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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The recent Walkure live event, which announced this new movie and two crossover live concerts. ANN has a brief article about it. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-09-23/macross-franchise-gets-new-delta-film-new-crossover-concerts/.137201
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Worldwide? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could sell ten thousand copies of a licensed Variable Fighter Master File volume's translation no problem. Such as it is, I'm not likely to ever get a license due to the ongoing legal reasons and not owning a publishing company, so instead my humble circle of amateurs are focusing our attentions on just doing it for love of the game. Those who attempted this year's Super Dimension Convention's collectibles panel will have heard that we're working on a complete translation of Macross Journal Extra: The latest version of SKY ANGELS: VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition. The original plan was to have that one done and ready for uploading by SDCon to promote our new website project, but life got in the way when one of my day job's projects got moved up a full year without warning so now it's targeted a launch title for 1/1/19. I just got to the bit about the engines (page 38) last night.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I hope not. I'd like to continue to live in hope that we'll get a new Macross story with a competent writing staff behind it. Macross Delta didn't deserve the first movie, let alone a second. The Macross Delta TV series had enormous potential that ended up almost completely squandered by the sheer ineptitude of its writers and their bloody-minded insistence on promoting Walkure over telling a coherent story. The compilation movie Passionate Walkure exacerbated a number of the writing problems that were dragging the series version down (like its inability to focus on telling the actual goddamn story) and only improved the story in the sense that it's less agonizing to watch because there's so much less of it. I could maybe work up some enthusiasm for it if this new, all-original Macross Delta movie shares no writers in common with the previous film and TV series. If it's the same lot of idiots, then it's a virtual guarantee the movie will be a barely coherent Walkure commercial with a plot so thin you could see daylight through it.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the quote came in at $24,575 and four months turnaround time... an amount that's nothing to sneeze at even in the 1st world and not really that much faster than my group can do it on our own. We inquired out of idle curiosity, and that princely sum was enough to convince us to inquire no further. It wouldn't be so bad if we had a license to commercially exploit a translation, since that cost could be spread across the sales of a few thousand books, but it's too steep for doing it simply for the love of the game.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I will... but between the amount of stuff in the To-Do pile and the estimate that each volume of Master File will take 4-6 months to complete, it'll be a year or two before I get there.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It was the first planet outside of our solar system to be colonized, yeah.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    If you are, so are the rest of us... so you either aren't, or you are in excellent company. The only sections I've done out of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur so far are the variants list, block numbers list, and some stuff way at the front of the book about the cockpit and mobile seat. I would assume, given that the events of Operation Phantom Sword are dated late 2041 and it says they were using the FBF-1000A fold booster, that the VF-19As are equipped with two of them because they need to: Fold a distance of greater than the 20 light years the FBF-1000A was rated for, either by making two fold jumps or having those fold boosters work together. They needed to generate a larger fold effect for a single jump to carry something (as Basara tried in Macross 7 during the attempt to rescue the captured Macross 5 civilians in the spiritia farm. They want to make a return trip without being serviced by the carrier, since the FBF-1000A was rated for a single use only. Eden was stumbled upon by a short-distance emigrant fleet, one of the ~100 that ended up exploring space within a few hundred light years of Sol. It was discovered between the launches of Megaroad-01 and Megaroad-02. Both fleets were basically flying into Vajra space intentionally... Frontier was pursuing Richard Bilra's dream of freeing the galaxy from the limitations imposed on fold travel by fold faults, where Galaxy was pursuing Grace O'Connor's implant network theory. By the time of Frontier, fold boosters were longer-ranged, more reliable, and good for multiple uses. Alto appropriated Michael's because it was handy, since he didn't have time to go hunting for the one he'd left up in orbit with his Super Pack (which may not have even survived the dimension eater detonation).
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Offhand, I don't recall any particular reason being given for Megaroad-01 and its escort fleet setting a course for the galactic core. (Considering where Sol sits on the Orion-Cygnus arm, the vast majority of the Milky Way galaxy is in the general direction of "towards the galactic core".) やさしさSAYONARA ("Farewell to Tenderness"), which shares its title with the episode itself.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    When it's not telling you Kawamori's hovercraft is full of eels... (It's getting better, but every now and then I see it produce something spectacularly wrong.)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Odds are there's probably at least a little lithium in the reaction as it is, as a consequence of decaying Beryllium-7 produced by fusing Helium-3 and Helium-4.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I wouldn't expect much to change outside of maybe getting Macross on one or more of the popular streaming services (Google Play, Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). Big West and Bandai have at least proven on a conceptual level that cutting out the middlemen and having the Japanese head office market translations directly to westerners is a viable tactic through the Macross Delta series and Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure movie. I'd expect to see them keep expanding on that approach, and having a growing selection of direct-from-Japan media presented with an English option.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Individually, yeah... the only way to make that tenable would be for a professional distributor to do a translation with intent to sell, or to crowdfund it. Since neither option is likely to pan out in the near future, I'm just gonna keep slowly plodding away at 'em. True, though since those often include staff/cast interviews, production info, and other goodies on top of the art, being able to read them definitely adds value.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Most folks, yeah. I'm kind of weird in that I specifically got into collecting them with research as a goal (to fix the many errors in the old Macross II RPG). There's just too much coming too fast for fan translators to reasonably stay on top of things, so the percentage of material made accessible to western fans is presently quite low. (On a lark I got a price quote on what it'd take to get something like Variable Fighter Master File volumes professionally translated and it came out to a bit under $25k per book.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    "A lot like Gundam" would be the honest answer. Due, in no small measure, to Macross II, Macross 2036, etc. having drawn on staffers from the various recent Gundam titles. Macross II was a very "safe" sequel, typical of the anime industry in that it took the bare minimum number of risks, pushed no envelopes, and stuck close to a proven formula. Macross in general is rather atypical in the extent that it reinvents itself and mixes up its formula in each successive installment.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's a ways off! Can't we hope for something nearer term, like now (the 35th) or the 40th?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    The initial generations of Armored Pack were intended as enhancement for land warfare, but once things moved to space they were mostly used for improved defense while operating in an anti-ship role. As far as attacking a ship with a VF-31... I'd say it should do OK in an attacker role provided it has a couple thermonuclear reaction warheads to throw around. Hey man, they're the best!* * In their budget category. Dogfighting is a pretty atypical use of an Armored Pack. I was rewatching Macross Frontier on my flight back from Super Dimension Con, and noticed Alto actually remarks on that during his initial sortie in episode 7. (He's surprised by how Ozma is dogfighting in such a heavy armored pack.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    That a fusion reactor wouldn't need fuel is a surprisingly common misconception... likely due to the most frequently-cited example being the colossal self-sustaining thermonuclear fusion reaction we orbit (the sun). What that example almost inevitably forgets to mention is that the sun is, in simple terms, a ball of fuel so massive that the compression force of its own mass started a thermonuclear reaction and exerts enough pressure to keep it going. So, yes... the compact thermonuclear reactor at the heart of a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine in Macross does require an external fuel supply. Unlike modern fusion reactors that use electrostatic fields, magnetic fields, or high-intensity laser pulses to trigger thermonuclear fusion, the OTM-based compact thermonuclear reactors use a Gravity and Inertia Control system (GIC) to compress the fuel using intense artificial gravity.1 Fuel compression by artificial gravity enables the reactor to extract a much greater quantity of energy from the same amount of fuel2 and making the engines extremely fuel-efficient in atmospheric flight.3 Heat from the thermonuclear reaction is harnessed using advanced thermoelectric converters and magnetohydrodynamic generators to generate electrical power and also replaces burning jet fuel as a means of heating up intake air to provide thrust, enabling the engines to produce more thrust than a conventional jet turbine and simultaneously cooling the reactor. They're much less efficient when operating in space4, because they're operating more like a fusion plasma rocket and venting the plasma from the reaction out of the engines to produce thrust. That's why, in space, they often mount conformal fuel tanks to increase the fuel available to the compact thermonuclear reactors in the engines5 and supplement those engines with hybrid or liquid-fuel rockets. I suspect it has more to do with the number of stages a fusion reaction can be pushed through using hydrogen as a starting point. You can wring a LOT of energy out of multistage hydrogen fusion that way. (It may also be somewhat advantageous from a logistical standpoint, reducing the number of types of fuel a ship or base needs to stock since it can also be used as fuel in liquid-fueled rockets.) 1. Amusingly, the oldest iterations of Macross's technical materials gives the name of the control system that moderates the GIC system inside the engines as the MAtrix of Gravity and Inertia Control... MAGIC, for short. 2. Using the Proton-Proton Chain at the very least, and possibly the CNO Cycle. Continuous compression like that also makes the reaction more efficient by reducing the amount of fuel that isn't taking part in the reaction. 3. Available data suggests the VF-1 is consuming its slush hydrogen at a rate of approximately 0.28 milliliters per second per engine, or roughly 2.0143 liters per hour, giving it approximately 700 hours of continuous operating time in atmosphere. 4. Available data suggests the first generation of thermonuclear reaction turbine engines consumed its fuel 4,200 times faster in space... at about 2,350 milliliters per second. The same amount of fuel that would have provided 700 hours of flight in atmosphere only lasts ten minutes at max thrust in space. 5. The VF-1's FAST Pack extends the VF-1's onboard fuel capacity to almost 5x what it can carry in its basic configuration, greatly extending the maximum operating time of its engines in space.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's one of the things I would dread about Macross becoming as prolific as Gundam... it would probably mean the end of Macross radically reinventing itself with each new incarnation in favor of an overly formulaic series composition like Universal Century Gundam. Oh, I'm sure they've had their eye on expanding westward for a good while now... but I suspect that their own success might prove to be just as big an obstacle as HG unless they decide to go without licensing out to someone else. The music rights are expensive! That was rumored to be one of the things that kept Macross 7 out of the west in the late 90's... that the music rights were made into an all-or-nothing thing that priced the series beyond the reach of any prospective distributor. Undoubtedly... though I imagine he's likely just as frustrated with the various people taking credit for his work instead of crediting him. Killing two birds with one stone would probably make him happy.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    None as an individual, AFAIK... Macross is jointly owned by Big West and Studio Nue. He is, for all practical intents and purposes, The Man in Charge of Macross in his official capacity as the franchise's supervisor on top of being involved in various aspects of production including story composition, mechanical design, storyboarding, and directing and serving as executive managing director of Satelight.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Whether Mikimoto will finish the series the second time around is anyone's guess, but most fans will probably agree it would look nice as an OVA... even if actually becoming an OVA seems unlikely due to Kawamori's aversion to revisiting stories he considers "done".
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Arguably... but there's a massive difference in scale there. Gundam is an enormous corporate merchandising powerhouse which sustains itself by continuously releasing new animated material, and hasn't really taken a year off since that brief hiatus that came between the original compilation trilogy and Zeta Gundam. There are very few properties out there that can afford to be even half as prolific, using the strength of their merchandising and/or massive fan followings. Macross is an auteur creator/designer's personal pet project that brings forward new material mostly on anniversaries or when Kawamori is moved to do so by some inspiration. Naturally it doesn't have content coming out nearly as frequently, though since Frontier took off like a shot it's been a lot less infrequent. (I wonder if Kawamori is facing pressure from Big West and its partners on that score, to make Macross run more like Gundam.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Gundam is a lousy choice for a yardstick... it's hands down the most prolific anime franchise in the mecha genre, if not overall.
  23. Seto Kaiba

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Seto Kaiba replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Thought they already did that, back when they announced the Arad VF-31S? I distinctly remember seeing a teaser for the Armored Pack on their website.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    ... wasn't there already one admittedly terrible attempt at a live-action adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Y'all keep forgetting that we shouldn't be expecting to get any news of the new series for at least a few weeks yet. Both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta largely kept mum about production until the September before their release and didn't have any substantial news until the end of October. Also, the idea that Kawamori would break the habit of a lifetime and do a direct sequel is a bit on the silly side... he's been dead-set against it for over three decades. Your tastes, as noted previously, tend to be rather... "specialized" might be a nice way to put it.
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