The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Whenever he shows up I always have the suspicion that he’s just gathering information to put into that weird Robotech essay of his in a self-serving sort of way.

Let us speak of that no further... for politeness's sake.

 

 

11 hours ago, darkranger12 said:

How screwed is the galaxy if someone decides to var the entire thing? 

Pretty screwed... but, luckily, actually doing that is impossible without incredible levels of mechanical amplification that are only possible with the most advanced overtechnology that the ancient Protoculture could muster.  The Delta Wave System the Protoculture built for that purpose was so massive that the individual amplifiers/resonators occupied a significant portion of the crust of multiple planets in the Brisingr globular cluster and the completed resonator was nearly a thousand light years across.  The whole thing depended on the Star Shrine on Ragna, and that was taken out of action in the Macross Delta series shortly after being activated, so actually Var-ing the entire galaxy or even a small portion of it wouldn't be possible anymore.

 

Quote

seems you'd want tactical sound units to combat them in each system maybe?

Ideally... but it's probably impossible.

For one, the ultra-high purity fold quartz necessary to produce the fold wave amplifiers that the Tactical Sound Units use is prohibitively expensive due to its scarcity.  You either have to dig it out of Protoculture ruins or hunt Vajra semi-queens for it, and neither of those things is what you'd call a healthy lifestyle choice.

For two, individuals who have fold receptors and are able to activate them and produce sufficiently powerful fold waves to have an effect are vanishingly rare.  Xaos is an interstellar megacorp and despite holding frequent open auditions for Tactical Sound Unit membership they've only been able to turn up about 10 people with usably-strong fold receptors in the eight billion-strong population of the Brisingr globular cluster: the three members of Tactical Sound Unit Thrones and the seven members of Tactical Sound Unit Walkure.  Two members of Walkure quit due to stress, one only joined under duress (Reina was given a choice between prison or service), and of the two that were actually powerful enough that they could manage the weaponized Var syndrome on their own (Mikumo and Freyja) only one was actually recruited while the other was a weaponized clone of a Protoculture bio-android.  

One person out of eight billion was a powerful-enough fold singer to actually combat Var syndrome.

 

 

58 minutes ago, jeniusornome said:

Hmm. I thought the var “trigger” was short range, activated by creepy kid singing through a wormhole. That was why they needed the protoculture ruins to reach the whole cluster. 

Yup... the biological fold waves in fold song that trigger or alleviate Var syndrome only have a short range unless mechanically amplified.

Heinz used the shrine aboard the Sigur Berrentzs and various other mechanical aids to amplify his fold songs enough to reach the other worlds in the Brisingr globular cluster.  Even then, he was only able to reach one planet at a time and the effort involved was such a strain on him that it significantly shortened his lifespan by depleting his runes to the point he was bedridden by the story's end.

(Fun fact, there's a Macross VF-X2 reference in the additional equipment that Berger Stone mentions.  Part of the amplification system that the Epsilon Foundation provided was Die Zauberflöte - the fold quartz-based communications system created by the Critical Path Corporation as the basis for the Sound Jamming System in Macross VF-X2.  

 

 

[jeniusornome]

Ah. I don't think I'd realized the end of the show that was affecting the whole galaxy. Maybe I'd just forgotten or I was confused by some of what was going on.

Delta was fun to watch but it all fell apart as soon as I tried to pay close attention to the details. /shrug.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, jeniusornome said:

Ah. I don't think I'd realized the end of the show that was affecting the whole galaxy. Maybe I'd just forgotten or I was confused by some of what was going on.

Eh, it's easy to miss... that bit only really comes in at the very end of the series.

The Protoculture ruins in the Brisingr globular cluster were built specifically to be a massive fold wave amplifier that could broadcast biological fold wave emissions from fold songs to the entire galaxy, in order to link the minds of humanoids into a collective consciousness.

 

1 minute ago, jeniusornome said:

Delta was fun to watch but it all fell apart as soon as I tried to pay close attention to the details. /shrug.

Yeah... it had a strong first half, but kind of fell apart after the heroes very clearly lost the damn war halfway into the series and the conclusion was just ripping off Macross Frontier.

[slide]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For one, the ultra-high purity fold quartz necessary to produce the fold wave amplifiers that the Tactical Sound Units use is prohibitively expensive due to its scarcity.  You either have to dig it out of Protoculture ruins or hunt Vajra semi-queens for it, and neither of those things is what you'd call a healthy lifestyle choice.

The Protoculture either manufactured it, or harvested it from the Vajra... or there's some in a mine-able form somewhere in the galaxy, presumably other than ruining a Protoculture ruin/structure/artifact, which would presumably be far more valuable.

 

Grace implied quite strongly that the Protoculture remade themselves in the likeness of the Vajra, which I take to mean they developed synthetic biological bodies built around fold-quartz [like the Bird-Human from Macross Zero, which was, in fact, a long dormant member of the species we know as the Protoculture, or do I have this wrong?] as well as their Fold-Wave-Hive-Mind-System [again, an attempted imitation of the Vajra]...

Is this, perhaps, what caused the schism in the Protoculture? Some were all "Grace O'Conner, Queen of the Borg" about it and some didn't want to be assimilated?

Or was it that they were harvesting the Vajra for Fold-Quartz and some thought that was abhorrent? [also an interesting reason for the Protoculture to have developed the Zentran]

I guess that all hinges on whether the Protoculture revered or were mortified by the Vajra...

 

Anyhow, if they manufactured Fold-Quartz eventually we'll figure it out, now that we've begun to make use of the stuff, for good or for ill.

Hell, we used to not know how to make fire... and Fold-Quartz seems to be just about as fundamentally transformative a substance to master...

[Bolt]

Considering how much the Protoculture admired the Vajra, it does seem abhorrent that they would go around killing Vajra for their "ivory tusks"..

 

[jeniusornome]

Also, as I'm thinking about it now - did the Zentradi know about the Vajra? I imagine they ran across quite a lot before SDFM, did they make records of anything beyond the protoculture and supervision army / protodeviln?

[darkranger12]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Let us speak of that no further... for politeness's sake.

 

 

Pretty screwed... but, luckily, actually doing that is impossible without incredible levels of mechanical amplification that are only possible with the most advanced overtechnology that the ancient Protoculture could muster.  The Delta Wave System the Protoculture built for that purpose was so massive that the individual amplifiers/resonators occupied a significant portion of the crust of multiple planets in the Brisingr globular cluster and the completed resonator was nearly a thousand light years across.  The whole thing depended on the Star Shrine on Ragna, and that was taken out of action in the Macross Delta series shortly after being activated, so actually Var-ing the entire galaxy or even a small portion of it wouldn't be possible anymore.

 

Ideally... but it's probably impossible.

For one, the ultra-high purity fold quartz necessary to produce the fold wave amplifiers that the Tactical Sound Units use is prohibitively expensive due to its scarcity.  You either have to dig it out of Protoculture ruins or hunt Vajra semi-queens for it, and neither of those things is what you'd call a healthy lifestyle choice.

For two, individuals who have fold receptors and are able to activate them and produce sufficiently powerful fold waves to have an effect are vanishingly rare.  Xaos is an interstellar megacorp and despite holding frequent open auditions for Tactical Sound Unit membership they've only been able to turn up about 10 people with usably-strong fold receptors in the eight billion-strong population of the Brisingr globular cluster: the three members of Tactical Sound Unit Thrones and the seven members of Tactical Sound Unit Walkure.  Two members of Walkure quit due to stress, one only joined under duress (Reina was given a choice between prison or service), and of the two that were actually powerful enough that they could manage the weaponized Var syndrome on their own (Mikumo and Freyja) only one was actually recruited while the other was a weaponized clone of a Protoculture bio-android.  

One person out of eight billion was a powerful-enough fold singer to actually combat Var syndrome.

 

 

Yup... the biological fold waves in fold song that trigger or alleviate Var syndrome only have a short range unless mechanically amplified.

Heinz used the shrine aboard the Sigur Berrentzs and various other mechanical aids to amplify his fold songs enough to reach the other worlds in the Brisingr globular cluster.  Even then, he was only able to reach one planet at a time and the effort involved was such a strain on him that it significantly shortened his lifespan by depleting his runes to the point he was bedridden by the story's end.

(Fun fact, there's a Macross VF-X2 reference in the additional equipment that Berger Stone mentions.  Part of the amplification system that the Epsilon Foundation provided was Die Zauberflöte - the fold quartz-based communications system created by the Critical Path Corporation as the basis for the Sound Jamming System in Macross VF-X2.  

 

 

Okay. So not the whole galaxy.  Got it. Thanks for the info.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, slide said:

The Protoculture either manufactured it, or harvested it from the Vajra... or there's some in a mine-able form somewhere in the galaxy, presumably other than ruining a Protoculture ruin/structure/artifact, which would presumably be far more valuable.

The ancient Protoculture did acquire the ability to technologically synthesize fold quartz, an advancement they definitely developed based on their findings from their long-term study of the Vajra's biology and bio-technology.  If the diagram of the ruins in the Brisingr cluster shows what it appears to show, the ruins on any given planet are just the tip of the iceberg covering a massive network of fold quartz "roots" that span the better part of a hemisphere.  

Admittedly, poking around in Protoculture ruins has proven to be a decidedly unhealthy pastime given how often said ruins seem to be concealing or sealing stupidly dangerous tech that the Protoculture created and almost immediately regretted... like the Protodeviln, the time-traveling Fold Evil, or a means for galaxy-wide mind control that could accidentally kill all sentient life in the galaxy by burning out their brains.  Hunting the Vajra isn't exactly safe either, given that the bugs know how to shoot back and are REALLY good at it.

 

 

Quote

Grace implied quite strongly that the Protoculture remade themselves in the likeness of the Vajra, which I take to mean they developed synthetic biological bodies built around fold-quartz [like the Bird-Human from Macross Zero, which was, in fact, a long dormant member of the species we know as the Protoculture, or do I have this wrong?] as well as their Fold-Wave-Hive-Mind-System [again, an attempted imitation of the Vajra]...

Not quite... what Grace was getting at was that the ancient Protoculture studied the Vajra extensively, based a fair bit of their advanced technology on what they learned from their analysis of the Vajra's biology and biotechnology, and came to revere them for possessing a perfectly harmonious society devoid of internal strife.  There's never been a suggestion that the Protoculture dabbled in transhumanism.

The Birdhuman in Macross Zero is a Protoculture construct - a biotechnological mecha - that the Protoculture made in the image of a Vajra queen.  The Protoculture left it behind on Earth to monitor humanity's development and, if necessary, exterminate the human species if they failed to become a harmonious society before acquiring space travel.  The Mayan priestesses were created with fold song abilities to maintain it and activate it if necessary, and apparently activated it once in the distant past before aborting the activation through having it detach its own head.

The delta wave system in the Brisingr cluster is pretty definitely a Protoculture effort to imitate the Vajra's hive mind tho.

 

Quote

Is this, perhaps, what caused the schism in the Protoculture? Some were all "Grace O'Conner, Queen of the Borg" about it and some didn't want to be assimilated?

Nah, the official timeline and the Macross 7 series point to the genesis of the Protoculture's civil war being socio-political.

Except in DYRL?, where the civil war was caused by social issues stemming from the segregation of men and women after cloning replaced biological reproduction.

The Protoculture didn't create the delta wave system in the Brisingr globular cluster until their civilization was already basically gone.  The Brisingr globular cluster is reckoned to be the Protoculture's last bastion before they went extinct.

[Seto Kaiba]

41 minutes ago, jeniusornome said:

Also, as I'm thinking about it now - did the Zentradi know about the Vajra? I imagine they ran across quite a lot before SDFM, did they make records of anything beyond the protoculture and supervision army / protodeviln?

Safe bet they did... in Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa, we see a Zentradi mobile fortress that was destroyed by the Vajra.

It's mentioned in a few places - most notably in a discussion of fold faults - that the Zentradi tend to ignore anything that can't be neatly pigeonholed into the categories of "enemy" or "ally".  They knew fold faults were a thing, but they didn't think too hard about them because they didn't fit the "is it an enemy" mindset.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[JB0]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Protoculture ruins in the Brisingr globular cluster were built specifically to be a massive fold wave amplifier that could broadcast biological fold wave emissions from fold songs to the entire galaxy, in order to link the minds of humanoids into a collective consciousness.

Query: WHY did the Protoculture build this? Was it an anti-Protodeviln thing, or what?

 

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Admittedly, poking around in Protoculture ruins has proven to be a decidedly unhealthy pastime given how often said ruins seem to be concealing or sealing stupidly dangerous tech that the Protoculture created and almost immediately regretted... like the Protodeviln, the time-traveling Fold Evil, or a means for galaxy-wide mind control that could accidentally kill all sentient life in the galaxy by burning out their brains. 

Heck, even the ones that AREN'T concealing insanely powerful technology, deadly superweapons, and deadlier bioweapons are dangerous.

Mac7 crew found one that was intended to be completely benign, helpful even, and it... tried to stab them to death just as a way of checking their identity.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

Query: WHY did the Protoculture build this? Was it an anti-Protodeviln thing, or what?

Nobody knows... but the likely explanation is that it was a last-ditch attempt to fix what they'd broken and achieve their societal ambition before going extinct, or perhaps to find a way to haul themselves back from the brink of extinction.

Either way, they never activated it so they may have been afraid of the same "your head a'splode" consequences that humanity was when they discovered the damned thing.

 

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

Heck, even the ones that AREN'T concealing insanely powerful technology, deadly superweapons, and deadlier bioweapons are dangerous.

Mac7 crew found one that was intended to be completely benign, helpful even, and it... tried to stab them to death just as a way of checking their identity.

"What, this?  No no no... this is my healing shiv.  Sterile, you know?"

[kaiotheforsaken]

I've been rewatching the original show recently, and been doing it mostly through Amazon Prime. I have the AnimEigo set stashed away and was thinking about digging it out. My recollection is that was the absolute best version of the original SDF Macross we had, is that still true? The version on Amazon seems rougher than I remember and the subs are a little janky.

[jeniusornome]

IIRC the restoration done and the subtitles from the AnimEigo set were not used in the later ADV release and it's definitely not what is streaming on Prime.

[kaiotheforsaken]

Guess I'm breaking out the set for Roy's death to the end of the show. Whatever they're using for streaming on Prime is totally watchable, but rough. I think the nicer subs and all the cleanup are worth the minor loss of convenience with swapping discs.

[jeniusornome]

Thought of this reading another thread talking about Delta. 
 

There was one aspect of the Walkure tech I wasn’t really clear on. Did the girls have cybernetic implants to control the drones that made their shields and holograms? Did that tech become normalized after the Galaxy fleet was blown up by SMS?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, jeniusornome said:

There was one aspect of the Walkure tech I wasn’t really clear on. Did the girls have cybernetic implants to control the drones that made their shields and holograms? Did that tech become normalized after the Galaxy fleet was blown up by SMS?

Nah, it's gesture control... they've got some kind of mini-computer terminal embedded in their press-on fingernails.

[jeniusornome]

Ahaha, I may have missed the press-on part of the fingernails then. 

[Seto Kaiba]

18 hours ago, jeniusornome said:

Ahaha, I may have missed the press-on part of the fingernails then. 

It's not really discussed in the show proper, but an episode of Delta Mini Theater from the Blu-rays does explain the technology.

The model is "LF6se Multi-Device", a device the size of a press-on fingernail that includes a holographic display, vital sign and bio-fold wave monitoring, and communications functions with a 30km range.

[RedWolf]

On 8/14/2020 at 6:32 PM, JB0 said:

Query: WHY did the Protoculture build this? Was it an anti-Protodeviln thing, or what?

Roid speculated it was an attempt to control Zentradi. The Protoculture lost its comm system infrastructure during the Protodevlin War. That major casualties meant the chain of command that Zentradi followed was broken. Which led to few fleets reinstating Do not mess with Protoculture protocol. 

However the whole Ruin system seems to be an experiment involving Windermereans as a hivemind. Do note the only reason the Windsinger and Starsinger songs work on other species was because Vajra introduced Fold Bacteria to humanoid species without killing them.

[darkranger12]

On 8/21/2020 at 2:05 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not really discussed in the show proper, but an episode of Delta Mini Theater from the Blu-rays does explain the technology.

The model is "LF6se Multi-Device", a device the size of a press-on fingernail that includes a holographic display, vital sign and bio-fold wave monitoring, and communications functions with a 30km range.

I'm surprised the tech can be made into the size of a press on fingernail.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

I'm surprised the tech can be made into the size of a press on fingernail.

IMO, the most impressive bit is that such a small device has a transmitter with a 30km range.

Modern technology has offered some of those features in similarly-sized packages.  There are several different manufacturers of fingernail-sized UV radiation exposure sensors that are meant to be worn that way.  MIT's done a lot with fingernail-mounted sensors for a variety of purposes, including fingernail-mounted biometric sensors meant to be an alternative for the skin-mounted sensors that occasionally prove problematic for patients with limited mobility and a fingernail-mounted trackpad called NailO.  (My favorite is already in production, swallowable self-powered sensors with short-ranged wireless transmitters for measuring things like core body temperature small enough to fit into gelcaps.)

 

[darkranger12]

So I found this in an Artmic book...one I think is Kawamori's the other is the Megalord city which would then become the SDF-1 Macross? what's the Artmic connection here?

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, darkranger12 said:

So I found this in an Artmic book...one I think is Kawamori's the other is the Megalord city which would then become the SDF-1 Macross? what's the Artmic connection here?

They were the project's original producers/financial backers.

Back in 1980, ARTMIC had changed its name to the Wiz Corporation and was sponsoring the development of a series concept pitched by Shoji Kawamori called Genocidas.  When that failed to thrill potential investors, a more sponsor-friendly proposal for a Gundam parody anime called Battle City Megaroad was thrown together.  That concept was what the pictured Breast Fighter and Megaroad were made for.  Not long after Battle City Megaroad went into serious development, internal issues at Wiz Corp. forced it to withdraw from the project.  It changed its name back to ARTMIC soon after, while Studio Nue shopped its orphaned project around and found a new backer in the advertising agency Big West.

 

 

[darkranger12]

39 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They were the project's original producers/financial backers.

Back in 1980, ARTMIC had changed its name to the Wiz Corporation and was sponsoring the development of a series concept pitched by Shoji Kawamori called Genocidas.  When that failed to thrill potential investors, a more sponsor-friendly proposal for a Gundam parody anime called Battle City Megaroad was thrown together.  That concept was what the pictured Breast Fighter and Megaroad were made for.  Not long after Battle City Megaroad went into serious development, internal issues at Wiz Corp. forced it to withdraw from the project.  It changed its name back to ARTMIC soon after, while Studio Nue shopped its orphaned project around and found a new backer in the advertising agency Big West.

 

 

Ah okay.  I didn't know that ARTMIC changed its name then back again after some internal issues happened.  It IS funny to note that after macross was completed Artmic did Mospeada.

[Seto Kaiba]

35 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

Ah okay.  I didn't know that ARTMIC changed its name then back again after some internal issues happened.

The name change only lasted about a year... they changed it in 1980 and changed it back in 1981.

 

35 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

  It IS funny to note that after macross was completed Artmic did Mospeada.

Maybe a little... but that was mostly Tatsunoko Production's desire for a Macross-like breakout hit of their own at work.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Is there a solid primary source for Miria's height? There's 885cm in a wiki, 8.55m in a zentradi height chart floating online, and Macross Chronicle 05 has a vague height chart that look to put her closer to 7.5m. Which of these has the most to back it up?

[Bolt]

The shorter the better. I still can't see how any Zentradi or Meltran can fit in their battle suits or pods. They surely don't suffer from claustrophobia..

[sketchley]

24 minutes ago, TMBounty_Hunter said:

Is there a solid primary source for Miria's height? There's 885cm in a wiki, 8.55m in a zentradi height chart floating online, and Macross Chronicle 05 has a vague height chart that look to put her closer to 7.5m. Which of these has the most to back it up?

Of the 3 you mentioned, Macross Chronicle is the only one we can verify.

That's not to say that the source material of the other information is incorrect¹, but without knowing where they came from, they are as trustworthy as fan-made information.

 

¹ at the time of their respective publication—when it comes to SDFM, DYRL, et al, Macross Chronicle is usually the most recently published material.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

After doing some more digging and finding the source of the chart which is this page http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrosstechman/tech-zentradiheight.html

 

Quote

Official fact describes Meltrandi ace pilot Milia Fallyna as 8.55 meters tall and 6.25 metric tons in weight

What's the specific source for this?

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, TMBounty_Hunter said:

Is there a solid primary source for Miria's height? There's 885cm in a wiki, 8.55m in a zentradi height chart floating online, and Macross Chronicle 05 has a vague height chart that look to put her closer to 7.5m. Which of these has the most to back it up?

8.55m/855cm has the most official support.

That figure comes from the official biographical data that was published in a few different books that came out shortly after the series finished its initial broadcast run in 1983.  Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti has the most succinct version, packaged in a neat little data block on each character's bio page that contains their birthplace, age, height, weight, and the measurements of the women.  Milia's data block on page 31 of Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti indicates she was born in a Zentradi clone synthesis system, that she is 15, 8.55m tall, and a robust six and a quarter tonnes in her usual form with petite measurements of B415 W290 H420.  Her miclone data from after the timeskip is also given, at which point she is 17 years old, 171cm tall, weighing a dainty 50kg, and measuring an eye-catching B83, W58, H84.

(For those who don't do metric, that's 33-23-33... she's a petite little unrivaled engine of death and destruction.)

 

 

7 hours ago, sketchley said:

Of the 3 you mentioned, Macross Chronicle is the only one we can verify.

Or is it? 

 

 

6 hours ago, TMBounty_Hunter said:

After doing some more digging and finding the source of the chart which is this page http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrosstechman/tech-zentradiheight.html

 

What's the specific source for this?

The direct source is likely the liner notes that Egan Loo compiled for the Animeigo remastered DVD release of Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

Given the way he formatted it, I strongly suspect Egan Loo got it from Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Perfect! Thank you very much!

[Lexomatic]

Is humanity the first race in 500,000 years to approach Protoculture levels of tech?

The galaxy is a big place, and 500,000 years is a long time. Sub-Protoculture races may have had Protoculture relics to study, or observed Vajra activity, or independently discovered superdimension physics. The Supervision Army booby trap tactic may have been tried elsewhere. Non-Protoculture non-humanoid races may have arisen unnoticed in the lacunae between Zentraedi and Supervision Army patrol zones. Any of these civilizations may have thrived for millennia and then been destroyed for any reason, including such mundane ones as a nearby supernova or bolide ELE. (It's not hard to splice established space-SF tropes onto the Macross milieu.)

Now, there is (1) the practical question of, "how would the characters know?" Human knowledge (c.2012 to 2070) is limited to whatever records the acculturated Zentraedi have provided (and there may not be complete sharing between the thousands of main fleets), whatever the extant sub-Protoculture single-planet cousin-races (Zolan, Brisinger Cluster, etc.) might know, and what human xenoarchaeologists have excavated from Protoculture and extinct sub-Protoculture sites. And (2) the dramatic question of, "does authoring such galactic history support the signature themes of the Macross brand?"

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, Lexomatic said:

Is humanity the first race in 500,000 years to approach Protoculture levels of tech?

The galaxy is a big place, and 500,000 years is a long time. Sub-Protoculture races may have had Protoculture relics to study, or observed Vajra activity, or independently discovered superdimension physics. The Supervision Army booby trap tactic may have been tried elsewhere. Non-Protoculture non-humanoid races may have arisen unnoticed in the lacunae between Zentraedi and Supervision Army patrol zones. Any of these civilizations may have thrived for millennia and then been destroyed for any reason, including such mundane ones as a nearby supernova or bolide ELE. (It's not hard to splice established space-SF tropes onto the Macross milieu.)

Thus far, humanity has not encountered any other sub-Protoculture species that had reached a level of technological development rivaling pre-Overtechnology Earth at the time they were discovered.

Zola seems to have been the farthest along, with the native Zolans having an acknowledged tech level rivaling early 20th century Earth at the time the New UN Government discovered their homeworld.  Windermere IV was still a medieval civilization when the SDF-05 Megaroad-04 discovered it after being damaged by the fold faults surrounding the system, and its neighbors Voldor and Ragna are implied to have been at roughly similar levels of development when they were contacted by humanity.  

It seems likely that most of the Protoculture's engineered species were either destroyed alongside their ancient creators at the outset of the Stellar Republic's war with the Supervision Army or were caught up in it in the intervening millennia.  The ones who've slipped the net, like humanity, were still hundreds if not thousands of years from independently developing faster-than-light travel.  The most advanced were only just starting to explore space inside their own solar systems.  Humanity got lucky/unlucky when someone dropped a mostly-intact Supervision Army gunship on their doorstep and were just advanced enough to start figuring out how it worked by investing almost the entire planetary economy into studying it after the mass "oh crap" that came with the realization that it was a warship of breathtaking size and power.  If there were other sub-Protoculture species that were farther along, they may have either been destroyed by one side or the other in the Protoculture's civil war, been "drafted" by some part of the Supervision Army, or simply been destroyed in the crossfire at some point in the last 500,000 years of war between the Zentradi and Supervision Army.  (There is an outside possibility that they took one look at the state of the rest of the galaxy and went "Nope! Nope! Nope!" and decided to isolate themselves from the greater galaxy, which would account for them having not been discovered.)

[Zinjo]

On 8/11/2020 at 6:10 PM, JB0 said:

As I recall, ADV failed to acquire Animeigo's heavily-restored footage when they stole the license, so the ADV release has old, faded, off-color footage and the exact same subtitles and japanese audio track. Literally the only reason to get the ADV version is you want the english dub.

Actually, ADV/HG did get the Animeigo's restored video footage, they couldn't get the restored "audio" as that was licensed directly from BW in Japan.  When the license with HG ran out they sent the restored audio masters to BW in Japan.  I like to think of it as Animeigo flipping the bird to HG who essentially "stole" the remaining stock of their DVDs as part of the closing of the license.  Animeigo had a fire sale of sorts (how I got my set) but couldn't move all of their inventory before the hand over.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Zinjo

[Zinjo]

On 5/29/2020 at 11:23 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

I mean, we already kinda did that... it was called Macross 7.

The Varauta forces are basically a second Supervision Army, created by the Protodeviln to help Gepernich pursue his more humane (but still pretty awful) plan to make a sustainable spiritia farm instead of nearly obliterating all life in the galaxy (again).

 

Well, they used both the Megaroad-13 colony and later the captured Zentradi citizens of Macross-5... but as far as we know they never managed to link up with the Supervision Army they created in the ancient past.

Wrong post

Edited September 25, 2020 by Zinjo