Mark Nguyen

To Ozma - dude, Fire Bomber had their last live concert twelve YEARS ago. Get over it! Mark

Thing is though, this MAY have been retconned, as the opening CG graphic suggests that it was a Megaroad. The information that Eden was colonized by a short range, non-huge expedition is ONE reference in print, published almost fifteen years ago. The more recent reference is seen directly in animation, and it's what more people will accept as "true" as a result. While not absolutely concrete, an on-screen reference is usually enough to be more "canon" than a print reference. Mark

Dude, you're missing some of the very best episodes. Especially #44. :) Mark

You might say the same thing of Battle Galaxy, which seems to have large spine off its "back" which don't look like guns. Anyway, I think the reason Frontier can't communicate instantly with earth is its greater distance away than M7 was, or a combination of that with a greater number of fold fault which might be in the way. As for the Einstein, I still don't buy it. the separate "diamond" shapes on these blue ships don't at all resemble the arrangement of the M7 Einstein's engine block, and viewed from behind they wouldn't even be that distinct. While a degree of artistic liberty has been seen in all the designs of Frontier that were ported in from other series, in this case I believe it's too far off to be the Einstein design. I maintain that it must be a different ship altogether. From M3: http://www.new-un-spacy.com/macross7/einst...instein-aft.gif Mark

I don't think the two "Einsteins" in the Macross 11 shot are them at all; rather, I think they're the Stargazer type ships we see in the screencaps lower down, flying away from us. The scaling might be off, but they are not the single diamond shaped blocks we know the Einstein class to be. If not Stargaze/Bolongese, they could be some other small ship. Mark

Screencap? Mark

True, but most seem to think that those ships were "older" type colony ships or smaller ones simply built to have those classes of ships as the dedicated escort. Also, the ONE shot we have of the Macross 5 colony fleet landing on planet Rax shows the ships attached to the City domes in the background to be proportionately just as long as Battle 5, not the relatively stubby Uraga carriers. Then, there's the one shot of the Macross 1 fleet, which more explicitly shows multiple NMCs. Mark

I'm with Bullet on this one. The VF-19/22 were probably never meant to be a "grunt" fighter; in Macross Plus, there is dialogue to support its use as a spec ops or surgical strike fighter at the tactical level, while explicitly NOT carrying reaction weaponry. In closest terms, its the next "big thing" VF for the military, liek the F-15 is now and the F-22 eventually will be. The 171 was pretty clearly the next general purpose fighter that's cheaper to produce with lower specs than Super Nova, by design; if the military were to equip all its fighter squadrons with VF-19s, it'd be bankrupt while having the coolest toys. Hence, the equivalent of the F-16 Falcon, the 171. Frontier may not have been equipped with an "elite" fighter as it's a colony fleet and not a military fleet; the 171s were multipurpose but tasked principally with keeping the colony safe,not going out there to destroy military targets. If NUNS had sent in military reinforcements, we could have been lucky enough to see wha thtey have, instead of the underpowered but cheap 171s. What I don't agree with is the idea that there were lots of 17 pilots already trained. While they share the same shape and I'm sure a few of the components, I see the 171 as an evolution akin to the SUper Hornets the Navy uses. They only LOOK like the older Hornets, but are pretty much a whole new plane. Mark

Nuts to that - I like admiring my Valkyries from close up! What mechahead hasn't poked themselves in the eye with a gun pod form one of their figures, hmm? I don't think the 171 was an outgrowth of a mass-produced 17; the "teal" planes from MD7 were never referenced as being for CF use. Just because we saw several of them flying in formation in the Macross 7 fleet, and several more stolen examples of the plane, doesn't mean that EVERYONE's got 'em. Rather, it's probably a still-very-expensive plane that had been licensed for export to other nations / independents, much as the F-15 has turned up in limited number in the IAF and JASDF. Some years later when the need for a cheaper replacement for the Thunderbolt arose, the 171 probably took advantage of the 17s's export sales record and uber-cool look. Add to it optimization for certain new technologies like fold boosters and EX-Gear, and you have a vehicle just as good as the VF-11 to take on those pesky Zentradi leftovers and wierd big bugs of today's colonization fleets. Mark

Anyone wonder what happened to the Dulfim? The orange Macross Galaxy ship? After all they went through to save her, the ship and crew were first placed "under quarantine" and subsequently disappeared... It was a pretty cool looking ship, but it hasn't shown up since episode 8 or 9... Mark

Woo! The codec update worked just fine. Still doesn't work that well on my desktop, but it's the laptop that's hooked up to the HDTV. Thanks all! mark

And I've been having real problems playing the GG MKVs on my unit - it slows up and chokes during the action scenes, etc. Even on VLC or MP Classic, and I'm playing it on a 2G RAM Acer laptop with an ATI X1600 card. I'm not a big fan of converting stuff just so I can watch it - is there anything I can do t make the MKVs play more smoothly? Mark

The purpose of transformation has been nebulous at best since the first Macross. I tend to buy the notion that Attacker mode will allow the main cannon to traverse and hit targets faster, without moving the entire ship to do so. However, there would be many more efficient ways of doing so withouth changing your ship to look like a giant robot. In THEORY, Attacker mode would allow more weapons to be trained on a given target due to increased cross sectional area presented to the enemy; this may have some tactical value, but again I think there would be better ways to do this than transfoming a ship. Honestly, the REAL reason is and remains that IT JUST LOOKS COOL. Now, if only someone could explain the use of five-fingered HANDS on the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder? Are there really big buttons or keyboards out there to justify them? What use are enormous opposable thumbs when there's nothing that big to really pick up and hold precisely? Mark

Not sure about that... Battle 7 has destroyed myltiple vessels on multiple occaisions, and Battle Frontier seems to have roughly that ability (plus a nifty drop-down feature which IMO allows them to traverse the Macross cannon beam without turning the whole ship in carrier mode). Other than that, Frontier only looks like it has additional antiship beam weapons mounted in turrets, not unlike Quarter but in larger numbers on the shoulders. If she has smaller AA weapons and missiles, they're too small to see so far (as they would doubtless be on Battle 7 or even Quarter). Mark

I'm sure one will show up before long. It's really fun to see such variety in the NMC class designs, especially contrasted to the old SDF-01 clones that pop up on backwater planets. This one certainly fits into the "mean-looking" class of NMC, as was Macross-13. One wonders if Quarter will be able to take it out, if indeed that's the way the plot it going? Mark

I'd not be surprised if the 14s were upgraded with SOMETHING. In "real life", all Tomcats were retired in 2006. I can easily see this date being extended due to the global conflicts that continued as a result of ASS-1, or even that the Tomcats were brought OUT of mothballs and upgraded when the UN / US Navy ran out of Hornets and Super Hornets due to wartime attrition. Hell, for all we know Shinn and company were flying old clunkers simply because there wasn't anything else! Everyone I've read who's flown a Tomcat can attest to its speed and handling being a joy, but no match to the Air Force's planes. And from a purely maintenance perspective, I know from a friend of mine who works on a Hornet squadron that back in the day, typically by the time a Tomcat crew was finished their maintenance, everyone from the Hornet crews were already polishing off their second round at the bar. That was mainly because of the complexity of the swing wings on an F-14 - one can only imagine the maintenance nightmare that a variable fighter must be! Perhaps OT could have been applied to a Tomcat's VG wings? Maybe making the wings easily maintained and stress-resistant, they could have contributed to making the plane much easier to maintain and fly? What about more powerful engines, better avionics, etc.? Mark

IMO, it's the lack of the big booms over the head that's the real difference. I always liked that about the SDF-1 Macross, and how the Super Valkyries emulated that somewhat. My tech observations on the last episode: -The Frontier command center we've seen all along IS the bridge of Battle Frontier. By far the least "Macross" style bridge they've had, and probably part of the reason the head is so disproportionately larger than that of Battle 7 and others. But why is glass offered his own seat? He can't be thee during ALL military operations, he's got a country to run. -About the deployment of the Macross Cannon battery - I think it's a modification to the original Macross gunship, allowing it to fire in Carrier mode AND have a decent swath o' destruction. I'm reasonably certain they CAN fire the damn thing in Carrier mode, but the cannon would have a pretty limited field of fire and you have to turn the whole ship to hit multiple targets (which is why the Zentradi versions generally are used against big planets or stationary ships). -In this episode, with Battle Frontier being stuck to Island One for the operation, being able to "drop" the main gun battery from its usual position would enable it to traverse slightly, which we see them using to great effect. I'm hoping that when we see the Big Mac transform, it'll use its cannon in the more traditional method that we see the Quarter Pounder use with its main gun. -It's been noted before, but Frontier closes up its dome and Islands a heck of a lot faster than the Macross 7 fleet does. Also regarding the different-looking NMC ships, it's hardly a new thing. There are at least three different kinds of Nimitz class carriers in existence. Over the years, they've made modifications to the ship design, electronics and weapons loadout. The most recent one even has a redesigned bow. As such, I see no problem that the NMCs have significantly different design despite being the same class and type of ship. The only thing remaining is whether or not Macross Galaxy has one, and what does IT look like? Mark

It's the Man Klan! Say, is there a repository of ALL the character art of people emulating Ranka's funky Kira hand pose? We've seen them scattered around: Ranka, Klan Klan, Bobby, Alto's Messiah, Duke Togo, not to mention all the stuff on the last page... It would be hilarious and disturbing to see them all together, no? Mark

Heh - after Frontier wraps, people will stop asking about a prequel series about Megaroad-01, and start demanding their prequel series about the 117th fleet. Mark

Yep. As Frontier doesn't really show Battle 25, there's little real indication of how much bigger Island 1 is than its predecessor. The interesting part is how the city inside, being essentially San Fransisco, may have a port area - but nowhere for the ships to go... The fun part is thinking about population density. Island 1 is supposed to support five million people, and City 7 had around 300,000. From the looks of it, City 7 is downright sparse. Given what we see in Macross 7, it's no real wonder that the Varauta managed to hide so many damn fighters in thter without anyone noticing... Mark

Ooh! I hadn't seen this top view before. Compare it to the same view of Macross 7: http://www.new-un-spacy.com/macross7/newma...-schematics.gif Pretty solid copmarison. Cool, eh? I just did some quick cut and pastes in MS Paint and at the same scale (reducing the M7 pic to 40%), Island 1 is freaking gargantuan compared to City 7. Anyone care to do up a better comparison in Photoshop? Mark

To wit, the same icon was used for the Macross Frontier fleet... And while it has a "dome" style city, it's NOT proportionately the same as the "Island Cluster" dome that Frontier has. The icon from that CG overview seems more like the smaller "City" dome from Macross 7. So, it may simply be that a New Macross class ship is assigned, and that a colony ship of SOME sort is part of the fleet. Galaxy may have an NMC assigned, but not literally attached to the colony ship, and for all we know she was destroyed off-camera. Mark

The first episode CGI tactical overview shows a graphic that clearly says "Battle 25", with a link both to "Island 1" and "Macross Quarter". Mark

A variant perhaps, but I'm pretty sure it's the same CLASS of ship in any case. In any case, we don't know if Battle 07 is a "unique" ship or representatve of ALL New Macross carriers. Battle 5 and 13 were different, though arguably Battle 5 had two sister ships. Either way, I'm a little confused as to why NUNS didn't react more. The gunship of Battle 25 should have been a major player in the Episode 14 battle, and they didn't even finish transforming the ship. The second the Vajra fleet defolded the ship should have popped off its moorings and started firing. Even if its purpose was defensive, the target was obviously the Island Cluster... B25 should have kicked major ass! And yet Quarter gets to have all the fun. Mark

I like to think that Claudia (along with her relative Edgar, who can FREAKING SURVIVE ANYTHING), hopped aboard Megaroad-2 or later to command her own ship across the stars. Loved the retro tech in the latest episode. It's a real fanboy episode - I just hope we won't have too many more like it. Frontier is its own show, dangit! Mark