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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Headed up by the Macross-13 under General Kim Kabirov, c.2059. Ja, like Apollo Base. Hikaru was stationed there for a bit during the timeskip, IIRC. Gamlin's a Martian boy, born and raised, so yeah. H.G. Wells City, represent! @sketchley has a reasonable list on the RPG section of his site. http://sdfyodogawa.mywebcommunity.org/Stats/Locations/Locations.php ... several. Twenty or so of the bloody things have been relocated to the Sol system, there's one orbiting Eden, one orbiting Uroboros, and one or two others I'm sure I've forgotten.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Logistically, that doesn't make a ton of sense... by the time the VF-1X+ and VF-1Z are a thing, the New UN Forces have 2nd and 3rd Gen VFs that are being phased out. Why keep a squadron of museum pieces around and combat-ready at that point? I'm not sure that's a great example, as the Super Turcano is a modern aircraft in every respect except for the turboprop engine it's using. Bringing VF-1s along in the regular armed forces would be like bringing a platoon of old M4 Sherman tanks in your brigade of M1 Abrams MBTs, or having a squadron of old P-80 Shooting Stars in your carrier air wing alongside F/A-18F Super Hornets. Yeah, allegedly as a mixture of refurbished early block machines and new builds.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    As far as we know, Destroids in general seem to have fallen out of favor with the (New) UN Forces in the decade or so following the First Space War. Apart from a unit or two that end up in enemy hands in April 2030, the only times we see a Monster outside of the later VB-6 Konig Monster is when a Mk.II unit was used as a static target for live fire testing of the YF-19-2's optional weapon packages in 2040 and a unit that'd been surplussed out of service and given to its now-elderly former crew in Macross 7. (Unless you want to count the Gjagravan Va and Annabella Lasiodora from Macross VF-X2, there don't seem to have been any new Destroid designs developed after the First Space War... just some ad-hoc upgrades and modernizations of 50 year old designs like the Cheyenne II and the Macross Galaxy fleet's Super Defender.) Apart from the vanilla VF-1X - allegedly a 2018 vintage service life extension update - those were essentially Special Forces-only limited updates to the VF-1 Valkyrie or units built specifically for the civilian market. They weren't what Master File is talking about in the Battroid Valkyrie book WRT the VF-1 remaining in frontline service as a main variable fighter for... reasons. Master File flipflops a bit on that, like a bunch of the VF-1P's having allegedly been made by updating mothballed VF-1's. Mass production of the VF-1 Valkyrie ended in late 2015. Existing units were modernized over time and limited numbers of new units were built to order thereafter. Shinsei Industry delivered the VF-1X+ in 2047, which is the latest one we have a firm date for in official setting materials. The VF-1X++ is supposedly an aftermarket improvement of the VF-1X+. Master File added a VF-1Z in the Battroid Valkyrie book that is apparently a further improvement on the VF-1X+, which also serves as the basis for conversion into the VF-1EX type seen in the Macross Delta series in its version of things. Whether that's applicable to the official setting is unknown. We don't know if the VF-1EX was used by the New UN Forces, but if it was and it was a factory build rather than an aftermarket modification, it would bump that from 2047 into the 2060s. Shinsei is, however, still building the VF-1 Valkyrie for civilian markets - like the VT-1 Ostrich and VF-1C Civilian Valkyrie - apparently well into the 2050s if not beyond. The VB-6 Konig Monster, which entered production in 2032. None that we've seen... the last model we know of was the Mk.II that came into service prior to the First Space War. The only ones we've seen used in actual combat were the retirees decommissioned unit in Macross 7 (2045) where they failed miserably at hitting anything and downed a large-ish building in the process, and the pair of units deployed by terrorists on Bellfan in 2030 which had been upgraded with barrier systems which were downed by the prototype YF-11-2.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it does help that Master File is not official setting material... they can take more liberties because anything they say about the timeline may or may not actually apply depending on Kawamori's mood and/or what they were serving for lunch in the cafeteria at Satelight that day. That particular factoid is actually from the VF-25 Master File rather than the VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie one. Apart from clearing up one or two vague bits from the official setting line art like the "sensor" on the leading edge of the wing glove, the VF-11 Master File was mostly an unremarkable book that didn't push any particular envelopes and didnt do anything to rock the boat. That it contained art of the VF-11 with both the old and new markings was not surprising given that the VF-11 Thunderbolt is known to have still been in the process of being phased out and decommissioned c.2058 even in the wealthier fleets like Macross Frontier (MtR).
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That's a question with a fuzzy answer... because the story isn't altogether consistent on when the "New UN" markings became a thing. Variable Fighter Master File treats the New UN Forces as having come into existence at the same time as the New UN Government was inaugurated back in 2010. Their version of the story has it that, when the New UN Government decided to update the New UN Forces' markings, Earth and the oldest emigrant planets dragged their heels on adopting them to hold onto the old UN Forces kites as long as possible out of a sense of patriotic pride. They finally achieved universal adoption of the new markings in the 2050s, in the wake of the Second Unification War and the military reorganization that followed. Official setting materials are a bit less consistent on that score. Macross the Ride posits that the New UN Forces didn't exist until the military reorganization in 2051 after the failed Latence coup later referred to as the Second Unification War (Macross VF-X2). This reasoning doesn't quite work because Ozma is shown flying a VF-171 with NUNS markings in 2048. (Kawamori himself seems to have repeatedly forgotten that the New UN Government existed in the original series... which doesn't help.) Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie, from whence this image comes, contends that large numbers of VF-1s were kept in military service for various reasons and were, over time, updated for compatibility with newer models of weaponry to streamline logistics. Since that had never been alluded to before, the answer would technically be "When this book came out".
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Frankly, my bet is on CBS trying to brazen it out and pushing Star Trek: Picard as-is rather than reversing course and either tactly or explicitly admitting that the entire direction they set for the Star Trek franchise five years ago was a massive mistake. They've got Amazon's money already, so they're not going to want to give it back and take a second substantial loss on development costs for a Star Trek show. (Rumor has it they're upside-down $200M on Discovery right now.) I think there's something to the idea that was used to poke fun at a bunch of the rejected Star Trek series pitches in the DTI novels... treat it as a bad alternate timeline that was created by hostile powers in the Temporal Cold War and retroactively prevented by the intervention of temporal agents from the Temporal Integrity Commission and/or Federation Temporal Agency. (The DTI novels attributed a few bombed Trek pitches, like the 25th century cartoon proposal about a galaxy where omega particle weapons destroyed subspace and left most of the galaxy un-navigateable, to the work of Future Guy from Enterprise... listed when FTA agents read the charges against him during his arrest.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yup.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that is what happens when you let Jar-Jar Abrams and his hangers-on run your franchise... but Hollywood never learns. Now that Kurtzman and Bad Robot are apparently out of Star Trek, I wonder what'll happen to Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery. Netflix seems content to let Discovery languish in de facto cancellation without a budget, but CBS is in a weird spot with Star Trek: Picard thanks to audiences hating it in test screenings, a distributor who's suffering buyer's remorse, and a lot of cash sunk into ongoing production. I'm wondering if they're going to plow ahead with the Kelvin-esque aesthetic or they'll try to rework it now that they're free of Bad Robot and Kurtzman.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    A loose partnership of fan translators, collaborating on the creation of a comprehensive Macross official setting reference. Our goal is to do full translations of a lot of the books that've only been tackled in a piecemeal fashion and host the translations directly alongside the articles referencing them. We're keeping the group name under wraps until we've got the domain registrations sorted out. Not yet. Our site's still under development. When it launches, we'll create a thread in the Homepages section of the forums here.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. It's on my group's to-do list but it'll likely be a while yet before we get to it.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    There might be a hinge at the base, but what you're seeing in that picture is a T-tail similar to the ones on the Gloster Javelin or F-104 Starfighter. Though, from the line art, it seems to differ from the F-104's in one crucial regard: the tail appears to have a conventional horizontal stabilizer and elevator configuration instead of stabilators like the F-101 Voodoo or the F-104 Starfighter (where the whole horizontal stabilizer itself moved as a control surface). As a whole, the design is inspired by the F-104. That's probably where the two legs join to form the engine nacelle.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Heavy quantum beam weapons draw a LOT of power... so much so that a dedicated reactor or the 3rd Gen Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines (or in one case, both) seem to be necessary to operate one. My guess would be that it's probably a stealth rotary cannon like the VF-171's GU-14B or MC-17C. The Sv-154 Svard's allegedly a little better than the VF-171 in atmospheric combat, but as it's a mass production export model being built for the local planetary defense force of a relatively poor New UN Government member world with a low level of technological development I'd expect a design that focuses on being simple but effective without a lot of frills or unnecessary sophistication. Sorry for the crap quality of the picture, devices with photographic capabilities aren't allowed in my workplace (forward model development, y'know?) so I had to make do with a picture someone posted on a Yahoo! Japan blog. From what I've read, the Svard was designed to exploit the superior physical abilities of the Windermerean pilots flying it, like the Sv-262 was.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    If that's how it is, do I have to call you Commissioner? Yeah, someone on the art/writing staff for Master File seems to have failed a knowledge check... 「全長: 515m」 Failed it REAL hard. The CVN-99 Asuka II is, as you've indicated, officially 276m long. On page 079 of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix they have it incorrectly listed as 515m long... which would explain its magical ability to fit four VF-0s in the space between the island and the catapults in the art from page 097. They've got her drawn almost twice her actual size, closer to the scale of the CVS-101 Prometheus.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Presumably it works the same way the Sv-262'd dual nozzle does. Incidentally, I am a blind idiot as I apparently never noticed until I bothered to look at the uncolored line art... its gunpod is fit flush to the ventral hull, in much the same way that the SV-262's is flush to the dorsal hull. There is that, but the conformal packs on the Draken III look to be much higher capacity and we know they're disposable, whereas these launchers are built directly into the wing and would be more difficult to service.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Considering who developed it, the Svard's gunpod is probably internally stored similar to the VF-14's or VF-17's. We know almost nothing about it, except: It was developed by General Galaxy's SV Works team, who were sold off to the Epsilon Foundation subsidiary Dian Cecht.,, as such, it technically is a descendant of the design lineage of the SV-51 and SV-52 from the Unification Wars, since the SV Works were founded by a defector from the SV-51's design team who later cofounded General Galaxy. It was Windermere IV's main variable fighter throughout the 2050s and into the early 2060s. Its facing competition was the VF-171-II Nightmare Plus, which almost certainly makes it a 4th Generation VF (with all that entails). Its design, like so many Kawamori designs, is an updated reuse of a concept Kawamori created for an earlier project. In this case, Air Cavalry Chronicles... the series concept which was developed into his fantasy series The Vision of Escaflowne. Its original name was the LV-7 Valorous Rapier, one of three models of transformable fighter operated by Fanelia (the home nation of Escaflowne's protagonist Prince Van Fanel). Given Windermere IV's demonstrated tactical priorities, it seems a safe bet the Svard was probably an atmospheric VF with less than stellar endurance in space like its replacement, the 5th Generation Sv-262 Draken III. That would've been to its advantage during Windermere IV's 2060 war of independence, when it was facing off against the largely space-optimized VF-171-IIs of the Brisingr Alliance New UN Forces. (Entertainingly, the LV-7 design had a big freaking sword just like the Draken III does in Macross Delta's final episode.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    More than the lack of someone with lasting power in Hollywood, anime adaptations have repeatedly proven to not be profitable... that's a pretty big barrier to entry too. Alita: Battle Angel took Cameron years and, as the best-performing anime adaptation thus far, it's not even clear if it actually turned a profit or not once the marketing expenses for it were factored in. The Robotech license is just a case of studios buying up similar stories to a successful property, to deny them to rivals. They've only been noticed thanks to Michael Bay's Transformers movies making bank for Paramount, due to the happy accident of being a contemporary of the G1 Transformers show. We tried that... it was called Astro Plan, and it was so hilariously bad that we successfully trolled Robotech fans into thinking HG had licensed it. Bingo. Banky is Harmony Gold's version of Baghdad Bob... his job is to tell the Robotech faithful that everything is fine, that Robotech will triumph over the Macross infidels, and that they totally needn't worry about the crumbling sounds from behind the curtain that absolutely are not the franchise collapsing like a biscuit raft in a gale.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    So it's more an unofficial live action adaptation for Gate: Thus the Japanese Self-Defense Force Fought There?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, but the plot of the original Transformers series was pretty thin on the ground and largely episodic... so they could easily get away with porting over the iconic characters and a few set pieces in vaguely familiar guises, because the franchise had a large and devoted fandom. That franchise was always merchandise-driven rather than story-driven. Its fans were not expecting anything particularly deep or sophisticated from its story... they came for giant robots beating the tar out of each other, and that is precisely what the movies delivered. Yes, that is pretty much exactly what I'm saying. If you remove the fundamental characteristics of a Macross story from a Macross project - the aliens/space war, the love story, the power of song/music as communication, and the fundamentally optimistic/idealistic outlook - then it's not really a Macross story anymore. You can put the Macross title on it and try to fit it into Macross's timeline, but that will not make it a Macross story. (Essentially, I'm distinguishing between "a story with the word Macross in the title" and "a story that's thematically consistent with Macross".) If you look at the Macross franchise's history, you'll see the underperforming installments are all ones that tried to remove one or more of those characteristics of a Macross story. IMO, it's more like we're splitting hairs over what it'll take for a theoretical Macross movie to come out and make a lasting impact, build the fandom, etc. rather than coming out and being the Flavor of the Week that's immediately forgotten when a new sci-fi/action movie comes out. *cough* MOSPEADA and Southern Cross what? They don't seem to have actually gotten monetary damages on many of the occasions they've sued or threatened to sue... their stake in it is more a steady trickle of income from its merchandise and home video releases since all production costs were paid off ages ago. HG reps, including the famously deceptive McKeever himself, were quite open about their bosses only really caring about the profits from the official website store. For now, their plan seems to be selling or giving away licenses to indie toy makers and toy bootleggers to get something with their name on it out there... they've had a number of high profile crash-and-burns lately, so they're looking to put one in the wins column after Palladium Books and their own Kickstarter misadventure left them with more egg on their face than an industrial chicken farm could furnish in a year. It's Banky... it'll be BS. They wouldn't send Kevin the Coffee Boy if they were going to be imparting news of actual import.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    There's a bit of a difference between leaving out the core set pieces of an entire franchise and not adapting events from the first 8 minutes of the first episode of the first TV series that had at-most negligible plot relevance until they were revisited by a sequel TV series made over a decade later. Kawamori did try to get the basic Macross original series plot adapted in that cancelled project Macross: Final Outpost: Earth... so he found at least one producer in Hollywood willing to take a whack at a largely faithful Macross film before they shelved it. Really, I don't think Macross is a setting or story suited to a western live action adaptation... and I'm not at all put out that there's no plans for such an adaptation. If you take the music, the romance, and the optimism - the heart and soul of Macross - out of Macross, what you've got left when it's all done is flat and lifeless... we call that Robotech. That's why Macross Zero and Macross Plus weren't as well received in Japan as other Macross titles. They lacked that upbeat Macross love-conquers-all spirit. If you want a more grounded conflict without most of the SF elements between a world government and an anti-government force, you're basically just remaking Mobile Suit Gundam: MS IGLOO. You don't keep long-term fans by sacrificing the story's spirit. That's why the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies were a string of flops... they sacrificed the optimistic spirit of exporation in the original Star Trek for a darker, grittier, more conflict-heavy setting that got a lot of one-time casual views but failed to attract a following because it was ONLY mildly entertaining... there was no depth to it at all, no feeling, and no real sense of attachment to anything.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Some LGBTQ aspects are more accepted in the west now than compared to 3 decades ago. In fact, that'd probably be why they'd dump Yellow's crossdressing. Apart from his bio implying he was a bit of a Japanophile1, Yellow Belmont's crossdressing was for purely pragmatic purposes of disguise as a Mars Base soldier and resistance fighter. That could very easily turn into something the trans community would get up in arms about and cause some internet outrage. Rey's reaction to learning Yellow's real identity was played for laughs in the anime, but play it for laughs or play it straight you can bet it'll garner cries of "transphobic!" if they were to do it in a live-action series or movie. Then there's the inevitable backlash from the demographics who, for whatever reason, condemn that kind of thing and all of their fussing. I'd expect studios to be rather gunshy about that kind of thing after the way the accusations of whitewashing hurt Ghost in the Shell (2017) both before and after release and the brouhaha over Star Trek's first gay couple on Star Trek: Discovery where the writers could do no right. Then there's all the markets where LGBTQ stuff isn't as accepted as it is in the US... No, five'll get you twenty they'd play it safe, axe the crossdressing, and potentially make Yellow a woman. 1. [...] with an avowed interest in kabuki theater, where young men traditionally played the female roles.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure about an uptick, it's always had a pretty steady cult following. It'd probably be more live action-friendly than Macross since there are fewer fantastic aspects to the story like the Power of Music. (That said, it'd probably take a lot of work to make the Inbit look like a threat that could actually conquer Earth since they went down easy to light anti-armor rockets in the anime. I'd also expect them to dump the part of Yellow Belmont's story where he disguises himself as a woman.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet episode 8 was, if anything, slightly more of an audience punch than the OVA version was. Origin's version of the One Week Battle was, if anything, worse than any previous description of it in books or manga. Even MS IGLOO never actually showed the Principality of Zeon's assault on Side 2, and in this version instead of gassing colonies we see the Dozle fleet bombarding them with mega particle cannons until they either break up or totally decompress. The added punch comes from that little side arc about the inhabitants of Iffish that was in OVA ep5. They split it in the middle so the episode ends on a falsely optimistic note for Yuki and his girlfriend, which feels a lot more cruel than the OVA's take of going straight into the gas attack and Iffish being used in the attempted colony drop on Jaburo. (It is a bit annoying that the translator doing the subs hasn't figured out that "bunch" is a word... they keep romanizing it "banchi".)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    That's kinda what people expect when you adapt a property to a live action movie... that you start at the beginning. Macross Zero was pretty to look at but wasn't received all that well. The plot with the music and aliens is pretty much THE iconic Macross story. You wouldn't make a Transformers movie and leave out the Autobots and Decepticons.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Animation is literal orders of magnitude cheaper than CG- and special effects-heavy live action production. The problem with animation is that, in many western markets, animation is still seen as a medium that's almost exclusively for children's entertainment. (Anime grappled with the same stigma in Japan in the 70's and early 80's and never entirely overcame it.) That'd be nice, especially since we've had Gundam: the Origin released in the US in multiple formats already... hardback editions of the manga, the OVA series, and now the Gundam: the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet TV edit. You remember correctly. Harmony Gold went to some pretty substantial lengths to get rid of anything overtly Macross or Macross-related when they were developing Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles for fear of litigation from Big West. They used the tie-in prequel comic book to summarily dispose of almost all of the remaining Macross holdover characters. "Rick" got an all-new design which resembled Hideo Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig and looked nothing like any previous incarnation of the character. Both "Lisa" and Minmei were sidelined to eternally-offscreen positions. Max and "Miriya" were Sir and Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Comic, and all other Zentradi characters were summarily killed off panel. The comic even redid panels from the Waltrip Robotech II: the Sentinels comic it was tying into to remove the VF-1 Valkyries and Spartas hover tanks and replace them with Legiosses or Ride Armors. They even, yes, went so far as to forbid the dialog from using the word "Zentradi" in the OVA episode itself (and using Macross designs was already off the table so its sepia-tone flashback was all generic scenes.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    If true, this is fantastic news for Star Trek... one of the principal architects of the stupidly gritty, action-ized, "new Trek" is gone. If CBS wants to double down on this by cancelling Star Trek: Discovery or go for a hat trick by also sinking Star Trek: Picard, I'll be prepared to call them very fine people.
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