SebastianP

What part of "there are 96 missiles countable in the drawing" is counterfactual? Are you seriously attempting to gaslight me? Because that doesn't work. You can, if you zoom in, see all 96 of them yourself. Start with the top layer. Each missile has two delineated endcaps. You can see both endcaps of the first 35 missiles from the back, plus the endcaps (and part of the rest of the missile on one of them) of the remaining five just peeking out from behind the forward frame. That's 40 in the top. Skipping the corner row since it's already counted, you can count another 56 missiles easily identifiable in the vertical side. That's 96. That is not extrapolation anywhere, that is what I *see and can count* in the picture. Ergo, the caption is not accurate to the drawing. Something is wrong. And I'm more willing to believe it's the caption that took some seconds to write, over the drawing that someone spent a few hours on minimum. Second, if the drawing isn't correct, why bother putting it into the book? So, if the drawing *is* correct as presented, it gives me a few options for interpreting it. Either the 96 missiles we can see and count. Or the full 320 that the rest of the drawing is implying. Or somewhere in between. This is all information presented in the book, but its' not written down. So, the DRAWING shows 96 to 320 missiles, depending on interpretation. The CAPTION says 90. That there is a mismatch *at all* lowers the trustworthiness of the book to the point where I am unwilling to give precedence for either number and will hold to my estimate that a Super VF-25 holds somewhere between 200 (because 90 per booster and 15 per shoulder as on the 1/72 model kit is 210) and 700 (because 320 per pod and 20 per shoulder as on the V1 DX super packs is 680). Anything *else* is dishonest, and basically giving precedence to the one source that is most counter-indicated by everything else, given that Chronicle doesn't say either. Oh, and speaking of the Armored pack - none of the visual depictions in the anime or on the toys match the officially given number of 64 per leg. That's another number pulled out of someone's... let's say hat... and stuck in a book that can be verified as wrong by watching the anime and counting what's in there.

I'm very visually inclined, and I didn't read a word of Japanese, so I went straight for the nicely drawn diagram where I could directly count 96 visible missiles, and infer that there were either 176 (assuming a hollow core) or 320 (assuming they were packed solid) per pod, with just the eight layers we can directly see. And *then* I saw the 90 and wondered if the author had even looked at the diagram. So I'll stand by my statement that minimum estimates for the super pack are a couple of hundred missiles total (because there's more than ten missiles in each shoulder launcher) and if the launch pods are packed to the extent that the diagram blatantly suggests, we're looking at well over 650 total for the whole kit, so "nearly 700" is appropriate. Though I should have said "packs" instead of missile pods. Look at the image, and tell me it's not basically saying "there's 320 missiles in this pod".

Having the Super Pack does not equal under-equipped - those booster pods have a couple of hundred missiles between them at the lowest end estimates, and if you trust the diagrams in the Master File, something like seven hundred at max missile load. That's *plenty* of firepower for dealing with anything short of a capital ship that actually approaches you. The Tornado pack specifically exists to test out the feasibility of a heavy energy weapon for dealing with the annoying Vajra adaptive abilities, and since the gun would have sat where the radome goes, it wouldn't have been compatible with the RVF anyway. You might be able to Armor an RVF-25 (the major issues would be the spine armor), but why would you? The armored pack is for getting in up close and personal, which is not what an RVF-25 is supposed to do ever.

Some controversial opinions, in reply to several posts across the last couple of pages (and the last month, so I don't want to bother quoting all of them); 1 - I can't bring myself to watch the original SDF Macross. I watched it as Robotech in the mid 80s, as my second ever anime (though at the time it was just "that cartoon with the actual plot and character death!" which made it stick out like a sore thumb - or maybe a diamond in the bag of coal), and again in the late 1990s when it aired on Scifi and basically reignited my anime fandom. I know I *should*, but the music feels so *wrong*. It's very strange, and I will probably give it a go *sometime*, but it's just hard to let go. (I did watch DYRL though, and it was gorgeous. It's just... not the version of the plot that anything else seems to actually build on,) 2 - Macross Plus might have been better off as the non-Macross movie that Kawamori originally wanted, if I recall correctly. Having seen all of the rest of Macross (even if the original series was in Robotech form) I feel like it's actually Plus which is the outlier that doesn't quite fit, stylistically. It integrates fine plot-wise, but it doesn't *feel* like the rest of Macross. 3 - Technically, Macross 7 is more Macross than any of the other shows or movies, because there more *of* Macross 7 by runtime; and by the time it was finished, it made up roughly *half* of what Macross even was. More, once you add in Encore and Dynamite 7. Saying that Macross 7 does not fit the concept is doing it a great disservice, it more or less codified the concept. All of the other TV shows follow in its footsteps, using elements of the tech, elements of the cosmological worldbuilding, and the whole "let's *properly* weaponize music!" parts. Most of its glaring flaws are in the early parts where they made some really dumb decisions with sound and animation direction - like cutting to the silence of space multiple times in the middle of the songs Fire Bomber were performing and the excessive reuse of certain animation clips in the first episode; and then not having Basara try *anything* except Planet Dance for the next several episodes. There was a whole album worth of Fire Bomber songs already recorded at the start, but only one song gets heard in its entirety (other than the OP and ED songs) for half a dozen episodes IIRC. 4 - Up until the last half of Delta, Zero was the weakest point of the franchise. Sure, spiffy new artstyle, textured 3D variable fighters were an awesome treat; but the plot made little sense, the pacing was weird, and the transition between the last two episodes was weird as heck. Also, the VF-0 looks neat, but makes no sense either design wise (it looks like it came out of the 2030s), or designation-wise (why backtrack to "VF-0"? That was nonsensical, they should have just named it VF-2, but they wouldn't have had the spiffy "Zero" title.) It looks awesome, but I feel there's no substance and barely any relevance to the rest of Macross. 5 - Frontier TV is the best entry into the franchise, because they did basically everything right. Spectacular animation. What little stock footage reuse there was, was difficult to detect as the scenes I *did* detect were reused several episodes apart. The textured VFs looked awesome, and the VF-25 was not just a love-letter to the VF-1 with its similar (if much sleeker) overall configuration, but it also had exactly the right variants and equipment packages to really sell it. The setting hearkened back to both 7 and SDF M with the fleet being harried in space; the tech and worldbuilding obviously built off of 7; and it did the music *right*. As in, perfectly, in all respects. I liked the movies, and they had some even more awesome scenes and redesigns; but the TV-series was all in all the better *Macross*, IMO. 6 - Delta TV was excellent for thirteen episodes and then someone walked off with the script for the rest of it, is what I feel about that whole thing. Maybe it should have ended with Sigur Valens' shields failing and the Windermere leadership taking Hemera's bad breath to the face, though that wouldn't have been very Macross (where the moral is that communication always wins). I did still watch every episode as they came out, but with decreasing urgency. The movies *sort of* fix the problem... but then the second one ends on the biggest downer in the franchise. 7 - I have to admit, I haven't watched a Sunrise mecha series since Build Fighters Try, though I did see the WFM prologue. I don't know if they're up to the task of making a Macross title worthy of the name, because I have no current data. I will watch it though. It took The Last Jedi to sour me on Star Wars, so unless the new installment is worse than that, I'll be watching it.

I think the person you're replying to is commenting on how a bunch of people are going "We want our Macross to be like it *used* to be, without the magic music and the idol singers!" - which is basically what happened with Robotech, which went a grittier route than Macross, so they (the people wanting grittier Macross) should just admit that they don't actually want more Macross (which has had the "music is magic" as part of its mythos since DYRL at least), they want more Robotech. (though preferably Robotech that's actually good). Me, I don't mind any of the music-heavy or even the magic-heavy shows at all, and my worst complaint about Macross 7 was that the songs didn't continue when they cut to the action in the first several episodes, so Mylene's song in episode one was chopped up. Which in turn meant that the only song we got to hear more than bits and pieces of was Planet Dance for several episodes. Anyway, here's to hoping that whatever this new Macross production is, we get a proper model kit line that covers *all* of the mecha. I'm sick and tired of the DX toys that I can't afford being the *only* line which gets even close to a complete lineup. Where's my 1/72 YF-29 from *any* manufacturer? Where's my 1/72 VF-31 Armored? Why did it take nearly 15 years to get a VF-171 in 1/72?

All the people going "they changed it now it sucks" need to remember that the record deal and the music has always been the big money maker for the series. Big West wants music that they can sell and make more big bucks on, hence why they've been picking genres that are currently popular and then going all in on them. Macross Plus may be more popular with western fans than Macross 7, but it was Fire Bomber's songs that basically paid for all of it in the end. Similarly, the VF designs changed because Kawamori became more conscious of toy sales and needing things to be both sturdy and accurate. All of the 2D era VFs are stuck in a position where a toy has to be either anime accurate in robot form, anime accurate in plane form, or some compromise between, because the proportions in the original anime weren't exactly measured. Anyway, my hope for a Sunrise-animated Macross show is that we get some ground combat and destroids again, after not seeing anything new since Macross Frontier's Cheyenne II, which in turn was based on a Macross 0 design rather than any of the old DYRL ones. And *proper databooks*, with figures that make sense from the start and aren't retconned to the point where things no longer fit if you use the official scale. And more Tenjin-designed ships, and not the guy who made the Quarter.

I think the out of universe explanation for Macross 29's attitude is that they had to come up with an in-universe explanation for why there were no space battles in their musical. Basically: "We want to put on a musical. But we can't do mecha battles in a musical unless we do the rubber suit thing, and that'd look bad. How do we explain that why there are no mecha in a Macross fleet so we don't have to show them?" and the explanation was "they don't have any, because they're pacifists". And from there we get malcontent zentraedi who think their warrior traditions are disrespected, an economy that's in the toilet because the largest single customer for locally manufactured goods has been disbanded, and a situation where singing can win the day. In universe, it depends on where they are relative to other fleets how terrible the idea was to do away with the military - on the strategic plane. It's still a terrible idea economically wherever they are, as seen in hindsight, but if they're coasting through mostly explored space that other fleets have already declared safe, then at least it's not suicidally stupid.

For the twin-store in particular, you'll notice that it's pretty much always paired with an UMM-7 micro missile pod, which will stay on the fighter for longer than the RMS-1 missiles. The twin store also seems to be too wide to install on that inboard hardpoint, so you'll never see a VF-1 with four of them. The loadout configurations are confusing. The original VF-1 had two hardpoints under each wing through most of the show, used for the triple-rack AMM-1 missiles. In Episode 24, the Booby Duck, the first iteration of the super pack, is introduced, originally with no stores under the wings (but one angle did show the standard mounting holes for the pylons, interestingly). In Episode 27, the super pack comes back again, this time with three single RMS-1 missiles under each wing. This may or may not be an animation error (among other things the pylons are way short so the missiles look like there's no pylon at all, and the spacing doesn't match anything else), but it was noticed and remembered for later. Then in DYRL, Kawamori has refined the Super Pack and the VF-1, and come up with the UMM-7 micro missile pod. He also went back to just the two pylons, but they're spaced differently, with the inboard one being *more* inboard than previously, and the RMS-1s are carried in twins. Then the years go by, with artbooks and fanbooks and the like abounding, and then Hasegawa gets a license to produce a model kit and they decide to make it capable of doing all the things - which ends up giving you the option of five total locations under each wing to stick a hardpoint. And then the Master File writers decide to explain that the difference between where and how many hardpoints there are is due to different production blocks.

So the question of "why is the Macross 29 fleet disliked" came up on another forum, which got me curious - *is* the Macross 29 fleet actually disliked, canonically? Given that there were only eight performances and no recordings made, there's precious little information to go on, and of the three places I've found in English discussing the actual thing, none of them really says anything about their relationships with other colonies. Macrosswiki and Gubabablog says "they're pacifist, and facing economic trouble", while Decultureshock says "without any form of military to boost its economy [Macross 29] has found itself slipping into a recession". This is in contrast with the usual interpretations and explanations I hear from Western fans who never saw the source: "They're in trouble because other people won't trade with them because they refuse to defend themselves". None of that is mentioned in the summaries made by people who were there. And the "other people won't trade with them or gives them bad deals" take rhymes very poorly with the resolution of the musical, which is "Macross 29 will establish itself as a cultural center by sending their Miss Macross winners on galactic tours and make money off the merchandise". It just sounds like they've had trouble finding something to actually sell abroad for cash to replace their military-industrial complex. So, is there anything in any of the side materials/unofficial books (Master File, etc) that suggests no one likes Macross 29, or is this a figment of the Western fandom where pacifists are considered stupid?

The issue is that I'm trying to figure out what the specs are for a ship (the Stealth Cruiser) where we never got any, and all I have to go on is feature comparison. It's the only methodology I *can* use, but the models aren't built in a way that lets me get an easy answer, which is why I'm irritated about it. Which means that I go with my gut feeling that the internal scale, which matched for four other ships, was correct; and that the cruiser is 316 meters long, its main guns are 80 mm-ish (instead of 72 mm) and it has 40 mm point defense guns instead of 20 mm. As for me not being happy with the official information... will you accept that there is conflict between the features given on the 3D models, the sizes given for those 3D models, and events happening in the anime? Namely, that Rabbit 1 has no way of getting to the deck of the ARMD-L with the elevators we can see, and there is no room to put an elevator that is big enough for Rabbit 1 in any place where it can actually retract into anything, so long as the ship is 472 meters long and the VB-6 is 30 meters? There are three possible resolutions to the conflict: Option 1: the size given for the ship is incorrect, and it is enough larger that the VB-6 actually can launch from it. Option 2: the hangar capacity is incorrect, and the ship only carries those mecha that actually fit in real life - basically only Skull Squadron, no Rabbit 1 and likely no Pixie squad either. Option 3: the specs are all correct, but the 3D model is incorrect to the point where we have no idea what the Quarter really looks like. Given Kawamori's statements about how the shows are dramatizations, Option 2 is likely the "correct" answer, but that still means the specs are wrong and so is the plot. Option 3 is unquantifiable, it invalidates the visuals we have entirely. Option 1 is something I can explore because I have the models and can experiment with them. But the conflict is there, and real, and *something* is off about the official information because all of it cannot be correct at the same time due to inconsistency. I can do similar setups for the other ships where there is inconsistency, like the amazing shrinking Macross Elysion, (I can also see Actual Max Jenius watching the Stargazer episode of Macross 7 and going "that's not how we did it, even I couldn't do that, and that's flat impossible" about the whole "let's launch 30-something large fighters out of the tiny missile launchers on a tiny frigate, instead of using an actual carrier", like one of those "actual fighter pilot reacts to movie" youtube things...)

According to the photos of the toy, all the decals say APS-31/W, rather than having different designations for each part. I haven't found any other info yet, but then I don't have the VF-31 Master File, either version.

Sure, but I couldn't *prove* it before I had the models on hand. Now I do, and now I know for sure. It may have been meant to be "Maizuru". What's written on the actual ship model - both in the anime and in the game - is "MAIDURU". On all of them. Because we see two in the same shot with the name visible in the opening scene of Itsuwari no Utahime, and at least a couple of ships pass by outside the window while Hayate and Freyja are talking before the final battle in Zettai Live, at least one of which has the name visible. And in the game, the "MAIDURU" is baked into the main texture of the ship, rather than being a decal like the hull numbers on the Aether/Hemera or the NUNS logo on the side of the frigate (which was traded for a Xaos logo on some ships in Delta during the muster in episode 10-ish). I'll chalk this up to a weird typo in transliteration that no one ever bothered correcting. When the parts are identical in shape and use the same textures like the point defense guns do, I'm going to assume that they were meant to be the same guns first. And then give up trying to rationalize it and go "the tech specs are useless" even harder. Where? It can't go aft of the two existing main elevators of the ARMD-L, because behind those there's nothing underneath the flight deck as that's where the Quarter sticks its hand for ship mode. It can't go *forward* of those elevators because that's where the hangar is, and a Monster-sized elevator would eat half of it - plus the wings would poke through because the VB-6 is ginormous and the hull is narrow. It can't be the existing elevators because they're physically not large enough. And of course, it's not marked on the flight deck on any version of the Quarter I've found pictures of. The only way to get a VB-6 under the deck of the ARMD-L is if they made a serious typo when statting out the ship and made its overall length into what the overall *height* was supposed to be. At that point the stock elevators are big enough, and the hangar wide enough, and there'll still be room for other aircraft in the hangar.

I've been playing around a little with the ship models that were extracted from the PS3/PSV games, and my conclusion is that scaling the ships by features is not viable since the ships use similar features but at different scales. For example, the NUNS cruiser reuses multiple features from the NUNS frigate, but they're individually scaled differently. There are four ships that all scale to about 400% of the official size as imported in my 3D software - the Battle 21, the Battle 25, the NUNS frigate, and the Maiduru escort carrier (2059 Guantanamo). The NUNS cruiser, if scaled by the same factor that gives me an accurate overall size down to the meter for the other four, comes out to 316 meters long. But I noticed that several features are larger on the cruiser than they ought to be if they're the same ones as on the frigates: If I want to match the size of the main turrets of the cruiser to the size of the 72 mm turrets on the frigate, the entire ship has to be scaled down to 87%, and ends up around 280 meters long. If I want to match the size of the outrigger pods of the cruiser to the size of the outrigger pods of the frigate, the entire ship has to be scaled down to 72%, and the cruiser ends up at 227 meters. If I want to match the size of the point defense turrets that are clustered on the ship, then the entire ship has to be scaled down to 65%, and the cruiser ends up at 208 meters. And the main turrets of the cruiser ends up just a tiny bit larger than the 58 mm beam turrets on the frigate. I've tried to check this against the footage in the anime, but I'm not seeing anywhere that the in-game model proportions differ significantly from the animated model. All of which leads me to the conclusion, again, that the art team did not care if the parts were to scale as long as they looked good. I've also come to the conclusion that the Elysion's size was changed to match the official statement after the fact. If I scale the ship by what we see in episode 2 with the Siegfrieds on the deck of Aether, the Elysion is some 14-1500 meters long in ship form and about as tall in robot form. There are scenes in the movies though that are more to scale with what was stated in interviews ("as tall as Burj Dubai" was the original quote, which was then quantified as 860 meters IIRC?), I really need to go rewatch the episode where Delta have their first space mission to see if the scale was changed more than once. And finally... if the Quarter is sub 500 meters long... where does Rabbit One launch from, because the elevators on the flight deck aren't large enough and I don't think it even fits inside the hull. König Monster is a Monster.

Thank you so much for posting these beautiful beasts! That Thuverl Salan is ginormous, which is appropriate given that they're six or seven hundred meters longer than a Battle Class, Shame you couldn't find the Vajra assets - they're in there, I know because I've killed them in the game, but maybe they're not classed as ships? They might be under monsters or bosses or something given that they're animated characters in a way that the ships aren't. Probably located in the same structures as the Mother Dyaus boss monster.

I'll be patient and wait... Thanks for doing this anyway. It's a shame if the other ships can't be read - Macross 30 had a Thuverl Salan and I think a couple of Vajra ships, as well as the modified frigate and the pirate ship, all of which would be very nice to have as reference material.

I hesitate to ask, because I don't want to sound like I'm begging or anything, but is there any chance you could extract the non-transforming capital ships? Northampton, Uraga, Guantanamo, Stealth Cruiser and Gefion (carrier Northampton from Macross 30) are very very much on my wishlist, and I've been trying to extract the Gefion myself but the tools I was using wouldn't work.

Hmm, those other effects shots match the official scale better, so it's possible. Still very very iffy on the room inside of the ships though. I'll see what things look like once I've corrected the Quarter's scale (I had it as 460-something m)

Thanks for putting together those FBX files, then. The official sizes of the ships are *really* not matching up with the scaling cues on them, or what's shown in the show. I'm going to see if I can put together a little demo. I scaled the Elysion to 900 meters overall like you did in your comparison, and then put a correctly scaled VF-31E with super packs from Uta Macross at the aircraft elevators on the Hemera. That... does not fit. Those elevators would be unable to carry a VF-31 from the hangar to the deck because they're not big enough. Same with the jet blast deflectors, they're way too small, and the spacing between the catapult tracks does not work either. This is what the elevators look like with the Elysion at 1450 meters overall length, Notice how the elevators are now big enough to handle the aircraft... And, the Jet Blast Deflectors are now large enough to work. Sort of. On the Quarter, the elevators are large enough to handle the fighters from the start with an overall ship length of 400 meters, but there's not enough room inside the hull to store the fighters. Seriously, I don't think the four fighters of Skull Squadron fit inside the amount of space available in that hull, let alone the scenes we got in the show and the movie where there a dozen fighters with space in between. The hull just isn't wide enough, because the whole carrier is only 215 meters overall, and that's counting the extension of the angled flight deck at the back. (I think there's also an issue with the bridge if the Elysion is just 900 meters in ship form, as I don't think it'll be tall and wide enough...)

OK, so lots of questions, but the most important: 1 - Where did this Koenig Monster come from, because I can't find it in the Uta Macross rips that were posted on Reddit 2 - Is there an Armored VF-25 in your stash somewhere (also missing from the Uta Macross rips) 3 - (Not entirely seriously) Where does this ginormous hangar fit inside of the Macross Quarter if it's only 400 meters overall? (two Super VF-25s barely fit side by side on the flight deck...) Also, compared to the Battle Frontier and the Macross Quarter, the Macross Elysion model feels kind of lackluster. All of the turrets are missing etc from the OBJ version. But it's much, much better than having *nothing* to work with. (Edit: The FBX version of the Elysion worked much better, all the colors in the right places and all the turrets are there).

Part of that may have to do with Covid, and part with a move towards doing more things through P-bandai (which may also be because covid.) We've gotten 8 retail-release MG kits over the past three years (3 in 2020, 3 in 2021, and 2 in 2022), but the year before that (2019) we got seven. Also, Bandai is building a new factory that'll be online in the next couple of years. Anyway, what would count as an MG for Macross? Transforming 1/72 kits?

I would imagine there's also a bit of "you'd need to design the airframe around the weapon" involved as well. In real life, conformal carriage of missiles has hung on for quite some time, with even some of the new Asian indigenous 5-th gen fighters sporting conformal missiles rather than internal bays in the public concept art, but real fighter aircraft have relatively large flat undersurfaces which don't have to break apart in order to transform into a robot. There's very few places in the later designs that would allow conformal carriage of missiles because the good surfaces to put them on would separate during transformation. The VF-4 appears to be an evolutionary dead end, given how few of its major features seem to have carried over to future fighters - no conformal missile carriage, no big built-in beam guns, no apparent re-use of the transformation schema, etc; compared to the Stonewell Belcomm/Shinsei lineage which has kept most of the primary features all the way into the 2060s and mostly added to them rather than discarding features wholesale. I kind of wonder whether Kawamori *decided* it was a dead end and abandoned it, or if he was forced to do so because of the constraints imposed by the conformal missile system. (one out-of-universe version might be the difficulty of animation consistency. If you launch an externally carried missile in one shot, it should still be missing in following shots, otherwise you end up with people helpfully pointing out all your animation glitches; magically respawning missiles would be a big obvious. Especially with the low total count that the VF-4 has. You really can't do an Itano Circus more than once per sortie with only twelve externally carried missiles to use, and then you have to remember to animate the fighters as not having any missiles left. With the indeterminate capacity enclosed micro-missile launchers, the animators can be much more carefree.)

Note that it's the flagship of the Brisingr Cluster division of Xaos, not the flagship of the *entirety* of the Xaos PMC. I'm sort of assuming that the other ships (Megasion and Grasion in Passionate Walkure, and the Gigasion & Co from Zettai Live, are outside reinforcements from Xaos' HQ or neighboring regions. A whole Macross for each inhabited planet does not match what we see in either the show or the movies given that if there was a Macross on planet during the takeovers, we should have seen some of them be taken over on the ground or in space prior to the movie battle where it actually happened. (We know that Xaos was doing anti-VAR stuff under contract on Planet Pipré in Macross E, but I don't know where that even was - Wikia says it was in the Brisingr Cluster, but the manga scanslation doesn't appear to say any such thing. As you noted, Xaos is HQ'ed on Earth and ought to be pretty much everywhere, so them having a large fleet of ships unfortunately spread out so they missed the first big event, but already moving so they're in time for the second isn't *entirely* silly).

Yes, to the point where I think they basically re-drew it according to the old line art.

More than that, even. This is from when Max gives the order to move into the Alfheim super gate to get to Windermere. All of the large symbols are marked "Macross-class", and there are twelve of them in the readout. Note that since the ship icons go all the way out to the edge of the display this isn't guaranteed to be all of them, indeed the one shot where we have multiple icons for something where we *know* the display isn't cropped is during the conference call during the fleet muster, where eighteen people dressed just like Max, hat and all, are present by video. One of the shots from that scene shows the entire bridge area from the outside so we can count the portraits accurately.. This sort of matches the action footage - while the greatest number seen on screen at any one time is eight, there's a few scenes where the camera jumps from "Gigasion with half a dozen ships in the background from one angle" to "Gigasion with half a dozen or so ships in the background from nearly the opposite angle". In other words, at least twelve, and possibly as many as nineteen of these things were present for the Second Battle of Windermere (movie version), plus the at least two which definitely weren't present due to having been destroyed or damaged in the previous movie. Note that the Ragna Branch having to take on Windermere alone in the TV series may be because Xaos was spread out too far or something along those lines - I don't think they work exclusively in the Brisingr cluster and they may have had some travel time involved that made them late to the party... (or more likely, they didn't have the budge to animate them.) (Note that this is not really the first time where a previously unique ship gains a whole class worth of sisters for the final climactic showdown out of nowhere - there were *plenty* of Quarters shooting at the Vajra queen in Sayonara no Tsubasa, not just the three that we got better pictures of in the magazine articles).

All of the Starscream toys from the original 1984 one onwards were unarticulated bricks... until 2006, when they actually released two different versions of it with actual elbows and leg articulation. And guess who's name is on the more convincing version? (Note that Kawamori was involved in the Diaclone designs from which Transformers stem in the 1980s, and is apparently one of the designers that made "Battle Convoy", aka G1 Optimus Prime.)