Mr March

WOW! Fantastic video JELEINEN! This is one of the best tributes to anime art I've ever seen. Naturally I knew well of the Itano Circus from Macross and I did instantly recognize it in Cowboy Bebop, Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I had no idea it was so prevalent in other anime until I saw this video. Thanks for sharing!

More Macross naturally means more goodies all around. I suppose one takes the good with the bad, as with any franchise (not just Gundam). Not all Macross was good, but like I said, most fans just want more of it anyway. For my part, I can't complain. A new series is on the horizon and Graham himself says there's stuff coming up. THat's about as good as it gets.

I can understand it. Fans want more Macross. Period. Sometimes, we don't even care what it's like, we just want more of it. And really, who can blame us? If it's your thing, it's your thing and you want as much as you can get. Fans got hooked on Macross through the television series because that's how the franchise was born. They are the biggest parts of the franchise. A franchise is only as high profile as it's last big thing. When you're trying to talk up a franchise and promote the hell out of it, you use the most high profile, most recent example of it's greatness. That's wouldn't be Macross Zero I'm very sorry to say, that would be Macross 7 (more's the pity). Also, franchises have to keep putting out material to both maintain the fan base and create new fans. This is why Gundam has gone through nearly three times as many incarnations in almost the same time frame. Macross doesn't have this. The franchise has two television series in 25 years and the original is now too old for most anime fans to remember. Worse still, current generation anime fans have been raised on anime shows that have good stories, new music and new animation, so SDF Macross is fighting with two strikes against it already. Like it or not, anime is a visual medium and most fans (japanese AND international) are more likely to give something a chance as long as it LOOKS good. So the people marketing Macross really don't have much choice but to go with Macross 7 as the last exciting series to rebroadcast and hope it still appeals to the current majority of the anime fandom.

Can't guarantee your "favorite" , but there's some in the next update.

LOL THis thread just hit me with something so obvious. Here I am doing all this coloring for the website and it never even occured to me to color a custom variant Now I'm getting all kinds of ideas. Maybe a Halloween color scheme or a Christmas valkyrie!

It is nice. The Animeigo set sure did a lot to bring in new fans. I didn't realize the effect would be so pronounced, but there sure are a lot of people getting into the show via that release and the new ADV set too. Nothing quite like an increase in a franchise's profile to bring in some fans

We're also trying to prove tachyons exist, but we're a long way from superluminal particle application

Have to agree. That's one unimpressive display

Why, the Macross Mecha Manual should be able to help (shameless self-promotion!) Armored Valkyrie You can scroll down to the bottom of the entry for more black and white line art. Hope that helps you out!

I would think that features like internal armament might have something to do with stealth in the Macross universe, but with the new OverTechnologies I would think "stealth" goes far beyond mere radar absorbing. It would have to considering the detection technology of the era. We know detection methods in Macross are far more advanced than what we have now. They use radar indeed, but VERY powerful radar and they are not limited to radar for electronic detection. In SDF Macross, capital ships are constantly detecting other vessels and energy readings over huge distances. The Macross itself detected the Zentradi approaching Earth while they were farther out than the moon and fired on them from a distance almost as far. The Zentradi were able to track the Macross from the other side of the Sol system when it folded out of Earth orbit and even from outside of the solar system when tracking the original ASS-1. The canon literature of SDF Macross makes mention of several detection systems in addition to standard radar. There are mentions of gravity wave passive radar as well as passive and active particle systems. Naturally these systems aren't explained, but it's not necessary. It's obvious detecting gravity is something we can't do, so the name sounds sufficiently advanced for fictional literature. In Macross Zero, the standard detection radar of OverTechnology is at last given a name called the Cyclops and it's revealed that the system is actually a cross-dimensional detection method. Likely, this was done to explain how ships can detect each other instantly over distances that would normally take several minutes for an electromagnetic wave to travel, even at the speed of light. It also explains why the radar functions under water and why the VF-0 and SV-51 can detect each other while all other radar systems are useless against their stealth abilities. So in order to counter these methods, OverTechnology stealth must involve methods of sensor masking/distortion/absorption that goes far beyond internal weapons and hull geometry. Hell, a thermonuclear reaction engine has got to put out one hell of an energy/heat signature and is probably the thing you want to hide the most in any OverTech craft.

None of the three valkyries you've listed have underwing hard points according to the canon write ups. The Macross Compendium does include a vague listing of "Numerous optional weapons" in the VF-11 description. It is possible, but not confirmed, that the VF-11 could be fitted with underwing missiles as part of that vague description but "numerous optional weapons" could just as easily refer to hand-held weapons or other weapons mounted on the dorsal hard points (where the FAST Packs are ordinarily mounted). The Macross Compendium

I don't think there's any surprise about what they'd say in such a review. When the guy says "This movie was great, made before Kawamori had lost his mind" I think we know how they'd feel

That was a fun podcast. They talk about a lot of aspects of Macross that I think many people here, especially the old timer MacrossWorlders, relate to and feelings/opinions that have been expressed when the fans talk about old anime versus new anime. I think most here would really enjoy this podcast, it's got a strong sense of nostalgia while at the same time being very relevant to modern fandom. Great combo. Thanks for sharing.

I could really go for a sequel, though I won't fuss either way. Btw, Black, if you don't mind my saying you could use better picture of that figure for your avatar. This one's a little hazy and dark.

The same society that invented tentacle porn to get around censorship banning the depiction of the penis Humans come up with silly rules no matter what society we live in.

FROSTING! Stupid, but funny KingNor

'Tis a silly tatoo

Cool! I'm going to keep my eyes opened for more new tidbits in the news. I can't wait to see what they are planning.

Wow, that's quite high profile for Macross. I hope this rumor, if true, actually means there's substance behind this new Macross series and related products. I know we were told to expect things from Graham, but it's always nice to have the facts in our hot little hands as they say

I love that video

The armor looks worn but the helmet is clean; looks a little odd. Other than that, it's a damn fine suit. It looks very good.

I'm working on it...I'm working on it. Will appear in the next update

I wouldn't think we have much choice. The big guys declare Macross II is a parallel universe, so we're pretty much stuck with that interpretation. I'll agree with you that there's no harm in trying to make it work as an exercise, but I'd just as soon not bother myself. I actually should have used "fusing" rather than "fissioning" since the literature states OverTechnology reaction engines are indeed fusion devices. My mistake. But the point I was trying to make still applies. Even our best nuclear weapons are very inefficient, sometimes utilizing very small percentages of the actual reactant in in the bomb for the explosion. Going back to the early Hiroshima examples, I remember the bomb being so ineffcient it actually utilized less than 5% of the reactant of the bomb in the explosion, the rest being wasted. Given the displays of destructive force for reaction warheads in Macross, it's likely that OT allows much more efficient fusion weapons but not necessarily all that much larger yields (though again using several notable examples from the series, there are OT reaction bombs pumping out way more firepower than anything we could hope to match with real world tech). Regardless, I think we're both on the same line of thought here The destruction of the Bodolzaa's Flagship is indeed open to interpretation and we can't know for sure exactly how is was destroyed. However, based on the numerous examples throughout the series of Zentradi capital ships being destroyed, it's clear there is no single contained area that would suggest secondary explosions from engines/reactors. They pretty much blow up all over when destroyed, suggesting most of the damage is from the weapon being used on the vessel. The actual calcs were quite interesting. Kinda gives one a sense of the firepower the Macross can dish out. Wish I could find them online, but it's been years since I last saw them.

That's a good question. Since OverTechnology is more advanced than any human technology, it's safe to assume that reaction weaponry is far more destructive than conventional nuclear weapons. Or, at our most skeptical, that OverTechnology reaction weapons have a far greater destructive potential than conventional nuclear weapons, but aren't always utilized to their maximum destructive capability. It's possible that efficiency plays a big role in OverTechnology and thus perhaps reaction weapons simply have far greater reactant fissioning percentages rather than yields being all that bigger. Having said that, there aren't many examples in Macross that show reaction weapons doing something with a yield any greater than that which is possible using current technology. The best example using reaction missiles is the final battle with the Bodol Zer Fleet in which the Macross destroys the Fulbtzs-Berrentzs with a hundred or more reaction warheads. In order to destroy a 1,400 kilometer object, you'd need plenty of firepower. As a comparison, the Hiroshima Bomb was roughly 15 kilotons and it affected just one city. Obviously, the Zentradi Flagship is much larger and more massive than the Japanese Islands because of it's width and depth, so even a hundred or more kiloton yield weapons wouldn't be enough to destroy it. Likely, we'd be looking at individual yields in the high megaton or even gigaton range assuming 100-200 missiles launched from the Macross. These weapon yields would be beyond our current capabilites. The biggest example of firepower in Macross still remains the SDF-1 Macross cannon and by extension, that means all Zentradi Quiltra-Quelamitz Class Medium-Scale Gunboats and Meltrandi Medium Scale Gunboats possess the same maximum destructive potential (as well as the Film Version of Britai's Nupetiet-Vergnitzs command ship). There were a few fans online that did actual calculations for the effect of the SDF-1 Macross cannon based on it's firing in Episode 1 "Booby Trap." Depending upon the assumptions made, the calculations for the vaporization of the mountain range of South Ataria Island, the ocean the beam blasted through and then the two Zentradi pickets the beam destroyed some 280,000 kilometers away lead to explosive yields in the high gigaton to low teraton range. Might be able to find them with a google search, but I assume these numbers are pretty much what you're looking for anyway.

Well said Zinjo. Writing profiles for the M3, I've found this little rule a very useful policy to embrace. Though, the speculation attempting to reconcile Macross II to the Macross-proper universe goes beyond anything I'd agree with, I will agree with you that it is important to monitor one's perceptions of what can and can't be in the Macross universe, lest we run into RPG-like "conclusions"