Seto Kaiba

Oh yes, it's rather telling that literally nobody can seem to muster a defense of Titan Publishing's additions to the ongoing travesty that is Robotech... Though since Robotech fans and even some folks here were at least reading that dreadful tome, they ought to be able to offer the desired feedback on whether Titan's effort to rework the Robotech story into something more upbeat and Macross-y was an improvement on Robotech's general tone of doom and gloom or not. (Because, let's be honest, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles wasn't exactly a prize either and it was as doom-and-gloom-heavy as the rest of it.) Only practically? I'm pretty sure there's a fair bit of actual screaming about it in there somewhere. Ironically, one of Gundam's scheduled releases for this year is arguably one of its most depressing and least subtle anti-war pieces yet... Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash. The light novel was upsetting to read, to say the least. Poor Hathaway. That's one of the fundamental differences in dichotomy between Gundam and Macross... whether or not the average person is basically decent. In Gundam, there are no good guys because everyone's an arsehole looking out for number one. In Macross, there are no bad guys because everyone's a decent person trying to do what's best for their people. Not caring about the message doesn't give you a valid point when you're whining about the franchise not making something that is the antithesis of that message. It just means you didn't get the bloody point.

Their respective creators have been quite clear on the message their work is meant to convey. Unsurprisingly, a lot of Japanese fiction that features war stories of some type outside of the setting of Japan's feudal period tend to include fairly strong anti-war themes and messages that are both central to the story and a major part of character development. Again, that's kinda just you.... you seem to miss a lot of points with distressing consistency. To most of the audience, that anti-war message is a core part of the individual story and one of the overall themes of the franchise as a whole. Gundam, in particular, is very fond of stressing how war breaks families even before the fighting actually starts and how the people whose families have been broken by war go on to sustain the cycle of hatred that gives rise to future wars and how those psychological wounds never truly heal. Macross is somewhat more optimistic about people's ability to heal or at least forgive when the conflict ends and the talking begins, but even that has occasionally shown that some people really do end up broken beyond repair (like the racist General Gomez in Macross Plus). The point you're resolutely missing is that war in a lot of fiction is ALSO hell for the characters... and that is often the basis of a point the author is trying to make. This isn't escapism, this is social commentary... tackling themes like militarism, nationalism, dehumanization, bigotry and discrimination, the psychological and social cost of war, etc. I'm not really interested in your perspective. As we've established before, your views are so skewed and your interested so hyper-specialized that you don't seem to even understand what these shows are about. There's a pretty damned big gulf between Star Trek and "classic" Robotech's downright Warhammer 40,000-esque attitude that the only good alien is a dead alien and that aliens who side with humanity are tools to be used and potential betrayers. That's why I'm interested in what people who read Titan's comic thought of the more Macross-like approach to the story instead of being Oops! All Genocide!

Zany is definitely not a word I'd have used for it. It's not a pure comedy so much as it is a slice of life about an incredibly dense girl whose efforts to avoid a terrible fate turned a love story on its ear and continually exasperate all the love interests that she doesn't know she has. It's meant to be an affectionate parody of a typical otome game.

*sigh* The first three words of what I wrote were "By Macross's standards". Of-bloody-course it's not going to be as relentlessly grim as a Universal Century Gundam show... those are unstinting war-is-hell, black-and-grey morality slogs through the emotional and psychological deterioration of unfortunate kids who wind up forced onto the front lines of a war with actual Nazis... and occasionally of Yoshiyuki Tomino himself. Mind you, that seems to be exactly what the mercifully few western fans who want Macross to be more war-centric are hoping in vain we'll one day receive. It's the same sort of crowd who missed the very pointed reminder at the end of Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket about how people who are only watching for the giant robot fights missed the entire point of the story. That is to say, the lesson about the toll that war and death take on people. As in Macross, the giant robots in Gundam are but set dressing for a story about what a profoundly evil, ugly, and senseless thing war is. The key difference between the two being that Macross is fundamentally optimistic and Gundam is fundamentally pessimistic. To the writers of Macross, the power of communication and mutual understanding can de-escalate and end wars and allow former enemies to live together in peace. To Gundam's writers, a never-ending cycle of hatred will always be there as the defeated simply nurse their wounds and plan their bloody revenge with no hope of ever giving up long after the cause is lost and no chance of ever understanding or even trying to understand each other. Robotech, of course, is even worse as humanity very quickly learns that the only way to achieve peace in their wartorn universe is unrelenting genocide. I'm not sure if Titan's take on it would count as better or worse, since the end result of any war is always the aliens being exterminated unless they submit to serve humanity. The Zentradi who refused to live among humans are killed to a man, and then the ones who agreed to fight for humanity are killed off in an internal conflict. The Robotech Masters and Earth forces genocide each other to a standstill and are then both wiped out by the Invid. Humanity tries to exterminate the Invid entirely, and only narrowly fail, only to immediately end up on the receiving end again due to one of their subjugated alien races secretly wanting to genocide them both. I wonder if Robotech fans saw Titan's more Macross-like setting as better or worse than the unrelenting cycle of war and death in Robotech's TV series?

It's so pure, lighthearted, and fun... it's the perfect counterpoint to the rather upsetting times we live in. It's got none of the usual fanservice you expect from a show like that, and sells itself entirely on the strengths of its characters. It's got a very all-ages appeal to it, IMO.

By Macross's standards, Macross II was pretty damned gritty for the time... what with the UN Forces being a stagnant and overbearing military that maintains the illusion of perfection by exercising heavy press censorship, the Mardook being a race of genocidal religious fanatics who use mind control to force their Zentradi into kamikaze attacks, etc. It took a lot of pointers from Mobile Suit Gundam, which I'm sure had nothing to do with all the Gundam staffers working on it. What's that old saying? "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt"? Harmony Gold invested a lot of time and effort into creating and sustaining a culture of deliberate ignorance in the Robotech fandom with the specific goal of keeping Robotech fans willfully ignorant of anything outside the Robotech franchise. That cult of ignorance has manifested in a lot of different ways, but particularly in the fandom's ridiculously toxic habits in anything resembling a debate or discussion. There are some reasonable voices among the vocal Robotech fans, but they're drowned out by the totally unreasonable fanboys who refuse to accept any evidence that doesn't fit with their personal headcanon. It's not at all uncommon for them to repeatedly insist that an easily disprovable claim is gospel truth... well after it's been disproven with source citations.1 Many of them believe the easily-disprovable lies they've been told by Harmony Gold, Carl Macek, and Tommy Yune without any question or an ounce of thought. Other fandoms don't want Robotech fans around, because nobody wants to deal with the fallout of a practical demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The few people who remember Robotech exists at all generally have no strong feelings about it at all... their disgust is typically reserved for the dishonest behavior of Harmony Gold and the trollish behavior of Robotech's fans. Looking at what Robotech has "accomplished" in over three decades inspires pity more than anything. That's what this thread mainly is... bystanders gawping at a train wreck in progress, wondering how anyone could've thought that was a good idea. Oh, I absolutely want to see more of the kind of Star Trek that I enjoy... and I express that desire through the ways in which I support the franchise. I like TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT... so I support those parts of the Star Trek franchise by buying merchandise when they produce something that appeals to me. I watch them on TV or streaming, I buy them on digital library or home video, etc. I don't do that for the parts of the franchise I don't like - Discovery, Picard, and the Abrams movies. That shows, in a very real and very tangible way, what I think of Star Trek and what I want to see more of. I'm voting, as I like to say, with my wallet. If fans don't like it, licensees won't bother to license it. That kind of thing demonstrably works. These entertainment companies are in business to make money, and if there's supply but no demand for one product and more demand than supply for another, they'll absolutely change their focus to support the one for which there is demand. That's how we're seeing studios release alternative cuts of films they never intended to allow to see the light of day. That's why Star Trek: Discovery flopped and was retooled twice, and why Star Trek: Picard got no licensee support at all and had to find funding elsewhere. That's why Strange New Worlds exists at all... it's an attempt to give the people what they want after trying something different and failing. Of course, it helps to be with the majority on things like that. You're falsely presuming a Boolean condition here... that things must either fall into "Things I like" or "Things which are crap". That isn't the case, and it never was. Just because it does not appeal to you does not mean it is objectively bad. I don't care for rap music, but that doesn't mean I can dismiss it as having no artistic merit. It simply isn't for me. Art is all about pushing boundaries in ways that speak to people. It wasn't that long ago that uptight idiots considered Jazz to not be "real" music. That's a collective "we". You'll notice that nobody here agrees with you, and a lot of people are seconding what I said? Yes, I am completely serious. Super Dimension Fortress Macross was, first and foremost, a character-driven drama and love story. All that crap about giant robots and space war is an elaborate backdrop for a story that's focused on love, teenage angst and awkwardness, the idol phenomenon, and music's power as a form of communication. It's cool, and it helps sell the main story, but that's all it's for... helping to sell the main story. That hasn't changed at any point in the franchise's history. The VF-1 was cool, but Mari Iijima's Lynn Minmay was the real phenomenon... so much so that it had some fairly significant consequences for her singing career as a result of being intrinsically associated with Minmay. You'll notice that, when Macross stories acknowledge the events of previous ones, it's almost always the characters - and specifically the singers - they acknowledge. Myung wanted to be an idol singer like Lynn Minmay and participated in creating Sharon Apple as a way to fulfill that dream after not making it as an idol herself. Basara was inspired by Minmay's story to become a singer, as were many others like Mylene and Emilia Jenius. Ozma Lee is a huge Fire Bomber fan and when it comes to fame the crew of the Macross Quarter make the instant connection to Minmay and Fire Bomber. Sheryl Nome's concert in the first Macross Frontier movie opens with an acknowledgement of the previous Macross singers. The list goes on and on and on... and homages to this have spilled over into more titles than can readily be counted. Even Gundam couldn't help but acknowledge its power. 1. I've had to deal with this garbage as recently as just a few days ago... when Robotech fans decided to butt into a question about the Macross setting to try to argue the Robotech definition of a fold drive, despite their claim not lining up to either pre- or post-reboot Robotech official materials, and then tried to argue that that same incorrect conclusion also applied to Macross.

They had a brief face-to-face meeting in episode 8, when the members of Walkure and Delta Flight who stupidly went undercover on Voldor escaped after being captured. They each picked each other out as the other's rival pretty much right away, despite the fact that they had never seen each other outside of a VF before. Instead of fighting on the ground, Keith promised to finish him in the sky. I'm not sure it was convoluted... its story is exceedingly simple and a big part of its second half is largely cribbed from Macross Frontier. It's just badly laid-out and nothing is properly explained because there was no time to explain it. I mean, they're all third rate at best... this was a bush league conflict by any standard of measure. Messer or Arad would have to claim the title of "least crap", but of course Arad is perpetually out of focus and Messer was the one Keith singled out as his rival ace. That's got basically nothing to do with the actual show, and everything to do with the real idol group Walkure.

That show is just solid gold. Absolutely solid gold. The very first anime that ever got my broke-ass student self to open up his wallet and buy it on home video. I've been continuing to follow Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags… and it continues to be a surprisingly pure and genuinely funny show. I've always rather liked that kind of self-aware self-parody that you get in reverse-harem shows, and HameFura definitely delivers on that front. It's been a while since I've had a show that I'm actually looking forward to each week, and in these troubling times its lighthearted tone and content really just hit the spot. The Eighth Son? That Can't Be Right! is turning out more or less how I expected. It's a very generic, very by-the-numbers isekai story about a Japanese salaryman who is reincarnated in a fantasy world where he's an overpowered hero. It's also unmistakably being made on the cheap, even as anime goes, with some of the worst CG animation I've seen in years. The CG used for the golems in particular would've been awesome in 1994 but now just looks like some high school DeviantArt project. While catching up during this lean season, I started The Irregular at Magic High School. I can't shake the feeling I'm basically watching Full Metal Panic!: Wizards Edition. I get the feeling there's a LOT of content from the light novel that absolutely did not make it into the show, because there's a bunch of long contemplative sequences where it feels like there ought to have been an inner monologue or something. The main character just comes off as a boring, invincible, hyper-competent hero... like what I'd expect from a bad isekai series. I've been hosting a weekly watch party for some friends on Discord who haven't seen Jojo's Bizarre Adventure yet. We're a few episodes into Stardust Crusaders: Battle in Egypt, and it's every bit as good as I remember it being. Looking at possibly re-attempting Aldnoah.Zero, or starting on Eromanga Sensei, Himouto! Umari-chan, Today's Menu for the Emiya Family, or Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions. (Also rather looking forward to rewatching Golden Boy, since Crunchyroll seems to have stealthily picked that one up.)

That's essentially why we predicted that Robotech Remix was going to fail when the series was announced... the Masters Saga is the fandom's un-favorite saga and she is generally considered to be the worst and most obnoxious character in the show. Making her the main character, even if they were transplanting her into a universe in which the Masters Saga designs never existed and everything is Macross-based, was taking an awful risk. A gamble that seems to have rather predictably ended poorly, given the apparent catastrophic existence failure of the series after just four issues.

I think I should make the distinction between what I mean when I say "main cast" and "main character". The Main Cast are the named characters who are actually directly involved in moving the story forward... the characters who do enough in the plot to actually merit being named, featured in the merchandise, etc. The Main Characters are a proper subset of the Main Cast, being the ones who are actually the focus of the story. Characters like Bruno Global or Ray Lovelock are undeniably not Main Characters, but they have essential roles in the story that are critical to the plot advancing.

Because they don't keep to themselves. To borrow a popular meme, it's like dealing with vegans or people who do crossfit. Nobody gives a tinker's damn about what they do when they keep it to themselves, but they seem to feel compelled to force it into any even remotely related conversation at the first opportunity. That's why a "No Robotech" rule is a near-universal thing found in almost any Macross fan community online. It was a bloody necessity back when Robotech fan were more numerous. Robotech fans were (and still are) notorious for their ignorance, and would butt into and derail discussions (often unwittingly) because they had no idea what the hell the rest of the participants were talking about and tried to relate everything to Robotech. Rules like that aren't as necessary now that there are very few Robotech fans left. Harmony Gold cultivated and encouraged that ignorance, of course, as a way of retaining their customer base... while blocking the release of real Macross in the west in defense of a property that was a commercial failure from the outset and which several court systems believe is kept around mainly to launder money for tax evasion. They're in business to make money, mate. If it sells, that's because people like it and want more. If you don't like it, take your cash somewhere else... that's the meaning of the free market. I, for instance, am a lifelong Star Trek fan. I loathe Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, so I don't support those parts of the franchise with my money. Rap, as a musical genre, is no less a viable platform for artistic expression than classic music, jazz, opera, or motown. And those other genres certainly had their fair share of mediocre acts who were transparently only in it for the money... it's just that, as time goes on, we only remember the greats and epic failures. All that middling garbage gets forgotten. As we've noted many times, you have a very VERY warped perception of what made Macross a success... your tastes are not at all in line with those of 99.99999999% of the fandom. Macross demonstrably performs better with general audiences when it emphasizes those aspects of the story you don't like. The optimism, the music, the love triangles, the things which were always central parts of the Macross experience. When they tried to go more gritty and action-focused, it didn't do nearly as well... like Macross II, Macross Plus, and Macross Zero. The same principle applies to Gundam too, actually. Gundam is known for being relentlessly grim, dark, and depressing... and when it's tried to break that mold, it ends up doing much worse than usual like Reconguista in G. Let's be honest here, the two dozen or so people who actually give a toss about Southern Cross aren't enough to matter... the vast, nay, overwhelming majority have no use for or interest in any part of Robotech except "the Macross Saga". That's why every effort to continue Robotech has been Macross-centric except for its two very worst failures... and let's just say that IS NOT a coincidence. MOSPEADA does have its own cult fandom independent of Robotech, mind you.

To be fair, several of those clones also had more solo screen time than Reina did. Yeah... having loads and loads of characters fighting for the aggressively limited screen time between Walkure songs definitely did not help the show's writing. Normally, a Macross series has around ten people in the main cast, plus assorted minor and supporting characters. Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Hikaru, Misa, Minmay, Roy, Claudia, Max, Milia, Global, Vrlitwhai, Exsedol, Quamzin (11) Macross 7: Basara, Mylene, Ray, Veffidas, Gamlin, Max, Milia, Gepernich, Gigil, Sivil (10) Macross Frontier: Alto, Sheryl, Ranka, Ozma, Michael, Luca, Brera, Cathy, Leon, Grace (10) Even the OVAs are pretty close in this regard: Macross II: Lovers Again: Hibiki, Sylvie, Ishtar, Nexx, Feff, Exegran, Ingues, Dennis (8) Macross Plus: Isamu, Guld, Myung, Sharon, Jan, Lucy, Millard, Marj (8) Macross Dynamite 7: Basara, Elma, Liza, Graham, Lawrence, Gamlin, whale poacher captain (7) Macross Zero: Shin, Sara, Mao, Edgar, Roy, Aries, Nora, D.D., Hasford (9) Macross Delta has: Walkure: Mikumo, Kanama, Makina, Reina, Freyja (5) Delta Flight: Arad, Messer, Chuck, Mirage, Hayate (5) Aerial Knights: Keith, Bogue, Hermann, Qasim (4) Windermere IV: Grammier VI, Heinz, Roid Brehm (3) Other: Ernest Johnson, Berger Stone, Laurie Malan (4) For those who are counting, that's 21. I left out Theo and Xao because they're glorified background characters who have no role in the actual plot and almost no interaction with other characters. Properly developing ten or so characters in the space of 26 22min episodes is a big ask, but not unachievable. With a cast twice that size like Macross Delta's, it's nearly impossible. When you have an Excuse Plot that's all about contriving flimsy reasons for an idol group to have live concerts at the drop of a hat, it's defnitely an impossible goal. The five members of Walkure, plus Hayate, Mirage, Keith, Roid, and Bogue... yup. There was the Hayate-Freyja-Mirage triangle and the Messer-Chuck's sister-Kaname one... what was the third? In this day in age? Yeah, I'd doubt it. These days, a lot of what seems to get made are 13 episode adaptations of light novels. Even a 26 episode series seems to be increasingly rare.

Nothing fantastic... it won't be a momentous event, because almost nobody knows or cares that Robotech exists even now. It'll just be cause for a brief sigh of relief as the fandoms that've had to put up with the ridiculous shenanigans of Robotech's fanbase and "creator" realize they don't have to put up with if anymore. It's the same sort of relief that comes with being done babysitting someone's ill-behaved child or pet that won't stop sh*tting on the carpet. Nope... unlike Robotech, that stuff actually sells. And pretty damn well, at that. Looking at how it's currently doing, on its seventeenth animated feature and with Walkure and previous singers playing to packed houses while merch sells out while still in preorder, there's a pretty damned airtight case for Macross having been great all alomg. Goodness knows it's the one and only part of Robotech anyone gives a cr*p about. ;-)

Yup. Xaos is an interstellar conglomerate with a weirdly diverse portfolio... it's like someone let Comcast have a private army, both in terms of how their business is split up and their general lack of competence. Oh, it's worse (and funnier) than that... the Aerial Knights, with the exception of Master Hermann, are a standard set of reverse harem genre character archetypes of the sort that you could find in practically any otome game. Someone somewhere in production was clearly hoping for shipping wars that never materialized. Keith Aero Windermere is the practically obligatory blonde-haired tragic prince character who comes from a wealthy/influential/noble but broken family and has been treated badly, neglected, or excluded because he's an illegitimate child the family head fathered with his mistress. Roid Brehm is the bespectacled stoic chessmaster with a manipulative streak and a hidden nasty temper who is the best friend and right hand man of the tragic prince character and runs everything from the shadows. Theo and Xao Jussila are the incredibly close identical twins who finish each other's sentences, who exist mainly to facilitate twincest and one-true-threesome ships. Qasim Eber-Hardt is the tall and intimidating, but soft-spoken, gentle, and considerate "wild" man type. Bogue Con-Vaart is the younger girly boy who was doted on and spoiled by his big sisters but wants to be a real manly man and overcompensates for everything as a result. Plus or minus a few little tidbits here and there, they're basically the main cast from Ouran High School Host Club recast as villains... which has been a source of unending entertainment to me ever since I noticed it. They're horribly underdeveloped expies of characters from previous Macross shows... except Hayate, who is arguably an improvement in likability. Arad Molders is Great Value Ozma Lee, a scruffy old veteran who left the New UN Forces after the grief from a personal loss/failure broke him and he compensated for it with a mild anti-authority streak and joining a private military contractor. Messer Ihlefeld is Dollar General Michael Blanc, the hotshot senpai who tries to keep the main character out of the service, is hiding an entire airport's worth of emotional baggage from a previous traumatic experience, is wanted by all the ladies and refuses to publicly acknowledge his romantic interest in a colleague until right before his untimely demise. Chuck Mustang is Five Below Hayao Kakizaki, the boisterous big guy with little-to-no indoor voice and a very relaxed outlook who's usually laughing, joking, or eating and wants to be a hit with the ladies but they all find him unappealing. Mirage Jenius is Daiso Mylene F. Jenius, the tomboyish girl who feels overshadowed and inadequate in the face of someone better but takes the family legacy very seriously and is constantly frustrated and at loggerheads with the more lackadaisical main boy. Hayate Immelmann is better Alto Saotome, a dreamer who feels lost and put-upon in the world and wants to chase their passion but doesn't get the opportunity until they fall into the cockpit and discover they're actually really suited for this fighter pilot thing, despite an anti-authority streak. Unlike Alto, he's not constantly moping and shouting and has well developed sense of humor, so he's easier to like early on. Walkure, as characters, are even less developed than Delta Flight, but are no less a pack of cliches... Freyja Wion is just better Ranka Lee. Mikumo Guynemer is a counterfeit Sheryl Nome who's stuck in Sheryl's abrasive "pro" mode 24/7 because she literally has no personality of her own. Kaname Buccaneer is the broken bird woobie, a pity sink who seemingly exists to fail and be sad. Makina Nakajima is just a fanservice character, who exists mainly to move a set of large breasts from scene to scene and gainax occasionally... to the extent that her boobs feel like more of a character than she herself is. Reina Prowler is the standard-issue short-haired sugar-and-ice girl with the troubled past who talks in monotone... what most call a Rei Ayanami expy. Is that really what Macross Delta was about, though? "Might"? Macross 7 actually developed its characters and its story. It stands head, shoulders, knees, toes, and a 50,000km Tsiolkovsky tower above Macross Delta in every category that isn't music. Macross Delta really REALLY needed more time and more opportunity to develop its characters. It could've been really interesting and engaging, but they just kinda fell apart after episode 4 or so.

I used to play Warhammer 40,000 on a regular basis... I've been looking at getting back into it. Some of my coworkers roped me into joining their Overwatch team, so I've been playing that competitively for about half a year now. I've also been coordinating watch parties on Discord with several coworkers and friends who are casual anime fans looking to sample various titles... we've been doing a weekly Jojo's Bizarre Adventure marathon and finally got to Stardust Crusaders: Battle in Egypt this week. My RPG group's on hiatus, but we've been taking a break from my heavily hand-edited take on Palladium Books's Macross RPG to play Dark Heresy and Pathfinder. I'm also involved as a volunteer researcher with a couple different local historical societies, and I'm a volunteer coordinator and judge for National History Day's events here in Michigan. ... and because it sort of meshes with my Macross hobby, I also sometimes do translations by request for Gundam publications like Master Archive Mobile Suit and artbooks from various other anime properties. I've also occasionally accepted commissions to translate doujinshi, which I've mostly stopped because there isn't enough brain bleach in the world to unsee the things I've seen. (It's not even the gore or freaky porn, some of the stuff I've seen makes Rob pecs-bigger-than-their-head help-I-can't-draw-feet Liefeld look like a master of anatomy.) I'm not sure if it necessarily counts as a hobby, but I also take in a lot of pets that people can't care for or can't take with them to a new home... I've ended up with a lot of weird critters part-time or full-time because of that.

I mean, we already kinda did that... it was called Macross 7. The Varauta forces are basically a second Supervision Army, created by the Protodeviln to help Gepernich pursue his more humane (but still pretty awful) plan to make a sustainable spiritia farm instead of nearly obliterating all life in the galaxy (again). Well, they used both the Megaroad-13 colony and later the captured Zentradi citizens of Macross-5... but as far as we know they never managed to link up with the Supervision Army they created in the ancient past.

Past tense... the Supervision Army was controlled by the Protodeviln. After the Protodeviln were sealed away by the anima spiritia, the brainwashed members of the Supervision Army lost the highest level of their chain of command. With neither side having anyone left who could call a halt to the conflict, the Zentradi forces and Supervision Army have continued to follow the last orders they were given and have waged 500,000 years of war against each other with no sign of stopping. Exsedol was afraid of the Protodeviln because they were essentially terrifying, utterly unstoppable monsters by the Zentradi's standards. It took anima spiritia, Protoculture who had special spirita like Basara's, to contain the Protodeviln and seal them away in the laboratory where they had been created. Initially, the Zentradi were unable to effectively oppose the Supervision Army because they had standing orders to not "interfere with" the Protoculture... and the Supervision Army's troops included vast numbers of brainwashed Protoculture. It wasn't until the order to not interfere with the Protoculture was rescinded that the Zentradi forces could properly fight against the Supervision Army.

There's been no mention of any consequence like that... though the Supervision Army has more pressing concerns, like the Zentradi who've been hounding them with the intention of exterminating them for the last 500,000+ years.

Only one small portion of it was mentioned in a marginal note on one piece of line art from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. I noticed the connection during a discussion on another forum about Macross drawing inspiration from the US armed forces for much of the UN Forces. While I was looking for a picture to show an example of the old school Army bumper numbers I happened upon a picture that also had the AR-850-5 1942 formation markings visible and it just clicked. There are several other members here who have a better claim to that title than I do... and a few folks who don't come here anymore who'd also have a pretty good claim on it as well.

When Macross was made, the US Navy's career path for pilots was Pilot -> XO -> CO -> CAG -> CO of a high-draft support ship -> CO of a larger ship Max's career followed a similar trajectory from pilot to squadron leader to XO and CO on an escort ship to CO of a Battle-class. Macross actually does an OK job of following formation organizations nicked from the US Armed Forces... there are fairly few distinctly Japanese touches to its organization, it's mostly American.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking? The presence or absence of a dedicated unit command variant doesn't really have any implications for squadron or air wing organization, modex numbers, etc. In the real world, all that sets a CAG bird apart from the rest of the squadron is that (if certain permissions are obtained) it can have the squadron colors instead of the standard low-viz paintjob. Macross is a bit more lax about low-viz paintjobs and such, so all that would really set a CAG bird apart would be its modex number.

The only member of the Jenius family who got screwed over was Mirage... who had to deal with feelings of inadequacy because she was merely Above Average in a family that not only literally defined what excellence meant as a VF pilot, but also dominated in politics and professional music.

Macross borrows a lot from US Armed Forces practices and systems, but it doesn't always follow those systems to the letter. For instance, the SVF-1 Skulls have a weird aberrant modex number set that starts with a leading 0. The Destroid formation markings are borrowed from World War II-vintage US Army regulation AR-850-5, though they're missing division-level numbers. As to why Hikaru's VF-4A and Roy's VF-1S had a squadron commander's modex (x01) instead of a modern CAG modex (x00)... Macross's usage of the term CAG seems to be more in line with the original context of the title from World War II. Back then, the CAG was simply the most senior squadron commander currently embarked and functioned as a department head under the ship's captain while continuing to lead their squadron directly. It was after the war that the post of CAG evolved into a dedicated administrative billet for a senior officer who had "graduated" from squadron command on a career path towards being made captain of an escort vessel.

Unless there's been a run on 20-grit sandpaper, I doubt anyone would want to use something quite that unpleasant.

Nope... the Fold Dimensional Resonance system is only shown piercing a fold fault once, and that was a fold fault barrier produced by the Fold Evil. It got stuck on its first try too, until Basara boosted it with song energy. It's not clear how the Fold Dimensional Resonance system would have facilitated overcoming fold faults, unless perhaps it was intended to work in concert with a regular fold booster to help it operate like a super fold booster.