Next Macross series: Prequel story about the origin of the Zentraedi, Supervision Army and Protoculture?

[Invid99]

Could a show soley focusing on these factions work and would you be interested?

[JB0]

Nope and nope, in that order.

[azrael]

[Seto Kaiba]

No.

[RedWolf]

The beauty of Protoculture history is that we don't know everything. Something always pops up. Like the Protodevlin and the Vajra. Various technology they left behind. Doing a prequel limits the storylines.  Besides as Kawamori stated Macross is an in-universe docudrama. Hence a fluid Canon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Invid99 said:

Could a show soley focusing on these factions work and would you be interested?

The short answer is "It wouldn't".

The longer answer that explains what basically everyone already knows is that such a story would be incredibly boring.  The ancient Protoculture are as interesting as they are when they're name-dropped in the Macross because they're kept mysterious.  They're fascinating as a long-vanished ancient galactic civilization that was destroyed almost overnight (by historical standards) by the products of their own hubris in a tragedy that sounds almost torn from the pages of classical mythology and leavened with a bit of cold war allegory to boot.  The problem is that, once you start examining them up close, they're just a race of sufficiently advanced idiots and total bastards who had a death grip on an idiot ball nearly the size of the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole and destroyed themselves over petty bullsh*t and wouldn't stop building irresponsibly dangerous macguffins.

For their part, the Zentradi and Supervision Army are factions composed entirely of flat characters.  We've already seen, in other franchise, that that doesn't work.  Star Wars did all it could to avoid focusing on the clones and battle droids during the prequel trilogy because there's little emotional investment in watching two armies of flat characters who are literal mass-produced expendable cannon fodder destroy each other unless you're playing it for horror, and they weren't.  That's why when that franchise does it, they only ever do it through the lens of "irregular" units of "defective" clones that exist solely to do protagonist stuff despite not passing QC.  The Zentradi in Macross only really began to develop personalities of their own beyond their military roles once they became immersed in Earth's culture.  Zentradi from the height of the Protoculture's civilization are basically meat robots.  It might look like a person and walk like a person, but it's basically an organic automaton that's been programmed to do one specific job and eschew anything not related to that job.  On the other side, the Supervision Army is made up of Zentradi and civilians who've been brainwashed to follow orders without question... which makes them effectively no different.  You could do big showy space battles... but they have all the emotional impact of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots because a billion is a statistic and neither side cares.

[Big s]

I find the subject interesting. Maybe it would work as something elaborated upon in an unrelated series, but as a series of its own, would probably fail

[pengbuzz]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The short answer is "It wouldn't".

The longer answer that explains what basically everyone already knows is that such a story would be incredibly boring.  The ancient Protoculture are as interesting as they are when they're name-dropped in the Macross because they're kept mysterious.  They're fascinating as a long-vanished ancient galactic civilization that was destroyed almost overnight (by historical standards) by the products of their own hubris in a tragedy that sounds almost torn from the pages of classical mythology and leavened with a bit of cold war allegory to boot.  The problem is that, once you start examining them up close, they're just a race of sufficiently advanced idiots and total bastards who had a death grip on an idiot ball nearly the size of the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole and destroyed themselves over petty bullsh*t and wouldn't stop building irresponsibly dangerous macguffins.

For their part, the Zentradi and Supervision Army are factions composed entirely of flat characters.  We've already seen, in other franchise, that that doesn't work.  Star Wars did all it could to avoid focusing on the clones and battle droids during the prequel trilogy because there's little emotional investment in watching two armies of flat characters who are literal mass-produced expendable cannon fodder destroy each other unless you're playing it for horror, and they weren't.  That's why when that franchise does it, they only ever do it through the lens of "irregular" units of "defective" clones that exist solely to do protagonist stuff despite not passing QC.  The Zentradi in Macross only really began to develop personalities of their own beyond their military roles once they became immersed in Earth's culture.  Zentradi from the height of the Protoculture's civilization are basically meat robots.  It might look like a person and walk like a person, but it's basically an organic automaton that's been programmed to do one specific job and eschew anything not related to that job.  On the other side, the Supervision Army is made up of Zentradi and civilians who've been brainwashed to follow orders without question... which makes them effectively no different.  You could do big showy space battles... but they have all the emotional impact of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots because a billion is a statistic and neither side cares.

Your typical Protoculture:

[Podtastic]

The Protoculture story COULD have been interesting. The  first encounters with the Vajra, the creation of Vajra emulating technology and the creation of the Zentradi, COULD all be interesting.

BUT once those ludicrous, overpowered refugees from Biobooster armour Guyver (or whatever) are introduced, and their brainwashed Zentradi start fighting our Zentradi, it becomes completely uninteresting.

Macross 7 was enough for me, I don't particularly want to see or hear about the Supervision army or the Protodevlin ever again.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

The Protoculture story COULD have been interesting. The  first encounters with the Vajra, the creation of Vajra emulating technology and the creation of the Zentradi, COULD all be interesting.

BUT once those ludicrous, overpowered refugees from Biobooster armour Guyver (or whatever) are introduced, and their brainwashed Zentradi start fighting our Zentradi, it becomes completely uninteresting.

Macross 7 was enough for me, I don't particularly want to see or hear about the Supervision army or the Protodevlin ever again.

I'd just as soon not. Some things are best left as mysteries...

[TehPW]

I'm more interested in how the fleets themselves start to become competitors (aka moar Civil Wars please)

[RedWolf]

10 hours ago, TehPW said:

I'm more interested in how the fleets themselves start to become competitors (aka moar Civil Wars please)

Since fleets and planets are now Sovereign states I say it is war than a civil war. We have heard of planets in civil war like Cachew between the old UN Spacy aligned with Lactence and the local NUNS and Divide the planet of Kaname Bucaneer. Other than that is the usual Zentradi Rebels like with Sephira as seen in Macross VF-X2 though that was defending the planet's independence from Earth and the Zentradi attack in 2059 as seen in Macross 30.

[Einherjar]

All this time I thought the thread poster was just another pathetic lurker from the Robotech fandom.

[Bolt]

Didn't Windermere declare war(and lost)  in the first series? And the new Delta movie seems to cover another splinter group fighting Xaos..kinda like civil war..

[Seto Kaiba]

On 4/1/2022 at 4:20 AM, Podtastic said:

The Protoculture story COULD have been interesting. The  first encounters with the Vajra, the creation of Vajra emulating technology and the creation of the Zentradi, COULD all be interesting.

Not really, given what we know of that era.  

"Hey, we found a dead bug the size of a semi truck."
"Well that's kinda f***ed up.  Where?"
"Deep space."
"Well that's kinda f***ed up."
"It's made out of sh*t we can't identify that our tools can barely scratch and has no obvious means of space propulsion."
"Well that's super f***ed up, someone should look into that."

Unlike humanity, who had all the answers practically dropped in their lap, the Protoculture had to work that out from scratch and it took centuries to do.

 

13 hours ago, TehPW said:

I'm more interested in how the fleets themselves start to become competitors (aka moar Civil Wars please)

2 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Since fleets and planets are now Sovereign states I say it is war than a civil war. We have heard of planets in civil war like Cachew between the old UN Spacy aligned with Lactence and the local NUNS and Divide the planet of Kaname Bucaneer. Other than that is the usual Zentradi Rebels like with Sephira as seen in Macross VF-X2 though that was defending the planet's independence from Earth and the Zentradi attack in 2059 as seen in Macross 30.

14 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Didn't Windermere declare war(and lost)  in the first series? And the new Delta movie seems to cover another splinter group fighting Xaos..kinda like civil war..

Little inter-colony conflicts apparently happen all the time, but apparently don't last very long or have much in the way of consequences for either side with the New UN Government stepping in to curb both sides when things get out of hand.  There are only a few extreme examples, like Kaname's home planet Divide basically being Space North Ireland circa the Troubles... which is less "civil war" and more "prolonged civil unrest".  It was worse before the government reforms following the Second Unification War in 2051, but that was some Earth-supremacists using the NUNS to stomp on planets seeking governmental autonomy by declaring those groups "terrorists" for the most part.

 

1 hour ago, Einherjar said:

All this time I thought the thread poster was just another pathetic lurker from the Robotech fandom.

And from what I've seen, you weren't wrong.

Hell, there's more than one of them in this thread.

[pengbuzz]

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not really, given what we know of that era.  

"Hey, we found a dead bug the size of a semi truck."
"Well that's kinda f***ed up.  Where?"
"Deep space."
"Well that's kinda f***ed up."
"It's made out of sh*t we can't identify that our tools can barely scratch and has no obvious means of space propulsion."
"Well that's super f***ed up, someone should look into that."

Unlike humanity, who had all the answers practically dropped in their lap, the Protoculture had to work that out from scratch and it took centuries to do.

 

Little inter-colony conflicts apparently happen all the time, but apparently don't last very long or have much in the way of consequences for either side with the New UN Government stepping in to curb both sides when things get out of hand.  There are only a few extreme examples, like Kaname's home planet Divide basically being Space North Ireland circa the Troubles... which is less "civil war" and more "prolonged civil unrest".  It was worse before the government reforms following the Second Unification War in 2051, but that was some Earth-supremacists using the NUNS to stomp on planets seeking governmental autonomy by declaring those groups "terrorists" for the most part.

 

And from what I've seen, you weren't wrong.

Hell, there's more than one of them in this thread.

Yeah... I think this entire idea can go right into the "circular file". Some things should remain unsolved and distant.

[RedWolf]

 Space Life capable of Fold has been encountered by the Protoculture replicating their forms. The Vajra for their Zentradi Battle Pods while the Galactic Whales for the Nupetiet-Vergnitzs class. While is it explicit the Birdman in Mayan islander  mythology I think the Fishman may be the Galactic Whales.