ewilen

Shin is right if you're asking about a 1-1 fight. The Apache would be a sitting duck against almost any modern fighter jet. As for doing the job the Apache is designed for, i.e., ground attack...I'd still take a Hornet in a high-threat environment. Just look at how badly the Apaches suffered when they assaulted Iraqi ground forces south of Baghdad. Helicopters are probably okay for anti-guerilla operations where you don't know exactly where the enemy is and you want to patrol around looking for him. However, the Black Hawk is probably more suited to this role, and the Marines, who fight on the ground but have access to both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, use the Cobra, not the Apache, along with the Hornet and the Harrier jump jet. The Army is forced by law to rely on the Air Force for fixed-wing support, so although they'd probably like to fly A-10's in a tank-buster role against massed enemy forces (and probably wouldn't mind getting their hands on some AC-130's), they're stuck with Apaches.

With a few exceptions, this little diversion has been surprisingly free of passion. But it's still a diversion. If you can't discuss M7 without bringing Iraq into it, you you need to read some books, or at least sit down with the History Channel for a while.

Is that Akuyaku tank from an anime or manga, or just a one-off that Miyazaki came up with? I found other pics on the net which show that the figures are anthropomorphic pigs (shades of Porco Rosso, but I know there aren't any pig people in that one other than the main character).

Strongly disagree with some of the recent nominations, but I won't dwell on that. I will contribute something that I saw blessedly little of, but still hate with a passion: anything with a title consisting of a classic group of characters, plus the word "Babies" or "Baby". The only ones I'm aware of are "Muppet Babies" and "Baby Looney Tunes". If there are any others...well, I'd rather not know.

Looks nice. I'll need to compare it to an unmodified one to see the changes, other than the obvious addition of missile launchers and painting over the window. Someday, I'd like to repaint my Glaug and Regult to make them more correct. (BTW, what you've got is a Regult, not a Glaug. Glaug is the officer's pod that Kamjin--Khyron in RT--pilots.)

I've rarely watched something which I didn't like long enough to actively detest it. I suppose it has to have something about it that that makes you really want to like it so that you keep coming back for more punishment. In my case, Land of the Lost is that rare kind of show. I can't even remember the whole deal but what it had going for/against it... A dorky family gets lost during a camping trip... and ends up in a prehistoric world with fairly well-done stop-motion dinosaurs...now we're talking but let's face it, the family is really dorky...I can't remember if there was a good looking daughter... however, there are also these mysterious pylons and Sleestax critters...cool but then there's some sort of stupid monkey-boy running around...and instead of driving him off with torches, the dorky family adopts him... Yuck.

Toy? No, unless you count Kishimoto's customs... Model, yes--yellow submarine (non-variable).

I think it would and I don't need to go ask. If other Macross couldn't get in Models, DVDs, Tapes, and CDs of M+, MII, and even M7 would not be available. The big problem was a lack of customers. Hard to understand what you're saying here, but if you did go to the thread, you'd learn that M+ and MII made it over before HG starting trying to monopolize the Macross market in the US. M7 has never been legally distributed in the US (although the reasons are somewhat more complicated than just HG). Ever since HG blocked the sale of the M+ Valk toys, they have been successful in keeping any and all subsequent Macross products from licensed US distribution. (Largely world distribution, too--sole exception was M7 Trash, distributed in some European countries.) Macross Plus has less to do with SDF Macross than any reanimation would. So if HG can block M+ toys, there's every reason to believe that they could block stuff associated with a reanimation or remake of the original series. (Note that I'm not arguing that HG's blockade is correct, fair, or legal. Merely that it's been successful so far.) The real proof of whether HG can continue its blockade will be whether M0 makes it to the States. Again, if you'd like to continue this line of discussion, let's take it to the licensing debate thread. Edit: Clarity.

Good luck, Shin. I just think that in the long run, this thread will become so unwieldy that newbies aren't going to be able to find the answers they're looking for. If you use Netscape (not sure about other browsers), there's a built-in tool which will let you create functional web pages more or less the same way you'd use a page layout program or a word processor. Then you could just update as necessary and put a link to your page in your sig or something.

So Hasbro now owns both "Go-Bots" and "Transformers"? That Aero-bot is cool. Somebody ought to tell Datterboy.

Oh, for pictures, the main page MW is pretty good, combined with Valkyrie Factory, even though both are a little behind the times. The reason a web page is better than a FAQ thread is that the FAQ thread just gets longer and longer. If you could search a specific thread, that would be okay, but you can't.

You'd be better off creating a web page somewhere with your FAQ. That, or maintain a pinned thread that nobody can post to except for you, like boinger has with the pinned imacross thread, and edit the main post. There are a couple of technologies for doing this sort of thing collaboratively--faq-o-matic and Wiki.

Just for the heck of it... A 1/48 scale SDF-1 would be about 25 meters (83 feet) long. A modern tractor-trailer is about 60 feet long. Get building, Yamato...

More pics here, in the Products:Vehicles section. The arms go under the nose in jet form, and the legs fold back like a Valk. I notice that in your pic, it even has a circle-bar vernier.

No, I don't need to see the entire background of the Macross universe animated in boring detail. We know most of these facts well enough; presenting them in a straight narrative fashion would just be a tedious rehashing if there isn't a good tale to tell. That isn't to say I wouldn't mind exploring them in other ways--e.g., in the course of an anime where the UN Spacy contacts the Supervision Army. For your needs, I think some sort of print encyclopedia would be a more useful presentation. But as has been made clear over the course of several threads, it's doubtful that Kawamori is really all that interested in building a complete, consistent, detailed "world", unlike Tolkien (unfortunately) or Lucas (fortunately). Nope, reanimating Macross will not help with the HG embargo. If it did, then HG would not have been able to block the Macross Plus toys. (If you have questions about this, please read the licensing thread and/or post there.)

Well, I'm really in the middle here. I do think M7 handles its material in a way that most viewers would see as less "mature" or "serious" than other science fiction and fantasy--no matter that the underlying premises are no more or less plausible. But by the same coin, the premises themselves aren't the problem. Having seen 80% of M0 and about 55% of M7, I see M0 as being in the same vein, though with a more mature sensibility. Sort of the way that you might see DYRL as more mature than SDF Macross in many ways. I know that there are also people who hate M7 and M0...but I'll bet you could also take a fairly detailed outline of M7 and adapt it into a "mature" movie that would please many of the biggest M7 detractors without significantly altering the story or premises.

Pfft. Wussie Yes, well I doubt you can do better.

Although Grenade Box Protector is often cited, I don't think there's an official answer.

[Minor spoilers follow.] I agree with some of the answers that have been provided but I'll put it in my own words. In no way whatsoever is it goofy within the context of M7. In M7, singing works, so it's the right thing to do. But in terms of viewer sensibilities (this viewer anyway), it's somewhat goofy both in concept and in execution. That doesn't mean I hate it, though. Trying to stop a war in the middle of the action by singing at the combatants is crazy in any real world instance, unless you're determined to be a martyr. In the science fiction world of SDF Macross, it's not crazy because there was a demonstrated culture shock reaction that you could count on (not to mention, you're desperate). In M7, it's not crazy both because of the prior experience of Space War One, and because you increasingly learn about certain effects of singing which have hitherto been unknown to science. Whether those explanations are sufficient for accepting the fictional presentation of singing to stop a war depend on the individual viewer's reaction to the concept and its treatment. My impression from what I've seen so far is that Basara is pretty much acting on faith and idealism for the first third or so of the series. If I saw someone acting like him in real life--let's use an historical case to avoid political discussion--by flying around in 1943 the Eastern Front in Sturmovik equipped with speakers, I'd think he's a nut and I'd expect him to be dead very soon. But in anime I'm willing to cut him some slack and go with the flow. Later it turns out that there's a "scientific" explanation for the success of his tactic. This is also really far out...although it's hard to say why one science-fictional/supernatural concept is necessarily more "acceptable" than another. It may depend on cultural conditioning, or familiarity from other fiction. Nevertheless, I can deal with it (some parts better than others--e.g., I think the effects on the bad guys are more reasonable than the use of Dr. Chiba's gizmo to locate City 7 over vast distances in space). Anyway, I'd like to write more but a very important person of the opposite sex is calling me to dinner...

That's what I meant, the FPS games you listed don't come with transforming mecha stock, coded in already. So yeah, it'd be a serious mod project do to that, and pull it off even remotely well. Still, that is something I'd enjoy seeing, but based more on Halo that Half-Life. Cyclone special forces taking on Covenant Elites... THAT would be fun I'm pretty behind the times on computer games but it seems to me that if you have a game that lets you interact with vehicles, all you have to do is define "transforming" in terms of mounting/unmounting from a vehicle that's spawned/unspawned on the fly. The animation may be ugly/missing, but beyond that you'd just have to define how the two modes work in game terms.

Boy, that's a lot of rice and exotic fruit. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that certain members of the EU (esp. France) have tended to try to protect fruit growers in Africa, against the wishes of consumers who like bananas from Latin America..and I'm guessing mango/guava/jackfruit/durian from SE Asia.

Probably this one: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=10607

Do you mean a computer/console RPG, or a pencil & paper-type RPG? Because the latter's been done. http://members.optusnet.com.au/~cyc01/rpg.htm

Do canards (or at least the canards+delta config) have any effect on ability to land on a carrier? I'm just fishing for some rational reason why the Navy might have nixed the JSF proposal mentioned by Knight26. Edit: BTW, nice sketches, Shin.

This is a FAQ/newbie question. You might try using the search feature, where you'll find a lot of previous discussion. Anyway, Kawamori has said in interviews/panels that the Megaroad SDF-2 lost contact with Earth. This is the official story as noted in the Chronology (2016). Kawamori stated this at least as early as 1998. Among the real-world reasons that have been cited include Kawamori's disinterest in rehashing old characters, the death of the voice actor for Hikaru, and the desire of Minmei's VA to avoid getting pigeonholed in the role. You might also check out these threads: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=9209 http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=2681 http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=1778