Killer Robot

Oh, I got some of that. Just from a more limited sort of forum, leading to a bit more signal/noise ratio. And after the show aired and I came here I caught up on all the old and new discussion threads, learning a lot more perspectives and things I needed to go back and look at again. I've had some experiences where I've followed an ongoing story, if not an anime, blow by blow on a dedicated fandom board and read the detailed speculation and commentary as it developed: all in all, I've found it an interesting and revealing but in many ways negative approach that surrounds me with overly passionate opinions and unfulfilled predictions about a half-finished story. I think I'm happier having done my real time reading about Frontier on one thread of a non-Macross board rather than on somewhere more focused about it, then come here for the in depth after the end.

I'm glad I wasn't reading the forums when it was airing, since in retrospect the shipping and some of the crazier speculation might have hurt things for me too, one way or the other. All I had until the final was discussing with some friends, and reading SA's discussion thread someone linked me to. That was when I came here, and I still haven't looked at Animesuki. Maybe that's why I don't especially hate anyone in the cast, I don't know.

Even if you really want to view on a DVD player, if you're computer literate I strongly suggest downloading the fansubs and using a DVD building program to burn them. Fansubs and bootlegs both give no money to the creator, but a bootleg for sale means someone is actually making profit off the piracy. That said, the mood and style vary greatly between all the Macross series, so don't go into any of them expecting what you've seen before, and if it's not your style try one of the other ones.

Does Max commanding those have anything to do his and Milia's separation?

More from Danbooru:

That is scary. Closest I've seen was a gag with some collision damage:

My third possibility is that we're looking at Mainland from the rear: looking at that, or some higher resolution images of the same screenshot I've seen, the navigation lights are all red on one left and green on the right. Traditionally that means port and starboard respectively, meaning we're looking at the stern of the ship. Weird looking a ship as it is, I figure either direction is possible for its facing.

It's a nice one. Quite a contrast with the three girls...even if the company makes Ranka look like she's breaking some child labor laws or something.

I'm just going to say that I'll be disappointed if Sheryl ends up wearing the dress. How many of these are there going to be, has it been stated? And really a pity there's no script in the liner notes: that would make translation so much more reasonable. Sounds like there's some amusing and interesting stuff.

Now I totally want to see that in place of the episode he spent in the hospital hallucinating to reused footage.

I missed Robotech myself. I saw some of the RPG books via browsing at the store, but that was about it. So my first encounter was Macross Plus when it came out, and I assured it would be great from people who were fans of the original. True enough, it was amazing. After that I saw some other bits of Macross: the Macross 7 movie, which I saw untranslated and found interesting but really bizarre; and DYRL, which was pretty and all but really doesn't have that much content for someone who doesn't already know and love the TV series. I gave Macross 7 TV an attempt but I lost interest a half dozen episodes in. I loved Macross Plus then, but Macross in general? Not so much. In 2002 or so when Macross was released on DVD, I watched through that and found it quite enjoyable. It gave me a new perspective on the rest of the franchise: Macross Plus was fun to rewatch even though it's an odd fit with the rest, DYRL was a lot better after seeing the TV series, and Zero opened up with some amazing 3D work though I drifted off somewhere in the long spaces between episodes. After that I also watched Macross 7 again, making it more 12-15 episodes in before I gave up and just watched the Encore episodes and movie(fansubbed this time!) and enjoyed them for the comedy value. When Frontier came out I had mostly drifted out of watching anime, and a friend mentioned it. I put it on the "to do" list but didn't really start downloading until I saw screenshots of a Zentradi mall and just had to see more. It was rocky going at first for a few reasons, but by the late series I was hanging on every episode and rushing to download fansubs every week. During that wait was when I went through the rest: a second viewing of original Macross and DYRL, Macross II which didn't wow me but was worth seeing, and finally going the whole way through 7, which I at least enjoyed a lot more when the plot started moving and they added some fresh music.

It might be a translation error, or it might be an overenthusiastic projection using modern technical conventions. When discussing tanks and anti-armor weapons, protection and penetration is discussed in a standard thickness equivalent to that of plain rolled steel armor as was used as of WWII. Modern tanks use much more effective protection for similar weights and thicknesses, but to simplify things weapons are described by how much rolled steel they can penetrate and armor by how much steel it would take to compete. For example, the newest depleted uranium ammunition for the M1 Abrams by one source is listed as penetrating 960mm at 2000 meters range, and have turret armor equivalent to 800-900mm against projectiles and more against explosive anti-tank rounds. The physical thickness of its armor is much less than this, however. Now, if the writer meant this it gives some perspective: it's not designed to penetrate 300m of destroid armor, but rather a destroid with 300m equivalent of steel armor, this might make sene, but the idea of destroids being 300 times tougher than modern tanks sounds pretty excessive too. Then again, looking at stats from WWII tanks, modern ones have armor and armor penetration on the order of ten times as high, and we didn't capture any advanced alien tech in the intervening period, so maybe it's only a little shocking.

It seems pretty clear the gold is part of the bullet itself rather than a casing or sabot. Otherwise there'd be no point coating it in super hard metal to penetrate destroid armor. I imagine there's some awkwardness in the particular translation here. Then again, if it's purely a magnetically accelerated round, the bullet would likely be all there is to the "cartridge": a case, sabot, other things you might have in a chemical gun would have no place in a railgun. Further speculation: the "super-polymerization" might also be an awkward translation or technobabble for some alloying/hardening process so as to make a harder projectile in addition to the coating, leading to better penetration.

That would make sense. If the projectile is accelerated by a railgun it doesn't need to be magnetic, I believe, just conductive. Coil guns require magnetic projectiles but those use different principles. Gold isn't as conductive as silver or even copper, but it's not far behind them and has a density comparable to tungsten or depleted uranium, meaning a much heavier round at the same size than silver would give. As for the obvious expense of gold: there's a fair chance it isn't so rare in 2059. Once you get into space the possibility of finding large quantities goes rather sharply up, if you can for example find heavy metal rich asteroids long since ejected by a supernova, mine them with reclaimed Protoculture technology, etc. Zentradi factory satellites have mined planets' worth of metal for materials in the past to make those ships: presumably either gold was separated out as an impurity and you just have to figure out where it got ditched, or else they use them in Zentradi vessels and you mine it from the wreckage of old battles. Gold might not be cheap either, but I can see a case for it not being more expensive than a lot of the stuff that goes flying out of high end guns today. Especially in a sniper weapon that's not pumping hundreds of rounds out for every engagement. Don't ask me what the "super-polymerized" part is, though. Polymers require covalent bonds, which don't happen generally in a metal and would presumably reduce its conductivity quite a lot even if they could.

What I'm curious about is that they weigh something like twice as much despite being so externally similar. Or at least Frontier does.

Gubaba's a busy sort of person. I'll take over for a bit if it makes you happier.

I thought Frontier was a step forward again as far as the equipment not taking the focus. Yes, the VF-25 is the new and superior model, but there were good pilots and nameless cannon fodder pilots flying it, and further the "special" versions of it weren't overall superior but rather special purpose and not even piloted by the best of the best. After the "ace hero pilots all get super advanced special forces VFs and advanced prototypes and custom models" of Plus and 7(much as I love Plus on its own merits), it was a welcome step back to the original even if the heroes were part of a special organization with better VFs than the rest.

There were two papers with Grace's name given in episode 18, the first along with Ranshe and Mao in what I want to say is 2047 but certainly is before 2048, and the second in 2053 with Grace alone, and Sheryl as a test subject. She would have been 10 or 11 at that point. Those tests were done right after Sheryl was taken from the street according to Grace in the same episode, but there's no indication of how long the experiment was or how much time passed between when it happened and when the paper was published, so that's just an upper limit for how old she was when Grace found her. She looks younger than 10-11 in the flashbacks and paper to me, but then again in anime age is hard to gauge anyway. When she was orphaned is pure guessing, though she says she doesn't remember her mother's face so it couldn't have been when she was too old. (Unless she has amnesia too, but then we're talking less Macross and more All My Circuits. ) So the only hard data points are that in 2048 Mao died and by 2053 Sheryl was in Grace's "care" on Galaxy. For further silliness, the text onscreen from that paper wasn't helpful either: it was that Adobe EULA again.

Danbooru only has 11 images tagged Grace O'Connor, most not acceptable here and most of the rest having been posted here already. This may not have been though:

I was a big fan of Transformers as a kid, and a whole lot of other things that I'm not really interested in any more. Sometimes I stopped following the new stuff. Sometimes I enjoy the old stuff but only in a nostalgic rather than a truly respectful way. Sometimes I look back and think "Wow, I used to enjoy this crap?" In most cases, it's not so much that the material has declined in quality, but rather that I've grown up, or that it's lost its novelty. Or to put it more neutrally, my tastes have changed and what I used to really appreciate doesn't necessarily interest me so much any more, especially if it's more of something I've already seen. In either case, a bad new installment isn't likely to spoil a whole franchise for me: if I stop enjoying something old it's because I changed, not because it did. One other thing: I discovered Macross at an older age: college for Macross Plus and the other series later when anime itself was no longer a new and exciting thing for me. Maybe my tastes are less fluid now and will stick with me, I don't know. In any case, when Zero came out I watched an episode or two of high quality CGI and then drifted off. Frontier caught me slowly but I ended up loving it a great deal. The future? Who can tell, but it will depend on what's made, and who I am when I see it.

I kinda wanted to go with Sharon Apple, but she makes me worry. Would I actually have fond memories of the show, or would I just come out with a dazed look saying, "It was better than Minmay, I want to see it again and again..."

Mao died when Sheryl was 6. Grace's published report on the V-type infection with Sheryl as test subject was published when Sheryl was 11. I don't think there are dates for when her parents died, or for when exactly Grace took her in. For the first, she did say she didn't even remember her mother's face so that implies pretty young but isn't terribly exact. For the second, any amount of time could have elapsed between then and the study publication, and I thought she was younger than 11 from just seeing the flashbacks and medical article.

On the contrary: decent songs I can get on any CD, when I go to a concert I want the live performance. Not that I don't want good music, but light show, stage presence, ability to excite a crowd - all of those add into what I can't get at home. That said, I'm still going with Sheryl Nome: she seems very much the consummate performer, and I like her music, so it's win-win.

Not just seduced - she drugged her, stripped her, and threw her on the bed. And then Roy and Veffidas rescue her acting like it was some sort of comic antics. I only later found out that it was a sort of reference to the Mylene Beat manga, set at the same time as Dynamite but with a much different plot and focus. The character and scene were both in that, but with much more buildup and serious handling. Still, that was a shocking diversion in the anime.

That's a big thing there. As Western anime fandom first got established one of the most important things to convince people of was that anime was something more sophisticated and varied than what people would think of if you said "Japanese cartoons." Especially before the modern crop of Western animation that was more than simple kids' shows really developed some roots. Sometimes the convincing went too far, and you have fans that won't admit that a lot of anime is best described as "Japanese cartoons" and that even among what is something more, seriously deep and complex storytelling is an exception rather than the rule. Serious portrayals or adult themes, sometimes yes; but in the way of action, horror, soap opera, Western satire animation, etc. Even anime clearly not aimed at kids is most similar to Western forms which are generally and justifiably viewed as lighter and less sophisticated entertainment.