Seto Kaiba

Don't knock it... it shows the quality of their writing has improved dramatically.

*raises hand* I know I'm late to the party, but Macross Frontier didn't thrill me either. I don't hate it, but it's a long way from being my favorite. From the start, it felt like a return to form, like they had decided to go back to the formula that had made Macross great. The story was pretty good, not fabulous... the core cast was pretty boring, the mecha was a mix of old, uninteresting designs and "new" designs made by haphazardly combining features from previous ones. For the above-stated reason, the main character mecha (VF-25 and VF-27) did not thrill me. It was nice to see some of the minor character mecha, like the VF-171EX and VB-6 get some love though. The core cast was a bore most of the time... Alto only really felt likable after he and Sheryl got together, Sheryl turned out to be easily the most likable cast member, and Ranka was every bit as pointless and offensive to the eye, ear, and most other senses as Basara was. Ozma was pretty awesome, though he got so little screen time that it was hard to think anything but "recycled footage time" whenever he got hurt. Bobby was, oddly, hilarious and awesome at the same time, and the bridge bunny banter was at least amusing. Really, the show could've been made a lot better with the excision of a single character... Ranka Lee. She was largely unnecessary to the plot, her role could've been easily filled by Sheryl, and the love triangle could've been Alto, Sheryl, and Brera. The Vajra need to win an award for all-time lamest Macross villain. You can't really relate to them in any way, because they're personality-less bugs. What made Macross's villains great was that you COULD relate to them, and they weren't unambiguously evil people... many of them were just soldiers doing their jobs, or just trying to survive another day, and were otherwise genuinely good people (see Vrlitwhai, Feff, Gigile, Sivil, etc). Without a personality or even a visible central intelligence, it's hard to really even consider the Vajra a threat until the very end, when Grace takes over the queen. On the whole, I think Macross Frontier had the seeds of true greatness. Everything necessary to make the show awesome WAS there, but it was buried in annoying characterization, pointless lolicon, and unnecessary side stories. As such, instead of being great, it's only "pretty good". A hell of a lot better than 7 was, but not nearly as good as the original series, DYRL, or even II.

Blech... it turned out to be the Cheyenne II... the most nonsensical and pointless destroid of all. I know they're trying to spread the good stuff out so they can cover ~50 issues, but it'd be nice if the Macross II stuff didn't always feel like filler, or an afterthought, when they've run out of stuff from Macross 7 to show us.

Aye, that'd be the one. I'd completely forgotten about that thread. Here's hoping Masaya comes through with some better-quality art for us so we can finally get a good picture of what the VF-4 Siren looked like in battroid mode. I'm trying to find contact information for the mechanical designers from the OVA, who can hopefully flesh out some more detail on VF weaponry for us too.

Maybe, since they're showing such little love for Macross II, they've decided to cram all five destroids from the OVA onto a single mecha sheet.

I'm hoping so too... FlamingGauntlet did a bunch of art for us as part of a "make your own color scheme" gimmick for the site, and for our mecha stats pages, and one of the most-discussed ones is his attempt to make sense of the various screen captures from Macross: Eternal Love Song and cobble together a VF-4S Siren from them. It actually leaked out onto 4chan a week or so ago, though how it got there is anybody's guess, since it was made specifically for us.

It's a nice theory, but it doesn't explain why Mardook technology is more advanced than that of the Zentradi (as explicitly stated by Kenichi Yatagai). About the only way I can see it happening is if the Mardook have been in control of a Zentradi faction for thousands or tens of thousands of years. Humanity's had direct access to Zentradi overtechnology and even a couple factory satellites for decades, and they still haven't gotten anywhere near that level of reliability. I've forgotten the exact date Misa cites, but according to her translation of the colony computer in DYRL, the Protoculture were still very much out and about in the galaxy only twenty thousand (or thereabouts, I've forgotten the exact number) years ago. It's equally possible that the Mardook are, like the Atlita colonists, survivors from both sides of the war who fled when the Zentradi and Meltrandi ran out of control. It accounts for a lot... their superior technology, their control over the Zentradi, males and females coexisting, their culture, their belief in their own superiority, etc. etc. etc. Of course, nothing's provable either way, because the only person involved in Macross II's creation who ever really talked about the origins of the Mardook was Kenichi Yatagai, who stops short of calling the Mardook the survivors of the Protoculture. I haven't gotten down to translating the Mardook article in Macross Chronicle yet, but I doubt it'll offer any new insights. One quick note to Zinjo... there is no Supervision Army in the DYRL-II continuity. They were replaced by the Meltrandi as the rival power opposing the Zentradi. This has been Seto, your friendly neighborhood Macross II expert... signing off and heading for the pub.

Hmmm... if you could scan that and send me a copy, I'll add it to the translation queue and see if it adds anything to our body of information (plz. be sure to indicate what magazine, volume, and issue it came from, for archival purposes). I've knocked together a script of sorts for Macross 2036 already, and I'm about to do the same to Macross: Eternal Love Song. I've been trying to contact Masaya for a while now to see if they've got any lineart of the VF-4S/SP/ST Siren from Macross: Eternal Love Song. All they printed in the game manual was the Flashback 2012 lineart of the VF-4, which is, oddly enough, labeled "VF-X4". In-game, there're a couple screens where the battroid mode is visible, but the shots aren't exactly the highest quality (sprite graphics and all).

Oh rest assured, I will. Right now my notes on the Macross II alternate continuity span something like twenty pages, and I'm not done yet. I'm still adding details from Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song. There are a couple areas where not much detail is available, though only one of those is a major event: the 2054 Zentradi invasion, which led to the capture of another factory satellite, and the development of the VF-XX. B-Club really is the best of the three main sources for Macross II, because it doesn't just provide the whole universe backstory, it also goes into the minutiae of the mecha stats, stuff that isn't covered in TIAS 5 and EB51.

Really, I'm not surprised anymore by the mistakes people make about the date Macross II is set. After all, only those of us with access to the creator interviews in B-Club magazine and Volume 2 of the OST (which didn't come out in the US) had the information necessary to arrive at the correct date... 2092 AD. Remember, it was thanks to you that we finally got ironclad proof that the creators set the show in that year. B-Club 79 and the show's dialogue all indicated that year, but it's nice to have an explicit statement that we were right. Since I haven't done a thorough translation of that Mardook character sheet yet, I can't be sure that they're talking about the year the Mardook invasion took place. It might be referring to the state of the Mardook the year before the invasion, or it might be an error that'll be corrected later (like the Megaroad-01's size). Despite multiple inquiries, I have yet to find out who exactly came up with 2089 as Macross II's date, but it looks like it was somebody at US Renditions. It's not hard to guess how Macross Ace's writers came up with 2090... they added 80 to the year Space War 1 ended. I wish my translations of B-Club #79, Entertainment Bible 51, and This is Animation Special #5 could offer a definitive and lasting solution to the nagging questions of Macross II, but while I can easily bury you up to your ears in an excruciatingly detailed and annotated timeline of the events between DYRL and II, I can't do the same where the mecha stats are concerned... yet. B-Club has filled in a LOT of the gaps in TIAS5 and EB51, leaving only one real vague area behind... gunpods and the VF-2SS's big cannon. Some sources call 'em all beam weapons, some sources call 'em all railguns, and some sources don't give any detail at all.

Yeah, the occasional bouts of odd technical terminology do make the translations kind of a pain. It's not quite so bad in Macross II's artbooks though, though that's mostly because the show's creators pulled a Gundam and only really touched on the basics of each mecha's specs. Actually... that's exactly what my ongoing project is... collating all the information from the official sources into a single internet resource devoted specifically to the Macross II branch continuity. We started to build a new site design last year, but got derailed a bit by a major translation backlog and some personal crises, so as an interim measure I've been donating my findings to Mr. March for the Macross Mecha Manual.

It's nice to know someone out there will appreciate my hard work. Unlike my work in EB51 and B-Club #79, translating Macross Chronicle really feels like a chore, because it's not really adding anything to the body of knowledge I'd already accumulated by translating EB51, TIAS #5, and B-Club #79. I've already done partial translations of the SNN Valkyrie article, People of SNN article, and Macross Cannon article, but the translation work is currently sharing my attention with other projects... the lineart scans I'm doing for Mr. March, mecha stats I'm pulling together for Mr. March, and my attempt to sort out the contradictory accounts of VF weapons in the Macross II source materials. Well, for one, it's an interesting take on the future application of Zentradi technology in the U.N. Spacy. It is, for all intents and purposes, a transformable Queadluun-Rau. It's taking the VF concept to new and interesting places. It doesn't have to be flashy to be functional or interesting.

Unfortunately, it looks like the lion's share of information on Macross II will never see publication in Macross Chronicle, because they're only referencing Entertainment Bible 51 and This is Animation Special #5. They're not referencing the real mother-lode of information, B-Club #79. If they were, they'd have identified the SNN Valkyrie's model number, the design that preceded it, and its manufacturer, among other things. For the time being, it looks like I'm the only one translating the Macross II stuff, I'll post some links in the translation thread once I've finished, but it's gonna be a while, since my Japanese is not the best, and my free time is rather limited thanks to the economic downturn.

One day, I'd really love for everyone to be able to spell "Seto" correctly. Yes, Macross II is a sequel to DYRL, and it's fairly typical for a Japanese-made sequel in that it sticks fairly close to the original work. I don't hold that against it. They had a formula that worked well, and they stuck with it. Too many sci-fi franchises have been ruined by their creators trying to fix what isn't broken (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc), which almost invariably leads to a product that's almost offensively unlike the original. (This is actually my only complaint with Macross Plus, I crucify Macross 7 for other reasons) Macross II had some absolutely stunning mechanical designs, many of which did not get the attention they deserved, and the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie is one of them. Yeah, unfortunately Chronicle's writers seem to be drawing exclusively from This is Animation Special #5 and Entertainment Bible 51, so a lot of the information Kenichi Yatagai and co. gave out about the series is being inadvertently excluded because it was published in B-Club Magazine. So don't expect to see anything about the Million Star incident, the Macross-class emigration ships of the 2050s, or the altered date of the Megaroad-01's liftoff in Chronicle. What little information is available is being roundly ignored by Chronicle's writers, just like it was ignored by the idiots at Palladium, who we can thank for the mistaken belief that Macross II takes place in 2089. On that irksome note, Chronicle offered the first hint of a date for Macross II, mentioning the year 2091 in the "People of the Mardook" article. It's in the estimated range based on the B-Club timeline, (2091-2092) but the OSTs give the year as 2092 (100 years after the OVA's debut, 10 years after the last Zentradi invasion, ~82 years after Space War 1). With most of Macross II's mecha designers going on to work on Gundam later, it seems like 2091 might be an in-joke, because it shakes out to the year 0079 under that "New Era" calendar.

dara made, Information about the VF-XX is pretty scarce, and so is its art. The VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie appears for only a few seconds in either episode 5 or 6 of Macross II: Lovers Again, and only two pieces of lineart seem to exist for the mecha... the battroid and fighter modes you posted. The only information available about it apart from that is that it's a technology demonstrator-turned-Zentradi variable fighter that was developed after the December 2054 capture of a factory satellite, introduced "in the 2060s", and was the predecessor to the VF-2 series. Entertainment Bible 51 has color and black & white art for it, B-Club Magazine #79 has color art for it, and This is Animation Special #5: Macross II has black & white art for it. It also appears in Palladium's Macross II: Sourcebook One, though none of the information Palladium has for it is canon. One noteworthy mention is that there is a coloring error in either B-Club Magazine #79 or Entertainment Bible 51, wherein the finlike protrusions in front of the mecha's shoulders and above the cockpit in battroid mode are colored differently. In B-Club they're white, and in Entertainment Bible 51 they're the same shade of green as the other green accents around the "collar" and on the shoulders. The art you posted is somebody's poorly done photoshopping of the B-Club colors, turning the green to blue.

Date for Macross II is wrong in those timelines too... B-Club #79's timeline and the OST books establish that the OVA is set in 2092.

I rather prefer fighter mode, simply for aesthetic reasons. There're some interesting fighter designs, though I loathe what Kawamori did to the VF-19 in Macross 7, and I don't much care for the VF-0, SV-51, VF-25, and VF-27.

No, it's not yours. It's anime52k8's VF-4 w/ VF-25-style feet. No need to get your knickers in a twist. I just ordered my copy of the Fan Book today... so I oughta be getting it around two days hence.

Well, if Sketchley won't point you in the right direction, I will. I've sent you a link to a site in english that sells all of the books you're looking for. Incidentally, I saw your VF-4 redux on 4chan, and was quite impressed. Nice work. EDIT: Had to reword that, didn't send him scans, just pointed him to a site that'll sell him the book.

On the subject of WHEN precisely Macross II takes place... we have one answer that fits the available evidence: We have the timeline published in B-Club magazine that offers the year 2082 as the last Zentradi invasion. Sylvie Gena explicitly states that it has been ten years since the last Zentradi invasion, Hibiki confirms the last Zentradi attack was ten years ago when he tries to talk the producer into letting him cover the battle at MA-224, and Mash states that the SDF-1 brought culture to the Zentradi approximately eighty years previously. This agrees with other sources, namely the soundtrack booklets, which explicitly attribute the war with the Mardook to 2092. Furthermore, 2092 is exactly 100 years from the date when the OVA was released, and honestly... that doesn't look coincidental. I think it's a pretty safe bet that Macross Ace is dead wrong on this issue, as it contradicts pretty much everything else that's out there as far as official source materials go. Reintroducing Macross II to the main timeline would entail tossing out quite literally all the previously established continuity for the alternate universe, and thinking up an excuse for the Zentradi suddenly becoming a tangible threat to humanity again... they've been borderline comic relief in the main timeline since 2045.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it an urban legend, it's really more of an educated guess on the parts of many viewers. Strictly speaking, the Macross II alternate universe's official timeline (as published in B-Club) makes no mention of the formation of a New United Nations Government or New U.N. Spacy. Of course, that cannot be taken as an outright denial of the existence of either organization, since the timeline glosses over all but the most important details between the end of Space War 1 in 2010 and the attack of the Neld Fleet in 2036, and focuses mainly on the development of the variable fighters. I'll get in to what it DOES mention in just a sec. Realistically, we could go either way. Since DYRL was a condensed version of the TV series with only some of the events changed, it seems reasonable for there to have been a New United Nations Government established in the wake of Space War 1. Of course, since NUNS does show up, particularly in the government's propaganda broadcasts, it would make sense for it to be the name of their media bureau as well. Now, to business... Since the timeline B-Club published isn't a general historical overview, but rather a history of variable fighters in the Macross II alternate universe, it doesn't really offer a lot of help covering historical milestones, though it does make mention of the major events and stories. It attributes the lack of new variable fighter designs between 2014 and 2060 to the drain on resources imposed by the Earth reclamation project, rebuilding the fleet, and the ongoing efforts to colonize other planets. As a result, the VF-1 and VF-4 remain in service far longer than in the main timeline, receiving periodic technology upgrades including the VF-1R's SP-II super parts, and the eventual introduction of funnels to the VF-4S's super parts in 2037. As far as historical milestones, it mentions the end of Space War 1 in 2010, the launch of the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 in 2014 (yes, 2014!), a few Zentradi raids between 2010 and 2018, the introduction of the VF-1R in the 2020s, the death of Dr. H. Takachihoff (the father of the VF-1 and VF-1R) in 2030, the return of Quamzin with the Neld Fleet in 2036, the Burado fleet in 2037, the start of an eight month war with the Zentradi on May 5, 2054 which culminated in the loss of the fmr. Adoclas fleet and the capture of another factory satellite, the development of the VF-XX in the 2060s, the introduction of the VF-2 in 2072, the VF-2SS in 2081, a Zentradi invasion in 2082 (the invasion Sylvie Gena refers to in the OVA), the introduction of the VF-2JA in 2086, and the Mardook invasion in 2092. Now if you want a CONCRETE, iron-clad case of Kawamori stealing plot elements from the alternate universe... let's start with the use of Macross-class super dimension fortresses in colonization missions. The alternate universe timeline published in 1992 mentions that the 2054 war was kicked off by a Zentradi attack on the Million Star(s), a Macross-class colonization ship, only 1.8 light years from Earth on May 5, 2054. Now we've got Chronicle claiming that each and every Megaroad mission had one (or more) escorting it some 16 years after the fact.

I think there may be an error on the Meltrandi Gunboat page in your DYRL section. Exactly what source did you use for the length of Milia 639's gunship? I was answering a friend's question about Meltrandi ship retcons, and made mention of Chlore's gunboat. As I didn't have my copy of TIA-11 on me, I consulted your site's DYRL section and the size you had for it just didn't seem right. Acting on a hunch, I pulled up my scans of TIA-11 page 92 (the DYRL ship size comparison) and using Photoshop, compared the ship against the SDF-1 in storm attacker mode. The size comparison has all the ships drawn to the same scale, with the Meltrandi gunship being 203px long, and the SDF-1 being 190px long. Working from the pre- and post-refit SDF-1 dimensions, we can establish the scale at 1px = 6.368m by the pre-refit dimensions, and 1px = 6.316m by the post-refit dimensions. With that, we can establish the size of the Meltrandi gunship as being between 1282m and 1293m (depending on whether you're using the post-refit or pre-refit size of the SDF-1), not the 1,800m given in your article. If you measure from the back of the engines instead of the fins on the ship's ventral hull (which extend past the engines) the ship's size is about 1270m. Is there a source I missed that offers a concrete statement of 1,800m as the size?

Unfortunately, I don't have the laserdisc release of Macross II: Lovers Again, so I don't have access to those liner notes. I have the original US Renditions subtitled OVA release on VHS, the US Renditions subtitled movie release on VHS, the Manga Entertainment re-release of the movie on VHS, and the Manga Entertainment DVD release. Laserdisc went bust as a format when I was still in my mid-teens, and the only laserdisc movie I've ever watched was Star Wars ep4. I'd imagine the liner notes booklet is on the large side, but if you can scan it, I can add it to the queue of things waiting to be translated. However, I'd be inclined to say that they're probably just episode summaries.

Actually, it's the Balzae fleet, it's one of those weird romanizations. Captain Balzae's name was changed to Bataze in the english dub to make it easier to pronounce. His fleet was referred to in the series dialogue as the 12th Group, though he doesn't appear to be Nexx's commanding officer. Unfortunately, most of what was in the Macross Cannon article was old news. A brief dialogue exchange between Captain Balzae and one of his bridge officers revealed that the New U.N. Spacy had at least six Macross Cannons prior to the final fleet engagement of the war. The dialogue is worded such that it implies there may have been more than six ships of that class though. The only new information was the size being approximately 6000 meters.

No, the text says nothing about the pilot, except that the mecha has a crew of one Zentradi soldier. From the animation, it looks like the pilot is either scrunched up like a Regult pilot, or is sort of squatting, like a Queadluun-Rea pilot. The animation used for the pilot is pretty much identical to all the other Mardook-controlled Zentradi pilots, so I don't think he's a miclone. The cockpit is in the mecha's rather bulbous torso, which I'm guessing is probably about the same size as the "head" of the Esbeliben Regult, if not slightly larger. The unnamed Mardook VF does look to be somewhat closer to the VF-2SS in size. The Metal Siren's actually a full head shorter than the VF-2SS and VF-2JA in battroid mode in the size comparison, making it probably one of the smallest VFs in all of Macross. Zinjo is correct. The Auto-Attack Bits following the VF-2SS around in episode one are alternately referred to as Auto-Attack(er) Bits and Squires in the source material. Though I would say Auto-Attack Bit is the type of mecha, and "Squire" is probably the unit's name. I'm afraid I won't be of much help on that note either, as only one piece of lineart seems to exist for the AAB/Squire unit, a rather simple sketch of the mecha from three different angles, totally unlabeled. That same sketch was reprinted, totally unaltered, in the Palladium RPG, for those who don't have access to EB51 and TIAS5. While it looks suspiciously similar to a Fulbtzs-Berrentz mothership, there's no way it can be. It's several orders of magnitude smaller than Boddole Zer's Fulbtzs-Berrentz mothership from the TV series, and appears to only be about a dozen kilometers wide and maybe thirty kilometers tall. It seems to have just been inserted as a homage to the original series. The dialogue refers to it as "Macross Cannon Base", and its exterior is dotted with docking umbilicals for Macross Cannons (several are seen to be docked there).