Seto Kaiba

5 hours ago, azrael said:

Someone wanna explain...

Oh, you're not wrong... at this stage of the game, the audience score is all but completely meaningless.

It'll only start to become a viable metric once RT clears out the pre-release review bombing by toxic Star Wars fans, the season has aired in full, and a few months have passed for them to accumulate a decent body of reviews by people who've actually watched it.

Critic scores are almost completely meaningless these days.  Too many of the critical reviews are bought-and-paid-for by the major studios and the networks.  If you look at RT's new releases on streaming, 80% is practically the floor for critical review scores on anything new.

For proof, just look at Paramount+'s recently concluded flagship series Star Trek: Discovery.  Its critical score average across five seasons was 84%, on a series that did so poorly worldwide that its sponsor tried to cancel it three separate times before selling the rights back to Paramount at a loss to be rid of it.  The audience score average?  34%.  The delta between the critic score and audience score got as wide as 67% during the show's run.  The only way that happens is if the critics are either completely out of touch or the studio's putting its finger on the scale... and I don't doubt for a second that's already happening with The Acolyte too, regardless of where its audience score eventually stabilizes because that's marketing.

1 hour ago, 505thAirborne said:

I hope this is good and makes up for that horrible Covenant movie. 

Me too.

IMO, that we're seeing plenty of the xenos in the trailers isn't a great sign... that's a pretty good indicator we're headed more into the slasher flick territory of Alien 3, Resurrection, and Covenant than the horror of the original and Isolation game.

41 minutes ago, azrael said:

Doesn't matter. The review embargo lifted at 12PM EST.

Hrm... I wonder why Rolling Stone and a few others withdrew their reviews then?  Disney's Ministry of Truth (marketing dept) got 'em, maybe? 🤣

Ah well, I'm headed into this one with my expectations kept pretty low.  Three seasons of The Clone Wars and counting has, if anything, reinforced my opinion that Force users are the least interesting characters in any Star Wars story.  A story that's positively infested by them doesn't appeal much.  I'm open to having my mind changed, though.  After all, I do love Andor and that started out feeling like an advertisement for Dramatic Walking as a cinematic device the same way Battlefield Earth is an advertisement for Dutch Angles. 🤣

I was going to make a joke about how I'm keeping my expectations low enough that only Master Sol spending the entire first episode in the john coping with the aftermath of a questionable food truck taco could truly make it unwatchable... but then I realized that would actually just make him the single most relatable Jedi in the franchise.

1 minute ago, TG Remix said:

You know with regular aircraft I can understand them only looking like an older design and under the hood there's a new one. But with the reproduction VF-0s and SV-51s, those have to factor in the entire transformation aspect. Would these reproduction models be almost the same as the originals but with token improvements in performance, or basically new models that somehow just look physically the same? I know for gameplay purposes you just want to have a VF-0 like how it is in Zero, but I guess I'm looking for a Watsonian answer on why they'd be commercially sold for combat when there are probably warehouses of VF-11's waiting to be used.

We've seen multiple approaches, if we consider Master File as well.

Macross the Ride's VF-0改 "Zeak" [sic]* was only superficially a VF-0.  It faithfully recreated the appearance and transformation of the VF-0, but "under the hood" the VF-0改 was for all practical intents and purposes a VF-25A-0.

Macross 30's VF-0 Replica is a less extreme example that follows the same basic approach as the VF-0改.  It was a reproduction VF-0 made with more modern materials and using systems from Shinsei Industry's VF-5000 and VF-1C** including thermonuclear reaction turbine engines.  (That makes it something akin to an upgraded version of Master File's VF-0+ Phoenix Plus, which was a VF-0 upgraded with the VF-1's engines and some other improvements that was supposedly used in the closing days of the Unification Wars, which may have been used in Macross the First as well based on creator commentary.)

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix's VF-0 "The Nostalgia" was a true reproduction of the VF-0 in as close to the state it was actually flown in as possible.  It was built as a private project by Shinsei Industry staff based on the analysis of wreckage of two VF-0A's that were recovered from the ruins of Edwards Air Force Base after the First Space War.***

* Should be "Zeke" not "Zeak", it's one of several Macross R references to World War II-era aircraft... in this case, the Allied nickname for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

** A civilian-use VF-1 variant that appeared in the Macross Frontier short story Actor's Sky and the Macross Frontier novelization.  It's used as a flight training aircraft at Mihoshi Academy, and was used by the actor who played Shin Kudo in the Bird Human movie filmed in Macross Frontier's TV series as part of research to play the character.

*** Said by Master File to have been No.07 and No.13 from the CVN-99 Asuka II's carrier air wing, which were damaged beyond repair during the Mayan Island incident and transferred to Edwards AFB for storage before the First Space War ruined everything.

It seems that a couple of entertainment news outlets like Rolling Stone either weren't aware of, or forgot, that The Acolyte doesn't drop until 9pm today and briefly published their reviews from the screening events early.

The articles have since been taken down, but they made no secret of their dislike for the series.  Rolling Stone's article was titled "The Acolyte Review: This Star Wars prequel series isn't a Force to be reckoned with - Even a veteran Jedi master would lose their patience with this latest Disney+ addition to the canon, which focuses on a pair of twins and revenge, and... zzzzz."  (It still shows up as the top search on Google, though the article itself now returns a 404 error.)

That said, the same reviewer (Alan Sepinwall) absolutely loathed Andor season one... the best-written, best-acted, most profound piece of media Star Wars has produced since the franchise was sold to Disney by a comically gargantuan margin and IMO a supremely strong contender for the single best-written Star Wars story ever made.  So it's worth taking that opinion with a piece of salt big enough to build another Starkiller Base on..

7 hours ago, JB0 said:

There's only one reasonable explanation. The VF-0 is based on reverse-engineered technology found in the wieckage ofs a time-displaced VF-11. The Shinsei brand was used for these experimental machines in honor of the source.

The whole situation is made worse by the fact there are at least two VF-0 models that are built by post 2012 Shinsei Industry between the official setting and Master File.

In Master File, Shinsei Industry was responsible for a reproduction VF-0 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first space war armistice. In Macross 30, they're presumably the ones behind the reproduction VF-0 models that are used all over Uroboros.

46 minutes ago, sketchley said:

I say "fourth" because of the way that "Macross the Ride" indicates that Stonewell and Bellcom are separate companies: "新星を中心に新中州重工、ストンウェル社、ベルコム社の各社航空部門が．．．"

 

So, pending the source, it's either "three companies" (Macross Chronicle glossay entry), or "four companies" (Macross the Ride).

Yeah... Stonewell AND Bellcom vs. Stonewell Bellcom is one of those long-running inconsistencies in how the company names are presented in Macross publications.

I mentioned it a while ago while I was going over the VF-0 book, but Master File took a whack at explaining away the inconsistency as "Stonewell Bellcom" being a joint venture by the separate companies Stonewell and Bellcom dedicated to variable fighter development.

46 minutes ago, sketchley said:

I think you've got two distinct companies confused:  "Shinsei" and "Shinsei Industry".  Or did you intend to write "Shinsei Industry" for the M+ and M7 era?

That's the thing... the founded-in-2012 Shinsei Industry was the ONLY company named Shinsei in the setting until Macross Zero.  The Macross Plus and Macross 7-era materials all list only three companies involved in the creation of Shinsei in 2012: Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu.

The creative team working on Macross Zero seems to have forgotten that Shinsei Industry was founded after the First Space War and erroneously credited them as codevelopers on the VF-0... four years before the company was founded in-universe.

The "second Shinsei" mentioned in Macross the Ride and Macross Chronicle appears to be an attempt by the creators to explain this continuity problem away by breaking the One Steve Limit and retroactively adding this second Shinsei company to the aforementioned merger which previously did not mention or include any such company.

Master File, as noted, attempts to explain this in more detail by claiming the pre-war Shinsei Industry (written 新星工業 as opposed to 新星インダストリー) was a developer of land warfare weapons systems and subsidiary of shipbuilding firm Yashu Heavy Industries.

(And yes, the fact that they're both named Shinsei Industry really takes the cake...)

The reason for this confusion just hit me.

Macross Plus and Macross 7-era materials describe Shinsei as a new company that emerged out of the merger of Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu Heavy Industries.  

Macross Zero-era materials inexplicably mention Shinsei as an involved party in the development of the VF-0 despite that being set four years before Shinsei was previously said to have been founded.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix offers some mild clarification/explanation in its development history of the VF-0.  It asserts that the original Shinsei Corporation was a land warfare weapons company and subsidiary of Yashu Heavy Industries, the shipbuilding firm that would go on to design the Macross Quarter-class.

3 hours ago, sketchley said:

Isn't it the aircraft divisions of the respective manufacturers, along with a fourth company called "Shinsei"?

I don't think so, no...

If you go back to the materials for Macross Plus and Macross 7 - e.g. This is Animation Special: Macross Plus - there is no mention of a fourth company named Shinsei going into the merger.

"Development began as a joint project between Shinnakasu Heavy Industries and Stonewell Bellcom in 2011.  However, in 2012, just one year after development began, the aircraft development divisions of Shinnakasu Heavy Industries and Stonewell Bellcom merged to form the new Shinsei Industry, making this [the VF-5000] the first aircraft developed by Shinsei Industry." - This is Animation Special: Macross Plus pg68 3rd sentence.

I'll check more extensively later today, but I'm reasonably sure that most other works that discuss the merger don't mention a fourth company already named Shinsei in the merger that produced Shinsei Industry.  

EDIT: Macross Chronicle's Worldguide Sheet 06A "Military Manufacturers" describes Shinsei industry in the same terms as above.

6 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Although much of the imagery from IC is semi-cringe, its also very detailed.

... having zero familiarity with the content creator in question, I question the necessity of the jab at their content.

6 minutes ago, TehPW said:

In this video, it has two Armored VF-1Js and two different models of Legioss (in Soldier Mode). The Legioss's look like large power armor in scale. Are the legioss smaller than a VF?

Yes... but not to the extent shown in that YouTube video.

I'm guessing whatever models they're using - physical or CG - are not built to the same scale.  It's like they used a 1/60 scale Valkyrie next to a 1/72 scale Legioss.

Macross's VF-1 Valkyrie is 12.68m tall in Battroid mode.  MOSPEADA's AFC-01 Legioss is 8.75m tall in Armo-Soldier mode.  As such, the Legioss should be approximately 2/3 as tall as the Valkyrie if both are in their respective humanoid robot forms.

Hmm... pass.

Tomb Raider lost a lot of its charm and sense of fun when the games made the move from being an Indiana Jones by way of James Bond pulpy sort of action-adventure series to a more grounded survival-focused series.  New Lara's too much of a generic action hero to get me interested.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

It might be because of the different medium VF-X2 is in and how it hasn't been completely translated into English yet so I can't get a full grasp, but the game makes it feel like The Second Unification War feels a lot less of a wide-galaxy scale event then what later material makes it out to be. The biggest influence you get from it is the general restructure of the NUNS from Frontier and onwards, but how Kaname's home planet is still fighting the war between pro-autonomy and pro-unification sides.

Kawamori has done a lot to change the context of the events of Macross VF-X2 in the last 20 years.

It graduated from "an isolated incident" to "the cause of the government reformation" to "a symptom of the government reformation" to "a small part of a larger series of smaller conflicts over the structure of the New UN Government".

Macross VF-X2's story makes you think it's something that's isolated to just Earth's "neighborhood", but Macross Delta has revealed that the conflict was fought as far afield as the Brisingr globular cluster... which is about as far from Earth as it gets.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Since there's so little known about the NUNS Reserves that Isamu was a part of, I'm wondering myself if, like actual reserve forces, aircraft if not retired from official military use were just retired from front-line duty and kept for emergencies, local forces, remote regions, etc. There's probably a point where you can upgrade them to a point, since I'm not expecting a fleet of VF-11s to be equipped with a panoramic cockpit and pinpoint barrier system, lol. Then again, considering there's a VF-1 retrofitted with EX-Gear...

We've seen some radically different approaches to airframe retention over the years in Macross, so it may vary depending on the perceived need of the local military at the time.

For instance, Earth in Macross Plus was shown using decommissioned VF-11A units as remotely operated target aircraft in the Ghost X-9's testing c.2040 while Macross Frontier was sold off a bunch of its old VF-11s to civilians when the military deemed them no longer service-worthy.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I knew Xaos had money issues but if they couldn't afford something slightly better like even a VF-5000 then that may be an issue lol.

Yeah, you'd think an alleged mega-conglomerate like Xaos would have the funds to afford a more reasonable training aircraft for new pilots like a VF-11D, a VF-171T, or even a VF-31D.

Then again, the fact that Xaos's PMC division runs out of money within days of being chased out of the Brisingr cluster by the Aerial Knights says that they were either not getting paid properly or were living paycheck to paycheck as a corporation which is even worse.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Well, that's a bit of a shame. So there'd probably be no more surprise comebacks like the museum the Zentradi Marines had in the first episode lol. Although would that sorta count derivatives of SDF designs like the Queadluun-Rhea or the VF-0?

Just the designs from the original series, as far as we've heard.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Huh, well that kinda makes sense considering stealth technology in our time was getting a lot better than when Plus was being released.

I think it's equally as much a way to justify in lore why VF vs VF combat is almost always a dogfight.

Normally, fighters would stand off against each other with long and medium range missiles before ever attempting to dogfight.  Macross's explanation for skipping right to the good bits is that missiles need powerful ECCM to counter the active stealth Valkyries have, so long and medium range missiles that rely on radar guidance are less effective in combat than short range missiles that rely on emissions that can't be masked like infrared radiation from engine exhaust and optical seekers.

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Quick question for clarification: when you say "predecessors", do you mean they became Shinsei, or simply that they predated Shinsei?

They became Shinsei.

Shinsei Industry was formed in 2012 when VF-1 and VF-4 codevelopers Stonewell and Bellcom merged with each other and with FAST Pack and thermonuclear engine manufacturer Shinnakasu Heavy Industry.

General Galaxy was also formed by a merger of existing defense companies several years later in 2017.  The overtechnology research and development firm OTEC merged with other surviving defense industry companies.

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Now I'm imagining an extremely salty Shinsei engineer supporting Anti-UN groups because the NUNS turned down the VF-19 for widescale adoption, who may or may not care about the export laws enforced because of the VF-19's conception.

Obvious things like industrial espionage aside, the one illegal activity I'm fairly certain Shinsei Industry will have engaged in is covertly selling weapons to the anti-government forces during the Second Unification War.

(The obvious copout there being that said "anti-government" forces were actually the paramilitary volunteer forces of the pro-autonomy faction in the Second Unification War, the "good guys" backed by Max et. al. who were resisting the fascist abuse of governmental authority by the pro-centralization faction.  It's illegal, but nobody's going to prosecute the company because the pro-autonomy forces won.)

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Honestly, I kinda like how we see some like the VF-5000 and VA-3 being used past their prime by the time we see them; it shows the passage of time in the Macross timeline without having to completely boil them down to just being old and useless. I still want to see a bit more about what happened between SDF and Plus, just to get more of a grasp on how big the world got since the advent of emigration fleets and planets.

EDIT: IIRC there was a tidbit in either The Ride or the Frontier novelization that even by 2058 the Macross Frontier fleet was still in the process of decommissioning their VF-11s, way long after the move to the VF-171.

There's a limit to it, though...

No longer being the latest and greatest model doesn't mean a fighter immediately becomes useless.  Older models that have either recently been phased out or are in the process of being phased out can still be used in a lot of different capacities because they're not immediately obsolete.  We see this a few titles like Macross 7 Trash, where the Macross 7 fleet NUNS has a number of old VF-4's that it uses for things like training flights and evaluating experimental technologies.  They can still be updated and modernized up to a point, with engine swaps and avionics upgrades and the like.  

Not every government feels compelled to upgrade to the latest and greatest right away either.  Like in Macross Dynamite 7, the Zola Patrol were a police force for a government that generally believed in pacifism and didn't have a ton of money to throw around, so the export model VF-5000G suited their needs just fine.

With the exception of the VF-1, the point where retirement and replacement seems to be necessary is when a design is two generations old.  For instance, the Zola Patrol in Macross Dynamite 7 was upgrading from their 2nd Gen VF-5000s to 4th Gen VF-19 monkey models.  Or the Macross Frontier fleet retiring and selling off its 3rd Gen VF-11s as it prepared to begin its transition from its 4th Gen VF-171s to its locally-developed 5th Gen VF-25 in Macross the Ride.

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

And that's not even mentioning the (un?)official SW-XAI Schneeblume that used the VF-1 as a reference for a stealth VF to pair up with the VF-17!

As far as we know, those are still unofficial.

The closest we've seen to a direct reference to them is a YF-29 in the SW-XAII's colors in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah.

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Honestly, the moment I saw the VF-1EX in Delta with its own EX-Gear system I'm convinced those things will be a universal constant in the franchise.

Probably not for much longer, thanks to the international distribution agreement supposedly requiring them to "retire" the designs shared with the original series in any works that are meant for international distribution.

That said, it was already getting quite silly even before Macross Delta.

After all, the VF-1 is a 1st Generation VF and it was hilariously outdated by the time the VF-11 was introduced.  Look no further than Gamlin's comical reaction to piloting Milia's old VF-1J Super Valkyrie in Macross 7 ep18.  He trained on the VF-11C Super Thunderbolt before he moved to the special forces, and he's absolutely flabbergasted at how low the VF-1's performance is.  It's enough of a moment that his reaction is presented in big bold text in the Macross Chronicle episode sheet:「ちぃ、これで全開なのか!?」"Tch.... is this full throttle!?".  And of course, he gets shot down because the VF-1's performance is so much lower than even the baseline of what he's used to.

It makes sense that it's become popular as a civilian model due to having had decades to polish its performance and handling after being retired from military service, and that it's a popular choice to teach people the rudiments of how to pilot a Valkyrie because of that low cost and low performance.  Like how Mihoshi Academy in Macross Frontier uses a civilian model VF-1 for its pilot trainees.

That said, as a training aircraft for military use like in Macross Delta it's pretty absurd because its performance is SO LOW compared to what the pilot is training to fly that it's a joke to even consider using it.  At that point, it's four (and a half) generations out of date and its performance is a tiny fraction of even the base model VF-31's.  Using one to train a pilot for a VF-31 would be like using a go-kart to train someone to race in the Indianapolis 500.

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Having a stealth system before it became the norm with the 4th generation VFs I think is a nice bonus too all things considered.

All Valkyries have stealth systems.... thanks to a retcon in Macross Zero.

Macross Plus was the first title to explicitly mention and depict the existence of active stealth technology, but Macross Zero retroactively established that all VFs have had an active stealth system.  Macross Frontier would later clarify that the new active stealth system in the Project Super Nova prototypes was the debut of the 3rd Generation of active stealth systems.

The picture painted by subsequent material incl. Master File has been that there's sort of a pendulum effect as detection systems and active stealth systems advance in opposition to each other.  Because active stealth in Macross is a form of destructive interference-based ECM that operates by analyzing incoming radar beams and then producing a matching offset antiphase wave that reduces or zeroes the amplitude of the radar waves reflected from the aircraft's skin, the larger the aircraft is and the less passively stealthy its design is the harder the active stealth system has to work to mask its radar returns.  So it's kind of an arms race.  As radar systems get better ECCM and adapt to existing active stealth, the active stealth has to improve and/or VFs have to be made more passively stealthy to reduce the burden on the active stealth system.

The VF-14 and VF-17 are on the large side, and came in during the 2nd Generation of active stealth systems, so it was advantageous for them to adopt a more passively stealthy profile.  Especially the attacker-focused models like the VA-14 and VF-17, which have to contend with more powerful ship-based and ground-based radar systems in addition to the radars of enemy aircraft.  

As active stealth gains an edge, we see more externally-carried weaponry and such, and when radars start to catch up again we see a move towards internaly-carried weapons and passively stealthy designs.

17 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Picked up the newest Hobby Japan, and in the back is a custom build of the Imai 1/720 Quel Quallie.
I knew it was big, but holy cow...it is BIG

look at the size of it compared to a regult, which towers of the vf-1 in size.  I think the radome hanging off at the bottom could fit on an Elintseeker.

No wonder Hikaru's single GPB VF-1J with all the little micro-missiles didn't do it in.
It is freaking massive.

Yeah, it's big.  126.7 meters long and 57.8 meters wide... making it 20% longer, but slightly narrower, than a FIFA regulation football pitch (105m x 68m).

Or to put it in another perspective, end to end it's about two Boeing 747-700s in length.  Stood on end, it'd be about 35 storeys tall.

It's almost exactly the same length as the US Navy's old Forrest Sherman-class destroyer, but about four times as wide.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

You know Frontier and Delta focus so much on General Galaxy's shady business and connections, sometimes I wonder if Shinsei has some dirt and/or blood on their hands.

I'm sure they have at least some... after all, Shinsei Industry is one of the oldest, most successful, and most influential corporations in Humanity's defense industry.

That's not a position you earn, or keep, without having at least a few skeletons in your closet.

We do know their predecessors Stonewell and Bellcom employed former Anti-Unification Alliance engineers from the SV-51 program after the Unification Wars.  That's how Alexei Kurakin, General Galaxy's cofounder, survived the war.  He was on Luna doing space testing on the VF-4 when everything went to pot.

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Maybe as a part of a life extension service like what the VF-1X and similar variants went through, I can see it. Either that or as modified export craft like the VF-5000G and VF-19P. Heck looking deeper the Elgerzorene has the same max cruising speed as both the VF-17 and VF-171 at 30,000+ m Mach 21+. So maybe the Gustav isn't really all that different from the original craft and the VF-11 were just very unlucky to fight practically an army of 4th generation Valkyries.

Maybe... though the designs of that era are kind of a Lost Generation in terms of depiction in Macross works.

We only ever got to see the 3rd Generation on the way in in Macross M3 and on the way out in Macross 7.  

That said, I'm inclined to doubt that the VF-14 would've received the same kind of excessive service life extension the VF-1 got.  The VF-1's unending utility is practically a running joke, and the main reason it's stuck around as long as it has after being aged out of main military service is because civilian market VF/VT-1s are so ubiquitous that the military's Special Forces supposed use VF-1X derivatives because they're as close to inconspicuous as a 12+ meter tall transforming robot can be.

Macross Chronicle's descriptions of the Fz-109 series suggest that the Elgersoln's performance improvements owe a lot ot other areas beyond simply raw power... it's said that they made refinements to basically every system, though the transformation is specially noted to be much smoother than the original aircraft's due to their improvements.  The overall performance is said to greatly exceed the original VF-14's, which yeah... I guess makes the Macross 5 and Macross 7 fleet's VF-11s supremely unlucky to run into enemy forces who are fielding a Gen 3.5-equivalent as standard.

7 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Lightsabers are no longer special as almost everyone has one like everyone had a Nokia in the late 90s, and even after getting stabbed right through vital organs, it's barely a scratch the next day. 

Hm... I'm not sure it's "everyone has a lightsaber" so much as it is the franchise's obnoxious tendency to put the vanishingly tiny minority of Force users at the center of every major event in galactic history.

The Jedi represent just one ten-trillionth - 0.00000000001% - of the galactic population before Order 66.  After it, they're on the order of one ten-quadrillionth of the population... but any even slightly important event seems to involve at least one.  I only noticed that detail recently, but damn if it doesn't bother me. I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here...

14 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Light saber whip... 🤣🤦‍♂️

What's next? Light saber net launcher? Light saber nun-chuks? Light saber imagine whatever you want alla green latern ring? 🤣

Didn't we already have something like that in The Last Jedi?

Not the memes, I mean, but those guard in Snoke's room had a bunch of weird lightsaber-like weapons including a whip.

After getting almost two seasons into The Clone Wars, I'll settle for lightsabers being treated like actual deadly weapons and not just paddles for games of laser ping-pong.

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

And here I thought the ban on cybernetics would make the VF-27 follow suit.

One aspect of the period spanning the events of Macross Frontier and Macross Delta that is often overlooked in the face of the conflict itself is the rise of corporate power and the huge amount of influence those large corporations wield.

Macross Galaxy is the best/worst example, being a subsidary corporation of General Galaxy that was set up as a literal corporate state.  

With that kind of power behind them, it's not surprising that the wealthy and influential choose to flout the law whenever it becomes inconvenient like Ivan Tsari did.

How Mei Leeron, the relatively humble head of a mercenary NGO on a remote planet came by something like a VF-27... we'll never know.

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

I'd assume most NUNS territory probably wouldn't adopt it since either the VF-24 or VF-25 are more better options in flexibility.

Probably not, yeah.

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

In the same vein of antagonist, maybe illegal VFs, I'm almost certain aside from Fasces no one adopted the Varauta Army variable craft, almost definitely because of the Spiritia absorption beams and a little more because the Fz-109's base model VF-14 wasn't as popular as the VF-11. Although looking through the stats, comparing the M3 VF-14 and Fz-109F, the latter has a noticeably higher standard cruising speed (10,000 m Mach 4.5+ compared to 10,000 m Mach 3.8+) and I think it's a safe bet that the max cruising speed is much higher. It strikes me as odd since they both use the same type of Shinnakasu/Daimler FF-2770D thermonuclear turbine engines and P&W / Daimler HMM-5C thrusters, unless the airframe was modified to the extent that it can handle quicker speeds.

Well, Fasces had certain incentives to use the Varauta models where possible.

They had control of the factory satellite that was producing them, so they didn't have to worry about issues with illegal procurement or little things like having to pay for them.  That they were also roughly comparable in performance to a VF-17 or VF-171 didn't hurt their feelings either I suspect.  

There probably wouldn't have been much of a push to adapt the Varauta forces improvements to the VF-14 and VA-14 given the timing involved.  Their performance was around the same as the Gen 3.5 VF-16 and VF-17 and inferior to the VF-19 and VF-22.  And just two years after the conflict ended the 4th Generation VF-171 debuted and began to replace the VF-11s and VF-14s in service at the time.

36 minutes ago, DownIsUp said:

Did the Vf-27 ever get adopted by NUNS, like the Yf-29 was, or is it a functionally extinct design now that the Galaxy is space dust? I know it was heavily optimized to the point only a cyborg could functionally operate it, but the Yf-29 was altered for use as a spec-ops aircraft so I wasn't sure if it also received a similar treatment.

It seems a reasonably safe bet that the VF-27 is not a lost/phantom design after 2059 given that several of them do show up in stories set years after the events of the Macross Frontier series/movies.

That said, both of the VF-27s we see after the events of Macross Frontier appear in side stories and are shown to be in the possession of (extremely well-connected) civilians.  If you don't count the generic VF-27 in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and the unlockable Havamal colors for same, the only time we've seen it in a pure NUNS livery is in the VF-25's Master File.  (On page 27, by happy coincidence.)

The two we see in civilian hands are:

• Mei Leeron's personal VF-27γ in Macross 30.  The Uroboros Hunter's Guild boss seldom takes to the field, but when she does she's shown to have a VF-27γ Lucifer with a unique white and purple color scheme and Hunter's Guild markings.
• Ivan Tsari in Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E.  The head of Zelgaar Heavy Industry is shown to have a personal VF-27γ Lucifer with "jet black" coloring that he uses during the events of the story in 2062.  He, unlike Mei Leeron, is also confirmed to be a full-body cyborg.

Good to know.  I've got multiple copies, but my old PS3 is showing its years... and replacing it with emulation seems like a good way to replay the game into the future.👍

On 5/29/2024 at 6:19 PM, djivaldi7 said:

Interestingly enough, ghosts and squires have become a reality:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ngad-america-s-new-6th-generation-fighter-is-not-what-you-think/ar-BB1mvbz4?ocid=socialshare&pc=DCTS&cvid=b9332dd6741c4656bb124479dd76882e&ei=18

Thank you Macross for showing us the future!

That news is actually about ten years old now.

Next Generation Air Dominance requirements came out in '14, and multiple governments have been publicly working on unmanned "loyal wingman" systems since at least '15.  The US has been flying prototypes since at least March '19 (with the Kratos QX-58 Valkyrie). 

Mind you, the idea of unmanned escorts in fiction is a pretty old one too.  It goes back to at least the 1960s as far as I'm aware... and seems to have been the logical consequence of late 1910s and 1920s advances in remote control of vehicles via radio making their way into the commercial sector in the 1950s and a growing interest in the idea of AI and robotics kindled by 1940s developments in computing and popular fiction from writers like Isaac Asimov.  By the late 1960's and early 1970's the idea had enough traction to get used in Star Trek at least twice, with the most blatant example being Kirk's Enterprise using two unmanned Antares-class "robot ships" as wingmen against the Klingons.

That said, Macross didn't actually start doing "loyal wingman" style drones until 2008's Macross Frontier debuted the RVF-171 and RVF-25 acting as motherships for groups of QF-4000 Ghosts.

The Squire used by the VF-2SS Valkyrie II in Macross II: Lovers Again is not a true unmanned fighter like the Ghosts used in other Macross titles.  Rather than being an AI wingman capable of independent operation, Squires are "dumb" drones that are controlled remotely by the onboard computers of the Valkyrie II they're assigned to.  All of the thinking behind their operation is done by the Valkyrie II's computers, the Squire is just a remote weapons terminal.  That's why Macross II's official materials refer to Squire using a borrowed term from Gundam: they're Bits, not Ghosts... just controlled by computer over radio instead of via psychic waves from an ESPer.  The Macross II timeline version of the VF-4 had funnels ala Gundam too, though with the same computer-based control system.  (The distinction between funnels and bits in Macross appears to be exactly the same as in Gundam too.)

Nah, Keanu would 100% be cast as a Jedi.

Keanu has a definite preference for playing the showy invincible hero (or at worst, antihero) who happens to be a stoic loner, which is basically the short definition of "Jedi".  Not to mention his typically wooden delivery makes him an ideal candidate to play a flat character with a little-to-no emotional range due to a lifetime of detachment and repression like a Jedi the same way it makes him a good choice to play flat character stoic action movie heroes too cool or too grizzled to react to anything.

He doesn't have the range to play an excessively melodramatic villain like a Sith Lord.  For that, you need someone who really play to the back row with the dental fortitude to leave no piece of scenery unchewed.  Hugo Weaving would make a great Sith Lord.  Sam Neill would probably make a pretty good Sith Lord too, IMO.

Besides, we already had "Keanu Reeves from Wish.com" in the sequel trilogy, and it wasn't that well received. 🤣

29 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Not really - just no emotional attachments.  A playboy (or girl) Jedi going from one one night stand to another is perfectly fine.

Imagine my amusement that this was apparently a topic George Lucas felt merited his attention and an official response.

"Word of God" from George is that you're right, they get fool around just in a commitment-free manner. 🤣  

No wonder so many Force users are messed up.

57 minutes ago, twich said:

I hope that one of the resident Japanese translators would be able to start relaying some of these statistics for these Valkyries!

Still waiting for my copy to roll in, but from what I can see in those photos there's nothing new there except the VF-31AX's Armored Pack.

It's all information you can find on the Compendium, the Mecha Manual, Sketchley's gateway, etc.

I did a breakdown of the 31AX over in the Super Mecha thread back when the Master File came out... and of the Sv-303, since Master File had specs for it and this doesn't seem to.