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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'd never really imagined it as a big armed raid on an Imperial data storage facility. I'd always imagined it was some kind of Mission Impossible sort of affair where the Empire only noticed the data'd been stolen when it was transmitted to the Rebels the first time, and Vader spent an arbitrarily long time chasing a daisy chain of retransmitted plans to Leia's ship in the hopes of stopping the leak. Many Bothans died to bring us this correction.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Odds are they have a fair-sized chunk of additional story written but between redoing pages for the Cycomi re-release and other obligations they need to actually sit down and draw the stuff out. If they'd foregone the do-overs on a bunch of pages, they'd probably have fresh material ready now.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    CBS seems to be a little gunshy about HD remasters after Star Trek: the Next Generation's didn't do so hot. Mind you, Kurtzman also seems to want to sweep Deep Space Nine and Voyager under the rug so he can pretend Star Trek: Discovery was more progressive than it actually was. When they were first trying to promote Discovery, they kept trying to pass Sonequa Martin-Green's casting off as an unheard-of representational coup for women and black actors. It isn't as impressive once you realize Star Trek already logged a whopping 14 seasons and 341 episodes under black and female captains already. Appropriately, given Star Trek's fixation with the number, that accounts for over 47% of all Star Trek episodes produced up to that point (47.7%). Across the other four Star Trek shows, Kirk, Picard, and Archer combined managed only 33 more episodes... 22 of those being TAS. The only new ground Discovery broke (besides being a commercial failure) was to have an openly gay couple, which Star Trek's producers had previously backed down from on at least three prior occasions: DS9's Elim Garak, First Contact's Lt. Hawk, and Enterprise's Malcolm Reed.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be interesting, but since Battroids are basically the de facto main infantry force of the New UN Government's various member nations the footsloggers aren't likely to get much focus. Those linear rifles were pretty effective against the Vajra larva in Macross Frontier, but it was the Special Forces models with those special anti-cyborg harpoons that took down the Macross Galaxy fleet's cyborg soldiers. Oh, I agree it's highly probable the Macross Concern submitted responses to both of the New UN Forces' Requests for Proposals for nextgen fighters. What makes less sense is that they would submit two responses to General Gomez's unmanned fighter program and end up competing against themselves for the next generation unmanned fighter contract. Both the AIF-X-9 Ghostbird and Neo Glaug are Macross Concern unmanned fighter prototypes built on their Sharon-type AI. I can't honestly recall a time when a company ended up competing against itself in a military design competition... The drone version only had two modes, though... it's only the manned version that was depicted with a Battroid mode. Eliminating Battroid mode likely cut the cost a fair bit. As far as we know, the only version of the Neo Glaug that was actually built was the unmanned version... at least, prior to when we see manned versions in the late 2050s in Macross the Ride (2058) and one of the Macross Frontier manga titles (2059). ... wait, what? You've got the actual issues of Dengeki Hobby, right? Could you check the title pages for chapter 8 "Combat Open"? If you haven't seen it before, I'm wondering if they changed the unit's name between the light novel's run in Dengeki Hobby and the release of the collected edition and those visual books that collected all the art and modeling pages. Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.2's version of the chapter 8 title page has a model-builder credit right under the chapter title that reads: 模型製作:佐藤匠真（NEO GLAUG bis）. Curiously, in the text of the novel itself, the "bis" part is always written in English while the rest of the mecha's name is always in katakana (save for that title page where it's written in full in English). The text on the title pages themselves have a few mentions of "bis" in the paragraphs running along the bottom of the next page. (For those with the Visual Book, I'm referring to pages 18 and 19 of Volume 2.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Gotta run up those Bothan body counts somehow...
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Well, a lot of the improvements in conventional firearms technology that've come from overtechnology have been increases in the power of chemical propellants, the strength of armor-piercing ammunition, special classes of AP rounds, etc. A lot of that simply wouldn't be applicable to conventional small arms, and the improved propellants would increase power but at the expense of the guns being harder to use safely and accurately. So most of what we've seen is pretty clearly lightly improved versions of typical modern firearms that may benefit from things like improvements in materials but haven't really changed much because a human being can't safely leverage the kind of improvements OTM could bring. A lot of them seem to be modeled on Heckler & Koch's stuff... the bland name P8 in Plus and unnamed one in 7, the not-a-MP5 in Plus, and the not-a-G36s used by the New UN Forces infantry and Windermere infantry in Frontier and Delta respectively. The only thing we've seen that's really "out there" is the laser small arms the Varauta forces and various people in the Zola system used. The Zolan lasers were apparently non-lethal stunners that could only kill at point-blank range (a nod to Star Trek VI?), where the Varauta ones seemed to be pretty inefficient weapons that routinely shot clean through targets in a massive waste of energy. (Realistically, you don't want a through-and-through because most of the energy of the shot is being wasted on whatever's behind your target.) The only really effective energy small arms we see seems to be Feff's pistol in Macross II, which blows an enormous hole in his records officer without any apparent collateral damage. Even in Macross II, the unused designs for UN Forces small arms (like Sylvie's pistol) were largely conventional weapons. Sylvie's unused pistol design is a big, chunky revolver. EX-Gear suits had linear rifles, so apparently the problem of more advanced weapons not being safely usable for humans is not as big an issue if they're wearing a big chunky powered exoskeleton to help them cope with the recoil.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Despite CBS's protestations that Star Trek: Discovery is wildly popular, Netflix's dissatisfaction with the show's performance on their service internationally and Alex Kurtzman's apparent inability to keep the production on budget would've made another Kurtzman-led Star Trek show a VERY tough sell for Netflix's management. That Star Trek: Discovery's merchandising partners are reportedly quite upset that the series turned out to be a merchandising dud probably didn't help either, since Netflix is likely contractually entitled to a non-trivial share of the show's licensing revenue. CBS and Kurtzman wouldn't have had a lot of options for getting the Picard series funded. For whatever reason, CBS is stupidly determined to keep Star Trek streaming-exclusive and their enticement to finance the series is the international streaming rights. Netflix isn't interested, and they're the metaphorical 500lb gorilla of the streaming world. They can't go to Netflix's chief rival Hulu because 90% of Hulu is jointly owned by two of CBS's own rivals: NBC Universal (30%) and Disney DTCI (60%). That basically left Amazon Prime and YouTube, both of whom already carry Star Trek properties on their digital library services. I suspect YouTube was probably the less attractive option to CBS and Kurtzman because it'd link their videos directly to the overwhelmingly negative reviews for Kurtzman-led Star Trek already dominating discussion of the franchise on the platform. Amazon expressed a desire to get more into content creation the way Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube already have, so they may see this as their foot in the door. All told, with the licensees, the Star Trek fandom, and the franchise's #1 financial backer all convinced that Kurtzman's vision for Star Trek is a steaming turd... I can only wonder why it hasn't occurred to CBS to remove Kurtzman and start fresh with something people might actually want to watch. They keep doubling down on bad decisions and wondering why the things they create aren't popular. I mean, it's generally a pretty bad sign when actors who've only just finished shooting for your flagship property go on talk shows and to cons with the intention of talking about what a crappy job you're doing and how awful you are to work for... and when the only positive press you can drum up is the stuff coming from "news" sites that you own. EDIT: Word on the street is that the claims that the Picard series started filming are only technically true. They're apparently just shooting B-roll in an attempt to say work has commenced while they sort out licensee grievances.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Meant to reply to this much earlier, but Thursday and Friday were a mechanical nightmare. The problem is the Macross the Ride light novel seems to have forgotten that the Variable Glaug was developed in the 2010s, so it acts like the Neo Glaug was the original model. The explanation also has some issues as to why the Macross Concern was marketing a competitor to their own X-9 Ghost prototype... My hypothesis/interpretation would be that the Neo Glaug was probably a parallel development of manned and unmanned modernized versions of the New UN Forces reproduction Variable Glaug. Having manned and unmanned fighters that shared a considerable number of parts would probably have been a strong selling point form a logistics standpoint, but the manned version apparently wasn't able to adequately rival Shinsei's YF-19 and General Galaxy's YF-21, so it got dropped before the final competition. They completed the Neo Glaug's unmanned specification only for Isamu to blast it to scrap near Macross City in 2040. I'd guess the Neo Glaug bis is a manned conversion of the drone specification of the Neo Glaug, essentially re-converting it into a modernized Variable Glaug. Well, that is why the Strike pack is called the Strike pack... having a big damn beam gun for knocking holes for engaging ships or ground targets counts as being an attacker. "Artillery" is a matter of perspective in space where microgravity isn't going to substantially affect the trajectories of shells. Considering the Meltrans in the main Macross timeline were basically an attempt to solve the Queadluun-series battle suit's problems with Zentradi not being able to pilot it by just designing a better grade of pilot, it makes sense. They naturally have better g-force resistance and reflexes because they were designed that way. Possibly. The Intellectual Passive Interface in the EX-Gear with those electromyographic sensors would probably go a ways towards making up the gap in terms of reflexes, but the Meltrandi still have better g-force endurance than Zentradi or Humans. They might get all the way there if they had something like an inertia vector control system or inertia store converter.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Literally anything else. Trying to convince Darth Vader that the ship he just forcibly boarded is an ambassadorial transport on a diplomatic mission after he'd literally watched the ship narrowly escape from him at Scarif is like a kid caught sneaking cookies mumbling they they didn't take any cookies through a mouthful of cookie. It's convincing nobody. That's the part Rogue One screws up in A New Hope. They were caught, yeah... but trying to feign innocence is like the least effective thing they could do. Spouting defiance, giving an array of sarcastic answers to interrogation, name-calling, pretending they don't speak English, anything to keep Vader's attention on the crew and not Leia. The guy's gonna kill you himself or hand you over to be shot by a firing squad, so why not spend your final moments tweaking him for a petty thrill? Prior to Rogue One there was implicit plausible deniability there. Vader hadn't personally witnessed that very ship blasting off after personally witnessing the plans being transferred to the ship. Feigning innocence was a valid strategy there given Alderaan's very well-known neutrality policy. It doesn't make sense anymore in the wake of Rogue One where Leia's ship practically fled with Darth Vader's fingernail marks going down the side.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It was the first time we really got to see a scene that justified Darth Vader's reputation as The Dreaded. Costume and technical limitations in filming the original Star Wars trilogy meant that Vader had to have an aggressively minimalist fighting style and couldn't really abuse force powers in showy ways. Rogue One's Darth Vader has the same minimalist style, but in light of advances in effects technology we get to see why he doesn't need prequel trilogy acrobatic nonsense to tear through whole platoons of enemy troops like a tornado of knives. The casual brutality of it makes for an incredibly tense visceral action sequence and leaves no doubt as to why this guy showing up makes the rebel troopers wish they'd been issued brown pants. This quadruple amputee burn ward patient is nowhere near the top of his game, but he's still a one man army.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    You say that like it's a bad thing... that scene in Rogue One was the first time Darth Vader had been intimidating in any way, shape, or form since the prequel trilogy ruined him. For once, he wasn't just Little Orphan Ani whining about how he doesn't like sand. Well, for one, it kind of reduces the opening of A New Hope to absurdity... the lie about the ship being on a diplomatic mission goes from "cover story" to "incredibly blatant and obvious lie nobody was going to believe" by establishing that Vader'd been chasing them since the theft of the plans at Scarif and had almost boarded the ship once already.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I had a feeling Games Workshop would eventually cross the line into prepainted collectibles like this... though I never expected it'd be Bandai they'd partner with to do it. Overall, it looks pretty damn good in terms of the fidelity to the original art and build quality. I wish they'd picked a more interesting start to such an unexpected line though. A generic Primaris marine in generic Mk.X Tacticus pattern power armor belonging to the Ultramarines - the Space Marine chapter embodying genericness - isn't a particularly exciting offering. It's more or less the default settings for space marines in the present edition. I mean, if you're gonna do a posable character model shouldn't you do an actual character with a little personality? Like Marneus Calgar, Cato Sicarus, Uriel Ventris, Azrael, Asmodai, Dante, Kayvaan Shrike, Vulkan He'stan, Vorn Hagen, etc. I know I'd spring for an old school Beakie (Mk.VI Corvus pattern) in a heartbeat, since that was the iconic space marine design when I first started out.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Master File kinda ran with the idea of doing something with the unused hull frame space on the underside in the VF-4 book, so the idea at least has a certain amount of currency. It's basically the three-hull type described in Master File with a less-busy design. I did find it rather amusing that Master File included a freaking water landing conversion. Yeah, it's a modified T-Crash suit equipped with weapons derived from Midou's mom's research. Fun stuff tho, it was nice to see a tiny implicit nod towards that kind of tech in Frontier was the hover skateboards. That thing is a write-up nightmare... a custom manned conversion of an unmanned variable fighter prototype that was converted from a manned variable fighter that was developed by rogue Zentradi based on a stolen VF-4. The way it's written up, I'm half-convinced VBP-1 and VA-110 are actually the designations for the original Variable Glaug. It would fit with Kawamori and Chiba's love of nicking US conventions. 110 would be a design number from Project Constant Peg, the once top-secret test program evaluating captured enemy fighters... and the Variable Glaug was that. The funny part is that, despite all the fuss and noise about the Zentran version only being suitable for a petite Meltran, two of the three known pilots are bigger-than-average Zentradi men: the commander-class Temjin and Naresuan. That can not have been a comfortable ride for them. No kidding. After the last couple Master File books, I am once again out of shelf space and having to buy more bookshelves.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it was odd. Mahara Fabrio's subordinate, Hoyer, needs a word in private with Macross 7 Trash's protagonist Shiba Midou and totally unheralded we get this QF-3000 that's been converted into a manned spacecraft with a suspiciously roomy side-by-side cockpit so they can talk in private. Nobody bats an eye at this or remarks on it at all. That same sequence depicted a hereforeto unseen and unmentioned variant of the ARMD-class space carrier as part of the 37th large scale long distance emigrant fleet, which is also not remarked upon despite this class of ship being close on fifty years old when the manga is set.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    My mental image was more us translators sitting around loudly agreeing with each other about the things that frustrate us, like a bunch of old duffers at the nursing home. That approach runs an even greater risk of confusion, IMO. Pre-war, you've got publications like Macross Chronicle that insist upon prefacing the pre-war government and military with the word "Earth". Post-war, you've got the problem that a couple of descriptions imply Earth has a local New UN Forces specifically for its own defense AND is the de facto headquarters of the supranational armed forced. That leaves the awkward question of which Earth New UN Forces are we talking about... the ones that answer to the Earth head of state (whatever he/she/fill-in-the-blank is called) and then the ones that answer to the New UN Government itself and its head of state (who I've seen variously referred to as a Prime Minister or Chairman). Well, all the military organization and designation systems that Macross copied almost whole cloth from the US would appear to be the doing of Shoji Kawamori and Masahiro Chiba... as that goes all the way back to Sky Angels if not further. For instance, if you look at the VF-1 units mentioned as being assigned to ARMD-class carriers in the wake of the First Space War in Sky Angels, they're all famous US Navy F-14 squadrons: the Tophatters, Swordsmen, Black Aces, Jolly Rogers, Checkertails, Checkmates, the Wolfpack, Bounty Hunters, Freelancers, Black Knights, Challengers, and Stallions. Likewise, the ARMD-class ships are a who's who of famous aircraft carriers, with almost half of them being US Navy (Enterprise, Constellation, Ranger, Midway, Independence, and Forrestal). Neither are the sort of thing the typical Japanese English-speaker is likely to know. That's every language though... I remember sitting down to my first Latin lesson in high school and being informed that we were going to have to learn both classical Latin (the formal dialect used by the Roman Republic and Empire) and the informal "vulgar" everyday Latin spoken by the plebs, while other classes used the bastardized Latin used by the church and later generations of western scholars. (I took Latin to annoy my parents and keep them from trying to mess with my homework, since they'd taken Spanish and French.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's WAY too roomy for its size. The cockpit would look more at home on a commercial airliner in terms of size.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Hey, it's Hoyer's little leisure craft from Macross 7 Trash...
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, this is now officially a translator pet peeve thread... Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here. I notice it fairly often, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more slipping past me. I may be American, but virtually all of my coworkers speak British English being Brits themselves or from former crown colonies. (Sadly, this has not given me any insight into the appeal of cricket... it remains as alien to me now as it was when I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) Believe me, I'm not altogether happy with it either... but it's the closest term I've found that communicates that we're talking about the supranational government/military rather than that of the individual member nations to the predominantly American audience here. There's gotta be a better word out there to capture that particular dichotomy, but it escapes me. (I am open to suggestions. I'd previously tried referring to it as the "central" government/forces but that seemed to be insufficiently clear in many cases.) I'd guess it might be easier for an American audience to get their heads around if the EU moved forward with Germany's proposals for a supranational European Army. It wasn't something that Macross really made prominent until Macross Delta, when the subject of "can we expect assistance from the supranational armed forces?" came up fairly prominently in an episode. I feel it might be a smidge more accurate to say that the current state of the New Unification Government is more reminiscent of the European Union. Prior to the reorganization of the government and military brought about by the conclusion of the Second Unification War, the New Unification Government was more along the lines of the American Federal Government in that it was a strong central government that exerted broad authority over its member states. That, of course, was the whole reason that conflict happened at all... folks in the emigrant governments were unhappy with the increasing concentration of governing authority in the central government, and there was a faction within the government and military working to increase that centralization of power (the bad guys in VF-X2). Given the strong American bias Kawamori introduced in his worldbuilding of the [New] UN Forces, using the American terms for levels of organization like that is probably a "best fit" scenario. Obnoxiously, that seems to change between versions of the Macross Frontier story. IIRC it's the TV series that leans slightly French while the novelization(s) lean more towards American with the inclusion of an American-style Vice President on the list of officials that Leon has to have murdered in order to seize the office of Frontier President.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Are you possibly thinking of "fighter/attacker" rather than fighter/bomber? Because I've seen statements that the aircraft that the QF-3000 Ghost was based on was a fighter/attacker multirole aircraft, but I've never seen the bomber role associated with it. Its weapons are exclusively short-ranged, consisting of six 55mm cannons and 2 3-tube missile launchers mounted in the fixed-forward position behind the guns... and a lifting body like that can't carry much under the fuselage without screwing up its own aerodynamics. Design-wise, it's more or less a freshened version of the Martin Marietta X-24A/SV-5J lifting body prototype with armaments. That experimental aircraft was used to test the feasbility of several design choices that were being made for the space shuttle. (There is a nod to this in the form of Kawamori's VF-X-7, which is a Martin Marietta X-24B that Kawamori named the "Ghost Valkyrie".) Macross Chronicle's a top-tier source, but there were changes and corrections to many sheets between editions.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Resources are pretty slim all around on that one... the only book I've translated that says more than a little about it is the old Sky Angels book, which is where most of the info in later publications comes from. Perhaps not directly, but the AIF-X-9 Ghost from Macross Plus is a descendant of the Northrom QF-3000E Ghost from the First Space War. It was arguably also a predecessor of the Neo Glaug drone that was also under test in 2040 (and was a boss in the Macross Plus video game edition). Volume 2 of the VF-1 Master File indicates that the Northrom QF-3000 was internally designated AIF-3, and also mentions an improved model that was developed in the late 2010s that was designated QF-3100 Ghost Kai. After the fully autonomous AIF-X-9 ended in a spectacular fiasco in 2040, the economized production version of the nextgen Ghost (the AIF-7S seen in Macross Frontier) was built with an improved version of the same semi-autonomous artificial intelligence used by the QF-3000. Yeah, the QF-3000 had some issues with its FF-1999 initial-type thermonuclear reaction turbine engine. The knowledge gained while investigating and correcting those issues also benefited the VF-X program. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix gives a little detail as to how. It describes the VF-0-NF, a VF-0 outfitted with a pair of FF-1999 engines, that was used in atmospheric and space testing to evaluate the performance of a Variable Fighter with thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. (This apparently later led to the VF-0+, a VF-0 updated with the same FF-2001 engines used by the VF-1A.) Yeah, the initial generation of OTM-based AI computers were a little flaky so the QF-3000 was a semi-autonomous unmanned fighter. None before, though it's said that the vast majority of QF-3000s saw combat exactly once... in the battle with the Boddole Main Fleet in 2010. Of the 1,500 produced, less than 100 survived that engagement. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie suggests that the 20 or so remaining Ghosts that the SDF-1 Macross had access to after its defold at Pluto's orbit did pretty well for themselves against the Vrlitwhai branch fleet and suffered only about 50% losses in the entire flight to Mars.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Considering he can't be much over 50 in Macross Frontier, it's a damned impressive resume regardless. The Macross Frontier novelization makes him out to be one of Ozma's old COs from the time he spent in the NUNS prior to the 117th Research Fleet incident, which implicitly further ups his badassery level by suggesting he was Earth/Federal NUNS before going off to join a PMC. Not so much, no. That only came up in connection with my correction of the rank table in the thread's first post by @DWN013. The rank table in question incorrectly presented the rank of Junshō - the word used for foreign "one star" flag officer ranks - as equivalent to the US Navy's usage of "Commodore" as an honorary title held by a senior captain. The best equivalent term for the US Navy's title of "Commodore" is Teitoku. Basically, it was the American English version of the Captain (title) vs. Captain (rank) conundrum that often crops up when translating Japanese into English. On the contrary, we're 100% certain that military structure was changed at least twice in the wake of the First Space War. The first time was when the New Unification Government was established after the First Space War in 2010, and the second was the governmental and military reforms that came out of the Second Unification War. This isn't really about in-universe changes or whether or not it's consistent between shows, though. The actual bone of contention in this discussion is the allegation that the ranks in Macross media being consistently translated as Army-style (or Air Force-style) ranks both in-series and out since the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series is a result of a systematic bias towards the use of Army ranks in the Japanese-to-English translation process, and the related assertion that the Spacy's ranks should actually be translated as Navy ones since it operates a space fleet. (It's worth noting that the general idea that a bias exists is not entirely unreasonable, as the alleged bias can actually be demonstrated in the handiwork of machine translators like Google Translate and Babelfish. Those systems tend to pick whatever the first dictionary definition because their ability to detect context is limited or nonexistent.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    That could get messy. Is the novel Darth Plagueis still canon-ish? From what I've read, he was kind of a high-functioning psychopath from a very young age.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    According to Vol.3 of the Macross Frontier audio dramas, Colonel Jeffrey Wilder was a lifer in the New UN Spacy with a frankly impressive resume as a variable fighter pilot until some unspecified life event drove him to leave the military and join Strategic Military Services. (It may or may not have been his wife leaving him.) He is, however, acknowledged to be an avid enthusiast of water sports in his free time with a particular passion for surfing. What he's doing in that scene is using the Macross Quarter's Storming Attack mode to surf a piece of armor down into the atmosphere of the Vajra planet. Given his acknowledged passion for the sea in his off time, it wouldn't be surprising if he had boating experience as well. (Getting assigned to an emigrant fleet that had large simulated bodies of water must've been a dream come true for him.) Macross Frontier character designer Risa Ebata did acknowledge in interviews that the visual theme they went for when designing Jeffrey Wilder was that of a "pirate" and a "man of the sea", which is apparently why Kawamori insisted on the goggles he wears over his duty uniform. His passion for surfing was apparently determined early on but not properly touched on until the second movie. More like his hobby. They touch on his past career in the Macross Frontier audio dramas, and as a New UN Spacy fighter pilot he supposedly flew an impressive array of VFs over the years including the VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-17, VF-19, and VF-171.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Considering it's Rebecca Forstadt's tone-deaf caterwauling, the only thing I would say it could inspire would be suicide... or perhaps murder, whatever it takes to stop the Most Annoying Sound. (Seriously, it's like listening to someone insert a barbed-wire buttplug into a hungover cockatiel.) Ah, no... just as in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross version, the lolicon trio are pretty freaking stoked when they hear they're being delivered to their objective by none other than top ace [Milia/Miriya]. The ONLY hostility ever displayed was between the commanders, which was pretty much entirely work related. [Quamzin/Khyron] was PO'd because [Laplamiz/Azonia] put him on the shortest of short leashes to make him behave, and [Vrlitwhai/Breetai] was a bit snippy because she took his job and it took him a fair bit of political maneuvering to get it back (with interest) from their mutual boss. Zentradi men and women are segregated, but not mutually hostile. Mutually hostile was only a thing in DYRL?.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The official Macross timelines have always maintained that the Earth Unification Forces were originally created with four branches of service (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines) in 2001 and that the Spacy was a late addition two years later. The biographical summary from Isamu's personnel file that Guld accesses in Macross Plus mentions that Isamu's (involuntary) reassignments took him to a UN Navy posting aboard the carrier Enterprise (in 2035) and a UN Air Force posting on planet Iota (in 2039) in addition to his service in various UN Spacy postings. Macross Plus's official artbooks also made explicit references to the existence of the UN Spacy Air Force and UN Spacy Marine Corps after the First Space War ended. So the only technically unaccounted-for ones would be the UN Army and UN Marine Corps, and it seems relatively safe to assume that the miclone infantry and tanks we've seen are probably the regular Army. Some of the technical write-ups of VFs also mention branch-specific variants of postwar VFs like the UN Navy's VF-4D and VF-4S. Macross's animation focuses overwhelmingly on the Spacy, so we haven't really gotten a chance to dig into the rest of the armed forces in detail. In Macross II, there definitely seem to still be five branches of the UN Forces c.2092. We know that two of the uniform variants explicitly belong to the Spacy (black) and Army (khaki), and there were a few other variants like blue and green. Given Isamu's experience of being shuffled around to different branches of service without loss of rank depending on where his latest fed-up CO could dump him, I would surmise that the branches of the New Unification Forces are likely not as separate as we Americans would be predisposed to think. The way Isamu does it, it almost sounds like the branch affiliation is more indicative of where you're assigned. EDIT: I mean this mainly in the physical location sense. If you're in space and they attach you to a fleet it's a Spacy assignment, where manning static defenses might be a Spacy Air Force job or being assigned to an orbit-to-surface assault unit would land you in the Spacy Marines. I would assume both are likely combatant commands under the Spacy, and that the non-Spacy forces probably aren't very large.
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