Seto Kaiba

"Yes." You see, we're dealing with a character who has a nickname that is a variant form of his given name. His given name is written ミハエル (Mihaeru) which is the katakana rendering of Mikhail or Michael. His nickname is ミシェル (Misheru), the katakana rendering used for his name's French variant "Michel" (but also the feminine "Michelle"). Back when the series was being fansubbed, this naturally caused a great deal of confusion because his name was being pronounced inconsistently by different characters. Some fan subs went with the assumption that he was Russian based on the Russian sounding pronunciation of his given name and that his surname is spelled/pronounced "Buran" (ブラン, Buran, which can also be used for the French "Blanc") like the Soviet spaceplane/space shuttle program. Some fans assumed he was French and that his nickname was his actual name, and rendered his name as Michel Blanc instead. Official materials (e.g. Macross Chronicle) and merchandise have since cleared the matter up, that his given name is meant to be written "Michael", that his surname is "Blanc", and that the French variant we hear "Michel" is an affectionate nickname. That's generally incorrect (see above). A lot of fans have guessed about what the nationality/ethnicity of his Human parents might be, but AFAIK there has been no official statement on the matter. The few books that do talk about his family generally stick to mentioning that he has Zentradi, Zolan, and Human ancestry. Sometimes they get as specific as to say the Zentradi is in his grandparents generation, but that's about as specific as they get.

We don't know who became Michael's legal guardian after his sister passed in 2055. The most likely candidates to serve as Michael's legal guardians (or at least guarantors if he continues to live alone) are his friend Klan's parents. We don't know what his exact living conditions were, so it's hard to say how he would have lived after his sister's passing. There are (rare) circumstances under which a teenager can legally live alone in Japan, though these almost always require the consent of a parent or other legal guardian who serves as a signatory and guarantor for any contracts like apartment leases and such. IIRC, the most common such case is students from very remote rural areas being given permission to get a place closer to school... though staying with relatives or in a school dormitory is vastly more common. There are also very rare cases of minors living alone (with permission) either due to the child wanting more independence from very trusting parents or not getting along with their parents to the point that neither can stand to see the other, both of which are used in popular fiction far more commonly than they occur in reality. In Macross 7, Mylene Jenius is one such case of a minor (aged 14) living on her own with parental permission and support. Macross Frontier's Alto Saotome also started living alone at 16, renting an apartment in the Senzoku district of Island-1.

Detectives These Days Are Crazy! remains at least mildly diverting. It's more a sitcom/slice of life series about an unsuccessful detective and the weirdos around him than an actual detective series, but at least it's entertaining.

Seems like there's a real deep cut in the new season's second episode "Wedding Bell Blues".

So... pretty much as a rule, when a habitable planet is located and colonized in Macross it's an emigrant fleet that found the planet and colonized it. That's what emigrant fleets do. It's kind of their entire thing, really. Those emigrant fleets raise, fund, and maintain their own local New UN Forces defense forces that protect them in transit as well as after they locate a planet and settle down. The size and composition of those forces varies wildly based on the generation of emigrant fleet and preferences of its government, but the vast majority of planets have at least a few New UN Spacy warships chilling out in orbit for defense. Most have dozens if not hundreds. Even New UN Government member worlds that weren't, strictly speaking, colonized by Humanity because they already had native sentient lifeforms have such defense forces, and some maintain additional paramilitary forces for law enforcement purposes like Zola's anti-poaching Zola Patrol and Uroboros's anti-piracy Hunter's Guild. Yeah, that's pretty much the rationale behind the Hunter's Guild on Uroboros. Though the Uroboros Hunter's Guild isn't a PMC, it's a licensing and regulatory body for freelance bounty hunters and similar... basically your standard JRPG Adventurer's Guild but dressed up in sci-fi suitable terms. 'course, it's worth noting that the emigrant fleet's/planet's government is already footing the bill to maintain the fleet's/planet's local New UN Forces. Of course. These PMCs are corporate subsidiaries that have to turn a profit in order to stay in business and often remain enmeshed in providing services to their parent companies. Mind you, because manpower is scarce and demand is high they do seem to be willing to take risks on people who have skills but also have problematic habits, personalities, or histories. This much is explicitly stated, and we of course do get examples to go with it. Even SMS, the top tier PMC, is hiring folks who got BCD'd out of the service and Xaos is even less choosy... hiring several characters who are described as lazy and guilty of chronic tardiness and absenteeism, a mentally unstable pilot, and a commander with a rather checkered past and a long history of losing battles. There's definitely an element of suspect judgement in some of their decisions, particularly Xaos's in Macross Delta. Such as allowing a new recruit to repeatedly blow off training without consequences and disable safety features in a training aircraft after skipping training on the ground, a rather heinous breach of common sense that nearly got their new recruit killed in the expensive and messy crash of a dedicated training aircraft. Well, yes... whether such wise leadership is actually available is another matter entirely. However, PMCs aren't being hired to take on Zentradi fleets on their own or anything like that. From what we see and what we're told, when they're not being hired by their parent company to protect its own assets and personnel they're providing support, training, and/or field testing services in support of the local New UN Forces. They're not a replacement for said local New UN Forces, merely a supplement to them.

Hundreds, not thousands. We don't have a firm size range, but the one branch fleet we have definite numbers for (Vrlitwhai's 67th branch fleet in the TV series) was implied to be on the large side for a branch fleet and consisted of 1,213 ships. Not that there's a huge amount of practical difference in being outnumbered hundreds to one as opposed to thousands to one in a stand-up fight. Indeed. Even in 2058, an armed confrontation with a branch fleet was Serious Business even for the largest and best-equipped emigrant fleets like Macross Frontier. The sort of emergency situation that results in a major mobilization of the New UN Forces and any supporting PMCs alongside them, as seen in Macross the Ride. The sort of affair that you dust off the Special Forces for. If we take Master File at its word (and a grain of salt is strongly encouraged) even the largest emigrant fleets are about 900 ships and a main fleet is the sort of thing where you're not just sending in the special forces... even a small main fleet of a few hundred thousand ships is a "get every fighter, every ship, and every reaction weapon that every planet and fleet in range can spare" sort of occasion. Like what the New UN Forces did in response to the main fleet that bombarded Spica III. Fewer than usual... those Logitech G815s hold up commendably well.

Oh, absolutely. General Galaxy managed to clout its way into having the New UN Government recognize one of its subsidiary companies as a government itself, turning an entire emigrant fleet into a flying company town where the Macross Galaxy corporation had total authority and could engage in all kinds of human rights and ethics violations in its R&D while hiding behind the autonomy granted to emigrant governments by the central government. There's more straightforward political corruption and all manner of corporate crime too from the megacorporations. SMS did send several Macross Quarter-class ships to assist the Macross Frontier fleet in the movie version of Macross Frontier, but they weren't a rogue operation. They arrive as part of the joint SMS-New UN Forces reinforcements that were dispatched from other nearby emigrant governments to reinforce the Frontier fleet. They were almost certainly activated under whatever defense contract they have with the emigrant fleets they were attached to, and dispatched alongside the New UN Forces reinforcements from the fleets in question. That SMS has such powerful ships is certainly grounds for concern, though Macross Chronicle suggests that even those ships may technically be considered to be "on loan" to SMS rather than "owned by" SMS and that they're also essentially the limit of what SMS is allowed to operate by law and government regulation. They're also quite expensive, so they're not just the limit of what the law permits, they're also likely the limit of what SMS can actually afford to operate despite Macross Chronicle explicitly marking them out as being The Biggest among PMCs. SMS is never shown with other ships besides the Macross Quarter-class ships, barring one case where the branch in question is meant to be low-key and covert. At least four at the start, yeah... Elysion, Gigasion, Megasion, and Grasion. That said, the Elysion-type Macross doesn't seem to actually be all that powerful as a warship. One of the several reasons I privately suspect - in the absence of any hard statements either way - that the Elysion-type is an older generation of Macross than the Macross Quarter-class is that its greater size doesn't seem to afford it any significant advantage. It has a few more beam turrets than the standard Macross Quarter-class, but is outclassed there by a variant Macross Quarter-class from the movies. Neither its turrets nor its Macross Cannon seem to be particularly powerful either... and it flat-out lacks an equivalent to the Macross Quarter's gatling buster. Perhaps most tellingly, despite being twice as large it seems to have only about 1/2 the mecha capacity of its smaller counterpart. The New UN Spacy's smallest standard carrier is home to around 40 aircraft in normal operating conditions. The Macross Quarter-class supposedly holds around 60 mecha in total, counting emplaced unmanned destroids for air defense, Ghosts, Valkyries, and Battle Suits. The Macross Elysion's only home to twenty Valkyries between its two support carriers Aether and Hemera, presumably having room for around 30 in total without Walkure's special equipment getting underfoot. That's pretty darn small for such a large ship. Doubly so considering that one ship is Xaos's only force covering multiple inhabited planets simultaneously whereas a single Macross Quarter-class is covering a single emigrant fleet. On that basis, I don't think they really have enough firepower to take over the Brisingr cluster solo... I think they'd probably get taken out through sheer weight of numbers in a similar way that Windermere IV did once Heinz was out of action. It probably wouldn't be a particularly large fight. Macross Chronicle and Master File both mention in passing that the New UN Government imposes regulations and restrictions on PMCs that limit things like the size of PMC forces and what weapons they're legally allowed to purchase for their forces. SMS's Macross Frontier branch and Xaos's Ragna branch are both either implicitly or explicitly quite substantial as PMC forces go. SMS's Macross Frontier branch was supposed to be a heavyweight force of elites intended to tackle the threat of contact with the Vajra, and Xaos's Ragna branch was basically sector headquarters covering multiple planets under contract with the company. Both forces amount to a single well-armed warship and a few dozen Valkyries... and even that is disproportionately heavy since they're equipped with state-of-the-art weapons on loan from the NUNS. Odds are the much less impressive forces like Xaos's Pipure branch in Macross E are closer to the norm, with a few platoons of previous-gen Valkyries and not much else. A good deal less power than even the smallest regular NUNS carrier can project. Macross Chronicle suggests a lot of PMC forces are still primarily engaged in their original business of protecting the cargo shipments of their parent companies from piracy, so if one PMC did attack another odds are it'd likely be a quick battle followed by the defender's parent company suing the aggressor's parent company for damages rather than a big fight that's outside what the NUNS can put down. Yep... though it seems like they're trying to declaw the concept a bit in the Macross Delta era by acknowledging that a hypercompetent PMC like SMS is quite unrealistic and most are... substantially less impressive. Macross Delta as a whole is essentially set up as a war between two bush league forces, a third-rate PMC and some disorganized local NUNS remnants vs. a planetary defense force that has high-end gear but almost no experience. It's pretty telling that when a renegade force from the central NUNS shows up, both sides get pounded into the ground like tent pegs in the first five minutes. That's true for any contract worker... you don't want to hire someone who's making a lot of noise and causing a lot of problems. Not so much? Each emigrant fleet has its own New UN Forces escort detail that protects it in transit and becomes the local New UN Forces once they find a planet to settle on. The only exception we know of is Macross 29, which deliberately disbanded its defense force after adopting an official policy of pacifist total nonaggression. As noted above, large PMC forces with state-of-the-art weapons are the exception rather than the rule. We've gotten two different takes on what exactly drives demand for PMC services in Macross: Macross Chronicle suggests that demand for PMCs like industry leader SMS started with companies establishing internal security forces for interstellar cargo transports and eventually spun those divisions off and diversified them into providing support and training to local New UN Forces who suffered from a decline in the quality of training as the result of the Second Unification War and overreliance on unmanned fighters. Macross Delta era materials and Master File take a rather less kind view that PMCs were a workaround for chronic manpower shortages in the era of space emigration. PMCs are a way for the New UN Forces to ring-fence and indirectly make use of people who don't meet the military's exacting standards but have useful skills, talents, training, and experience. Sort of a way to recycle people who've been kicked out of the military for various reasons and use folks who couldn't hack it there in the first place.

I honestly cannot recall the creators of Macross Frontier commenting on why they chose to make the protagonists private military contractors. I checked a variety of artbooks with staff interviews and came up dry as to the inspiration for the choice. @sketchley might know more. Now, if I were inclined to guess as to what the inspiration might be... my suspicion would run more towards similar organizations in popular fiction around the time development first began on Macross Frontier. The one that jumps to mind is MITHRIL from Shoji Gatoh's Full Metal Panic!. The second season of the anime (Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid) aired in Summer 2005, and the original light novel was just kicking off its final climactic story arc. MITHRIL is, of course, a super-elite mercenary organization that recruits the best soldiers of fortune from around the world for its mission to prevent World War III by acting as an NGO superpower that field tests the latest and greatest robotic weapons for the NATO powers while wiping out terrorists, dictatorial regimes, and other forces aiming to destabilize the world (like their predecessor organization AMALGAM). The two organizations are quite similar in principle. though Macross Frontier's SMS is a bit more cynical given that it's run as a business (rather than being a NATO proxy force set up with implausible deniability in mind), tying into the show's theme of runaway growth of corporate power and influence. I'm inclined to suspect that there is probably no specific real world inspiration for SMS. Public perception of PMCs has always been rather unfavorable. They're not something that'd generally be considered "heroic". Particularly in the mid-2000s, when public awareness of PMCs was focused mainly on scandals, controversies, and criminal activities tied to PMC troops in the middle east.

The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses is another addition to the list of titles I'm dropping this season. Scooped Up by an S-Rank Adventurer is also joining the drop list. Ruri Rocks is a lot more fun and interesting, despite being edutainment. It's clear the art department on this one likes their girls EXTRA THICC. Even Nagi's undergraduate assistant is drawn that way. Cultural Exchange with a Game Centre Girl had a pretty good episode today too. Started Hotel Inhumans... It's... it's something. I wouldn't say it's something good. The premise seems rather thin.

Yeah, that conversation between Ozma and Alto is split across episodes 2 and 3 as a prelude to Alto joining SMS. Of course, one detail that is tactfully omitted in Ozma's explanation is that the reason SMS got the lucrative contracts to support the Frontier NUNS as an advance scouting force and elite special duty unit, as well as field testing the next-generation VF-25 and Macross Quarter-class carrier, is that the fabulously wealthy interstellar shipping firm that is SMS's parent company wields an enormous amount of influence over the Frontier Government. Macross Frontier and Macross Delta both remind the audience in various ways that the PMC troops get a pretty raw deal despite being paid better than the regular military. They are legally civilians and thus enjoy none of the benefits or legal protections afforded to the government's soldiers. If they die in the line of duty, no matter how it happens, it's legally an accidental death. There's no government pension, no death benefits, no promise of an inquest or board of inquiry into wrongful death, no military burial or memorial... nothing. On top of that, it's confirmed in-series that their status as armed civilians makes them unlawful combatants in wartime so they're ineligible for legal protections afforded to prisoners of war or regular civilians. Kind of the ultimate F-about Find Out situation... PMC troops are as close to legally expendable personnel as it gets.

Private Tutor to the Duke's Daughter has joined the list of titles I'm dropping this season. It's not as out-and-out creepy lolicon bait-ish and criminal feeling as Strike Witches, but it definitely leaves me ready to assume that the original light novel's author is more than a bit creepy when it comes to teenage girls.

Mr. Gilroy out there putting it mildly and humbly... Andor set the new Gold Standard for writing in Star Wars and served up one of the year's best and most impactful shows. No doubt it'll be celebrated and discussed for many years to come. It'll probably also be cursed by every creative working on a Star Wars TV series after it because Gilroy raised the bar so high that other Star Wars creatives need a telescope to even see it.

Migraine meds are a hell of a sleep aid... lol Anyway, caught the latest episode of Betrothed to My Sister's Ex. It's still adorkable. Also started Solo Camping for Two. I'd initially pegged this one as an edutainment series shilling for a particular sport or hobby like Iwa-kakeru or Let's Make a Mug Too. Instead, the series seems to be shaping up to be a comedy about a 30-something camping enthusiast who just wants to be left alone in peace and the dojikko-moe girl who keeps disrupting his quiet enjoyment of nature. All in all, very little entertainment value in this one... unless you really get off on depicting generation gap "comedy" depicting the younger generations as spoiled, selfish, lazy, and pathologically stupid.

Oh, but I do insist. I love seeing what people come up with for this sort of thing... for much the same reason I enjoy the "Squadron Marking" sections of the Master File books and the Macross Plus This is Animation Special book, and the custom model kit features in Model Graphix, Character Model, etc. It's a beautiful grab bag of "just looks cool", neat references and in-jokes to the series, and historical references to famous fighter squadrons or other things. That's kind of intentional, yeah... One detail that's not really brought up in either series but is fairly important and comes up a lot in supplemental material is that the reorganization of the New UN Forces following the Second Unification Wars (the events of Macross VF-X2) stripped the military of a lot of the authority and unchecked power it previously wielded and decentralized command to the individual (and more autonomous) emigrant governments. As a result of that and a growing reliance on unmanned fighters, the quality of the average soldier in emigrant fleet New UN Forces has declined a bit. The troop quality situation is surely not helped in the least by having PMCs owned by unfathomably wealthy mega-corporations headhunting top talent away from the military with sheer spending power. That said, the presentation of the New UN Forces at the start of Macross Frontier is pretty unfair to them. The Frontier branch of SMS is the very definition of the words "spared no expense". They are the very finest mercenaries money can buy, headhunted away from the most elite New UN Forces units and equipped with the very latest and best weapons, to protect an emigrant fleet sponsored by SMS's parent company on a mission set by the company's founder as a part of his personal obsession with finding a way to overcome fold faults. They're not just the most elite soldiers in the fleet, they're likely SMS's most elite soldiers in the galaxy. Plus the Frontier NUNS initially doesn't have weapons that can hurt the Vajra. Scorning them for feeling fear when they're fighting a fight they have no hope of winning and dying for it is pretty unfair. Once they get better munitions meant for use against the Vajra they give a pretty good accounting of themselves. It's perhaps more blatant and also less intentional in Macross Delta, where the Brisingr Alliance's economic situation means the local New UN Forces are underfunded and less well equipped, though even they still thrash the Aerial Knights despite a massive disadvantage when the playing field is leveled. Macross 7 was perhaps where it was most justified to have an elite unit with ace custom mecha. After all, the anima spiritia users were rare and effectively irreplaceable assets who were 100% necessary to oppose the Protodeviln and their forces. Maximizing their effectiveness meant non-standard gear designed for their non-standard approach to warfare, and giving them gear with the best possible defensive ability was only sensible to ensure that they came back alive. (Why the fleet military didn't assign them a permanent bodyguard unit like Diamond Force or Emerald Force is beyond me... could've saved a lot of trouble, not that Basara would've given them the time of day.)

Secrets of the Silent Witch had a pretty decent episode today.

At the very least, link it here. It's definitely on topic!

Caught the first of the new episodes last night - Part II of "Hegemony" - and I have to say I still hate what Strange New Worlds has done to the Gorn.

Macross II: Lovers Again was another one where the members of the main cast in the military all use the same model. Possibly the most strict example, since the only "ace custom" variation is a special gunpod on Nex's machine rather than any performance differences. It is rather sad that we don't get to stick around and see emigrant governments actually adopt their respective 5th Generation machines, though they do get acknowledged here and there in novelizations and games and manga and the like. (It's also worth remembering that all of Macross runs on broad strokes continuity, so there isn't any such thing as "unambiguous" canon anyway.) There's definitely an element of "the hero must have a distinct machine" that I'm sure the toy partners enforce... though as of Absolute Live!!!!!! even they seem to be dialing it back somewhat and making the ace custom machines more closely resemble the production ones. (That might have something to do with fans thinking the VF-31A looks better, too.) That said, I think the tendency to have the protagonists equipped with the latest and greatest VF ahead of the actual military is pretty silly. It kind of worked in Frontier, because the story's theme was heavily about abuse of corporate power and influence and SMS's parent company more or less ruled the titular fleet indirectly through sheer financial power and even SMS's staff were in a way dehumanized as disposable. Delta doesn't do as good of a job with it, since the whole premise is lazily copied from Frontier even though Xaos is not anywhere near as wealthy or influential as SMS or its parent company. I get the feeling Macross's creators have started to cool on the idea of PMCs too, since the materials for the second movie increasingly depict Xaos as incompetent and other PMCs as criminal. Hopefully once we get away from PMC protagonists we'll see more mass production machines getting to shine. NGL, that kinda rocks. I'd buy that in a DX. We've gotten a couple New UN Forces color schemes for the VF-25 thus far. The two main ones that show up most often are essentially the same as Alto's VF-25F and the generic SMS VF-25A but with New UN Forces markings instead of SMS ones. There's also the unlockable New Game+ colors for Havamal in Macross 30.

I quite like this one. It feels like a very natural evolution of the pre-Federation Earth Cargo Service freighters from Star Trek: Enterprise and a nice sort of middle ground with the TOS/TAS-era Antares-type.

The amazing recycling technology that Humanity uses to make its emigrant fleets so efficient and long-term sustainable had to come from somewhere... and we know the New UN Gov't has put a lot into studying and restoring factory satellites. Maybe one use-case for the fold-capable factory satellites is to move them into the vicinity of old battlefields and have their robot ships hoover up the wreckage and debris in order to break down the composites, alloys, and organic compounds from ships, pods, and dead bodies into usable raw materials for the manufacture of fresh ships, pods, and soldiers to man them all. Perhaps that's where they got the technology they're using to recycle the bodies of the dead in Macross Frontier.

We've already heard about it all the way back TOS's first season episode "The Menagerie", which recycled large chunks of the "The Cage" series pilot. We've also actually seen the training accident happen in Star Trek: Discovery's second season episode "Through the Valley of Shadows", thanks to some timey-wimey crystals that show Pike his future when he touches them. There was a reactor accident aboard a training ship full of cadets while he was aboard for an inspection tour, and he was near-fatally irradiated while trying to save as many cadets as he could in the ship's engine room. You can watch the series on other services... even YouTube's digital library service has it. Here's a clip from the episode of Star Trek: Discovery where the accident is shown.

The Water Magician is going where the vast majority of isekai stories have gone before. New Dandadan today too...

Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant seems to have run out of ideas a mere three episodes in. I'm tentatively moving this one to my "best skipped" pile. Picked up a new series, Solo Camping for Two, which I'll give a whirl later alongside Hotel Inhumans and Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra.

Saw a news piece the other day which said that Strange New Worlds aims to end the series with the transfer of command from Captain Pike to Captain Kirk, essentially making a direct segue into TOS. I have to admit, I rather like the idea.

If only the entire film were that campy, I might actually go and see in the theater. The worst thing they could possibly do with a Mortal Kombat movie would be try to take its premise seriously.