking something like the thermoptic camo of Ghost in the Shell or the Predator movies if not something even more impressive like the eponymous "cloaking device" from Star Trek and so many other sci-fi titles that renders ships invisible to all forms of detection (and occasionally intangible in the bargain) through a variety of exotic means like gravitational lensing, dimension shifting, etc. Infrared can, to an extent, be manipulated the same way as the visible spectrum... but bending light waves out of the way of a fighter would require some pretty intense applications of gravitational force, which would probably run counter to the idea of remaining stealthy since ships are routinely scanning for dimensional faults and gravitational anomalies both because they can be damaging and because they can be precursors to a ship arriving by space fold, so it wouldn't be particularly useful for stealth purposes.

Which was based on the depiction in the Robotech series by Comico Comics that depicted two Macross-class SDFs standing back-to-back in the lake. The Comico Comics series did that as a way to rationalize/explain away some particularly problematic dialog in the Robotech TV series. Robotech mentions the SDF-2 at the same point the original Macross does, but proceeds to conflate the command center built inside the SDF-1 with the bridge of the SDF-2 thereafter including when the Macross it hit and is listing, and is referred to as if it were the SDF-2 in the final episode. It's one of the all-time Robotech plot holes, so much so that it had its own section in the robotech.com FAQ back in the day.

I am somehow not surprised that it was One Piece that ultimately broke the "western anime adaptations suck" curse... or that season two has been approved. I guess all it took was an author with sufficient clout to veto any of Netflix's attempts to Netflix up the series.

That's the standard MO for Robotech licensees in general, TBH... they do the most popular/main character designs and move on. The farthest afield they've really gone is the "stealth" paintjob that was just Roy's VF-1S with the white swapped for black and dark gray for yellow. Or maybe that "YF-1R" that only got made by Toynami because it was the signature ride of the MC in a then-new Macross Saga videogame.

Macross's active stealth technology is an anti-radar countermeasure only. It works basically the same as noise-cancelling headphones do. It leverages wave superposition principles to make the aircraft invisible to enemy radar through destructive interference. Basically, it analyzes the incoming radar wave, calculates how it's going to reflect off the airframe and back towards the enemy aircraft, then sends a precisely timed radar beam back to the enemy aircraft that has the same frequency and amplitude as the reflected radar beam but is 180 degrees out of phase with it. The enemy radar receives both its reflected radar wave and the active stealth system's antiphase radar wave at the same time and because those two radar waves have the same frequency and amplitude but opposite phases the two waves cancel each other's amplitude out and the total amplitude of the radar waves that the enemy radar receives is zero... making it look like there's nobody out there. Even if it's not perfectly aligned, it can still greatly reduce the amplitude of the radar return to the point of potentially being dismissed as noise on the signal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_interference?wprov=sfla1 Infrared emission mitigations would be binned under passive stealth, since the focus is on suppressing the aircraft's own emissions rather than evading detection by countering the emissions of enemy aircraft. VFs have a bunch of different passive stealth measures. The heat sequestration I described previously is one that's used to reduce the aircraft's infrared profile. Others include the use of radar-absorbent materials to absorb radar waves so less energy is reflected and the use of airframe shaping and internally stored weapons to minimize the amount of radar waves that can bounce back to an enemy radar or even deflect them off in a different direction. The VF-25 Master File mentions the addition of passive stealth coatings meant to defeat fold wave radar by absorbing part or all of an incoming fold wave radar pulse to prevent it from being reflected. The VF-22 Master File also makes mention of materials the VF-22 used in conjunction with its ability to freely change the shape of certain portions of its airframe in order to reduce light reflections and thus make it harder to detect using a LADAR system or optical camera.

So, further to this... yeah, the next section of the book does mention (in passing) the (movie) Queadluun-Rau's (cybernetic) brainwave control system and video-brain feedback setup that General Galaxy's engineers were unable to analyze or reproduce at the time. It seems that they just straight-up used the system from the Queadluun-Rau for video-brain feedback setupi, since they were categorically unable to reproduce it satisafactorily themselves. The YF-21's BDI is subsequently explained as an attempt to speed up a Valkyrie's response time by making that VF an extension of the pilot's body directly controlled by the brain instead of routing control information through an airframe control AI. (Which explains why Col. Johnson said that the issue analysis on the YF-21 was problematic because half of the unit's computer was Guld's brain... it's not a figure of speech, it's literally true.) Apparently switching to the more reliable but less invasive Brain Computer Interface led to more than a 20% loss of performance in terms of system reaction time though it's said that it's considered easier to use by the pilots. (Which is perhaps understandable, given that the next section makes the BCS-based control setup sound twitchy as hell with an end-to-end reaction time of under 10 milliseconds and 200 hours of training required just to prepare the pilot and collect the data necessary to set up the brainwave control system for them to use!)

So, there may be an explanation for that as well... admittedly in one of the sections I've only skimmed so far. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II makes several references to the YF-21/VF-22's origins as an outgrowth/rethinking of General Galaxy and the New UN Forces plan to restore the Queadluun-Rau's factory satellite and produce an improved version of the battle suit. While this much is also in the official setting, Master File adds a new aspect of the plan by suggesting that (in its version) the YF-21 grew out of plans for a Variable Glaug-esque miclone version of the improved Queadluun Rau. They make a couple mentions of the (movie) Queadluun-Rau's cybernetic control interface, which they describe as an unreproducable "black box" system at the time (the mid-to-late 2030s). I'll have to dig into that section properly to verify, but the implication thus far seems to be that the Brainwave Control System of the YF-21 is an attempt to reproduce that black box system from the Queadluun-Rau or at least duplicate its functionality using Human technology. Well, it was a prototype... those aren't generally known for being entirely stable or reliable. The intention was that the manual controls were there purely for emergency use, should something go awry with the Brainwave Control System. There's mention that the restraints locking the arms and legs in place automatically release if the BCS connection deteriorates to a certain level to allow the pilot to switch to the manual controls easily. However, it's definitely a testament to Guld Goa Bowman's physical and mental discipline that the first testing accident connected to the YF-21's BCS was the one in Macross Plus where Guld's YF-21 experienced a (recoverable) loss of control after almost colliding with Isamu's VF-11B. It's noted that they did address the alignment issues when they switched to a laser-based brainwave monitoring system for the reduced-capability Brain Computer Interface on the production VF-22. (Of course, that was also after the brainwave system was made a support system for the regular controls, so it was a lot more fault-tolerant anyway.) Nope... that's Fold Dimensional Energy Conversion. It's a technology the Protoculture probably developed by studying the Vajra and requires extremely high purity fold quartz to pull off. Some of the Protoculture's most advanced constructs had that ability - like the Birdhuman, the Fold Evil on Uroboros, and the Protodeviln's Evil-series bodies - but that's something that was beyond Human technology until the development of the Fold Wave System for the YF-29 Durandal in the late 2050s. We've previously touched on how even building a fold wave system is nearly impossible because the quantity and purity of fold quartz needed to make it work at an acceptable level are prohibitively high. The YF-21's about twenty years and two generations* before that technology became available. * The YF-29's Fold Wave System was such a massive game-changer that Master File reclassified the YF-29 as a 6th Generation VF prototype. Macross Delta's Blu-ray extra features appear to imply the same happened in the official Macross setting, with the VF-31 Siegfried being classified as a Gen 5.5 VF apparently because of its adoption of the Fold Wave System. Nope. Not aware of any VF that can do that. I haven't gotten far enough into the VF-22 book to see if it says anything about that, but in other Master File books the subject of waste heat management in space does come up (esp. the VF-25 book). The approach they describe involves the VFs using their cryogenic fuel slush as a system coolant, cycling that coolant back into the vacuum-sealed tanks where it's both less detectable and eventually dealt with when the fuel is used in the compact thermonuclear reactor or the verniers. Outside of combat, it's mentioned that they don't bother with heat sequestration and use the surface of the wings as a radiator for cooling the VF... assuming it's not equipped with FAST Packs that have their own heat sink systems like the VF-25's Armored Pack. I'm not sure it's even his ego... his hyperfixation on music makes me think he's just high functioning autistic and has trouble with social cues.

I have to admit, the more I read of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II, the more I'm convinced I've done the book a disservice by describing it as one of the less-good installments of the series. It's got quite a bit of good material, it's just the original variants are largely stupid. The section on the VF-22's cockpit makes it sound like the YF-21 prototype would've been an absolutely miserable aircraft to operate. It describes the original BCS control system as having such tight tolerances that the pilot was basically not allowed to move at all. We're talking way beyond normal levels of restraints, to the point of immobilizing the pilot's entire body via a Houdini-like system of restraint straps and clamps in normal operation. All of that was in service of keeping the EEG sensor hood from shifting, since moving as little as 10mm from its ideal position would cause the system to lose 40% or more of its accuracy and send the aircraft to emergency recovery mode. The connected Brain Direct Image system required measures nearly as severe, basically requiring the pilot to fly with their eyes closed and wearing sound-damping headphones. The description of the Sync Pod chair that grips the pilot's entire body instead of using conventional restraints sounds uncomfortable as hell too. There's also a mention that the pilot suit also includes a version of the metabolic booster system that's the only mentioned feature of the VF-15, which uses lasers, electromagnetic fields, etc. to stimulate the body's metabolic stress responses as an anti-g measure. It's said that it can provide the wearer with the endurance to temporarily handle g-force load of +20 for nearly three minutes. The same system is also used for life support, slowing the pilot's life processes down in the event of an emergency escape of the aircraft to allow the pilot to survive up to 70 days in space.

... so that's where the inhabitants of the Discovery and Picard writer's rooms went.

Just the one so far... the only Valkyries to get multiple volumes thus far have been the VF-1 (five volumes) and the VF-31 (two volumes).

Master File's Structure and Systems area for the VF-22 goes with an interesting take... asserting that, since the book was written shortly after materials regarding the VF-22 began to be declassified, that there are still many unclear areas regarding its systems and performance. With the last operational VF-22 unit - SVC-665 - officially retiring its VF-22s in March 2061, the VF-22 seems to have had an unusually short service life in Master File's view. They were only active for around 19 years due to their high operating costs and high difficulty of maintenance and operation. They do acknowledge that some private companies may continue operating them, in a possible nod to the Macross Frontier novelization where the Macross Frontier fleet's SMS branch had three VF-22S's. There's an interesting note in the introduction that claims the YF-21/VF-22 started out as a Queadluun-Rau for miclones and changed partway into development into a new model VF for Project Super Nova. It's noted that the aircraft ended up becoming larger than originally planned in order to accommodate the New UN Forces stealth requirements so that all necessary arms and tanks could be stored internally. There's also an explicit reference to the VF-22's brainwave control system being an obstacle to widespread adoption to a degree that it was considered a "pilot selection system" because not everyone was compatible with it and training to operate the system takes a lot of time and a statement that the actual performance of the aircraft varied greatly depending on the pilot's overall level of compatibility with the system and thus its versatility was VERY low. The section on the nose has an unusual statement about the VF-22's radar and its interaction with the energy conversion armor. Apparently the VF-22's synthetic aperture radar extends outside the aircraft's nose and into the sides of the fuselage, dorsal frame, and beavertail as an extremely large synthetic aperture radar. In practice, it sounds similar to what General Galaxy's SV Works would later develop in the Sv-303's Mirage Package system. Though in this case, it's said that the synthetic aperture radar stops working if the energy conversion armor is energized due to electromagnetic interference. General Galaxy asserts (via the author) that this is a non-issue since during close-range combat the primary detection system switches to the optical cameras and LADAR system. There's also an interesting (and prophetic, considering this book was written in 2014) statement that the YF-21 concept was originally aiming for a completely opaque armored canopy relying entirely on the projecting data direct to the pilot's brain with only a single monitor within the cockpit as an emergency backup. The test pilots objected to this plan, and further difficulties with the original BDI system led to the introduction of more transparent canopy sections and internal monitors to ensure the pilot had an adequate fallback field-of-view. Even more interesting, these transparent canopy sections are not covered in battroid mode. The armor shutters protecting the pilot are on the inside of the canopy, not the outside.

Later explanations, esp. WRT the DYRL? versions, suggset that Zentradi are anatomically and biochemically different as giants vs. as miclones. IIRC, that was basically what the explanation of Exsedol's changing appearance hinged on. That his TV appearance was what he looked like as a miclone, with his role-specific enhancements disabled/removed, and that his movie appearance was what he looked like "on the job" as a giant. Considering rule of thumb is that Zentradi are generally 1/5th their giant height as miclones, Cromwell's grandpappy must've been a senior commander-class Zentradi like main fleet commander Boddole Zer. He'd be 16.5m tall as a giant, around the same height as Boddole Zer who towered over the 13m+ commanders. (Either that or he's More Machine Than Man and entirely too preoccupied with size.) The average Zentradi is said to be approximately 2m tall as a miclone... on the tall side but not unreasonably so for a human (says the nearly 2m tall guy writing this)... but they're also big believers in Large and In Charge with their leaders being substantially larger. Vrlitwhai's 1354cm tall as a giant, meaning he'd be 271cm tall as a miclone (a whopping 8ft 10 inches) if his height isn't an enhancement that can be removed in micloning. One can only assume the Zentradi have done amazing things for the sport of basketball. The New UN Spacy 7th Fleet is one of the fleets from the central New UN Spacy, according to what little commentary there is on it. Cromwell's Battle Astraea was its flagship, which he and his crew stole when they deserted and disguised its disappearance as a fold navigation accident. I don't think there's been any statement connecting it to the Battle Galaxy, which was destroyed utterly in the movie version of Frontier. It just seems to be a modified reuse of Battle Galaxy's CG model, with the hull number presumably being a coincidence. Master File also presents the YF-21-2's BDI control architecture as so radical and so unprecedented that even General Galaxy was hesitant to actually authorize mass production of it because of how finicky and immature the technology was. For what it's worth, Master File does indicate that the VF-22 had similar problems to the VF-19 but on a smaller scale since there were fewer of them and the pilots being recommended to fly them were already the military's elite. So while the VF-19 was making the Earth NUNS's rank-and-file very nervous with its peaky, unstable performance the VF-22 was struggling with compatibility issues in terms of pilots who could get the best out of the BCI system. Ironically, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II was written several years before Delta came out... but by an amusing coincidence lists the final year of the VF-22's use by the New UN Forces as early 2061, not long after Wright Immelmann's ill-fated flight that resulted in the destruction of the city of Carlyle by (illegal) dimensional weapon. The one you're thinking of is a fan design from a 2003 issue of Model Graphix magazine as a part of its recurring feature series "Advanced Valkyrie in Action". It was inspired by the proposed, but never built, Lockheed Martin FB-22 light bomber variant of the F/A-22. There are only three or four official versions of the VF-22: VF-22 initial type (impl. VF-22A) VF-22S - the type seen in Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7 VF-22HG - experimental Galaxy fleet version with improved specs for cyborg use VF-22 Manfred custom - VF-22S w/ Di Zauberflote & ISC VF-22 Todo custom - based on VF-22HG or separate cyborg custom of VF-22S

After six episodes, I'm strongly considering proposing a new title... Yuri for Fun and Profit. Yeah, I definitely got that vibe too... especially considering she can't seem to remember that her arm is actually injured half the time despite the wrap.

Yeah, he had potential. It's a bit of a shame that, after the Ferengi flopped, the TNG writer's room never really settled on a second candidate to take over the role the Klingons has previously occupied as the Federation's primary antagonist. They toyed with the Romulans and they toyed with the Cardassians - both debuts featuring future Gul Dukat actor Marc Alaimo - before they ultimately kinda gave up. Jean-Luc Picard not really having a signature villain besides Q definitely worked against Picard in the writer's room since the Romulan connection that drove season one was entirely offscreen and then they just did the Borg twice. TBH, while I've seen this particular complaint a number of times I honestly can't say that I see it myself. Both Discovery and Picard are very badly written and definitely suffer a fair amount of "protagonist-centric morality" as a result being Main Character-driven shows instead of Star Trek's usual ensemble-driven format, but apart from a few brief and terribly hamfisted moments I don't recall them getting overtly political. They're preachy as hell, but that's just what happens when you have a writer's room that doesn't really "get" Star Trek trying to make DSC and PIC sound a bit more like classic Trek by having the main charater deliver a filibuster-length speech. Jean-Luc may be memetically famous for them in-universe and out, but they lose a certain je ne sais quoi with the show making his positions hypocritical, clueless, or just plain wrong half the time. In all fairness, that's a topic that certain Trek characters have struggled with in TNG, DS9, and ENT. Some of those are at least as cringeworthy in terms of execution, despite the showrunners having the best of intentions. Comes up a fair bit in the relaunch novelverse too... albeit mainly because of species that are androgynous, hermaphroditic, undergo some kind of metamorphosis that causes them to change biological sex at a certain point in their life cycle, or have more than two biological sexes like Species 8472 (5+) or the novelverse version of the Andorians (4). The Trill in general seem to exist to invoke this, considering how often people stumbled over Jadzia's pronouns WRT her symbiont's switch from a legendary dirty old man to a relatively more reserved young lady. (They at least seem to be good sports about it, though.)

I am not much of a toy collector, so please take this as vague guidance at best, but I found them to be a little on the stiff side. The range of articulation is not quite what I would have liked. I'm not sure about the endurance, since I just posed them once and put them on a shelf as knickknacks.

Macross's sequels have zigzagged the idea of whether the Zentradi stand out or not quite a bit... The idea that part-Zentradi have issues managing the elevated physical aggression the ancient Protoculture designed their Zentradi ancestors with was a new idea brought in with the Macross Plus OVA and subsequently abandoned not long after it. I guess Master File felt compelled to explain why this supposedly widespread problem that was regarded as an obstacle to the YF-21's adoption as next main fighter was never mentioned again... both in terms of it being a widespread but not universal issue and the introduction of a cure that permanently resolved the issue. Zentradi in subsequent sequels always blend into the population perfectly until the story needs them to not. I guess that's the benefit of them being an amazing technicolor population with a much greater range of normal body types than humans. You can have most Zentradi look identical to humans and still have a bunch of them be green, ghastly pale, seven feet tall, and so on. Like how Milia looks completely human except for her green hair (and that may be excusable by rule of anime), while the inhabitants of Macross 5 are mostly the ghastly pale type of Zentradi to make it obvious to the viewer Macross 5 is an all-Zentradi fleet. Looking a little more into Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II... the events of the Macross Plus OVA's final episode are glossed over for in-universe reasons. It's said that there was an official announcement shortly after the incident to the effect that "a super-AI system went berserk" but that most of the information about the incident remains under seal so all people can do is speculate and theorize. Interestingly, the Master File actually takes the view that the BDI-equipped YF-21-2 was objectively superior in terms of specs due to the incomplete nature of the X-9 Ghostbird's AI and that it should have had an advantage despite having used up most of its ammunition fighting the YF-19-2. The thing that made it an even fight was that the DECU6000/Sharon Apple had self-evolved to a "super AI" thanks to the illegal bio-neural chip installed by Marj. From there, it returns to toeing the official line by indicating that the incident proved the dangers of AI technology and the continuing usefulness of manned fighter aircraft which prompted the New UN Forces to abandon the X-9 and quietly resume Project Super Nova as though it'd never been cancelled. General Higgins's pro-AI faction apparently lost an enormous amount of influence and their rivals had a field day crowing about the insufficient anti-hacking measures in the X-9 program among other things like smugly indicating that you can't hack an organic pilot. (Which the Macross Galaxy fleet apparently later took as a challenge.) While hypnosis proved to be at least partially effective against Isamu and the YF-19-2, it's noted that the YF-21-2 proved to be completely impervious to Sharon's attempts to infiltrate its systems due to the BDI's radically different architecture. The section talking about the decision to reinstate Project Super Nova mentions that while the military went with the more conventional design in the YF-19, they persuaded the New UN Gov't's assembly to approve limited requisitions for the YF-21 as well as a special forces fighter despite its higher production and operation cost. Development of the YF-21 restarted in November 2040 using the YF-21-3 that had been in storage on Earth. The Brain Direct Interface (BDI) was scaled back to become the BCI (Brain Computer Interface) that operated as a support system for the manual controls. The new system required a new airframe control AI designated ANGIRAS-BRAIN-2, which combined with the other refinements led to the military issuing YF-21-3 a new provisional designation as YF-22. Two more units (YF-22-2 and YF-22-3) were produced and later tested at New Edwards in the first half of 2041 and approval for mass production was granted after space trials ended. The first mass production VF-22 rolled off the line to the Earth NUNS in 2042. Having switched from pursuing the next main fighter role to a special forces role apparently hurt GG quite a bit financially too, since that sharply reduced expected production volumes by order of magnitude... from "tens of thousands" to just a few hundred. General Galaxy was apparently struggling at the time due to having taken many contracts for things like spacecraft and stardrive systems for the New UN Forces and civilian enterprises. They got a bit of a shot in the arm when the UN Spacy Weapons Test Center proposed building the VF-22 in batches of 200 to "test the transition to a production design", allowing development of the VF-22 to continue using the budget that'd initially been earmarked for the X-9 Ghostbird. The concept Argus Selzer apparently developed from this was to customize the VF-22s to the needs ot the various local commands requesting them since no one location was expected to need more than about ten VF-22s including spares. This proposal ultimately led to the New UN Gov't parliament approving the purchase of 100 VF-22s, and later expanded by another 200 aircraft, but it's said that the number of aircraft actually produced and delivered might not have been accurately reported due to losses in development accidents and production of replacements. The last bit talks about the possibility that the VF-22's extremely high stealth performance was used for illegal operations... with the book's in-universe author presenting that as likely, but probably a necessary evil. The new variants described in the book are an odd bunch. The VF-22B is said to be a modified Block 5 VF-22 from 2045 that abolishes the vertical tail in order to reduce the burden on the energy-intensive active stealth system. It's said to have also adopted a new stealth paint based on carbon nanotubes that reduced reflected light, making the VF-22B stealthier at close range by making it harder to detect via LIDAR and optical cameras in addition to its improved radar stealthiness. It's said to pay for this via a reduction in maneuverability and top speed from the extra weight added to its wing surfaces. The VF-22D is an extended fuselage based on the VF-22B that abolished the BCI and adding a second crewman in order to operate as a dedicated attack aircraft able to carry a whopping ten large anti-warship reaction weapons. This unfortunately resulted in a significant loss of speed and maneuverability, so the end result was it was diverted to training use. The YVF-22E is a VF-22D modified as a side-by-side cockpit attacker with two BCI systems. It contained refinements to the system that prevented the operator's emotional state from interfering with the system's decision-making functions. The YVF-22U is another odd bird... the YVF-22E was further modified to attempt to use it as a forward drone control ship where the copilot could control multiple Ghosts using the BCI. It's said to have been able to control up to six Ghosts and 24 target drones, though the handling is noted to be VERY dependent on the individual operator. The YVF-22VG is a fairly straightforward case of GG attempting to swap the extremely expensive flexible wing material for a traditional variable geometry wing. The YVF-22SA is an attempt to address a defect in the VF-22S in which its laser cannons could accidentally damage the airframe itself in high-g maneuvers by introducing a set of movable dorsal laser cannons. Next change I get, I'll have a look into the Structure and Systems section.

Coming off an insane week... decided to watch something absurd. Yuri is My Job! is... odd. It's definitely unconventional as stories go. An incredibly vain and nasty high school girl who's put her all into a facade of being cute, innocent, and charming in order to bag a rich husband accidentally injures someone on the street and is dragooned into covering their shifts at a theme cafe modeled on a private girls school in which all of the staff are working in character as schoolgirls in various yuri relationships. For all the protagonist's confessions to scumbag motives early on, it's surprisingly easy to get invested in her peculiar struggle because she has absolutely no idea what's going on, her coworkers can't be arsed to explain anything properly, and so she's left to fake it 'til she makes it and hope that she doesn't piss her new coworkers off too badly. It might help a bit that I'm honestly as lost as she is... (Or maybe it's that a sympathize with her for having such a wildly irresponsible manager who waited until her third shift before bothering to explain even the basic rules of her new and very odd workplace?)

Making another valiant effort to get through Buddy Daddies... this show is absolutely awful. A similar premise worked in Spy x Family because the kid was intelligent enough to understand what was going on with both of her adoptive parents even if she didn't understand the implications every time. The kid in Buddy Daddies is beyond stupid. I don't know how old she's supposed to be, but she has an IQ like a basement apartment number and the self-preservation of a clinically depressed cartoon lemming. Worse, she's incredibly annoying and they keep trying to make her being annoying the focus of the comedy. 😕

... and if you just go through the motions and do the bare minimum to make the story feel Star Trek-like as in Picard's third and final season, you might score some brownie points with the die-hard fans through fanservice but it won't make it an engaging or interesting series for the casual viewers who make up the majority of the audience. ... and this is why ever single origin story given for the Borg in Star Trek's 100% non-canonical "Expanded Universe" has been absolute garbage. First Contact already ruined the Borg by turning them from an inscruitable alien race who evolved into a symbiotic relationship with their technology and a completely alien set of priorities and benevolent (in their view) intentions into boring cyber-zombies led by an incredibly hammy and openly malevolent B-movie villain called the Borg Queen. The whole idea was incredibly stupid and they knew it, since it required them to repeatedly deny that the leader they'd created for the Borg was the leader of the Borg. It just got worse each time the Borg appeared, hitting its nadir in Picard's second and third seasons where the Borg Queen - who is definitely a personification of the collective and not at an individual being with its own agency according to the writers - is basically the last, lonely, pathetic survivor of the Borg collective. The last thing we need is another sh*tty origin story like Star Trek: Destiny to come in and reveal that humanity is responsible for creating the Borg. Yes, you read that right... in the relaunch novelverse the Borg were created as a result of something humans did. Specifically, the crew of the NX-02 Columbia. Ref. Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Into Darkness, Star Trek: Beyond, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard... All attempts to make Star Trek into something un-Star Trek-like... and all, notably, massive failures for the studio and the franchise. Best known in this franchise as "the crew of the USS Discovery".