Seto Kaiba

Yeah, I know... but it's hard to consider the ARMD's TV variant as a proper battleship given that the U.N. Spacy already had a much bigger, more effective ship for that particular role, and the very definition of the acronym ARMD essentially boils down to "bigass hangar deck with engines and a few guns bolted on". Eh? I don't recall seeing the bit in Chronicle about Oberths from Apollo Base surviving Space War 1 anywhere else. Isn't that new information, or is it reiterated from somewhere that I've forgotten? Also, did they actually confirm that those things that looked vaguely Oberth-like in FB2012 were in fact Oberth-class destroyers? As far as I can recall, the earliest example of Oberth-class space destroyers still being in use after Space War 1 is Macross: Eternal Love Song, which came out in 1992. That's a trifle odd... I take it that was gleaned from your not-yet-typed translation of the DYRL ARMD sheet? It seems a bit at odds with the established information about the ARMDs from the TV series (and TV series sheet), where only eight ARMDs were completed and commissioned prior to the end of Space War 1, and all eight of which were supposedly lost during the war, as the fleet disposition after the war mentions only a hundred or so Zentradi capital ships and the two Macross-class super dimension fortresses. I think the problem you're having here stems from trying to combine two accounts of the ARMD's service history which are essentially mutually exclusive, the one from DYRL and the one from the TV series. By all accounts the first known example of the DYRL pattern ARMD in the main continuity are the rebuilt ARMD-I and ARMD-II, which were supposedly built for the SDF-1 Macross during its restoration. It would be consistent with the available facts for any and all ARMDs available after the war to have been built after the war. It would also make sense for the "Combat ARMD" to be the fold-capable ARMD mentioned to accompany early colony fleets, and for the DYRL pattern ARMDs to have been built on an as-needed basis for the mass-produced Macross-class ships, orbital defenses, and the like. Other sources (like the fleet numbers which come from either Perfect Memory or the Gold Book, I've forgotten which) point to all six surviving ARMDs (03-08) being destroyed during the final battle of the war, leaving the U.N. Spacy with just their two Macross-class ships and a hundred or so Zentradi warships. Given how frequently and thoroughly the VF-1 Master File contradicts the canon, I would be inclined to just throw the whole book out as unreliable. Certainly the ARMD sections are entirely unreliable, since they were copied almost whole cloth from the old Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual, a non-canon doujin from 1984. It obviously predates Flashback 2012, but given its content I'm fairly sure it predates DYRL as well, which doesn't bode well for its accuracy. Given the sources involved in its creation, I would say it should be common sense that the Variable Fighter VF-1 Master File is entirely unreliable, definitely non-canon, and that nothing from it should be treated as accurate unless it jives with other, more reliable publications like Chronicle, the Gold Book, Perfect Memory, etc.

"It's a Gundam!"

Considering how frequently the books reiterate the point that the Joker galaxy humans have a love of ostentation which borders on the fetishistic, and that said love of ostentation is almost invariably applied to their nation's mortar headds, I very much doubt anyone would bat an eye at a MH with an optional set of strictly ceremonial accouterments. After all, our boy (he IS nominally male) Amaterasu IV is the head of the richest and most powerful nation in the Joker galaxy, and he did already build a completely gold-plated mortar headd at the request of a fatima he happened to like (even though the mere contemplation of the price nearly made him pass out)... so I guess a little more ostentation beyond that would just be pissing into the ocean. Either that or the man has a few friends who do and tapped them for translation help so he could make the universe seem a bit more diverse. In any case, he insisted that the major foreign language sections not be translated into english, so we can only guess at his reasons.

Actually, I'm not just counting the US, but the other markets that would be opened up as well... and factoring in the general antipathy many anime fans have for cut-and-paste translations like Robotech. That is what he was accused of when he announced that the first two generations of RT mecha don't run on protoculture, yeah. Not sure where you are, but hereabouts the mecha anime demographic seems to fall mainly around the 17-21 set, and I tend to end up one of the oldest mecha nuts around, and I'm not even halfway through my 20s yet.

Color me surprised... I didn't think you liked anything from Macross II. Because they have a hardon for the number 25?

Not sure exactly what would've made you think that, expect the implication that the "DYRL version" is a postwar version made specifically to work with the Macross-class super dimension fortress in a support role. I'd never really given any thought to the matter, assuming that they were probably technologically comparable (given when the new versions were supposedly first made) variations on the same hull design meant for slightly different combat roles. If I may, I'd like to inject a few of my own insights and some (no doubt esoteric) additional information. Part of me has always felt that there's something fundamentally wrong about the design of the "Combat ARMD" in the original Macross TV series. Generally speaking, the fleet tactics of the U.N. Spacy are at least superficially based around real-world naval tactics and fleet roles, despite having a few ships that don't fit into the conventional mold (the colony ships, Macrosses, etc.). As such, it's a bit odd to see something that on paper is intended to be an aircraft carrier charging into battle equipped with battleship-grade gun turrets and missile launchers. All things being equal, one would expect the majority of a carrier's armament to be anti-aircraft weapons and for it to rely on its fighter complement and escorts for protection and the destruction of enemy ships. The movie version, and many of the later carrier designs in Macross fit that particular bill perfectly, which just leaves me scratching my head when it comes to the TV series ARMD. On a relevant side note, in the Macross II continuity game Macross: Eternal Love Song DYRL-variant ARMDs produced after Space War 1 are clearly seen operating in almost the exact capacity described above, independent of a larger craft like a Macross-class fortress and supported by (oddly enough) by a complement of Oberth-class guided missile destroyers. Presumably despite their lack of a large main engine cluster they still have enough "get up and go" to keep pace with their escorts and maneuver in-system. (Also somewhat relevant is the Daedalus II-type space assault carrier which combines features of both versions of ARMD) Given what little information we have on the first appearance of the DYRL-variant ARMD in the main Macross continuity, the first (known) examples of which being the reconstructed ARMD-01 and -02 attached to the newly-repaired SDF-1 Macross in 2012, one could infer that all eight ARMDs lost during Space War 1 were of the "Combat ARMD" type seen in the TV series, and that the 26 DYRL-variant ARMDs presumed to have been produced for the Macross and the SDFNs were produced after the war specifically for that purpose, along with any "Combat ARMD" models seen afterward. As existing sources point to all eight of the original ARMDs having been destroyed in the TV series version of events, one would assume that any ARMDs seen after the war, be they the TV series "Combat ARMD" or DYRL variant, were probably built after the war, and thus may have been equipped with the designed-but-not-implemented fold navigation system. No evidence that I'm aware of points to any ARMDs having survived Space War 1, with the possible exception of any which were still under construction at the time and slated to be support ships for the incomplete SDF-2 (the ARMD-A and -B we see in the unused line art). "Canonicity debated"? As the Master File is a clear successor to (and draws on) the old Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual book, the safest assumption is that anything in it which is not independently documented in more reliable publications (such as Macross Chronicle, the Gold Book, etc.) is probably not canon... this extends to the list giving the names and presumed dispositions of 14 or so ARMDs. At best, we could perhaps assume this list represented the U.N.'s intent prior to the outbreak of Space War 1, at which time only two ARMDs had even been completed, and that it was likely fatally derailed by the loss of ARMDs 03 thru 08 along with most of Earth's surface and population. Waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of ya... scroll up a wee bit, I've addressed this one.

Oh good grief that's even worse than I expected... they're cramming all five non-Mardook-operated combat units onto both sides of a single page? What the hell Chronicle? I know there's not a lot of text on the damn things, but there's enough line art available they could easily have done it as a two-page spread.

Let's face facts... Harmony Gold is going to do everything in their power to avoid having their Robotech franchise compete openly with Macross because they know full well that if it did come down to open competition, it would be short, brutally one-sided, and it would almost certainly spell doom for their Robotech franchise. In their eyes, it's considerably safer to use threats of litigation to keep their thoroughly disinterested potential competitor from becoming a threat to their amateur-hour cut-and-paste "epic". I concur... while Harmony Gold has done their level best to keep Robotech alive by making Macross as inaccessible as possible and trying to convince people it's not worth looking into and that their own product is just as good, they're really fooling nobody but themselves. All they've really accomplished by taking this particular course of action is made Macross even more accessible than it would otherwise have been and built up an immense store of bad karma in the process.

The biggest difference between the examples you cited and what Tommy Yune has been doing is that the few legitimate examples of retcons are carried out with a relatively subtle and light-handed approach that leaves the story as intact as possible on both sides. In true American comics industry format, Tommy's approach has all the subtlety and nuance of an artillery barrage, smashing aside the established continuity to make way for his changes with little-to-no regard for the integrity and coherency of the narrative, creating more problems than he resolves and shitting all over the spirit and intent of the original in the name of keeping a stale story painfully lurching along. Actually, I think it might have more to do with Tommy being fully aware that Macross is the only part of Robotech that most of the fans care about, and he's therefore attempting to pander to them in any way that he can without landing Harmony Gold in hot water. Yes, he's also somewhat of a Macross fan, but I think pandering to his biggest and most profitable demographic is the heart of the matter. Actually, as I've said bloody repeatedly, it was NOT a retcon by any conventional definition of the "word", since at no point was it ever officially established that the mecha in question ran on protoculture. That they did was a commonly-held assumption among many Robotech fans, but it was only ever an assumption. You can't retcon out something that was never part of the continuity to begin with. Some fans wanted to paint it as a retcon, since many fans seem unable to distinguish between their personal opinions and fact, but the truth is that it wasn't one. What it was was a simple clarification of something that the show itself never made clear, and the dismissal of unfounded speculation. To my very great surprise, Tommy actually thought that one out reasonably well beforehand, and had a solid rationale that actually made a modicum of sense and imposed a sense of technological continuity upon the mecha where previously no such thing had existed. Yes, ruling out protoculture fuel on the early-gen mecha didn't endear him to the sort of die-hards who can't accept that part of Robotech was made from Macross, but then again nobody gives a toss what they think, least of all Harmony Gold.

Y'know, it wouldn't be the first time someone accused him of that... back when Tommy first announced the correction to the general assumption that all mecha ran on protoculture, establishing that the Macross and Masters Saga mecha were powered by nuclear fusion, there were a fair few people who were violently opposed to the idea to such a degree that a lot of muttering went on about how Tommy was trying to legitimize Robotech in the eyes of more mainstream fans of anime by making it more like Macross, or that he was flat-out trying to turn it into Macross one piece at a time. (For the record, I actually had a reasonably lengthy and remarkably civil discussion with him about the "clarification" on the Robotech.com message boards... about the only civil, intelligent interaction I've ever had with the powers that be at Harmony Gold) Honestly, I don't think Tommy Yune can really see that sad fact... he is, after all, a product of the American comic book industry. He might've made a name for himself drawing faux manga, but he's long adhered to many of the stylistic and artistic conventions of American comic books, and that means for him retcons are no big deal... after all, not a year goes by in the American comic book industry without at least one major retcon being carried out to unscrew a fatally screwed up plot or bring some dead character back to life. 'kay, apart from the massive sarcasm detection failure, the Valkyries are (largely) the jurisdiction of the U.N. Spacy.

I've always wondered exactly what purpose, if any, the bow served. If memory serves the only time the damn thing was ever even seen was during Aisha's coronation and the public debut of the LED Mirages. I wonder if it's a functional weapon or if it's just ceremonial. Ah, thanks... I'd heard that Prima Classe Hugtrang and a few other odds and ends were floating around, good to see the rumors were true. It's almost enough to tempt me to finish the translations of Book XI and XII myself, but I'm still buried under a small mountain of Macross II material. (Though speaking of translations, I'll never understand Nagano's odd tendency to insert whole dialogues in other languages and insist they NOT be translated... including that segment on one planet during Aisha's vacation where everybody's speaking Chinese, or that big long monologue Lachesis has when she's addressing Dr. Morard for the first time, or that equally long interchange between F.U. Rogner and Bojasfort that I think is mainly in German...

While I can't offer you any image stock directly from Macross M3, I can possibly point you towards several other, very similar designs. By the look of things, the Macross M3 flightsuit is one of several variations on a design that Haruhiko Mikimoto originally created for Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song back in 1991-1992. Other variations on the design appear (albeit briefly) in Macross 7 Trash and it looks like the redesigned DYRL flightsuit from Macross: the First may be in the same mold as well. Any of those should serve you pretty well.

Probably the best way to interpret the narrator, yes... though in all honestly the narrator's not even terribly useful for that purpose, since his dialogue is shot through with the same screwball mistakes that pepper all of the show's dialogue, and on more than one occasion those errors leave the narrator's dialogue at odds with what's actually happening onscreen. I guess the story was so disjointed that a recap segment at the start of each episode would've been right out, leaving them to the only remaining alternative... force-feeding the audience a narrated digest version during the early establishing shots.

No, no it does not... though that might be a function of him being Italian rather than Russian in Macross. I agree wholeheartedly that ethnic stereotyping like that really detracts from most any futuristic sci-fi premise. There's a fairly sizable body of evidence that suggests quite a few members of Harmony Gold's creative staff (incl. Carl Macek) are either fans of the original Star Trek series, or unimaginative enough to try to appeal to fans of more mainstream American sci-fi shows by copying select elements from it. Paramount got rid of it in TNG, but the original Star Trek series did use the silly stereotypical accent to get character ethnicity across in the case of a few notorious characters, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if that was the reason for the silly accents in Robotech.

He is... they went out of their way to make him stereotypically Russian, right down to a borderline Pavel Chekov-accent.

Yeah, the slow pace of releases for FSS material really doesn't make it an easy series to follow... doesn't help that most of Books XI and XII still haven't been translated either. I only remember half this stuff because I have a really good memory for detail. I have heard that there are translations for the Prima Classe Hugtrang insert and part of Book XI floating around though, any truth to those rumors?

If we're lucky, Chronicle might even step up and offer us a corret(ed) romanization for his name, which could clear this whole mess up altogether.

Oh totally... and if anything the "new" comics written under the supervision of Tommy Yune are even worse offenders than the old comics were. In the span of only five issues they establish that before the events of the "Macross Saga", that all of the following characters had met and knew each other prior to the start of the Macross Saga: Roy Fokker Henry Gloval Eli Leonard T.R. Edwards Bowie Grant Claudia Grant Janice Merin Donald Hayes Jack Archer And to think they establish all that in like the first two issues. They also went to great pains to establish that Donald Hayes, Roy Fokker, Henry Gloval, and a handful of others were within eyeshot of the crash of the SDF-1 in 1999... symptomatic of their other problem "every character must have been present at every major event, even ones we just came up with".

They tried that stunt in the Macross universe with Macross II and in the Robotech universe with Robotech 3000. Actually, I think you could easily argue that, with few exceptions, the entire animated Macross continuity uses this particular concept with fairly good results... the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA is just the most extreme case. The gaps of a decade or so between most major Macross titles allows for a bit of low-key handwavery to justify pretty much any universe developments necessary to the story the show's creators want to tell. It works because the gap is large enough to accommodate some fairly major changes, but not so large that you lose everything of the established setting. One of the problems that sank Robotech 3000 was that the show's story took place so far into the future that nothing of the setting was recognizable... for all practical purposes it was a completely different universe from the Robotech the fans knew, and as such might as well have been a different universe altogether. What'd he have, overall, like five lines counting his death scream in the entire original trilogy? Oh god yes, Jonathan Wolfe and Thomas Riley "T.R." Edwards are by far the worst cases of "Boba Fett syndrome" in Robotech... ironically enough, the chief sufferer of that tragic syndrome used "Colonel Jonathan Wolff" as his handle on the Robotech.com message boards.

It's not exactly a secret that the process of editing and rewriting Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada into Robotech was carried out in an extremely disorganized fashion. In various interviews, members of the cast and staff have alluded to there having been as many as three or four episodes being rewritten at any given time, often with little or no interaction between the writers. Presumably a great many of the various inconsistencies, discontinuities, and plot holes can be attributed to this bad practice. Some of the deliberate changes, like adding the "SDF-2" to the dialogue and many of the screwball decisions about the continuity are just the result of inept writing and generally poor decision-making. Not really, no... Robotech fan culture, deprived of new material through virtually all of its life, has centered itself around retreading the same old, unanswerable questions. Various Harmony Gold mooks have, at one time or another, attempted to officially address many of the major screwups and intentional (harebrained) changes, but I don't think the fans really WANT an answer. As we've seen in the SDF-2 debate over there, even when an official answer is available, the fans will never be satisfied with it because once these questions are answered they no longer have anything to talk about, their franchise having produced nothing of substance for nearly 25 years. Because the fanbase has been starved for new content ages, they've had to turn on the TV series and try to make all something significant of all the minutiae scattered throughout the series with a zeal that borders on the obsessive. There are a bunch of guys on RT.com who do nothing but go through the dialogue with a fine-toothed comb and then barrage everyone present with detailed questions about one-shot or background characters. Before the new Star Wars trilogy, I guess we could've called this sort of thing "Boba Fett syndrome", where fans are compelled to try and make every minor character with a handful of lines into a sophisticated character with an immense backstory.

Hmmm... how can I display my approval for this image with the proper dignity and gravitas? L-O-V-E! HAP-PY MI-SA!

Not a lot of information is available on the Yen Xing... it only briefly appears in the manga during one of the chapters set during the AD era, and only for a few panels at that. I'm not aware of any artbooks which feature or cover the Yen Xing either. Like the only other known example of a machine messiah, the Yen Xing is a relic from the AD era that completely outclasses modern mortar headds. Since it was developed long before the introduction of fatimas, it can be assumed that the Yen Xing is operated via a direct neural interface with the pilot. The Yen Xing was developed by the Farus Die Kannon Empire (AKA the "Super Empire", the greatest nation of the AD era) for use by the Empire's finest chevaliers, genetically engineered supersoldiers whose descendants became the headdliners of the Joker era. The only known appearance of the Yen Xing in the manga to date has been a brief battle in the late AD era where a squadron of Yen Xings belonging to the Empress of Flame's personal guard cut an enemy fleet to pieces using only their speids. As of yet, there are no known operators of Yen Xing machine messiahs, though it's possible that Super Empire chevaliers Kensei Skins and Princess I Yarn Vatshu (Dougulas Kaien's biological parents, no less) may have used Yen Xings at some point, as both were members of the elite Black Chevaliers. It's also likely that Sir Nakkandra View Swans (the ancestor of many modern headdliners) may have used one at some point in the past. The only known Yen Xing components which are still in service are a pair of Yen Xing engines which were adapted by Dr. Zebee Corter to power the Empress Flame, the flag MH of the Hathuha Union Republics.

Yeah, HMV.co.jp's English side has had the VF-19 Master File up for preorder for a while now.

Pretty much a staple of all things Robotech... "Hey, war's over! Oh hell, now we've got to fight a new evil alien race even more deadly than the one we just finished beating who didn't warrant serious mention until they were practically on our doorstep!" Of course, it also comes with Robotech's imitation Federation where they "ally" themselves with every alien race they liberate or conquer, and essentially force them into servitude to fuel the human war machine for the next major war against evil aliens. This, my friends, is what's known as a "wall-banger". Just one of a whole host of idiot retcons in the McKinney novels intended to redeem characters Robotech reduced to cardboard cutouts, and/or just dick with the story to make it more interesting from the author's viewpoint.

LOL! Well, I never much cared for all the clunky chicken-walker type mecha that were so often trotted out as iconic mecha of Battletech, but those are some ATROCIOUS designs.