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Seto Kaiba

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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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?.)
  9. 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.
  10. 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".)
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Of course, the scarcity of secondhand fold quartz from Protoculture ruins and Vajra carcasses will only be a temporary bottleneck. The ancient Protoculture developed the technology to synthesize fold quartz. Clues from the official timeline suggest that the reason it's so scarce is they were still experimenting with applications for the stuff when their civilization collapsed* and it was the generations of refugees thereafter who truly perfected the technology and used it on a large scale to manufacture things like the Protoculture System and the later models of Fold Evil. Many sources mention humanity has been steadily improving its fold carbon synthesis techniques since OTEC first discovered the stuff aboard the ASS-1 in the early 2000s. The writeup in Macross Chronicle does indicate that the bar has been set higher since humanity discovered fold quartz, and that research in how to synthesize it is underway. * Due, ironically enough, to one such experiment's catastrophic failure. The activation experiments for a prototype biotechnological fold dimensional energy converter resulted in the bio-weapons they were installed on becoming possessed by energy beings from super dimension space, who subsequently became known as the Protodeviln during their rampage across Protoculture space.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It could be anything. Kawamori has, in the past, expressed a disinclination to do direct sequels. He likes to branch out and get weird and experimental with his work and whatever interest or topic has taken his attention tends to end up getting rolled into what he's working on. Sometimes it's a cultural interest like the trip to Nepal that spawned Escaflowne, and sometimes it's a social issue like the "Save the Whales" of Macross Dynamite 7 (or the more politically loaded aesops in Frontier and Delta). The one thing we can be reasonably confident about is that the next Macross series will almost certainly distance itself from previous works as every new Macross series has. It'll be set somewhere new and with a bunch of new characters and mecha. The number of references to previous shows will be kept to a minimum and broad strokes only so that the series remains accessible to new audiences. By distancing each new Macross title from its predecessors that way, he can get away with experimenting with other genres and isn't locked into a particular concept of the setting.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Some kind of space station or satellite...one that looks like it was designed by someone who plays Dark Eldar in WH40K or has seen Hellraiser too many times. It's one of those background designs for which there really isn't any info.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    You mean the Epsilon Foundation? No, as far as we know the Epsilon Foundation has not been involved in any of the prior shenanigans in the Macross setting. The Epsilon Foundation is more or less your standard anime zaibatsu with an almost comical number of subsidiary companies giving it at least some presence in most any field of industry you'd care to name. They make everything from tourist-y knickknacks and everyday necessities to personal electronics to military hardware. They do seem to do business with a lot of the major players from previous shows, though. Especially General Galaxy. Well, only two... Macross Galaxy, and the Kingdom of the Wind.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Try actually reading the post you're quoting... it's literally right there. *sigh* The problem with this latest argument of yours is that the movie does not at any point present those accusations as unfounded.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's fun... for the second time in under two weeks I've found a recent show that I really can't pidgeonhole. Birdie Wing was hard to classify because it was a completely insane intersection between shounen anime tropes, an intense sports drama, garnished with a bit of organized crime drama. The Raven of the Inner Palace is... ... ... ... ... ... ... I don't ****ing know. I just watched three episodes of it in a row and I don't think I could even put a genre on it. It's either set in feudal China or some fantasy world with feudal Chinese theming. It's more or less entirely character drama, but with supernatural aspects and actual magic in play and a lot of emphasis on the court relationships in the Emperor's palace. It's all drawn like a classic shoujo series but it's veered hard into mystery, horror, fantasy, and political territory a few times. I can't imagine there'd be a lot of shipping going on for the shoujo audience in light of almost all of the male characters explicitly being eunuchs. Whatever the hell it is, it's interesting viewing. I only meant to watch one episode but before I knew it I'd seen all three currently-available ones.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That's a very definite "Maybe". It's complicated. "Lady M" was an invention of Macross Delta's writers and had never been mentioned in any previous Macross works. Throughout Macross Delta, "Lady M" remains a vague existence whose circumstances are only ever discussed in terms of rumors and hearsay and she only ever seems to communicate with the cast indirectly by having others relay her messages to them. The Macross Delta TV anime and its movie adaptation Passionate Walkure seemed to be building "Lady M" up as Xaos's version of Richard Bilra. That is to say, as the ultra-wealthy, highly influential, and terribly eccentric borderline recluse who founded the original company that grew into the mega-conglomerate Xaos we see in the series proper. The rumors we hear from the Epsilon Foundation representative Berger Stone also suggest "Lady M" was throwing her vast personal fortune around for the sake of private research projects. "Lady M" had supposedly been researching the power and military potential of songs since the end of the First Space War. One such set of rumors that turned out to be true or at least so close to it as to make no odds was that "Lady M" had used the fruits of her research and either cloning/genetic manipulation or artificial intelligence to develop an ultimate weapon based on the power of songs... revealed to be Mikumo Guynemer, a clone based on reconstructed Star Singer DNA. The rumors are contradictory about when "Lady M" first became involved in galactic affairs. One of the rumors conveyed suggests she's been active since the First Space War and may have contributed to the work of Dr. Chiba and others. The other suggests she only recently became active, after the Vajra conflict in 2059. It wasn't until Absolute Live!!!!!! that "Lady M" was changed from an enigmatic weirdo and (theoretically) one-woman Omniscient Council of Vagueness into some kind of Deep State figure... an oligarch who corruptly controls the New UN Government, New UN Forces, and PMCs somehow and acts as the sole arbiter of what knowledge humanity is "ready" for. It's that hot take that retroactively inserts "Lady M" into decisions from the previous 50+ years like the New UN Government's ban on cloning, the restrictions imposed on AI technology after the Sharon Apple incident, the implant ban, and the strict controls imposed on MDE weapons. Unfortunately, it really doesn't tally with previous material at all... so it doesn't fit at all if you've seen more of Macross than just Delta. Most unusually for that Fandom Wiki, that article isn't wildly inaccurate or a pile of nonsensical fan-fiction. Statistically, I guess it had to happen sometime.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Well, this season's off to a start... not a great start, but a start. Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun has hit the point in the manga where it fully switched genres from a slice of life comedy with occasional shounen elements to a regular shounen anime series. Unsurprisingly, that coincides with a sudden spike in the amount of filler so the first two episodes set up a plot point and then basically do nothing. Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is off to a good start and staying close to the manga. It's cute, it's funny, and it's finally hit the point where the two main characters are starting to notice they're into each other. My Hero Academia is doing another one of its big arcs, and it feels pretty padded. I'm the Villainess, so I'm Taming the Final Boss is almost exactly what I expected it to be. It's playing the tropes of its otome game villainess genre absolutely laser-straight with very generic characters and plot lines and the occasional obligatory talking animal. Several of the events really don't fit the generic shoujo anime art style though and it's a bit odd that a villain gets away with so much. The villainy was pretty petty up to the most recent episode, where the main antagonist thus far jumped off the slippery slope... It comes off as too easily forgiven. I finished Birdie Wing the other night. It's... got a lot of Gundam references for a sports anime about golf. Not just the gunpla-obsessed girl in Generic European Country... the main girl's golf coach is a blonde man who refuses to put his jacket on properly voiced by Shuuichi Ikeda (Char Aznable) and his rival/disciple is a coach voiced by Toru Furuya (Amuro Ray) who is even named Amuro. It's also really weird how blatant the shilling for Gunpla in that series is. It's not even tangentially related to the plot, but there are several scenes where they basically STOP DEAD and start talking about gunpla (with one character lamenting that she received an obscure HG one instead of a MG). It's still very much on all the drugs and a sports anime conceived by a crazy person who has only a vague idea what golf is, but it seems to also be headed into shoujo ai territory at the end. Later I'm gonna throw a rewatch of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion into the mix since I still haven't gotten around to watching Lelouch of the Resurrection and Akito the Exiled.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    One would assume that an AI bent on ruling humanity from the shadows would want or need a lot of the things Lady M banned in order to govern effectively. Not just other (subordinate) AIs that it could delegate tasks to in overseeing humanity, but a plethora of robotic weapons both covert and overt that could be relied upon to be there for the AI to seize control of should its meaty subjects rebel. Not to mention a cyborged populace with networked brains who could be easily subjected to mind control to keep them from revolting and be used as infiltrators and sleeper agents. Yet all of that is (allegedly) banned under Lady M's regime... (though past works definitely disagree) It's way harder to do something like Control from the Star Trek novelverse, which basically just gaslighted the brilliant but naive into working for its fictitious off-again on-again black ops organization. Certainly the same people allegedly dogmatically enforcing Lady M's diktats on technology to the point of allowing entire planets to burn and millions of people to die rather than use "banned" weapons in their defense would not flex so readily if it turned out the one dispensing those edicts was also a piece of banned technology. Personally, I suspect Absolute Live!!!!!! is gonna end up swept under the rug and "Lady M" will be quietly forgotten about in whatever the next series is. They wrote themselves into a corner and have no easy way out. Better to just roll with the TV series where "Lady M" didn't have a defined origin.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    ... he's "Lady" M because he kicked off a Rocky Horror Picture Show revival there. He'll show up to the final battle of the next series in drag and perform an uptempo Jpop remix of Sweet Transvestite. Brings a whole new meaning to "shipping" doesn't it?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Loved him in Blackadder... and he did an amazing job as Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter. His absence will be keenly felt for a very long time.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    A bit, yes... though I don't believe they've ever been described as independently-operable warships like the ARMD-class. It's possible they started out as partially-completed ARMD-class ships that were integrated directly into the ship's structure. The process of launching from them is a bit odd, but only seen in the OP for Macross M3. There is an extreme case in the "handedness" of the individual ships that make up the Macross Quarter-class as well... But no, apart from the movie ARMD-class - called the ARMD II-class in some cases - there aren't any ships that I know of that exhibit mirror-imaged variants like that. The painting seen in Macross Perfect Memory (pg203) is kind of a blue-gray color? The art in Macross Chronicle's History Sheet showing crews examining the ASS-1 shortly after the crash depict it with a Zentradi green hull.
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