JB0

Other personas? You mean the voices in her head? I'd assumed she was in communication with someone else, and that she's not crazy... well, not "voices in my head" crazy. Remember, she's a cyborg. She doesn't NEED a phone.

Asteroids.

I think I may need to watch the latest episode ASAP.

The implication is it's part of Project M, or another similar endeavor. Which is actually a fairly understandable, if distasteful, development. He disliked the military intensely from the start. The conclusion of SW1 was a huge shock to everyone, and it would be easy for him to blame the military he already disliked for everything that happened. Especially since he wasn't there from the start of things. He can merrily conclude that the warriors aboard the Macross have been pushing and pushing and dammit the zentradi would've left us all alone if we hadn't started shooting at them, because he wasn't there for the "running away with our tail between our legs while they try to blast us to death" part. Even BEFORE the end of SW1 he's speaking out against the war, though admittedly he wasn't inciting riots. It was only right before the final battle that the reality of the situation impressed itself on him, and apparently it didn't impress itself very well. Just enough to get him to participate in the single most lopsided assault in all of military history. Post-war, he extends his hatred to the military-controlled New UN.

But KOnami did. I assume it was a brainfart. Or sarcasm.

Speaking of limited resources... The GBP turns the VF-1 into a cheap destroid, meaning your fleet doesn't need to lug around a bunch of largely useless destroids and spare parts in anticipation of the day they land and set up camp somewhere and start NEEDING infantry mecha. They can use GBP Valkyries in that role until they get destroid production up.

That would definitely explain the magic accompaniment. It wouldn't explain how the music knows to go into a holding pattern when he needs to talk to someone, but... a smart player could probably be set up to do it, and they seemed to have enough funding(I mean, they got the first VF-19 on the Macross 7 fleet, that says something right there). It's actually a physical part of the cockpit. There's a big post sticking out of the back that connects it to the rest of the plane. Presumably for tracking purposes. ... Ehh, I guess it snaps out. Oh well... We don't even know that. All we know is that when he was little, he got mad at a mountain for not appreciating his music. No, not really. There may not be a single dramatic incident, but people's decisions are based on their life's experience. And the stronger it's affected you, the stronger your take on the issue is likely to be. And I can point to examples where the cost of peace was higher than that of war. There's examples in Macross 7, too. Heck, Basara's stubborn aural assault on the protodeviln was arguably an act of agression, though he didn't seem to view it as such, until it became a clear matter of "them or us." And even then he flip-flopped, first participating in the operation to trap Gavil and Glavil for the Battle 7's cannon, then turning around and objecting to Operation Stargazer. He only participated because he was been told he could make them LISTEN TO HIS SONG! if he beat the nukes to the cave. EVERYONE has prejudices. They don't always choose to acknowledge them, but they have them. And I think Basara has a superiority complex, personally. I still don't get the whole mountain thing. That's a bizarre obsession, even for a kid. And he DOES seem fod of the wild outdoors, which raises questions about how he wound up on a colony ship in the first place. Much less in an abandoned ghetto as a stowaway on a colony ship(I got the impression he wasn't on the official roster, though clearly no one's gonna space the stowaways). Maybe he traded the freedom of an untamed planet for a larger audience? But Basara wasn't really about the size of the audience. I assume Ray is somehow responsible, but... it's still a big question mark. He exists for my amusement, and he fails at it. One of the reasons I stuck with Macross 7 through the slow beginning is that I wanted to know WTF was up with Basara. It was my first and largest question about the show, and it was left untouched. How did he get involved with Ray and Sound Force initially? I can't imagine Ray just walked up, said "Hey, wanna sing in a jetplane?" and Basara went "Yeah, sounds cool." ... Okay, I lie. I CAN imagine it. And I hate myself for it. The point is, he remains a VERY unrelatable main character, made all the worse by the fact that he takes most of the available camera time that could be devoted to characters with actual personalities.

Well, swinging the guitar around is unrelated to playing it. So the flight stick part is okay... sort of. So we've got a guitarstick, that's kinda almost maybe reasonable, if you squint a little. Now, the real question is how do we do the throttle. And the pedals. And the everything else. We already know that there's buttons mounted on the neck of the guitar for secondary functions(including real honest-to-goodness missiles, thank you, Ray!) Maybe twist the guitar neck for throttle? I know you can't get away with it on a real guitar, but... this isn't a real guitar. It shouldn't be hard to build one that doesn't rely on the vibration of strings, even without overtechnology(in fact, real-world guitar-based MIDI controllers have existed since the 80s). Pressure-sensitive pads down the neck for finger position detection and strings at the base for continuity with conventional guitars. Or even a set of strings at the base and a second independent set down the neck. The actual soundwave creation is all done digitally in either case, with the plucking of strings serving to issue MIDI commands(or some future replacement of MIDI) rather than create an actual soundwave(or electronic equivalent thereof). Really, something less conventional would probably suit their purposes better. But it would require a bit of retraining, and who knows if Basara would agree to use something less than a "real" guitar. http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/synthaxe.html Speaking of 80s MIDI guitars...

Real life isn't built around the adventures of a single person, nor is it attempting to tell an interesting story. Macross 7 IS built around the adventures of a single person, and IS attempting to tell an interesting story. Unfortunately, it's built around a fundamentally unrelatable person.

Only in the most ham-handed of shows does a character sit down and say "So yeah, I'm a dirty pacifist hippie with a guitar because when I was younger ..." There are ways to develop things WITHOUT the character just sitting down and explaining things. Ray seemed to have some knowledge, but as a third-tier character(tier-1 = Basara, tier-2 = Gamlin+Mylene), he wasn't allowed to share this information. Not to Mylene, not to Gamlin, and not to us. If I recall, Basara didn't do the customization. He got the plane from Ray as-is. And while the Jamming Birds were a complete and utter failure, this is through no fault of the 2-seater approach. In fact, there's a distinct advantage there, since the pilot is free to focus on piloty things while the musician is free to focus on musicy things. Also note that Ray and Veffidas were in a 2-seater. Because as third-tier characters(and I'm being generous including Veffidas here instead of with the flower girl and background scenery), they weren't important enough to get their own mechs.

Problem is, a fold isn't instantaneous. Not even for the people inside the fold. And for those in real space, it takes even longer. How long were Hikaru, Max, Misa, and Kakizaki gone when they got captured? 2 weeks? And from their perspective, it wasn't even long enough to start worrying about where their next meal was coming from. If you're under attack, you need defenses NOW, not as soon as a carrier can be mobilized and make it through the fold lag.

Maybe Ninja Gaiden? The NES game, I mean.

But how did he get where he is? Basara's annoying to a lot of people, and I thnk part of that's because there's no attempt made to show people WHY he is how he is. What gives him this burning passion? Why does he believe so strongly in his music's ability to change the world? What made him such an extreme pacifist? We have ONE flashback of him trying to move a mountain with a guitar. That's simply not adequate, especially for a character that gets mad at OTHER PEOPLE when he's forced to resort to violence(the VERY FIRST episode has him yelling at Mylene because she MADE HIM punch someone). He's not a well-established character by any stretch, and it really hurts the show.

FINAL FANTASY SEVEN LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!1111111111111111111111 Seriously... I think they COULD make a great Metroid movie. I also think they WON'T make a great Metroid movie. And to be mildly creative... Maybe the 90s Battlezone game? You know, the RTS/FPS hybrid? America VS the Commies IN SPACE! WITH HOVERTANKS! How is that NOT a recipe for complete awesome?

NOT IF THEY WRECK HER PLANE! Actually, it's junk for another reason. Regardless of whether you think Kawamori should be allowed to make DYRL exist within the Macross universe, Basara isn't in DYRL. He's in The Lynn Minmay Story, which is a DIFFERENT in-continuity movie about Space War 1. It seemed to be a lower-budget, "made for TV" type of thing than DYRL.

My two cents, and a Petite Cola: Slow start. Sad, but true. You WILL be tired of Planet Dance before it goes anywhere. Basara is freaking annoying. And he gets no character development. Mylene and Gamlin are FAR more interesting lead characters, despite their secondary status. Just focusing more on them would've made the show a LOT better. The show totally crashes after Operation Stargazer. But it's almost over at that point, so ride it out. It features a few interesting concepts, but they're poorly handled. Macross 7 is an OK show. It could've been a great one, but... it's not. I've seen FAR worse, though. Focus on Mylene and Gamlin. Pretend Basara is a secondary character. And pace yourself. Don't try to plow through it too fast, or you'll wind up stabbing yourself in the face.

Ditto. Sheryl's had a lot of development to move her away from the stuck-up pop princess that she was at first. I don't HATE Ranka, but... she's deus ex out the machina right now. "hai guyz the bugz r raepin us IN TEH BUTT!111" "lol i hax them n steal their megahurtz wif mai songz" "ZOMG WE HAS BOTHACK!1111"

Maybe when(if?) the movie comes out. Then we can complain about the horrible designs/script/acting of the movie instead. I have faith in Hollywood's ability to screw it up.

And Halo Chick. But the world can never have enough chicks in powered armor.

Aww, c'mon... they're the only people on Earth that HAVEN'T done Mai. You wouldn't want to deprive them of this unique market position, would you?

Physics dictates that a breastplate placed on a comic-book girl will deform in accordance with the size of her chest. Always. You can't argue with science.

Hey, if they put Iron Man's suit on a girl, it'd be pretty sexy too. So clearly the fundamental problem is girls look better than boys.

I fixed it for you. I have to assume the "if" was a typo.

Officially, there's no blood relation. Which, of course, means Kaifun is adopted or one of his parents had a kid with an undefined third party. Both Minmay and Kaifun are Linns. So IF japanese naming conventions for marriages follow western ones* , that means their FATHERS are the blood relatives, since the wives would both take their husbands' names. But there's not a lot of background on that issue. Just a note in Kaifun's bio that he's not a blood relative. http://macross.anime.net/wiki/Linn_Kaifun_%28Lynn_Kaifunn%29 *All I have to go on is Misa Ichijo and Millia Jenius. It's a bit of a stretch to take a pair of "near-future" cartoon marriages and apply that as the standard rule.

That makes more sense. Or it could be some form of genetic defect that's very rare among zentradi, but not rare among hybrids. Since the zentradi are all originally clones, they didn't have to worry about eliminating the genes that caused various conditions, just ensuring they weren't active in the specific sequences they were using(obviously they botch it occasionally, or Klan wouldn't go chibi when she miclones). Once they start breeding, who knows what happens? And breeding with humans, who have a different SET of genes... well, all bets are off. You could have something like a gene that caused a mental imbalance that was always paired with a gene that blocked it in zentradi genetic sequences, but doesn't have a corresponding "blocker" in the human genome, or has a rare blocker. ... Oooooh, maybe there's even a name for it. Guld has Kamjin Syndrome!