Delta Character Thread

[kajnrig]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Kaname was no less one-dimensional than the rest of Walkure... she got a little more characterization than Makina and Reina, but it was purely based on pity.  She got rescued from the Scrappy Heap in-universe after her idol career failed to launch because she had a fold receptor factor, then she lost de facto leadership of Walkure to Mikumo because she was a more powerful fold singer and better performer, and then she lost the one fan she actually had when Messer broke orders and got his one-dimensional self reduced to a stain on the canopy.  She's the designated woobie, nothing more... like how Makina exists solely to be Miss Fanservice, Reina is there only as the Quiet Girl, Mikumo spends almost the entire TV series as the Alpha B*tch before some last minute characterization to make her into Mina Forte by way of Sheryl Nome, etc.

Is it worse writing when you make your characters bland and uninteresting from the start (Makina, Reina, Mikumo, Chuck), or when you set up some plot threads that never go explored (Kaname, Mirage, Arad, Messer... and while we're at it, Hayate and Freyja)?

Kaname would be less disappointing if she didn't have the "failed idol" backstory, if she were never the leader of Walkure, if she never had any connection with any of the characters? Because her backstory SHOULD be super interesting, her role in Walkure SHOULD be super interesting, her connections to Arad and Messer SHOULD be super interesting. How does she feel about being an idol? (Conflicted; she had moved onto being a small-time bar singer/waitress.) Why did she want to be one? (To make people happy.) Does she even want to be part of Walkure? (Not really; she doesn't care for fold reception or Var, she doesn't like using her ability in the context of war/conflict. She doesn't like being a Lynn Minmay.) Why does she stay, what's her end-goal? (Being the most emotionally mature and senior member of the group, she wants to mentor Mikumo and views her as something of a surrogate younger sister; she also wants to pursue her relationship with Arad, though she doesn't know how a military(? was he part of UNS/NUNS?) guy like him would feel about her conflicting thoughts about her duties.)

The Idolmaster girls during the tryouts on Ragna were better characters than her, because they were nothing but visually interesting character designs.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Sildani said:

I'm searching for crumbs, here, man!

Unfortunately, if you're looking for Messer's love interests based on his actual expression of interest in their existence in public, Chuck's kid brother Zack has a lock on first place... he's the only one to actually get Messer to make a positive facial expression.

 

 

10 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Is it worse writing when you make your characters bland and uninteresting from the start (Makina, Reina, Mikumo, Chuck), or when you set up some plot threads that never go explored (Kaname, Mirage, Arad, Messer... and while we're at it, Hayate and Freyja)?

In my opinion, it's worse to make your characters bland and uninteresting from the start... but only in the event that they're in the main cast.  That's one of Macross Delta's biggest problems, it has a HUGE main cast, and fully two-thirds of it is flat characters who could be tidily summed up in terms of what cliche they're ticking a checkbox for.

The only characters who truly get characterization in the series are Hayate, Freyja, Mirage, Keith, Roid, Bogue, and Qasim, though that doesn't save several of them from also being flat characters:

Arad: the Big Brother Mentor.
Messer: the Broken Ace.
Chuck: the Big Guy.
Kaname: the Woobie, bordering on the Broken Bird.
Makina: the Miss Fanservice, her bio tries to make her a Wrench Wench but the show forgot to.
Reina: the Stoic, the show tries to sell her as the a Playful Hacker but she's no good at it.
Hermann: the Team Dad.
Qasim: the Token Good Teammate.
Theo and Xao: purely for Twin Banter, or less wholesome activities by doujinshi authors.
Bogue: the designated Fantastic Racist.
Grammier: the Well-Intentioned Extremist, initially a reasonable authority figure in the manga.
Heinz: the Unwitting Pawn.
Berger: the Corrupt Corporate Executive.
Wright: the Suicidal Pacifist by way of a Pacifism Backfire with shades of Too Dumb To Live.
Valan: the Smug Snake, superficially.  More a One Sane Man once you put context to him.
Lady M: a one-woman Omniscient Council of Vagueness by proxy, since she never appears.
 

 

10 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Kaname would be less disappointing if she didn't have the "failed idol" backstory, if she were never the leader of Walkure, if she never had any connection with any of the characters?

For my money, she'd be a lot less disappointing if her status as the Woobie wasn't her one and only character trait.  A lot of these characters had potential, but there were just too many characters and not nearly enough show to develop them properly.

The only ones who really aren't save-able are Makina and Reina, since they're there purely for the fanservice and to fill out the list of standard fetishes for the doujinshi authors.  The gaiden manga already did a lot to salvage the members of the Aerial Knights and King Grammier.

 

10 hours ago, kajnrig said:

The Idolmaster girls during the tryouts on Ragna were better characters than her, because they were nothing but visually interesting character designs.

Ouch.

[Einherjar]

I hear from the Uta Macross game that Reina is actually Zolan.  The ears, like Michael's, should have been a hint.

[Sir Galahad®]

If Mylene and Emilia can generate a lot of song energy, and even Milia can sing, I think Mirage can do it too, unless she really is the black sheep of the family when it comes to talent.

[Einherjar]

Spoiler

I don't know, judge for yourself.  I can tell you that I was completely sober working on this on Paint.

Spoiler

 

Update - Thanks to This Confuses Gamlin who took the time to edit the picture from episode 17 years ago

Edited August 31, 2018 by Einherjar
uploaded a better quality picture

[wmkjr]

Wouldn't be surprised since they've integrated. 

[Einherjar]

1 hour ago, wmkjr said:

Wouldn't be surprised since they've integrated. 

If true, it would be a significant change to Hayate's character and his interactions with Mirage.  Reminds me of a question I asked before when the show ran;  unless he was lying, how does someone like Hayate have such finesse piloting a Valk (at least in battroid mode) without ever piloting one and with at least some experience using a civilian destroid before Delta?  Remember, it's not the only mecha lineage in use in the galaxy.

Just something to think about for the immediate future, I guess.

[Seto Kaiba]

21 hours ago, Einherjar said:

I don't know, judge for yourself.  I can tell you that I was completely sober working on this on Paint.

Pretty big reach, IMO... considering that aliens and hybrids usually have some obvious trait that marks them out as such.  (Pointy ears, exotic skin colors, extra appendages, etc.)

Wright's jacket is pretty close in design to Ushio Todo's special forces longcoat, and he was a certified human (and certifiably crazy).  The hat looks like a black version of the regular New UN Forces standard issue one (which is usually white, which I guess marks him out as special forces).

 

19 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Reminds me of a question I asked before when the show ran;  unless he was lying, how does someone like Hayate have such finesse piloting a Valk (at least in battroid mode) without ever piloting one and with at least some experience using a civilian destroid before Delta?

"Natural talent" is kind of a recurring schtick in cases like this.  Look at how it worked for Mylene... she had basically zero experience and in fairly short order her natural talent for VF operations had her flying at the same level as elite special forces badass normal Gamlin Kizaki.  Alto too.  He changed majors at Mihoshi Academy from theater to space flight and he was flying at a level rivaling professional soldiers with two years of regular commercial-grade spaceflight training.

Hayate's had the advantage that mecha control systems have been at least partially standardized for somewhere on the order of half a century by the time he made the move from a forklift operator to fighter pilot.

[Einherjar]

For anyone who either bought that Macross Delta character art book or went to one of the Walkure museums that were set up last year, was there ever a full body front and back sketch of Wright Immelman wearing his military uniform from episode 24?  I thought I saw at least one panel from a gallery from one event, but the website it was on no longer exists. If possible, search on Google and see if it has any similarities with the Zentradi uniforms designs from the original series.  From what I remember, prior to this episode and him anyone currently or at one time associated with the NUNS in a leadership position had a uniform design that was a variation or call back to something worn way back in the days of the UN Spacey.  What got me thinking about is was the placement of the pockets on his coat.

[Seto Kaiba]

16 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

For anyone who either bought that Macross Delta character art book or went to one of the Walkure museums that were set up last year, was there ever a full body front and back sketch of Wright Immelman wearing his military uniform from episode 24?

Page 061 of the Macross Delta Character Design Works book.

 

 

16 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

I thought I saw at least one panel from a gallery from one event, but the website it was on no longer exists. If possible, search on Google and see if it has any similarities with the Zentradi uniforms designs from the original series.

It really doesn't look anything like a Zentradi Army uniform.  If it weren't for those rank tabs on the shoulders and those funky shoulder pads, it'd be a pretty generic gray long coat of the type you could buy in practically any store.  What he's wearing under it looks like it might be the regular uniform shirt from the New UN Forces duty uniform in Frontier and Delta, for those who aren't "fancy" like Major Marin or Brigadier Peliot (who wear either ties or ascots).

More interestingly, a good view of the pilot suit looks nothing like contemporary New UN Forces-issue TSV or TSS-series pilot suits either.  It looks for all the world like it's based on the Feios Valkyrie's pilot suit from Macross Digital Mission VF-X.

 

16 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

From what I remember, prior to this episode and him anyone currently or at one time associated with the NUNS in a leadership position had a uniform design that was a variation or call back to something worn way back in the days of the UN Spacey.  What got me thinking about is was the placement of the pockets on his coat.

He's not in a leadership position though... he's just a rank and file pilot.  The New UN Forces officers we see are wearing a mostly unmodified version of the same New UN Forces duty uniform from Macross Frontier.

[Einherjar]

I forgot to mention, according to one of the mangas during the war for independence Wright was on an infiltration mission on Windermere.  It was just like what Chaos did in the show, or what three aliens pulled off over fifty years ago.  He saw Keith and Roid on the way to meet a contact.  

[SMS007]

Hey Seto, what happened to the image of Wright in your post?

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Hey Seto, what happened to the image of Wright in your post?

Didn't post one, IIRC.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Einherjar said:

I forgot to mention, according to one of the mangas during the war for independence Wright was on an infiltration mission on Windermere.  It was just like what Chaos did in the show, or what three aliens pulled off over fifty years ago.  He saw Keith and Roid on the way to meet a contact.  

And no more effectively than Xaos's lazy, ineffectual infiltration... he was spotted for a fraud from the word "go".

[Einherjar]

He didn’t read the manga.  

SMS007, if you are interested, we had a thread for the mangas here.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Einherjar
Trying to be more helpful without being insufferable.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Einherjar said:

He didn’t read the manga.  

Oh, I've read it... translated a fair chunk of it too.  I'm usually the one praising it as material that should've been in Macross Delta's TV series, since it does such a good job of developing the Aerial Knights as characters.

The scene you're talking about is in chapter 7, on page 40 of White Knight of the Black Wing's second (and final) volume.  Keith and Roid bump into an undercover Wright on the path to the Protoculture ruins and Wright's disguise lasts all of two panels before they notice there's nothing coming from his fake runes.  They don't make an issue of it because he seems nice.  They don't discover the man they met was a New UN Forces soldier until the identity of the pilot who bombed Carlyle was made known in chapter 9.

(Trying to go undercover among a naturally empathic species by disguising yourself as one of them is kind of a boondoggle when you think about it.)

Edited August 11, 2018 by Seto Kaiba

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, I've read it... translated a fair chunk of it too.  I'm usually the one praising it as material that should've been in Macross Delta's TV series, since it does such a good job of developing the Aerial Knights as characters.

I think he meant that Wright forgot to read it.

 

That said, the additional detail is hilarious, and much appreciated.

"Hi, guys! I am one of you and have sparkly runes, look how they shine!"

"(His runes... they're so fake. Weirdo.) Haha, that's nice! Good for you!"

Edited August 11, 2018 by JB0

[SMS007]

15 hours ago, Einherjar said:

He didn’t read the manga.  

SMS007, if you are interested, we had a thread for the mangas here.

Ah, I wasn't sure if this board had any policy against necro-ing threads. I have read several chapters of Kuroki Tsubasa no Shiro Kishi.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/11/2018 at 2:30 AM, JB0 said:

That said, the additional detail is hilarious, and much appreciated.

"Hi, guys! I am one of you and have sparkly runes, look how they shine!"

"(His runes... they're so fake. Weirdo.) Haha, that's nice! Good for you!"

Clark Kent-ing seems to be realistically ineffective in the Macross universe... though at least Wright wasn't working with the additional handicap of being an interstellar celebrity on top of trying to go undercover on the planet of the empaths.

[Einherjar]

I’d rather get other people’s opinion about what I found.