JB0

Yes, we DO know who fired first. Episode 27: 5 minutes, 25 seconds: The Zentradi fleet fires on Earth, as Hikaru and Minmay express mutual angst. 7:05: Bodol laughs evilly at the devastation of the Earth. 10:25: The Grand Cannon unleashes holy hell on the Zentradi fleet. The cannon fires AFTER the zentradi bombardment. Other notable points: Bodol orders the fleet to fire on the Earth as soon as the fleet's defold is confirmed. The brass in the Grand Cannon base are attempting to contact the zentradi fleet and being completely ignored. This ain't your modern pacifist hippie anime where all pain and suffering is the direct fault of the evil warmongering military. The zentradi fleet only came to Earth because it had ALREADY been decided that the planet, the Macross, and the "infected" zentradi ships would be destroyed to prevent cultural contamination. And yes, I just HAPPENED to have my DVDs sitting next to me and got obsessive with the timestamps. Not obsessive enough to back up and find the episode where they establish that this is standard operating procedure for the zentradi when they find a "cultured" world, though. Okay, love him or hate him, you have to admit that's hilarious.

But the aerial performer job is Hikaru's back-story.

Flying. Just like Hikaru or Isamu.

Plus started as a movie. And in fact, most of the footage wound up on the big screen, where the smaller-size film would have made grain hopelessly visible(if you saw Fantasia 2000 at an Imax theater... think Sorcerer's Apprentice). So most, if not all, of it is fit for an HD transfer. I suspect the OVA-exclusive parts are fit too. Just for consistency's sake(I also gather Japan had a high-resolution LaserDisc format, so there'd be a logical reason if they intended to publish that way). But that may be semi-wishful thinking(only semi-wishful because... I'd rather see the movie version anyways). I have my doubts that 7 is fit to expand.

Wasn't that Gundam SEED? Gah! I sincerely hope that Fleet of the Strongest Women is not considered canon. Given it was dropped from broadcast plans, then packed in as a DVD extra, it's kind of in a gray area... right?

2 words: Operation Stargazer.

Did Animeigo do a DYRL release? I'm only questioning the point of a BluRay original series. I meant to make that clearer. It got lost somewhere between my brain and keyboard. I completely agree that DYRL needs the HD treatment. Now.... when do we get Imax-res TV, so I can rebuy Fantasia 2000?

It happened in Gaogaigar too. But only once or twice.

The DVD version is already at the limits of the source image. You CANNOT extract more detail once you start seeing film grain. Animeigo hit the grain limit. They DID remove the film grain at one point during the remastering, but then had to add it back in for the final revision because it looked too flat without any grain.

But Animeigo isn't getting anything anymore anyways, so it's a moot point. I've got the original 9-disk box, though. And I will proudly proclaim my affection for the artwork until the end of time.

But you strike a blow against the evil empire in the process! Use the Force, Luke!

There's not a legal J release? You could buy that and print out a script.

This here is the big problem. The colonization fleets are FLEETS. There's a lot of allies to worry about, and a single ship's barrier overload could be catastrophic for the rest of the fleet. Though by spec, the New Macross vessels HAVE an omnidirectional barrier. They just don't use it. http://macross.anime.net/mecha/united_nati...ross/index.html under countermeasures. ... Pity so many of the numbers are sevens. It'd be nice to not have such a significant vessel in the continuity defined in terms of a very large pun. Ehhh.... I guess this was already dealt with. But I at least get to be the first to point out the ODB is still in use! +$0.02 anyways.

Yah. Apparently Atlus has decided that SRW has not shown itself to be a marketable franchise in America. ... Maybe if they spent more than five dollars on ADVERTISING, so people actually knew the game was coming... But this IS the same company that kept on not reprinting Disgaea while eBay scalpers made a killing.

But how did you feel about the bonus dungeon in Tales of Destiny?

I remember that. Then when it fell through, HG deleted the news from their website archives.

I imagine the fact that there seems to be no requirement to keep things together during the whole transformation helps a bit. I don't mind the speedy transformation so much as the "comes totally apart then snaps back together" aspect. Sure it's justifiable from a technological advancement standpoint and all. It just doesn't appeal to me.

Wikipedia is wrong. You did not play Galaxian 3. http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=83...p;gid=2688#2688 You played a sequel. Most likely Galaxian 3: Project Dragoon, though possibly G3: Attack of the Zolgear. Despite Wikipedia's insistence that all three games are the same thing, they pretty clearly aren't. Project Dragoon could be a REMAKE of Galaxian 3, but it's certainly not the same thing given the original was a full circle with 28 guns and PD was a flat screen with 6 guns. Not that it isn't sexy as hell anyways.

If Millia is any indication, that's not necessarily a problem.

Could be worse. Could be Vanessa. What, she is too? Well... crap. There goes that plan.

NO DISASSEMBLE! Seriously, I've checked the date on that article multiple times now to make sure it wasn't a missed April Fool's gag. I just cannot figure out how that makes any real sense.

In exchange, you can't attack from behind your shield. Not explicitly stated, but look at the end of Space War 1. They bust into the core of the flagship, full of thousands of zentradi ships, and they wait until AFTER the cloud of thermonuclear death is clear of the ship to activate the shield? I'd bet that it's a 2-way shield, and they would've been trapped in a bubble with a swarm of angry nukes if they hadn't waited those extra seconds. Did they? It seems to me they spent a lot of time and effort miniaturizing the pin-point barrier system for fighter usage, as well as adding it to all of their warships. And you're talking about a barrier orders of magnitude larger than the Macross' for protecting a planet. Assuming a linear scaling ratio, surface area will be absurdly expensive, and if power scales with volume... If it doesn't scale linearly, things could be quite a bit easier(most of the cost is in initial setup, and size of the barrier is largely irrelevant) or much more difficult(an given increase in barrier size requires a much larger, possibly even expontential, power increase). There could also be absolute upper limits on shield size. Given we don't know what sort of physics it operates under, we can't say for sure. As an example... hypothetically, you can keep adding particles to an atomic nucleus to make bigger and better atoms to infinity. But past a certain point, the nucleus expands beyond the effective reach of the strong force, and starts spontaneously fissioning. It's why radioactive elements exist(But not radioactive isotopes of stable elements. That's a different effect.), and why very large atoms have half-lives measured in fractions of a second and will never be observed outside of a lab. We also don't know how barrier capacity scales. We know that the barrier deflects some energy and stores the rest, and that if it absorbs too much, it goes kerblooie with spectacular results. It could just be that the facilities needed to store the sort of energy a planetary bombardment generates are prohibitively large. Or it could be that all barriers have the same energy absorption, and that a planetary barrier would rapidly overload just from solar radiation. If everything was as simple as "build it small, then make it bigger," the world would be a lot different. See the robot. Aibo, Asimo, and Robosapien are all highly articulated robots that move fairly reliably. And if you scale them up, they collapse under their own weight because volume(and hence mass) cubes while surface area(including the cross-section of load-bearing structures) squares. Or a lack of knowledge? Remember, the entire THEORY for the barrier system was developed after the fold accident. Assuming it can hold up to a significant bombardment instead of failing instantly, and can be energized rapidly enough to stop a mass assault. They had an orbital defense fleet. It got raped. They also had several anti-fleet cannons under construction on the Earth and the Moon. Only one was completed, and it served it's people well before it went kerblooie. Complaining they didn't create a functional planet-sized version of a device that wouldn't even be PROTOTYPED until almost a year after the Macross was launched, and a mere two months before the final attack on the planet, is a bit unfair. The fact that they DID continue using pin-point barriers, and expanded their usage, suggests that the PPB is just plain better. Also of note: The Macross 7 has both PPB and ODB systems. http://macross.anime.net/mecha/united_nati...ross/index.html The ODB was never used in animation, despite it's greater coverage. Of course, the hazard a barrier overload would pose to the other ships in the fleet(especially the unarmed and vulnerable colony ships) could be considered a significant mitigating factor.

Good point. I dragged the comparison a bit too far. It's more like... that clash of ideals and reality is, in some ways, a sign of growing up. Most people at some point have to accept that the universe is NOT a friendly place, and ideals aren't completely compatible with reality. That's actually one of my complaints. The show has a lot of interesting concepts present, but they're stunted by the "monster of the week" and "prefab pop-band promotion" angles.

Check the brawl in the restaurant. Kaifun hit at least one person. He also threw booze at Minmay. Anyways... It's also worth noting that Hikaru was, at one point, a pacifist. A major point of his early development was coming to terms with the fact that sometimes life throws situations out that just can't be resolved peacefully, and that arc peaks in Transformation with his decision to enlist after the destruction of the rebuilt Macross City(and I only just realized that's not the painfully literal episode title it seems to be...). Hikaru's still not going to run out and pick a fight, but he acknowledges the necessity of taking up arms in defense of your home, your people, and your world. IMO, Basara is Hikaru, just without that moment of realization. He never accepts that sometimes you can't solve a problem in a non-violent manner, and gets pissed when people make him resort to violence. Singing to a group of street thugs trying to punch your lights out isn't any more effective than sitting in a park and sulking while aliens shoot at your space ship. Fortunately for Basara, singing to interdimensional invaders trying to eat your soul IS more effective than shooting at them, and his stubborn adherence to an ideal is ultimately to humanity's benefit.

I actually find this a HIGHLY unfair argument. The zentradi are established as having a long, proud tradition of sterilizing any planet they come across that has "culture." They were not shown as being inclined to negotiation once the cultural contamination became obvious. MAYBE the war could've been avoided had the Macross not been rebuilt, or not been booby-trapped. But as things happened, the military didn't really botch anything. In fact, throwing the Macross to the wolves was a sound strategical move. The enemy's interest WAS solely in the battleship, as far as anyone could tell. When the Macross left Earth, the aliens followed it, and expressed no interest whatsoever in the planet until the Macross returned. And when it left again, the aliens left with it. ... And then they signed a peace treaty with the Macross hours before their boss came to blow everyone to hell. Certainly, the military's immediate dismissal of Misa's first-hand experience with the alien fleet was poor judgement, especially since the viewer knows she was 100% accurate. But there WASN'T any evidence they had a fleet the size of her report, and eyewitness accounts ARE prone to extreme variability. Especially when the planetary sterilization was a planned demonstration. That was VERY easy to fake. Their later observations of the fleet during their escape are disrupted and colored by their attempts to escape. It is NOT what you would call ironclad evidence. Also note that by this point in time, the spies are already aboard the Macross, beginning the chain of cultural contamination that will ultimately lead to the decision to sterilize the planet. Things had already started rolling at this point, and the ultimate conclusion was arguably inevitable. And this is only tangental, but... for all the military's pride and arrogance, the Grand Cannon WAS relevant to humanity's victory. The allied fleet advances towards the zentradi flagship through the path cleared by the Grand Cannon, sparing them a large number of ship-to-ship battles. Kaifun is an apeface. Before the end of the war, he blames the military for the Macross' situation. Which is only partially accurate, given the Macross fired an automated attack to start the war. AFTER the war, he acts like the military wandered into the Zentradi fleet, punched Bodol in the nose, and laughed at him. In point of fact, the military had ALREADY DECIDED not to start a fight with aliens when Britai first showed up. The first shot is beyond human control. The second shot is by the zentradi. After that, opportunities for discussion and a peaceful resolution to the conflict are surprisingly limited, especially since the aliens spend most of their time on the other side of the solar system. Notable typos fixed during the production of this post: A continued traditional confusion of Kamjin and Kaifun. Britai = Britain