The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[pengbuzz]

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 Good and Evil are a matter of perspective, not fact.

Not true. Otherwise, you wouldn't put locks on your doors.

[aurance]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

One thing to remember, both as a storytelling principle and a general fact of life... the right thing and the nice thing are not always the same thing.

That's a theme that recurs a lot in Macross Delta, especially the second movie where it's basically the antagonist's whole deal.

Moral absolutes like "good" and "evil" are a reductive oversimplification that ignores the inherent subjectivity of morality and wrongly assumes that the same values are universal across cultures and time periods.  So very many things that we today would consider historical atrocities were committed by people who firmly, sincerely, and completely believed that what they were doing was morally correct.  That's one of the reasons sci-fi loves to play with the concept so much.  Good and Evil are a matter of perspective, not fact.

I don't disagree, but what you're saying is also an oversimplification from a narrative point of view. It's a spectrum that we, as the consuming audience, come to some some sort of rough consensus about.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, aurance said:

I don't disagree, but what you're saying is also an oversimplification from a narrative point of view. It's a spectrum that we, as the consuming audience, come to some some sort of rough consensus about.

There's also the question of what moral position the author intended to depict too...

Macross Delta is complicated by the fact that a good chunk of its backstory was jettisoned into manga side stories.

[Big s]

I will say that even though as a comparison between Gundam and Macross that at least Macross seems to end a conflict while Gundam just has sides fighting eachother a second, third and more times without a real reason to go on other than a corporation wanting to make money off both sides or something.

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

Was rewatching Frontier at work today and it just dawned on me. Sorry in advance if this has been adked/answered before. In  the final episode where Klan Klan gives Alto Michael's sniper gunpod. How was he able to carry it with his own gunpod in the finale? I see both in hands in gerwalk mode, but not when in fighter mode. I don't really see it battroid mode either. Was there ever a logical/reasonable explanation for this?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Was rewatching Frontier at work today and it just dawned on me. Sorry in advance if this has been adked/answered before. In  the final episode where Klan Klan gives Alto Michael's sniper gunpod. How was he able to carry it with his own gunpod in the finale? I see both in hands in gerwalk mode, but not when in fighter mode. I don't really see it battroid mode either. Was there ever a logical/reasonable explanation for this?

None that I am aware of.

It can be difficult to see given the amount of spinning Alto's doing, but the animators did in fact model both gunpods on Alto's VF-25F for the entirety of that sequence.  At 20:17, right after Grace calls them "insects", there's a clear close-up shot of the underside of Alto's VF-25 where the two gunpods appear to be stored side-by-side in the usual position.  When they switch to Battroid at 20:45, the GU-17 ends up in the right hand and the SSL-9B appears to be stuck to the underside of the left wing Armored Pack where it fits over the dogtooth on the front of the wing glove.  Then Alto tosses his GU-17 and the SSL-9B somehow ends up in the right hand after two more mode changes.

If I had to guess, I'd assume that the same magnetic attachment system used to detach and reattach packs in the field (like we see Alto do toward the start of Ep14) is being used to connect the gunpod to the Armored Pack for safekeeping.

(Variable Fighter Master File, while not official setting material, puts forward the suggestion that the VF-25 is designed to carry up to three gunpods at a time... one on the centerline and one on the dogtooth of each wing glove similar to what we see Alto do in the final episode.)

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

None that I am aware of.

It can be difficult to see given the amount of spinning Alto's doing, but the animators did in fact model both gunpods on Alto's VF-25F for the entirety of that sequence.  At 20:17, right after Grace calls them "insects", there's a clear close-up shot of the underside of Alto's VF-25 where the two gunpods appear to be stored side-by-side in the usual position.  When they switch to Battroid at 20:45, the GU-17 ends up in the right hand and the SSL-9B appears to be stuck to the underside of the left wing Armored Pack where it fits over the dogtooth on the front of the wing glove.  Then Alto tosses his GU-17 and the SSL-9B somehow ends up in the right hand after two more mode changes.

If I had to guess, I'd assume that the same magnetic attachment system used to detach and reattach packs in the field (like we see Alto do toward the start of Ep14) is being used to connect the gunpod to the Armored Pack for safekeeping.

(Variable Fighter Master File, while not official setting material, puts forward the suggestion that the VF-25 is designed to carry up to three gunpods at a time... one on the centerline and one on the dogtooth of each wing glove similar to what we see Alto do in the final episode.)

Thank you Seto. That answer is more than enough to satiate the nagging voice in my head if "how". I always found it intriguing how gunpods "connect" and disconnect, to be used. Like how they carry them in their undercarriage, but are able to be in hand battle ready or stowed away on their forearm.  Roy's gunpod toss scene from Zero and Max's forearm gunpod scene from the opening of DYRL come  to mind. I can only imagine how many factors/variables there would  have to be for that to happen so smoothly and in general for other pilots.