Prime

I knew it was popular, but I didn't realize it was that popular...

I don't see how any of what you just said makes it supernatural. Everything is explained in terms of natural laws. The Zentraedi, whether alien or not, still exist and function on the set of natural laws in the universe. They do not require anything beyond natural laws to exist that would make them supernatural. The same with music's affect on them. Their reaction can be explained using natural laws of psychology/physiology, and thus it is not supernatural. Good point. To be honest, this is a good discussion because it is forcing me to examine Zero a bit closer. Going in I didn't like Macross 7, and in the end I liked Zero a lot. For one reason or another, Zero just "worked" for me. I am thinking I feel that way because for me at least the presence of the Protoculture makes things more feasible to me. The AFOS certainly stands out as a bizarre thing in the Macross universe. But it is made much more real and acceptable to me because of the direct tie ins to the original series and the Macross itself (the main gun and anti-gravity generators mentioned earlier). That and the fact that the Protoculture have been a part of the Macross story from the beginning. Because of this connection to the original series, I seem to be much more willing to accept its presence and affects in Zero. And it indeed does come down to "Protoculture technology and stuff" because the fact is there isn't really much else to go one. Kawamori has never been one to fill in the details. Like I said earlier, I don't think my problem with M7 is the concept of spiritia so much, but the fact that it leads to Valkyries flown by musical instruments and a guy I don't like singing the same song over and over. I guess I see it as all a product of Protoculture technology because to this point I haven't come up with a better theory, as opposed to it being blatently obvious. From the impressions I got from there series, there are three possibilities as I see it. The first is the one we've discussed where the AFOS has an affect on the Mayan people and the events in that area. The second is that Sara and Nora are different from other humans (genetically or otherwise) as a result of the tampering by the Protoculture long ago. Perhaps because of this they have powers beyond normal humans as seen in the show. The third possibility is some combination of the two. Perhaps the AFOS can only interact with Sara and potentially Mao, and it enhances their latent powers. Personally, I tend to think either 1 or 3 is the most likely. But that being said, IIRC Aries had mentioned that Hasford had a theory that once upon a time humans could make rocks float. But in the end, it all comes down to the Protoculture. Indeed. There is nothing in the original series that is greatly outside the standards of science fiction. Also, these concepts are introduced at the beginning of the series and are used to establish the rules and concepts the series will use going forward. I agree completely. The viewer will base the realism on the set of rules and conventions and base their suspension of disbelief on those rules. That is why someone can enjoy Star Wars and accept the concepts within it, and still not like the supernatural aspects of Zero and M7. Although I enjoyed Zero, the supernatural aspects of the show certainly are a stretch, and I find them too much in M7. And I can certainly see why many Macross fans do not like the show because of it. I had a problem with it in the first few episodes, when there were times when I was saying "WTF?" But I think Zero succeeds in grounding these aspects, albeit after the fact, by tying the AFOS and and the floating ships and such back to the Protoculture and the familiar concepts from the first series to show that it is indeed a machine that is in part comparable to the Macross or parts thereof. Once this connection was made, I could resolve my suspention of disbelief and allow it to be explained as the AFOS/Protoculture allow these events to be possible, even if I don't completely understand the mechanisms. To take that point one step further, I think people could accept a movie about a godfather and demons if the premise and concepts for the story were set up from the beginning.

I don't think Minmay's affect on the Zentraedi is considered supernatural or unscientific. Now there may be information about this from Kowamori that states the contrary, but the impression I get is that it is more of a psychological affect. The affects of culture shock is a real concept. In this case it was not just two cultures colliding and the Zentraedi being adversely affected. The fact that they had no culture to speak of and were specifically engineered/altered/programmed to avoid such cultures made the affects of that shock so much more pronounced. They were completely horrified by the coexistance of males and females, which had nothing to do with singing. So I think it was Earth's culture as a whole that blew the Zentraedi's minds, and singing is just one of the more powerful aspects of that culture. I don't believe there was any indication that it was because of some supernatural/magic power of singing. The point is, the events seen in Macross are easily explained without the presence of the supernatural, and culture shock is a very scientific concept. And the extreme shock the Zentraedi displayed is perfectly reasonable considering their background. That is the way I took it as well. Since humans were altered by the Protoculture to presumably be more like them, it makes sense that one of their machines would be able to operate under our control. Or it was designed to eventually be compatible with us as we evolved. It also makes sense that Protoculture technology would seem magical to humans, considering how far advaced they were. It is like what ancient humans might think of cars and planes. Those would seem supernatural to them. And no doubt they would explain such things in terms of gods and religion and so on. Well, I think the term "magic" is used for a lack of a better one to discribe the flying rocks and the like that occures in Zero. For me I found Zero ties in very well with the TV series and DYRL, because all the fantastic stuff we see is based on the Protoculture and their machines. It also shows how it relates to some of the technology we see in the original series (anti-gravity devices, the main gun, similar blood, etc.). This is one of the reasons why I think Zero works and M7 doesn't. I'm no expert, but I'll take a stab at these from my impressions of the show. I'd be interested to hear what others think... Like I said above, I get the impression that the Protoculture machine was able to accept input from humans either because they made us more like them, or it was the machine's purpose to accept input from humans. I can remember this happening, but I can't quite remember if she was in the AFOS by this point or not. If she wasn't perhaps the AFOS can operate and somehow enhance the abilities of someone like the priestess (who has the same bloodtype to show a connection) without physical contact. This may also be explained by the above. Perhaps she had these abilities because she had the genetic connection to it (the blood) and the AFOS was in a reasonably close proximity. I'd be interested to learn if she had the same abilites on the other side of the planet away from the AFOS. I'm not sure about that one. I kind of get the impression that that was in Shin's head. Perhaps relayed through the AFOS? Again, I don't remember enough about M7, so I will leave that to someone else.

Thank goodness he got out safely...

Hmmm. And here I thought that phrase only got applied to Lucas...

For me anyway, it isn't the concepts themselves that bother me so much. It is more the extreme transition from the science fiction base of Macross and Plus to M7. But probably more importantly, I really didn't like the implementation (characters, visuals, dialog, etc.) of the series as when as the new "magic" elements. I don't think that is necessarily because I am North American. Maybe I don't like the J-pop because of that, but there are certainly lots of other fantasy-ish stories that I love that are probably just as wierd as M7. I haven't seen that series so I can't really comment on that. True. Many times Lucas has mentioned that he borrowed a lot from Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress."

No.

I'm looking forward to it.

Kick ass!!

It may be a mature attitude, but kids shows like Care Bears also have a "fighting is bad" message. It is certainly not something that is unique to Macross, and it certainly isn't beyond the storylines/themes of shows aimed at children.

That pretty much sums it up for me. Although I really don't have a big problem with the spiritia in itself. I just found Macross 7's heavily repeated J-pop songs, and some bizarre looking and acting characters and Valkyries to be too much of a deviation from the original Macross and Plus that got me into the series in the first place. I like those ones because of the sense of "realism" that they establish at the beginning. Just my take...

Very true. I really enjoyed Macross Zero, and after a second viewing I found the "magical" (for lack of a better term) much more acceptable. I didn't like Macross 7 at all. Since it is used as part of the Protoculture story elements, it made more sense to me at least. I think Kawamori did a better job of tying those things into "reality." Just things like the scientists looking at the AFOS and comparing systems to the Macross. Because of this, the whole floating ships and such made more sense in terms of the "science." The Protoculture was so far advanced it can only seem like magic to humankind. Obviously other's milage may very, but I think that the show makes the magic stuff as real as possible. And I come from the "don't like magic in Macross" camp.

IIRC it was more like 40 years beforehand...

Those huge cannons seem like they would really restrict the pilot's vision...

I know what you are saying, but I think there is a link in the sense that we learn more about the Protoculture, which does link it to the original series...

Whoever is piloting that Valkyrie must be drunk. So I guess that means it's Focker...

Curse my inability to express myself with the written word! As for M7, I just thought the dude with the wings was pretty funny looking.

I was using the term "magic" in jest, since as you point out there have been debates about it already.

Transforming planes/robots + music + magic + baked Hory Froating Head = Macross

Man, that site is one of the sorriest ripoffs I've ever seen... no wonder is robotech... they even named one valk "Kawamori"... what kind of vermin made such crap? it's one of the things that truely makes me happy I'm on the macross side, it's the true side, not that turd and complete ripoff of designs that never had anything to do with that POS we all know.... Robosh.it. I wonder if the guys who made that site have any soul... what a lame excuse of a site is that... Don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.

I just got Battlecry a little while ago and I'm one of those who like it quite a bit. I had heard that many people (especially around here) didn't like the game very much, so I guess I went in with low expectations. But in the end I was pleasantly surprised, and found that it provided a fun experience despite its flaws. On the good side, all the versions of the VF-1 are included as well as one custom one. It is nice having all the different paint schemes, which include most of the famous ones from the show. Flying around in a VF-1S with Skull 1 colours is a lot of fun. IMO it does a pretty good job of providing an arcade experience of flying a Valkyrie. Especially the air/space missions were fun for just flying around and blowing stuff up (like in the Party Crashers mission). The franetic pace of battles from the show are captured well. There is a bit of a learning curve, but overall I found the controls to be pretty good and they soon become second nature, as is switching between modes. Also the "HUD" is pretty simple and straight foward and doesn't overwhelm you with information like Macross VO did for me. I like the cell shaded look a lot and it made the game look like the show, although I may be in the minority. You will have to decide for yourself if a real-life looking game is important to you. There are tons of missions, and lots of things to unlock like medals, VFs, bonus versus missions, and paint schemes. So as far as content goes, there is a lot there. I found the animations of the Valkyries to be very well done, and in the XBox version at least they were very smooth. The animations for the other mecha like destroids and pods seem adequate at least, and aren't particularly noticable either way due to the frantic pace of the game. On the down side, the biggest complaint I had was the real seperation between the air and ground missions. The artifical ceiling is pretty annoying and more or less eliminates fighter mode in most ground missions. There are also invisible walls where in some cases you'll turn to go down a street and you find you can't. Why not just put a wall there? Like others have said the difficulty of the missions varies wildly with no descernable order. Personally I found the ground missions to often be tougher than the air missions, but this might be because most escort missions tended to be on the ground. It would have been nice if there was an option to skip a couple of missions, so that you wouldn't get stuck if you couldn't complete a certain one. And yes, the Valkyrie is missing its wings in battroid mode, but I hadn't noticed this until someone pointed it out to me. As for the story, of course it would have been nice if it was Macross, but it is also nice to have a game in English. Really the story is fairly neglegable and only serves to bridge the missions together. So it is quite easy to imagine that you are in the Macross universe. Besides, my first introduction was through Robotech and I liked it as a kid, so the trip down memory lane wasn't all bad to me. I think it is worth making a few points about the difficulty of certain missions. There are certain things to remember that can make life much easier. A lot of missions have tricks. For example, with escort missions usually only certain units go for your protectee. In aerial ones, only fighter pods attack the target and the rest go after you. In ground missions, only pods go after the target and things like the male power armour and fighter pods go after you. So if you can prioritize your targets it makes it much easier to complete these types of missions. Other missions have tricks that could almost be considered glitches. Many people complain about the Cat's Eye mission, but if you just fly around it releasing flares/chaff, you can complete the mission without firing a single shot. Also, I find that the different modes can be more useful than people give them credit for. Often people complain that battroid is useless in aerial missions. I don't find this at all. It is very useful when an enemy flies by at close range. In this case you can quickly switch to battroid, turn quickly, and blast them with the gunpod. However, it is important to remember that by default the battroid hovers in the air. Thus it is very important to hit the boosters so that you move around, otherwise you will get blasted. Whew, I wrote way more than I intended. So in a nutshell, I think the game is a bargain at $10.

I didn't say that Isamu was the only one that looked like a bobblehead.

Sorry I thought you were saying that certain parts of Macross were not official in terms of not being sanctioned by Kowamori. But in any event...what Keith said.

They needed some place to put their guitars? j/k

Indeed. In some shots he looks like a bobblehead.