Why the Clans from BattleTech would make better Macross antagonists than the current Macross rouges gallery......

[TehPW]

On 11/25/2022 at 5:23 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The latter... with a further caveat.

Not only do we not know what kind of Republic the (Inter)Stellar Republic was (or if it was even truly a republic and not a People's Republic of Tyranny)... it's not always referred to as a Republic either.  

Sometimes it's 星間共和国 (seikan kyouwakoku, "Interstellar Republic") and sometimes it's 銀河帝国 (ginga teikoku, "Galactic Empire").  The latter is more common in early works, but Macross Chronicle expressly acknowledges both terms.  It's possible that both are correct and either the government changed its name or those existed concurrently as the two factions in the Protoculture's civil war.

Ok, lets do a thought process on those terms.

1) WHEN exactly, date wise in production, was the term coined.

2) How old was the individuals at that time.

3) How often was regional nations discussed in news (and which ones)?

Mind you, I'm thinking the same thing as how other concepts creeped into the setting (ARMD = AIMD, VF-84's colors at that time). Galactic Empire was a term that was first coined in Star Wars and maybe they used the word as a literal concept?

[sketchley]

31 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Ok, lets do a thought process on those terms.

1) WHEN exactly, date wise in production, was the term coined.

2) How old was the individuals at that time.

3) How often was regional nations discussed in news (and which ones)?

Mind you, I'm thinking the same thing as how other concepts creeped into the setting (ARMD = AIMD, VF-84's colors at that time). Galactic Empire was a term that was first coined in Star Wars and maybe they used the word as a literal concept?

The short answer:

SDFM (1982) was created after the release of both SW Eps 1 (1977) and Eps 2 (1980) by relatively youthful creators.  However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the creators of Macross were cognizant that they were emulating Star Wars.

Simply put, the Empire of Japan existed from 1868–1947, and the arguable top of the Japanese government has been an emperor since 660 BC (and still is).  So, if one combines "a galaxy spanning civilization" with "what did we learn in social studies about our history", it's quite easy to get to "galactic empire".

Again, it's a slippery slope, as cultural cross-pollination does happen, but often times that occurs at a subconscious level through the filters of one's own culture.

 

The other thing is we have to be careful about misconstruing "publication date" as "creation date".  E.g. Kawamori-san purportedly lamented that Dir. Spielberg was the first to publish the concept of a boy riding a bicycle in space, even though Kawamori-san independently came up with the idea long before E.T. was released!

 

 

Regarding 3):

The neighbours of Japan are the "Republic of Korea" (South), the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (North), the "Republic of China" (Taiwan), and the "People's Republic of China" (mainland China).  They appear quite regularly in the news.

Edited November 27, 2022 by sketchley

[TehPW]

So when the concept of Galactic Empire was coined (and i mean the literal Japanese words, not the English translation), they thought about Japanese history when they coined the Protoculture?

o.O

That could be taken one or two ways (and that distinct leans towards a political discussion, a BIG NO-NO in common discussions) PM Sent, Sketchy.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Ok, lets do a thought process on those terms.

1) WHEN exactly, date wise in production, was the term coined.

銀河帝国 (ginga teikoku, "Galactic Empire") is the one that was used first in Macross's development.

That shows up in the description of the original series pitch for Battle City Megaroad that was made to Wiz/Artmic in August 1980.

The actual Super Dimension Fortress Macross series does not provide a name for the Protoculture's civilization when their history is discussed in the episode "Satan's Dolls".

The Macross: Perfect Memory artbook from 1984 is, I believe, the first in the franchise to use 星間共和国 (seikan kyouwakoku, "Interstellar Republic") but uses both terms interchangeably.  It uses "Interstellar Republic" in the timeline on page 54, but uses "Galactic Empire" on the description of every Zentradi mechanical design.

 

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Mind you, I'm thinking the same thing as how other concepts creeped into the setting (ARMD = AIMD, VF-84's colors at that time). Galactic Empire was a term that was first coined in Star Wars and maybe they used the word as a literal concept?

"Galactic Empire" is a very generic term that had a LOT of traction in sci-fi well before Star Wars came around, even in Japan.

Star Wars is the most mainstream user of the term, but it was in common use decades before Star Wars was first conceived.  Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is the oldest one I can find to uses that explicit term dating all the way back to 1942, though it wasn't translated into Japanese and released in Japan until 1968.  Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night also calls the Human interstellar civilization a "Galactic Empire", and it was published in 1948 (and again after some rewriting in 1953).  There were, of course, plenty of other space empires in fiction like the Gamilas in Yamato, or the Klingons and Romulans in Star Trek as well.  

EDIT: I'm not sure what "AIMD" is supposed to be, but "ARMD" is a contrived acronym play on the word "Armed", because the ships were supposed to be the Macross's arms.  It stands for "Armaments Rigged-up Moving Deck", officially.

 

19 minutes ago, TehPW said:

So when the concept of Galactic Empire was coined (and i mean the literal Japanese words, not the English translation), they thought about Japanese history when they coined the Protoculture?

I doubt it.  I suspect it was simply a question of conveying the appropriate scale of the Protoculture's civilization in the development of the series.  An empire that spans multiple star systems would be an interstellar empire.  An empire that spans the galaxy would be a galactic empire.  If it is a result of pop culture osmosis in this specific case, there are quite a few more possibilities than just Star Wars, several of which are referenced here and there by the production staff and were available in Japan well before Star Wars.

We know the staff were conniseurs of printed science fiction, given that they snuck nods to several sci-fi authors into the setting of Super Dimension Fortress Macross.  The first two heads of state of the Earth UN Gov't are named for multiple sci-fi authors incl. Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, and Robert Heinlein, for instance.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[TehPW]

AIMD 

Additive increase/multiplicative decrease - Wikipedia

No, not that (but when i think about some of the places i worked at over my career, maybe some of the other divisions suffered from that)

AIRCRAFT INTERMEDIATE MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT (AIMD) (tpub.com)

anyway, that term (AIMD) had to come from a Sailor talking about work in public (because unless someone got to actually visit the Carrier inport at that time, i find it incredulous that the production staff would coin the phrase ARMD out of their butts and literally just a single letter difference). 

(Honestly, we'll get back to the Clans soon enough)

[sketchley]

2 hours ago, TehPW said:

So when the concept of Galactic Empire was coined (and i mean the literal Japanese words, not the English translation), they thought about Japanese history when they coined the Protoculture?

I think you are reading things into it that aren't there.  Let me try to explain it in different terms:

When English speakers translate Macross terminology, some translate "軍" as 'army' and others as 'armed forces'.  Why?  Because that's the common term that is used in their respective cultures and countries.  There is no political bias, cultural baggage, agenda, or anything else going on other than that's the word used by people from where they are from for that particular concept.  The same holds true for the people who created Macross and their choice of the term "empire".

[Seto Kaiba]

In the interest of avoiding going OT, I'll answer that ship question elsewhere...

 

2 hours ago, TehPW said:

(Honestly, we'll get back to the Clans soon enough)

We hope, but I suspect that is a dry well.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We hope, but I suspect that is a dry well.

That well is so dry that I heard a few ginger ale companies were bidding for it.

[TehPW]

Ok.... The Clans... 20? 18? 17?

First off, there's the elephant in the room dressed in grey with a name type that says Joe Smith, Hyperspace Navigator...

The Clans (or ANY BT faction) could NEVER be a threat to a Colony fleet or a colony world because the manner in which BT vessels travel between systems (Jumpships travel between systems, Dropships travel to/from the Jumpships to the planet in question). It would be far too easy for two Gitmo Stealth Carriers to hold both the Nadir and Zenith Jump Points plus a third holding near common L1 points at the colony home world. In order to make the Clans into a viable Macross Protagonist, you need to change the tech used, the methodology in how they get around. To expand this notion of how easy 3 gitmos can hold a system, you only need 6000 Gitmos to embargo the entire Inner Sphere. The notion of the Clans being better bag guys? that's need some proof checking...

 

Please, MODS: Lock down the thread, because the guy who originally started this thread, hasn't said &^%$ lately about it.

(Plus id like to PUBLICALLY Condemn Sketchy for his very provocative explanation on the Politics involved that we discussed in PM. Excellent response from him and quite surprising...)

Edited November 27, 2022 by TehPW
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