JB0

Still orders of magnitude faster than without fold drives. 10 lightyears a month becomes 120 lightyears a year, which is a LOT more than .75 lightyears a year. And you don't have to worry about slowing down at the halfway point either!

Actually, Frontier says they DON'T take the most direct route. If I recall, they go around some fold faults and through others. It may wind up being the SHORTEST route, time-wise, but it's not the most direct.

Whoops! Clearly my memory is only any good for the original series. Curses!

It's stated, in the show, that the spectacular series of failures on the Macross' maiden voyage was due to the booby trap. Both the gravity controllers AND the fold drive broke because of the unprepared main cannon firing.

Technically, dark matter is denser than empty space. It's density relative to regular matter is highly subjective, given density varies greatly. But I actually like "faults" being related to dark matter. Though that relies on super-dimension space being close enough to our own universe that what we do affects it. In which case... actually, the faults could just be mass shadows. Stars, planets, nebulas... Could also be the fold-space equivalent. Areas of denser/lighter super-dimension energy.

Hmmm... that WOULD make an excellent lower limit, actually. Of course... does Palladium mean 6 minutes ship-time, or 6 minutes real-time? That matters a lot. Sadly, the only fold we have any sort of clear distance measure on is the Earth/Pluto jump, which was depicted as near-instantaneous(it took longer to open the fold than it did to travel the distance). You can actually reconcile the two different illustrations without them being different travel techniques. If it's relative to the speed of the ship as it enters fold, it makes a lot of sense. There may be some sort of transition from real space to fold space that necessitates certain entry behaviors, and you can "project" the fold "gate" in front of the ship if it's moving fast enough, but you have to open the gate AROUND the ship if it's not going above that minimum speed. I'd think opening the fold around the ship would also make it much easier to synchronize multiple fold generators working on a single target. But that's only been needed once, in Macross 7.

If you mean what I think by "tunnel effect"(that the animation when they travel through fold space looks like they're flying through a tunnel), then that wasn't present in SDF Macross. What folding has in common in the various series...es is faster-than-light travel. Everything else is left vague, most likely intentionally. It's also implied that fold space is "wrong" somehow. SDF used the wavering color separation effect to indicate fold space(except in the factory satellite theft, if I recall). Frontier makes reference to fold sickness(maybe, sometimes), and re-invents the old visual separation effect. Oh, and that specific fold drive failures leave behind a strange energy phenomenon that can be harnessed for the creation of a barrier system. That's a bit of a leap there. Especially given the official description involves interdimensional travel, making it sound more like a conventional hyperspace drive.* http://macross.anime.net/wiki/Fold There's also the episode where they steal the factory satellite, which establishes it takes an energy expenditure to leave fold space. Wormholes are open at both ends. You need energy to create and maintain the wormhole, but not to exit it. *Interestingly, several sci-fi stories with "conventional" hyperdrives describe a tunnel effect caused by the apparent elongation of the stars. Star Wars even illustrates it. SDF has a few different fold animations. Sometimes the ships slide into/out of a fold "gate" and other times they appear/vanish. Which tells us is that there's a few different ways of folding/defolding, some of which are flashier than others. ... Or, you know, that the animators bungled defold animations a lot and they're all supposed to be the "portal" type(assumed because the first examples are that type, and the first few episodes are of consistently decent animation{though not error-free}). It's NOT established, but fortunately the effect makes sense anyways if you consider the "gate" to be a hole between the dimensions. Ask and ye shall receive. My understanding is the fold drive moves a ship into another dimension, where the laws of phsyics are different, and moves the ship back to normal space at it's destination.

The REAL question is... did Kyon steal Hikaru's magic bicycle for that scene?

Interesting you mention Short Circuit, since Number 5 was designed to look "human" Hell, he has EYEBROWS. And each species has it's own different aesthetic sense. Look at birds. The "pretty" birds are all male. But the male birds are looking at the ugly plain-looking female birds. And apparently they like what they're seeing. And of course, there's insects and arachnids and shellfish and all sorts of other "ugly" stuff. That which we like looking at is, generally, mammalian. Avians are a runner-up, and things plummet after that. They quite likely did... and their sense of aesthetics is completely different than ours. Heck, even different segments of humanity have different aesthetic values. Now, the PROBLEM isn't an in-universe one. It's an IRL one. They AREN'T appealing from our perspective(though apparently mainstream America is quite happy with them. Not the first time I've considered mainstream America a bunch of morons.). Personally, I don't care for the movie aesthetic in general. Most of the (handful of) toys I bought from the first movie toyline weren't movie characters. My favorite from that line was Wreckage, actually. Especially once I realized you can make him look down into his chest cavity while still being in robot mode. In a stupid bit of anthropomorphization, I decided it looked like he was aiming his gut cannon, and I suddenly started liking the gut cannon. And personally, I think they bungled the Autobot designs horribly. The Decepticon heads fit the "alien robot" aesthetic(and are ugly as a really ugly thing that isn't pretty at all, just like the rest of their bodies). But the Autobot heads fly in the face of the general design aesthetic. "They are alien robots. They do not look like us. Well, except their faces. THOSE are total mecha-human. Heck, they even have noses. WORKING noses! Why a space robot needs a sense of smell we don't know, but... *sniffsniff* Ratchet says you stink."

She's probably just resigned to her fate after all the merchandise whoring she's been through. You can see it on her face.

Oh. Okay, then I can ignore the biker bots. Sorry, Rei. You aren't enough of a booth babe to sell me on the Constructicons.

Why does this picture make me want the biker bots?

That would be supremely, hilariously, awesome. ... Until I realized it meant I wasn't getting my Disappearance.

So... I've watched the raw, and felt something was wrong. And watched some shitsubs with strange punctuation scattered in randomly(seriously, I can't for the life of me figure out how they typo'ed that badly) and... Haruhi's will is not done( ), so next week, we see the first all-new rerun in television history!

As long as we don't have to wait 594 years.

There's worse things than forgetting she's there. I'm on record as mistaking her gloves for her chest. ... Yeah, I'm not really sure how either. But in stills it looked like a REALLY big bust.

That actually kind of proves his point. It's NOT Masterpiece Prime, it just LOOKS like him. The axe-pistol is hilarious, though.

Roughnecks, AKA Starship Troopers done right. Just to add to the list.

No, that's perrfectly consistent. They're willing to BRING Macross to the world. The problem is Big West doesn't want to deal WITH THEM. They've never said they're willing to watch someone else bring Macross to the world while they get nothing. Because they own the copyright, don'cha know?

Depends on what they do next. Almost* certainly a minimum of 2. They aired Lone Island Syndrome friday. Lone Island Syndrome part 2 is next. After that... we don't know. It could be Endless Eight. If they don't do Endless Eight, it could be Sighs 1. If they don't do Endless Eight OR Sighs, it's either an anime original story or... Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, since they started with Melancholy 1 for this run instead of the movie. And if Adventures of Mikuru Asahina is next, they ALSO run Live A Live, Day of Sagitarrius, and Someday in the Rain before they start Disappearance, and we have a month and a half to wait. *Unless they toss Haruhi Theater in, in which case all bets are off. There's no established time for the Haruhi Theater stories, other than Return of Haruhi Theater is after Haruhi Theater, though it's implied they happen before Snow Mountain Syndrome... which is after all currently-seen episodes, so it's not a useful benchmark for our purposes. They could toss Haruhi Theater in between Lone Island Syndromes, just to inject a little chaos into this chronological-order no-episode-previews broadcast! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! ... I actually hope they DO throw one in-between Lone Island Syndromes now. Kyon: Wait, we aren't showing the conclusion? Edited because Lone Island 1 has already aired, and I was counting it.

If you like Yuki now, wait until Alt-Yuki shows up... Also: watching the reruns, I remembered what first prompted the "Kyon is the one with powers" thought. It was in Mysterique Sign. The Brigade logo that caused all the trouble WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL VERSION. It was the resampled web-size version. Resizing an image file creates a TOTALLY DIFFERENT IMAGE FILE. Especially if Haruhi was working in a different file format than Kyon(Probably BMP or PSD on Haruhi's side. The anime shows her using Photoshop, and while it's not specified in print, Paint is by far the most likely candidate. And Kyon is certainly using GIF or JPEG.) But even ignoring file differences, the actual IMAGE is changed by resizing, and changed MORE if Kyon used JPEG instead of GIF(GIF is quite likely lossless for Haruhi's masterpiece.) So HARUHI isn't the one that accidentally created the most compressed data file in the world. KYON is the one that created a tiny-ass GIF that represented hundreds of petabytes of data. Of course, Yuki should have caught this if it was relevant. But she may have just felt that correcting Koizumi wasn't important enough to say more words, given she was over-budget for the week already.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.ph...Suzumiya_Haruhi But the server's down right now. And there's only one episode of season 2. Though apparently the reruns are an extended cut. Either way... http://www.nol888.com/plog/category/fansubbing/releases/ Because Our Lady Suzumiya must be worshipped in HD. (Hey, I bought the deluxe editions of all the DVDs, and the US hardback novel. I'm supporting the Brigade.)

The way I read book 9 was more

A LOT of fandoms seem to not really know what they want. I can't count how many things I've seen ruined by doing EXACTLY what the fans asked for. Heck, several times I've seen the fans flip around and ask WTF was wrong with the creators. Though I think Transformers: Animated is a better example than the Bayformers. Given there was probably MORE initial outrage over the Animated designs, and it's become a VERY fan-popular installment...

It's subtle, but Kyon's really become a much more active persion since the beginning of the story. Certainly some of it is just that he gets to hang around Mikuru every day, but... The "current" Kyon probably wouldn't give that horrible waste of breath he called a speech that inspired Haruhi to create the SOS Brigade. I think he might even find it offensive(I know I did, and I really hated Kyon's character for a while because of it). Especially since he now knows a plain old ordinary boring person IS changing the world. Hell, he's even saved it from total annihilation a time or two. It kind of undermines the entire premise of that little speech. I wonder that too, actually. Watch them do it someday. And it'll just be "Meanwhile, Kyon(younger) ate dinner. It was take-out. He then went to bed." Well... Being Haruhi's foil makes him a "person of interest" by default. Hence why the Brigade members revealed themselves to Kyon in the first place. He's also someone who needs protection, as the Ryoko incident demonstrated. Given the factions represented in the Brigade would rather NOT see a repeat of Three Years Ago, it's in their interests to look out for Kyon . He's also a convenient common ground. The various factions aren't really working towards the same goal. So Mikiru, Koizumi, and Yuki are limited in what they can do with each other business-wise, even if all three are there merely to observe. But Kyon is neutral, so they have a bit more liberty to work together with him. Mysterique Sign is a good example. Sans Kyon, Yuki just deals with the situation on her own(as she probably has several times before). Add Kyon and it becomes a Brigade activity, with everyone but Haruhi taking part in the monster hunt. The way I understood it, As of Disappearance