Master Dex

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

Boy I wish Bandai would give its folks a lesson in how to pose mecha so they don't look like they're bored out of their minds.

"Yo like... Listen to my song... or whatever..."

2 hours ago, TehPW said:

Is there any reason, legally, that TPTB cannot animate a REBOOT of SDFM-TV? or is it a purely Japanese Cultural reason, they have not yet?

Legally, I dunno, probably not but I could be wrong there.

It's not cultural why they won't though. They just don't want to do it. Kawamori isn't interested, and without him it's barely worth it. He'd rather put the energy into a new show with new characters. 

23 minutes ago, Space Casual Life said:

Okay, how is Max more interesting to you than the love triangle between Hikaru, Misa and Minmei?

Easily, he's my favorite character.. I mean he's often my avatar lol.

But also Hikaru is frankly, kind of a dumbass lol. He's a good audience avatar in the show so he is a better main character to relate to however. His character story is essentially about learning to grow up amid the end of the world and becoming responsible for his choices.

Minmay is honestly a great character study in someone thrust into fame with no preparation and naturally that fame breaks them down from the stress until they are just going through the motions in the post-war world while dealing with depression. They only had a passing interest in Hikaru (plus they were a kid with no sense of what they wanted in a partner at the beginning), but post-war they gravitated to him in hopes of finding comfort in a world she couldn't stand to live in. Her realization to leave Earth to seek out a better life for herself on her terms instead of letting it be based on other people is a solid endpoint for her journey.

37 minutes ago, Space Casual Life said:

Ok. I would have liked to see Misa as Captain of the ship, being a military pro and from her lineage I think she would have been a more interesting skipper than Max was. I think the design for the Megaroad-01 is a masterpiece. 

Misa kinda runs the broken bird ice queen that thaws out as her chemistry with Hikaru grows and she helps him grow up while he helps her to heal from the issues in her past. It's not super inventive but it was well told. I'm glad she's a Captain now but that was kinda inevitable. A show about her wouldn't offer anything different than a show about another Captain married to a pilot in their fleet.

37 minutes ago, Space Casual Life said:

Stuff doesn't always change for the better though. Look at what happened to Star Wars when Lucas was given absolute power. SW is returning a lot to what the original fans liked, going back to the source material and more the original "feel" and people love it apparently. 

I have no comment on Star Wars but yeah, sometimes new stuff isn't as good. That happens. Sometimes it is good or better. You'll never find the next great story if you don't venture out past the old and comfortable. Macross has proven this out with both amazing and not so amazing sequels. I'd prefer the risk to get the rewards. 

Honestly, even aside the issues Seto notes (which I agree with)... I personally never thought the combo of Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay were all that interesting. Like, even if we still didn't know their rather mundane fate, I could care less about a follow up with them. My favorite from the original are the ones that stayed behind and have gotten referenced or reappeared (namely Max). 

Those three carried their story, the original story, well, but they had a good and satisfying conclusion. They aren't that compelling now that they've worked their crap out lol. Megaroad-01 certainly isn't especially interesting as a ship either.

I think when people say they want this follow up they really mean they want something that's not new and different. The problem is, Macross is all about new and different because like real life, stuff is always changing. 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

Sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons there's a purposeful intention to not focus on Earth in the franchise other than Plus was because even after decades of attempted recovery it sounds absolutely miserable to live down there.

I'm pretty convinced that Macross City in what used to be called Alaska is probably the only really functioning population center.

We know there are other towns, most of them being set up after resettling and not far from Macross City really but I heavily doubt any place is anywhere near that built up. 

41 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In a way, it's kind of another case of "reality is unrealistic"... given that military operations in space had, until very recently, fallen under the auspices of the Air Force.  Which would've included any kind of space fleet if one existed.  (Essentially, Stargate is the only US sci-fi property to actually get it right... "Space is an ocean" is too darn prevalent as a trope.)

I assume the until recently thing is a reference to Space Force. You're absolutely correct, I just want to add that the US Space Force is in all reality a sub branch under the Department of the Air Force (similar to how the Marines operate under the Navy) and most of the jobs it does are just from the old Air Force Space Command with some new name tags.

1 hour ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Okay, so why the designers incorporated a inertia vector control system in the YF-21? Was there a reason?

Because high g-loads can be fatal to squishy human pilots. Just ask Guld. Obviously the IVC was not powerful enough to help him with the no limiter operation he was pulling in order to defeat the Ghost X-9.

It's story why the latter inertia store converter in 5th Gen VFs is used too. It enabled pilots to pull off accelerations hitherto impossible without killing them or forcing them to be cyberized. 

There wasn't anyone especially famous this year beyond Eririn doing a performance after her Japan tour. She's not in Macross but did cover various songs and has been at the con before.

As for Mari. I think her last appearance was two years ago, and if I'm being perfectly honest... it wasn't great. She was much better 2 years prior to that one and it kinda came off that she knew it wasn't great. That's not to mention how... opinionated... she was anytime she wasn't booked for the con in any previous years. I don't know if she'll come back to SDC, but I do think it's good they are looking into a lot more options than just one repeat guest.

59 minutes ago, Focslain said:

There was also a dub of Macross II and Plus. But agreed on the fact that none of the others (0,7, Frontier and Delta) will ever get dubs done. Which is fine.

Right, I was only thinking series I guess, which is silly because Zero is an OVA too lol. 

12 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

So the painful wait to see this in English continues... 

If you mean subtitled in English, no because this will be, even if it has to be imported.

But if you mean dubbed... Honestly, I don't think anyone should expect this of any Macross series (except existing non-RT SDFM dubs).

I genuinely think dubs of any series outside maybe new stuff in this WWM era are unlikely. 

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As an engineer, I can honestly say that exploding violently has always been an unintended and undesirable operating mode for any of the propulsion and power systems I have worked on.

This doesn't stop the explosions from happening, it just means we get upset and have to add notes to the FMEA when they do.

Though this isn't universally true. Being an aerospace engineer myself, some of the things we make involve explosions in normal operations lol. Rockets technically are burning more than exploding but it's not far off. Then there is sometimes a payload that is supposed to explode.

Sometimes. 

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

The REALLY fun one was the USAF's OTHER Orion battlewagon. It DIDN'T have crew, or weapons. They just filled the entire craft with a SINGLE FUSION BOMB. Yield was estimated to be a hundred gigatons. No one's ENTIRELY sure what the effects of a blast that large would be, other than "very bad"

I don't doubt this concept was floated, but it reminds me more of the Soviet idea for a massive barge of nuclear explosive which would basically have the same end result. Also a concept that thankfully never actually happened.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur?wprov=sfla1

Would you be horrified to know we tried to do this in real life?  Because we did.

The tip of the iceberg really! These were gonna be used, along with other crazy but physically possible weapons on the USAF's Orion based space battleship. Which is a real design that would have had enough nuclear ordnance to basically kill the planet in one ship. Story goes it was Kennedy who axed it after reading the details and getting thoroughly freaked out by the concept. https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarshipart.php#id--Orion_Battleship

I agree it was likely too dangerous to make but at the same time it would have been pretty impressive as a spacecraft. I'm not willing to risk MAD over it though.

Considering however that the UN Spacy basically has clean versions of all that tech and more they likely would appreciate it. 

I drive 3 hours for it and some fly in so yeah I think shifting it around the greater LA area isn't gonna make a huge difference in the end. 

Are... people unaware Yoko Kanno was involved in Frontier?

Because she was. She scored the entire series and had a large part in building Sheryl and Ranka's music.

Delta was someone different and it is noticeable but be careful about casually dumping on Frontier while praising Kanno, lol. 

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Those restraints must've royally sucked if they needed to revert to manual controls for any reason. It also sounds like the craft was so twitchy  that anything that disturbed the pilot's trance like state or rocked the delicate tolerances of the craft would essentially cripple it.

Talk about a "glass cannon"!

On a couple of unrelated side notes:

1) I wonder if a craft could directly draw upon heavy quanta to power itself without the need for its' own power source and fuel for thrust (such as nuclear fusion)?

2) Could said craft also dump its' waste heat into Fold Space to avoid detection?

3) Could Basara dump his ego into fold space?

1. The first is essentially how the fold wave system works except in the YF-29 it's a secondary system due to limitations on the super rare fold quartz. But Protoculture stuff effectively did this as a common method I think. The Fold Evils the Protodevlin possessed certainly did this, in a biomechanical sense.

2. Not so sure on waste heat. I kinda don't want fold space to be used as a free get out of physics card like most sci-fi does with their extra dimensional realms. That's why I like the ISC, it does do this at first but it needs to bring the forces back into normal space eventually, it can just spread it out over time.

3. No super dimension space can withstand ego of that magnitude! 

It was probably his idea but I don't know for sure.

The Ragnans are descendants of the Protoculture just as humans are though. They seeded the planet with genetically alerted life based on their form, which they also did on several Brisignr worlds. It's likely Zola is similar despite being located elsewhere which is also not strange considering Earth is pretty far away as well. 

It's specifically the character designs from SDFM and DYRL, so them as they looked in those. Max and Milia from M7 are fine, as is any version of an OG in a later thing that looks different enough. I'm not sure VF-1 and SDF-1 count.. Plus is already getting English releases with the latter, and the other shows are slated for release eventually. There might be reason to question certain shots perhaps but for the most part it's pretty workable.

1 hour ago, Raikkonen said:

That. There's so many other potential characters in the fleet that the main cast can act as mentors or role models to them?

That's... The opposite of what I said. I was saying there's no reason to use Megaroad 1 at all lol. Just do a new group entirely (which is what I honestly expect to happen).

1 hour ago, Raikkonen said:

I obviously missed this. Where is it stated or shown that this happened to them? 

8 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Frontier introduced us to a whole new species, the Varja... you think that with the size of the galaxy that the Megaroad-1 won't have it's own encounters?

That logic is good, we can follow an entirely new group of people in a new fleet of ships doing exactly that.

Nothing about Megaroad 1 makes it especially suited to anything other than a couple familiar faces who's story was completed. Any other reason to have that ship involved can be accomplished elsewhere. Let's not pretend it's not about nostalgia. 

7 hours ago, Xenon said:

Amen.

Should we change the expression 'jumped the shark' accordingly?

Hardly, lol. I love that moment so much and the franchise certainly is no worse for it.

Honestly the best part of that scene, besides that it's just really f-ing cool and fun, is the fact it's an established and named maneuver for the Quarter's crew to perform and they react to the Captain calling for it so nonchalantly that clearly they've done this before.

I find that implication so amusing and it says so much about this crew that it breathes life into the setting at the implied existence of other events as crazy as this one. A one off would be silly for sure, but that they made it a repeatable thing just means they are good at crazy stuff and I love that. 

2 hours ago, kajnrig said:

So for whatever reason, maybe I just imagined it, I was under the impression there would be more news about Macross physical releases at Otakon, that the above announcement was just Day 1. Is this true? Is there more news? Or am I just crazy?

No one said that was happening for sure. Though I certainly hoped for it. Alas all their news was stuff we already knew about. 

7 hours ago, azrael said:

"I want Macross but without all the Macross-y stuff"
"So you want Gundam?"
"No. I want Macross. But without the stuff that makes it Macross."
"So you want Gundam?"
....

🤦‍♂️ Every time we get a new Macross, this exact conversation comes up. Every. Damn. Time.

"Those damn Macross fans, they are ruining Macross!"

4 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

But was there one in Zero?

Yes. With Sara, Shin, and Mao. They did underplay the Mao leg though. She was more into Shin then he really acknowledged her in that way. Sara was about as obvious the answer as Freyja was in Delta. 

There's definitely no logical reason to assume anything based on Zero is going to happen.

Honestly besides the clear fan interest in an SDF era remake, I don't know why people think it's a possibility. Even if it didn't have legal issues, it's so will documented that Kawamori and Big West aren't interested in going backwards anymore. It's so much easier to keep moving forward. Literally anything is possible that way, with no restrictions or story hampering.

Any concerns of the way stories are written today, whether it's Japanese audience interests over Western or just shifts in generational expectations, a prequel or remake isn't going to fix that, if anything a remake would veer into today's sensibilities and just turn the original into something older western fans would dislike lol.