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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It's definitely an unrealistic expectation, yeah. Given how long it's been out-of-print, any major/chain bookstore would've returned all unsold copies to the publisher for a refund many years ago. There may be some unsold new (or "new") copies in the hands of the second- and third-tier retailers like the import hobby specialty stores in San Francisco's Japantown, that is kind of a long shot twelve plus years after initial publication. Secondhand significantly lowers the difficulty.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The only difference between the Macross 2 OVA and movie versions are the omission of the OP and ED in order to string the six episodes together into one contiguous story. Even the title cards are still present.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Thanks for the tip. I'll keep that one in mind for filling in gaps in my collection. 😁 I'm kind of a stickler for physical media, though... so I'll doubtless end up chasing down physical copies of anything I get in ebook form anyway.😅
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% behind supporting the original creators. It's the reason I import multiple copies of all the books I translate. I'm just saying, we're talking about a light novel that's been out of print for about ten years. As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been any announcement of a re-release, so picking up a secondhand copy is probably your only real option. (Thankfully, most of the sellers I can see who have posted gently used copies aren't price gouging.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure if "new" is still an option... that light novel's well over a decade old at this point. You might have to resort to eBay or Yahoo Japan Auctions for a hardcopy. I can see a few copies of each volume from Japanese sellers on eBay.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    In the Macross 30 thread in the Game section:
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The handheld/container-mounted one, anyway. But they are referred to as gunpods in most publications... usually as a "mini-gunpod" (ミニガンポッド) and "railmachinegun" (レールマシンガン). Some of them, anyway. A few examples, like the VF-25G's SSL-9 Dragunov, use a railgun system to boost the velocity of a projectile that has already been pre-accelerated by a chemical propellant to achieve maximum stopping power.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The movie never really touches on it. We see something similar happen in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series, where we don't really get to see the trauma this literally world-changing event had on people until an episode or two after the timeskip. One could say that everyone was so busy with the business of surviving that they didn't really have an opportunity to process the trauma of a near-total global apocalypse until things started the settle down. There are a couple possibilities. One, of course, is that the UN Forces kept as much information as possible about the state of Earth from the populace until after the fighting was over. Another is that the populace already basically knew, or at least suspected the worst for the entire year they'd been sailing back. Differences in the order-of-events in DYRL?'s version have the bombardment start before the Macross has even properly lifted off. With no contact from Earth in the six or so months they spent sailing back to it, it's possible everyone had already assumed the planet had bit the big one. It's also possible they were less concerned because, in DYRL?, the Macross was (re)built as an emigrant ship and it had been intended to leave the solar system. Being aboard a ship designed for long-term habitation and having already resigned themselves to never seeing Earth again might've softened the blow a bit. 'course one could also say that, because it's a movie in-universe, the civilian reaction was simply omitted to avoid distracting from the love story and war story.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, we haven't seen much in the way of official overlap in naming conventions. The few cases we have seen are mainly different organizations using the same nickname for a unit ("Skull Platoon") or two different ships being named after the same person (SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global and CV-339 Bruno J. Global). We also see some in the opening animation of Macross VF-X2 (Aegis's Konig Monster steps on one) and some anti-aircraft batteries of various types in the gam'es fourth mission, though they are not named and called simply "Battery A" and "Battery B". Macross Chronicle only really describes the VA-3 as "having the special characteristics of both a VF and a Destroid". It never explains what that means, and the remark isn't found in the Technology Sheet that discusses Variable Attackers. It's possible that all they really mean by that is "it has heavier armor", since that's one of the few traits that's mentioned in the Technology Sheet and Mechanic Sheet as setting it apart from Variable Fighters. It's basically a side book to Master File. The only volume produced thus far is essentially an extended account of the VF-19's ARIEL integrated control AI system. Von Braun, Granada, and the other Lunar cities in Mobile Suit Gundam are built the way they are because of the limitations of the technology available to their builders and what they were built for. They're not really underground per se. They were built into existing lunar craters because it was convenient both structurally and for their intended purpose. They were established as space-based mining and refinery complexes producing construction materials for building space colonies. Building inside lunar craters provided the stable foundation for the mass drivers needed to launch materials to the construction sites and easy access to lower geological strata. Salla Base on Mars in Macross was set up as a research facility, so what we see of it is almost entirely surface-based with the only noted underground part being its power plant's thermonuclear reactor. We don't get to see Apollo Base at any point, but the brief descriptions we get describe it as being built on the lunar surface. The accompanying shipyard where the SDF-2 was built is noted to be underground, though. It's likely that the civilian residential areas on Luna are above-ground too. Macross's technology is more advanced than that of Gundam, relaxing the practical restrictions on what kind of structures can be built. The existence of gravity control technology would make permanent settlement of the moon a much more practical concern. Presumably other residential areas set up on Luna and so on take full advantage of the advanced technologies available to make them as comfortable as possible.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That's probably the case, given that there are only really two story sources that depict the VF-11 using its underwing pylons: Macross the Ride and Variable Fighter Master File. Macross the Ride's depiction of the VF-11 using its underwing pylons - Anthony Clemens's VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor - didn't have any visuals until Chapter 10. That came out in October 2011, about four months before Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy was released. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-11 Thunderbolt didn't come out until March 2019, around seven years after the game's release. On an unrelated note, an interesting detail I found while working on Master File in a quiet moment offers an interesting explanation for the sudden (in-universe) renewal of interest in railgun and coilgun technology around the time of Macross Frontier. A point that Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah keeps coming back to in several sections is how a closed-system environment ship like the Macross Frontier has to very carefully manage its usage of organic compounds in various non-recyclable contexts (such as explosives or combustible rocket fuels) because those resources are precious and necessary to the maintenance of the ship's artificial environment. As a result, these compounds are a good deal more costly for emigrant ships than planetary governments and thus create a cost incentive to explore alternatives like substituting railguns and coilguns for cannons using chemical propellants and swapping rocket motors for plasma arcjets on some missiles.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Like that short distance emmigrant fleet that found Eden. Imagine setting out on a multi-year mission to explore the area within a hundred light years of Earth and finding a Class A habitable planet practically on Earth's doorstep almost immediately. One has to wonder if the crew even had a chance to properly unpack their suitcases before the mission was over.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    G-Quacks has proven they don't have to settle for one or the other... they can do both at the same time! Looked at the scans for GQuuuuuux's theatrical debut booklet the other day, and oh lordy are these designs UGLY. Studio Khara's Ikuto Yamashita served up some of the worst mechanical design works in the franchise's history. 🤮 I'm looking at his design for GQuuuuuuX's version of the Zaku II and thinking "Look how they massacred my boy!". The fugly main Gundam is actually the best looking one of the lot.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It's really no different. The art style in the vast majority of Gundam titles uses mukokuseki character design, so almost none of the character designs have distinctive features that are associated with a particular ethnicity. The few characters with explicitly stated backgrounds are from all over: America, Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, Argentina, Puerto Rico, etc. It's intentional to show the Earth Federation is really the Earth Federation. Same way Macross's main cast practically has no two people from the same place. If it's romantic options you're worried about, well... Char and Amuro have always had one of the all-time great bromances/foemances. Folks have been shipping that for decades with no signs of stopping. More recent titles have been more overt about that too, like Tieria and Niel!Lockon in 00, Yanagi's crush on Shino in Iron-Blooded Orphans, the two leads in The Witch from Mercury, it's implied Angelo's carrying a torch for Full Frontal in UC, whatever Quatre and Trowa have going on in Wing, etc.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much. The vast majority of Gundam titles take place in a setting where Earth has either united under a world government or is one step away from doing so with most of the nations having consolidated into huge international alliances. With humanity busily expanding into space, modern distinctions like that aren't as meaningful. Characters are generally drawn in the stateless style and most do not have a background that ties them to any one specific real world group or place. When discrimination does happen for the sake of the story, it's almost always based on whether one lives in space or on Earth.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It occurred to me while I was eating dinner, there is one case I can think of of non-standard markings indicative of affiliation with a specfic planet/system rather than just New UN Forces. Variable Fighter Episode Archive, which I have yet to work on, has some pictures of VFs badged as affiliated with the Sewell Independent Space Force.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    He did, kind of... After Macross II: Lovers Again, Kawamori integrated the idea of non-military mecha into Macross in several different ways. Macross 7 introduced the idea of the New UN Forces selling off decommissioned Destroids and Valkyries to private citizens as heavy machinery and/or leisure craft, and also had two new non-military transformable mecha (an armored car and a tiltrotor) used by the City 7 police department for public safety work. Macross Dynamite 7 doubled down on that by showing that the Earth New UN Forces were loaning old model VFs armed with nonlethal weapons to the Zola Patrol's officers for wildlife conservation work AND introduced a dedicated built-for-civilians VF variant (VT-1C). Macross Frontier and its novelization also introduced a dedicated built-for-civilians training version of the VF-1 in the VF-1C, civilian-use Destroids in the Destroid Work, and also the idea of civilian VF air racing including a dedicated News Valkyrie. (Of course, the VC-079 there is part of a design lineage that was developed for use in Department of Natural Resources-type field work and civilian search-and-rescue before also finding a secondary market as a leisure craft.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Ameku M.D. is a trashfire as always... it's on its third episode of trying to make something out of that ridiculous "is it a curse or isn't it?" storyline, and the twist is even dumber than I had expected. Bravo. Has the Imagine my surprise to learn that the author of the original light novel is a board-certified physician... Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time and Bogus Skill <Fruitmaster> continue to disappoint as expected. There really is no originality left in that genre.😅
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Unless they miss the point entirely or try to "reinvent" it. Most western attempts to adapt anime end up eye-bleedingly awful either because the studio working on it completely missed what made the original work interesting and enjoyable or because some "creative" decides to put their own spin on it in what amounts to a massive show of disrespect for the original. Hopefully Bandai will steer them into doing an AU, so the project can be either exploited or disowned without issue and so fewer of the fanbase's sacred cows are in danger of ending up as hamburger.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    There's not really a difference, TBH. Emigrant fleet defense forces become the emigrant planet defense force when the fleet finds a suitable planet to colonize. Whether those designations are actual ones or just the ones used internally by the Special Forces for that specific operation are anyone's guess, but the unit names and designations we see in other works are more in line with modern ones. Given what we see in the game, likely just infantry and light armored vehicles like self-propelled AA guns and tanks. Maybe some leftover First Space War-era destroids or Regults. Yeah, the Macross Frontier novelizations (TV and Movie) make this connection quite explicit.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Quite high.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Not exactly Gundam's "first" live-action film project... G-Saviour may have been a made-for-TV movie, but it was still a live-action Gundam film and it predates this by like twenty-five years.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It's a more flavorful way of calling someone a particularly annoying idiot. Of course, given his hyperfixation on music and inability to pick up social cues, he's probably just high-functioning autistic rather than an idiot... not that that makes him any less obnoxious. Either way, it's easier to treat him as a walking plot device rather than a character in his own right.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I've rewatched Macross 7 a few times over the years. I remember I absolutely hated it when I first watched it, partly because of the awful subs and the first half endlessly recycling the same 2-3 songs, but mainly because Basara is a pillock. Some 20 years later, I love Macross 7. I still think Basara is a pillock, but I sympathize so much with Mylene, Gamlin, and even Gigile being absolutely confounded by his bullsh*t and visibly restraining their desire to throttle him at many points in the series.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Macross, being animation, isn't bound by a lot of the practical limitations that apply to live-action science fiction... so it's free to get weird with its setting-specific take on artificial gravity. Gravity control technology in Macross is presented as being a lot more precise and flexible than your average SF artificial gravity system. It's used in thermonuclear reactors as a way to provide fuel compression and plasma confinement, it's used to focus and collimate particle streams in beam weapons, it's used to tie spacetime in knots in order to make ships teleport interstellar distances, for reactionless flight in planetary atmospheres, and of course for providing artificial gravity for the living spaces in spacecraft. In DYRL? and other titles we see them make gravity fields that intersect at 90 or 180 degree angles within the same space, creating an environment where "down" has more to do with where you're physically standing than the orientation of the ship as a whole. This is really blatant in the Macross Frontier movies, where we see that Island-1 has three separate layers of cityscape at 180 degree angles to each other, with two facing "up" relative to the ship's orientation and the middle one being "upside-down" attached to the underside of the same bulkhead supporting the uppermost layer. Because artificial gravity (and other gravity-control functions like reactionless flight) are created by a network of gravity control systems scattered throughout the ship, it's possible for two immediately adjacent areas to have completely different gravity levels. The outage in the area where Hikaru and Minmay were trapped immediately adjoining the area that still has normal gravity is an extreme example (one repeated in Macross Delta's 14th episode), but this kind of thing is also done entirely on purpose for carrier recovery on ships like the Prometheus and Macross Quarter. A low-power gravity field is projected up from the carrier deck to allow fighters to gently fall towards the deck for arrested recovery, and stronger living area-suitable gravity is available inside the adjoining hangars and the other areas of the ship. We also see this in the very start of Macross Frontier, where a spaceport hallway gradually ramps up its gravity from 0g to 0.75g.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    I bought those two posters from a booth at Super Dimension Convention in Torrance, CA. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the seller's store. One of the event coordinators could probably tell you which store it was, since they were regulars at the con every years and always had a large collection of posters for sale.
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