Seto Kaiba

They've got a sense of humor about it too... both in production terms and in the Macross setting itself. Going back as far as the original VF-1 technical manual, the name of the system that controls the operation of OTM thermonuclear reactors is literally "MAGIC". (The acronym is short for MAtrix of Gravity and Inertia Control.) We engineers do love to have fun with acronyms. Sadly, the leadership types tend not to let us get away with most of it... especially when it's a rude word or forms a joke when read aloud.

Yup... whether the next Macross series will change that is unknown, but as of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! (2068), Humanity can apparently synthesize fold carbon of such high quality that it can approach a tiny fraction (~1%) of the potential of fold quartz but is still unable to achieve a synthetic version of fold quartz itself. Fold carbon is used in all sorts of systems, like the Gravity and Inertia Control systems inside of thermonuclear reactors, ship-based gravity control systems, fold communications and radar systems, fold navigation systems ("fold drives"), dimensional beam weapons, the detonation mechanisms of thermonuclear reaction warheads, holographic projection systems, and so on. Master File also suggests that it's used in advanced computer systems. Essentially, it only really does two or three things: it's a catalyst for producing heavy quantum, it can function as a higher dimension equivalent to a radio crystal, and if Master File is accurate it can be used to make computer circuitry. The trial production model VF-31A has two large fold carbon pieces inset along the spine of the aircraft, though it's not 100% clear what they're for. Yup, that is the Master File-original YF-29C... a (failed) experiment meant to facilitate development of a mass production-worthy version of the YF-29 using carefully selected ultra-high purity fold carbon in place of the nearly-impossible-to-obtain ultra-high purity fold quartz used in the original YF-29 or extraordinarily rare super-high purity fold quartz used by the handful of YF-29Bs produced. With the very best fold carbon Humanity could make, the fold wave system only achieved about 1% of the potential the original YF-29 displayed in Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye.

Probably because episode 1 introduces the series and episode 4 is the first big concert and battle. Episode 2 and 3 are a breather between them with Hayate's training arc. HG has said that all current/existing Macross titles are in the clear... so I'd assume it's because episodes 1 and 4 are simply the most exciting ones in the early series.

Like a lot of things in mecha anime, it's one of those "it's all in the manual" sort of situations with the information. The "heavy quantum" in Macross that is so critical to the operation of thermonuclear reactors and fold technology is very much inspired by the exotic Minovsky particles that make much of the advanced technology in Gundam's Universal Century era go. Minovsky particles are exotic charged particles that are a product of fusing deuterium and helium-3. The positively and negatively charged Minovsky particles naturally align themselves into a sort of lattice based on opposing charges. Almost all of their tricks depend on the Minovsky particles being charged particles and interacting with electromagnetic fields/waves. In extreme densities, they can block heat and neutron radiation from a fusion reaction, letting them be used as a self-sustaining form of shielding in fusion reactors. In lower but still high densities they can jam radio and radar in a manner similar to chaff (but longer lasting) by absorbing radio waves. They can also be used in certain kinds of sensors, and fusing them using magnetic pressure releases an enormous amount of energy that is focused to produce destructive high energy particle beams. A similar effect can allow ships to float on a cushion of high density Minovsky particles via magnetic levitation. Macross's heavy quantum is also principally produced inside thermonuclear reactors, albeit by a fold carbon or fold quartz catalyst, and while the force it exerts is gravitational not magnetic it's still used to provide fuel compression and plasma confinement that makes a compact fusion reactor possible. Instead of magnetic fields, fold waves produced by a fold carbon or fold quartz resonator are used to control the amount of gravitational force. It can similarly be used for reactionless flight via antigravity or opposing gravity ("falling up"), and like Minovsky particles compressing heavy quantum to the point of fusion with itself releases an incredible amount of energy that's focused into the most destructive form of beam weaponry: the heavy quantum reaction cannon AKA super dimension energy cannon. The main thing it doesn't do that Minovsky particles do is block radiation. The other key difference is that there's only one flavor of Minovsky particles... whereas the force heavy quantum can exert varies depending on the purity of the fold carbon or fold quartz used to produce it, which can vary wildly. Letting normal heavy quantum collapse on itself will yield a thermonuclear boom (this is largely how thermonuclear reaction bombs work), but letting the superheavy quantum produced by fold carbon collapse on itself yields a fold effect intense enough to be a pseudo black hole (a dimension eater bomb).

On an unrelated, but fun, note... a Gundam book I'm working on for a friend (Gundam Century: Renewal Edition) contains a very familiar friend... ... with a very familiar explanation. Checked the credits, and lo and behold... "Cooperation: Studio Nue". This is a drawing of the MS-09B Dom's thermonuclear jet engine and it looks A LOT like the drawings of the FF-1999/FF-2001 initial type thermonuclear reaction engine from the QF-3000E Ghost and VF-1 Valkyrie. Its description even boasts the same design flaw. Both designs omit the turbine stage that would normally drive the compressor in favor of using an electric motor because the temperature of the plasma-heated exhaust was too high for a turbine built with available materials to survive. The main difference between the two, apart from substituting the gravity produced by heavy quanta or the magnetic compression of Minovsky particles is that the Dom's turbine had to use indirect heating to keep the engine at a safe temperature. Macross's thermonuclear reaction turbine engines put the compact thermonuclear reactor in the engine core and the heating of intake air is achieved by passive transfer and by injection of minute quantities of plasma from the reactor core into the airflow. Gundam's Dom wanted to do that, but didn't have materials with the heat resistance to pull it off. Instead, the primary reactor fusing deuterium and helium-3 inside the MS's body is used to heat hydrogen from a separate set of fuel tanks into a lower temperature plasma for injection into the turbine in order to heat intake air. Just thought y'all might enjoy this fun little bit of serendipity between Macross and Gundam.

Not a lot that's controversial there, TBH... at least not to the majority of the Macross fandom. The one thing I'll say in Zero's defense is that it's really not meant to be watched as a stand-alone title. It builds on a lot of what Macross 7 did, and it sets up a lot of what went on in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta. There are some reasonably cogent explanations for the VF-0's designation and anachronistically advanced appearance, but a lot of that is "all in the manual" stuff. It works much better as a part of the larger whole. They really are just that good. I imported the album, but was surprised and delighted when my YouTube Music "My Supermix" picked the album up seemingly of its own accord. Honestly, I'd love to see a duet version of some of them between May'n/Sheryl and Minori Suzuki/Freyja.

Oh, I am maximum chill... we're just making sure it's understood that the goal here is to give people accurate and factual answers to questions. 😉 (I'm actually on a staycation and having a blast getting stuff done WRT translations and some home improvement projects.) Which has led you to make other inaccurate statements... like when you said there were only two launcher systems in the CIMM-3A missile pod, when the text actually says that there are typically two CIMM-3A missile pods equipped on the Super Pack. Machine translation has come a long way, but it's still not terribly reliable. We are, at least past the comically bad phase where using those tools in the dry goods section of an Asian market produced a cluster F-bombing. That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. But remember, what matters when we're answering questions here is giving accurate answers based on what the official materials actually say.

As a side note, there is one FAST Pack configuration described in Master File which does potentially have over 400 missiles in it... but it's an original design Master File's authors made up for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur. The Master File original NP-BAP-15c booster pack is a design similar to the one used by the VF-11 Thunderbolt's Super Pack booster, which is said to have an improved rocket motor and a modularized interior that can hold a theoretical maximum of 220 micro missiles, though at the expense of having almost no fuel. The actual number of missiles and quantity of fuel are presented as a tradeoff depending on mission need, with fuel modules beyond the minimum cutting into the amount of space for munitions. (Though the Master File-original ELINT/AWACS variants of the VF-19 would probably not be able to equip it due to how the radome is mounted.)

Received and understood. On one level, I understand that it's just how those fly-by-night operations were back in the day. On another, as someone who routinely has to work with the protected IP of other companies, that they didn't give you that information or may not have even had it themselves is like a shocking level of administrative negligence.

Yeah, both parties did a pretty good job with the covers... but there's no denying that JUNNA's just no substitute for May'n.

To be blunt, there's only one contradiction in the material... and that's between what the text says and your interpretation of an art piece that does admittedly have a few issues. But what's not kosher here is what you're doing. You've already admitted you did not read, and/or cannot read, the book. Yet you are confidently attempting to tell people what the book says and shows. That is deeply, deeply disingenuous at best. It would not be at all unfair to say that what you're doing is spreading misinformation. A desire to contribute and help people with answers to their questions is admirable. There's also nothing wrong with discussing hypotheticals either. But if someone is here asking a question, the responsibility of the people answering the question is to give factual, verifiable answers or reasonable fact-based inferences where no factual answers exist. What you posted is a mixture of half-truths and interpretations that run counter to what the book you're claiming to have referenced actually says. That's not OK. And those of us who CAN and HAVE read the book aren't going to give it a pass as though it were OK. Macross has enough problems with fans spreading misinformation as it is thanks to projects like the fan Wikia that doesn't police its content. We don't need to stand idly by and let more misinformation be introduced to spare your tender feelings and indulge your desire to appear knowledgeable. If you post BS, we will call you out on it... because the goal here is accurate information. If you keep posting misinformation, we'll start reporting your posts as spam/trolling and let the mods remove them. If you didn't or can't read the book, then you should not be confidently telling others what the book says or shows. That's just an integrity problem on your part. The problem with your conclusion here is that it runs counter to what the rest of the book says, what other publications say, etc. etc. In the event of an apparent contradiction, you don't pick a conclusion at random... you go with the one that's the most consistent/supported by the rest of the publication and other publications of similar or greater levels of authority. Because sometimes publishers are working to deadlines and don't have time to scrutinize every detail of every art piece. The text is very consistent. 90 missiles, 3 launchers, two pods. It's a cinch that this one isolated art piece is the odd man out. (If you'd read the book, you'd have known that the art was done by a number of different artists while the book was still in development.) And this shows why you're not to be taken seriously. You jumped straight to "The source is not 100% consistent, therefore the source as a whole is useless." and appointed yourself the arbiter of truth. The art has issues, yes. But the rest of the text is quite consistent. Of course, you didn't/can't read it, so I'm not sure why you imagine you're qualified to comment on how consistent or authoritative it is at all. It actually says that the most common option is two Bifors CIMM-3A micro-missile launchers. As in, the same Option Pack mounted on both NP-FAD-23 boosters... rather than mixing and matching with other Option Packs described on the opposite page.

The caption that I quoted in my previous post is literally right there. It clearly and unambiguously states that the pod holds up to 90 micro missiles. Not 320. Not any other number. Up to 90. Please don't post your counter-factual suppositions as fact.

So... all in all... that's not quite accurate. The Labyrinth of Time does make the somewhat bittersweet conclusion of The Wings of Goodbyte happier, but only a little. It's not really a happy ending yet, but it's the implication that a happy ending might occur in the not-too-distant future. Eh...

It's not always about the money... some license agreements - like Harmony Gold's - impose an obligation on the licensee to defend (in court if necessary) the integrity of the IP being used under license. It's a big part of why HG has a reputation for being so litigious. They had a legal obligation to do so even if it meant doing so at a loss. There's Chinese bootleg everything out there... but it's a lot easier to prosecute when it's a company in the west doing it, and China is making a concerted effort to clean up their own image on that front as well. There's a certain amount that's allowable as homage, but it's a safe bet that if Robotech hadn't been so obsecure Eternity/Malibu, Academy, and Antarctic would probably have been having several uncomfortable conversations with lawyers representing companies like Big West/Studio Nue, Bandai, Sunrise, 20th Century Fox, etc. (Harmony Gold knows that only too well, having spent twenty solid years looking over their shoulders for fear of Big West, Studio Nue, Tatsunoko, etc.)

... did you read a different book from the rest of us? The NP-FAD-23 booster pack used by the VF-25 series incl. the RVF-25 holds at most 90 missiles per Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. That's 180 between the two boosters, for a total of 226 when the other launchers in the VF-25's Super Pack are accounted for. The VF-25's Armored Pack has a total of 244, plus 30 armor-piercing rockets. The VF-31's Super Pack has no number offered, but is almost certainly lower than the VF-25's given how much smaller it is, and the VF-31's Armored Pack has a total of 484... which is still a long way short of 700. That said, the actual difference in armament between the RVF-25 and VF-25 and VF-31 Siegfried and VF-31E Siegfried is only a little... pretty much just the coaxial laser guns that were mounted on the monitor turret being replaced by antennae on the RVF-25 and the VF-31E sacrificing normal storage for its gunpod in exchange for the radome. Similarly, the RVF-171 didn't sacrifice ANY weapons... it just can't use the rear-facing beam guns in fighter mode. Half right... the Tornado Pack was/is a proof-of-concept for the unconventional aerodynamics of the YF-29 in parallel development at the time. The Armored Pack is for surviving heavy combat in general, which you shouldn't be throwing a reconnaissance aircraft into regardless.

Yep... the Macross 40th Anniversary Super Dimension Collaboration Deculture!! Mixture!!!!! album. May'n and Megumi cover five Walkure songs, and Walkure covers five May'n or Megumi songs. Walkure did an OK job with Lion, Northern Cross, After School Overflow, Universal Bunny, and The Wings of Goodbye. May'n and Megumi absolutely crushed it with Forbidden Borderline, Our Battlefield, Giraffe Blues, Cosmic Movement, and The Ruin of a Pure Heart. All seven singers also collaborated on a 40th anniversary cover of DYRL, and there was a special medley track that was different depending on which edition you got. It's available on streaming music services.

It's staying on mine, sure as sure... but the May'n and Megumi cover, not the Walkure original version. It really is kinda sad that Frontier's singers do a better job with Delta's music than Delta's singers do.

Ah, OK... so pretty much the same as it was at Academy Comics and Eternity/Malibu Comics then. That lack of coordination and editorial oversight at the publisher level and at HG's level was a big part of why HG ultimately decided to condemn all of the pre-2001 licensee-made material as a part of their reboot and relaunch of the brand. It's one of the very few topics where HG openly admits that Robotech failed because they screwed up, rather than just blaming the licensee/studio/economy/alignment of the planets. It really never fails to shock me a little just how cavalier the attitude of Robotech's licensees was when it came to copyrighted material. I know these were smaller publishers, but it's amazing how nobody ever seems to have stopped to ask "Can we legally use that?". If this hadn't been made in the 90's and most of the publishers hadn't collapsed on their own, they would've been run out of business by the court-ordered compensatory damages.

I stand corrected on the topic of cancellation for Covert Ops, at least. That said, knowing what we know about the duration of the Antarctic Press license and Harmony Gold's reasons for revoking it, being among the best print runs that the most hated publisher with the shortest-ever tenure as a licensee had for that license feels like it was probably a low bar to clear. It sounds like you dodged a bullet, then. Especially given how the fans had the torches and pitchforks out for Rubicon. Was there any kind of oversight going on regarding the usage of copyrighted material? I know the '90s were a lot less lawsuit happy on that front, but some of the titles that were published under Academy Comics and Antarctic Press feel like the artists were actively trying to get sued for copyright infringement. So much so that, these days, the new comic licensee handling reprints won't touch those titles. (And yes, it absolutely objectively was copyright infringement... HG didn't have any rights to DYRL? until 2001, years after these comics were published, so 100% of the use of DYRL material was unauthorized.) Come to that, was there any guidance being given on character and story arc development at all? I know the Robotech fans were really up in arms about Antarctic Press's comics because of how out of character everyone was all the time. Was this operation just a free-for-all?

Kind of an autopsy on the company too... Academy Comics only held on to the Robotech license for about 2 years and folded shortly after Harmony Golden revoked it. Like most of Robotech's licensee pool, they were a real amateur hour outfit. If you feel so inclined, go ahead and share your tale of disaster and woe. IIRC, those two titles have a combined issue count of just three and were both canceled basically immediately.

I'm sure announcements of streaming licenses will follow as the home video releases are prepared. After all, you don't want to completely destroy the market for the home video physical media by leading with streaming. They'll probably release them around the same time so they can market the home video release in ads on the streaming release for the folks who are using streaming with ads.

If only... But no, the Sentinels aliens were no licensee fever dream. They were created by Harmony Gold itself for the failed Robotech II: the Sentinels series and their representation in those terrible old comics, novels, etc. was based on unused animation model sheets, backstory, and other concept materials from the aborted TV series. HG even kept them around after the reboot. Revised designs for all six of the alien races show up in the Prelude comic HG used to set up the story for Shadow Chronicles, and one of the six are the villains for the aborted OVA series. They weren't particularly original designs, for sure... off-brand wookies, coneheads, rock men, cat men, and sentient robots from an artificial planet. It's like they picked every cliche they could from contemporary pop culture and just hoped no one would notice. Of course, when your creative team has such bad taste that they name one of the major characters in honor of L Ron Hubbard, incompetence is probably about the best you can hope for.

I did say it was a low rent knockoff... but yes. It's more apparent in the Fighter mode, where it has the delta-esque profile with forward-swept winglets. One of the reasons HG has avoided reprinting so many of its old Robotech comics is because of just how much copyright infringement was going on. Their licensees "borrowed" from whatever the flavor of the month was.

It smells like an open septic tank. Oh, I remember this one... this one had two, maybe three, different cases of blatant copyright infringement in it. The low rent knockoff versions of the VF-19F and Ghost X-9 seen there on the cover, and the character who developed them in that story was super-blatantly traced from a freeze frame of Brent Spiner's character in Independence Day. So much so that he's not even in the same art style as the other characters.

Shonen anime isn't for everyone. Mainly, it's for kids as the name would imply. I don't blame anyone for struggling with One Piece though. Its art style and writing style is... pretty out there even by shonen anime standards. I have a feeling that's probably a big part of why it's so popular and has lasted so long. It's so incredibly distinctive. Probably also gonna be a significant part of why the live action series will bomb. Gotta admit, I did get a chuckle out of this part in "Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?" terms... Tony Tony Chopper's been a recurring character since chapter 134 of the manga and episode 81 of the anime. 954 chapters and 990 episodes ago. I could feel my hair greying writing that... that was twenty-three years ago!