The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[JB0]

4 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Heinz claimed in an earlier episode that he wanted Keith and the Knights to end the war as quickly as possible, though. What a twit that he doesn't really grasp that he's been making decisions affecting millions of people en masse.

He's not a twit, he's a CHILD. There's a difference.

[Sildani]

This. ^

[SMS007]

Do the UN Forces still have separate service branches in the New UN era? I see all these "NUNS" markings onscreen in Frontier and Delta, but I can't ever recall hearing anyone say "Shin Tōgō Uchū-gun", only "Shin Tōgō-gun". 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Do the UN Forces still have separate service branches in the New UN era? I see all these "NUNS" markings onscreen in Frontier and Delta, but I can't ever recall hearing anyone say "Shin Tōgō Uchū-gun", only "Shin Tōgō-gun". 

Yes, it's just that the Space Forces get all the attention.

(Also, both Frontier and Delta had episodes devoted to the New UN Spacy Marine Corps.  If you look on Isamu's service record, you'll find he's also served with the (New) UN Navy.)

[Seto Kaiba]

The New UN Spacy Air Force also puts in an appearance in Macross the Ride.

[Valkyrie Driver]

So would it be fair to say that the New UN Forces are a combined force, where there is mobility between branches based on skill set and assignment rather than being locked into your branch like in the US military? 

For instance if you're a fighter pilot, based on a fixed installation on a planet, you'd be in the NUNAF? If you're based on a ocean carrier or coastal installation you might be NUNN or NUNMC if assigned to a Marine Unit? And if you're assigned to a Space carrier or Colony fleet you'd be NUNS? 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

59 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So would it be fair to say that the New UN Forces are a combined force, where there is mobility between branches based on skill set and assignment rather than being locked into your branch like in the US military? 

For instance if you're a fighter pilot, based on a fixed installation on a planet, you'd be in the NUNAF? If you're based on a ocean carrier or coastal installation you might be NUNN or NUNMC if assigned to a Marine Unit? And if you're assigned to a Space carrier or Colony fleet you'd be NUNS? 

Something like that, yes... seemingly inspired by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces' more "corporate" attitude towards service.  Unlike the US military, in the JSDF you don't need to apply for early discharge in order to switch branches of service, and can usually retain rank in the transfer.  It doesn't seem to be very common for soldiers to switch branches, thus far there are only a few characters identified who've ever explicitly served with more than one branch.  

The only ones I can recall offhand are Col. Millard Johnson (Macross Plus), who started his career in the UN Spacy and later transferred to the New UN Air Force before becoming a senior officer at the New Edwards Test Flight Center, and 1st Lt. (later Maj.) Isamu Dyson, who started his career in the New UN Spacy and was subsequently punted around to the New UN Navy, New UN Air Force, and back to the New UN Spacy because no commander wanted to deal with him.

[SMS007]

Is this a genuine screenshot from Macross Frontier? I don't remember ever seeing a 25A close-up in battroid mode in any episode or movie.

[Master Dex]

4 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Is this a genuine screenshot from Macross Frontier? I don't remember ever seeing a 25A close-up in battroid mode in any episode or movie.

It is from one of the movies I think, where we saw more of them. Possibly from the SMS reinforcements near the end of Wings of Goodbye. Though to be honest I am pretty sure that shot is just a reskinned shot of Alto's VF-25 from early in the show spinning around and firing it's gunpod.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Is this a genuine screenshot from Macross Frontier? I don't remember ever seeing a 25A close-up in battroid mode in any episode or movie.

Yes, it is.  I believe it's from the last two episodes, the CF VF-25A showed up in several earlier episodes, including episode 16.

 

EDIT:  I had the wrong episode number.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Sir Galahad®]

How come the Zentradi survived while essentially being the shields of the protoculture race when the entire protoculture race was wiped out?

[Roy Focker]

7 hours ago, Sir Galahad® said:

How come the Zentradi survived while essentially being the shields of the protoculture race when the entire protoculture race was wiped out?

The galaxy is a huge place.   The Protoculture didn't keep their Zentradi at home.  They sent them out across the galaxy.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Sir Galahad® said:

How come the Zentradi survived while essentially being the shields of the protoculture race when the entire protoculture race was wiped out?

Because the Zentradi are a mass-produced clone army that was scattered across much of the galaxy, while the Protoculture were mostly concentrated on inhabitable planets inside their Stellar Republic's sphere of influence.

Being the living embodiment of "we have reserves", even though the Zentradi were decimated too in no small measure because of their programming to not interfere with the Protoculture (even if said Protoculture were spiritia-drained and brainwashed) they had the massive factory satellites churning out endless quantities of men and materiel to feed their war machine.  The Protoculture's reproduction was not anywhere near as prolific, so their population began to diminish due to the mauling they'd taken while their Zentradi soldiers continued to clone at a rate that'd make bunnies envious.  So, despite the fact that something like 40% of their fleets were obliterated, the Zentradi bounced back with vigor and without the Protoculture around to hold the leash while they blindly followed their last orders to exterminate the Supervision Army.

[SMS007]

How old can an individual Zentradi get? Are there any running around as of SDFM to Δ who remember the Stellar Republic era? Or are they all too young and have to rely on historical records?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

How old can an individual Zentradi get? Are there any running around as of SDFM to Δ who remember the Stellar Republic era? Or are they all too young and have to rely on historical records?

As far as we know, Zentradi (and Meltrandi) age at roughly the same rate as a standard human being... with similar life expectency barring violent death in combat.  For the most part, the soldiers we see are in their teens, twenties, and thirties.  Vrlitwhai was, IIRC, something like 38 years old at the start of SDF Macross.

Richard Bilra is a fairly elderly Zentradi in 2059, and he's known to have served in Vrlitwhai's fleet during the end of the First Space War in 2010.  Some of his contemporaries, like Timothy Daldhanton and Naresuan, have maybe shown some slightly slower aging in that they still seem to be physically fit enough to fight at ace level even in their 50's and 60's.

The only Zentradi (and I have to use the term loosely here) that has ever indicated an age greater than that of a standard human or similar is the Gol Boddole Zer biocomputer in Macross: Do You Remember Love?.  Not strictly Zentradi, being a part of his fortress's systems, but he was noted to be over 120,000 years old.

[SMS007]

Has there ever been any in-universe comment about so many Zentradi adopting human-style names? (Chelsea Scarlett, Aisha Blanchett, etc.)

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, SMS007 said:

Has there ever been any in-universe comment about so many Zentradi adopting human-style names? (Chelsea Scarlett, Aisha Blanchett, etc.)

There is, in Macross the Ride.

The antagonist-in-chief Naresuan adopted a human name upon assimilating into Earth society after the First Space War because he was that enthusiastic about Earth's culture and was terribly proud of his new home and life.  He's kind of the anti-Quamzin in a way, he remained so psyched about Earth that he bitterly opposed the decentralization of the government and military and ended up leading an Earth-supremacist militant group.  Richard Bilra seems to have done something similar, and he was also originally a veteran of Vrlitwhai's branch fleet, though instead of staying in the armed forces he went into business and became an interstellar shipping mogul.

Chelsea and Aisha aren't clones, like Klan Klan they're natural-born full-blood Zentradi who were raised in humanity's interstellar society.  Their parents may have adopted more human names to fit in better with their new neighbors, or they may just have been following Milia's lead on that front considering she gave her children human names (Komilia insists on going by her middle name "Maria" in her one starring appearance).

[SMS007]

Is the species name "Vajra" (バジュラ) mean to be a reference to the Sanskrit word of South Asian religion, or is "Vajra" just a made-up sci-fi word coincidentally similar to the Sanskrit term?

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Is the species name "Vajra" (バジュラ) mean to be a reference to the Sanskrit word of South Asian religion, or is "Vajra" just a made-up sci-fi word coincidentally similar to the Sanskrit term?

I forget if it was in one of the Pash! Animation Files or an issue of Otona Anime, but I do recall it being said that the naming was an intentional reference to the sanskrit term's double meaning of "thunderbolt" and "diamond", embodying the concepts of irresistible force and invulnerability.

Since humanity named them, it's almost certainly an intentional reference in-universe by whatever party first encountered them in 2040.  They certainly would've seemed like an invulnerable, totally unstoppable force of nature compared to the technology of the day... after all, the Vajra don't have a spoken language of their own, so they didn't name themselves.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[kajnrig]

On 11/13/2017 at 1:17 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Since humanity named them, it's almost certainly an intentional reference in-universe by whatever party first encountered them in 2040.  They certainly would've seemed like an invulnerable, totally unstoppable force of nature compared to the technology of the day... after all, the Vajra don't have a spoken language of their own, so they didn't name themselves.

Is it stated outright that they don't have a spoken language? Even so, not having a spoken language doesn't mean they don't have a language, and within that language a name for themselves, but your point still stands.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Is it stated outright that they don't have a spoken language? Even so, not having a spoken language doesn't mean they don't have a language, and within that language a name for themselves, but your point still stands.

It's stated that they don't communicate at all in the conventional sense, but rather are linked into a hive mind via natural(?) zero-time fold communication facilitated by fold bacteria they've formed a symbiosis with... so, kinda.  They "sing", but the singing is all fold waves with no conventional audible component, as you'd expect from a species that evolved in a hard vacuum.  The most noise they seem to be capable of making is an inarticulate screeching sound.

(At no point has anyone raised the subject of what the Vajra call themselves, assuming such a thing could even be translated, though the name Vajra can't have come from them as communication with them wasn't possible until 19 years after first contact thanks to Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee.)

[SMS007]

On 11/13/2017 at 2:17 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I forget if it was in one of the Pash! Animation Files or an issue of Otona Anime, but I do recall it being said that the naming was an intentional reference to the sanskrit term's double meaning of "thunderbolt" and "diamond", embodying the concepts of irresistible force and invulnerability.

Since humanity named them, it's almost certainly an intentional reference in-universe by whatever party first encountered them in 2040.  They certainly would've seemed like an invulnerable, totally unstoppable force of nature compared to the technology of the day... after all, the Vajra don't have a spoken language of their own, so they didn't name themselves.

Interesting that the Macross Vajra's name is not spelled as either of the katakana renditions (ヴァジラ/ヴァジュラ) listed on Japanese Wikipedia. I certainly wonder if, had that been the case, then perhaps Macross publications wouldn't be plagued with the variant spellings "Bajura"/"Bajra". 

 

Also, are we to really believe that prior to 2040, no one in the UN had any knowledge of the Vajra? The Zentradi can roam everywhere in the Milky Way over the Protoculture's former domain and yet they don't have any useful data available? What kind of military caste doesn't keep geographic records of armed and dangerous lifeforms? 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Interesting that the Macross Vajra's name is not spelled as either of the katakana renditions (ヴァジラ/ヴァジュラ) listed on Japanese Wikipedia. I certainly wonder if, had that been the case, then perhaps Macross publications wouldn't be plagued with the variant spellings "Bajura"/"Bajra". 

The one that counts, Macross Chronicle, does spell it correctly in English as "Vajra".  It's certainly possible someone mangled the katakana adapting the sanskrit term.

 

4 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Also, are we to really believe that prior to 2040, no one in the UN had any knowledge of the Vajra? The Zentradi can roam everywhere in the Milky Way over the Protoculture's former domain and yet they don't have any useful data available? What kind of military caste doesn't keep geographic records of armed and dangerous lifeforms? 

The New UN Government's first contact with the Vajra is officially down as 2040.  The Zentradi may have run into them before, but... well... we know what the Vajra are like in a fight, and we know the Zentradi only really categorize things into "enemy" and "not enemy", so it's highly probable any Zentradi fleets that encountered the Vajra and were smart enough to leave them alone lumped them firmly in "not enemy" and the ones dumb enough to attack didn't live long enough to report on the experience.  Fleets that pissed the Vajra off probably were written off as casualties of the search and destroy op for the Supervision Army, or maybe as fold accidents the way the New UN Government covered up the loss of the 117th Research Fleet.

[azrael]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(At no point has anyone raised the subject of what the Vajra call themselves, assuming such a thing could even be translated, though the name Vajra can't have come from them as communication with them wasn't possible until 19 years after first contact thanks to Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee.)

Or for that matter, what do dogs, cats, goldfish, elephants, lions, iguanas, etc. call themselves or us, humans. (OK, cats call humans "slaves" but that's a different story...)

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, azrael said:

Or for that matter, what do dogs, cats, goldfish, elephants, lions, iguanas, etc. call themselves or us, humans. (OK, cats call humans "slaves" but that's a different story...)

Amusingly, some interesting ground has been broken on that in the case of elephants and cats... they communicate in frequencies outside normal human hearing, but systematically enough for several researchers to make a stab at starting to systemize it.

The Vajra don't seem to exist as discrete beings in an intellectual sense, so whether they communicate with themselves/each other in terms humans could readily understand is questionable.  The whole hive is one giant networked intelligence.

[Valkyrie Driver]

So, what's the timeline on the VF-X-1 project that we see in SDFM Ep33? Was it before or after the Mayan Island incident? 

[NightmarePlus]

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So, what's the timeline on the VF-X-1 project that we see in SDFM Ep33? Was it before or after the Mayan Island incident? 

For the non-transformable proof of concept fighter? IIRC it was set before the 2008 incident.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So, what's the timeline on the VF-X-1 project that we see in SDFM Ep33? Was it before or after the Mayan Island incident? 

February 2007, about a year and a half before Macross Zero.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Ah, Ok then. I take it that Macross Zero was more or less the last combat action before the events of SDF Macross?

[Seto Kaiba]

48 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Ah, Ok then. I take it that Macross Zero was more or less the last combat action before the events of SDF Macross?

Depends how you want to define "last".

The last official conflict of the Unification Wars was the Third Defensive Battle of South Ataria Island in 2006, after which the partisans in the Russian Federation withdrew support for the Anti-Unification Alliance.

The last actual conflict of the Unification Wars was Operation Iconoclasm at the end of the Mayan Island conflict in September 2008, after which the Anti-Unification Alliance dissolved entirely.

Macross the First has one more conflict, a fourth Defensive Battle of South Ataria in which an Anti-Unification Alliance remnant launched a surprise attack on South Ataria Island on Christmas Eve 2008, shortly before midnight.  That particular battle has a few interesting tidbits.  If canon, it would count as the last known canon/pseudocanon usage of the VF-0 Phoenix, Sv-51, and Octos destroid... as well as the first known usage of the VF-1 Valkyrie in combat, the first known incidence of an unmanned variable fighter (the Sv-51Σ), and CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II's only appearance outside Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix.

Otherwise, the next conflict would be the start of the First Space War.

[Sildani]

Which made all our previous Wars kinda seem like mere bagatelles...

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, Sildani said:

Which made all our previous Wars kinda seem like mere bagatelles...

Y'know what, I'm gonna +1 this just because you used "bagatelles" correctly in a sentence.  

(But yeah, totally... the First Space War was such an incredibly traumatic event that the estimated time to restore Earth to something resembling its prewar state using overtechnology is over 10,000 years and even decades later there are soldiers jumping at the opportunity to use Protoculture technology to make the war un-happen.)

[Sir Galahad®]

Was was the population of the earth in 2012? I mean if you think of all the emigrant fleets that they have launched, numbering from 1 million for New Macross Classes and 10 million for Island Cluster Classes. Which brings me the following questions:

When they tried to implement cloning, did they try to accelerate the aging to accommodate all that people. For me it would be a bad idea since it's like putting a child in an adults body and sending him out in the far unknown. But then again, if they didn't there would be difficulty taking care of a whole lot of kids.

Did they do cloning on earth or was it done in the ships of the emigrant fleets?

Did they try to manipulate their genes so that there are variances so as there are not too many identical "Roy Fockers"? But is Aegis a 100% identical clone of Roy?

[SMS007]

3 minutes ago, Sir Galahad® said:

When they tried to implement cloning, did they try to accelerate the aging to accommodate all that people. For me it would be a bad idea since it's like putting a child in an adults body and sending him out in the far unknown. But then again, if they didn't there would be difficulty taking care of a whole lot of kids.

I haven't read/seen the relevant material, but you may want to keep in mind that the Macross franchise probably ignores the realistic timescale fine details of that just like most sci-fi franchises. After all, Mikumo in Δ is only 3 and yet she has the language skills of an adult. 

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, Sir Galahad® said:

Was was the population of the earth in 2012?

About 9 million, all told... ~1 million humans and ~8 million Zentradi.

 

15 minutes ago, Sir Galahad® said:

When they tried to implement cloning, did they try to accelerate the aging to accommodate all that people. For me it would be a bad idea since it's like putting a child in an adults body and sending him out in the far unknown. But then again, if they didn't there would be difficulty taking care of a whole lot of kids.

Presumably, yes... since it's mentioned that they duplicated important personnel with key skills right down to their memories and learned skills.

 

 

15 minutes ago, Sir Galahad® said:

Did they do cloning on earth or was it done in the ships of the emigrant fleets?

On Earth, as far as we know.

 

15 minutes ago, Sir Galahad® said:

Did they try to manipulate their genes so that there are variances so as there are not too many identical "Roy Fockers"? But is Aegis a 100% identical clone of Roy?

Apparently not, given that a portion of it was identical copies of people with key skills and they had to kill the program after about 20 years because of a significant increase in the rate of recessive genetic illnesses.

As far as we know, Aegis has no relation to Roy.