Zinjo

Actually the VF-25 could be the 2059 equivalent of the VF-5000! For it's day the VF-5000 was a formidable aircraft designed primarily for colonial defense and used to an extent in Spacy. The use of Armor and Fast packs leads me to believe that the NUNS SOC fighters are probably much more advanced and expensive to produce, thus we don't see many outside military fleet operations (an assumption there). I expect the issues of available resources, production time and cost are other factors that not only require the use of Contract Defense Wings, but also limit the amount of "special" equipment available to emigrations fleets. Keep in mind the logistics of patrolling and maintaining the peace on dozens of separate systems would be enormous and by 2059 it is easier to upgrade existing aircraft and/or simplify their construction to get the fleets out there, hence the VF-171. It is doubtful the VF-171 packs nearly the same kind of specialized hardware the VF-17 did. The removal of internal missile bays, and beam weaponry to possibly the removal of the active stealth systems that made the Nightmare a stealth aircraft to begin with. The use of the design shows us that the plane has proven it is an effective variable fighter and thus the general production version is the adopted fleet defense aircraft of NUNS, replacing the VF-11.

NICE! It's about time those beauties got some 3D lovin' Keep up the great work! Consider working on the textures for them. The basic designs are quite good. I can get you some scans if you want to do more details...

Mighty big gun for anti-personnel!

Huh? We as the audience know where they went and that during an alert they were called in, it is apparent their participation in the combat operations is required. Switching from one point of view to another is not helping you make a point. Obviously not very covert. They have a public building, the public knows about their existence as well as the military. The only thing the public didn't apparently know is what equipment they were using, as if the average citizen really cared. That too is a viable possibility. I believe the "power up" mode is akin to a PBB overload ala SDFM. It's lance has a PBB which is uses to rip into the hulls of enemy capital ships and I don't recall if it has an omni-directional barrier in use on the fighter (it is doubtful, but possible)...

As expected Japanese "New Type" 01 will carry another story about Frontier, according to the New Type website... It should already be out in Japan...

I never found the Metal Siren a super robot type. It was a very powerful (yet Fugly) fighter piloted by an ace, which gave it the vibe of a super robot, but not actually being one, IMO...

Exactly. He somehow missed out on fighter training like Luca and Micheal are doing and Luca was trying to comfort him with the comment that he can still fly commercial ships. Not something a fighter pilot wannabe is going to want to hear... Even in the military you have to qualify to become a fighter pilot, no one joins the airforce, navy or marines as a pilot. I get the impression he had his hopes set on flying with the SMS like his team mates and for some reason that fell through...

You'll figure it out eventually...

How many 17 year olds have you met who are passionate and driven when faced with their plans falling through. I wouldn't call him som much moody as probably frustrated... SK has stated in the translated article from October (in December issue of NT USA) that this is the series he's always wanted to make. Now he describes each show as a different genre of story. DYRL was a theatrical performance, Mac 7 was more manga like, Macross Plus was like a foreign movie (to the Japanese, which explains much of it's popularity over here) and Zero was a fantasy story according to SK. So essentially Mac F is going to focus on the lives of Highschool students who have to cope with mortal danger on a regular basis (according to the boss). Now the highschool is more of a vocational school for pilots as Sketchley pointed out, so we have the tie in to show teenagers flying variable fighters. Exactly what genre SK is specifically choosing to do this series in is still hard to tell, but I'm sure that will become evident soon enough... I am excited to see what he has in mind for this one, as he has no interest in redoing what has been done before, therefore no resurrection of SDFM, Mac 7, Mac Zero, or even Mac + should be expected.

NICE WORK!

Yes it has been noticed that the markings are similar. To me the markings look like a simplified galactic spiral. Well considering the size of the macross cannons on the red bugs, they'd need several to take out a city ship 5 km in diameter and the "Islands" are not very much smaller... They may have been investigating what kind of life form existed inside these floating bubbles in space... Once inside the civilian ships, you will notice their tactics switch to defensive from offensive. The attack on Alto, is most likely due to the fact he was wearing the same exosuit as the SMS pilot, thus considered to be another threat... Well actually he hates not being a fighter pilot. It appears that he has been relegated "shuttle pilot" while his friends have been selected to apprentice with the SMS... I get the vibe of someone very disappointed in the results of his life so far, jealousy of his teammates (Micheal appears to like to rub it in Alto's face that he didn't qualify for fighter training) and an overall restlessness to prove himself. Which is a different hero type for a Macross series, all the other heros were accomplished or recognized pilots. Here we have a capable pilot who has to "prove" he can do it...

No they weren't there to hit the shops, just trying to evade an enemy bearing down on it with enough firepower to damage or destroy it. The VF-25s with their armor and fast packs were much more sucessfull at shooting down the bugs than the VF-171s were. Before the redbug entered Frontier City the CIC reported that the bugs were attacking the "islands" aka the Pill ships, so this was an all out attack on the fleet not an isolated Search and Destory mission. We as the audience only witnessed one of the infiltrations. Is Sheryl and/or Ranka persons of interest to the aliens, possibly? However, whether they are being sought by the aliens hasn't been revealed yet.

What I'd like to see is the Manga "add" to the existing story of the anime. Such as giving back stories, peripheral events, etc... Things the anime won't have time to dwell on, but are an extention of the existing series of events.

Very nice! Where did the full VF-25 element come from?

Probably a codec issue. Vid files are authored with various codec which allow computers to run them. Often times they are done with the latest codec and if your computer doesn't have it yet, you won't get a picture. The same can be true with video and no audio. Yes, it is seen leaving next to the Macross 7 fleet's icon...

FYI The Macross article from the Japanese Newtype 10 is now in the December issue of Newtype USA 12... The one with the preliminary sketches of the fighters and characters for the newbs...

I spent about 2 -3 hours taking screen shots frame by frame of the battles on the HD raw version of the episode, so I'll look and see what I can find.

That sir is the totally hot cougar, Mari Ijima the voice of SDFM's Minmei. It is amazing how she has gotten "Better Looking" as she has gotten older....

It looks as though they increase the color saturations and in so doing it brings out the grain of the master print. One of the things they do here when remastering is they digitally clean up the film stock first, then work on removing any flaws and coloring issues. I don't think BigWest spent the money to do that. I suspect if the title on the property were clear and they had released it worldwide like back in 1984, this remaster would have had a lot more money poured into it.

Having Mari reprise her voice work in the new show would be cool, I suspect she'd be a lot more comfortable in her native tongue as opposed to English! I love the idea of her popping up as a Minmei impersonator, that would be too funny...

I thought that might not sound right. I meant no "they aren't" in agreement, as in "no they aren't that far appart"....my bad...

Boooo

Kresphy how do you get 25th Anniversary T-shirt from that site in your signature???! I love the Chibi-Rau on it!

No they aren't, remember Minmei was 15, Hikaru was 17 and Misa was 19 at the time of SDFM. I believe Mao was 14 (or 15?) not 12. Sara was 18 and I believe Shin was 21 in Zero. Girls are still encouraged to behave childlike in asian cultures, so Ranka's behavior may seem immature by Western standards, but not so much in asian cultures. Well the presentation was "provocative", not doubt by design. However I saw the CGI as being a slave to the 2D animation in order for the two to work better together. The CGI was definitely closer to photorealistic in Zero, but then when the 2D was added it became painfully obvious and often affected the audience's immersion in the story. I suspect they took a page from Last Exile and tried to keep a balance between the two. To compare this show to anything hollywood puts out is like comparing modern anime to Hanna Barbera cartoons... Apples and Oranges... I find it an acceptable compromise for the sake of the story telling. After all, if all you have is flash and no substance all you have is...well... Micheal Bay's "Tranformers" or George Lucas' "Revenge of the Sith"....

Well I'll wait until Hurin doesn another srt file with the new timings since the man works authoring DVDs professionally. Personally I use DVDFab to remove some of the copy protection, burn to a DVD9 and then DVD Decrypter to remove the rest for an encryption and region free master. I found only using DVD Decrypter doesn't get it all and often leaves "issues" that I tend to attribute to the extra layer of copy protection on Japanese R2 releases, but both cleans it all out very nicely. Once I have a "clean" copy of the Disc (not shrunk) on a DVD9 then I proceed from there. My subbed R2 release of the Bandai Perfect Edition came out quite nicely, with the exception of the odd letterboxing from the disc.