Macross Δ (Delta) Movie Gekijō no Walkūre (Passionate Walkure)

[Seto Kaiba]

53 minutes ago, Focslain said:

[...] granted the most she does in the series is being seen grease monkeying in the opening and building Hayate's custom EX gear, [...]

The first OP is the only time she's actually shown doing anything vaguely mechanic-like.  The show doesn't actually depict her working on Hayate's VF-31 or EX-Gear, she just shows up to tell him it'd been tuned up for him.

If they're not gonna kill Makina and/or Reina off, it'd be nice if they actually lived up to what their official bios said about them the way the other Walkure members do instead of just being the galaxy's most inept undercover team.  

Heck, why not go all the way and have Xaos actually behave like the (strictly mythical) competent PMC the show was supposed to make us believe they were?  They're no SMS, but it was incredibly bizarre seeing them walk blindly into every trap Windermere set in the series.  The reduced movie runtime might help a lot in that regard, since just two hours leaves less time for Xaos to be played for fools by Windermere before saving the day.

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[BlackRose]

55 minutes ago, Focslain said:

Actually Makina comes from a family of mechanics, granted the most she does in the series is being seen grease monkeying in the opening and building Hayate's custom EX gear, but she's mostly a fan-service checkbox for sure. 

A little equal-opportunity fanservice would be nice to counterbalance Makina letting it all hang out.

Shame all the good-looking guys in the show were the villains.

 

32 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Wow that looks very Mikomoto-ish! Love it!

It does kinda, doesn't it?

[no3Ljm]

17 hours ago, Tallman said:

Right, but she wasn't wear this costume as I remembered. Will find out in the new movie 

Well, so does Arad's Armored VF-31S.  

We'll just have to wait and see what other things they will change on this series retelling. 

 

[no3Ljm]

50 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Wow that looks very Mikomoto-ish! Love it!

I didn't follow Mikimoto's art all through the years (90's onwards). But can someone tell me in what year Mikimoto changed his style? I do have his Macross The First books and I can tell that's 2010's Mikimoto style already. Thanks.

 

[Gerli]

2 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

I didn't follow Mikimoto's art all through the years (90's onwards). But can someone tell me in what year Mikimoto changed his style? I do have his Macross The First books and I can tell that's 2010's Mikimoto style already. Thanks.

 

Kotetsu no Kabaneri was his latest work for anime I think...

Edited December 4, 2017 by Gerli

[no3Ljm]

13 minutes ago, Gerli said:

Kotetsu no Kabaneri was his latest work for anime I think...

But what year did he changed his style?

 

[Valkyrie Driver]

7 hours ago, jenius said:

Mirage should die... It would topple the order to kill off a Jenius.

I'm sorry, but you can't kill off the only other female character with any sort of personality. Also, Mirage is probably one of the only characters to get any sort of growth and development in a meaningful way...

7 hours ago, BlackRose said:

It would upset the order of things to kill a good Jenius.  Mirage is basically a mauve shirt.

I'd like to see her get fair time in the love triangle in the movie but I'm not going to hold my breath for it.

While I'll grant you that Mirage isn't as well loved as our Classic Power couple, or Mylene, or Emilia, she's still a Jenius. She's also every bit as good as her lineage suggests, though she's a bit too by the book. 

Because of the glaring issues Delta had, everyone is really quick to dismiss all of the writing. The characters were well thought out, and had some interesting back stories. The Characters were good, and more nuanced than people want to give credit for. But because of the lazy story writing, all of that character design was for naught. The lazy story writing pulled each nuanced character into a trope. Not that tropes are necessarily bad, but when your writing relies on them...

There is one trope that they could have used, and didn't. Well, at least not to it's fullest and most useful. Delta Platoon was perfectly set up to be a five man band. And with Delta Platoon you could have subverted the trope a bit, because the various members had some overlap. Hear me out though:

Arad- Leader, while Arad is not the main protagonist, he is unquestionably the leader. He's also the mentor figure for Hayate. In this case the leader is the supporting foil for the Lancer.

Hayate- Lancer, He and Arad highlight the different character elements for each other. Hayate is passionate and inexperienced, while Arad is even tempered and seasoned. 

Messer- The heart, I know, Messer's a jerk. But he's not. Sure He's aloof, and he's got the whole tragic backstory thing, but he essentially knows his days are numbered. So he's trying to make the team the best he can before his time is up. His death, and it's aftermath, are what actually bring the team together, as they realize that he was pushing them all to be better. 

Chuck- The big guy, He's the loveable oaf, but also the dependable one. He's the team's fixed point of reference. He's also one character that can't be kept down. Granted that's not the classic big guy, but, that's hard to do in real robot type shows. 

Mirage-  The smart guy, She's technically proficient. She's skilled, and knows the book inside and out. But because she's all brains, she doesn't feel her way through situations. She's quick on the uptake, and knows her stuff.

Now, this dynamic was underutilized even though it was present. Unfortunately, We knew that Messer was fated to die, from the third or fourth episode. They even gave us an episode to try to make us like him, before he eats it. It's just unfortunate that Messer was of the GySgt Hartman school of training.

Seto has probably said some of this in other threads, but I felt that it needed to be brought up here. Messer is still the only member of Delta platoon that needs to die to bring out the team's potential. 

As for walkure? Serious injuries could do just as much to break walkure as deaths. I think putting Reina or Makina into a deep coma, removing them from the rest of the story would be as good as a death, but also keep things varied enough so that death isn't overused. 

[BlackRose]

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

While I'll grant you that Mirage isn't as well loved as our Classic Power couple, or Mylene, or Emilia, she's still a Jenius. She's also every bit as good as her lineage suggests, though she's a bit too by the book. 

That's not what the show says about her though. 

She quit the military and joined Χάος because the pressure her family's legact put her under was too much for someone who was only an average pilot.

The show forgets she exists at Freyja's birthday and she's just a background character until the end.

 

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Because of the glaring issues Delta had, everyone is really quick to dismiss all of the writing.

From this thread and the new episode review threads it looks like most people would say the writing was the most glaring issue.

 

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

The characters were well thought out, and had some interesting back stories.

Not to be rude but what show were you watching?  Most of them don't even get back stories and most of the ones that do have so little it'd be one line on a Trivial Pursuit card.

 

13 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

As for walkure? Serious injuries could do just as much to break walkure as deaths. I think putting Reina or Makina into a deep coma, removing them from the rest of the story would be as good as a death, but also keep things varied enough so that death isn't overused. 

The coma thing is so overused in fiction though and it creates way too many loose ends because people will expect them to snap out of it at the most dramatic moment.

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I'm sorry, but you can't kill off the only other female character with any sort of personality.

They're talking about whacking Mirage, not Freyja.

 

14 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Because of the glaring issues Delta had, everyone is really quick to dismiss all of the writing. The characters were well thought out, and had some interesting back stories.

Only a handful of them actually had backstories... and most of the ones that did had only the most cursory kind, with barely one bullet point's worth of information.  Hayate's dad had more backstory than almost the entire main cast, and he was a posthumous character!  The backstory for the main frigging character was "he's a shiftless space bum who moves a lot because he can't keep a job".  Some of them, like Makina and Reina, have a "backstory" that's entirely Informed Ability that's not actually in evidence in the show.

[Valkyrie Driver]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They're talking about whacking Mirage, not Freyja.

I did say the only other... Mirage and Freyja were the only two female characters with any sort of real development. Granted it's not much.

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Only a handful of them actually had backstories... and most of the ones that did had only the most cursory kind, with barely one bullet point's worth of information.  Hayate's dad had more backstory than almost the entire main cast, and he was a posthumous character!  The backstory for the main frigging character was "he's a shiftless space bum who moves a lot because he can't keep a job".  Some of them, like Makina and Reina, have a "backstory" that's entirely Informed Ability that's not actually in evidence in the show.

Maybe I should have said character concepts. Anyway, Delta tried to make us care about these characters. It failed, and frankly I think that was a disservice to the character they created, which could have been so much better.

7 hours ago, BlackRose said:

Not to be rude but what show were you watching?  Most of them don't even get back stories and most of the ones that do have so little it'd be one line on a Trivial Pursuit card.

I actually think that the character concepts were decently well thought out. The writers didn't follow through though, and so what was left was so much wasted potential. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I tend to think that the characters had those nuances that we want, but because of crappy story writing the characters didn't get to show it. I could be off base, but that's how I see it. I'm not disagreeing that Delta had issues, but I don't think the characters were the core of the problem. 

 

[D-Joe]

Actually from what i see, any characters that not one of Walkure members can die because staff never cared them.

This "Walkure and their not so important pilot friends" poster and trailer already told us about this, i'm not sure why some of you guys still dreaming about any non-Walkure character getting development, it will just make you end up disappointed, again.

[no3Ljm]

52 minutes ago, D-Joe said:

Actually from what i see, any characters that not one of Walkure members can die because staff never cared them.

This "Walkure and their not so important pilot friends" poster and trailer already told us about this, i'm not sure why some of you guys still dreaming about any non-Walkure character getting development, it will just make you end up disappointed, again.

Not me. I'm only interested to see how Arad's Armored VF-31S looks like since the rest will be just the same. And ofcourse, looking forward to DX release of that one for sure.

Besides, this is MacrossWorld.

 

[D-Joe]

39 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

Not me. I'm only interested to see how Arad's Armored VF-31S looks like since the rest will be just the same. And ofcourse, looking forward to DX release of that one for sure.

Besides, this is MacrossWorld.

 

Oh yeah, my bad, i should say lower the exception for non-Walkure part, then maybe the movie can end up being surprise, or at least i hope.

But still, i will looking for next Macross TV more than Delta movie, even it may another disappointment, but i guess can't be help because we all are Macross fans right lol.

[BlackRose]

17 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I actually think that the character concepts were decently well thought out. The writers didn't follow through though, and so what was left was so much wasted potential. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I tend to think that the characters had those nuances that we want, but because of crappy story writing the characters didn't get to show it. I could be off base, but that's how I see it. I'm not disagreeing that Delta had issues, but I don't think the characters were the core of the problem. 

I definitely disagree that they were well thought-out.  It was super obvious that Macross Delta was a minimum effort sequel that just copied characters from Macross Frontier for most of its cast but didn't develop them at all past basic traits.  Mikumo is just Sheryl in her ice queen mode from early in Frontier.  Hayate is Alto without the family issues or ambition.  Freyja is Ranka without her extreme doormat tendencies.  Arad is Ozma minus the family connection.  Messer is Brera minus the family connection. Etc. Etc.

The ones who aren't just copies of Frontier characters without the personality are basic stock characters rounding out the normal Five Girl Band for magical girls and idol music shows with a big boobed ditz (Makina) and and quiet nerdy girl (Reina) thrown together for girl on girl fanservice.  

 

7 hours ago, D-Joe said:

This "Walkure and their not so important pilot friends" poster and trailer already told us about this, i'm not sure why some of you guys still dreaming about any non-Walkure character getting development, it will just make you end up disappointed, again.

This is the truest thing that has been said in this topic.

[BlackRose]

6 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Besides, this is MacrossWorld.

Delta isn't really a "Macross World".  Like the song goes, "Welcome to Walkure World", all Macross stuff purely incidental.

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I did say the only other... Mirage and Freyja were the only two female characters with any sort of real development. Granted it's not much.

>implying Mirage got development.

 

17 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Maybe I should have said character concepts. Anyway, Delta tried to make us care about these characters. It failed, and frankly I think that was a disservice to the character they created, which could have been so much better.

The writing was just an absolute fiasco, start-to-finish.  It's not so much "they wasted a perfectly good character" as "they wasted a perfectly good cast".  Kind of a bad idea to require the whole audience to buy a manga side story to even figure out what the enemy's motivation is.

 

3 minutes ago, BlackRose said:

Delta isn't really a "Macross World".  Like the song goes, "Welcome to Walkure World", all Macross stuff purely incidental.

Savage, but undeniably true.

[SMS007]

1 hour ago, BlackRose said:

Delta isn't really a "Macross World".  Like the song goes, "Welcome to Walkure World", all Macross stuff purely incidental.

Ahahahaha!!!!!

[Valkyrie Driver]

7 hours ago, BlackRose said:

I definitely disagree that they were well thought-out.  It was super obvious that Macross Delta was a minimum effort sequel that just copied characters from Macross Frontier for most of its cast but didn't develop them at all past basic traits.  Mikumo is just Sheryl in her ice queen mode from early in Frontier.  Hayate is Alto without the family issues or ambition.  Freyja is Ranka without her extreme doormat tendencies.  Arad is Ozma minus the family connection.  Messer is Brera minus the family connection. Etc. Etc.

I mean I can see that. I'm trying to evaluate Delta on its own, though, since Frontier was undeniably good (even though even it was kinda tropey). I mean humanity at this point has written every character and every basic story permutation, and it's all retreads with new window dressing. But comparing Delta to Frontier, yes, Delta is incredibly disappointing. In almost every category. The two categories that stick out to me that Delta didn't fail hard on, were the Music (I kinda dig the sound of Walkure), and the Mecha (even though they didn't get enough screen time). 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

>implying Mirage got development.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to. Mirage, as a character had so much potential, and they didn't do enough with her. 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The writing was just an absolute fiasco, start-to-finish.  It's not so much "they wasted a perfectly good character" as "they wasted a perfectly good cast".  Kind of a bad idea to require the whole audience to buy a manga side story to even figure out what the enemy's motivation is.

So in your opinion, having read said side story, does it improve Delta at all? I do feel that the cast of characters was solid, maybe needed some polish, and then a story treatment that actually developed them. I'll freely admit that Delta suffered from some abhorrently lazy writing. But between the weight of trying to follow up Frontier, and with Kawamori leaving halfway through... 

Anyway, perhaps It was lack of sleep, combined with a desperate wish that Delta had been as good as Frontier, that I was unable to articulate myself.

[kalvasflam]

The sad truth is Mirage didn't get enough development, it was still leaps and bounds compared to 90% of the other characters.  She is the first Jenius that wasn't exactly a genius at anything.  The fact that she had to carry her family name and live up to impossible expectations could have been great for her development, a Jenius that isn't much more skilled than a grunt in the Macrossverse, it's like saying the sun suddenly didn't rise in the east any more.  This could have been excellent in so many ways.  But in the end, they went with a classic pretend love triangle that was quite frankly flat in my opinion.  I would have for once like to see a Macros series not be so focused on a triangle.  But Delta blew it.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to. Mirage, as a character had so much potential, and they didn't do enough with her. 

Macross Delta's writers forgot about her "woe is me, I am the merely average Jenius" character arc almost right away after they introduced it in the sixth episode.  

Definitely a "they wasted a perfectly good plot" moment, after Mirage completely took a backseat to Freyja in the second half of the series and she just mysteriously became as good as Hayate for the finale.  She just became the tsundere girl who couldn't spit it out for thirteen episodes.

 

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So in your opinion, having read said side story, does it improve Delta at all? I do feel that the cast of characters was solid, maybe needed some polish, and then a story treatment that actually developed them. I'll freely admit that Delta suffered from some abhorrently lazy writing. But between the weight of trying to follow up Frontier, and with Kawamori leaving halfway through... 

Absolutely, yes.  Macross Delta: the White Knight of the Black Wing shouldn't have been a separate side story manga.  Its story absolutely should've been a flashback episode or two of the Macross Delta series proper.  Without that extra context, the Macross Delta audience never really gets that signature Macross moral ambiguity where where antagonists aren't really bad people.  Someone who only sees the anime never gets the Why of the Kingdom of the Wind's grievances against the New UN Government.  All they get to go in is a vague remark about a "profoundly unequal treaty" in Roid's declaration of war, and a lot of hinting that all is not as it seems before the very late introduction of the truth about the New UN Government having bombed Carlyle with a dimensional warhead.  If you add in the material from the manga, and it puts an entirely different dimension on the whole conflict.  Roid's remark about the unequal treaty and second class citizen status turns out to be a masterpiece of understatement and makes their stated desire to liberate the other natives from the New UN Government seem rather reasonable (if misguided).

[Master Dex]

22 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Absolutely, yes.  Macross Delta: the White Knight of the Black Wing shouldn't have been a separate side story manga.  Its story absolutely should've been a flashback episode or two of the Macross Delta series proper.  Without that extra context, the Macross Delta audience never really gets that signature Macross moral ambiguity where where antagonists aren't really bad people.  Someone who only sees the anime never gets the Why of the Kingdom of the Wind's grievances against the New UN Government.  All they get to go in is a vague remark about a "profoundly unequal treaty" in Roid's declaration of war, and a lot of hinting that all is not as it seems before the very late introduction of the truth about the New UN Government having bombed Carlyle with a dimensional warhead.  If you add in the material from the manga, and it puts an entirely different dimension on the whole conflict.  Roid's remark about the unequal treaty and second class citizen status turns out to be a masterpiece of understatement and makes their stated desire to liberate the other natives from the New UN Government seem rather reasonable (if misguided).

The real sad thing about that is.. they could have fit it in... the back half of the show had 2 or 3 pointless exposition episodes, one of which was basically a history of Macross and why music was powerful discussion by a side character who barely was relevant to the plot. If they had instead decided to toss in a Windermere history episode.. it could have forgiven a lot.

[BlackRose]

15 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I mean I can see that. I'm trying to evaluate Delta on its own, though, since Frontier was undeniably good (even though even it was kinda tropey). I mean humanity at this point has written every character and every basic story permutation, and it's all retreads with new window dressing. But comparing Delta to Frontier, yes, Delta is incredibly disappointing. In almost every category. The two categories that stick out to me that Delta didn't fail hard on, were the Music (I kinda dig the sound of Walkure), and the Mecha (even though they didn't get enough screen time). 

You can't really judge Delta on its own merits because it puts so much effort into tying in to Frontier.

It's one thing to have a character who fills the same kind of role as an existing character.  It's a lot less acceptable IMO to have the majority of the "new" characters be almost exact copies of characters from the previous show with only a little change to their art that barely makes them look different.  

[SMS007]

And Delta really blew at trying to copy Frontier.

[Marzan]

Maybe they could get the guy who wrote the sidestory manga to write the movie? Might improve things

[BlackRose]

23 hours ago, SMS007 said:

And Delta really blew at trying to copy Frontier.

Oh yeah.  At a level that would make even an EF5 tornado seethe with envy.

 

8 hours ago, Marzan said:

Maybe they could get the guy who wrote the sidestory manga to write the movie? Might improve things

Hiring a writer who can actually write?  That would be a good place to start.  Azuki Fuji is definitely better than the writers of the series.

Shame the movie is a compilation one.  That means any improvement isn't going to be very big because it will be reusing material from the series.

[SMS007]

Y'know funny enough, Delta tried a half-assed late-stage explanation that Vár syndrome was the result of the events of Frontier, wherein the Vajra departed normal spacetime in the wake of the Vajra War. (Now, the in-universe characters could be wrong about their theory. But the show doesn't explore this.) But as Seto Kaiba here points out, Vár syndrome being caused by the Vajra's fold bacteria doesn't make any damn sense given what Frontier established about Vajra and fold bacteria. So that just blows, and a compilation movie probably won't shake that up. 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Y'know funny enough, Delta tried a half-assed late-stage explanation that Vár syndrome was the result of the events of Frontier, wherein the Vajra departed normal spacetime in the wake of the Vajra War. (Now, the in-universe characters could be wrong about their theory. But the show doesn't explore this.) [...]

Oh, it's not a "could be"... almost every aspect of Berger Stone's expository dialog about the Vajra and the origins of Var syndrome is demonstrably wrong.  The annoying part is that Macross Delta's own prequels disprove portions of it, and Xaos should not be in the dark about that fact because one of their branch offices was directly involved in events that disprove key assertions in Berger Stone's hypothesis.

The Vajra departed this universe for another?  Nope.  It's like Berger Stone and the Xaos staff aren't aware that the Vajra hive that the Macross Frontier fleet and Macross Galaxy fleet encountered wasn't the only one in the Milky Way.  Even weirder, the image in Berger's presentation is the Macross Frontier TV series version in which the headless but still very much alive and aware queen of the Vajra hive in question led her hive on a space fold to another galaxy to mate with another Vajra hive there.  They never left the universe, except in the sense that they were briefly in fold space during their fold jump.  Both Berger and the Xaos staff should've known that the Vajra were still very much present in the Milky Way because the Epsilon Foundation was able to capture a Vajra in the Pipure system in 2062 with the help of Zelgar Heavy Industries and briefly attempted to use it against Xaos's Pipure branch in the middle of the Project Thrones field testing of Tactical Sound Units for Var suppression.  Xaos's Ranga branch also has Aisha Blanchett from Macross 30 working on Var research there in the novelization's version, and she ought to remember the Vajra had been very much present on Uroboros even before Havamal's dicking around with the ruins tied spacetime in knots.

The real question is why did nobody in the Xaos Ragna branch office call Berger on his obvious lies?  Are they just that dense, or what?  Must be, because they don't even know who Lady M is, and they bloody well report to her directly on several occasions... plus she signs their paychecks.

 

2 hours ago, SMS007 said:

But as Seto Kaiba here points out, Vár syndrome being caused by the Vajra's fold bacteria doesn't make any damn sense given what Frontier established about Vajra and fold bacteria. So that just blows, and a compilation movie probably won't shake that up. 

Yeah, the idea that fold songs are "new" doesn't jive at all with any prior information.

The worst contradiction is obviously Macross Zero, in which Sara and Mao Nome both exhibited significant fold song abilities that were, per official sources, something their ancestors were engineered to have to maintain the biotechnological Birdhuman.  Their fold song was powerful enough to be detectable by even the crude cross-dimension radar systems of the pre-First Space War UN Forces... and not even high-powered ship-mounted units, small man-portable ones!  

Macross Chronicle also points to anyone with Song Energy abilities generating a particular type of fold wave in their songs, which includes Lynn Minmay (whose recordings alone could generate 10,000+ Chiba units of song energy) and most every other singer in Macross with the possible exception of Sharon Apple.

Even weirder is that Berger and co. somehow believe that the fold bacterium responsible for Var syndrome came from the Vajra... when we know it resides in the brain, and we know from Macross Frontier making it a critical plot point that having the v-type fold bacteria in your brain causes your standard anime incurable bloody cough of death and is incurable by conventional means, save for the movies indicating a major blood transfusion from someone who was infected by V-type bacteria in the womb and thus an antibody for it could treat the disease.  Given that Ranka probably can't have donated several dozen pints of blood to every single person in the galaxy in the space of eight years, and the galaxy isn't an open mass grave of humanoids dying off because they've been infected with an incurable brain disease with a 100% mortality rate and untreated life expectency of only a few years, it's an obviously ridiculous claim that the Var syndrome-causing fold bacteria are the Vajra's v-type bacterium.

[BlackRose]

23 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Y'know funny enough, Delta tried a half-assed late-stage explanation that Vár syndrome was the result of the events of Frontier, wherein the Vajra departed normal spacetime in the wake of the Vajra War.

The most half-assed part is that it was all "explained" in a businessman's powerpoint slideshow in an episode that was just one big exposition dump.

[Sildani]

Whaddya mean “possible exception of Sharon Apple?” How could a virtuoid idol singer, consisting of zero organic material and thus zero protoculture genetic engineering, generate any fold waves at all?

[Focslain]

2 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Whaddya mean “possible exception of Sharon Apple?” How could a virtuoid idol singer, consisting of zero organic material and thus zero protoculture genetic engineering, generate any fold waves at all?

Mind you this is a guess, but....

While she is connected to Myung she could have generated through her. Or depending on what her final AI chip was made of could have given her some fold wave generation ability.

If she had any fold wave ability that could go a long way to weaponize fold energy more then they already have. 

[kajnrig]

Oh crap, turns out her AI chip had bits of fold quartz in them!

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Whaddya mean “possible exception of Sharon Apple?” How could a virtuoid idol singer, consisting of zero organic material and thus zero protoculture genetic engineering, generate any fold waves at all?

Well, she wasn't exactly 0% organic anymore when she finally jumped off the slippery slope at the end of the Macross Plus OVA.  Marj upgraded her with an (illegal) bio-neural processor prior to the ill-fated concert to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the First Space War armistice.

Mind you, it's entirely possible she could've had fold wave devices built into her... there were small, man-portable cross-dimension radar systems as early as 2008.

[Sildani]

So that bio-neural processor was actually organic? I thought it was purely artificial, based on Myung’s neural net, and the “bio-neural” bit referred to its use of a real brain as a template to “grow” the artificial neural net. Well well. 

As for the small fold wave devices: possible, but for the purposes of an idol singer used purely for entertainment as opposed to an idol singer used as a psych-ops WMD, what purpose would they have served? Was humanity’s understanding of fold waves and their propagation properly understood then?

Finally, since we brought him up: what was Marj’s damage, anyway?

[Seto Kaiba]

52 minutes ago, Sildani said:

So that bio-neural processor was actually organic? I thought it was purely artificial, based on Myung’s neural net, and the “bio-neural” bit referred to its use of a real brain as a template to “grow” the artificial neural net. Well well. 

Wouldn't be a reason for the prefix "bio-" if it wasn't... the Sharon Apple system was using computer abstractions of a living brain and its biochemical emotional responses to model Sharon's "personality" on stage, but she didn't become truly alive until she got that bio-neural processor installed.

 

52 minutes ago, Sildani said:

As for the small fold wave devices: possible, but for the purposes of an idol singer used purely for entertainment as opposed to an idol singer used as a psych-ops WMD, what purpose would they have served?

She was an artificial intelligence with fairly sophisticated network capabilities, so she may have had built-in fold communications hardware to allow her to interface with the galaxy network... or she may have had to interface with a starship's fold communications system like she almost certainly had to in order to control Earth's defense grid.

 

52 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Was humanity’s understanding of fold waves and their propagation properly understood then?

Biological fold waves wouldn't be properly documented and codified by Dr. Gadget M. Chiba for another five years or so... but the mechanics of artificial fold waves were well understood and a basis for long-range (incl. interstellar) communications, FTL radar, and so on.

 

52 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Finally, since we brought him up: what was Marj’s damage, anyway?

Marj's official bio makes it pretty evident that he was mentally ill.  He was Sharon Apple's creator, and was so utterly obsessed with pursuing the project to completion by making Sharon a "living" AI that his obsession turned into a delusion-fueled romantic love for the Sharon Apple AI.

Let's just say that boy ain't right... and he dreams of electric sheep.

[Seto Kaiba]

As a fun aside, if the Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E manga is any fair indication, the science and technology behind Tactical Sound Units for suppressing Var syndrome is an indirect continuation of the research Dr. Gadget M. Chiba and Dr. Lawrence did back in Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7 on song energy.  Dr. Elma Hoyly seems to have been Dr. Lawrence's pupil, and was a major contributor to the first Tactical Sound Unit's equipment and field testing.