Sailor Arashi

But I wanna take a stab at it! Anti Neumann-type means it's a computer that doesn't utilize a standard fetch-and-execute architecture. The 'Generalize Integrated Renormalization Aided' is technical overspeak for aid in turning general input into commands the systems can actually act upon. My understanding is that the ANGIRAS is an intuitive computer system that translate broad pilot input into intricate machine performance. Like, the pilot lights up a target in their pipper and fires. The ANGIRAS translates that into the Valkyrie moving its arm and aligning the gunpod and pulling the trigger.

I demand fan-art of Kamen Rider on a Segway now please.

I always felt the Northampton class looked like it drew from Zentradi design elements. Particularly the pointier renditions of the Thuverl-Salan. At the very least when you see Northamptons in the "Zentradi fleet variant reskin" pics it looks like it could be an actual Zentradi ship as opposed to "New Macross With A Bad Rash".

Huh. So I actually have read it, then. Or at least the parts that were in Mecha Press. I suppose those brain cells got re-purposed somewhere along the way

Important setting details relegated to supplementary material? I guess Macross II is more authentically Macross than I thought! The operative word was 'suggesting'. Though the fact that they keep flying around in the bridge (!?) even after the main hull is destroyed, and Ishtar is still all "I believe in the Alus!" doesn't help dispel the lingering Legendary Ship of Legend trappings. Pretty sure it wasn't really workable even then. Exedol seems pretty certain it's a suicide mission even with that knowledge right up until the Grand Cannon opens up. I was just mentioning the behavior of branch fleets when they lose their flagship because someone else said that the YF-24 was sold as designed to do that (among other miracles like retiring last series' toy line making all other existing fighters obsolete).

If you take out the flagship of a branch fleet, the entire branch fleet retreats (usually), thus it's theoretically possible to defeat an entire Main Fleet by destroying as few as 2,000 flagships, resulting in all of their escorts retreating piecemeal...or so Exedol says when they're planning how to fight the Boddole main fleet. The Grand Cannon opening a giant gaping hole in the Boddole defensive line changes their strategy and leaves that theory untested, but presumably that's the basis for the YF-24's advertised capabilities. It wouldn't need any buddies, it could isolate the keystone unit and nullify thousands of ships simply by destroying one. That would be the crux of my tongue-in-cheek comment that it'd only require one of them to defeat an entire Main Fleet. Every thread on the relative capabilities of the various Valkyrie series I've read in the past few years has basically amounted to "They all completely suck compared to this one fighter which has never actually been seen in any show except for like a half-second mention once" I've just taken to assuming that the VF-24 is made of Vibranium, has an Adamantium hull, and is piloted by the second coming of Jesus Jenius. Again, I'm joking. The never-seen-yet-completely-dominating-fighter is just another of the many quirks we accept from Macross as a franchise.

Our heroes did note some sort of battle going on in the distance when they first folded in to the current location of the Boddole Main Fleet. I always just assumed that the subsequent "We're glassing a planet to make a point" was equivalent to a public execution of the Supervision Army personnel on that planet who had just lost that battle. I dunno. Even two years after the fact the dude defending the Factory Satellite was all "Hey Britai! Long time no see!" until Britai started subjecting him to babies and awkward PDA. I think whatever tales of the Boddole Fleet's defeat that get spread around will just give even more weight to the "Don't mess around with micronians" warning that Exedol was advising from the start. I mean, Boddole Zer didn't listen, and now he's dead. Might be best to avoid those lunatics and go see if there's some Supervision Army people over in that other direction that we can shoot at without them snap-chatting us their kissy-face photos.

Reading the subsequent replies to this post I have located and made GIFs of the 'tail fin missiles' incident. The second image being the above mentioned unlikely one-shotting of the Zentradi scout ship. This all appears in SDFM episode 10 between timestamps 18:40 and 19:15.

Hey, I only commented on the difficulties the attacking Zentradi would face. The humans living on Earth are pretty much fraked in that scenario, but afterwards the Zentradi fleet still has to deal with 20+ heavily-armed moon-sized factories and however many happy fun time toys they've managed to spit out since the last annual colony fleet departure in addition to whatever standing defense fleet Earth has (which is presumably pretty impressive). Any way you look at it, it's going to be a bad day all around. I think I'd still rather be there than Zola, though. Joking aside, it's not terribly clear exactly how belligerent the Zentradi are, on average. Going by SDFM, at least, an entire Main Fleet folding in and bombarding out of the blue as their very first move seems out of character. Britai is content to just calmly approach and check things out and see if there's any Supervision Army ships around in the first episode, for instance. Earth actually pre-emptively attacks the Zentradi TWICE before they retaliate, and they can only claim the first was an accident. After that accident, rather than transmit "Oh crap! Sorry! Our bad!" to the approaching Zentradi, Earth decides to nuke reaction-weapon them instead. It's only after this second attack that the Zentradi start shooting back. It's hard to say how the whole thing would have played out if the Macross hadn't been booby-trapped to attack the first Zentradi ship that got too close, but in the TV version it seems like a peaceful first-contact might have been possible. EDIT: Besides, reading through this thread, I'd think a single VF-24 would be more than enough to dispatch a pathetic Zentradi Main Fleet

The second half of the second trailer definitely piqued my interest more than anything else I've seen about this show so far. I'd be giving a watch regardless. Dave Filoni hasn't let me down yet!

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm trying to explain an aspect of the series that really grabbed me when I was 12 or so and has driven my love for it in the 30 years since Yeah, it's essentially completely impossible, especially in the years immediately after the war. Unfortunately, in true Macross fashion most of the information that tells you that is from supplementary material or the movie. When pitching the Humankind Seeding Project to Misa in the final episode, Global just says the Zentradi and Supervision Army are still out there fighting, and that the odds of surviving another encounter are a million to one. This is the first time the futility of the defending Earth had been suggested, with even the narrator a few episodes back suggesting that the Factory Satellite evened up the odds a bit. Misa certainly thinks so, and notes that capturing the Factory Satellite was supposed to fix that problem. That's when Global lays out what I said above: "If we had the military might to resist such an armada, the Earth would become a world that existed only for warfare, just like the once-great Protoculture who in creating their giant Zentradi soldiers destroyed themselves. I want us to spread out to the stars, so that Earth's culture will never disappear." That's the part that always stuck with me. Obviously he knows exactly how screwed they are, but as a 12 year old with no access to supplementary materials, it wasn't readily obvious that he was saying it was truly impossible. I really like the idea that at least part of the drive to disperse was to protect what it means to be human, rather than just protecting the race for the sake of itself. I've always felt like this was the reason that their colonization ships are functional cities where people can actually live and play rather than simple human cargo containers (like Galaxy is implied to be). Even if the latter is more efficient and easier to defend than a giant open atmosphere dome, letting people have lives is more important than military efficiency. Anyway, that's my unsolicited rant on why I love Macross! I'm right there with you on the fiddly bits and trivia and lore. I've spent a completely unhealthy amount of time digging through the M3 site. But the idea that all of that has to be balanced with 'culture', as the Zentradi succinctly put it, is what really sets Macross above the rest for me. One of the reasons Macross II has always felt a little off to me. Not only does it miss the point of the original series, it active contradicts it, what with fortifying Earth instead of spreading out. Also suggesting the Macross itself is a Legendary Ship of Legend instead of a fairly common gunship. I liked the show well enough when it came out, though. The VF-2 with the armor packs and drones is pretty nifty. That abomination that looks like someone bolted four Zentradi command ships to a Macross hull is...interesting. The only other thing I really remember is how bad the dub was. I should try and track down a subtitled version...

Right, with the specific caveat that the military build-up required to actually repel a full-scale Zentradi assault would require so much effort humanity would be unable to do anything else. Maybe they could pull it off, but in doing so they would just become the Zentradi in essence. The only option for humanity to survive and preserve its culture was to disperse. At least that's how I remember it being sold to Misa when she's offered the Megaroad. Global was waxing a bit philosophical there, maybe, but that's how the Seeding Project has stuck in my mind. Of course sixty years and two dozen factory sattelites later I think any Main Fleet that approaches Earth is probably not going to have an easy time of it regardless. They didn't have people running around dressed in clunky transforming ship costumes?! What a travesty!

Oh wow. I knew he was the manager of Fire Bomber America, but I didn't realize the entire fleet was like that too. It's like the writers came up with the details of that fleet specifically to make it an ironic hell for Kaifun. I have to say I approve. I want a Macoss-11 OAV series that's all hot-blooded fighter action and an utterly miserable Kaifun. There was also Basara with his "No fighting only singing!" mentality, though he's why I said 'usually' as well since Basara never really gets shown to be wrong. At least they did show that even he needed military support to keep him alive long enough to keep singing from time to time. But I was also thinking of the reason the entire setting spins out the way it does, with humanity spreading out into the galaxy specifically to avoid becoming overly militarized...but with every single one of those colony fleets having at least one fleet-obliterating superweapon on hand just in case. Did Macross 29 ditch their Battle section somehow? Or just the Gunship? Or otherwise disable the Macross Cannon?

But I thought Kaifun was on Macross 11! The fact that total pacifism is (usually) depicted to be just as stupid as aggressive militarism has always been one of my favorite aspects of Macross as a franchise. Like, yeah, you need to find common ground and make peace...but you still have to be able to defend yourself long enough for that to happen.