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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It's from a doujinshi... that kind of goes without saying. One of the things that makes this doujinshi series so interesting is the artist frequently "shows their work" by drawing their concepts for ships or classes that are described in official material but never actually shown. The Takashi Hayase in that image is one of those obscure bits of official setting trivia. The first mass-production Macross-class ship was the SDFN-01 General Takashi Hayase, one of the twelve mass-produced Macross-class ships and one of only three of them to be named thus far. The other two are SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global that appeared as a wreck that crashed on Gallia IV in Macross Frontier and the SDFN-08 General Vrlitwhai Kridanik that semi-permanently landed on Uroboros and was known as Vrlitwhai City in the Macross 30 game. (There is a fan theory that the General Takashi Hayase was the ship that was "cast" as the SDF-1 Macross in the in-universe movie Do You Remember Love?.) There are several other bits of fun trivia scattered around that doujinshi series like Zentradi ships converted for use as emigrant ships (which was what was done for short distance emigrant fleets) and the air defense and enhanced firepower versions of the Northampton-class.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well, this season is coming along nicely... the shows I'm following (Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, etc.) are all sticking fairly close to the original manga and remain pretty consistently well-executed. All in all, I'm quite happy... between this season's multitude of interesting offerings and Andor, I've got no shortage of things to watch. The Raven of the Inner Palace remains my stand-out title for the season. It remains consistently hard to pin down but inexplicably compelling in terms of character-focused drama with some elements of mystery, fantasy, and the slightest hint of romance. It's been a long time since a show grabbed me like this one and left me not just curious but genuinely impatient to see what happens next.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    ... I just realized it can't do a lengthy timeskip. The series started with not quite five years before Cassian's supposed to die in Rogue One. He can't serve a six year prison term unless he's actually two people,.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    ... actually, yes.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's the CIC. Macross Chronicle makes a big deal out of explaining the different acronyms used for it like CIC (Combat Information Center), CDC (Combat Direction Center), and C4 (Command, Control, Communications, and Computers) on its Mechanic Sheet. In the Macross Frontier TV anime and movies, the Battle Frontier's captain and commander of the fleet are the same officer (Brigadier General Pelliot) who seems to prefer to lead from the CIC rather than the bridge of his ship. In the novelizations, those two roles are divided between two separate minor characters. The equivalent to Pelliot is a general by the name of Kevin Backflight who serves as overall commander of the Frontier New UN Forces and Battle Frontier's captain is one of his subordinates named Jean-Luc Tarkovsky.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    All in all, I think we can/should probably resign ourselves to the fact that any future official explanation that's offered for the Megaroad-01's circumstances in the second Macross Delta movie will be at least as stupid and contrived as the circumstances themselves.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That'd raise the awkward question of "from where?". The SDF-2 Megaroad-01 wasn't a remodeled alien starship like the SDF-1 Macross. She was planned as a 100% human-made copy of the Macross-class and construction began on that premise, before the First Space War forced a change of plan that saw the partially-completed warship remodeled into a 100% human-made long-distance emigrant ship for the first long-distance emigrant fleet. She wasn't hiding any surprises. She disappeared just four years after launch without finding any inhabitable planets.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I haven't said she's dumb... I've been saying from the beginning that she's sharp. Meero's problem, until now, was that she was right for the wrong reasons. She was drawing incorrect inferences from reports on things Cassian did and using those as evidence of a pattern of coordinated rebel activity that did exist, but wasn't actually related to the cases she was investigating. The irony in Meero's stance in this latest episode now that she's been vindicated is that she seems to think the Imperial response is insufficiently harsh, because they're treating the Aldhani incident ONLY as a robbery and not as a statement of intent from the rebels. (She's arguably wrong about that as well, sinc it was a needs-must-as-the-devil-drives sort of situation where the rebels just needed the money.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    With the near-total lack of information for Absolute Live!!!!!! at the present time, we can't quite say. As disappointing as the liner notes were, hopefully the Master File will pick up some of the slack.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    On the one hand, we'd have dialog that doesn't sound it like was penned by a writer who was only just starting to come down from a heavy dose of dental anesthetic. On the other hand, 15-20% of each movie would be protracted multi-cut sequences of the characters purposefully yet silently walking everywhere like they forgot their space bus passes and don't have enough credits for cab fare.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    After listening to the uncut versions of the songs in the movie on the OST, I have to admit this movie actually has a few pretty good songs. Nowhere near as good as the few real bangers Walkure had in the main series, but a few actually-good songs that are just completely ruined by the movie's trash-tier sound editing. "Glow in the Dark" probably comes the closest to the higher standard set by the TV anime.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    OK... "Announcement". As a build-up to the rest of the series goes, this one's a bit hit and miss for me. I'd wager Roy's right that we're in for another timeskip... likely to right around the time... I guess that'll explain why the rebellion didn't... ... then, since he would have been out of reach.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Even the ones that do don't always have the resources to do it alone. Like in the Macross Frontier fleet, the local Shinsei office collaborated with LAI and the Macross Frontier Fleet Arsenal to develop the VF-25. Or in the Brisingr cluster, Shinsei's local branch there collaborated with three other companies in a joint venture that created the VF-31. Of course, developing your own new models of starship or VF costs A LOT of money and a lot of resources for manufacturing and infrastructure. Some governments just don't have that kind of cash, so it's easier to buy from someone else who does. When you get down to it, the bare fact of the matter is that there really are no two ships that are exactly identical no matter how exacting the manufacturer tries to follow the spec... and because technology is advancing all the time, newer ships end up having many differences from the older ones. The same is true for Valkyries, where the specification is revised frequently even during production in the form of production blocks that represent distinct "steps" in integration of upgrades, improvements, and refinements to the design that might or might not be able to be integrated into older models as well. The VF-1, for instance, supposedly had SEVENTEEN distinct production blocks and we've only actually seen a couple of the most visually-distinct ones onscreen (Blocks 1-5 as the "TV" type and 6+ as the "Movie" type seen in almost every subsequent work). So in essence, it's very true that there are a great many more sub-variants of Valkyries and so on than we see... or can visually distinguish, anyway, since many of those minor block improvements are not always something externally visible or easy to identify. The differences between the Macross Plus, Macross 7, and Macross Frontier versions of ships are more blatant improvements resulting from modernization of the design and various other perceived tactical or strategic needs... you'd probably call those subclasses of those classes. There are probably similar micro-level differences between them based on which shipbuilding firm built them for which fleet using what technological limitations or proprietary technologies, etc.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    That's the problem with fanworks... sometimes, the stuff that looks super cool doesn't necessarily work when you start thinking about the details. There are a few like that in the doujinshi series, like a stealth cruiser with an underslung Macross Quarter-class Macross Cannon that wouldn't be able to open the way it appears to be mounted. Of course, Fuso Katsumi also shows a lot of love for obscure stuff that's never gotten art like the air defense versions of the Northampton, that weird hybrid carrier only seen as a desktop model in Macross Plus, and the Daedalus II-class from the Macross II timeline. A few of the original ones they designed are compelling enough that you have to wonder if something like that DOES exist in the setting like the Kaga-class, a scaled-up Guantanamo every bit as structurally simple but with twice the capacity.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, my interactions with him have been limited lately for similar reasons... the Facebook groups he co-admins really went downhill and started banning people for many random reasons, like mentioning several of the people who worked on the official subs for Macross Delta. I gave up after being removed from that group twice for no clear or explained reason. Yeah, unfortunately I don't really have a good way to contact him except via Facebook. We did most of our previous interacting via Skype, but few people use that anymore. These days, I just keep the site running and the books I import are going towards my own projects instead. EDIT: That said, once I get my own project launched I'll be similarly happy to accept the same kind of details. Just gotta get the actual pages build first. XD
  16. Seto Kaiba
    He hasn't posted on here in quite a while. Come to that, I haven't spoken to him in a while either... I've been keeping the server going, but that's all I've been doing for it since I've been very busy with work and moving and a host of other nonsense since the start of the pandemic. I know he recently changed jobs and moved I think twice recently, so I assume that's probably something to do with it. Right now there haven't been any official specs for anything in the new movie, even the new movie's liner notes were silent on the subject, so all hopes currently hang on the Master File. Once I'm done renovating my home office, I'll be getting back to work on my own projects and only doing server maintenance on M3.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    ... so, it's not "very similar to" so much as "from". Fuso Katsumi is the author/illustrator of the four volume Macross doujinshi series Battleships of the Galaxy published by FANKY Planning, as well as similar books for other titles. Recently, they've been posting art pages from their Macross doujinshi work on their artist page on Pixiv, which is where Danbooru's users got it. Incidentally, you have to be a bit careful about linking to gallery sites like this one because neither they nor the ads on them are worksafe.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That is a simple question with a complicated answer. It's "Yes" with a "but..." and "No" with a "it's technically different". You see, when the Earth UN Government and Earth UN Forces decided to adopt the VF-1 Valkyrie as their first main Variable Fighter in 2007 there were exactly zero manufacturers with the production capacity to meet that demand on their own. The Earth UN Government removed the production bottleneck by engaging multiple manufacturers to build VF-1's under license including the US's Northrom (Northrop) and Japan's Shinnakasu. Master File mentions a few others like Britain's Devilland (De Havilland). They were all meant to be used by the Earth UN Forces, it was more like decentralized production for a single armed force than production for a single member state. Northrom did a couple of special duty variants like the VF-1S, VT-1, etc., and Japan tried an improved mass production type that didn't catch on. So, yeah it was built under license but at the same time it was different because all the different licensees were building for the same government and the same military.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    General Galaxy sponsored the construction and mission of the Macross Galaxy emigrant fleet, but its day-to-day operations of their roving deep space company town are managed by the subsidiary corporation that General Galaxy established as the fleet's government and the chief employer of the fleet's population. Despite being a corporation, the fleet's still considered a New UN Government member state and the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army operates under the auspices of the New UN Forces. The VF-19C/MG21 is a product of licensed manufacturing. It's one of the two main ways that governments that don't develop their own military aircraft outfit their forces with new models as time goes on. They either purchase completed aircraft from one of their allies directly, or they purchase a license to have a manufacturer in their country build that new model of fighter. Until recently, licensed manufacturing was Japan's favored method for acquiring new fighters. The Japanese government purchased licenses from the US so its domestic manufacturer(s) (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) could produce a limited quantity of a particular variant of an American-designed fighter aircraft. The F-15J and the F-16-derived Mitsubishi F-2 are examples of this practice. The distances between the farthest-flung emigrant governments and Earth being what they are, building under license does appear to be the Macross setting's favored approach for new model VFs most of the time. Macross Galaxy reached out to Earth and bought a license to build their own VF-19C's domestically. That said, the VF-19C/MG21 is also a bit different in that the Macross Galaxy corporate government didn't buy that license because they actually needed the VF-19. They more or less did it to troll their parent company's rival Shinsei Industry by building a "better" VF-19 and showing it off at airshows as a taunt... a "we can build your aircraft better than you can" sort of thing.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    It's worth noting that no version of the story thus far has presented the Earth UN Government as having had any foreknowledge that an encounter with the Zentradi was imminent prior to detecting the Vrlitwhai branch fleet's defold reaction during the launch day festivities. They expected contact would happen eventually, but it seems that none of them expected it to be so soon and they did not expect it would immediately result in hostilities (thanks to the booby trap). As General Global notes, the crew of the Macross had orders that on no uncertain terms they were NOT to fire the first shot. Since DYRL? is, in-universe, a 2031 docu-drama intended to draw a line under the scale of the Zentradi threat and the fact that it was ongoing, the change to depicting the Macross as an emigrant ship may have been driven by the era's emphasis on emigrant fleets and/or the fact that the Macross-class ship they used was designed for emigrant fleet use. (Unless you count Master File's take, where there was a prior film called The Booby Trap that depicted the events before the start of DYRL?.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Depends which version of the story you're looking at. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series presents the SDF-1 Macross as having been a ship (re)built as the flagship of Earth's UN Spacy defense fleet. The Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie presents the SDF-1 Macross as having been intended for deep space exploration and space emigration, with a purpose-built city in its interior instead of an improvised one. Had the Zentradi not shown up, Earth would likely have continued to build up its defense forces for some time before beginning to expand into the greater galaxy. Nothing so fancy. The Macross Delta Blu-ray extra features explain Walkure's equipment in some detail. It's mostly the same technology we see in Macross Frontier for Sheryl and Ranka's concerts, but a more fanservice-friendly version that looks like underwear rather than a wetsuit. Walkure's field gear is a multi-layered undersuit with several additional accessories. The base layer is essentially body armor... a body gel that offers some defense against laser weapons and a bullet- and shrapnel-resistant body stocking made of "bio-silk". The actual holographic projector units are a part of the underwear they wear over that, which also has mounting points for a belt of nitrogen gas jets that they can use to hover or fly for short periods. There is a microcomputer built into several of their press-on nails to control the costume, monitor local bio-fold wave levels, and control the Multi-Drone Plates that provide larger-scale holographic projection for their concerts and also generate pinpoint barriers to protect them from enemy fire. All of that equipment is hidden by the holographic projections that restore their normal skintone and conceal the gas jet clusters. During Walkure's original field trials, they wore actual body armor to sing on the battlefield but apparently that was killing the vibe and they decided to sacrifice defense for more freedom and aesthetics. (This would appear to have been less than a great decision in some cases, since the actual protection offered by their field gear is rather negligible as Makina found out when she got shot.) She was, but she was being built as a second Macross-class ship with a slightly different design from the SDF-1 Macross at the time.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    That's more what's special about what humanity did with it after. Though it is oddly funny to realize that the first 26 episodes of Super Dimension Fortress Macross from the Zentradi perspective are multiple high-ranking commanders repeatedly trying and failing to determine if the Macross's captain is a tactical genius or completely clueless about how space warfare works. (Episode 27 being the point where a conclusion is reached and the answer is simply "Yes".)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    ... and you have missed the point completely. This is also wrong on multiple levels. Macross Galaxy's sponsor has been known since the Macross Frontier TV series, and it is NOT the Epsilon Foundation. Macross Galaxy is named Macross Galaxy for a reason... its sponsor, and the owner/parent company of the Macross Galaxy Corporation that governs the Macross Galaxy fleet as a flying company town, is the defense industry megacorporation General Galaxy. The Epsilon Foundation didn't support the Kingdom of the Wind's ambitions for free either. The Kingdom paid the Epsilon Foundation for their assistance. Windermere IV had no real technological base to speak of, having effectively jumped directly from a pre-industrial feudal society to an interstellar one overnight thanks to the intervention of the humans from Megaroad-04. Everything they use - ships, Valkyries, other vehicles, weapons, ammunition - is purchased from the Epsilon Foundation's many subsidiary companies. It takes no great leaps of logic to figure out how they paid for it. Fold quartz was the only valuable resource Windermere IV had and its extraction and trade is heavily regulated under the New UN Government. Go back and actually read it this time.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury is certainly quite a thing. The only thing that really gives it any semblance of a distinct identity is its main character being a painfully introverted girl instead of an emotionally extinct boy. Otherwise, it's the love child of Reconguista in G and Iron-Blooded Orphans.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Unlikely for a bunch of reasons, the most important of which is a spoiler for Absolute Live!!!!!!. It's unlikely there's much of anything to find on the Protoculture's homeworld if someone did find it... and that's assuming the planet itself is still there to find. It's very likely that the Protoculture's original homeworld was conquered by the Supervision Army and subsequently destroyed either by the Protoculture themselves or the Zentradi as per their standard practice. And that would have been back when the Zentradi still had access to reaction munitions so the damage would've been even worse than it was when the Boddole Zer main fleet torched Earth. If there's a surviving record of the technique the Protoculture used to create synthetic fold quartz, it's probably on one of the remote planets they settled right before going extinct like Uroboros or Windermere IV or in the ruins of one of their emigrant fleets or space colonies. This ain't the R-word show... there was absolutely nothing special about the Supervision Army gunship that crashed on Earth in Macross.
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