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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Part of it is, as @sketchley said, a convenient contrivance of the plot. Having Reon Sakaki get shot down in orbit of Uroboros while on a mission to hand-deliver a YF-25 Prophecy from the SMS Sephira branch to the Uroboros branch was very convenient to the plot, since it set up a combat tutorial vs. Rod's YF-29B, introduced Reon's rival (Rod Baltemar), and being shot down put him in the position of having no choice but to take a position with the Uroboros SMS and participate in the plot after the Uroboros Aurora flares up and blocks all fold travel to and from the planet while he's in hospital recovering from the injuries he sustained in the crash after he was shot down. There is also an element of secrecy to it. Strategic Military Services and its parent company Bilra Transport chose Uroboros for its remoteness as a place to develop the YF-30 Chronos as clandestinely as possible. It was an extension of Mr. Bilra's mania about finding a way to overcome fold faults. Parting out an existing, unneeded aircraft would be one way to conceal having acquired the Ariel II "Brunhilde" airframe control AI system from the YF-25. Otherwise, attempting to acquire a new one from the manufacturer would potentially draw unwanted scrutiny to the top secret project... one doesn't simply place an order for bleeding edge military avionics and expect it to go unscrutinized.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the factory satellite seen in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series indicates that factory satellites have a fleet of robot ships they use to mine the necessary resources to facilitate continued production. Presumably there is some "recycling" involved as well, given Quamzin's allusions to "retiring" elderly Zentradi and what we see of biomatter recycling in Macross Frontier.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... though in practical terms there isn't actually much difference between the YF-25 and VF-25 outside of its monitor turret and tandem cockpit. It might as well be a VF-25B with a different head. Mind you, the whole reason Reon Sakaki was ferrying that YF-25 from Sephira to Uroboros was so that the SMS office on Uroboros could part it out and use some of its more useful bits (like its Ariel II airframe control AI) in the YF-30. Presumably Sephira was not willing to part with a production aircraft on the altar of Major Blanchette's ambition. The idol group Walkure was extremely well-received in Japan and still enjoys considerable popularity there today. I'm not sure I'd be willing to argue that the Macross Delta series itself was particularly popular or well-received outside of its role of promoting Walkure's albums and live concerts. The show's merchandising is pretty limited outside the realm of Walkure character goods. There's the obligatory novelization, manga adaptation, PSP game, and DX Chogokin toys, and then there's two brief gaiden manga titles, a technical manual that's mostly copy-pasted from a previous Macross Frontier book, and some model kits in various scales. There's very little in terms of character goods for Delta Flight or Darwent High School Host Club The Aerial Knights except for some Mirage stuff (a lot of which is her cosplaying a Walkure member) and even a fair number of the kits are Walkure versions of various mecha even though exactly none of the Walkure characters are pilots. The kit for Roid's Sv-262Hs had to be advertised with Mikumo on the box instead of Roid, and come with a huge Mikumo sticker that covers a lot of the plane. Roid's not the only one getting shorted either, Bogue and Keith are the only two members of the Aerial Knights to get kits and actually appear on the box art. Theo, Xao, Hermann, and Qasim apparently don't count. So yeah, I'd say Macross Delta was well-received and quite popular in Japan... but it's mostly because of Walkure. (Not gonna lie, I love the setting, I've got all of Walkure's albums, and the VF-31 and Sv-262 are some of my favorite later Kawamori designs... but if you tried to make Macross Delta stand on the merits of its heavily-derivative and obviously phoned-in story and the horribly underdeveloped cast, I wouldn't rate it much higher than I did The Price of Smiles, Tatsunoko's ill-fated attempt to get back into mecha anime for its anniversary that didn't so much go down in flames as find the elevator in Hell's sub-basement was out of order.) We don't really know any details, do we? I mean, we know the title is Absolute LIVE!!!!!! and that's about the end of it.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's possible some did... but if there were any, we haven't been told about it. As to "why incur the extra development costs", in part it's to get yourself something better than a half-complete YF-24 and partly to have something you can sell in export to turn your own profit on it... as the Macross Frontier fleet is alleged to have done in various sources like Master File (and implied to have actually taken place via Macross 30 showing a VF-25 from Sephira) and the Brisingr Alliance was explicitly planning to do in Macross Delta with the VF-31A Kairos.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That is something that Master File came up with, independent of the official setting.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the YF-24 is the common ancestor of all 5th Generation VFs so far... and likely will remain a common ancestor to all of them, since the technology that defines the 5th Generation was developed on and for it. The gimmick the last two shows have done where the shiny new VF is only available to a non-military group of elite mooks who are picked to test it because they're legally expendable is overdone. The whole PMC schtick is overdone too, though at least Xaos was closer to the reality of PMCs than SMS was... what with Xaos being mostly made up of people who couldn't hack it in the military's ranks. All they were really missing, since Lady M constitutes corrupt corporate management, was having the ranks packed with the kind of pasty, out-of-shape, military-cosplaying militia nut the real military didn't want, convinced they're living out the plot of their very own Call of Duty game. I'd like to see a return to something closer to the original series, where the protagonists were the actual military and there wasn't a unit of elites doing all the heavy lifting with VFs a generation newer than everyone else's. Or, hell, let's go towards the realistic and have the PMC be the bad guys... or maybe an underequipped PMC can save the day, like in Terrestrial Defense Enterprise Dai-Guard. (In the last Macross RPG campaign I ran, the villain was a megacorp with its own PMC, the Canaries.... and the Canaries are, yes, based on the ones from Red Dwarf in every respect.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It wasn't the merchandising rights to Macross: Do You Remember Love? that had unclear ownership... it was the distribution rights that nobody's really clear on the ownership of. Tatsunoko does still have the merchandising rights to the movie outside of Japan, and Harmony Gold licensed those rights c.2001 after their failed bid to stop Macross toy imports with cease and desists claiming they owned the rights to all Macross titles. They were basically trying to ensure that their then-forthcoming Toynami VF-1 toys wouldn't be competing against higher-quality import toys from Japan. They did briefly experiment with making Do You Remember Love? merchandise of their own and importing toys from Japan, but it seems to have been a failure in no small part because they were Robotech.com store exclusives... Robotech fans have little to no interest in non-Robotech merchandise, and Macross fans were generally averse to the site itself to say nothing of the buying from the same idiot brigade responsible for preventing Macross distribution in the west. Nowadays, with their brand having fallen even farther into obscurity and ineptitude, they and their bargain basement licensees are unwilling to gamble on any but the most sure bets when it comes to saleable Robotech merchandise.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    If I had my way, I'd like to see them go backwards a bit and give us a story where the main VF is from one of the neglected generations... like the largely skipped 2nd Generation, the 3rd that was mostly only around as cannon fodder in Plus and 7, or the 4th when the VF-171 was actually new.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be honest, he makes an exceptionally good point... the R-word Series That Must Not Be Named is a textbook example of why you DO NOT keep bringing back your original cast once their story arc is over. It inevitably becomes a shameful mess. The Star Wars sequel trilogy (especially The Last Jedi), Star Trek: Picard, and Blade Runner 2049 are all also recent excellent examples of why it's better to let your heros go when their story is over and move on instead of dragging them back for more after they've had their closure. Kawamori is a wise man to insist that he will not bring them back, and the aforementioned examples amply demonstrate the wisdom of his decision.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Smart money says it was all about stopping power. Laser weapons are compact, simple, robust, and extremely precise... but their maximum achievable output power is relatively low compared to particle beam weapons due to the way the stimulated emission of photons is achieved. Particle beam weaponry's a directed energy weapon technology that's more conducive to scaling up power without necessarily significantly increasing size... but it's also more complex and finicky. More firepower would have been necessary as VFs and other mecha adopted new, more durable composite materials, improved energy conversion armor systems, and energy weapon-specific countermeasures like ablative coatings painted over the armor's surface to dampen the power of energy weapon hits. That was special equipment manufactured to Dr. Elma Hoyly's specifications as prototype Tactical Sound Unit hardware. Normal VF-171EX units look the same as they did in Frontier, minus the anti-Vajra weapons.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Somehow, that one never made it into the final cut of the movie. Yup, they're reskins of the same CG model... and the turret is visibly present and accounted for (see 7:27 in Macross Frontier ep7). The turret isn't exposed in Shuttle mode, you can only see it clearly in the other two modes. IINM, the last we really see or hear of the Dulfim is at around 6:48 in Macross Frontier Ep8... where she's shown to be alongside one of the Macross Frontier's Island-class environment ships. It's mentioned that the Dulfim's crew had been interviewed about the fate of the Macross Galaxy but that they didn't really know anything useful, and that they were currently quarantined and awaiting medical examination due to the risk of V-type infection. They just kind of drop off the face of the story after that, except in the movie version where those ships and the refugee ships they escorted carried the cyborgs who hijacked Battle Frontier. It's been a good while since I last reviewed the novelization and I'm well overdue for a reread, but I don't recall anything specific being mentioned about the fate of the ship or her crew. They're the ones on either side of the cockpit. Well, almost all of them... there's an eccentricity in the Macross Frontier movie materials that list a different model of coaxial gun on the VF-25's monitor turret (head) that's a laser weapon instead of a beam weapon. Laser weaponry is exactly what the name indicates: they produce an extremely intense, tightly focused beam of light that damages the target by heating the target's surface until the target's surface burns, melts, or evaporates. They're very limited weapons in terms of stopping power and top out below the other types of energy weapon in Macross, but they're an extremely precise class of weapon because they fire a tightly focused light beam at, well, the speed of light. Laser weapons can also be made extremely compact, which is a virtue for something with an internal structure as complicated as a VF's or as cramped as a battle pod or battle suit. Beam weaponry, on the other hand, is an umbrella term that refers to two different types of directed energy weapon: particle beam weaponry and dimensional beam weaponry. Particle beam weapons are weaponized miniature particle accelerators. They use electromagnetic fields and electrostatic lenses to focus and accelerate subatomic or atomic particles to relativistic velocities (significant fractions of the speed of light) so that the immense transfer of kinetic energy causes the target's surface to superheat almost instantaneously and a deeper hit might see the beam's charge cause secondary damage to onboard electronics. The Zentradi make widespread use of electron particle beam weapons as the main weapon of the Regult series battle pod. Macross publications usually aren't specific about what type of particle beam weaponry humanity favors. Starting in Macross Frontier, the generic term "beam gun" or "beam cannon" started to be applied to dimensional beam weapons too. These are the exotic energy weapons that are built on the same technology as the Macross's main gun. They produce a type of ultra-heavy exotic particle called heavy quantum that exists simultaneously in realspace and in fold space, and when they've got enough of it they use fold waves to cause all of its mass to drop into realspace. This causes the heavy quantum to collapse in on itself due to the heavy quantum's intense gravity, until it ignites in a fusion reaction. The ensuing explosion triggered by the fusing heavy quantum is corralled using any of several technologies to make a highly destructive beam of fast-moving fusion plasma. This technology is sometimes called a converging energy cannon, super dimension energy cannon, or more recently a heavy quantum reaction beam cannon. This technology was mostly confined to ship-based gun turrets and the larger "main gun" type systems, but miniaturized versions began showing up on VFs starting with the VF-19 and VF-22. (I privately suspect the unspecified "impact cannon" technology the Zentradi have is also a miniaturized dimensional beam weapon.) Where the line has started to blur has mainly been in warship stats... abbreviating "converging beam cannon" down to just "beam cannon". When a VF is equipped with dimensional beam weapons, they're usually specifically called out as such instead of being referred to by generic terms. (Macross Delta publications have been a bit hit-or-miss in that regard.) They did, in the gaiden manga Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E. The Xaos PMC branch on Pipure uses VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX units... albeit without the MDE beam weaponry and other anti-Vajra add-ons.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    One interesting detail - well, interesting to a detail-obsessed mecha nut like me - that I noticed while I was reviewing footage to answer the above question is that the Brisingr Alliance's member worlds seem to be equipping their local New UN Forces defense forces differently. From the sound effects used, the New UN Forces from Voldor and Al Shahal have outfitted their VF-171s to use conventional machine guns on their forward gun mounts, while Randor's VF-171s seem to be using beam machine guns.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the VB-6 Konig Monster in the Macross Frontier movies does note that the craft has many armament variations to deal with diverse combat situations, though it doesn't even mention the guns in question. I'm actually rather glad for this particular topic, since I get to go back to one of the few actual good moments in Macross Delta and a much better series in general (Macross Frontier). What's interesting here is that there is very clearly more than one set of unlisted guns on the 2050s-2060s era Konig Monster. Both 1st Lt. Canaria Berstein and Cpt. Alberto Larazabal's VB-6 Konig Monsters are depicted firing two different sets of unlisted machine guns. One set is a pair of machine guns that appear, from the muzzle flashes, to be set into the sides of the nose near the vernier thrusters in Shuttle mode. The second is the aforementioned set of guns that're mounted in the arms in GERWALK and Destroid modes. There's an up-close view of Cpt. Larazabal firing the nose guns on his Konig Monster at about 9:50 in Macross Delta's 22nd episode, but they made their debut in Macross Frontier's 7th. As to what they are, it's hard to say... since the main Variable Fighters in service around this time seem to have been designed with an eye towards easily exchanging even the internal weapons systems. For example, the VF-171 and VF-25's fixed-forward guns could be either beam machine guns or conventional machine guns. There's often little obvious difference, visually, between the two. Given the space constraints in the VB-6's nose, I'd expect them to be beam machine guns... but it's anyone's guess really. The sound effect used is the one that's normally used for solid-ammo machine guns though, for what little that's worth.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    My expectation would be that it wouldn't be... as an anti-frustration feature for players.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    You must not have read/watched much science fiction then. Granted, that kind of thing is pretty standard fare in fantasy... and I blame J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for becoming the encyclopedia of Standard Fantasy Tropes.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Not a pinpoint barrier... energy conversion armor is a technology that's used on all VFs to compensate for their armor being comparatively thin in order to keep their weight down for flight. It's a system that uses a special layered, laminated armor material that becomes more resistant to damage when it's charged with electromagnetic pulses. That system draws a LOT of power, though, so VFs are forced to trade off engine output for armor strength depending on mode. Normally, the energy conversion armor is turned off in Fighter mode so a VF can exert all of its reactor output producing thrust to fly, it's turned on at partial power in GERWALK mode where demands for raw engine thrust are diminished, and full power for Battroid mode where thrust requirements are lowest. On the VF-0, the energy conversion armor made Fighter mode a fair bit tougher than the average fighter plane, GERWALK mode was as durable as a well-armored attack helicopter, and Battroid mode was as tough as a main battle tank. This way, a VF that has armor only a fraction of the thickness of a Destroid's can acquire similar defensive ability. The VB-6 Konig Monster in Macross Frontier was an improved type that uses a next-generation energy conversion armor technology that boasts defensive capabilities rivaling the armor of a heavy cruiser-class space warship when operating at maximum potential. It's even more Tonka-tough than the already incredibly durable VFs in common use (which are themselves several times as durable as the VF-1, which was by all accounts at least three times the toughness of a main battle tank). It's broadly similar to technologies like Star Trek: Enterprise's polarized hull plating, Gundam SEED's phase shift armor, and Gundam 00's structural GN fields.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, welcome! Dunno where you read that, because that's actually not true... they did actually render all three modes for Macross Frontier, though the Destroid mode puts in only one brief appearance in the final episode of the TV series. It's at 19:16 in the episode, where SMS's VB-6 is shown defending Island-1 during its landing on the Vajra planet. We see it transform at around 18:36, after it shot Battle Galaxy full in the face with four thermonuclear reaction warheads. It was also animated in the trailer for the second Macross Frontier movie, though that was an ultimately unused variant that has some big damn rotary cannons (reused CG models off the Cheyenne II destroid) on its arms. Konig Monster fans did at least get some recompense when Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy made the Konig Monster one of its playable VFs. Setting any weaponry from Macross up against the Inbit from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA - AKA the Invid from Robotech - would be a level of overkill that crosses the line twice and ends up feeling like bullying. The Inbit/Invid are so lightly armored that, even in the native MOSPEADA setting, their mecha can be easily destroyed by weapons little more powerful than modern man-portable rocket-propelled grenades and anti-materiel rifles. A 30mm rotary cannon like the A-10A Thunderbolt II's (or the trio of 'em carried by the AB-01 TLEAD AKA "Beta Fighter") is itself comical overkill against an enemy like that, and the VF-1's GU-11A gunpod is something on the order of 7 times as powerful. The Konig Monster has the firepower to flatten cities. (Never mind that the SMS/NUNS upgraded Konig Monster from the late 2050s and 2060s has advanced energy conversion armor that would make it difficult for the Inbit/Invid to do much more than scuff up the paint and annoy the pilot.) Yeah, all 5th Generation VFs have linear actuator technology. The VF-31 and Sv-262 are 5th Gen.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, and his only appearance after that was a cut cameo in Star Trek: Nemesis. They could always stick him in Star Trek: Discovery now that the unlovable cast of the show have f*cked off a thousand years or more into the future. Maybe he and an elderly Neelix can be besties with Burnham and they can change the show's name from STD to Star Trek: Cancer. With the Buffy the Vampire Slayer level of writing they've got going with the idiots from Secret Hideout, they could set a new speed record for cancellation. I'm most concerned that we'll start to see crap from Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard bleeding through into Strange New Worlds... especially since "time crystals" have already given Pike a preview of his own future.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Sounds about normal for a Macross development. IIRC, wasn't it about 2 years from Macross Frontier start of development to the first trailer?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Surely you jest. Wil Wheaton may have managed to use The Big Bang Theory to at least partially separate himself from the antipathy that die-hard Star Trek fans and general audiences had for Wesley Crusher, but that's all he did. It's not like he managed to diminish the Star Trek fandom's loathing of Wesley Crusher, who was rightly lambasted as Star Trek's first Canon Sue. He was the Star Trek franchise's most loathed character, with only Star Trek: Voyager's Neelix and Star Trek: Discovery's Michael Burnham coming close to achieving the same levels of fan hate. (Kai Winn doesn't count, because she was deliberately written to be a Hate Sink.) Not doing something that's all but guaranteed to fail isn't exactly a "lost opportunity". Now, the proposed Hikaru Sulu series... that was a missed opportunity. Shame Shatner was so dead set against George Takei getting more time in the limelight. If CBS had an ounce of sense, they'd dump Discovery and Picard altogether and throw their budgets at Strange New Worlds.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    > implying Harmony Gold is capable of feeling shame Really, it's the quintessential Robotech setting... there's no chance for peace, love, or understanding in the universe because everyone has been driven mad by their lust for the ultimate power and nobody will suffer someone else to possess it. So it's just an unrelenting string of gritty, grimdark genocidal wars of conquest. Basically WH40K Lite.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It was. But that's the point he's making... the ONLY successful part of Voltron is the part that's repeatedly adapting Beast King GoLion, just like the only part of Robotech that's successful is the part adapted from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Nobody gives a damn about the other Voltron that was adapted from Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, just like nobody gives a damn about Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. The oldest case of this that I know of is from 1939. A Moscow University professor named Alexander Melentyevich Volkov produced a Robotech-esque translation/adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1939 under the title The Wizard of the Emerald City. It was so well-received in the Soviet Union that Volkov produced five original sequels for it: Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers, The Seven Underground Kings, The Firey Gods of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Secret of the Abandoned Castle. (This is assuming you want to count only official commercialized media... otherwise the oldest case I know of is Sherlock Holmes fan fiction written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries shortly after Doyle killed Holmes off in The Final Problem in 1893.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    So ViacomCBS's latest, and probably last, attempt to turn a profit on Secret Hideout's wildly unpopular take on Star Trek is... a Captain Pike series? I mean, yeah... Anson Mount's Captain Christopher Pike was basically the only character on Star Trek: Discovery that anyone actually liked, but it's not like that was an achievement when the entire rest of the cast consisted of shallow stock characters backing up a handful of Mary Sues and complete monsters (and a main character who managed to be all three). Maybe the third time really will be the charm, but I doubt it. They've already managed to turn Jean-Luc Picard, master diplomat and moral paragon, into an incredibly selfish and manipulative old man who endangers the entire galaxy for the sake of his own ego and had Pike spend an entire season as Burnham's doormat... I don't think they're going to change how they do things.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Only the Draken III and Kairos... the Siegfrieds had forward-swept winglets.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The 8th Son? That Can't Be Right! is proving to be the painfully generic sleep-inducer I suspected it was going to be. Fantasy at its most generic, to the extent that I literally cannot tell you what the protagonist's name is, and I literally just finished the most recent episode. Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess with only Destruction Flags is proving to be a surprisingly lighthearted and entertaining series, in no small part because Catarina (the show's main character) has so thoroughly derailed the plot of the otome game setting she was reincarnated into that she's not only stolen the role of main character from the otome game's main character Maria, she's accidentally turned it into a reverse harem series with a harem of both the original male capture targets AND the rival female characters.
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