Seto Kaiba

Nah. Speaking as a filthy casual in the Star Wars audience, my gut reaction to The Acolyte is that it reads like a product of the same Fanservice First development process that shat out the likes of Solo: a Star Wars Story, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Why? Because The Acolyte is fundamentally a backstory dump. Casual viewers don't care what the characters or factions were doing before the story started or after the end of the story. If those details were important, they'd have been in the main story not some spinoff made decades later and only tenuously connected to the films. What the Sith were doing a century before the Jedi realized they were still around isn't something that has any real bearing on the story of the film trilogies, so casual viewers won't really care. This series is meant to appeal to the die-hard fans who are here for the continuity nods and the in-jokes. That transition started waaaaay before the prequels, man. That grew out of the original trilogy's biggest sequel-induced plot hole when Empire Strikes Back's big twist revealed that Obi-Wan had lied to Luke about his father's fate. That got progressively worse when Yoda and Obi-Wan doubled down on it from "a certain point of view" in Return of the Jedi and Luke followed up on it by getting all smug and preachy with Vader on Endor and with the Emperor on the Death Star. The prequels just took that existing development and ran with it full tilt.

Well, two reasons. Practical effects were the only real option when the first three movies were made, and that made alien characters very expensive as they either required prosthetic makeup or an uncomfortable and downright unsafe full-body costumes. (Consider the hell Tony Daniels and Peter Mayhew had to go through playing C-3PO and Chewbacca.) The other reason is that it's a bit of truth in television. At the time the original three films were made, many combat roles in the armed forces of most nations were not open to women. That didn't start to change in the real world until a few years after [i]Return of the Jedi[/i] came out, when Norway and Israel opened all combat roles to female troops. Other nations like the US and UK only relaxed those restrictions in the 2010s. There was similar thing going on in the original Star Trek, with the network rejecting the "The Cage" pilot in part because they felt having women in prominent positions of military(-esque) authority was not believable at the time it was made (1964). Like any other work of fiction, Star Wars is very much reflects the era in which it was made. Even though the prequels are set before the original trilogy, they were made after it and reflect the societal values of a later day. The same will be true for The Acolyte, sure as sure.

Macross Chronicle, Great Mechanics, etc. have pointed to two specific design issues that are echoed as root causes of the testing accidents in Variable Fighter Master File. The exceptional maneuverability the YF-19 achieved via its inherently unstable forward swept wing design and its powerful next-gen FF-2200 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines was ultimately a double-edged sword. Its sensitive handling and powerful acceleration combined to make it easy for pilots to unintentionally exceed their physical tolerance for g-forces (esp. lateral g-forces) and lose control of the aircraft. Shinsei Industry built the YF-19 No.1 and No.2 prototypes with the latest previous-gen ANGIRAS-GFW204 airframe control AI. It's said that this control AI system (which is presented as a high-end VF-11 control AI in Macross R) wasn't able to keep up with the YF-19's higher performance. AFAIK, official media gives us no guidance on what the circumstances of the fatal and injurious testing accidents the YF-19 encoutered were. Master File offers a brief description of the YF-19's first test accident and first testing fatality. It asserts that YF-19-1 crashed on its second test flight out of Eden's New Edwards Test Flight Center on 30 July 2039, which ultimately cost the life of Cpt. Juuso Grennan. Cpt. Grennan lost control of the aircraft during a test sequence (impl. due to a control AI issue) and ejected late due to trying to regain control of the aircraft. He did successfully escape the aircraft, but having ejected low and with the nose pointing down he ended up hitting a slope in a mountainous region on landing and sustained severe injuries that ultimately cost him his life. Once selected, there were a number of additional YF-19 prototypes... official sources mention, I believe, a No.3 and No.4 prototype that used the new ARIEL airframe control AI that is production standard for 4th Gen VFs. Master File mentions prototypes as high as No.8. After the final design was OK'd by the military, low rate initial production started on the VF-19A so that the first squadrons from the Earth NUNS could start transitioning to the new model. The VF-19A had essentially the same specs as the YF-19 final prototype (and not appreciably different from the No.2 and No.3 prototypes), and once it started ending up in the hands of less-veteran pilots the problems started to become apparent. Multiple loss of control accidents occurred during model conversion training and that combined with a number of other factors like the revised arms export restrictions and the VF-19's extremely high initial and operating costs to see the plans for widespread adoption of the VF-19A cancelled. Shinsei Industry tried to further refine the VF-19 to address the issues the military had reported, resulting in the development of the second production type (VF-19F/S type). Their rival, General Galaxy, understood the assignment slightly differently and went back to the drawing board to prioritize easy handling, cost performance, and operational versatility in their next 4th Gen proposal and based it on the already-proven VF-17D Nightmare. General Galaxy's proposal ultimately won out, and the VF-171 Nightmare Plus became the new 4th Generation main fighter to replace the failed VF-19A and the VF-19F/S became a Special Forces Valkyrie. (It's ironic in a way that chronic envelope pushers General Galaxy finally beat Shinsei Industry's more conservative/play-it-safe design team by putting forward a design that was more conservative than Shinsei's.)

It doesn't matter how many different flavors of rubber forehead and mocap suit are represented among the main cast, it's another bloody ****ing story about sectarian violence in the glowstick enthusiast community. 🤣 There are something like 1.3 million worlds in the Old Republic* and Coruscant alone is home to approximately three trillion-with-a-T people. Yet somehow, the writers seem to be all but incapable of conceiving a story that doesn't revolve around the two tiny cults of squabbling space wizards occupying the extreme ends of the moral spectrum and the same few planets. * Or so Google tells me.

I'm not sure what I expected, but Master File predictably offered an explanation of the VF-1's Block 1-5 hand design and it's just a rounded metal housing around the same single axis articulations that the square-edged hand has.

On a skim, I don't see anything about it in the few official artbooks and Macross Chronicle pages that discuss Ray's backstory and the episode where Pink Pecker team is mentioned. That said, it's not the kind of name you'd pick if you were being anything but deliberate about it. 🤣

... and now I'm headed down the VF hand design rabbit hole.

The way it's written up, it does kind of have that vibe... albeit not from the New UN Forces side. Rather, it's Shinsei Industry who seem to be absolutely dead set on finding some way to make the VF-19 marketable no matter how long it takes. After the military's plan to transition to the VF-19A went down in flames and procurement switched to Special Forces use only, Shinsei still kept trying to find a way to fix the issues and make the VF-19 a viable 4th Generation main VF. They radically changed the design starting from the VF-19F, they swapped out basically every part they reasonably could, and while they managed to make it accessible to more pilots it never really reached the level of being a viable main fighter. Even as late as 2058, fully 17 years after the VF-19 bombed out of the Spacy's service, they were still selling their own management on plans to refine and improve the VF-19 like Isamu's VF-19EF/A. How much of that was a sincere belief in the design's viability and how much was simply sour grapes over having lost the main fighter contract for the first time in the company's history is unknown. General Galaxy definitely realized it was a sore spot for them, which led to some unsubtle trolling with the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army building a small number of VF-19C's under license for one of their elite units as a way to show they could build a better VF-19 than Shinsei could. Not as such. Project Super Nova wasn't set up to fail from the outset. The New UN Forces really did want those fighters. The program's cancellation came when the pro-unmanned fighter faction among the military brass won out and pushed for adoption of the X-9 Ghost instead... only to end up with enough egg on their face to kill an entire Zentradi main fleet through high cholesterol when Sharon Apple hijacked the prototype and went on a rampage through Macross City. It's almost like Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy were so preoccupied with chasing the highest possible performance to outdo each other that they forgot the aircraft they were developing had to have a pilot. They achieved stunning performance to impress the military brass and completely blew past the physical endurance limits of the human body. So once the dust settled on the VF-19's botched phase-in plan, the military threw up their hands and said "OK, maybe we went a bit nuts with the requirements...".

As ever, I am absolutely gobsmacked by just how consistently terrible HIGHSPEED Etoile manages to be. Bile fascination is the only reason I can keep watching this hot mess. It's not just that the full 3D CG animation looks like absolute arse and looks like an embedded video from a 20 year old console game, it's that the writing is if anything even more detrimental than the animation is. In a way, I guess I can commend it for being an unflinchingly accurate depiction of what would happen if a professional racing team decided to hire a teenage kid whose only driving experience was playing a console port of Forza. They'd do a pretty awful job, fail constantly, and probably crack under the stress. Having the main character be arrogant in a very dimwitted way AND incompetent to the point that failure is the ONLY option is a very strange way to write a sports anime. The audience is supposed to be rooting for the main character to grow and move up the ranks and become the champion, right? HIGHSPEED Etoile's protagonist seems to be actively getting worse as time goes on.

Hrm... that's a good question. I'd argue that it's possible for a design to be both as long as it meets the definition of both. I don't think there's a legitimate example in Macross, but I can think of at least a few from Gundam. True... the YF-19 was a hot mess. The four previous test pilots didn't exactly get to resign either... two of Isamu's four predecessors died in test accidents and the other two ended up so badly injured they couldn't continue to serve as test pilots on the project. Not to mention the No.1 prototype was damaged beyond repair and the No.2 prototype was smashed up badly enough to be sent back to the factory twice. (And if you take Master File's word for it, it didn't end there either with the No.3 prototype apparently having several loss-of-control related accidents.)

I'd assume any first-hand information about the questionable spelling probably vanished when Takatoku Toys went bankrupt and its assets were sold off. It's doubtful the people working on it expected to have native English speakers checking their spelling down the road. Odds are they didn't have anyone fluent in English and just sounded it out as best they could. The show's creators probably couldn't give them much useful guidance there either, since they seem to have initially done the same and spelled it "ICHIJOH" in the TV series artbooks and "ICHIJYO" in the animation itself before finally correcting it to ICHIJO in the movie. That's not surprising, given that the re-release was a reproduction of the original toy "warts and all"... but the packaging.

Fuel depot ran out of slush hydrogen and the pilot figured mountain dew slushie was close enough...

I don't think I've ever seen that shade of green used for it... the exhaust is usually drawn white with a tinge of either pink, blue, or yellow. Guld's YF-21 usually had a pink tinge, while Max and Milia's VF-22S's had blue.

Hell, it's a plot point for multiple characters that Basara is an incredibly good pilot. Gamlin has more than one miniature breakdown over how an unkempt and borderline unemployed rando like Basara is a better pilot than he is as a NUNS Special Forces ace.

Nothing about the definition of a Super Prototype stipulates that it can't be defeated by a sufficiently experienced enemy (or because of its pilot's own inexperience). But yes, the RX-78 Gundam codified the Super Prototype trope in the mecha genre. There was only one of them in the entire story, and its capabilities were far beyond any of the other mobile suits of its generation had. Zeon didn't have a MS that could rival its performance until the Gelgoog was introduced right at the end of the war. The Gundam had a special armor material that made it largely impervious to enemy fire, it had a special learning computer that made it get better at fighting the more it fought, it had the ability to swap out parts on the fly, it had a bunch of special weapons the other mobile suits didn't, etc. etc. It was power overwhelming to the extent that Zeon intrinsically knew that the White Devil's presence meant sh*t had gone off and it was rightly feared by the Principality's forces clear through to the end of the war. It's the same principle as the YF-29. You only see one in the story because one is game-breaking enough... even if there are potentially others doing the same elsewhere. "If." But he didn't, so it's not a valid point... and Basara's machine isn't a Super Prototype, it's a modified production machine. An Ace Custom. Per Macross Chronicle, it started its life as a trial production VF-19F. Here's the thing... the official writeups don't really support that assertion. Macross Chronicle, in fact, asserts the VF-22 was actually made faster and more maneuverable than the YF-21 thanks to the changes. Based on what's said, a sufficiently skilled pilot can still draw out that same level of performance or even better it... they've just abolished the risk of the kind of loss of control accidents from less elite pilots that scuttled adoption of the VF-19 and YF-21 in the first place. That's not quite accurate either... the refinements to the flight control software and engines that improved the VF-19's handling came in with the second production type, the space optimized one in Macross 7 (VF-19F/S type). The first production type exemplified by the VF-19A and VF-19C was a faithful reproduction of the YF-19 right down to the excessively finicky handling. Indeed, that was one of the factors that put the brakes on its adoption as Next Main Fighter. The start of model conversion training among the Earth NUNS was marked by a number of accidents caused by pilots losing control of the aircraft under high g-loads due to its excessively finicky handling. (The reason Isamu had to roll back the flight control software on his "Isamu Special" is because that started its life as a second production type VF-19EF. He wanted the handling of the original unstable software in all of its personnel-maiming glory.) Guld couldn't... but that has at least as much, and likely quite a lot more, to do with the fact that Guld Goa Bowman was a civilian scientist with a Valkyrie pilot's license and not an experienced combat pilot. Guld Goa Bowman was a civilian neuroscientist and engineer who was made test pilot on the YF-21 because he was the lead developer on the brainwave control system and the only one who could effectively troubleshoot it on the fly. The BCS was doing most of the heavy lifting for him, otherwise he would have been hopelessly outclassed by Isamu and likely many other pilots. And it's worth noting that there are several other pilots like Aegis Focker and Isamu Dyson who fought comparably powerful unmanned fighters using the VF-19 and won without incurring significant damage, never mind dying. Isamu defeated the Neo Glaug prototype in Macross Plus: Game Edition, and Aegis Focker defeated multiple AIF-9 Ghosts in the course of Macross VF-X2. The evidence doesn't bear your conclusion out, I'm afraid... esp. with Macross Chronicle itself contradicting key points of your argument.

Not really, no. What's being referred to here is the Gundam franchise's commonplace habit of giving its protagonist a one-of-a-kind mecha that is significantly more advanced and powerful than contemporary mass production versions and either flat-out cannot be mass produced or the mass production version is significantly stripped down and a lot less powerful. It was those early UC-era Gundams that more or less created the trope in the first place... which is part of why the trope is so commonly associated with the franchise. Given that the Fire Valkyrie spent the first half of Macross 7 accomplishing basically nothing on the battlefield, I'd question that assertion. That's not a nerf... by definition, a "nerf" is a change that weakens something to make it less effective. The refinements Shinsei Industry made to the VF-19 in the second production type didn't reduce its performance. It actually has higher performance than the prototype and first production type, but with improved handling that means that pilots can draw out that performance more readily without the risk of losing control of the aircraft. The instability of the prototype made it highly effective in the hands of the tiny handful of people who could actually handle it but was nevertheless a design flaw rather than a feature because the VF-19 not developed to be an elite special forces VF... it was intended as a main VF. In practice, it's more of a buff since it made the even-more-powerful second production type something that could be deployed in larger numbers. It went from "awesome but hilariously impractical" to "awesome but expensive". Just one or two things... and one is in "certain point of view" territory, TBH. Ironically, Macross Chronicle actually presents those removals as improvements too... crediting them with a significant cost reduction and reduced weight that improved the final aircraft's performance and operation rate. Despite the removals, it's also explicitly indicated to have performance comparable to, or superior to, the prototype... so I'm not sure it can be said the removals are a nerf with a straight face. Cutting out the free-deformation wing material doesn't seem to have adversely impacted maneuverability based on the descriptions in Chronicle, and scaling back the brain direct interface to a support system is noted to have reduced cost and weight and made the system itself stable enough to actually use, resulting in a net gain in performance not a loss according to Chronicle. It's not a nerf, it's explicitly a buff.

To be frank, you're massively overthinking it. As noted a few posts ago, Macross runs on Broad Strokes continuity. The answer to "which version of <previous story> the new story considers canon" is always "none of them". The creators pick and choose which aspects of design and stort they like best when referencing past stories, and freely mix and match between versions. That's why, for instance, Macross 7 has a TV Quamzin and movie Vrlitwhai in its docu-drama of the First Space War and its in-universe version of DYRL? has scenes that aren't in ours. Or why the Zentradi 33rd Marines in Frontier have a mixture of movie and TV equipment. Or why the Berger Stone's historical summary in Delta shows a TV version of the SDF-1 Macross's launch with DYRL?-style Macross and the Frontier TV ending with movie costumes and a YF-29. I could go on, but you get the idea... and Macross 30 is certainly no exception.

Pretty much, yeah. The VF-19 might've gotten the boot for looking too much like a "hero" mecha to be used as cannon fodder c. Macross Frontier's TV series, but the YF-29 Durandal was Macross's first real flirtation with the concept of a Gundam-style Super Prototype. Thankfully, there've only been two designs to fall into that lamentable category (the YF-29 and YF-30) and the only one to put in more than one appearance was the YF-29. Master File's explanation of the state of 6th Gen VFs and its explanation of the three different YF-29s seems to be a bit of an effort to retroactively NERF the other YF-29s and make their proliferation in Macross 30 and Absolute Live!!!!!! a bit less broken. Ah, that's not correct I'm afraid. Granted, Macross 7 did indulge in Ace Custom versions of the VF-19, VF-17, and VF-11... but that's different from the Super Prototype shenanigans going on with the YF-29 (and to a lesser extent, YF-30). However, claiming that the YF-19 was "so good that the production version had to be nerfed" is not accurate. The VF-19's first mass production type (variants A-D) was effectively identical to the final YF-19 spec, and the second mass production type (F, S, etc.) had significantly higher performance. Even the "monkey model" version used by the Frontier fleet's special forces in Macross R had performance comparable or superior to the YF-19's. Everyone knows. Like I noted, the ONLY source that talks about the mecha of the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! movie is Master File. That's it. That's ALL we got. There is no other source... and the part being referenced is very much just a minor expansion on things which were already stated way back in the extra features from the Macross Delta TV series. That's why I cited it. Bear in mind, that's all material from before Macross Delta and its materials started retroactively reclassifying the YF-29 and YF-30 as 6th Generation. It's also worth noting that this would hardly be the first time a generic label was assigned to a design in a movie and changed later. Isamu's VF-19 from the second Frontier movie got its name changed multiple times before they settled on one. The YF-29B designation from Macross 30 may be an informal one similar to the VF-31C/E/F/J/S types from Macross Delta. They've gone back and forth on it a few times. Initially, the Frontier fleet's YF-29 Durandal was treated as a one-of-a-kind aircraft because the exotic material requirements to build it were so impossible to meet that they had to leave the prototype incomplete for two entire years because the fold quartz needed to build a working fold wave system was effectively unobtainable by any normal means. Later, Macross 30 threw a few YF-29s in play with the excuse that Havamal was using fold quartz from the Protoculture ruins to provide its top aces with the YF-29B. The Delta-era explanation seems to be trying to reconcile the two conflicting explanations into something that also aligns with what it's trying to establish about the 6th Generation of Variable Fighters. The way they've done it allows for them to have exactly the same specs and still be different based on the different performance of their fold wave systems, esp. as it seems to be building up to the idea that fold wave systems are the wave of the future and power depends on their system efficiency. IMO, what they've done is actually quite clever, esp. in how it builds on what they were also establishing about the disparity in performance enhancement between the Sv-262 variants and the VF-31 customs. If memory serves, that was first mentioned in Great Mechanics DX16... but it's been repeated in official art books like the Official Complete Book for the second Frontier movie. Calling the unobtainably-pure fold quartz a "Philosopher's Stone" was a joke on how impossible the material was to obtain, and they gave each of the four pieces installed on Alto's YF-29 a name that referenced the various holy relics supposedly incorporated into the sword Durandal... possibly Luca's doing, he likes making references like that.

Finished the Tales of titles... and I'm pretty underwhelmed by both. Tales of the Empire in particular didn't really have much of the Empire in it. I guess "Tales of Generally Unpleasant People" or "Tales of Darth Vader Cosplayers" didn't have quite the same ring to it. It's three episodes of that one-shot villain from The Mandalorian and three about more members of the glowstick enthusiast society. There's maybe three minutes of actual Imperial characters in the whole six episode miniseries. The only one of the twelve episodes I think I really enjoyed was "Justice", the Count Dooku-as-a-Jedi story. As Lawful Good characters go, he's one of the rare ones who seems to think it's better to be Good than strictly Lawful.

Ah, yeah... I'm not surprised. The few of us doing translations are doing it in our free time, and each of us has a rather specialized practice. It's on my to-do list, but I'm literal years behind on that list thanks to day job shenanigans that started back around the first COVID lockdowns. I'm not aware of one, but the gist of it is... I'm sure the novelization is a more streamlined version of the story, since the game's version has a lot of side quests. It never really addresses the question of where various missing characters are in the present day of 2060... since the versions of them in the story are from the middle of the events of their respective stories instead. Probably won't get the anime treatment... if that was on the table, they'd probably have given us an OVA for Macross VF-X2 by now, given how important THAT story is to both the Macross Frontier and Macross Delta series.

@kajnrig, moving my response to your question here to avoid veering too far off topic in the Macross Zero topic. Thus far, we only have one book that talks about the mecha from Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! in more than the most basic detail: Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus. Max's YF-29 is referenced as part of the book's explanation of the challenges and roadblocks defense companies are facing in developing 6th Generation VF concepts. It defines three types of YF-29 as part of its explanation of the YF-29 in general and the difference fold quartz purity makes in performance in particular: the A-type, B-type, and C-type: Alto's YF-29 is treated as YF-29A, a one-of-a-kind aircraft that cannot be reproduced because the ultra-high purity fold quartz from Vajra queens used in its fold wave system is effectively impossible to obtain. All of the other YF-29s in the official setting are collectively designated YF-29B. Various customizations aside, they're all considered the same variant due to being one-offs with similar performance well below the original YF-29's as a result of having to use lower-purity fold quartz than the unobtainably rare stuff the original YF-29 had. The third one, YF-29C, is a Master File original variant that's presented as an attempt to make the YF-29 economical for mass production by substituting the purest possible synthetic fold carbon for fold quartz. It's said that its fold wave system only achieves 1% of the power of the original YF-29's at best.

I'll answer that one on the mecha thread to avoid getting too far off topic.

Hm? No, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is a part of the official setting. That's the franchise's equivalent of being "canon", meaning it's considered a part of Macross's overarching narrative and is in continuity with other official works. Macross 30 is at least indirectly referenced in subsequent works, as the YF-30 that developed on Uroboros and successfully tested during the game's story was later developed into the VF-31 that is the main fighter in Macross Delta. Another Macross 30-introduced VF (the YF-29B) shows up in Macross Delta's second movie.

As noted previously, Disney is just a sublicensee to the streaming rights... the companies working to localize and distribute the shows outside of Japan are the ones who licensed them back in '21. This should not pose any impediment to a home video release.

That's from the PlayStation 3 game (and light novel) Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy... one of the few non-animated Macross works to be explicitly part of the official setting. That different characters from past Macross titles keep popping up is a major part of the story, and there's representation from pretty much every animated title that existed at the time the game was made except for Macross II. Because the timey wimey ball is very much in play thanks to a temporal weapon, you get to see weird stuff like Sheryl meeting her grandmother (Mao) and her great aunt (Sara) when both of them are technically younger than she is, Mylene bickering with Quamzin despite him having died decades before she was born, or an SMS crew from 2060 sh*tting a brick when the SDF-1 Macross from 2009 suddenly appears in their vicinity carrying a crew of legends. For instance, that crowd of all the idols from past titles standing together at the end of the trailer is not something figurative... That is an event that literally happens in the story.