Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12367

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing that I've seen... though I'd expect the answer probably has a good deal to do with the 25mm (27mm on the military model) railguns on the VF-31's forearms. By leaving the beam gunpod stowed in the ordnance container they can fire the railguns AND the beam gunpod at the same time, as they did on a few occasions in the series. Instead of foregoing a gruntier gunpod the way the VF-4 did or making it an either-or case like the VF-22, they found a way to have their cake and eat it too.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That, I must admit, adds a rather amusing dimension to Macross Delta having ripped off Macross II's gimmicks almost whole cloth but with far worse writing... particularly when you factor in that 4 is an unlucky number in Japan. There may be something in one of the books I haven't gotten to yet, but if it's anything like the other technologies that involve gravity manipulation it probably involves the exotic matter referred to as "heavy quantum". (Heavy quantum exists simultaneously in fold space and normal space, but its mass is incredibly high and exists mostly in fold space unless it's subjected to certain types of resonance fold effects. It's the substance used to produce intense gravity to compress fuel in thermonuclear reactors and is used in similar capacities in thermonuclear reaction and dimensional weapons.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    "Character development" is apparently a missed point... They had an entire episode devoted to this in the series. It was literally the exact same scene from the first episode of the TV series, just with Hayate's VF-31J substituted for the VF-171-II he was piloting before. This scene was in the TV series... ... you didn't really pay attention to the movie, did you? It's just demoted to a throwaway line, not gone entirely.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Different strokes for different folks, y'know? I'd be interested to know which version of the VF-19 is the most popular in Japan... my sample population for that is way, way too small to draw any conclusions but I have a feeling it's the Fire Valkyrie. It's possible that the staff was referencing either Delta Flight itself or the Protoculture's Delta Wave system that was crux of the plot even if it didn't show up until a few episodes before the end... or perhaps they were referencing the mathematical operator for Change. Sigma tends to be the favorite when they're pulling the mathematical gimmick though. Or... if you're in the mood for a spectacularly pedantic but otherwise entirely sound argument... the Siegfried Custom VF-31 does technically have a delta wing configuration. It uses the same wing configuration as the VF-19F/S type, which IS officially described as a hybrid of forward-swept and delta wing configurations. IMO it's more like a clipped delta with a forward-swept winglet stuck on, but I don't write the books. Curious that the VF-19F/S materials explicitly mention its delta wing characteristics but the Macross Delta materials that have been published for the VF-31C/E/F/J/S do not. Or Walkure Delta, considering how often the Macross aspects of the story take a backseat to promoting Walkure.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    My hopes for this series are not high. Since we've got a power outage that put the kibosh on my plans for the day, I've been reading the manga adaptation of the light novel and it's a mess. It legitimately takes at least fifteen LONG chapters (we're talking monthly serialization 30-50 page chapters) for them to even give Rimiru a humanoid form, and 20 chapters in I still have no sodding idea what's actually going on. It's almost stream of consciousness of Rimiru reacting to random bullsh*t that happens.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    You'll want to bring a snack... I got a bit wordy, as I am wont to do when a subject is worth analyzing in detail. The 5th Generation of Variable Fighters is shaping up to be a very interesting one, since for the first time we have multiple main fighters coming into service that AREN'T the result of deficient performance in a particular regime the way we had with the 2nd Generation's VF-4 and a parade of atmosphere-optimized designs like the VF-5, VF-5000, and VF-9. Yeah, I've found that to be a fairly common opinion among Western Macross fans. When it comes to forward-swept wings, there seems to be a strong preference for an all-or-nothing approach and a general feeling that the forward-swept winglet with delta wing combo on the space-use VF-19s and VF-31 Siegfried customs look stunted or somehow wrong.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Further to my last on the subject of Master File asserting the existence of NUNS VF-31S's, I did a little skim over the book's squadrons section and found that they aren't quite the same as Xaos's VF-31S... they seem to be just a VF-31A with the S-type monitor turret and forward-swept winglet.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The only VF-31s mentioned in connection with the Xaos branch HQ on Ragna are the Xaos 3rd Fighter Wing... composed of four flights, with Alpha, Beta, and Gamma using VF-31As and Delta using the ace custom Siegfried versions. All the information we've been given thus far has pointed to the Siegfrieds being modified VF-31A airframes specially tailored for the individual tastes and styles of the members of 3rd Fighter Wing Delta Flight. They've also implied that the reason there are five different variants of Siegfried, each with distinct differences in appearance and coloration, was (in-universe) to facilitate the celebrity status of Delta Flight by making its members easier to identify at a distance. As far as I've found, the only source that refers to the Siegfried custom VF-31s as though they were something intended for eventual production is Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried. Master File books aren't official setting material so... y'know. The book's contents are wildly inaccurate and focus primarily on Xaos's use of the VF-31, but it does treat the VF-31S as something that ended up in the New UN Spacy's inventory. That's probably the least bizarre divergence from canon in the book. Here's a somewhat more detailed analysis I did back in '17.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Ordinarily, I'd expect all of the platoons to be the same size... the TV series org chart showed fifteen fighters in three-plane platoons, so I'd expect the DYRL? version to be more like 20 planes in five 4 plane platoons. Given how little we see of the YF-29, I wouldn't hold my breath for a Master File book. I was a little surprised it got a passing mention in the VF-25 book, even if it was half for the sake of an obscure reference to the design the YF-29 was developed from: the SW-XA II Schneegans. Can't say... we've never actually seen a VF-31B. Apart from the five customized VF-31 "Siegfried" units operated by Xaos's Ragna branch 3rd Fighter Wing Δ flight, all of the VF-31s seen in Macross Delta are the VF-31A Kairos initial mass production type flown by Xaos. The Siegfried customs are all VF-31As that've been upgraded by replacing their FF-3001A Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines with a derated version of the YF-30's FF-3001/FC2 Stage II engines, installing a fold wave system and fold amps, exchanging the delta winglets for a forward-swept winglet, installing a customized integrated airframe management AI, and giving them lower-powered firearms for safer operation around civilians. No, the B is just a letter B... not a β. (Even then, for standard usage, β would still have been the 2nd mass production variant behind α, as on the SV-51.) The VF-31A and VF-31B are the first mass production variants of the VF-31 Kairos. The way they're described, the VF-31A and B seem to have the same relationship that the VF-11A and B or VF-19A and B did. The -A variant was the initial trial production variant used for its operational evaluation testing, and the -B variant based on the feedback from those tests is the first version to actually be widely adopted by the New UN Forces. The VF-31 Kairos is the next (5th) generation main fighter developed locally by the New UN Gov't member worlds of the Brisingr globular cluster (AKA the "Brisingr Alliance") to replace their aging fleet of VF-171 Nightmare Pluses. The VF-31 Siegfried is an Ace Custom unit that Xaos makes in-house by modifying stock VF-31As specifically for use by Δ flight. The variant letters that Xaos assigns to them are probably only for their internal use, rather than being official. It should probably properly be VF-31改. Neither the VF-31 nor the Sv-262 is all that impressive by 5th Generation VF standards, really. The VF-31A/B shares a lot of parts in common with the VF-25A, like its engines, EX-Gear, avionics, integrated airframe management AI, laser cannon, and missile launchers. Its performance is a bit lower than the VF-25's because it's a fair bit heavier thanks to the ordnance container system. Its only real improvements are the aforementioned ordnance container that makes configuring for a special mission easy as hot-swapping a FAST pack, the beam gunpod, and having those forearm-mounted railguns instead of machine guns or beam machine guns. You could say that it's almost certainly the lowest-performance 5th Generation fighter we've seen so far. The Siegfried custom version is a bit more impressive, but its performance still between the VF-25 and VF-27, and its guns are a bit less powerful than the military spec version's and it sacrifices the ordnance bays in the legs for multidrone racks. The Sv-262 Draken III's also hovering in that space between the VF-25 and VF-27, but it's a design that suffers from crippling overspecialization. It's dependent on conformal packs to carry missiles, and the only fixed armament it has is a pair of railguns (and a pair of lasers on the command type). Its design actually cripples it in space, since its complex VF-9-like transformation leaves less space internally for fuel tanks. It's very much an atmospheric dogfighter made for close-range combat, and since the honor-before-reason Aerial Knights insisted on having a sword the close combat blade's so fragile it can't be used unpowered the way the VF-25 or VF-31's knife can. (It came as something of a relief, since people were upset about the possibility of a new generation of fighters so soon after Frontier... instead, we just got some more regional 5th Generation VFs that really aren't all that impressive.) By the time the VF-31A/B Kairos finally makes it into New UN Spacy service in the Brisingr Alliance, the VF-19 and VF-22 will be 30 years old. Mr March is working on updates, but y'know... day jobs. I've been so preoccupied with my day job that I haven't spoken to him in a good while. I'm keeping the site's server ticking and all, but that's about it right now. I'm still plodding along on a project of my own that I'm trying to get launched in time for New Year's. Well, the most noteworthy accident we've heard about is the one that wasn't actually one... the 117th Research Fleet that was actually destroyed by the Vajra. One that we found out about via Delta was the Megaroad-04. It accidentally discovered the planet Windermere IV in 2027 when it hit a fold fault that knocked it back into realspace. (Incidents caused by fold faults vary... depending on how they're encountered they can either vastly increase the time disparity between objective and experienced time so that a fold jump takes DAYS longer than it would have, knock a ship out of higher dimensional space entirely, or even trap a ship in higher dimensional space and dooming it to be destroyed when its power runs out.) Either that or they're incredibly cynical... IIRC one or more of the Zentradi spies is an alcoholic, Vanessa and her husband run a bar.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's about where I am with it. Goblin Slayer himself is carrying the entire story, and the bits where the girls just get together and talk about him just highlights that he's the only one moving the story forwards. I put Witch in the love interests category, since the light novel leaves no doubt she wants the G... er... the D. She's what, the fifth or sixth woman who finds him to be irresistible? (Priestess, Guild Girl, Cow Girl, Sword Maiden, High Elf Archer... and the Witch makes six. Good thing Goblin Slayer is oblivious.) Chosen Heroine is like a fake alternate protagonist, but considering what happened to the last two of those in Goblin Slayer (Fighter and Sword Maiden), I have a nasty suspicion she'll be experiencing "goblin hospitality" sooner or later. Especially given that she was part of the framing device for volume five.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Admittedly it's not clear if the YF-29B Perceval was something that the federal New UN Forces had taken notice of, or just the particular (rogue) NUNS VF-X special forces squadron in question.1 (As the planet Uroboros had a factory satellite, Havamal wouldn't have had to twist too many arms before they got permission to use some of the planet's abundant fold quartz build a few YF-29B's.) Regrettably, we got the square root of bugger all. Literally all we're told about the YF-29B Perceval is that it's an improved version of the YF-29 used by Havamal's top aces. The only externally-visible improvement is that the fighter's heavy quantum beam gunpod has a bayonet now. Sort of. The Zentradi have known about them all along, but never really gave them much thought as it didn't really fit into their "Is it an enemy? Y/N" mindset. Humanity's fold technology wasn't all that great at the beginning, and their understanding of higher-dimensional spacetime was kind of rough, so there were supposedly a number of accidents and losses caused by miscalculated jumps and fold faults that weren't properly identified at the time. As time went on and humanity improved its understanding and its fold technology, such incidents became less common and fold travel became "faster" and more precise as humanity grew used to computing jumps that avoided or accounted for navigational hazards that could disrupt a jump or increase the disparity between experienced and objective time like fold faults and intense gravity fields. IMO, that fold jumps shown in earlier Macross shows are almost all short-ranged jumps of only a dozen to a couple dozen light years probably helped avoid areas of major fault activity. It wasn't until Macross Frontier that we actually saw ships folding close to a thousand light years at a time onscreen. Eden's only 11.7 light years from Earth, after all... and anything up to 20ly seems to be considered "short range", since that was the rated one-way capacity of an initial-type fold booster unit. I can only assume that the moon is somewhat light on entertainment and/or has incredible daycare facilities. IIRC, Macross 7 Docking Festival indicated that the Zentradi spies tended to crash at Vanessa's place, suggesting none of them married their Zentradi opposite numbers. 1. The New UN Spacy 815th Independent Squadron VF-X "Havamal".
  12. Seto Kaiba
    There are plenty of civilian mass-market publications that do that... I've got loads of 'em at home, and not just for fighters either. Not in the VF-1 volumes... I know those show up in the VF-19 book as part of its discussion of how the forward-swept wing affected its aerodynamics. The very first book has side-on plan views of GERWALK mode and front/rear, side, and top/bottom views of Battroid mode on literally the next two pages after fighter mode. There's also an entire volume devoted to the VF-1's Battroid mode. Neglecting the variable system they most certainly aren't.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    They never indicate that she's rendered all of the ships in orbit inoperable, we only see responses from the orbital weapons platforms. But she started hypnotizing everyone during Isamu's reentry... there likely wasn't anyone in a position to notice by the time they finally started shooting at each other. Basara is a Godmode Sue... but the fact that Basara was under a gargantuan amount of strain doing what he did in the VF-19 Custom is discussed, and shown that it was beyond what even one of the fleet's best active duty pilots could handle. A space fighter capable of hypersonic flight in double-digit mach regimes. The YF-29 is indicated to have been developed as a dedicated anti-Vajra variable fighter intended to exceed the capabilities of the YF-24. Whether it was actually successful in that regard is unclear, and the Frontier fleet probably didn't have a real way to make the comparison given that the YF-24 spec they were given was a redacted version. It was unsuitable for mass production anyway, thanks to its insane cost in terms of material requirements. It may technically not count anymore anyway, since we've seen that the New UN Spacy Special Forces appropriated the design and made a better version for themselves (in Macross 30) designated the YF-29B Perceval. Actually, that one's one anyone could've picked up on just by watching the show, no books needed. They used the same visual effect for the super fold booster in Macross Frontier that Macross Zero had used for the Birdhuman's fold jump. In short, a zero-time fold is "faster" because there is no disparity between the passage of time in the folding ship and realspace during the fold jump and it can traverse fold faults unimpeded. The downside is you need fold quartz to build a fold system capable of it, and since that stuff can't presently be synthesized it's not a technology that's going to be widely disseminated. Earth's total population in the wake of the First Space War was only about 9 million... 8 million of which were Zentradi. They've done a fair bit of growing since then, but it's worth noting that the Sol system has a lot of its population living in space colonies and on Mars. Earth may be the seat of the New UN Government parliament, but it's still a mostly-barren dump that's going to take somewhere on the order of 10,000 years to return to its pre-war state via the environmental reclamation tech the New UN Government is using. The New UN Government did have a cloning program going both to shore up the population and duplicate individuals with vital skills to crew emigrant ships, but shut it down in December 2030 due to a spike in the number of recessive genetic illnesses cropping up. The "donor" airframe that became Basara's VF-19 Custom was a locally-built VF-19F Excalibur, and the only real noted performance improvement was swapping the engines out for a more powerful model that had slightly more thrust than the VF-19S's. That's Macross 7 Docking Festival, IIRC. Kim was the only one of the bridge bunnies to stay in the military and not get married. Shammy's got 11 kids and lives on the moon. Vanessa and her husband have a club in Macross City. Interestingly, Zentradi spy Roli Dosel seems to have had a family too... his granddaughter appears in Macross the Musiculture, as a citizen of the Macross-29 fleet.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Even though I'm not much of a Harry Potter fan, I'll admit the first film had me interested enough that I'm actually quite eager to see where this is going.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'm more weirded out that giving something a name in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime takes magical power, to the extent that you can hurt yourself doing it. The sacrifices you have to make so a single-minded Silver-rank adventurer can get his occasional "I AM BATMAN" moments... I got through the first episode of this one and decided to give it a miss. I got the same Haruhi vibe from it, and decided that was a tall glass of Nope. (I can't stand the Haruhi Suzumiya stuff, esp. the titular protagonist, who I find irrationally annoying.) I'll say this for Goblin Slayer... it intrigued me enough to actually look up the original light novels to read. At time of writing, I'm 3/4 of the way through the fourth volume of Yen Press's translation of the light novels. (This is the third series this year to do that... a new personal best for the industry.) Quite frankly, if the anime opts to leave the blatant torture porn, excessive fanservice, and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge tabletop gaming references on the cutting room floor I will consider it to be an enormous improvement. It's not often I read a book that prompts me to start judging the author's lifestyle choices, but I can't help coming away from Goblin Slayer with a sneaking suspicion that its author is that one guy every game store seems to have who talks a lot of misogynistic crap when no women are around, has never had a girlfriend, and exclusively plays armies like WHFB Dark Elves or WH40K Slaaneshi Daemons because of the "sexy" miniatures and their memetic rapey-ness. All the women in Goblin Slayer seem to fall into one of two categories: the one-sided love interests which Kumo Kagyu can't resist describing in fits of sexually-charged purple prose, and the women who've been assaulted by goblins. The prequel manga is a bit more even-handed in dispensing abuse, but only a bit. It's overwhelmingly the women who are the victims in Goblin Slayer, despite there being roughly equal numbers of male and female adventurers. It's enough to make you suspect that the author has something against women. Goblin Slayer himself is an interesting Byronic hero with a lot of potential... but it keeps getting lost amidst the fanservice and torture porn. If the anime wants to cut as much of that crap out as it can and focus on the titular character, I am 200% behind it. It's cute, but that's about all it has to recommend it... my girlfriend seems to like it though. Does it ever get past this and develop something resembling a plot? The OP gives one such hope that there's an epic story in the offing, but so far it's Faffing About as a Slime. I gave up on this one a while ago... Fate is, IMO, a played-out property that only ever really had two or three good character designs. This feels like they're trying to inject novelty by copying whatever was popular at the time. Namely, Shokugeki no Soma. Honestly, the insanity of it all reminds me a bit of Wandaba Style... which never really stopped being about the weird. Looking at the new offerings on Crunchyroll, there are one of two that I'm thinking of giving a go. One is Skeleton Bookseller Honda-san, which just looks so incredibly bizarre I can't help but be a bit curious. The other is Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary, which I've heard almost nothing about except that it's based on a Taiwanese game, which sounds novel enough.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    She elevates the orbital defense network's readiness level, but it isn't until well after Isamu's reentry starts that she obtained control of the people... who could have reacted to the YF-19's approach via all manner of unpleasantness like gun turrets, missile launchers, fighters... Weapons fire is often surprisingly difficult to see at a distance... so that's arguably a spot of Truth in Television. Unless someone were looking in precisely the right direction at the time, it's unlikely the fight would've been spotted (or heard, as long as it remained at high altitudes). Also, remember that all of this went down during the 30th Anniversary celebration for the armistice that ended the First Space War. A fair chunk of Earth's sparse population was likely in Macross City for the event, and it would have taken some time for word of the fight to reach the military via law enforcement. (Assuming anyone was still in possession of their faculties enough to actually place a call...) That the VF-19's excessive maneuverability puts an enormous strain on even experienced pilots does come up in Macross 7, which ran concurrently with Macross Plus. It ended up the focus of an episode devoted to Gamlin's one-sided rivalry with Basara. No, it isn't... The line about the New UN Government withholding the best tech from the emigrant forces was a factoid that was originally applied only to the YF-24, as a justification for individual emigrant fleets developing their own related fighters based on its redacted specs. That arms export restriction bit wasn't retroactively applied to the VF-19 until over two years after Macross Frontier's TV series was over. (Via Macross R's first chapter in January 2011.) The contemporary explanation for the VF-171 having beaten out the VF-19 for next main fighter in the 4th Generation was that it was an inexpensive fighter with excellent cost performance that was easy for even average pilots to get the most out of... where the VF-19 was a money pit with cruelly unforgiving handling that put it beyond the reach of the average pilot.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    The YF-19's defold was detected, true... but we see Sharon Apple send the defense grid to its highest readiness level1, and it could easily be argued that the YF-19's possession of a valid friendly IFF code and prototype 3rd Generation active stealth system did a lot of the heavy lifting, preventing the grid from firing on him until he attacked it first and working with the debris he created to prevent missile stations and gun satellites from establishing a positive lock until he reached an altitude where their programming forbade firing. Sharon didn't have full control of Earth's defenses until well after Isamu's reentry started though... That wouldn't have been possible even if the pilots weren't hypnotized. Both the YF-19 and YF-21 were equipped with prototype 3rd Generation active stealth systems. As we saw when Isamu was flying a VF-11B as a chase plane during one of Guld's tests earlier on, that prototype system was capable of rendering the fighter equipped with it invisible to a previous-gen radar system even at a range of only a few dozen meters. If its capabilities were similar to its mass production spec, it was also effective against ground- and ship-based radar systems at range. The YF-19 and YF-21 were, for all practical intents and purposes, invisible to everything but each other and the orbit-based camera and LIDAR systems. Funnily enough, it's more like the coup de grace than the main reason. The same fundamental instability of control that made the YF-19 such an impressive specimen and had caused a number of crashes during testing (both simulated and actual), proved to be the most insurmountable obstacle to adopting the VF-19. When the NUNS started to introduce the VF-19A, they found out pretty fast that a fighter that sorely tests the abilities of the finest test pilots was an absolute nightmare for the rank-and-file to fly. There were a large number of incidents were pilots lost control of the VF-19, which combined with its high cost of operation, caused the NUNS to just throw up their hands and admit they needed something a bit less insane. Having the New UN Government waltz in and say "even if you fix this, we're still putting some very strict restrictions on exports" probably had Shinsei thinking "Et tu, Brute" awful loud. All the same, Shinsei invested a fair amount of time on trying to resolve the control problems, resulting in them developing the 2nd mass production type, starting from the VF-19F. (As an explanation for the VF-171, it meshes rather neatly with what we saw in Plus and 7 regarding the difficulties these fighters posed for even elite test pilots and special forces aces.) 1. In an acknowledged error, the readiness level is given as "DEFCON 5". Many writers mistake DEFCON 5 for the highest level because it has the biggest number, when in reality DEFCON 1 is the highest readiness level... particularly writers who aren't American.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, Priestess did wonder what a good goblin would be like... and Goblin Slayer's reaction to the goblins in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime would be an amazing thing in its own right. Three episodes into That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and I'll admit I have no clue where this is headed. The OP suggests we're in for some standard action/fantasy type stuff, but so far it's mostly just the titular slime (Rimiru?) dicking around. I am a bit surprised that Rimiru doesn't seem to have thought to question the RPG elements in the world yet... or the obviously computerized voice in his head.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That's kind of the point, though... The Variable Fighter Master File books aren't written to be uber-detailed technical manuals, they're written as in-universe civilian mass market books about the development and service history of the featured model of variable fighter. They're basically the Macross universe's equivalent of the books Haynes publishes about modern fighter jets that any schmuck can buy at Barnes and Noble. That keeps them accessible to their actual intended audience, Macross fans who don't have backgrounds in aerospace engineering and nuclear physics.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Isamu's one-man air raid on Macross City had knock-on effects that are still being felt almost thirty years later. Sharon Apple going berserk (partly because of Isamu) caused the New UN Forces to reevaluate the stability and safety of the new artificial intelligence technology the Macross Concern developed for the AIF-9. In the short term, it basically killed the New UN Forces' plans to transition to unmanned fighters stone dead. It also resulted in the deliberate crippling of unmanned fighter AIs to ensure a similar berserk incident would never occur again, indirectly resulting in the AIF-7 Ghosts the NUNS was using in Macross Frontier. The political fallout of the YF-19 and YF-21 independently breaking through Earth's orbital defense network administered the coup de grace to the New UN Spacy's plans to adopt the VF-19, handing victory in Project Super Nova to General Galaxy for the VF-171 after trial production had begun on the VF-19. Arguably the New UN Government's refusal to share the full spec VF-24 could even be chalked up to that, resulting in the emigrant fleets having to develop their own new fighters using redacted versions of the specs or buying monkey models. "Nice job breaking it, hero" doesn't begin to cover it. We get a bit of a look at this kind of problem in Macross M3, Macross Digital Mission VF-X, Macross VF-X2, and Macross R when it comes to the kind of problems that can be caused when terrorists or anti-government forces get their hands on New UN Forces hardware. Macross Chronicle drops a hint/suggestion that Mariafokina Barnrose, the de facto leader of the pro-autonomy militarized group Vindirance, is actually Therese Jenius operating under an alias and with the covert assistance of her father. Vindirance is only nominally an anti-government group... in truth, the organization was more like a proxy the pro-autonomy faction was using to oppose governmental and military overreach by the Earth-supremacist faction Latence, who wanted to transfer more authority to the central gov't and military. A fair portion of Macross VF-X2's plot is the VF-X Ravens being manipulated by Latence's members in the NUNS brass to wipe out armed anti-Latence organizations like Black Rainbow and Vindirance. The pro-autonomy group didn't want to leave the New UN Government... they just wanted colonies to have more authority to govern their own internal affairs. Think of it as the spacefuture version of that old "States rights vs. Federal rights" issue that US politics has been chewing over for nearly 250 years now. The problem, as Kawamori described it, was essentially that the mechanics of space fold being what they were, the New UN Government in its strong centralized government form just wasn't up to the challenge of micromanaging affairs of state on colony worlds that were ten years away by fold. The result was an ideological split: One faction (Latence) favored maintaining the strong central government and giving Earth and the New UN Forces more authority over the colonies. They argued that the only way humanity would survive would be to present a united front against threats like the Zentradi. The other faction (Vindirance) wanted to bow to practicality and have the central government devolve more authority to the individual colonial governments. They argued that it would be more effective for the local governments to make their own judgement calls on the little stuff because of the time lag in long-range communications with Earth. Macross VF-X2's conclusion was basically the centerpiece of the Second Unification War... when the forces loyal to the Latence faction launched a coup against the New UN Government using Macross 13 to seize power in the Sol system. The New UN Government's reorganization took it from being something like the US federal gov't to something more like the European Union. They also put more controls on the New UN Forces as a way to prevent the military from abusing its authority the way it had done under Latence. Alas, no... all we know of the VF-24 is that the YF-24 Evolution was approved for adoption as the 5th Generation VF of Earth and the federal New UN Forces in 2057. It must be pretty incredible, given it was deemed too awesome to share with the colonies, who got heavily redacted versions of its specs to build their own VFs from and the YF-29 is said to have been an effort to exceed its performance. Blame the Birdhuman... in hindsight, that was pretty obviously a zero-time fold effect, and humanity didn't have that technology until at least 2059, so it'd have to have been the Birdhuman. I actually cited the wrong block number there. Somehow, I always turn first to the page with the typo in This is Animation: Macross Plus. Mea culpa. Mea maxima f***ing culpa. That 5 should be a 6. I don't believe there's been an official canon statement as to the total number of production blocks the VF-1 had. Variable Fighter Master File says VF-1 mass production included 17 blocks. (AFAIK, the only other VF with officially-stated block numbers is the VF-171, which uses block numbers inspired by the F/A-18.) The only set of differences that's discussed in depth in an official source is the difference between Blocks 1-5 and Blocks 6 and later, AKA the TV and Movie versions. The most obvious change was they totally retooled the cockpit, consolidating the controls to a true HOTAS setup, replacing that three-panel main monitor with a single hexagonal display, replacing the conventional HUD with a holographic on-canopy projection system, and installing a new ejection seat. Other updates also included the new, squarer hand design and a higher maximum engine output of 240% maximum rated power (as visible on the throttle lever graphics). Block 6 and later were also where the VT-1 replaced the VF-1D and the VE-1 replaced the VEFR-1. Canonically, though not onscreen, Block 6 entered service before the ending of the First Space War and many of the VFs on the ARMDs that were up in Earth orbit when Boddole Zer razed the planet were Block 6. Variable Fighter Master File throws another unofficial one in there, asserting that Blocks 6-8 swapped the FF-2001 engines for a newer model designated FF-2006. (Master File has a rather long, non-canon list of block differences for all 17 blocks.) She literally ran away from the NUNS because she was only a mediocre pilot who couldn't stand the pressure of the expectations on her as a result of the family legacy. One of the first things we see of her is that she's not even as good as the other members of Delta Flight, missing the timing on their rehearsed airshow... which Hayate calls her on in episode 2. She gets called on her mediocre performance several times in the series by Messer, who even tells her flat-out she's not a good enough pilot to attempt non-lethal takedowns on Var-infected friendlies. Unfortunately we never get to see her measure her skills against an actual experienced pilot... she's only shown to be moderately effective against Var-infected local NUNS troops, and they're a bush league outfit flying decades-old fighters. The Aerial Knights were all combat virgins prior to their attack on Al Shahal in episode 1, so they're no fair indicator either. The question being... was she at some other organization trying to become a mechanic prior to that? That's one of the things I don't really buy about her character. She's allegedly the head mechanic on the Aether according to her bio... but we never see her actually do anything. The few things she allegedly created for Walkure are, to those who paid attention, just worse versions of off-the-shelf technology used by characters in previous shows (like Sheryl Nome). It's the same situation as Reina allegedly being a super-hacker despite being so bad at her job that she mostly only succeeds when the enemy lets her, and is foiled by a simple electronic door lock. A bio that writes a check the show can't cash.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Surely there are healthier ways to inflict pain on yourself if you're determined to suffer. Like flagellation... or solving the Lament Configuration. It's subjective... in the sense that Robotech fans whose slavish devotion to the franchise has led them to ignore thirty-odd years of progress in anime, science fiction, and comic books could conceivably mistake it for quality, if only that the art is clearly more professional than the amateur-hour garbage that was the standard under Comico, Academy, Eternity, and Antarctic. Everyone else seems to be more or less on the same page when it comes to regarding the comic as singularly unlovely art coupled to cringeworthy writing in a sad attempt to do a gritty reboot of Harmony Gold's adaptation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. There's a not-unreasonable suspicion that someone on the art staff has a dental fetish, going for a photorealistic art style was a huge mistake, and their stolen "original" VF design is pretty damned hideous. Harmony Gold shares your assessment... they actually publicly disowned all the old comics as low-quality garbage that resulted from their failing to exercise proper quality control over licensee works back in 2006. Art-wise? Yes... it's painful to look at. The writing is as cringe-inducingly bad as you'd expect from Robotech. All too often the dialog is painful in a "teenager watching your dad try to use modern slang and do it wrong" sort of way. Everything in the comic is pretty obviously derivative... and they've already more or less spoiled the ending by revealing that the SDF-1 is part of a bootstrap paradox and keeps going back in time, crashing on Earth, getting restored, launching, and going back in time.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The biggest item on that list is the VF-XS Valkyrie II... a name/designation that was foisted on a few different designs for the OVA in the promotional materials that were published before Macross II's first episode was released. (I sacrificed a few books from my personal collection to fill out the M3 site's Macross II line art, and Mr March hired an artist to redraw some of the art.) http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross2/vf-xs.htm http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross2/vf-xs-super.htm The first design to receive that name/designation was Kazumi Fujita's original concept version of the VF-2SS, which had a more traditional-looking gunpod and set of FAST Packs. as well as a number of airbrakes. The name was later applied to the design that would later be called the VF-2JA Icarus and later the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie before their final names were revealed. Many moons ago I used to use a version of the VF-XS art crudely merged with the VF-2SS to create a new VF-2SS variant for an RPG I was running. I've also got art for some alternate color schemes for the VF-XX and VF-2JA that weren't used in the OVA, like this white and red scheme that was used for a Macross calendar. There's some art for the VF-2SS's landing gear as well, though that isn't undocumented so much as frequently-ignored by a host of official publications. There are also a few tidbits here and there like an unused design for a pistol that was supposed to be Sylvie's sidearm.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The perils of a ruthlessly analytical mindset, I'm afraid... ^^; ... now that I think on it, you may be precisely right. It's not something the show or supplemental publications talk about, but close to half of Macross Delta's main cast on the Xaos side are working there because a promising career elsewhere died a messy death. Ernest Johnson ended up at Xaos after King Grammier VI let him go from his position as the Kingdom of the Wind's military advisor in 2060. IIRC, in the novelization he'd ended up as a mercenary in the first place because the military revoked his commission due to him being a member of Latence. Arad Molders ended up at Xaos after resigning his commission in the New UN Spacy over his guilt about the Windermere war of independence. Messer Ihlefeld ended up at Xaos after resigning his commission with the Aifheim NUNS over the trauma of realizing the destruction he'd caused after going Var during the Var riots there. Mirage Jenius ended up at Xaos after resigning her commission in the New UN Spacy over her difficulties coping with guilt after participating in the suppression of an anti-government group that hijacked a colony ship. Hayate Immelmann ended up at Xaos after being fired from his previous job on Al Shahal for skiving, because he had nowhere else to go. Kaname Buccaneer ended up at Xaos after her career as a solo idol failed to take off and she was picked up for her fold receptor factor. Reina Prowler ended up at Xaos because she's a "caged crook" who was given the choice of working there or going to prison after being caught hacking the company. Chuck may or may not belong on that list... his statements about his own background suggest he may have been a NUNS soldier who quit after having to fight humans. Mikumo's a clone who is more or less a slave, so she's not working there by choice. Makina's status is uncertain. Freyja is the only one we know of for whom Xaos was her #1 choice of employer.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I doubt it. Xaos is a small, underfunded, and woefully understaffed PMC that operates out in the space boonies to avoid having to compete for business against more capable outfits like SMS. Even if they weren't also eyebrow-deep in red ink and likely in hot water after the government that contracted them as a supplement to its defence forces fell due to the very thing they were contracted to protect against, I don't see a lot of potential for upward mobility inside that (troubled) organization. As much as I like Mirage as a character, being leapfrogged by Hayate in skill literally means she's the worst pilot in Delta Flight. She doesn't have much in the way of prospects for advancement, even if she improves. Transferring out to lead one of the other three flights would arguably be a demotion, and she'd be back to the bottom of the barrel if she went back to the NUNS or joined another PMC like SMS. I think they'll stick to the idea that she's a subversion of the idea (in-universe and out) that being a Jenius automatically means you're an amazing pilot.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... I wonder if someone in authority told them off for tracing from photos of Macross toys? Don't tell me you opened this dreadful tome expecting quality work. FFS, the One Word Warning of Crap Quality is right there on the cover: "ROBOTECH".
×
×
  • Create New...