Macross Δ (Delta) - Mission 13 - READ 1st POST

[Product9]

You're acting like this is real. It's a story, with a direction, dramatic license and a pace.

If anything, Elysion coming to the rescue was reminicent of Quarter's surprise attack - coming out of nowhere and saving the day even though if they had been off by one second it would have failed. When this stuff happens mostly off screen no one questions how the heck they pulled it off for some reason.

Again, I'm just stating what happened in the episode, and how those events were presented. The director's intent, if you will. I'm trying to see what is there, not what I want to be there.

[kalvasflam]

Well, if we're going to go with it's not real angle, then this entire line of discussion is somewhat pointless right? After all, transformable fighter is also just pure science fiction.

Because in both cases, all we're doing is talking about what happened on screen.... then whether Ernie is competent or not is no longer relevant, heck, he could be this guy, and it's still believable... after all, the only thing we need is to change is the uniform, and slap some facial hair on, and stuff his antenna under the cap, and who can tell the difference.

This would even fit it we start showing Haya-Haya with golden hair to go with his glowing valk.

Edited June 29, 2016 by kalvasflam

[Product9]

That would be going to extremes. I'm saying we should be trying to understand what happened in the episode, because there is a language barrier for most of us and the direction is confusing at times.

But what some of you guys are saying is very biased and bordering on headcanon.

I wasn't saying the show isn't real so nothing matters - quite the opposite. I'm saying it is a story that is written with some purpose and direction in mind, and we should be focusing on that rather than trying to come up with the strategies the characters should have used if it were a real battle.

I mean, sure, speculating and theorycrafting are all well and good, but the negativity is getting a little out of hand here.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Product9

[Seto Kaiba]

The episode also established that in the beginning the NUNS fleet was ineffectual due to the Wind Song, even with the Walkurie singing, it was not until Freyja began singing for Hayate did Heinz get overcome by the group. The Macross was not as effective against the SV until the Fold Fault barrier was disabled and even then all she was able to do was damage the bridge ultimately. Granted, this argument also proves how futile Johnson's hail mary attack on the SV would have been prior, but the alternative was a razed earth battle on Ragna. Not a great set of options for any commander tasked with protecting a civilian world. Take the fight to the enemy or be responsible for thousands of deaths on a planet that will be overcome by a superior force. The third alternative is to abandon Ragna (like Nato did with Ruwanda) to Windermere and lose the war, which is where we ultimately have come to anyway.

Um... that's not actually demonstrated in the episode.

What the episode does, in fact, show is that some of the New UN Spacy forces were affected by Var syndrome when Heinz first began to sing the song of the wind. Some, not all. As to why, we have to look at the members of Walkure who apparently forgot that stopping Var outbreaks was literally their goddamn jobs until Arad ordered them to suppress the Var and Hayate had had the time to go back to the hangar and prep a new aircraft for himself. That's an awfully long time to let the enemy leverage its trump card unopposed. Still, as we know Kaos doesn't have nearly the number of aircraft shown coming to support the emigrant ship's evacuation of the civilians (or the warships seen in orbit escorting the ship out of the system).

So, clearly Walkure was able to protect a good portion of the New UN Spacy from Heinz's song.

They had other options besides a hopeless Leeroy Jenkins run at the Windermerean fleet in orbit of Al Shahal... but they got suckered bigtime. That lucky shot is all that prevented Johnson and Lady M's blunder from letting Windermere take the last planet in the cluster without a fight. (Captain Johnson seems to be in the territory of "better to be lucky than good".)

No amount of tactics would prevent this as none of the forces available outside of the Elysion were immune to the wind song mind control affect. So the only ones able to remain effective against the SV and the wind song were vastly outnumbered. The song amplifier is turning out to be a formidable weapon and the only time Walkurie was able to fully counter it was when Mikuno and Freyja were at that shrine at the time of the attack on cat world and when Freyja pulled a Basara during the battle.

Actually, we're shown that even Elysion's forces were not immune... but they CAN be protected by Walkure's fold songs (when they remember to actually sing them).

Freyja even managed to drown out Heinz unamplified. That's a hell of a thing right there, considering Heinz was at his most powerful.

That taken into account, there's a pretty solid argument that chasing after Gramia was the wrong thing to do...

I think it's perfectly reasonable that one Macross-class warship was enough to bust the entire Windermere fleet with its wave motion gun. We're shown its defenses were strong enough to tank a blast from a Protoculture warship. Full power or not, I think it would be foolish to assume seven warships would be an overpowering force for a ship of that class. The SDF-1 took on odds like that every episode.

Eh... not all Macross-type warships are created (or armed) equally.

Civilian-owned Macross-type warships like Kaos's Macross Elysion or SMS's Macross Quarter-class are much more lightly armed in terms of their macross cannons than the military's Macross-type warships. The original Macross-class had a very powerful heavy converging beam cannon with a range of a light second and enough power to kill multiple enemy ships with a near miss. The New Macross-class's cannon was a good deal more powerful than that, with the ability to kill over a dozen ships with a single shot and not even needing to directly hit most of them. The Macross Quarter and Macross Elysion's main guns seem to be much more reserved, able to destroy a smallish warship in one hit but otherwise not the sort of thing that might obliterate something like the Sigur Valens in one hit. The Elysion's macross cannon seems to be on par with one of the Sigur Valens' gun turrets.

As far as the SDF-1 Macross and long odds, it's also worth remembering that the Macross had more than fifteen times the number of fighters the Macross Elysion apparently does, and its heavy converging beam cannon was on a whole other scale (being almost as big as the Elysion itself). Also, almost as important, is the fact that the Zentradi were not earnestly attempting to destroy the Macross for most of that time (whereas Gramia seems to have given Johnson a pass initially, and then tried to kill the hell out of him unsuccessfully).

This is like arguing politics, you lot are so completely convinced Johnson is an idiot that you can't accept any arguments that he isn't.

At the risk of pointing out an inconvenient fact, the show actually explicitly supports our contention that Captain Ernest Johnson is absolutely terrible at his job.

We had, in the previous episode, a scene where Mr. Berger from Epsilon tells King Gramia about Johnson's reputation... that's he's known far and wide as the commander who loses 100 out of 100 battles.

You don't get a reputation of "the man with a 100% failure rate" by being good at your job!

Chaos didn't win? Chaos aren't a true military force, they're basically security guards for the galaxy's rowdiest concerts. They're tiny, they're spread thin, and their entire training is to shoot to disable, rather than kill, because the people they usually fight are innocents that can be brought back to normal with sufficient song.

You were right up to the point where you said they were trained to shoot to disable rather than kill... remember, Messer frequently chewed out Hayate and Mirage for doing that, saying that they didn't have the skill to do it without endangering themselves and that they should shoot to kill (as he does).

"Why didn't they lie in wait for the Sigur Valens and blast it as it came out of Fold?" I don't know, why did no one else try doing that? Oh wait they did at Al Shahal, and the fold barrier came up immediately, no-sold the whole armada's massed strike, and then the fold song turned all the defenders in 15 minutes.

Not quite... they sat around gawping at it instead of immediately opening fire. Not the best idea when the thing you're gawping at is an enemy fleet.

BTW, what's up with his glasses thing? Does Lloyd actually have a Manchurian Candidate split/sleeper personality with the change of glasses as a tell or something?

😁

Officially... Roid has kind of an obsession with glasses. You could call him a glasses otaku. If you look in earlier episodes, his study on Windermere has a HUGE display case full of pairs of glasses in different styles. His official bio on the website actually says he has a different pair for every occasion.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Seto Kaiba

[Saruta]

I think both debaters are right.

Ernest Johnson is not a great captain in combat (he is much better at providing for his troops outside of battle than at leading them in battle - and it is the "outside" part, the support, logistics etc, that Gramia was probably learning from him).

But also there does seem to be something fishy re the NUNS captain and Windermere.

[Alastar]

I like the scene when the two huge booms ontop of the Ely got taken out...took me back to DYRL.

But on another note...if both of Ely's arms are docked...can there be a duel beam cannon effect taking place? Or is one ship a Shield and the other is the Gun Pod?

[kalvasflam]

Officially... Roid has kind of an obsession with glasses. You could call him a glasses otaku. If you look in earlier episodes, his study on Windermere has a HUGE display case full of pairs of glasses in different styles. His official bio on the website actually says he has a different pair for every occasion.

I'm waiting for the glasses from Roy that are just a little offbeat:

The I'm in a funky mood type.

#1 KumoKumo fan glasses (just cause Mikumo is so purple)

Lover, not a hater frame

Come to think of it, Ernie could use a pair....

Edited June 29, 2016 by kalvasflam

[charles88]

At the risk of pointing out an inconvenient fact, the show actually explicitly supports our contention that Captain Ernest Johnson is absolutely terrible at his job.

We had, in the previous episode, a scene where Mr. Berger from Epsilon tells King Gramia about Johnson's reputation... that's he's known far and wide as the commander who loses 100 out of 100 battles.

You don't get a reputation of "the man with a 100% failure rate" by being good at your job!

Its actually mistranslated from gg fansub as i read from forum that Ernest Johnson actually only lost 8 battle out of 100 space battle.

[Nazareno2012]

Its actually mistranslated from gg fansub as i read from forum that Ernest Johnson actually only lost 8 battle out of 100 space battle.

Actually, the statement he made was hard to translate, but what he meant that he sides with the losing faction in a battle.

[Product9]

To be fair, a guy can't side with the losing side every time and actually survive without having some kind of skill.

I think the idea they were trying to convey is that Ernest Johnson fights for principle rather than for personal gain.

[Seto Kaiba]

Its actually mistranslated from gg fansub as i read from forum that Ernest Johnson actually only lost 8 battle out of 100 space battle.

... nope, they actually did get it correct. Even the Japanese wiki confirms that it's 百戦百敗, 100 losses for 100 games (battles).

Actually, the statement he made was hard to translate, but what he meant that he sides with the losing faction in a battle.

Not really, no... and the statement that he always picks the losing side is in the sentence before that one.

To be fair, a guy can't side with the losing side every time and actually survive without having some kind of skill.

Kind of hard to argue that point... he's either just good enough to skulk away with his life intact, or he's managed to make luck a viable substitute for skill.

I think the idea they were trying to convey is that Ernest Johnson fights for principle rather than for personal gain.

That, plus his track record is lousy.

[squaresphere]

I'd point out that if Ernest was known to be a guy that always sides with the losing side, how would a guy like that be put in charge of one of the most strategically important assets in the sector? If he was known to be a better coordinator and trainer that's fine, it's still not a qualification to be a fleet commander (would having the 3 ships in a macross be a fleet by itself?)

On top of that, being a captain of a macross class ship should be a choice position. Could Ernest have been appointed by Lady M because he aligns with her view points the most? Other weirdness would be why would NUNS let a military contractor control the sole Macross class ship in the sector unless Kaos already owned it.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'd point out that if Ernest was known to be a guy that always sides with the losing side, how would a guy like that be put in charge of one of the most strategically important assets in the sector? [...]

Yeah, that's one of several nagging questions surrounding the chain of command at Kaos.

Ernest Johnson's reputation as a commander is so incredibly bad that soldiers and private citizens alike know him as the fleet commander who would lose 100 out of 100 battles. The "Soldier for hire" business is a results-driven field to say the least. It doesn't make any sense that planetary governments and an extremely well-funded PMC would want to retain his services with a reputation like that. With Windermere I could maybe believe that he was hired because he was cheap, but there's gotta be something more to it with Kaos.

I doubt it's anything as mundane as nepotism.

(I'm privately inclined to suspect that, like SMS's staff and the loss of the 117th Research Fleet, Kaos's staff has a large percentage of people who had a role in the Windermerean war of independence. It is, however, possible that a decision to hire him was made because they assumed he'd never have to do more than orchestrate a glorified bodyguard detail for Walkure.)

On top of that, being a captain of a macross class ship should be a choice position. Could Ernest have been appointed by Lady M because he aligns with her view points the most? Other weirdness would be why would NUNS let a military contractor control the sole Macross class ship in the sector unless Kaos already owned it.

... actually, there's a bigger question associated with that.

Why is the Macross Elysion apparently the only Macross-type warship in the Brisingr cluster?

Unlike Windermere, which was colonized by a Megaroad-class ship, we're shown that Ragna was settled by an early New Macross-class ship. Where is its Battle section? Even if the fleet was Macross-1 and the habitat ships that made up the fleet all settled different planets, Battle-1 still would be somewhere in the cluster... possibly more than one Battle-1 if the other city ships in the fleet also had their own Battle sections as the Macross-5 fleet did.

I mean, there are something like a dozen inhabited worlds that make up the Brisingr cluster... they can't all have been settle by one or two emigrant fleets. There should be at least one, possibly several Battle-class ships and maybe an old Macross-class or two. The Elysion should not be the only Macross-type ship in the cluster, or even the system... so where are they all? I know it's so far out in the space boonies you hear banjos during the fold jump, but key assets sent out with the 3rd Gen and later emigrant fleets can't have just gone walkabout... how do you lose a supercarrier a kilometer and a half long?

[This Confuses Gamlin]

how do you lose a supercarrier a kilometer and a half long?

Perhaps it was destroyed during the Windermere war, and the cluster is so far out in the sticks that NUNS never got around to replacing it.

I'll also present the off-the-wall improbable idea that the Dimension Eater was aboard the Battle-class when it went off.

[NightmarePlus]

Perhaps it was destroyed during the Windermere war, and the cluster is so far out in the sticks that NUNS never got around to replacing it.

I'll also present the off-the-wall improbable idea that the Dimension Eater was aboard the Battle-class when it went off.

But there could be several though.

Edit: Also i find it improbable that Ragna's Macross/Battle class would be involved with Windermere's war, even if the two systems are only 30 light years apart.

Edited June 29, 2016 by NightmarePlus

[Seto Kaiba]

Perhaps it was destroyed during the Windermere war, and the cluster is so far out in the sticks that NUNS never got around to replacing it.

Maybe... but the impression I got was that Windermere's war of independence was very short, probably too short for the Windermere NUNS to have called in reinforcements from more than their closest neighbors. Ragna is all the way on the other side of the cluster.

I'll also present the off-the-wall improbable idea that the Dimension Eater was aboard the Battle-class when it went off.

Almost certainly not, given that we're told that the dimension eater destroyed a city and its detonation would have to have been near ground level to produce that kind of crater. Getting a ship that big that low over a city would be insane. I'm not sure how a dimension eater would go off aboard a NUNS ship when the Windermereans were reportedly the ones who used it.

(Now, I'll wager the emigrant ship that settled Windermere - Megaroad-04 - was probably lost in that blast. It was probably the heart of the city of Carlyle/Carlisle, like that one New Macross-class domeship was for Barette city on Ragna.)

But there could be several though.

Edit: Also i find it improbable that Ragna's Macross/Battle class would be involved with Windermere's war, even if the two systems are only 30 light years apart.

Just a note... it's Al Shahal that's 30 light years from Ragna. Windermere is, per Arad, 800 light years from Ragna.

[NightmarePlus]

Maybe... but the impression I got was that Windermere's war of independence was very short, probably too short for the Windermere NUNS to have called in reinforcements from more than their closest neighbors. Ragna is all the way on the other side of the cluster.

Almost certainly not, given that we're told that the dimension eater destroyed a city and its detonation would have to have been near ground level to produce that kind of crater. Getting a ship that big that low over a city would be insane. I'm not sure how a dimension eater would go off aboard a NUNS ship when the Windermereans were reportedly the ones who used it.

(Now, I'll wager the emigrant ship that settled Windermere - Megaroad-04 - was probably lost in that blast. It was probably the heart of the city of Carlyle/Carlisle, like that one New Macross-class domeship was for Barette city on Ragna.)

Just a note... it's Al Shahal that's 30 light years from Ragna. Windermere is, per Arad, 800 light years from Ragna.

Oh, whoops >_>

[UN Spacy]

Gonna be neat to finally compare the official Bandai Visual subs to the fan subs we've been getting.

I wonder how much if there's being anything mistranslated.

[This Confuses Gamlin]

Gonna be neat to finally compare the official Bandai Visual subs to the fan subs we've been getting.

I wonder how much if there's being anything mistranslated.

This blog entry has been working on that here and there: http://karice67.livejournal.com/195157.html

Bonus question: If Freyja's accent was US-localized, what would it be? Midwestern? Appalachian? Is it especially weird-sounding Japanese?

[Master Dex]

This blog entry has been working on that here and there: http://karice67.livejournal.com/195157.html

Bonus question: If Freyja's accent was US-localized, what would it be? Midwestern? Appalachian? Is it especially weird-sounding Japanese?

A common affectation of dubs is to represent a Kansai dialect as people speaking with a heavy southern drawl as it is the closest to approximating the effect of the dialect and how it makes speech differ from typical Japanese.

I don't know if Freyja is speaking in Kansai itself mind you but the 'country bumpkin' bit on that page makes me think it is closer as such considering how it is usually handled.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Master Dex

[kajnrig]

Might they make her VA affect a stereotypical Russian accent?

[kalvasflam]

Yeah, that's one of several nagging questions surrounding the chain of command at Kaos.

Ernest Johnson's reputation as a commander is so incredibly bad that soldiers and private citizens alike know him as the fleet commander who would lose 100 out of 100 battles. The "Soldier for hire" business is a results-driven field to say the least. It doesn't make any sense that planetary governments and an extremely well-funded PMC would want to retain his services with a reputation like that. With Windermere I could maybe believe that he was hired because he was cheap, but there's gotta be something more to it with Kaos.

I doubt it's anything as mundane as nepotism.

(I'm privately inclined to suspect that, like SMS's staff and the loss of the 117th Research Fleet, Kaos's staff has a large percentage of people who had a role in the Windermerean war of independence. It is, however, possible that a decision to hire him was made because they assumed he'd never have to do more than orchestrate a glorified bodyguard detail for Walkure.

Just being a little snarky here, my theory is lady M is in fact Milia, the Ernie was probably a Zentran under her command once, and he sucked up enough that he made him a commander in a backward area thinking what harm could this possibly cause. Nothing ever happens in the Starwind cluster, glorified bodyguard... heh heh.

Good question about the Battle section, I wonder if Elysion can dock with the Island class in question, or if the connection would only work with a Battle class.

[BlueMax]

I like to think of Ernest Johnson as someone like Kambei Shimada from <7 Samurai>, rather than an totally incompetent commander.

I quote this excerpt from this blog :

We learn Shimada..... has a long history of fighting on the losing side. “You’re overestimating me,” he says. “Listen, I’m not a man with any special skill, but I’ve had plenty of experience in battles; losing battles, all of them. In short, that’s all I am.” But we know he is much more.

Sounds like it can describe Ernest Johnson too.

Edited June 30, 2016 by BlueMax

[Product9]

Honestly Lady M is probably going to be someone really boring. My guess is it's Mikumo... she seems like she's pulling strings behind the scenes.

Or maybe it's Messer, who faked his own death to be Lady M full time.

Edit since there have been no replies:

It also occurred to me that even though Ernest Johnson saved the day like three times and got a ton of civilians to safety, this is still technically a loss since they had to abandon the planet. I guess now it's 101 losses out of 101 battles.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Product9

[MisaForever]

I'm calling it now. Green-haired cleavage pilot will be the new member of Chaos. Love-quadrangle confirmed!!

[kalvasflam]

could she already be in CHAOS, just not Delta squad?

Edited June 30, 2016 by kalvasflam

[guyxxed]

Half way through, time for a quick mid-season review:

Overall, I'm enjoying Delta and think it's a good addition to the Macross universe. It's exciting, it's interesting, and it's fun. I'm in it for the long haul and can't wait to see where it goes. That said, there are some things that it does well, and some things where...well, not so much.

Good:

Worldbuilding - Delta has given us some very nice locations and additions to the universe. I really like Thomas Romain's work in creating Ragna and Al Shahal as unique places, and really like the little technical details that get worked into many of the episodes (like the load out scene in ep 6, or the brief discussion of live vs. recorded music in ep 4). I like the maps we keep getting and I really like that this series is seemingly going to look closer at the legacy of the Protoculture and what it means to those in the present day. Cool stuff!

Animation - The series is gorgeous, very well made and obviously going out of its way to give us more than it has to. This is a quality visual product, no matter what one thinks of the story.

Tone - 'tone' might not be the right word, but what I mean is that Delta does a good job of keeping a balance of light and dark moments as well as being more mature in its overall thrust than some previous entries. Despite some of the choices in character design that appeared to be for pure titillation, the fanservice has been very minimal, and the characters have been pretty well left to stand as themselves rather than as objects or cyphers.

Mecha - almost a given for a Macross show, but I like the new entries. The VF-1 was a hard act to beat, but Macross keeps giving me new Valkyries to love. I really hope we haven't seen the last of the new Zentradi mechs, too.

Not so Good:

Villains - I'm all for mystery and playing things close to the vest, but we're halfway through the show and I still don't really know what the bad guys' goals are. Push NUNS out and establish control of the sector, but what does that mean to them? Is fully enslaving the entire population the endgame, or is the Var just a means to an end with something else to follow? They clearly didn't know about the bomb, so did they know about the structure? If so, what was their plan to make it show up? Or was it all just a happy accident and they're just winging it? I have theories and suspicions, but the show hasn't given us anything to really tell us. This isn't a show killer, but it does reduce my engagement with the conflict because the stakes aren't clear. Which leads to...

Action - Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of action in the story, and the choreography of the action sequences is really good. But I'm feeling almost like I'm watching G.I.Joe in that only faceless nobodies get shot down and I'm half expecting to see everybody parachute to safety. The Knights should have taken a loss by now. Alpha and Beta squads should have gotten some face time so that their losses meant something. I don't want dark and gritty with deaths in every episode, but I want to feel tension during battles, and right now I don't.

Characters - This one could honestly have just as easily been a 'Good', because I actually really like the characters that we've been given. Hayate and Freyja are big improvements over Alto and Ranka in terms of complexity and agency, I really like that Walkure aren't just idol singers but also have other dimensions and values to them as well, I like Mirage and her self-doubt and pressures, I like that we have a broad ensemble that all have roles to play and fit together in interesting combinations that play well off each other. Which is why I'm a bit frustrated in some of the combinations we're getting. Mirage is a veteran pilot with actual combat experience, yet she's had to be rescued by Hayate (the green rookie) twice already. Arad has been hinted as being on Messer's level, yet we have yet to see him do...anything. There is a huge potential here to show Delta squad coming together as a team to save the day, where each of them balance out the weaknesses and strengths of the others, to be something more than any of them would be on their own, yet what we've mostly gotten is Hayate going from amateur to superstar in record time. Mirage is competent and tough, please show that side of her more. Chuck and Arad didn't get on the team because there were empty seats to fill, let's see what they contribute. I want less special snowflakes dominating the story and more of a team ensemble coming together to work as a unit. Frontier actually did a pretty good job of this, and Delta has all the pieces in place, it just needs to move the spotlight every now and then.

Again, overall I really like Delta and am looking forward to seeing where it's going. There's a lot to love here, and I am loving it. No show is perfect, and my negatives above are just my opinions on where it could be doing better. It's a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying the ride. Hopefully most of you all as well.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just being a little snarky here, my theory is lady M is in fact Milia, the Ernie was probably a Zentran under her command once, and he sucked up enough that he made him a commander in a backward area thinking what harm could this possibly cause. Nothing ever happens in the Starwind cluster, glorified bodyguard... heh heh.

Good question about the Battle section, I wonder if Elysion can dock with the Island class in question, or if the connection would only work with a Battle class.

That's a fun thought... if the Brisingr cluster offices are Kaos's equivalent of "reassigned to Antarctica" used to get rid of staff who can't hack it in a more important market or who would be legally problematic to fire, that'd go quite a ways to explain why Kaos's staff seems to lackluster compared to the fairly elite SMS troops from Frontier.

(Either that or SMS just pays better and is just recruiting all the best and brightest soldiers and Kaos is left with the scrubs.)

Honestly Lady M is probably going to be someone really boring. My guess is it's Mikumo... she seems like she's pulling strings behind the scenes.

Or maybe it's Messer, who faked his own death to be Lady M full time.

Edit since there have been no replies:

It also occurred to me that even though Ernest Johnson saved the day like three times and got a ton of civilians to safety, this is still technically a loss since they had to abandon the planet. I guess now it's 101 losses out of 101 battles.

New theory! Lady M is actually Dr. Gadget M Chiba in drag. He lost a bet and had to come to work one day in a dress, and everyone was so afraid to ask why (for fear of ending up chained to a chair like Gamlin) that he simply resolved to keep the dress until someone said something. 20 years later, the military and Kaos staff call him "Lady M" behind his back to avoid getting in trouble.

I'm calling it now. Green-haired cleavage pilot will be the new member of Chaos. Love-quadrangle confirmed!!

She's already an employee of Kaos... she's wearing the uniform. She just doesn't appear to be attached to the Ragna branch office.

[MisaForever]

could she already be in CHAOS, just not Delta squad?

Oops, I meant Delta squad.

[kalvasflam]

Yep, CHAOS is like your low cost providers, so don't get quite as a good quality in terms of personnel.

I do like the concept of concert security too, if you think about Delta, that's what they are. And the Aerial Knights are rowdy music haters. In that context, things are suddenly clear.

Welcome to the less glamorous side of Macross. Not quite as elite, because but still better than the NUNS red shirts.

[RedWolf]

... actually, there's a bigger question associated with that.

Why is the Macross Elysion apparently the only Macross-type warship in the Brisingr cluster?

Unlike Windermere, which was colonized by a Megaroad-class ship, we're shown that Ragna was settled by an early New Macross-class ship. Where is its Battle section? Even if the fleet was Macross-1 and the habitat ships that made up the fleet all settled different planets, Battle-1 still would be somewhere in the cluster... possibly more than one Battle-1 if the other city ships in the fleet also had their own Battle sections as the Macross-5 fleet did.

I mean, there are something like a dozen inhabited worlds that make up the Brisingr cluster... they can't all have been settle by one or two emigrant fleets. There should be at least one, possibly several Battle-class ships and maybe an old Macross-class or two. The Elysion should not be the only Macross-type ship in the cluster, or even the system... so where are they all? I know it's so far out in the space boonies you hear banjos during the fold jump, but key assets sent out with the 3rd Gen and later emigrant fleets can't have just gone walkabout... how do you lose a supercarrier a kilometer and a half long?

From what we know with the SDFN series is that once they've fulfilled their mission say settled a short ranged emigration fleet they can be reassigned with a new mission like with the Global.

It may apply to the Battle class of NMC fleets.

Edited July 1, 2016 by RedWolf

[Saruta]

Bonus question: If Freyja's accent was US-localized, what would it be? Midwestern? Appalachian? Is it especially weird-sounding Japanese?

I know nothing about her Japanese, but if I were to cast a dub, I'd give her Andrea Libman... better known in some circles as Pinkie Pie. Just for the somewhat-obvious reference, which is more than the colour scheme.

[Seto Kaiba]

From what we know with the SDFN series is that once they've fulfilled their mission say settled a short ranged emigration fleet they can be reassigned with a new mission like with the Global.

It may apply to the Battle class of NMC fleets.

Eh... I doubt it. The mass-produced Macross-class weren't attached to any one fleet on a permanent basis, but the Battle-class literally (physically!) were. The idea being that a colony would have not only a defense fleet but its own Macross warship shooty enough to successfully defend that colony should they encounter something like a rogue Zentradi branch fleet.

(Such as it was, this becoming the standard seems to have motivated at least one previously-established colony to build their own massive anti-fleet warship on an even greater scale to be able to take out an entire branch fleet without the need for the rest of the fleet... the ship in question was captured by the Protodeviln and became Gepernich's flagship.)

[MisaForever]

Saw this theory posted on Reddit and thought maaaaaaaaybe it could be considered a possibility. Though it's early and I'm half asleep so it may sound silly.

[kalvasflam]

Saw this theory posted on Reddit and thought maaaaaaaaybe it could be considered a possibility. Though it's early and I'm half asleep so it may sound silly.

Oh man, this would posit that Delta is a continuity of the Frontier movie universe, which diverges from the Frontier series.

But then if we look at the Frontier series, it appears to be more of a continuity of the DYRL universe, which could be interpreted as an offshot of the original SDFM universe. We have like basically a series of divergent continuities, like a bunch of simulations off the real and true SDFM universe. Then there is the SDFM universe which is a fiction of this universe, and what if we're just like the movie version of a series that happened elsewhere. It's like a continuity within a continuity within a continuity...

Kawamori is toying with us, OMG, MIND BLOWN