New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)

[Valkyrie Driver]

34 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Heh, I'd call Chaos leadership at least as shady as central NUNS for cloning and force-growing a millions-year-old dead person and then deploying her against hostile conquerors who can exert mind control over her without telling her a word about her origins. Minmay or whoever Lady M is can have their ass nailed to a wall for gross lack of ethics.

Yeah, now that you put it that way, Xaos is pretty shady.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Heh, I'd call Chaos leadership at least as shady as central NUNS for cloning and force-growing a millions-year-old dead person and then deploying her against hostile conquerors who can exert mind control over her without telling her a word about her origins.

Tip of the iceberg, old chum... the more you contemplate Mikumo, the wronger Xaos and Lady M get.  On top of recklessly altering¹ a human clone² with genetic code obtained from Protoculture ruins either with or without foreknowledge of what those genetic codes were for³ and then throwing that clone into the career of a fanservice-heavy idol singer despite equipping her with only minimal social awareness and education⁴ where she could be captured by a known hostile power⁵ and mind-controlled⁶ to operate an ancient Protoculture system that could potentially enslave the entire galaxy and cause billions of deaths⁷ while also actively interfering in the New UN Forces' ability to counter said threat at every opportunity⁸ is so irresponsible and dangerous it really ought to result in the death penalty several times over.

 

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Minmay or whoever Lady M is can have their ass nailed to a wall for gross lack of ethics.

Definitely not Minmay, but I think Lady M had better go into hiding before she ends up in the dock for war crimes.

 

1. Safe bet that's illegal.
2. Considering the New UN Government had suspended human cloning decades earlier for health reasons, this is probably illegal.
3. Dangerously irresponsible either way.
4. Once you know she's only 3 years old with minimal education and socialization created and owned by Xaos, this starts to feel like they're cutting a dash between exploitation of a minor, slavery, and human trafficking.  Safe bet they also forged identity documents for Mikumo to make her appear to be a legitimate normal citizen.
5. They KNEW Windermere IV had the key to the Star Shrine long before they made Mikumo, which makes creating Mikumo and stationing her in the Brisingr globular cluster akin to setting up a storage facility for h-bombs in the Korean DMZ.
6. They studied the same shrines that Roid did on Windermere IV, so they KNEW what could happen.
7. They risked the lives and freedom of EVERY SENTIENT BEING IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY with this ill-advised idiot move.
8. How many thousands of people died on Ragna alone because Lady M delayed the evacuation of Barette City and forced the NUNS to detonate a reaction warhead to prevent the ruins from falling into Windermere's hands?

Edited November 1, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

Oops, I made a mathematical typo. Mikumo's template lived no less than 500 thousand years ago (at least, the date of the Stellar Republic's heyday hasn't changed in any new canon work as far as I know). But still. Cloning and force-growing a member of an apparently extinct species just to test weaponized fold singing. And not even telling the test subject that she's vulnerable to the enemy. *snort* One would think Lady M is Tōdō Ushio.

[RealJayDee]

I think it will be Delta season 2. Lot of things were left incomplete: Freiya was becoming sick, the protoculture ruins arch seems open, who is lady M, the origin of mikumo, what happened to windermere and their thirst of unjustified bloodshed, the suspicious merchant poking both sides, why the nuns bombed windermereans in the first place, why roid suddenly lost it.

Plus bandai has still to launch the vf 31s, vf 31 e, the rest of the aerial knights and the idols toys.

 

[jenius]

I would bet against that for the following reasons:
1) Freiya becoming sick is kind of an awful plot to focus a series on
2) Lady M is only a successful macguffin if she remains mysterious
3) Origin of Mikumo is laid out in Delta right?
4) Windermere is crippled at the end of Delta... they'd be mopped up in one battle
5) Bandai made the YF-30 and VF-19Advance and hasn't shown any care about mold milking or even reissuing so not finishing the Delta squad is probably shrug worthy to them (but I suspect they will since they did so many Frontier releases... including a YF-25 (seen for one second) and a VF-171 itasha DX toy).

I thought NUNS bombed Windermere to destroy the PC ruins but Hayate's father intentionally botched the mission and dropped the bomb over a different target thus leaving the ruins intact and allowing Windermere to ultimately discover and harness the ruins. The suspicious merchant is a stereotypical arms dealing feeding two sides of a conflict for profit and trying to ensure no one wins. He ultimately has to side with NUNS/Delta because Windermere's victory would ensure the end of business. I think Roid was a poorly written character. He's bashed for being too slow and then he suddenly assassinates the king, is allowed to get away with it, and goes farther than the King had envisioned. He planned to use the PC ruins all along to achieve immortality (Windermereans all being hung up on their early deaths)  but in order to get there he had to make sure the battle dragged out a bit resulting in his seeming timid until the pieces were in place and then being very aggressive.

[JB0]

Lady M is OBVIOUSLY Doctor Chiba!

[Zx31]

I rather enjoyed Delta and feel like it was one of the most fun series to watch. The music being so well integrated into the scenes it is used in, and all of the characters being enjoyable. My primary criticisms are that Roid is a week villian and we've had three galaxy ending apocalypses in a row.

Having said that, I think a lot of the points brought up here have been valid and I appreciate the thoughtful insight from people that dont agree with me. The thing that bugs me about a vocal group on this forum is the apparent need to say how much you hate Delta at any opportunity. It's fine if you dont like it, but I feel like if it's not inside a topic like this, then just leave those comments out and let people that enjoy it have their thing without making them feel like they can't talk about it.

[JB0]

16 minutes ago, Zx31 said:

The thing that bugs me about a vocal group on this forum is the apparent need to say how much you hate Delta at any opportunity. It's fine if you dont like it, but I feel like if it's not inside a topic like this, then just leave those comments out and let people that enjoy it have their thing without making them feel like they can't talk about it.

Delta is the new 7. Whatever the conversation, no matter how tangental, some version of "but Delta sucked" has to be worked in somehow. At least they aren't vilifying the people that like Delta.

 

I enjoyed about half of Delta, personally.

Unfortunately, the plot threads I was interested in were abandoned rapidly, and the series moved into a holding pattern at about the halfway point that it never really recovered from.

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, RealJayDee said:

I think it will be Delta season 2. Lot of things were left incomplete:

Less than you'd think, really...

 

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Freiya was becoming sick, the protoculture ruins arch seems open, who is lady M, the origin of mikumo, what happened to windermere and their thirst of unjustified bloodshed, the suspicious merchant poking both sides, why the nuns bombed windermereans in the first place, why roid suddenly lost it.

Freyja was only experiencing that accelerated aging because she was burning up her rune singing fold songs at full blast to combat the Song of the Wind and Var syndrome.  Now that the conflict's over, she's not going to continue deteriorating the way Heinz was, since that was caused by over-using his runes to cause and control Var syndrome.

With the Star Shrine destroyed, there really isn't a lot more the ruins can do besides maybe open fold gates to connect the worlds of the Brisingr cluster.  It'd solve Windermere IV's issues with its interstellar commerce, but too little too late since they've alienated literally everybody.  You can't exactly send gift baskets to an entire globular cluster saying "Sorry for the mind control and all of the oppressive xenophobic totalitarianism"... and even if they could, after all that who's going to trust a fruit basket from Windermere?

Lady M's identity will never be revealed because she hasn't got one.  No, really.  According to the interview they did in Newtype about a year ago, they never decided on an identity for her as that mysterious nature is key to the character.  She wouldn't be an existing character anyway, there's nobody in the existing setting who could fit the few things said about her.

Mikumo's origin is explained in-series, she's a cloned human who was modified with the genetic information found in the ruins on Windermere IV.  Who she's a clone of (if anyone) is the only thing that's left unexplained.  I privately suspect Mikumo Guynemer of Walkure is a clone of the another, much older Mikumo Guynemer alias Lady M.

The final few episodes of Macross Delta pretty comprehensively declawed Windermere IV and the Kingdom of the Wind's Aerial Knights.  Thanks to his own overwhelming naivete, King Heinz is an invalid confined to bed because all that abuse of his runes on the Song of the Wind has him quite permanently at death's door and unable to continue capitalizing on weaponized Var syndrome.  A good number of the Aerial Knights and half their aces are dead including their commander (Roid) and top ace (Keith).  The Star Shrine was damaged and they lost control of Mikumo.  To put the metaphorical cherry on it, the corporation that was providing all of their technical assistance and military hardware bailed on them so their supply chain is effectively cut off too.

Edit: ... and the Aerial Knights aren't likely to renew the war on their own either, considering two of the three remaining aces are Walkure fans and the third is a closeted Walkure fan.

Why the New UN Spacy bombed Carlyle on Windermere was explained in the series (Hayate's dad did it by accident, he wasn't following orders), and Roid's little psychotic break is also explained in the series (he's got issues with his species' very limited lifespan and a misplaced belief in manifest destiny).

We're denied the closure of Windermere realizing its misdeeds and burying the hatchet the way so many other Macross antagonists have done, but beyond that the story's pretty much settled.

 

 

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Plus bandai has still to launch the vf 31s, vf 31 e, the rest of the aerial knights and the idols toys.

Now that is a fair point.  If nothing else, they need to keep the merchandising going so that Bandai and company can capitalize on the license they paid good money for.

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Zx31 said:

Having said that, I think a lot of the points brought up here have been valid and I appreciate the thoughtful insight from people that dont agree with me. The thing that bugs me about a vocal group on this forum is the apparent need to say how much you hate Delta at any opportunity. It's fine if you dont like it, but I feel like if it's not inside a topic like this, then just leave those comments out and let people that enjoy it have their thing without making them feel like they can't talk about it.

As a Macross II fan, all I can say to this is "butch up, buttercup".  What little flak Macross Delta gets is peanuts compared to what Macross II and Macross 7 fans have been putting up with for decades.  The whole point of discussing a series is to share opinions of it, and people are under no obligation to censor their opinions just because you don't agree with them.  (Provided that they're expressing their discontent in a civil fashion.)

Edited November 1, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Focslain]

6 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As a Macross II fan, all I can say to this is "butch up, buttercup".  What little flak Macross Delta gets is peanuts compared to what Macross II and Macross 7 fans have been putting up with for decades.  The whole point of discussing a series is to share opinions of it, and people are under no obligation to censor their opinions just because you don't agree with them.

After trying to re-watch Macross II recently, I'm going to have to try a subbed version as Hibiki's english voice was grating. But it wasn't bad.

*grabs a helmet just in case*

At least what I can remember of it. 

[Zx31]

Like I said, opinions don't bother me. Macross II, Delta, 7, whatever the show may be, I'm saying that if it's not something you enjoy then it's okay, but you also don't need to tell people about how much you don't enjoy it all the time and un-prompted. This isn't a contest about who has put up with the most flak over something they enjoy. I think we can all have adult discussions about things we do and don't like while also being respectful to those who like something by not trying to trash the thing they like all of the time. There's a difference between going into a conversation about a show and saying "I didn't like this show because of the following reasons: " and going into a toy thread and saying "Man I'm sure glad the toys are good because the show was a trash fire".

In my very first sentence of what you quoted I very specifically state that I don't agree with you but I respect and appreciate you're critique of the show and how it didn't work for you. I'm not sure how that translates into telling people to censor their opinions because I don't agree with them.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Zx31

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Focslain said:

After trying to re-watch Macross II recently, I'm going to have to try a subbed version as Hibiki's english voice was grating. But it wasn't bad.

*grabs a helmet just in case*

At least what I can remember of it. 

The original Japanese voice cast did a MUCH better job... but hey, that dub was made in the bad old days when the industry was still getting a feel for accurate dubbing, and simultaneous releases were practically unheard-of.

We've come a long way.  The subtitle quality on Macross Delta is consistently pretty excellent, and hopefully that will continue with future Macross Blu-ray releases.  (There was a panel about that at SDCon, though unfortunately I was preoccupied and missed most of it.  The gist I got from the last ten minutes or so is that they've got a foot in the door now, so convincing The Powers That Be to include subs on future official releases will be at least marginally easier.)

 

 

13 hours ago, JB0 said:

Unfortunately, the plot threads I was interested in were abandoned rapidly, and the series moved into a holding pattern at about the halfway point that it never really recovered from.

Started strong, failed to seal the deal in the second half... pretty much the standard take on the series.  That's why it draws a lot less vitriol than other controversial Macross titles... and we can at least rest reasonably assured it will be a "lessons learned" situation in the next series.  

 

 

4 hours ago, Zx31 said:

Like I said, opinions don't bother me. [...] but you also don't need to tell people about how much you don't enjoy it all the time and un-prompted.

... there's some quality irony there for those who were paying attention.  You're making frequent, unprompted complaints about how upset you are over the the frequent, unprompted complaints about the Macross Delta series. 

 

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There's a difference between going into a conversation about a show and saying "I didn't like this show because of the following reasons: " and going into a toy thread and saying "Man I'm sure glad the toys are good because the show was a trash fire".

Yes, there's a difference, but not much of one.  The former is "I didn't like the show because of the following reasons" and the latter is "of the things I didn't like about the show, this is not one of them".  Both are contextually appropriate, the former is a discussion of the show on its own merits or lack thereof, and the discussion of merchandising for the show would naturally lead to whether or not the group intends to buy the item and their motivations for deciding one way or the other.

(Besides, if a person who doesn't like the show feels that the quality of the merchandise is strong enough to merit their attention, backhanded praise, and purchase... that's more a statement to the effect of "this is the part of the show that works for me".)

 

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In my very first sentence of what you quoted I very specifically state that I don't agree with you but I respect and appreciate you're critique of the show and how it didn't work for you. I'm not sure how that translates into telling people to censor their opinions because I don't agree with them.

You are literally saying "unless I feel your complaint is contextually appropriate, it shouldn't be posted". 

Now seriously, stop trying to derail the thread with this.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Freyja was only experiencing that accelerated aging because she was burning up her rune singing fold songs at full blast to combat the Song of the Wind and Var syndrome.  Now that the conflict's over, she's not going to continue deteriorating the way Heinz was, since that was caused by over-using his runes to cause and control Var syndrome.

With the Star Shrine destroyed, there really isn't a lot more the ruins can do besides maybe open fold gates to connect the worlds of the Brisingr cluster.  It'd solve Windermere IV's issues with its interstellar commerce, but too little too late since they've alienated literally everybody.  You can't exactly send gift baskets to an entire globular cluster saying "Sorry for the mind control and all of the oppressive xenophobic totalitarianism"... and even if they could, after all that who's going to trust a fruit basket from Windermere?

Lady M's identity will never be revealed because she hasn't got one.  No, really.  According to the interview they did in Newtype about a year ago, they never decided on an identity for her as that mysterious nature is key to the character.  She wouldn't be an existing character anyway, there's nobody in the existing setting who could fit the few things said about her.

Mikumo's origin is explained in-series, she's a cloned human who was modified with the genetic information found in the ruins on Windermere IV.  Who she's a clone of (if anyone) is the only thing that's left unexplained.  I privately suspect Mikumo Guynemer of Walkure is a clone of the another, much older Mikumo Guynemer alias Lady M.

The final few episodes of Macross Delta pretty comprehensively declawed Windermere IV and the Kingdom of the Wind's Aerial Knights.  Thanks to his own overwhelming naivete, King Heinz is an invalid confined to bed because all that abuse of his runes on the Song of the Wind has him quite permanently at death's door and unable to continue capitalizing on weaponized Var syndrome.  A good number of the Aerial Knights and half their aces are dead including their commander (Roid) and top ace (Keith).  The Star Shrine was damaged and they lost control of Mikumo.  To put the metaphorical cherry on it, the corporation that was providing all of their technical assistance and military hardware bailed on them so their supply chain is effectively cut off too.

Edit: ... and the Aerial Knights aren't likely to renew the war on their own either, considering two of the three remaining aces are Walkure fans and the third is a closeted Walkure fan.

Why the New UN Spacy bombed Carlyle on Windermere was explained in the series (Hayate's dad did it by accident, he wasn't following orders), and Roid's little psychotic break is also explained in the series (he's got issues with his species' very limited lifespan and a misplaced belief in manifest destiny).

We're denied the closure of Windermere realizing its misdeeds and burying the hatchet the way so many other Macross antagonists have done, but beyond that the story's pretty much settled.

I admit we were only given a few seconds of footage showing it, but I thought when the Star Shrine on Ragna was destroyed, the feedback completely shut down the Wind Shrine on Windermere, hence why the lights on Windermere's tower went out.

I thought we were supposed to take Mikumo's flashbacks as the genetically-inherited memory of her Star Singer template from thousands of years ago (which of course from a real-world perspective genetic memory is bullshit, but sci-fi stupidly loves to use it).

The bombing of Carlisle is a bit confusing to me. If Wright's superiors wanted him to bomb Darwent, and they managed to remotely seize control when they realized he was trying to deviate, why drop it over Carlisle? Last resort second-best choice?

Edited November 1, 2017 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, SMS007 said:

I thought we were supposed to take Mikumo's flashbacks as the genetically-inherited memory of her Star Singer template from thousands of years ago (which of course from a real-world perspective genetic memory is bullshit, but sci-fi stupidly loves to use it).

The ancient Protoculture have done worse things with DNA than genetic memory... by all indications, the Star Singer is essentially a bio-android.

 

2 hours ago, SMS007 said:

The bombing of Carlisle is a bit confusing to me. If Wright's superiors wanted him to bomb Darwent, and they managed to remotely seize control when they realized he was trying to deviate, why drop it over Carlisle? Last resort second-best choice?

Presumably to keep the dimensional warhead from falling into Windermerean hands in the event Wright was shot down without his aircraft being completely destroyed.

The target wasn't Darwent itself - though they may not have told Wright that - the goal was to destroy the Sigur Valens and ruins to render the ruins across the cluster harmless so that they couldn't be weaponized the way Windermere eventually weaponized them.

[Sildani]

So Wright did a good deed, in his mind, and screwed up the future monumentally as a result?

As for Lady M being the original Mikumo... you may well have something there, old bean. It would explain further the deference everyone shows her as well as the cavalier way she’s used. 

And when it comes to milking molds, where’s the cat-people beige VF-171 Meowkyrie, anyway!!

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

So Wright did a good deed, in his mind, and screwed up the future monumentally as a result?

This is basically the sin of most of the main cast it seems. Someone does something with a "Screw the rules, I'm doing what's right" mentality but they really aren't doing anything but making themselves and maybe their personal friends feel better about themselves while impeding people trying to actually help.

The entire series can basically be reviewed as NUNS saying "Told ya so." when everything keeps getting worse. Meanwhile our 'heroes' can sleep at night because they made sure everyone heard how upset they were NUNS lit off a reaction warhead on Ragna, or that they wanted to use dimensional weapons instead of singing. At least in Macross 7 there was enough reason to assume singing was actually a better call for fighting the Protodeviln than just blowing them up (though they did try that too, and only really Basara had any issues with it) because that was the way to ultimately stop them. In Delta, sure they could undo the effects of the ketchup song but when you can just solve the whole thing at once with military action where singing was really just a stalling tactic... NUNS was right that time.

[SMS007]

11 hours ago, Sildani said:

So Wright did a good deed, in his mind, and screwed up the future monumentally as a result?

As for Lady M being the original Mikumo... you may well have something there, old bean. It would explain further the deference everyone shows her as well as the cavalier way she’s used. 

And when it comes to milking molds, where’s the cat-people beige VF-171 Meowkyrie, anyway!!

I would say he tried but he was foiled in doing a good deed. 

 

And oh yeah, why hasn't the 2067 NUNS Brisingr VF-171 come out? Surely the capacity to reuse the existing VF-171 mold played a role in the 171 getting into Delta. 

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, Sildani said:

So Wright did a good deed, in his mind, and screwed up the future monumentally as a result?

Enough so that he absolutely deserves an honorable mention on the TVTropes page for "Nice job breaking it, hero!".  By refusing to follow orders and deliberately trying to sabotage his mission to drop the dimensional warhead his fighter was carrying on the ruins outside Darwent, he caused a terrifying amount of death, destruction, suffering, and hatred.

I mean, c'mon... Hayate may be a bit of a flake, but his father Wright absolutely has a lock on the prize for worst judgement of any character in Macross.  There was literally no way that the moron was going to do anything but cause a complete, unqualified disaster... the only question was what the death toll for his staggering idiocy was going to be once he decided to break orders. 

Wright's plan to delay the operation to bomb the uninhabited ruins by flying off course to the target via a deliberately circuitous route that greatly increased his risk of detection to ensure that he'd end up detected by the Aerial Knights and intercepted put him over a major metropolis while carrying a live weapon of mass destruction.  Even if he got his way and was recalled by command before they could intercept him, there's no way having a strategic bomber hovering over a major city could get taken as anything but a statement of their intent to bomb civilians.  If he got intercepted and was taken down non-destructively, he's just been busted carrying an armed dimensional warhead over one of Windermere's major cities... effectively handing a highly dangerous WMD to a hostile and somewhat xenophobic government and making the war worse.  If he got shot down over Carlyle without setting the warhead off, the crash and the explosion of the various conventional munitions aboard is still going to hurt or kill many innocent civilians because the prat was flying over a major city.  Then, of course, there's what happened... he got intercepted and the warhead was deployed before he could be downed, wiping a city full of innocent civilians off the map, exacerbating the war to the point that the only viable option was for the New UN Government to withdraw, and causing the Windermereans to hate humans even more than they already did, leading to them declaring a war against the New UN Government years later.

It's small wonder one of the few things that Windermere and the New UN Spacy can agree on is that Wright Immelmann was an arse.  If he'd just done his job, the whole plot of the series would never have happened and millions of people would have been spared.

 

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As for Lady M being the original Mikumo... you may well have something there, old bean. It would explain further the deference everyone shows her as well as the cavalier way she’s used.

Not to mention it'd facilitate the massive coverup necessary to pass the recently-made clone off as an ordinary girl.

 

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And when it comes to milking molds, where’s the cat-people beige VF-171 Meowkyrie, anyway!!

CF units are usually the last ones to come out, so we're getting there slowly but surely... Captain Larazzabal probably won't have to wait more than another year.

 

 

 

11 hours ago, Master Dex said:

This is basically the sin of most of the main cast it seems. Someone does something with a "Screw the rules, I'm doing what's right" mentality but they really aren't doing anything but making themselves and maybe their personal friends feel better about themselves while impeding people trying to actually help.

It's not even necessarily "I'm doing what's right"... it's "screw the rules, I'm doing what I want to" in most cases.  Xaos makes a lot of terribly short-sighted decisions throughout the series, seemingly for no reason other than to "stick it to the man", most of which come back to bite them in the arse, and the New UN Spacy's attempts to deal with the situation (and their foreknowledge of the threat) was played as something ominous even though everything they do in the series is perfectly reasonable and they achieve more concrete gains over Windermere in two episodes than Xaos does in twenty-six.

Unlike SMS, who may have been dismissive of the NUNS but worked in open cooperation with them to deal with a major threat, Xaos seems to be determined to rebel against authority for no reason... and staffs its PMC accordingly with people who seem to arbitrarily resent authority like Hayate and Arad and people the military wouldn't take like Ernest and Messer.

 

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At least in Macross 7 there was enough reason to assume singing was actually a better call for fighting the Protodeviln than just blowing them up (though they did try that too, and only really Basara had any issues with it) because that was the way to ultimately stop them. In Delta, sure they could undo the effects of the ketchup song but when you can just solve the whole thing at once with military action where singing was really just a stalling tactic... NUNS was right that time.

Macross 7 even handled the conflict with the military better... despite Basara's way being right, he at least grudgingly acknowledged that violence was necessary to an extent.  He didn't want to be the one dispensing said violence, but he stopped grumbling about it and tried instead to minimize the amount of violence that would be necessary.

You don't see that cooperation in Delta, the Xaos forces screw up and blame the NUNS over and over again, and then only achieve success by exploiting the NUNS's independent activities against Windermere.

 

 

I'd give an awful lot for the next series to do away with this PMC garbage and get back to having the main character actually belong to the military.  It was a great deal easier to respect Hikaru's life choices and conflicted nature because he at least showed enough commitment to follow orders and such.  All of these mildly military PMCs are more focused on trying to be awesome than having any real conviction.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Focslain]

24 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd give an awful lot for the next series to do away with this PMC garbage and get back to having the main character actually belong to the military.  It was a great deal easier to respect Hikaru's life choices and conflicted nature because he at least showed enough commitment to follow orders and such.  All of these mildly military PMCs are more focused on trying to be awesome than having any real conviction.

Would be nice to see how NUNS is functioning as an inter-galactic force. Heck if you still want to have it semi-idol centric, let's flush out a story like the one in ep 21 of Delta, ie the early days of front line singers. Let's have Band of Brothers idol style. 

[azrael]

30 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wright's plan to delay the operation to bomb the uninhabited ruins by flying off course to the target via a deliberately circuitous route that greatly increased his risk of detection to ensure that he'd end up detected by the Aerial Knights and intercepted put him over a major metropolis while carrying a live weapon of mass destruction.

I still write this one up to piss-poor writing (which I hope they seriously remedy on this next series). Instead of dropping on a relatively uninhabited area, he drops on a relatively large population.

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I'd give an awful lot for the next series to do away with this PMC garbage and get back to having the main character actually belong to the military.

I know using a PMC gives more leeway story-wise, but they need to drop the PMC-crap on the next one.

[SMS007]

If they're going to pull the stupid and blatantly unrealistic "PMCs are better than the military" crap yet again, then can't they at least make it the hyper-competent SMS?

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

If they're going to pull the stupid and blatantly unrealistic "PMCs are better than the military" crap yet again, then can't they at least make it the hyper-competent SMS?

The obnoxious thing is that it's not "PMCs are better than the military"... twice now it's been a very contrived situation where a war breaks out while the latest fighter the military plans to adopt is still being tested in combat conditions by the technically-expendable PMC pilots prior to the start of the new fighter's mass production.  In both cases, nobody from the military thinks to repo the damned things or it's somehow impossible to advance the production schedule enough to get the new VF in the military's hands quickly.

Essentially, it's not "PMCs are better than the military" so much as it is "PMCs are temporarily better equipped than the military thanks to equipment on loan from the military for testing".

In Macross 30 and Macross E we see a more typical picture, where the SMS is actually outclassed by the NUNS forces who actually DO have the latest gear, and Xaos is making do with the same old gear the NUNS is using but in less quantity.

[Valkyrie Driver]

I'm fully on board with dropping PMC's. The reality is that Macross's over the top portrayal is an exaggeration, but typically PMC's tend to look for individuals that are anti authority. They tend to recruit from special operations forces (SeALs, Delta, Army SF, Force Recon, CCT's, etc), which are units that typically allow for individuality and personal initiative. That means they don't play well with rigid hierarchies. That said, Aviation has some strict rules, but it generally has a more relaxed atmosphere since creativity and unorthodox thought are required for unpredictability. 

[SMS007]

I would love to see a heroic counterpoint to Hávamál. There's a premise I can get behind.

[Seto Kaiba]

38 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I'm fully on board with dropping PMC's. The reality is that Macross's over the top portrayal is an exaggeration, but typically PMC's tend to look for individuals that are anti authority.

From everything I've heard from friends and family members of mine in the armed forces, I would have said more along the lines of "PMCs tend to look for trigger-happy gung-ho morons convinced they're living in their own personal action movie"... which admittedly fits Xaos alarmingly well.  I've yet to meet the soldier who speaks well of the private contractors, which kind of made Major Valan easy to sympathize with when he was dealing with Xaos's intransigence.

 

26 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

I would love to see a heroic counterpoint to Hávamál. There's a premise I can get behind.

At this point, kindly direct your attention to Exhibit A: "727th Independent Squadron VF-X Ravens" from Macross VF-X2... which are exactly that in the most stringently literal sense.

Hávamál's formal designation is the 815th Independent Squadron VF-X Hávamál.

Hávamál and the Ravens are the exact same type of New UN Spacy Special Forces unit, with the same command structure.  The only dangling question is we've never seen what Hávamál's main ship looks like, but it's probable it's another Saratoga II-type like the 727th's CV-565 Saratoga II "Mother Raven".

Edit: Maybe it's the "Father Odin"?

Edited November 2, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

Sorry, I should have clarified: I would like to see something like the 727th Independent Squadron VF-X Ravens fully animated for television. Just reading about the adventures of Aegis Focker feels awesome!

[Chronocidal]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

CF units are usually the last ones to come out, so we're getting there slowly but surely... Captain Larazzabal probably won't have to wait more than another year.

At this point, I feel like all bets are off.  The Kairos is already being sold, we've gotten two variants of Hayate's, and 40% of Delta flight hasn't even been teased yet.  If we were going purely off of screentime, the assorted 171 repaints would probably be before Arad and Chuck anyway, but then where's Bogue?  

I'm personally wondering if Bandai will even bother to revisit the 171 though, and even if they do, I'm not betting they'll fix any of the monstrous problems that design has.

Anyway, however the merchandising goes, I hope they weren't just being cruel teases with throwing the VF-22 in.  Still think the way it was included is flat nonsense, but if they weren't determined to rig an excuse for a toy of it, it would have made an infinitely larger amount of sense to steal something that was ready to fly, and wouldn't have required Berger to essentially god-mod an escape vehicle for them.

[azrael]

I won't mind if the next series focuses on a Special Operations group and I'm somewhat shocked they haven't focused on one in a series. They've been focusing on grunts that I would like to see a Spec Ops unit for once.

Or better yet, how about little military and no PMCs? Like perhaps Kawamori's original idea for Delta...

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

At this point, I feel like all bets are off.  The Kairos is already being sold, we've gotten two variants of Hayate's, and 40% of Delta flight hasn't even been teased yet.  If we were going purely off of screentime, the assorted 171 repaints would probably be before Arad and Chuck anyway, but then where's Bogue?  

Where's Bogue?  The guy assigned to do the sculpt started shouting about Walkure and hasn't been seen since.

 

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Anyway, however the merchandising goes, I hope they weren't just being cruel teases with throwing the VF-22 in.  Still think the way it was included is flat nonsense, but if they weren't determined to rig an excuse for a toy of it, it would have made an infinitely larger amount of sense to steal something that was ready to fly, and wouldn't have required Berger to essentially god-mod an escape vehicle for them.

I doubt we'll see anything for the VF-22, except maybe a HiMetal or something.

That Wright Immelmann's VF-22S survived intact enough to be repaired and restored to factory condition is just BS... it was shot down by the goddamn White Knight of Darwent FFS, you DO NOT recover from that.

 

1 hour ago, azrael said:

I won't mind if the next series focuses on a Special Operations group and I'm somewhat shocked they haven't focused on one in a series. They've been focusing on grunts that I would like to see a Spec Ops unit for once.

Or better yet, how about little military and no PMCs? Like perhaps Kawamori's original idea for Delta...

The only way I wanna see a PMC in Macross again is if they're the hopelessly inept comic relief... like 21st Century Defense Security in Dai-Guard, but without the hero status.

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I doubt we'll see anything for the VF-22, except maybe a HiMetal or something.

That Wright Immelmann's VF-22S survived intact enough to be repaired and restored to factory condition is just BS... it was shot down by the goddamn White Knight of Darwent FFS, you DO NOT recover from that.

I agree... though I wouldn't call it factory.. it couldn't transform worth a damn since Berger removed the legs for 'storage' and I got the impression it was barely flight capable. Still you have a point it should have been scrap metal after the incident 7 years prior.. that it was even intact enough to become an ironic monument on Windermere is silly.

 

I also support the idea of no more PMCs and having a Spec Ops group as a focus if we do a show with conflict again. Otherwise.. I'm game like Azrael is for Kawamori-san's original Delta plan...

Edited November 3, 2017 by Master Dex

[sketchley]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Essentially, it's not "PMCs are better than the military" so much as it is "PMCs are temporarily better equipped than the military thanks to equipment on loan from the military for testing".

Erm... one of the Kawamori-san interviews I translated paints a different picture.  In short, its a convenient way to lump 'elite' warriors together.

Realistically speaking, it is one way to have the heroes of a show being everywhere and doing everything... (not that I like it either.  The whole RL concept of PMC leaves a bad taste in my mouth).

[kajnrig]

32 minutes ago, sketchley said:

(not that I like it either.  The whole RL concept of PMC leaves a bad taste in my mouth).

It IS something you'd expect of Japan, though, isn't it? It's such a "pacifist" view of PMCs.

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, sketchley said:

Erm... one of the Kawamori-san interviews I translated paints a different picture.  In short, its a convenient way to lump 'elite' warriors together.

Realistically speaking, it is one way to have the heroes of a show being everywhere and doing everything... (not that I like it either.  The whole RL concept of PMC leaves a bad taste in my mouth).

That's not really a different picture, per se... that's just looking at the same picture from a slightly different angle.  

Having the PMC be a convenient way to lump elite warriors together is the excuse for compartmentalizing the characters from a narrative standpoint.  Having the PMCs conveniently be assigned to test the very latest military hardware in combat before it's given to actual soldiers is how they justify that elite-ness.  They're elite because they have better gear, but because it's not plausible that a private corporation has more defense funding than an actual nation they're simply doing advance testing for the military using gear loaned to them.  This is a very common trope for mecha titles featuring PMCs, going back at least as far as Full Metal Panic!'s light novels, in which it's a sort of open secret that MITHRIL is a NATO-funded black ops organization that carries out covert testing of next-gen American AS's before they reach US and NATO hands.

(Ozma actually subverts the "elite" part early in Macross Frontier when he points out to Alto that the reason PMCs are increasingly popular with the local governments is because PMC troops are a contracted redshirt army.  Their appeal, in government terms, is that if a PMC soldier dies it's legally an accidental death and the government is absolved of any potential liability even if said soldier died in combat.  Their lives are cheaper than those of the military's own redshirts.  They don't even get a military funeral.)

[SMS007]

The tldr I perceive when activists get into the news now and then is that it's bad enough when governments get into military adventurism abroad, but it's even worse that PMCs are solely in it for the money cause they're corporations.

Edited November 3, 2017 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

On 11/3/2017 at 3:45 PM, SMS007 said:

The tldr I perceive when activists get into the news now and then is that it's bad enough when governments get into military adventurism abroad, but it's even worse that PMCs are solely in it for the money cause they're corporations.

In my experience, there's also shades of "they're trigger-happy loons with dubious ethics and no discipline" in there too... often with references to the many misdeeds of Blackwater.