The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Bolt]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Macross Dynamite 7 was perhaps Macross at its most blatant in that regard, being a spectacularly blunt Aesop about whaling.

It was a little surprising Kawamori was able to put that into Macross. Considering the cultural entitlement on that issue.

As for the drones in Macross. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of that technology being pushed to the limits.

[Brofessor]

Is it taboo to view SDF Macross as an allegory or homage to World War 2? The SDF-1 crash landing and the Zentradi might be the allied occupation of Japan? Are the 2 atomic bombings a common theme running through a lot of 1970s and 1980s anime?

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Bolt said:

It was a little surprising Kawamori was able to put that into Macross. Considering the cultural entitlement on that issue.

Yup... though Kawamori is known as something of an "out there" director who does unconventional things as he pleases.

 

4 hours ago, Bolt said:

As for the drones in Macross. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of that technology being pushed to the limits.

Oh, likely.  After all, the 5th Generation Variable Fighters are tipped to be the "last manned fighter" in Macross the same way that real world 5th Generation fighter jets are tipped to be the "last manned fighter" before unmanned fighter aircraft take over.  Given concerns about the usage of unmanned combat aircraft it seems unlikely that the 5th Generation will be a final one for manned fighters in the real world or in Macross, but it's wearing the real world parallel on its sleeve.

 

3 hours ago, Brofessor said:

Is it taboo to view SDF Macross as an allegory or homage to World War 2? The SDF-1 crash landing and the Zentradi might be the allied occupation of Japan? Are the 2 atomic bombings a common theme running through a lot of 1970s and 1980s anime?

... no, it's not taboo.  It would just be completely unfounded nonsense.

And no, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not a common theme in 70's and 80's anime.  Outside of a few rather niche and very strange titles, Japanese media tends to avoid or downplay the Second World War and the rather touchy subjects therein.  There have been whole franchises cancelled for the suggestion that they were in some way glorifying Japan's... behavior... from that period.

The one real influence from World War II that you'll find in sci-fi/mecha anime most of the time is the taboo against the "good guys" using nuclear weapons... which is frequently worked around by the simple expedient of either calling nuclear weapons something else or explicitly having some form of ersatz nuclear weapon that is just as destructive but is explicitly non-nuclear.  Even then, both Gundam and Macross buck the trend by explicitly featuring the protagonists using nuclear weapons.

Spoiler

e.g. both the Federation and Zeon using nuclear weapons on each other in the backstory of the original series, Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket where the Principality of Zeon's fallback plan if Cyclops Team failed to destroy the Gundam prototype being built in Libot, Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, where the Principality of Zeon steals a nuclear warhead-equipped Gundam, or Char's Counterattack where Londo Bell uses nuclear weapons against the Axis space colony in an attempt to prevent it from falling on Earth.

Or in Macross, thermonuclear weapons are used fairly casually.  The only real mitigating factor is that, unlike modern thermonuclear weapons, they are "pure fusion" weapons that contain no fissile material and leave virtually no lingering radioactivity.

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[Brofessor]

13 hours ago, Brofessor said:

Is it taboo to view SDF Macross as an allegory or homage to World War 2? The SDF-1 crash landing and the Zentradi might be the allied occupation of Japan? Are the 2 atomic bombings a common theme running through a lot of 1970s and 1980s anime?

Have the out-of-universe creators of the show somewhat acknowledged the commentary on drones and whaling? Do these allegories have a stronger foundation than assertions about SDF Macross having some World War 2 subtext? Or is all of this analysis just plainly obvious when one watches the series, which I have not.

Thanks

[Master Dex]

At least they admit to not watching it... 

Maybe watch it first.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Brofessor said:

Do these allegories have a stronger foundation than assertions about SDF Macross having some World War 2 subtext? Or is all of this analysis just plainly obvious when one watches the series, [...]

Oh, absolutely they do.

The... "assertions"... about supposed World War II subtext in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series are completely baseless nonsense you posted in an utterly transparent attempt to appear knowledgeable. 

Macross Dynamite 7's entire A-plot revolves around Basara becoming involved with a Zolan family who are involved in galactic whale conservation efforts, a group of poachers who are illegally hunting galactic whales in the Zola system, and Basara's efforts to communicate with the galactic whales via song.  The story ends with Basara successfully communicating with the leader of the pod of galactic whales, foiling the poachers, and establishing that the galactic whales are intelligent life forms.  It's about as transparently Save the Whales as it gets.

Macross Frontier's official setting materials are similarly quite clear that the events of Macross Plus caused the New UN Government to shelve its plans to adopt an unmanned fighter as the next main fighter of the New UN Forces on the grounds that it deemed autonomous unmanned fighters dangerously unreliable.  That, combined with the issues the military had in its efforts to transition from the VF-11 to the VF-19, led to the development and adoption of the VF-171 as the 4th Generation main fighter and the deployment of the stripped-down semi-autonomous AIF-7S Ghost as a supplemental aircraft.  It's also noted in several publications, incl. Macross Chronicle, that the fully-autonomous combat functions that the Ghost X-9 demonstrated are prohibited or heavily restricted by law.  The Macross Galaxy fleet is noted to have illegally loaded its AIF-9V Ghost V-9's with autonomous air combat AIs and to have programmed them to carry out kamikaze attacks if they were running out of fuel or ammunition.  (When Luca enables the autonomous air combat AI in his three Ghosts, which he's noted to have received special dispensation to install, he refers to it as "the power that once plunged Macross City into the depths of fear".  It even carries a rather ominous name, "SYSTEM JUDAS", in keeping with Luca's habit of giving his gear biblical names.)

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Brofessor said:

Have the out-of-universe creators of the show somewhat acknowledged the commentary on drones and whaling? Do these allegories have a stronger foundation than assertions about SDF Macross having some World War 2 subtext? Or is all of this analysis just plainly obvious when one watches the series, which I have not.

Thanks

If you haven't watched the series, then why does it matter to you?

[Einherjar]

9 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

If you haven't watched the series, then why does it matter to you?

Shamelessly farming out information to put in that “academic” blog about Macross he does without actually watching it?

[pengbuzz]

4 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

Shamelessly farming out information to put in that “academic” blog about Macross he does without actually watching it?

I have a term for that:

Plagiarism.

At the very least, it's intellectually dishonest.

Edited August 18, 2021 by pengbuzz

[Brofessor]

13 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

If you haven't watched the series, then why does it matter to you?

Thanks. Understood. I am just trying to gauge the magnitude of error in my own analysis.

[pengbuzz]

1 minute ago, Brofessor said:

Thanks. Understood. I am just trying to gauge the magnitude of error in my own analysis.

Then here's a suggestion:

1) find Macross  (or whichever of the series you haven't watched) on a streaming site, pap per view, DVD, etc.

2) Watch the series and take notes.

3) Come to your own conclusions and post those on your site.

[Bolt]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, likely.  After all, the 5th Generation Variable Fighters are tipped to be the "last manned fighter" in Macross the same way that real world 5th Generation fighter jets are tipped to be the "last manned fighter" before unmanned fighter aircraft take over.

Interesting. I didn't realize that. So AI VF's are inevitable..? Imagine a likable AI VF in Macross. Are we going Transformers here?

where did you glean that info Seto?

[Seto Kaiba]

54 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Interesting. I didn't realize that. So AI VF's are inevitable..?

All in all, probably not.

Much like how, in the real world, there are some pretty significant technological and ethical hurdles to be overcome before unmanned fighters achieve enough acceptance to wind up being considered as a true replacement for manned fighters, the Macross universe seems to still have a lot of unsolved ethical concerns about unmanned fighters that aren't going to be going away anytime soon.

If anything, I'd say we're in for something more like Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere or Ace Combat: Infinity's Butterfly Master with pilots operating Valkyries remotely much the way that Grace O'Connor and Brera Sterne were shown doing with their VF-27s.

 

54 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Imagine a likable AI VF in Macross. Are we going Transformers here?

Almost certainly not.

Especially since artificially intelligent virtuoids like Sharon Apple was initially faked-up to be (and later became) are illegal under the New UN Government's laws.

 

54 minutes ago, Bolt said:

where did you glean that info Seto?

The "last manned fighter" thing?  That's mentioned in a few different sources in connection with the VF-25 and VF-27.  Master File mentions it as well, IIRC.

[Bolt]

Yes. Unmanned ( remote) but not full AI makes sense. And ya, Sharon Apple ( a bad apple😝) ruined it for all future AI's. 
Of course Galaxy is perhaps an unknown variable, as of yet.  That story doesn't appear to be over. Concerning cyber humans, AI's and other Ghosts in the Shell.. 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, Bolt said:

es. Unmanned ( remote) but not full AI makes sense. And ya, Sharon Apple ( a bad apple😝) ruined it for all future AI's. 

In all fairness, it wasn't even really Sharon Apple's fault... the computer model of a human mind she was built on was populated with emotion data from Myung Fang "I have issues" Lone, and then that idiot Marj Gueldoa installed a processor that might as well have had a label "CRAZY INSIDE" into her to make her autonomous.

[Bolt]

Yes, I know, but I couldn't help myself 🙃

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In all fairness, it wasn't even really Sharon Apple's fault... the computer model of a human mind she was built on was populated with emotion data from Myung Fang "I have issues" Lone, and then that idiot Marj Gueldoa installed a processor that might as well have had a label "CRAZY INSIDE" into her to make her autonomous.

Yeah... in retrospect, perhaps someone should have screened whomever was going to provide emotional data via a psych evaluation, although no one knew that Marj "I'm gonna go skydiving off the Macross without my parachute" Gueldoa was planning to try to make Sharon autonomous. At least they didn't use HIS emotional data for her!

If he wanted something "truly unpredictable", he should have befriended Basara Nekki and then tried keeping track of his whereabouts!

Edited August 18, 2021 by pengbuzz

[Bolt]

I'm sure we covered this before. But the VF-22 and VF-19 must surely still be in use amongst various Macross immigrant fleets. Even side by side with VF-171's. I would assume that the VF-25 and more obscure VF-27 are still not massively prevalent beyond certain, well funded fleets and PMC's. Although the cost of maintaining 22's and 19's may be their achilles heal. Having said all that, I imagine the 171 my be the bread and butter of most fleets. While the 22's and 19's are small elite groups ..

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I'm sure we covered this before. But the VF-22 and VF-19 must surely still be in use amongst various Macross immigrant fleets. Even side by side with VF-171's. I would assume that the VF-25 and more obscure VF-27 are still not massively prevalent beyond certain, well funded fleets and PMC's. Although the cost of maintaining 22's and 19's may be their achilles heal. Having said all that, I imagine the 171 my be the bread and butter of most fleets. While the 22's and 19's are small elite groups ..

So... yes, the VF-19 Excalibur and VF-22 Sturmvogel II are in limited use in some emigrant fleets.  The New UN Forces decision to drop the VF-19 from its planned adoption as the Next Main Fighter due to a combination of factors including cost, training accidents, and arms export restrictions imposed by the New UN Government saw the VF-19 effectively join its one time rival the VF-22 as a Special Forces VF.  The Macross Frontier fleet (c.2058) was known to have a special forces unit codenamed Round Table that used a locally-developed VF-19E derivative designated VF-19EF Caliburn (see Macross R).  The Frontier fleet used customized VF-19s for data collection in the development of the YF-25 as well (the VF-19ACTIVE).

The VF-171 was the New UN Forces Main Variable Fighter though due to the lower initial cost and lower cost of operation it ended up effectively sharing the main fighter role with the semi-autonomous AIF-7 Ghost.

[pengbuzz]

On 8/18/2021 at 5:20 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

In all fairness, it wasn't even really Sharon Apple's fault... the computer model of a human mind she was built on was populated with emotion data from Myung Fang "I have issues" Lone, and then that idiot Marj Gueldoa installed a processor that might as well have had a label "CRAZY INSIDE" into her to make her autonomous.

Revisiting this, I have just the thing for ya:

[Bolt]

Who's the head honcho running NUNS ?

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Who's the head honcho running NUNS ?

At what level?  The Earth UN Forces and New UN Forces organization is, by all indications, based on the organization of the US military and Japan's SDF and we can make some basic inferences from that and from information presented in the series and supplemental material.

Based on that, there are probably several different individuals at different levels of organization that you could point to as the "head honcho" depending on how technical or granular you want to get.

At the very apex of the chain of command would be the Prime Minister of the New Unification Government who also serves as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Below the Prime Minister, the cabinet's Minister of Defense overseeing the Ministry of Defense.

Below the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff.

Below the Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, the Chief of Staff of the Space Forces.

Based on Macross Frontier's Leon Mishima and Macross Delta's Lauri Malan, individual emigrant governments also appear to have their own local Joint Staff offices overseeing the local defense forces which presumably have their own local chiefs of staff for the various branches of service.

 

So in any given location there are probably at least or seven different people with a fair claim to being "head honcho" of the NUNS depending on what level of organization you're talking about.

 

Very little has been said about the individuals who actually hold such high offices in official Macross material, though.  

The only person ever explicitly identified as the commander specifically of the space forces is Vrlithwhai Kridanik, who assumed the post after the First Space War ended.  We don't know how long he occupied the position, who his predecessors were, etc.  General Takashi Hayase may have been one of them.

Two Prime Ministers have been named, but they're both prewar old UN Government ones: the inaugural PM Harlan J. Niven and his successor Robert A. Rhysling.  The military named the first and fourteenth ARMD-class ships after them (respectively).  We know Bruno J. Global joined the New UN Government after retiring from the military post-war, and he may have served as term or more as the Prime Minister given that they apparently named a Uraga-class carrier after him (CV-339 Bruno J. Global) in addition to the Macross-class battleship that they'd already named after him in his military capacity (SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global).  There may be another in Macross M3, by the name of Lawrence Yun Kamal.

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

Who's the head honcho running NUNS ?

Probably depends on when you are asking that.

I don't know if we know who is head of the Spacy as of 2067 but it seems around 2059 Kim Kabirov had the title of Commander of the NUNS. As in one of the original Bridge Bunnies.

Plus everything Seto said (kinda surprised he didn't mention Kim, though Commander of NUNS admittedly is a really vague title).

Edited August 24, 2021 by Master Dex

[Seto Kaiba]

34 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

I don't know if we know who is head of the Spacy as of 2067 but it seems around 2059 Kim Kabirov had the title of Commander of the NUNS. As in one of the original Bridge Bunnies.

IIRC, Lt. General Kabirov isn't the Chief of Staff of the Space Forces... she's the commander of the Earth defense fleet and its flagship, Macross-13.

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IIRC, Lt. General Kabirov isn't the Chief of Staff of the Space Forces... she's the commander of the Earth defense fleet and its flagship, Macross-13.

I saw that too, but it was given the, again, vague title of Commander of the NUNS so I felt it worth mentioning.

[TehPW]

6 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I saw that too, but it was given the, again, vague title of Commander of the NUNS so I felt it worth mentioning.

So, maybe there is a head honcho, on Earth. But does he/she have any authority over existing colonies or deployed Emigration Fleets? This is like Star Wars or Battle Tech: The Big Cheese's influence only reaches so far... (or in Battle Tech's case, Terra's authority doesn't quite reach the Periphery nations)

[Seto Kaiba]

54 minutes ago, TehPW said:

So, maybe there is a head honcho, on Earth. But does he/she have any authority over existing colonies or deployed Emigration Fleets? This is like Star Wars or Battle Tech: The Big Cheese's influence only reaches so far... (or in Battle Tech's case, Terra's authority doesn't quite reach the Periphery nations)

So... yes and no?

Earth is the de facto capital of the New UN Government, but it's also an individual member government that apparently has its own local defense force operating under the banner of the New UN Forces in addition to the central/"federal" New UN Forces that answer to the supranational New UN Government directly.

In theory, the local-level governments and their defense forces are semi-autonomous in a lot of ways but are also answerable to the supranational government and the authority of its armed forces respectively where laws and circumstances demand.  You can kind of think of the local forces as being a bit like the national guard in that sense, able to fight independently or as a reserve element for the central forces.  There is a special oversight agency specifically tasked with preventing abuse of authority by the military brass on Earth too (the Barnrose Authority).

[aurance]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... yes and no?

Earth is the de facto capital of the New UN Government, but it's also an individual member government that apparently has its own local defense force operating under the banner of the New UN Forces in addition to the central/"federal" New UN Forces that answer to the supranational New UN Government directly.

In theory, the local-level governments and their defense forces are semi-autonomous in a lot of ways but are also answerable to the supranational government and the authority of its armed forces respectively where laws and circumstances demand.  You can kind of think of the local forces as being a bit like the national guard in that sense, able to fight independently or as a reserve element for the central forces.  There is a special oversight agency specifically tasked with preventing abuse of authority by the military brass on Earth too (the Barnrose Authority).

The Barnrose what? You can’t just drop that in there and not explain 😝

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, aurance said:

The Barnrose what? You can’t just drop that in there and not explain 😝

After the events of Macross VF-X2 - which have since become referred to as the Second Unification War - the victorious pro-autonomy faction's reforms to the organization of the New UN Government and New UN Forces granted the individual member governments more autonomy to manage their own affairs.  There was also a general housecleaning to remove the members of the fascist movement that attempted to overthrow the government by force.  Part of that was creating an oversight bureau that was tasked with policing the special forces to prevent the military brass from abusing their authority to suppress political dissent, in direct response to them having done exactly that in the Second Unification War by branding a variety of anti-fascist movements as terrorists or rebels and ordering the special forces in to suppress them.  (Whether or not the special forces have a heel realization and join with the largest of those anti-fascist organizations is the difference between the good end and bad end in the game.)

The newly formed oversight bureau was named for the leader of the Vindirance paramilitary organization that successfully prevented the coup, Mariafokina Barnrose.  (Whom Macross Chronicle claims is possibly Therese Jenius operating under a paper-thin alias using her middle name and an assumed family name.)

[Bolt]

So the Jenius family is dynasty. It looks like. Poor Mirage. She's still my best girl. 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

So the Jenius family is dynasty. It looks like. Poor Mirage. She's still my best girl. 

lil bit, yeah.

[Bolt]

We are all pretty familiar with the designs and engineering of General Galaxy. But what else has Industry done since the YF-19 ? Presumably, the YF-19 was their first and most ambitious project.

[azrael]

41 minutes ago, Bolt said:

We are all pretty familiar with the designs and engineering of General Galaxy. But what else has Industry done since the YF-19 ? Presumably, the YF-19 was their first and most ambitious project.

Ummm, they birthed the YF-24 family of VFs (YF-24, VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, VF-31)...

[aurance]

Yeah, I think Shinsei tech is a lot more influential than General Galaxy stuff all the way up to Delta time period for NUNS at large.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Bolt said:

But what else has Industry done since the YF-19 ?

Shinsei Industry codeveloped the original YF-24 prototype with General Galaxy... then, after the project was cancelled, resumed and completed its development solo in the mid-2050s as the YF-24 Evolution that all 5th Generation VFs are based on.

Their branch in the Macross Frontier fleet codeveloped the VF-25 and YF-29 with Legodt & Angeloni Industries (LAI), their branch on Uroboros was involved in developing the YF-30, and their branch in the Brisingr globular cluster codeveloped the VF-31 with several other local firms under the name Surya Aerospace.

 

6 hours ago, Bolt said:

Presumably, the YF-19 was their first and most ambitious project.

... oh my, no.

Shinsei Industry was formed way back in 2012 as the product of a merger between VF pioneers Stonewell and Bellcom and the aviation division of the FAST Pack and reaction engine developer Shinnakasu Heavy Industry.  As you know, Stonewell and Bellcom codeveloped the VF-0, VF-1, VF-4, and VF-3000.  Post-merger, their first project was the VF-5000 that the New UN Forces adopted as the atmospheric-use counterpart to the VF-4.  They were also responsible for the upgrades to the VF-4, the development of the VF-11 Thunderbolt as the New UN Forces' 3rd Gen main VF, the VF-19 as the initially-accepted 4th Gen main VF, and the YF-24 Evolution that was adopted as the 5th Gen main VF.  Shinsei Industry's branches were also behind the VF-25, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31... the last being as a joint venture with several other companies under the name Surya Aerospace.

They're also supposedly contributing developers on the Macross Quarter-class.

Basically, Shinsei Industry and its forbearers have been the dominant force in Variable Fighter development for as long as VFs have been a thing.

General Galaxy was kind of that slightly-eccentric rival company that popped up in the late 2010s and found a niche for itself marketing low cost VFs to recently-settled emigrant fleet governments.  They're the ones who always come up second-best to Shinsei in main fighter design competitions like Project Nova (where their VF-14 lost to the VF-11) or Super Nova (where the VF-19 beat out their VF-22).  They had a nice niche making special forces VFs, with their one real "win" being when new arms export laws and troubles transitioning to the VF-19 saw them secure the contract for a 4th Gen main VF after initially losing the contract to Shinsei in Project Super Nova and producing the VF-171.