Seto Kaiba

I have to admit, for a fanbase that's been wishing for some mainstream exposure for so long I'm kind of surprised how overwhelmingly negative the expectations for this series are on the few WH40K fan communities I'm on. The inevitable nerdy gatekeeping aside, a lot of fans seem to be pretty worried about the implications. They're either worried that Cavill will use his Executive Producer credit to ride roughshod over production like he reportedly tried to do on Netflix's The Witcher, or they're worried Amazon will step in and require that the series be toned down to a less-than-authentic level to be more appealing to general audiences.

Oh, so much. Sunrise apparently tailored The Witch from Mercury to a younger audience after being told that "Gundam is for old people" by a school tour group, and I've kind of started to suspect that they took it perhaps a little too personally. There've been quite a few occasions in the story where I've been left with the distinct impression that their goal changed from "make Gundam relevant to today's youth" to "mock today's youth for not 'getting' Gundam". Spy x Family, on the other hand... this show's just a gem. I'm getting caught up on it, and I honestly don't think there's been a weak episode yet and I'm into the second season. It's funny, cute, engaging, quirky... the premise itself is out there enough to be distinctive. That said, it really feels like a stronger term than "Mama Bear" is needed to describe Yor. She has that same energy that made Fullmetal Alchemist's Izumi Curtis the thing that the toughest soldiers in the country told scary stories about, but she's even more superhuman and has an actual child to protect. Even "Mama T-Rex" hardly seems strong enough. She can scare trained attack dogs just by growling back...

It does a bit, lol. The Fall 2022 season kind of limped to the finish line without much interesting to say for itself. My Hero Academia is still My Hero Academia... once it moved past quirky and self-referential hot takes on the nature of superherodom it kind of fell into the dispassionate void of "Too bleak, stopped caring". Mob Psycho 100 III managed to be pretty unremarkable. I'm the Villainess, so I'm Taming the Final Boss had a strong first couple episodes but limped in to the finish line with a weak and disappointing storyline. Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! is doing a story arc that isn't filler, but sure as hell feels like it. Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! was consistently amusing, but they didn't get far enough with the story for the second season to have any kind of payoff unless you count the blatant reference to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury seems to be on a mission to settle the dispute over whether Gundam AGE or Reconguista in G is the worst Gundam series by being worse than both. From its totally phoned in story to the upsettingly toxic relationship the protagonists have, the series is just an endless parade of disappointment and halfassed writing. The season's standout for me was The Raven of the Inner Palace. It would've been the standout for its solid, character-focused drama even in a strong season... but in a weak one like this it feels like it won simply because nobody else put in the effort. Never got a chance to get to Lupin Zero or the new Urusei Yatsura. Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time continues to be a shockingly low-effort short series except for one moment of absolutely dreadful, I-can't-believe-you-did-that, moment in which it parodies Goblin Slayer!. Bibliophile Princess is kind of a minimum-effort mockbuster mashup of Ascendance of a Bookworm and My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! and not really worth the time it takes to watch it... and most of the rest of the season is full of isekai shovelware shows that are just increasingly derivative knockoffs of shows from previous seasons. The Winter 2023 season has at least a little of merit. A new Trigun series, Trigun Stampede, a second season of Bofuri, Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro! season 2, a continuation of the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen remake, and a second season of The Vampire Dies in No Time.

Proper discussion etiquette would be for you to make an evidence-based argument not an ad hominem. Just FYI. To clarify the matter, the point I'm making here is that you have the causal relationship backwards. As attested to by Kawamori's own Design Works book, the general body plan and transformation for the VF-1 Valkyrie were carried over from the earlier "Breast Fighter" design that had been developed for Battle City Megaroad. It's well attested-to that Kawamori drew some stylistic inspiration from the Grumman F-14 for the final version of the design when its concept was changed from a Gundam-inspired late 70's SF design to something more grounded. Kawamori didn't set out to design a robot based on the F-14. Rather, when he sat down to rework the 70's SF-inspired Breast Fighter into a more grounded aesthetic what he got was something that bore a strong resemblance to the F-14 because of many design choices that were made when the Flight Suit design evolved into the Breast Fighter a year or so earlier. Notably, the orientation of the cockpit, the way the wings folded during the transformation to robot mode, and the separation of the engines (because the pelvis was dead-center between the engines in the Breast Fighter). In short, it wasn't "I want to make an F-14 robot". It was "Hey, when I draw this in a modern aesthetic it kinda looks like an F-14. Let's explore that direction further." You can see several early drafts that bear a resemblance to his more SF design for the VF-X-3, as well as some that bear a resemblance to the BAE Hawk (esp. in the cockpit and the mounting for the gunpod). Don't blame me for the stuff Kawamori put in his own book. He's the one who mentions the resemblance the VF-1's nose has to that of Sukhoi's Flanker.

You joke, but Macross: the Lost Two Years mentions (and shows) that Meltrandi pro wrestling was a popular sport and the art of it shows Battroids refereeing matches.

Existing material does indicate that he did, for a time, live as a miclone. He returned to his giant size and reactivated his role-specific enhancements for fear that he would lose the information stored in his memories.

Depends on your definition of "utterly ruinous". The Earth Unification Government was already spending a huge percentage of the entire planet's GDP on a military build-up to resist a potential alien invasion. Macross Chronicle and other official media generally do not acknowledge the F-14 Tomcat's circumstances in any way other than to mention they were used by the UN Forces during the Unification Wars and that they had been received upgrades/updates based on OTM. This lack of detail can probably be chalked up to the F-14's relatively minor role in Macross Zero. One article published in Great Mechanics DX does note that there would have to be some divergence from the real world timeline for F-14s to still be in service in 2008, but goes no further than that. For its part, Variable Fighter Master File's unofficial/non-canonical history offers the explanation that the Earth UN Forces officially put the brakes on plans to retire the F-14 sometime in July 2001. The decision was apparently driven by difficulties in procuring sufficient quantities of the newly introduced F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the Navy variant of the new F203 Dragon II (an unofficial variant exclusive to Master File). A modernization plan for the F-14 was launched to keep the fighters viable, and in 2002 this plan intersected with the new VF Development Plan and led to "dozens" of mothballed F-14s being restored and reactivated for duty with OTM improvements for field testing as part of early VF-0 development.

Kawamori's Design Works book mentions the F203 Dragon II bears a resemblance to the F-15... but I don't think I've ever seen it said that it was supposed to BE a F-15 originally. That's a common misconception... or perhaps it would be fairer to call it an oversimplification. Macross was not originally a parody. Both the initial pitch Genocidas and the later Battle City Megaroad series concept were conceived and developed as serious sci-fi dramas in a similar style to 1979's sleeper hit Mobile Suit Gundam. After Artmic (under the name Wiz Corp.) bought in as sponsor, Artmic insisted on changing the direction of Battle City Megaroad from the serious space opera Kawamori et al. wanted to make to a Gundam parody series. Once the two companies had a falling out and Studio Nue found a new sponsor in the Big West Advertising Co., the series changed back from a Gundam parody to a serious drama. Studio Nue does credit a specific 1980 film as having significantly changed the direction of the project... but it's not The Final Countdown. It was another, rather more famous, film that came out in Japan a few days earlier: Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back. That film, and specifically the Imperial AT-ST walker, was what ultimately spelled doom for the initial Genocidas concept because many of the mechanical designs for Genocidas were reverse-jointed walkers. Other designs from Genocidas, including the Flight Suit which was to evolve into the Breast Fighter and then the Valkyrie, were carried forward into the next series concept. The F-14 was not the inspiration for the VF-1.

We can rule that out with a fair degree of confidence because we have Kawamori's draft designs going back to early 1980. As I said, it's largely a coincidence that the VF-1 ended up looking like an F-14. The design of the VF-1 Valkyrie originated from a transformable powered suit design that Kawamori drew for a series pitch titled Genocidas that also originated the GERWALK concept. It was a big, bulky, ~4m tall powered suit which could transform into a not-at-all realistic fighter mode vaguely reminiscent of the Martin Marietta X-24B. A little over a year later in March-April 1981, the design had evolved into the Breast Fighter: a giant robot with the VF-1J's visor and a body plan largely resembling the final VF-1's but retaining the Gundam-esque aesthetic. Its transformation resembled the final VF-1's as well, but the actual shape of it was more in line with the earlier Genocidas draft and bears a fairly strong resemblance to the (much later) Zeta Gundam Wave Rider. Later that year, the Breast Fighter design was revisited and reworked into a less sci-fi aesthetic while retaining much of the Breast Fighter's design and transformation, producing a fighter that looked a lot like a miniature F-14... though with aspects explicitly noted to be drawn from other aircraft like the F-15, Su-27, and BAE Hawk. You can see this design progression in the first section of Kawamori's Macross Design Works book. He did probably get the Jolly Rogers-inspired paintjob for the VF-1S from The Final Countdown, but the F-14-like design is mostly a coincidence of its development from the earlier designs that already set a similar pattern. (The Genocidas designs in particular predate the release of The Final Countdown in Japan.) His enthusiasm for military aviation is a well-noted matter of record. That second one... the Tomcats and other old aircraft were hauled out of mothballs and upgraded or prevented from being retired and upgraded to make up for the shortfalls in other areas due to losses and the like in the Unification Wars.

Emigrant fleets are, by their very nature, mobile things... it's only natural that one emigrant fleet wouldn't necessarily know the exact positions of every other emigrant fleet when they mostly only trade with the planets and fleets closest to them. They are retirees... their appearance in Absolute Live!!!!!! is Max and Exsedol after they got bored in retirement and took another gig to have something to allay their boredom. Like how a lot of retired cops and career soldiers take corporate security jobs because the working conditions are vaguely similar. The PMCs in Macross seem to hire a lot of retired NUNS officers... occasionally even ones who received bad conduct discharges (like Ozma). ... we see exactly three, all of whom are the crew of the same old Monster Destroid. The presence of three former crewmates who decided to retire together hardly makes the fleet a "Space Florida"... no matter how much Basara's antics could fall under the umbrella of "Florida Man". After the First Space War, the New UN Forces got into the practice of selling off disarmed military equipment to civilians for its secondary utility in things like construction work. That practice caught on enough for a market for VFs as pleasure and sporting craft developed, followed by actual sports for them.

So... I found an interesting detail while I was fact-checking my answer for this other thread: A lot of you are probably familiar with how many of the companies mentioned in the lore for the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series are trademark-safe bland names for various real world companies. Chrauler for Chrysler, Viggers for Vickers, Mauler for Mauser, Centinental for Continental, and so on. It seems that the authors of Variable Fighter Master File decided to come up with an alternate explanation for Stonewell and Bellcom. Stonewell was originally a bland name version of Rockwell International, the now-defunct firm that codeveloped the space shuttle orbiter and owned North American Aviation. Bellcom was originally a bland name version of the Bell Aerospace division (now Bell Textron). Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix, however, came up with a new explanation for both that makes the VF-1 somewhat more multinational. In its version of events: Stonewell is not Rockwell International, it's a OTM-focused joint venture by Lockheed Martin and Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace AG (now Airbus Defense and Space GmbH). Bellcom is not Bell Textron, it's an OTM-focused joint venture by Boeing, Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (now Airbus Defense and Space GmbH), and Marconi Electronic Systems (now BAE Systems). They also mention in passing another company besides Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and the fictitious Shinnakasu Heavy Industries who participated in the development of the first thermonuclear reaction turbine engines: EuroJet Turbo GmbH and BAE Systems.

's more like the attempt to develop the "Breast Fighter" from the earlier Genocidas series concept into a robot that transformed into a plausible-looking fighter ended up looking like the F-14 by coincidence. Just the VF-0, actually. One detail many fans get wrong is to assume that because the VF-0 has a lower design number than the VF-1 that it was developed first, and that the VF-1 was developed from it. In fact, the VF-0 was developed from the Stonewell and Bellcom design proposal for the VF-1 Valkyrie ("Plan E303") and its development, construction, and testing was carried out alongside that of the production-intent VF-1 Valkyrie. The VF-0 is, in practical terms, a technology demonstrator and development mule for the VF-1 program. Not much is said in official media about the VF-0 having "inherited" the F-14 Experimental Systems Group. Shortly after the outbreak of the Unification Wars, the Earth Unification Government began experimenting with applying technological advancements derived from OTM to conventional weapons. A handful of all-new weapons built around OTM (such as the F203 Dragon II) were rushed into service, while a number of older designs including the US Navy's Grumman F-14 received OTM-based upgrades and retrofits to extend the usefulness of those designs as the conflicts dragged on and the UN Forces struggled with the attrition of many simultaneous conflicts. The group that worked on the OTM-based improvements for the F-14 was pulled into the work on the VF-0, presumably due to their experience in applying OTM to conventional systems. It's only in the unofficial material in Master File that there is a concrete connection between the F-14 itself and the VF-0. In the development history laid out in the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix book, the VF-0 was also preceded by the Plan E303 design for the VF-1 but had a number of intermediate steps between that and the recognizable VF-0 from Macross Zero that involved progressively adapting the F-14's design to test various features. The starting point being the UN Forces version of the US Navy's F-14 which had received some degree of enhancement derived from OTM. From there, it progressed to a single-seater stealth version of the F-14 one could say is loosely based on the Grumman plans for the Super Tomcat 21 which the book calls the Advanced Tomcat and a "F-14X" that incorporated a rudimentary variable system for test purposes, before arriving at the earliest version of a true VF-0 in late 2005. (That prototype, which the book calls YVF-X-0, is said to have been a converted F-14 Advanced Tomcat, which many later VF-0s were constructed as a VF-0s.) To summarize the above... they didn't. Once the initial Variable Fighter development plan was approved, the existing design that most closely resembled Stonewell and Bellcom's Plan E303 was Grumman's F-14. That the F-14 was also one of the older aircraft models selected for improvement and a return to frontline service during the Unification Wars is more or less a coincidence.

There is... kind of. Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! was initially released as a short film alongside Macross Plus: Movie Edition. Macross 7 wasn't exactly a series that would lend itself well to a compilation film format considering how much of a slow burn the first half of the story was.

It's not just Bogue's... all of Delta Flight's VF-31AX Kairos Pluses have the same container. Xaos seems to have decided to go all-in on firepower during the retrofit, so even Chuck's aircraft was given the same weapons-only container instead of his usual radome continer. Considering its size, and the overall economized nature of the VF-31, it's probably just a regular particle beam gun rather than the more powerful heavy quantum beam guns that the YF-29 uses. Probably not a particularly powerful one either, given that it's about the same size as the coaxial beam guns on the VF-31's monitor turret (head). Most of the film - and, really, most of Macross Delta as a whole - is callbacks to previous Macross titles. It's basically a madlib of plot points from previous stories. It's almost a whole plot reference from Macross VF-X2, with the secret organization inside the New UN Forces and New UN Gov't conspiring to oust the current leadership using a secret bleeding-edge Battle-class ship and a bunch of unmanned fighters. Heimdall's Siren Delta System and the virtual idols it produces are one massive reference to the Sharon Apple system and the events of Macross Plus, where Sharon wielded the Ghost X-9 (and in the game edition, the Neo Glaug) against the protagonists. Max, Exsedol, and Mirage's whole thing is a protracted series of callbacks to Macross 7. For instance, Max and Exsedol's whole situation is just their roles from Macross 7, Mirage is standing in for Mylene for Max disapproving of her choice to become a pilot, and the whole "Max leaves someone else in command of his ship so he can sortie in a blue state-of-the-art VF for the final battle" is taken direct from the last episode of Macross 7. Freyja's whole ill girl schtick with the "I have to sing even if it kills me" thing is the exact same plot from Macross Frontier: the Wings of Farewell but handled much less well. The VF-31AX is a low-rent YF-29 (even in-story), and the Sv-303 is more or less just the Ghost X-9 and Neo Glaug merged into one aircraft.

While I agree that there is a subset of the fandom that'll can be counted upon to consistently buy any new book/mook/magazine/etc. that comes out, I do think we're in something of a publishing dry spell right now. Not for lack of publishers interested in the property or lack of an audience... but for lack of anything new to write about. The Macross Delta TV series and its two movies are such painfully threadbare stories that they didn't leave the publishers much to work with. It ticked the obligatory licensing checkboxes of a light novel version and a few short manga titles, but it doesn't seem to have achieved the level of interest that earned its predecessor an ONA, 14 short stories, a spinoff light novel series, four drama CDs, multiple video games, a TCG, and all the accompanying coverage. There's only so much publishers can do to milk something worth writing about out of shows from 10+ years ago. What little we've gotten from the latest series has not been very substantial either.

They could have. I get the feeling they opted to not recast Ernest Johnson out of respect for Ishizuka-san's passing since he was a relatively minor character. Whether or not a character gets recast after their voice actor either retires or passes away often depends on how important the character was in the story, and the personal inclination of the showrunner and/or production committee. Some voice actors working on recurring roles in long-running properties will even handpick and train a successor if they're getting up in years or their health is failing, as Yasuo Yamada did when he trained Kanichi Kurita to step into his shoes as the titular thief in Lupin III. To a lot of us, it's kind of a copout for a weak love triangle in the main series. IMO, it loses a certain je ne sais quoi given that only a short while earlier he'd been energetically telling them how much they suck. (And slightly worse, related publications tend to bear his assessment out... even the new Master File book sort of makes it clear our protagonists didn't really win this one, the film's antagonists just tripped at the finish line.) Well, you see... when a mommy plot hole and a daddy plot hole love each other very much the Variable Stork comes down and drops off a bundle of "the ending is too depressing, lighten it up" from the production committee. It's a really stupid and unnecessary plot point... one that'll probably get swept under the rug in future works. There's really no reason to doubt him. The extra features suggest this is TV Max we're looking at, which means he was born in 1993 and therefore is either 74 or 75 at the time the movie is set in October 2068. Mandatory retirement for commissioned officers is typically around 62-64 in real militaries, with flag officers sometimes being allowed deferments to at most 68. Max was likely pushed into a mandatory retirement sometime after the events of Macross Frontier.* The NUNS didn't beg him to come back. He took a do-nothing "I'm bored in retirement" job with the mega-conglomerate Xaos to head up their PMC division's branch office on the remote planet Listania in the Brisingr globular cluster. That position made him the captain of the Macross Gigasion the same way Ernest Johnson's post as head of the Ragna branch made him captain of the Macross Elysion. * The Macross Frontier: the Wings of Farewell novelization depicts Max as still being in command of the 37th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet and its flagship Battle 7 in September 2059, at which point he would have been 64 or 65. Dunno. The last time Battle 7 put in an appearance, it was in the novelization of Macross Frontier: the Wings of Farewell when it was part of the combined rescue fleet that came to assist the Frontier fleet in the final battle of the story in September 2059. Their kids are old enough to have kids, and a few of them old enough to potentially have grandkids at the time Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! is set. Komilia Maria from the original Macross series is 57. (She also had two video game appearances in the Macross II timeline: Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song. Her age is different in that timeline.) Miracle is 51. Muse and Therese are 46. Therese is alleged to have appeared in Macross VF-X2 under the paper thin alias "Mariafokina Barnrose". Emilia from the Macross 7 movie is 44. Miranda is 42 (and Mirage is supposedly her daughter). Mylene is 37.

None that I can recall.

By test aircraft standards, it's a pretty huge number... but then most test aircraft aren't meant to be used by more than one or two branches of one nation's armed forces. The VF-0 may have ended up with more aircraft than intended due to the influence of different branches of the UN Forces. The existence of the delta wing single-seat VF-0C is said to be to satisfy requests from the UN Marine Corps.

Sort of. Unlike the Anti-Unification Alliance's SV-51, the VF-0 was not developed with live combat in mind. It was, in development terms, a "mule" vehicle built out of available "off-the-shelf" and/or custom fabricated prototype parts intended to evaluate technologies during the course of development on an actual vehicle. Master File alleges that there were several VF-0 phases that started out as modified F-14s and gradually developed into the completed craft we saw in Macross Zero. The completed VF-0s we saw in Macross Zero were pressed into combat service after the "formal" end of the Unification Wars in 2007 to deal with Anti-Unification Alliance remnants, but only a few dozen were ever built* and were mostly used for model conversion training. Master File alleges that several VF-0s at Grand Cannon III also fought off an attack by the remains of the Anti-Unification Alliance, and Macross the First also depicts several units from the Graf Zeppelin II being used to defend South Ataria Island from a suicide attack by the Alliance in late 2008. Master File offers up a table of VF-0s produced for the UN Forces that accounts for slightly more aircraft than the official sources mention (though the official numbers are said to be approximations), indicating that most VF-0s were assigned to three places: either the carrier CVN-99 Asuka II seen in Macross Zero, her sister ship CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II seen in the manga Macross the First as part of South Ataria's defenses at the end of 2008, and UN Forces HQ in Alaska. Small numbers of VF-0s were also sent to Grand Cannon III in Africa and the SLV-111 Daedalus, and a few ended up stationed aboard the Macross and one ended up on HMS Ark Royal. * Official sources suggest 24 VF-0A, 6 VF-0B, 6 VF-0C, 18 VF-0D, and 4 VF-0S for a total of 58 VF-0s built.

Overspecialization is inherently limiting, yeah. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of that fact of life in Macross can be found in the design of the Sv-262 Draken III. The Kingdom of the Wind's Aerial Knights went all-in on a high-performance atmospheric dogfighter to fit their organization's professional ethos and then ran into a number of problems because their new main fighters lacked the endurance for protracted space engagements despite space being their enemy's favored operating environment and could only engage at visual ranges against an enemy who had vastly superior numbers, training, and far more experience. As soon as Heinz and his fold songs are out of the picture, we see the Aerial Knights in their shiny new Drakens getting bodied by local NUNS troops using twenty year old previous-gen fighters.

An understandable reason to drool. By definition, all VF-0s are proof-of-concept models. They were built to evaluate the Variable Fighter concept and various technologies being developed for the VF-1. The "Space Proving Wing" markings probably mean that specific aircraft was one of the few outfitted for space operations... probably equipped with either the QF-3000E Ghost's FF-1999 initial type thermonuclear reaction engine or an early trial production version of the VF-1's FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction engine. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix doesn't feature that Space Proving Wing, but offers a broadly analogous unit in the 55th Development Experimental Wing Orbital Weapon Test Squadron AKA the SVX-12 "Space Fighters". That unit used a handful of VF-0's retrofitted with the Ghost's FF-1999 engine to carry out testing of the VF-0 and Variable Fighters overall in orbital space. The UN Spacy was established in March 2003. The crash of the ship that would become the SDF-1 occurred in July 1999. You'll see it basically everywhere in Macross Zero, which is set in July 2008.

Yes, he knows what he's talking about. The dreaded "H-bomb" that dominated Cold War-era fears of nuclear world war and a nuclear holocaust is a nuclear bomb that uses thermonuclear fusion as its primary destructive force. Mind you, you weren't entirely incorrect about it being a more efficient use of fission. Thermonuclear fusion bombs are a two-stage weapon that uses a small nuclear fission bomb as a means to create the super-high temperatures and pressures needed to kick off an uncontrolled fusion reaction in the hydrogen stored in the primary warhead. It was the only way to achieve a significant release of fusion energy at the time. Some of the test apparatus that were developed for those experiments were further developed into the technologies used in this breakthrough experiment in fusion energy generation. Of course, because those thermonuclear fusion bombs use a nuclear fission bomb as a trigger, they still release dangerous radioactive fallout despite the primary product of fusion being intense heat. The "holy grail" of nuclear weapons research is a "pure" thermonuclear fusion weapon that does not require a fission bomb to trigger that explosive release of fusion energy and thus would be a "clean" nuclear weapon that produced minimal or no long-term radiation. These, of course, currently exist only in fiction.* The first full-scale test was the "Ivy Mike" experiment in 1952. * In Macross, these pure thermonuclear fusion weapons were able to be realized due to Overtechnology and are called thermonuclear reaction weapons. Rather than a fission bomb, they use the intense artificial gravity to create an uncontrolled thermonuclear reaction in hydrogen.

As a relevant aside to the above, one of the reasons that the VF-31AX Kairos Plus spec in Master File is that its baseline performance is significantly lower than the Siegfried's and the impact that has on the boosted performance. Essentially, the Kairos Plus may be 275kg lighter but it's working with 12.26% less output than the unboosted Siegfried. In order to match the Siegfried's boosted performance, never mind exceed it, the output of the Fold Wave System would have to almost double from +15% to +26.85%. Even then, because Xaos's Fold Wave System cannot self-activate, the end result is a fighter that's measurably worse than the Siegfried the vast majority of the time.

One thing to remember is that all engines are not created equal... and the engines are a significant portion of the aircraft's mass. True, the VF-27 has four engines but each of those engines is individually a fair bit less powerful than one of the detuned YF-30 engines used in the VF-31 Siegfried. It has about 47% more thrust to work with than the unboosted VF-31 Siegfried, but it also weighs about 42% more because of those extra engines. The end result is the VF-27 has a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 46.49335 while the VF-31 Siegfried is only slightly lower at 44.854 without its Fold Wave System active. That's not even a 4% difference. With its Fold Wave System on and operating, its output increases 15%. That might not sound like a lot, but at the baseline level we're talking about here that increases the total combined thrust of the engines by 562kN. That's more than the maximum output of a VF-19A's FF-2200 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine, and pushes the output of the individual FF-3001/FC2 engines to slightly over the tuning used on the YF-30 (2,156kN vs 2,110kN). That increase puts the VF-31 Siegfried's T/W ratio at 51.582, 10.9% higher than the VF-27's. It's got a better ISC than the VF-27 does too, rated for 29.5G rather than 27.5G, though it seems a safe bet there are also some limiters in place to protect the pilot in normal operation and the ISC is likely boosted by the Fold Wave System as well. Its gunpod may lack the punch of the VF-27's massive one that requires 3+ engines to operate, but it has a lot more operational versatility than the VF-27 which is almost exclusively a dogfighter.

Nope. The first one to get them was the YF-24. One of the three original YF-24 prototypes was lost due to a linear actuator malfunction during testing that caused a crash.