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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It is fanart... and fans do love a really big gun. IMO the weirdest example was the stealth cruiser where they just stuck the Macross Quarter's heavy quantum cannon on the underside. Considering how much space those Zentradi ships have, odds are they wouldn't even need a separate colony ship. I've not seen anything that would substantiate the idea of mixed units like that. There's definitely evidence that the New UN Forces incorporated Zentradi ships and mecha into their organization... like the aforementioned case of postwar ARMD-class space carriers adding nearly a hundred Regults in place of many of the Ghosts and Lancers they previously carried. I'd assume they were probably organized as separate squadrons at least, for the sake of organizational clarity. About all we know about the New UN Spacy Reserve is that it exists, and Isamu once belonged to it before retiring officially and joining SMS. I doubt it... after all, the Protodeviln's rampage across the Stellar Republic was massively destructive but very short-lived. Start to finish, it lasted less than two years. They emerged in late 2871 PC and were ultimately defeated and sealed by the Anima Spiritia in 2873 PC. They didn't have the time, or any real reason, to reengineer and replace the weapons the Protoculture had armed the forces they were capturing and brainwashing with. This wasn't a subtle undertaking either. They conquered hundreds of worlds - over 30% of the Stellar Republic - in just three months and turned those captured defense forces and civilians to their cause by draining their spiritia and subjecting them to mind control. The Protodeviln were much more circumspect the second time around... they waited two years after they were released from imprisonment and conquered Varauta, and used the time to build up and improve their forces. They probably felt they needed the help too. The Varauta colony's tech was not exactly bleeding edge for the New UN Government and Human technology is quite a ways behind the Protoculture's in practically every respect. The Varauta colony was a small one too, they couldn't count on numerical superiority for quick and easy victory. Taking the time to improve the technology of the planet's defense forces and construct new ships and more advanced fighters and conscript more of the population to give themselves a better chance of overwhelming another emigrant planet or fleet. (Of course, they were also deliberately being more restrained in their pursuit of spiritia because Gepernich's goal was to create a sustainable source of spiritia that wouldn't require them to destroy galactic civilization just to survive.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    No, it just mentions that battle pods were found inside the Alien Starship 1 and that their technology was studied, reverse engineered, and ultimately used to benchmark "anti-giant" weapons being developed for the Earth UN Forces. The Regult is the standard battle pod used by the thousands of Zentradi main fleets in the galaxy. Given that the Supervision Army has been kept in the fight by the various factory satellites they captured half a million years ago, most if not all of which were set up to supply the Zentradi forces, it's doubtful their equipment is significantly different from what's used by the Zentradi main fleets. They were probably Regults.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. As revealed in Macross 7, the Supervision Army wasn't some meticulously planned and painstakingly equipped standing army like the Zentradi. It was a messy ad hoc armed force that the Protodeviln threw together on the fly using the ships, mecha, and factory satellites they were able to capture when they attacked a fleet/planet and their soldiers were their spiritia-drained Protoculture and Zentradi victims. The Supervision Army's Protodeviln leaders were only active for around a year before they were sealed by the Protoculture, so the Supervision Army likely didn't have any time to develop original weapons... assuming the spiritia-drained and brainwashed Protoculture civilians who were a part of it initially were capable of doing so in their reduced mental state. The overwhelming majority of the Supervision Army would have been, and likely still is, made up of Zentradi as they were the Protoculture's armed forces. Macross Chronicle makes several offhand mentions in coverage of Macross Zero designs and a few general Technology sheets that suggest that the United Nations investigators and/or OTEC found battle pods aboard the derelict and used them to benchmark offensive and defensive capabilities for development of Earth's "anti-giant" weapons. The Earth Unification Government's decision to develop humanoid robotic weapons approximately 10 meters tall was in expectation of fighting a land war against the giants, and specifically the prospect of engaging in hand-to-hand combat. That pursuit yielded two competing design concepts: Destroids and Battroids. They were initially fairly similar, but would evolve in different directions. Destroids would evolve from their original Mobile Suit-like concept into the walking tanks and artillery pieces we know from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, while Battroid development merged with the nascent Variable Fighter program to become its humanoid robot form.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Still having fun with Birdie Wing... it's not so much taking refuge in audacity as filing for a permament change of address within the borders of audacity. I'm not 100% sure if it's intentional or not, but it almost feels like a sports anime parody given how often it veers into "What do you meani it's not awesome?" territory. When I first watched it, I don't think I really appreciated just how much it skips. Seems like the production committee decided to largely take a pass on any part of the story that doesn't involve goblins... which is a surprising amount for a story named Goblin Slayer. Yeah, it lost me as well. What was it that put you off it? For me, it was when the series stopped being a subversion of the usual isekai tropes and started playing things straight. Naofumi was interesting while he was a hated underdog who pulled the short straw power-wise and not a standard overpowered hero. Once the king was deposed and his name was cleared, he lost a lot of what made him interesting... and that only got worse once he tried combining the leveling methods of the other heroes and quickly outpaced them all.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    A nuance that isn't quite captured by sketchley's answer above is that the (New) UN Army only really has confirmed appearances in two Macross titles to date: the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Macross II: Lovers Again. As he noted, in Super Dimension Fortress Macross we see the UN Army using tanks and regular infantry. Macross II's final episode shows us destroid defenses being deployed in Macross City under the command of an officer the animation model sheets reveal is a UN Army officer, but Macross II is its own thing. Exactly which branch of the service owns the Cheyenne II's we see in Macross Frontier is unclear, as the CG model lacks markings for the most part, but it's very likely they're operated by the Space Forces as most of the other Destroids we've seen have been. The regular ground forces we've seen are wholly conventional... infantry and tanks. There's a lot we don't know about the organization of the military in Macross... mainly because the show and its related materials are only really interested in the space forces and largely ignores the surface branches. Given how much Macross bases the military organization in-story on real world practices - particularly those of the US armed forces - it's very unlikely that the Army operates any Variable Fighters. Fixed-wing combat aviation in support of Army troops is the purview of the Air Force. Macross Frontier and Macross Delta seem to suggest that Zentradi units operating "legacy" designs like battle pods or battle suits belong to the Spacy Marine Corps. In all likelihood, the regular Army is... well... regular. Tanks, helicopters, and boots on the ground. The branches operating Variable Fighters are the same ones that'd be operating regular fixed wing combat aircraft in the real world, and their space forces counterparts: the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Spacy, the Spacy Air Force, and the Spacy Marine Corps.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... citing Robotech is a bit like citing a particularly awful fanfic. If you want to see Destroids jobbing, you really just have to watch Macross Plus, Macross Frontier, or Macross Delta. On the ground, I guess... a mixture of battle pods, Valkyrie battroids, and conventional armored fighting vehicles. On ships, they've been replaced with beam CIWS and anti-aircraft missile launcher systems.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's fanworks for ya... There's no real reason for a New UN Spacy warship that's only named for a famous Zentradi general to be painted Zentradi green or designed differently from a normal ship. Relatively little is said on the subject of the close-range emigrant fleets in official materials... much of which you've covered in your post. It's unlikely they would need the same level of defense as an emigrant fleet intending to cross much of the galaxy since they would be within easy fold distance of Earth at any given point. The only mention of them, aside from their existence and their "within 100 light years of Earth" mandate, is that one of them was responsible for finding and settling Eden just a few months after the program began in 2013.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    From Macross: Remember Me in '93. The LDR-04 Maverick destroid is basically just a Phalanx with long-range missiles instead of short-range ones. Not the only attempt at a refurbished Destroid that appears in Macross the Ride either... Macross Galaxy was experimenting with modernizing some of the legacy Destroid designs it inherited from the companies that merged to form it, though the Super Defender was the only one that was substantially modified. They also had minimally modernized versions of the Tomahawk and Phalanx. Didn't work so great, but Macross Galaxy's Corporate Army liked to make a show of using a lot of General Galaxy current and former products. It was one of the unused/rejected design studies for ground mecha that was a part of development of the Tomahawk. Macross Perfect Memory calls it the MBR-08-Mk.II Heavy Battroid or MBR-11 Heavy Battroid. It's basically a Mobile Suit, which is probably why it was dropped. It was meant to be able to share hardware with the Tomahawk Destroid, swapping between a set of arms able to hold a gunpod and the Tomahawk's default armament.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, he was doing just fine with it until the personification of his berserk button was assigned to pilot the YF-19. Probably not. The Inertia Vector Control System is only active when it's changing the intensity of an acceleration force on the airframe, so the frame is still going to see all of the stress it would encounter in normal operation. It would just be spared the excess stresses caused by the maneuvers assisted by the IVCS. And if we take Master File at its word, certain systems like the engines were already suffering shortened lifespans due to the excessive performance being demanded from them.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility... though all three Macross-class SDFNs we've seen to date* have been the same type as the DYRL version of the SDF-1 Macross. (It's possible the ship that played the part of the SDF-1 Macross in the in-story version of DYRL? was the SDFN-01 General Takashi Hayase, which'd make four for four and leave 8 unseen.) Macross Chronicle's Technology sheet "The Macross-class and its successors" does mention that they appropriated parts from scrapped Zentradi warships as well as inheriting parts developed for next-generation Earth-built warships. As to what happened to most of those 20,000 or so Zentradi derelicts that crashed on Earth after the war... who knows? It's probably safe to assume that many of them ended up being disassembled in order to repurpose intact systems for repairable Zentradi ships and to recycle the remaining material for use in new construction. The New UN Gov't used their clone synthesis systems in the mass cloning program, and we saw a number of miclone systems in municipal service after the war. It strikes me as likely that systems that would have immediate non-military applications like thermonuclear reactors and waste material recycling systems would quickly find new homes in the infrastructure of the new cities and towns that were popping up after the war. Those are micro-missile pods... similar to the UUM-7, but for newer models of missile. * SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global in Macross Frontier, SDFN-08 General Vrlitwhai Kridanik in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and the unknown number unknown original name "Macross Extra" in Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Emigrant governments have ground forces... we've seen them in Macross Frontier. Infantry and armored fighting vehicles. You don't need destroids for an occupation force. Destroids may be cheaper than Valkyries, but more doesn't necessarily mean better. Or even at parity with a smaller number of Valkyries. After all, Valkyries are designed to fight against a numerically superior foe and excel at simultaneously engaging multiple targets. They've only gotten better at it as time has gone on too thanks to improvements in maneuverability, stealthiness, and the ability to engage more and more targets simultaneously. Destroids can only maneuver in two dimensions and they're not particularly fast because they're limited to walking/running speeds based on available traction, making them much less able to evade enemy fire. Macross Delta's first episode is a pretty good example of what would happen in a situation like that: anti-aircraft units like the Cheyenne II caught in the open are going to get cut to pieces quickly and efficiently by any enemy with higher mobility.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Closer to "It's expensive and a hard to make, but it's going to let our new plane with ultrafast reaction times treat Newton's laws like polite suggestions... so why wouldn't we?" Guld probably had a REALLY good feeling about it. He was the lead system designer on the Brainwave Control System and the Inertia Vector Control System allowed the YF-21 to get even more maneuverability and more precise maneuverability control out of its existing systems.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... even the pre-remodel SDF-2 Megaroad/Megaload had a significantly different design from the SDF-1 Macross since it was built entirely using Earth's overtechnology and to the somewhat different needs of the UN Forces at the time. In an amusing bit of truth in television, the post-war mass production Macross-class are said to have no two ships truly alike due to the ad hoc nature of their construction and the use of repurposed/diverted systems from Zentradi ships and elsewhere. In reality, it could fairly be said that no two ships of the same class are ever truly identical due to the many minor improvements that are made between the individual units and variations caused by issues in construction. The Megaroad-class is an entirely separate class, so its internal systems are very different to the SDF-1 Macross's since they're a mixture of purpose-built systems for the emigrant ship design and repurposed Earth-original hardware for the original Macross-class design. From the look of it, they still appear to have the internal beam guns too... It's not often discussed since its only appearance is in a video game, but the Saratoga II-type is generally assumed to be a separate class of space carrier based on the Uraga-class escort battle carrier design. It's essentially a Uraga-class split in half lengthwise. Yes, really. It's written 宇宙軍 (Uchu-gun, "space military" or "space forces"). "Space Navy" would be 宇宙海軍 (Uchu-kaigun). 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.) Presumably so... we know at least one case where it's definitely yes. That being the Macross 5 fleet's Neo Nupetiet Vergnitzs-type. Dunno, we've never seen them train. Given that they're not familiar with the concept of song at all... I'm guessing they train in silence or simply don't march given that they spend pretty much their entire lives aboard ships or space stations.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Partly because the YF-21 program spun off from General Galaxy's efforts to reproduce and improve upon the Queadluun-Rau battle suit for the New UN Forces. But mainly, it's because the Inertia Vector Control System is a stupidly useful thing to have if you can reproduce it. It's the system that gives the Queadluun-Rau its incredible maneuverability. It's a very precise application of Gravity and Inertia Control technology that can increase or decrease the magnitude (but not the directionality) of acceleration forces on the airframe. The Queadluun-Rau uses it to improve propellant efficiency and the output power of its engines and its verniers, allowing it to accelerate far faster than it would be able to unassisted, to turn more sharply, to make sudden starts and stops that would otherwise be impossible, etc. As a byproduct of its operation, it also protects the cockpit and airframe from the additional g-forces those impossible maneuvers would ordinarily incur. It's incredibly complex and hard to manufacture, but it's such a boon to performance that there's no way General Galaxy was going to pass on it while the factory satellite to manufacture it was under their control.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yup. By 2059, Destroids as a whole have basically been an obsolete concept for almost fifty years. They were developed to be cheap, efficient, high production volume tank equivalents to repel an invading force on the ground... but ended up as overpriced and overcomplicated anti-aircraft guns on the one ship big enough to support them. They lost out to fixed anti-aircraft guns and missile launchers that could do the same job for a fraction of the cost. That made them surplus to requirements, and many surviving Destroids were decommissioned, sold off, and repurposed as heavy machinery for construction, demolition, mining, etc. It remains their primary niche into the 2060s, with Destroid derivatives intended for heavy labor ("Workroids") being fairly strong sellers. Even in the Macross Frontier fleet, which still uses an upgraded version of the ADR-03 Cheyenne, the Destroids are not particularly effective as air defense platforms and operate as unmanned, remotely controlled gun turrets a fair amount of the time.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well, nothing... that's kind of the problem. Destroids ended up sidelined after the First Space War because the assumptions underpinning their development and deployment turned out to be wildly incorrect. The Earth Unification Government and its newly-established Earth UN Forces believed that a future war with aliens would take the form of a classic "alien invasion" scenario. They were expecting the hypothetical future enemy to focus on penetrating Earth's orbital defenses in order to land ground forces on the planet's surface and seize territory. Earth's new space-based defenses were set up as static "space airbases" and guided missile destroyers intent on sinking enemy ships trying to land on the planet, while ground-based defense focused on regional defense forces and large seagoing mobile reaction forces that could redirect to respond to anywhere an invasion might land. The Destroids were developed for that ground-centric defense plan as a next-generation overtechnology-based replacement for main battle tanks. But the Earth UN Government couldn't have been more wrong. The Zentradi had no interest in capturing and occupying territory or securing resources. Their one and only mission was "Destroy the enemy" and did so on a scale that meant planetary destruction could be done relatively casually. As land warfare weapons in a space war, the Destroids weren't exactly useful for much except as ad hoc air defense guns on the SDF-1 Macross. After the war, the New UN Government and New UN Forces had a better idea of how space warfare actually worked, and with land warfare not really in the cards there wasn't any reason to keep developing Destroids. Most New UN Forces warships weren't big enough to support them and the same air defense role could be done much more effectively by a static beam CIWS or anti-aircraft missile system. Development of destroids basically stopped at that point because the concept itself was flawed. The only Destroids that we're shown after the First Space War are original models from the early 2000s either being used as-is or with marginal upgrades for niche roles. At the end of the day, they couldn't make them more viable... just slightly better in their already niche role. TBH, this was one of the "niche roles" features mentioned above. In Macross II, the rollers were intended to make it easier for the Destroids to reposition on the outside of the Spacy's warships... but those ships are MUCH bigger than the ships the main Macross timeline has. In Macross Frontier, they were intended mainly to stop the Cheyenne II from ripping up the pavement inside of the emigrant ships. That was their main functional advantage... not pissing off the road commission. Not sure what that'd achieve, really... most of the Destroids in the original series already had a common/shared drivetrain (Series 04). The only real exceptions were the Spartan (a Series 07 design) and the Monster (a Series 00 design). The original Series 04 design, which became the Tomahawk, did have an ability to swap out certain weapons but it wasn't really that useful. The ability was seemingly abandoned after the MBR-04-Mk.IV's option to exchange the particle beam cannons for a pair of rotary cannons. EX-Gear doesn't help with aiming. That's the Fire Control System's job. It's designed to help with piloting, and specifically piloting a Variable Fighter, by making the interface more intuitive... which is occasionally described as creating the feeling that the pilot is wearing the Variable Fighter itself. Energy conversion armor and pinpoint barriers are two of the three most energy-intensive systems a Valkyrie has. (The third is active stealth.) Energy conversion armor was a concession made for Valkyries to keep their weight down, beefing up the strength of relatively thin armor plating instead of layering on thick slabs of composite armor. Destroids didn't need to fly, so they were able to keep costs down by using a much lower-output reactor that met the needs of the superconducting motors in the walking drivetrain and the few onboard beam weapons thanks to being able to achieve their defensive ability through making the armor itself thicker. This meant that a Destroid could be manufactured for as little as 1/20th what a Valkyrie cost in the First Space War. A Destroid would need more, and vastly more powerful, reactors to incorporate energy conversion armor and pinpoint barrier systems. To the point that it wouldn't be a Destroid so much as a non-transformable, flightless Battroid... and at that point, why not just go the rest of the way to making a Valkyrie esp. since you'd already have two Valkyrie-grade reactors.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    He would... TTS absolutely had his number. Asmodai is an arsehood who can't make anyone repent. After 10,000 years of paranoia and secrecy regarding the Fallen, I'm sure the modern Dark Angels leadership have some misgivings about the Lion's openness regarding the Chapter's history and his decision to pardon many of the Fallen. Then again, I'd also wager they're not exactly queueing up to say as much to the Lion if they remember anything about his infamous Bad Boss tendencies from the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. The last non-primarch who tried to contradict the Lion got his head punched clean off.* The one before that, well... they don't talk about him** or his right hand man.*** (Honestly, the best part of how the Dark Angels are presented in TTS is that it's barely an exaggeration. They really were THAT paranoid and triggerhappy before the Lion returned.) *Brother-Redemptor Nemiel, a Heresy-era chaplain who objected to the Lion's decision to violate the Nikaea Edict by ordering the reactivation of the Legion's Librarians in order to fight daemonic incursions on the Dark Angels flagship in the The Primarchs Horus Heresy anthology. ** Because it's Luther, the "arch-betrayer" whose falling out with the Lion was less violent but led to him being sent home to sit out the ENTIRE Great Crusade and Horus Heresy and eventually leading Caliban into open revolt against the Imperium. *** Cypher. Well, one of them anyway. It's complicated. REALLY complicated.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That's probably not a mix-up... but rather a part of the hull classification symbol that denotes a specific operational role. There are a dizzying array of such codes in the US's existing system. The one almost everyone is most familiar with is N, which denotes an nuclear power system like those found on classes of modern aircraft carrier (CVN) or submarine (SSN). Another one that's very common nowadays is a trailing G, which denotes guided missile primary armament. In Macross Frontier, we see a number of Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMDs with the designation CVR... which, if it means the same thing it does today, would suggest the ship was outfitted to serve as a part of the fleet's radar picket for early warning and reconnaissance duties. We also see a number of Northampton-class frigates with the designation FFM... a very odd choice that, in today's system, would mean the ship was outfitted as a minelayer but presumably means something else. The Uraga-class ships we see designated CVS are using a previously established code for a semi-submersible aircraft carrier (in the US system it would denote outfitting for antisubmarine warfare). That one makes sense given that the Uraga-class are also meant for surface use and an airtight space warship with concessions for surface propulsion shouldn't have any real difficulty running underwater the same way the Prometheus-class was designed to. It's probably worth noting that there have been two separate Marine Corps organizations in the UN/New UN Forces... one attached to the Navy, and one attached to the Spacy. The Zentradi marines we've seen belong to the Spacy's Marine Corps. For maximum confusion, it should be noted that "Spacy" is a contraction of "Space Military" or "Space Forces" rather than "Space Navy"... and it has both an Air Force and a Marine Corps under its banner, and its ranks are consistently presented in-series in English as Army ones rather than Navy ones despite it borrowing quite a bit from the Navy in terminology and in organizational designations. It seems a safe bet that the use of Zentradi ships for the Zentradi units in the Spacy Marine Corps is for the comfort of those troops, at least some of whom are Zentradi who are assigned there because they've had difficulty adapting to nonmilitary miclone lifestyles. Eh... I would disagree on the grounds that we know it's not the case. Richard Bilra's backstory mentions that he commanded a warship in the Vrlitwhai Branch Fleet during the First Space War. He shared his superior officer's fascination with Earth's culture, and after the war he adopted a human name and founded an interstellar shipping company named Bilra Transport. By 2040, that business had become so huge that he'd become one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the galaxy, with the resources to found a private security force to protect his company's ships (SMS) and sponsor one of the largest and most advanced emigrant fleets (Macross Frontier) on a mission into the galactic core in search of fold quartz for the sake of his own personal ambitions. Conda Bromco never commanded a warship or found success in business. He was an electronic warfare/signals intelligence officer assigned to a Quel-Quallie theater scout pod in the Vrlitwhai Branch Fleet's 08th Reconnaissance-in-Force Unit. He defected to the UN Forces during the war, and afterwards worked odd jobs in Macross City with his crewmates Roli and Warera. He and his fellows all struggled with substance abuse and as of 2045 he and Warera were both living with Roli and his wife Vanessa in Macross City.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much any Space Marine Chapter from the First Founding (the original 20 pre-Heresy Legions) or the Second Founding (when the Legions were broken up into Chapters) has at least a few skeletons in their closet. Of course, the Big One that more or less defined the Dark Angels as a Chapter from the game's 3rd Edition until very recently was the existence of The Fallen. That roughly half of the First Legion "Dark Angels" including Primarch Lion El'Jonson's second-in-command Luther and the garrison force on the Dark Angels homeworld of Caliban he commanded ended up rebelling against the Imperium, that Caliban was destroyed in the loyal Dark Angels attempts to suppress the rebel faction, and that the rebels were subsequently scattered across time and space by warp shenanigans. Until the recent return of Lion El'Jonson, the Dark Angels were desperate to keep the Imperium at large from learning that half of the celebrated First Legion had once turned traitor and mercilessly hunting the traitor forces ("the Fallen") wherever they found them. Their desperation to keep their shame from becoming known led them to hide it from even their recruits, with knowledge of the chapter's history being granted as one rose up the ranks. They've attacked other Imperial forces to keep the Fallen from ending up in anyone else's hands too. The Lion, upon his return, took a rather dim view of this and summarily pardoned most of the Fallen who had been deceived into betraying the Imperium by Luther. Subsequent material has added quite a few more skeletons to the Dark Angels collective closet. Especially in the Heresy era.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Since it got a second season... somehow... I'm rewatching Birdie Wing - Golf Girls' Story from the start and it's every bit as gloriously insane as I remember it being. Sports anime is a bit over the top at the best of times, and titles covering more niche areas of athletic endeavor tend to play up the popularity of the sport a bit... but none go as far as Birdie Wing. The first season is set largely in a fictional European country called Nafreece that is absolutely daffy for golf that it's seemingly not just their only sport but the only form of entertainment they have at all. So much so that refugees and orphans make a living hustling people on one-hole golf matches, they have rigged back-alley putting greens instead of conmen running three card monte, and the mafia has elaborate underground indoor golf courses they use for illegal gambling and settling territorial disputes. (The two prominent rival golf coaches in the series are voiced by Tooru Furuya and Shuuichi Ikeda, and the series is inexplicably obsessed with gunpla too...)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, yeah... that. So, that little detail is an artifact of Sky Angels having been written three years before we got Macross: Flash Back 2012. Super Dimension Fortress Macross was originally intended to end with an epilogue depicting the departure of the SDF-2.* Prior to Flash Back 2012, the SDF-2 was designed as a second (but larger) Macross-class ship as seen on page 150 of Macross Perfect Memory. There wasn't really a firm notion of how the SDF hull classification symbol was being used, except that it was for major capital ships/flagships. So since Vrlitwhai's fleet command battleship was the acting flagship of the Spacy post-timeskip the writers for that doujinshi decided to say it'd been designated SDF-3 to acknowledge its role. Three years later, Flash Back 2012 came out and the SDF-2's backstory was rewritten such that it had been converted into a Megaroad-class emigrant ship. Macross II's timeline published in 1992 would establish the existince of multiple Macross and Megaroad-class ships, a detail that the 1994 material for Macross Plus and Macross 7 would also make official. Macross 7's material would establish the existence of at least thirteen Megaroad-class ships, with the implication of there being at least thirty, and Macross Frontier put paid to it for good with "SDF" being identified as the hull classification symbol for the Megaroad-class. Macross Chronicle ran with that, and so officially speaking SDF-3 is the Megaroad-02. We've only got official hull classification symbols for a few types... SDF for the first Macross-class ship and Megaroad-class. SDFN for the mass-produced Macross-class. NMCV for the Battle-class. FF being used for the Northampton-class. The space-based carriers have used three different ones so far, not counting mission modifiers: initially being SCV and ARMD being used interchangeably, then ARMD and CV being used interchangeably, and finally just CV. The unusual/nonstandard "ARMD" being a nod to the fact that they were originally orbital floating docks converted into warships, and was inspired by the auxiliary floating drydock designations. We haven't seen anything for the stealth cruiser, the Macross Quarter, or the Spacy's upgraded Zentradi warships. Given that the Spacy cribs pretty liberally from the US systems in most places, one can assume the Oberth-class destroyers were probably DD numbers, and the stealth cruiser's probably C-something. Whether the Zentradi ships would be classified separately, by role, etc. is unclear. Esp. since Zentradi ships are somewhat multipurposeful with line battleships carrying what're analogous to fighters on top of a heavy gun battery. It's not really touched on more than as an excuse for why there are a bunch of Zentradi mobs in the game's overworld... something on Uroboros is making the Zentradi's fighting instincts go berserk. * The name for which is the return of the show's original working title Megaroad/Megaload, though it is sometimes (incorrectly) written Megalord in English.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Did we seriously necro a thread that's been dead for almost two decades for a photo of an old Burger King drive-thru window ad?
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I'd assume the opposite, TBH... Everyone would expect a live action Terminator feature to go all-in on action because that's what live action Terminator sequels do. Animation is an opportunity to branch out, since you're not beholden to a visual effects budget, and this one DOES appear to be going back to before Terminator 2 changed the date of Judgement Day for the first time...
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yeah... and that's the problem. Each new Terminator sequel wants to be Terminator 2: Judgement Day. As a result, the Terminators get less threatening with every new installment because no matter what state-of-the-art bullsh*t gimmick Skynet's latest robo-killer has it's still going to be jobbing for one of the Resistance's seemingly limitless number of jailbroken T-800s. It doesn't help at all that the T-800s have gone from stiff and inhuman to downright folksy. It's Terminator... it's pretty much a given that a Terminator's going to be the principal antagonist and better than 50-50 that one'll be part of the main cast on the protagonist side too. The problem is that Terminator has not really succeeded with an action focus since Terminator 2: Judgement Day. They can do a much more grounded and interesting story with a horror focus like the original The Terminator. Well, we're almost certainly not getting that... esp. since every timeline except Terminator 3's has basically settled on time travel is annoying and cluttering the timeline without any real detrimental side effects besides Judgement Day moving around a lot.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    There's far more to Horror as a genre than just "has monsters". Horror evokes fear in the audience. Castlevania was never in the horror genre. It was a puzzle/platformer so it'd be filed under "action/adventure" in this day in age... and while it started out parodying classic horror movies, nothing about the game's story or gameplay is designed to evoke fear in the player. The game's enemies are horror movie monsters, but outside their original context the monsters aren't frightening... they're just enemies to be defeated. The Castlevania animated series reflects this, belonging to the fantasy/adventure genre rather than horror, as it really doesn't do anything to frighten. Similarly, The Witcher is a fantasy/adventure novel series and game series. The monsters that Geralt hunts are physically grotesque and frighten random villagers, but the story doesn't present them in a way that evokes fear in the reader/player. Geralt of Rivia is basically a jaded fantasy Orkin Man exterminating nuisance wildlife. The Terminator, on the other hand, was sci-fi/action with a LOT of horror elements in its premise and titular antagonist. Its presentation of the titular Terminator is well in line with the classic definition of a horror antagonist/monster: The Terminator is a manifestation of one of the audience's underlying fears... that of automation/AI untethered by human morality and an older fear that humanity's own unnatural creations turning against it as in folk tales like The Golem of Prague (c.1837). The Terminator and its master Skynet are deeply unnatural. The former being a literal murder machine that walks among us disguised as a person, unknown and unknowable in pursuit of its target. The latter is a bodiless unliving intelligence that seeks to exterminate all life. The Terminator presents both a physical and psychological threat. It's absolutely determined to kill its target and nothing short of complete destruction will stop it. Nor can the authorities, as it shoots up an entire police station without issue. As it's coming from the future, you have no way to know it's coming until it's too late. And as if having an utterly implacable killer who can withstand most any punishment and pursue you wherever you go isn't enough, there is no happy ending. Judgement Day and the machine war that follows are unstoppable, not dying now just means the future genocide of humanity won't be total and Skynet can always just try again. Earth will still be destroyed and billions will still die no matter what. Terminator 2: Judgement Day was every bit as catastrophic to the Terminator story as Aliens was to Alien. The reveal that there are "good" Terminators on humanity's side and that Terminators are capable of learning to the extent that they can form friendships and comprehend human emotion obliterated much of their menace. Why have a human like Kyle Reese fight a desperate fight against a Terminator when you can send a good Terminator back to fight an evil Terminator? It not only makes the T-800 unscary thereafter, but the T-1000 is demoted from a terrifying threat to more like a severe inconvenience with another Terminator standing between it and the Connors.
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