Killer Robot

So convenient that MacF has three of them then. And one guy with purple hair and glasses, come to think. It seems that in that setting, purple hair goes with glasses, with Michael as the lone example of one but not the other.

That image pains me. Though it still makes me a bit sad that Frontier didn't have any onscreen badly done singalongs like SDFM and 7.

I'll have to grant you Sharon Apple, though I found her to be presented as a somewhat ominous figure at least from the start. For the other ones - antagonists becoming allies is part of Macross, and angatonists need not be heartless villains in any case. My point is that all of those had roles that were fairly clear and you knew where they stood. Even with the ones that started as antagonists and turned to allies the moves were pretty clearly telegraphed. Grace is unique in having seemed to be rather innocent and uninvolved in the conflict for at least a little while, and turning out to be one of the masterminds behind what the heroes are struggling against. There was no idle threats involved: Grace said Sheryl's death was planned and then interrupted during her conference with the rest of the Galaxy conspirators, not to Sheryl or anyone on Frontier. Likewise, it was to them that she said Project Fairy was over and she had no further use for Sheryl. All she said to Sheryl was that she had no use for her and was just going to let her die from the disease she conveniently had not cured before it was too late. She was clearly aware that there was some danger to her plans from Bilrer and SMS, and even that Alto was one of those people who have a knack to be at the center of things, but those were also mostly ignored because the plan was so perfect. True, it almost worked, but with that villainous cliche it always almost works until the little people the big bad knew but wasn't decisive about suddenly assemble a winning hand right under her nose. Naturally, a villain that doesn't make one of the classic missteps is likely to win, so it's not like I call it bad writing that she adhered to the cliche, just that she obviously did so. And hmm. Could Grace have made a non-villain? Certainly. Unifying the Galaxy in a network of the willing could be a laudable goal, but it was entirely overshadowed by her total disregard for the rights or wishes of anyone else involved. Similarly, Leon wanting to be the beloved President of Frontier and founder of a new colony world was hardly villainous - it was his willingness to lie and kill to get there that made the villain. Even Boldoza's wish to follow his people's ancient orders to keep free of cultural contamination wasn't so bad (ignorant rather than really ignoble) - until he decided that this required the extermination of Britai's fleet and all of humanity to accomplish it. What one will do to accomplish a goal is as much a definition of villainy as what those goals are. On another front though, it's hard to imagine a Macross series where a less villainous version of Grace's plan would be cast in a good light, for much the same reason as it's hard to imagine one where the Ghost program as replacement for VFs would have been a good and successful move - like many sci-fi series, it's much about a sort of culture and lifestyle the present viewer can understand and identify with, only with spaceships, giant robots, and ten meter tall people with pointy ears. Serious shakeups to human society, and the principles by which human society operates, are handled lightly by casual-viewing stuff like Macross.

I like Grace and all, but isn't the "I was going to kill you, but instead I will break your spirit and leave you to die while I go about my plot because I know you will never threaten me" treatment of Sheryl a classic villain cliche? Though what I loved most about Grace was that it's the first time I remember seeing a villain/antagonist/troublemaker in a Macross series who wasn't totally obvious as such within five seconds of appearing onscreen. The reversal of initial presentation was refreshing and well done.

Not to mention Ranka was a fan of how Sheryl would spout off impulsively during interviews, it sounded like. And ever read her blog? She might have been a real professional rather than just making a show, and exacting rather than unfair, but her public face is diva all the way. Proud and demanding.

Another from the booru: I like the look, very glamorous and all, but the more versions of the outfit I see the more ridiculous that skirt is.

Makes me wonder now if Ramaria's sudden and barely visible death was pushed into episode 14 so at least one named SMS character would die in the battle. Really, it's interesting seeing how fluid the plotline of a series can be in the production process.

To me that read more like Friendly Fire was supposed to be a character building episode since he was going to die within a few episodes. Assuming not much else was changed to accomodate it, he could easily have been killed in the escape from Gallia 4 in episode 13, whether by the Dimension Eater or the confrontation with Brera. The midpoint of the series, anyway, since 25 episodes doesn't make for clean halves.

Oh, that was so totally cringeworthy. Which is exactly why I loved it.

A couple of other things people tend to forget with the whole "Minmay singing at the enemy" thing: 1.) It wasn't a weapon in itself, not even something meant to really stop the enemy fleet. It was a quick "distract and confuse" measure which became a viable strategy only when combined with knowledge from Exedol and Britai who had joined Earth's side, detailing just how rigid their command structure was. Specifically, if the flagships of each sub-fleet of the Zentradi were destroyed the ships below would be forced to withdraw, and if the mother ship of the fleet could be destroyed it would be left aimless and leaderless, less likely to manage any sort of organized attacks on Earth. Minmay's performance was a way to get that temporary distraction while human and allied Zentradi forces were able to make directed strikes at enemy leadership. 2.) The singing wasn't even the most shocking part. True, Zentradi found that baffling and distracting, and especially given the main fleet was there to destroy a case of "contamination" by culture they were even more fresh and jumpy. On the other hand, the effect of exposure to music and other cultural effects gained from spies and monitored signals on Britai's fleet was slower and more insidious, making the soldiers gradually wonder if there was supposed to be more to life than fighting rather than making them throw down their arms immediately. It wasn't even until the big battle that the crew of the Macross even knew Minmay or other cultural elements were causing so much turmoil within the fleet. The biggest shock of the performance was instead the kiss - for a race raised with no idea of sexual relations and seeing mere contact between males and females to be an ultimate taboo, it was at once an unthinkable act and something that immediately reached a part of their minds they didn't know existed. Not unlike other aspects of culture, but it was the one that made the quickest, hardest shock in most encounters of the series. Mind, these are all SDFM workings. DYRL is a little different, in that the song worked because it was a Protoculture song that specifically pushed buttons in the Zentradi's genetic memories, and the kiss was even more shocking since in that timeline males and females weren't only strictly separated but had in fact been warring "races" for thousands of years. But the same principle applies - defeating your enemy with song alone was a romanticized simplification of a complex distraction used as a setup for a more straightforward military tactic. In Macross you don't win the war with culture alone any more than with guns alone - in the end you need both. Macross 7.....oh, Macross 7. Yes, it's a crazier sort of show, but even there it was more the psychic/chi powers that were focused by music than the music itself. Similarly in Frontier the key was communicating with the Vajra - given those able to do so were singers, it was music that gave the right push of meaning and emotion to bridge the gap with the alien mind.

What I also specifically love about Macross Frontier (and Plus) even among the Macross series is the sense of sound direction as well as good music in itself. Everything has its place, everything ties in, as compared to SDFM or Macross 7 where the music was good but often felt thrown in haphazardly, like any of the song list could be substituted in without affecting the flow of the episode.

Another grabbed from the web - this isn't how the triangle was supposed to work, I think:

I stilll haven't watched the last 3 episodes of Macross Zero. They're right here on my hard drive, I just haven't been motivated to pick it up.

Even accepting the scale of the new Enterprise on the original image, someone made a version with the Galactica to proper scale: Of course, if the other size is correct it's even smaller, but in any case it's not dwarfing Battlestars or Macross class vessels or anything.

I don't care if it is: new continuity and all. I just object to this because the Galactica is more than twice the size (1400m) that it is in this image, making the new Enterprise look far larger than it actually is. And casting doubt on the whole image for me. I can't find any other sources for the length of the new Enterprise on a quick search, and some of the others (Original Enterprise refit, ISS) are giving me (slightly) different numbers than on this sheet. Was there research on this, or just numbers thrown next to pictures?

Other way around, lead is the light one out. By Wikipedia: Gold: 19.3 g/cm3 Tungsten: 19.25 g/cm3 DU: 19.1 g/cm3 Lead: 11.3 g/cm3 All the same, you're right that gold must not have been chosen just for density: it's only a tiny bit denser than DU or the much harder tungsten but differs in being much more conductive, and might have other relevant properties that haven't been raised yet. As for the cartridge vs. bullet discussion, I'm suspecting awkward translation there, if anything. If it's a railgun the "cartridge" defined as the whole unit that goes in the magazine is going to be different in design than the cartridge of a conventional firearm, not needing primer or propellant as used with chemical guns. Some railgun designs can use a sabot, but even that is going to have a different structure and function than in a conventional weapon. Even if it's some sort of weird chemical/electromagnetic hybrid gun, the phrasing just doesn't match up if it's talking about a case or sabot - it pretty clearly is speaking of the projectile.

I'm one of those people that saw DYRL before I saw Macross, and like I said somewhere earlier in the thead I can attest to that. It's pretty, but the plot is a string of events that don't really hang together at all and don't effectively make any of the real societal or relationship points of the TV show. It's really meant for fans of the TV series and that's it.

As near as I can tell the immunities only develop in the big red Vajra, rather than the smaller ones. In addition, there are a couple other potential points: In space, unless you're really on top of it a nuclear weapon is just a radiation pulse, with no physical shockwave and fireball like it would be in atmosphere. While it can certainly damage electronics and kill unprotected organisms through radiation poisoning, it only would destroy physical objects through massive overheating or somesuch. Assuming this level of physics applies in Macross, the ablative coating Vajra used against reaction weaponry would make sense, but on the other hand might not be any more use against bullets than their normal armor. Even if the Vajra so struck die later of radiation poisoning, so long as they can continue the battle right now their use to the hive has not been diminished. As a result, bullets used on Vajra types that survived nearby reaction weapons in an earlier episode still wouldn't be ridiculous. Building from this in general, it's entirely possible that developing increased resistance to one attack type might diminish resistance to other attack types (say, to keep from bulking up, an anti-radiation coating would diminish the thickness of their armor against bullets, armor that stops bullets better might be less resistant to a PPB-covered knife cutting it, etc.) and against an enemy the hive will send Vajra that are strong against that enemy's known attacks. You can forestall this by switching attack types a lot, but the more the hive under the intelligent direction of its queen learns about you the better it will be able to optimize its soldiers to have the best possible combinations and tactics against your particular arsenal. This makes them a really fearsome enemy but explains why they haven't already evolved total immunity to kinetic projectiles, radiation, and everything else that's a pretty common danger in the universe at large.

Redwolf had the episode guide. mahq.net will give you links to the different Macross series and from there to episode guides. gg and THORA are just the names of fansub groups, and BD is Blu-ray Disc: until the Blu-ray release of the series came out all fansubs were made from the broadcast versions of the show so had imperfections of the capture, station watermarks, etc. Also, the BD release corrects some animation errors of the initial broadcast.

Yes, there are subs available on assorted torrent sites, in several versions. I watched the gg version during broadcast and switched to collecting THORA as they released BD-based versions, but others can surely compare the assorted versions better than I. Then when you're done with that you can get onto watching the other Macross series you've missed. Especially the original series if you only ever saw the Robotech version as a kid. It's less different than some people would like to tell you, but there are some really significant changes especially in the wider world setting and history.

The intelligence/communication of the Vajra is carried through the intestinal microbes that also cause the V-type infection in humans. Ordinary Vajra lack much other brain matter to speak of, and queens may simply have more of those microbes or may have actual brains of their own: if the latter, they are presumably in the abdomen as well, leaving the head as mostly there for sensory organs, mouth, and such. The latter also fits better with how a "safely" infected human like Ranka and the cured Sheryl functions as a queen of sorts. Given the queen has her own followers, losing her head might leave her personally deaf and blind(or whatever corresponding senses they have) but she can still sense through the others. She might even be able to regrow a head: main point is that it's not removing the brain like it would be for a human. What Grace did connecting through the Queen's head was link into its nervous system to control the whole body, and thus the whole network. In human terms, it's like having an alien parasite latch onto your arm and hack into your brain through the nervous system. (Realistically improbable, but this is sci-fi anime we're talking about here.) Cut the arm off and you're cured, though somewhat impaired. Make more sense?

For that matter, from Kawamori's statements it sounds like by the 2050s the fleets have expanded far enough that you can't even have swift communications with most of human space any more - it's hard to have a strongly unified modern government without that. It's not even really like a modern UN situation: if the whole world consented to one rule today you could send orders and get reports anywhere in the world swiftly...even were it a place deep in the jungle you'd just have to send someone with a satellite phone then you'd be able to maintain an instant link. For the UN in 2059 to hold a galaxy-wide government would be like trying to rule a unified world in the 18th century, where it your news from far places could be weeks or months old, and then just as long to respond to it, much less send aid or resources where needed. This is the reason why those who would want the whole galaxy under one hand are so interested in fold quartz technology, even without wanting to turn it into one collective brain like Grace and company.

Torrents can be slow starters sometimes. They usually pick up well enough. If it really does take forever, look for a different torrent with more seeds, or download an episode or two of one of the other series to see. None of the series are direct followups on another, so as long as you basically know what Macross is about you don't have to finish one before starting another.

Banning something due to a few high profile misuses/experiments rather than intrinsic dangers might seem silly, but it's one of those things people do. Especially when they're things with complex and hot-buttoned philosophical issues attached to them. Even more especially when they're being fielded by a military even more into the romanticism of the fighter pilot than that of the real world. Even even more with the whole Protoculture experiment in proxy warfare and how that turned out. It's speculation, of course, but it's very easy to assume it was banned primarily/solely for very non-technical reasons.

For walking, as opposed to most other physical activity, low gravity just makes things harder. Throws off the normal pace of footsteps(which rely partly on falling speed), reduces your traction(since your inertia isn't changed but how hard your feet press to the floor is), and generally throws you off. It's something you can learn to deal with in time, certainly, but all those green recruits and poor civilians are another matter. Now, stairs become much nicer to climb, though coming down them might lead to dangerous temptations at some gravity levels.