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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    We know relatively little about the actual structure of the Earth Unification Government prior to the First Space War, apart from the fact that the head of state was a prime minister. It's not clear if the government was a bicameral or unicameral parliament, but considering that the final United Nations general assembly before its dissolution served as the provisional UN Gov't, the structure may be something like the European Union parliament's technically-bicameral setup with the "lower house" being the parliament, the "upper house" being a rotating council, and executive power resting with the cabinet ministers and PM. The New UN Government c.2050 was likened to the European Union by Kawamori in his Otona Anime #9 interview, so there may be something to the above if the reconstruction of the government was according to its original constitution/charter after the First Space War ended. General Hayase and his fellows were basically the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Earth UN Forces, so presumably they're answerable to the Unification Government's current Minister for Defense1 or its Prime Minister2. By the time Macross Delta is set, the New UN Government had moved from being a strong central authority to being a more decentralized central government like the European Union3, with the big dust-up ("Second Unification War" c.2050-2051) being a symptom of a gradual devolution of more authority to the individual local governments. One consequence of this and the reorganization the New UN Forces underwent to accommodate decentralization, is that the New UN Government isn't quite so ready to intervene in local conflicts between its member fleets/worlds the way it did back during the 2040s. The local governments in the Brisingr globular cluster and their mutual economic/defense pact (the so-called Brisingr Alliance) seem to have been relying pretty damn heavily on Xaos to protect them since Xaos was much more resistant4 to Var syndrome thanks to Walkure and their own troops are much more susceptible thanks to years of consuming tainted foodstuffs exported by Windermere's government. Their own poor lookout, really, since Xaos turned out to be pretty freaking awful at going it on their own. They ought to have been leaning on Xaos to work in partnership with their local New UN Forces to shield them from Var outbreaks, since they could beat the Aerial Knights using sheer weight of numbers without the Song of the Wind mind controlling them. 1. Assuming that's what the office is called... Defense Minister, Minister for Defense, Secretary of Defense, Minister for the National Defense... there are a lot of potential variants here. There's a fair case for "Secretary of Enuff Dakka" considering how over-the-top Earth's defenses are c.2040. 2. Pseudo-canon/expanded universe material would make that Prime Minister Robert A. Rhysling for that time period. ARMD-14 would later be named in his honor. One has to wonder if Bruno J. Global ever became Prime Minister, since an aircraft carrier was named in his honor (Uraga-class, CV-339 Bruno J. Gloval) in addition to having a Macross-class ship (SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global) named in his honor for his tenure as C-in-C for the (New) UN Spacy following the First Space War. 3. The aforementioned comparison drawn by Kawamori in Otona Anime #9. 4. As we see in Macross Delta proper with Hayate, even having a fold receptor factor doesn't make you properly immune... it just means it takes a lot more exposure to biological fold waves to go Var.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Wasn't the lagging sales largely to do with the fact that it was a dog's age between releases?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The names are carried over from Kawamori's Air Cavalry Chronicles series concept, where they were the names of the ZaiBach Empire transformable fighters. Beyond that, I'm not sure... I only took half of one semester of German in college, and that was because my academic advisor screwed up some paperwork. Macross Chronicle romanizes their names as Elgarsoln, Panzersoln, and Zaubergern. There's some recognizable German roots there, like Panzer being "Armor" and Zauber being "Magic", but the rest... I have no idea, and neither does Google Translate. I can ask some friends of mine who work for ZF Friedrichschafen later this week. Not that I'm aware... the Blue Rhinoceros team officers who are running the show in the Macross 7 PLUS episode "Spiritia Dreaming" having vaguely German names (Ivano Gunther and Autolmauer), though the other two named characters from the colony don't (Chelsea Scarlett and Irina Hayakawa).
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I don't normally do Kickstarters... but this is SORELY tempting. What're we looking at in terms of backer rewards on top of the media itself?
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Hot damn, that is some fine news indeed.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I've worked fairly closely with several Japanese suppliers since 2012, and I honestly don't recall ever having seen anything like that in a public setting on the occasions I visited Japan on business. That kind of thing was only ever a fixture of office gossip, usually involving some coworker who's gone to the pub and gotten sexually harassed by a [friend/lover/colleague/stranger] who'd gotten so pickled they could probably breathe fire... not as a welcome thing. Depends what you're reading/watching, but yeah... in general you'll see romances focusing on the majority (heterosexual) appeal. There have been a few works that've been fairly prominent about homosexual characters, though that's a mixed bag. It's definitely the case that there are far more prominent stories about lesbian romances than gay ones, probably because the appeal of that is a good deal broader. Macross has never been especially shy about pushing anvilicious Aesops though, and has been big about "love conquers all", so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the franchise eventually took a stab at a homosexual romance plot, even if it had to do it in a manga or light novel. (Bobby Margot's popularity on Macross Frontier seems to have at least opened the door for more regular inclusion of gay characters, like Macross R's Anri Mahlberg or Macross Delta's implied Messer-Keith-Roid triangle.) Ranka did mistake Alto for a girl when they first met... maybe that's part of the appeal for her? (Come to that, Michael also mistook Alto for a girl when they first met... and he's been calling him "princess" ever since. Michael's case is at least more understandable since Alto was dressed as a girl at the time, IIRC.) Arguably because Makina and Reina's involvement in the actual series barely progresses beyond the level of "they exist"... and about half of the minimal characterization they get is devoted to ensuring nobody misses that they're a lesbian couple. I'm not sure it's necessarily that the entertainment industry there is unwilling to move beyond it as a fetish as much as it is that there's not really the same kind of hue and cry for representation that the west has in its media lately. Yuri media has a decent-sized following, though part of that might be a broader appeal because, to guys, "girl on girl is hot" even if it's a serious romance where guy on guy has a more limited audience. (Of those I've seen, I confess I'm not sure which was stranger... the titular character of Miyuki-chan in Wonderland being so deep in the closet she's finding Christmas presents, or One Piece's surreal, Rocky Horror-inspired stab at a transgender character.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Coming soon, to the "No, we don't know what we were thinking either" clearance shelf at your local game store! Also... "Japanime"? Really. That's the best name they could come up with? From what little I've seen Palladium's staff say on the subject of sales, the "manga size" hurt sales because the books were harder to prop open or search through and several and the Masters Saga sourcebook didn't sell particularly well in general... leading to a late reprint in full size only after it sold out of manga size inventory. It is a Palladium product, after all. The only feedback Palladium seems to have honored was Harmony Gold's insistence that they use official spec this time. That led to them copy-pasting from Macross sites for the Macross Saga book, accidentally resulting in the inclusion of a few things that the VF-1 didn't actually have in Robotech. That's a big part of Palladium's business problem... they haven't bothered to update their system or the layout of their products in over three decades. It was acceptable in the 80's, but these days it looks like they're turning these books out on the office copy machine. ... that might be the first positive review I've seen for the book, and I'm a regular at Palladium's own forums. It's basically Robotech 2.1: in the General Vicinity of the Sentinels because they weren't allowed to actually touch on the events of the Sentinels arc proper by HG, who are taking the attitude that it's something that could get rewritten at any moment to accommodate a future title. It got a better reception than the Genesis Pits book (a Make Your Own B-Movie Monster manual), but it still got torn into over not using the classic Sentinels art for legal reasons and using the Imai Files to pad things out. (There was also a good deal of carping over the lack of mentions of colonization, as in the comics there had been some noise about building colony ships, but inconsistent dialog makes it sound like they were build and then immediately mothballed as useless.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    ... surely you jest. Never mind that Reina is shown feeling Makina up on at least one occasion, she's got a line in that jellyfish festival episode (9, IIRC?) that's pretty much a straightforward declaration that it's a night for getting laid and she's gonna get some. Now, I don't know what cultural norms are like on Zola (Reina's homeworld) or Ragna, but that's generally in "more than just a warm friendship" territory here on Earth. Japan's nowhere near as uptight about that kind of thing as America is. Homosexuality was more or less an accepted, and to a certain extent romanticized, cultural practice until the Meiji era and influx of western cultural values in the early 20th century. Some of Japan's most storied and romanticized historical figures were involved in socially-accepted homosexual relationships, and popular fiction in the country hasn't exactly swept that under the rug either. (Kawamori's Nobunaga the Fool even cold-opens on the incident at Honnou-ji, where Nobunaga and his attendant/lover Ranmaru die together... setting up the reincarnation romance plot that pervaded the series proper on no uncertain terms that Nobunaga and Ranmaru were lovers.1) They don't have quite the same obstacles to showing a homosexual couple that we have in America, where even progressive franchises like Star Trek spent decades flip-flopping on whether or not they were going to have a gay romance at any point.3 Not that I've seen. Japan and China both have some pretty aggressive ideas about personal space, and that kind of touching wouldn't be done casually... and especially not in front of others. 1. Mind you, Kawamori's particular anachronism stew establishes that Ranmaru Mori was a reincarnation of Jeanne d'Arc, so it's more like a bi reincarnation romance where Jeanne/Ranmaru/Jeanne's2 gender is a revolving door while Nobunaga stays male consistently. 2. This gets a bit confusing to explain... Jeanne d'Arc is reincarnated centuries later as Ranmaru Mori, then dies and is reincarnated again as Jeanne Kaguya d'Arc who adopts the alias Ranmaru Mori while dressing and living as a man in the household of Nobunaga Oda's reincarnation. 3. Star Trek first alluded to it, ironically, in an attempt by Gene Roddenberry to shoot down Kirk x Spock shippers in the novelization of Star Trek: the Motion Picture. Star Trek: the Next Generation's attempt to tackle it in "The Outcast" was shot down by casting over the objections of Frakes and others. Deep Space Nine toyed with the idea of Garak being gay and attracted to Bashir, but ultimately abandoned it and only touched on it via a taboo reincarnation romance in "Rejoined" (the reincarnation part is taboo, not the homosexuality). Voyager didn't touch it. Star Trek: First Contact was going to introduce an openly gay man as a bridge crew member (Lt. Hawk) but the writers ultimately ended up having to kill him off after being assimilated by the Borg. Enterprise's armory officer Malcolm Reed was supposed to be gay but the network backed down from that too. It wasn't until Discovery that they finally worked up the courage to do it, and they promptly killed off one half of the show's token gay couple in the mother of all mixed messages.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    We've had a fair few implied love triangles with at least one same-sex side in the last few shows, it wouldn't surprise me. Macross 7 had that one episode with the tabloid journalist trying to get the Gamlin x Basara shippers going. Macross Frontier had the Nanase's crush on Ranka and Ranka's borderline crush on Sheryl, a preemptively resolved Cathy-Ozma-Bobby love triangle, and what could've been implied as an Alto-Michael-Klan love triangle since the origin of Alto's nickname was later established to be that Michael had actually hit on Alto when Alto first joined Mihoshi Academy as a performing arts student (and was, at the time, dressed as a girl for a theater performance). Then, of course, Macross Delta had a rather more than implied Messer-Keith-Roid love triangle.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    As far as I'm aware, there is no difference in the development backstory for any of the VFs between the Macross Frontier TV and Movie versions. The VF-27 doesn't even have a Mechanic Sheet in the movie section of Macross Chronicle, it only got one for the Super Pack add-on. Courtesy of the liner notes from the sixth volume of the Macross Frontier Blu-ray release. Offhand, I think that remark is also corroborated by the Mechanic A-sheet for the VF-27 in Macross Chronicle's Macross Frontier TV grouping.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    The poses are unnatural-looking, and the gunpods have that weird Liefeldian thing going on where they look like someone realized they ought to be holding something only AFTER the art was finished and hastily added it in Photoshop.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Hey now, I haven't solved any dubious puzzle boxes... This almost isn't terrible as long as you don't look at Roy or that knockneed VF-1S in the background. Side effects may include nausea, headaches, insomnia, constipation, oily discharge, severe deja vu, stiffness in joints, blurred vision or temporary blindness, loss of life, diarrhea, thrombosis, and rectal bleeding.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    They got deleted... sparing our eyes the horror.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I confess I'm not sure what the significance of the gender symbols is supposed to be... the Canaanite god Shahar was male, and so was his twin Shalim. There was, however, a Shahar ♂ in the YF-27's series of prototypes in addition to the Shahar ♀. The YF-27-3 Shahar ♂ was assigned to Maj. Brera Sterne of the Galaxy fleet 52nd Fighter Wing "Antares" platoon. It's implied to have a four-engine configuration, and it's noted that it was outfitted with an ISC despite its unstable engine output and has some lag in its control system. The YF-27-5 Shahar ♀ was assigned to Maris Stella, the Project Stella "cyber-grunt" prototype and was used for illegal combat data collection via black ops. It's a two-engine version which has no ISC, and thus is slower and has lower output than the YF-27-3, but it's better armed and a more stable aircraft overall. (It's hinted that this version was made to mislead people as to the level of capability of the final craft.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    As I've seen it explained, the YF-29 Durandal belongs to a separate development program that was running in parallel to the YF-25 Prophecy program that Master File calls Project Triangler. It wasn't (intentionally) related to the YF-25, (YF-26,) or YF-27, though the production-intent YF-27/VF-27 is an aircraft completed using stolen development data from the YF-29 program. The YF-29's designation comes from its status as the new VF debuting on the 29th anniversary of the Macross franchise. The name is a nod to an existing tradition of giving VFs with design series numbers ending in "9" to be named for swords. The VF-19 series set the bar there pretty high by using Excalibur, a mythical sword, and riffing on that theme for special variants like the VF-19EF's "Caliburn" and VF-19ACTIVE's "Nothung". "Durandal" is a fitting name, as the mythical sword the name comes from was reputed to be the sharpest in existence and indestructible... per Kawamori, the YF-29 is the strongest VF in Macross. There may be a very subtle nod to Sheryl there, as she was shown to be fluent in French in the series and the mythical sword Durandal is the sword of a French paladin (Roland) in French epic literature (e.g. The Matter of France). The stories that make up the Arthurian mythos come to us from a number of different languages including Welsh, Latin, French, and German. As a result, there are no shortage of variant names and alternate spellings. "Percival" is only the most accepted English spelling. It's also been rendered as Perceval, Parsifal, Parzival, etc. It's possible they started with one of those. It's also possible that's just a typo... like what happened to the YF-27-5. "Shaher" is a nonsense pseudoword. The correct spelling, "Shahar", is a Hebrew word that was translated as "Lucifer" in the translation of the Book of Isaiah from Hebrew into Latin. Translating foreign words into katakana is a somewhat imprecise science due to differing rules of pronunciation between languages.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe the license expired and someone else got it, like Diamond Select? Not too long ago, I got a few of Diamond Select's Star Trek offerings (an ENT-A and ENT-B) and they're pretty darn good. I'd love to see someone tackle the unused Enterprise Season 5 NX-01 (Columbia-class in the EU).
  17. Seto Kaiba
    They never took it to the level of Nina Einstein's crush on Princess Euphemia in Code Geass's first season1... but Nanase wasn't exactly hiding it either. Like in Ep8 of Macross Frontier when Ranka has her first day at Mihoshi Academy, when Ranka holds her hand Nanase's expression leaves no doubt that she's enjoying herself far, FAR more than if it were just a platonic friendship.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, it's not unusual for one or two members or an idol group to stand out in a performance environment... but it's not like the ones who don't just disappear into thin air between shows. Walkure are supposed to be Macross Delta's main characters, and the only one of them who was anything like a fully-realized character was Freyja. Mikumo was the group's star, and they didn't bother to give her any character development until she became a Macguffin three episodes or so from the end. Kaname was the group's leader, and the only development she got was when her love interest creepy antisocial stalker died suddenly and messily. Makina and Reina are a bit less glaring, I suppose, but it's still rather bizarre for a main character to get less development than a recurring background character. Having an idol group and only actually using one, maybe one and a half members of the group is pretty wasteful, no? That wasn't so much a curveball so much as a pitch so straight you could use it to calibrate lasers. Seriously, an anime series with a large satellite group of nominally school-aged young women who are utterly uninvolved in the main romance subplot? Regardless of whether it's played for comedy or fetish appeal, it's practically mandatory to have either a lesbian couple or at least a lesbian one-sided crush going on. So much so it's almost a required trope for magical girl or idol series, and it seems safe to say Macross Delta has a foot in both camps there. Macross has done this before... Nanase Matsura, Ranka's gag boob-owning bestie, had such a painfully obvious crush on Ranka it was only missed by Luca. What was less predictable was the apparent unrequited gay love triangle between Keith, Roid, and Messer. A certain amount of ho yay was only to be expected with a cast full of prettyboys who fill the standard table of reverse harem character classes, but not playing it for laughs was a surprise since it's almost never not outside of that kind of story. Keith did more to eulogize Messer in less than a minute than a whole episode of the main cast, complete with a "how dare you stand where he stood" caused by Hayate taking up Messer's VF-31F and threatening to kill a teammate who badmouthed him. We definitely need a more focused story in the next series. "Show, don't tell" needs to be a bit more of a hard rule too. Macross Delta seems to be leaning in the direction that the Vindirance-Latence conflict in 2050-2051 was a Second Unification War, at least in its novelization. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with for antagonists in the future, since the anti-government forces left are predominantly Earth supremacist remnants like Fasces, the Zentradi are a thing that can be managed, the Vajra hive at the galactic core is gone, and Windermere's bottled up and hamstrung so badly they'll probably be down to just harsh language and postwar reserve weaponry in five years.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, give it time... it's pretty clear that they're headed that way slowly but surely. When they're not tracing from JCPenney catalogs, porn from Google Images, or Macross toy/model box art, they're already deep in Liefeldian realms of anatomical improbability. Even then, it's pretty obvious they're not giving it their A-game. Compare the quality levels of their Robotech comic to their other work and marvel at the extent to which they're phoning this one in. Wasn't a fair bit of the Comico stuff drawn by Carl Macek's wife? IIRC the Comico stuff was done on the same kind of shoestring budget that became the norm for all things Robotech in the late 80's and beyond. (The "As Seen on TV" label is kind of a big red flag for quality whenever it appears...) ... for some reason, this reminds me of Professor Farnsworth's reaction to a blind Leela's attempt at applying her makeup. "You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favorite artist is Picasso."
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Because the combat in Macross Frontier takes place almost exclusively in space, they seem to have preferred to use FAST Packs to lug their missiles around. Stories set mostly or entirely in atmosphere like Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy aren't at all shy about having the VF-25s use their underwing pylons. Every VF-25 in-game uses the six pylon stations on the wings for varying mixes of weaponry including the multi-lockon missiles, the single lockon Itano Circus variety, and occasionally reaction missiles. It does, in fact, have wing hardpoints. Four, to be precise. Why they weren't shown until 2011 is anyone's guess. It may have something to do with wanting better passive stealth c. Macross 7, since fighters with 3rd Gen active stealth systems hadn't been introduced on more than a trial basis and improvements in detection systems had shifted design emphasis back towards passive stealth designs like the VF-17 and VF-22.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    The name alone is arguably an early spoiler of Dilandau's true nature... Alseids (Greek: Alseides) are a type of nymph, an exclusively female Greek nature spirit/minor deity. It is a bit reminiscent of the Sv-51's head. Call me a cynic if you must, but I'm pretty sure it had more to do with covering a list of standard character-based fetishes. ... there is some powerful irony there. That the bustiest character is also, by dint of having the least character development, technically the flattest of the show's flat stock characters. It's unusual enough having obviously flat characters in a Macross series. The franchise's creators normally do an excellent job developing the cast of any given story. Having flat characters be the majority of the show's main characters was just an unforgivable screwup on the part of the writers. Who makes a show about idol singers and then only gives character development to one of five of them? Honestly. Ranka was semi-perpetually out of focus in Macross Frontier and even she got a LOT more character development than plot-critical Mikumo Guynemer. Makina's so bad off that of the lot, hers is the only bio that's purely informed ability. We see Reina hack things (badly), we see Kaname lead the group, we see Mikumo being The Ace, and we see Freyja being the rookie... but Makina is never actually shown being the ship's head mechanic despite that the assertion that she actually is taking up fairly half her official bio. They definitely gotta get on the ball with writing in the next series. You can't build a show around main characters who get less development and screen time than nameless background cast members.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Because Docker. 'nuff said. At least we got two moments of badass-ness from it. Gamlin swiping a VF-11C Super Thunderbolt and proceeding to hand the Varauta forces their asses with it early in the series, and then Kinryu's roaring rampage of revenge in that Armored Thunderbolt. They were pretty ugly...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, we know the progenitor of The Vision of Escaflowne did end up rolled into Macross and at least one of its designs did become a Windermerean fighter: Fanelia's LV-7 Valorous Rapier "Excalibur" became the Sv-154 Svard. Kawamori's never been one to let an old idea or design go. Still, I'm left to wonder if we're going to see some of the Macross franchise's trademark reinvention of itself with each new installment is going to be de-emphasized in favor of more frequent new releases ala Gundam. This new series supposedly debuting later this year is coming a lot sooner than usual. As noted earlier, I definitely suspect that we'll see less in terms of new mechanical designs.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    For a while now, I've felt that Macross 7 is a show that is better on the second viewing. It is, yes, about twenty episodes too long and as a result it drags badly in the beginning and it starts out painfully repetitive, but in terms of its adherence to Macross's main themes I feel it's actually one of the stronger and more important entries in the metaseries. The one thing I've found helps getting through it is to NEVER watch more than one to two episodes in a sitting. It's not a show that should ever be marathoned, considering the aforementioned repetitiveness of the first half. The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross seems to have been almost the perfect length to suit Macross's particular style of storytelling. Three cours let them pace out the story and left plenty of room to develop a reasonably large cast without sacrificing pacing on the altar of exposition. The shorter two cour shows, Macross Frontier and Macross Delta, both had kind of rushed pacing in their last few episodes as the writers scrambled to tie up the loose ends in a satisfying manner. Macross Frontier managed to maintain near-perfect balance in its storytelling and did a fabulous job developing its cast. Macross Delta had a lot more trouble with it due to its overwhelming focus on music leaving a good deal less time to develop its large cast and its plot, terminating in a graceless stumble to a halt thanks to lost momentum from the exposition dumps. At almost four cour long, Macross 7 had the opposite problem... way too much episode left at the end of the story, and would've benefited greatly from a reduction to three cours forcing it to start developing the main plot earlier. Personally, I felt the mecha weren't so much "meh" as a mixed bag. The VF-11C Thunderbolt, VF-17 Nightmare, and VF-22 Sturmvogel II are great... but the Sound Force customs are absolutely hideous. There were a few that were pretty good back in the day, like the English version of Tenchi Universe's opening theme, but yeah... a lot of them were terrible. The English version of "Pioneer" from the Tenchi Muyo! OVAs was appalling. Doing English versions of the songs is also pretty expensive, which makes it an unattractive option even if you do have a voice actor who can sing worth a damn (which most don't seem to be able to). Like the "Mylene Jenius sings Lynn Minmay" album that Tomo Sakurai recorded a while back, I maintain there is no amount of alcohol on this Earth that would make that mess an enjoyable experience.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    There's some quality irony to be had there... given Walkure's evident popularity in Japan and abroad, it's highly probable that they'll be the only part of Macross Delta anyone remembers (in-universe or out) in the future. Kind of like how Isamu and Guld get swept under the rug and the only part of Macross Plus that usually gets referenced is Sharon Apple. Honestly, no... there are some superficial similarities there, I guess, but probably purely coincidental. Hayate's nothing like Van Fanel, that's for sure. Van did his level best to convince the audience that he'd had his sense of humor amputated at the neck, breakfasted on iron filings, and sat down abruptly on a broom handle. Keith and Alan are arguably only alike in that they're both blonde-haired prettyboys. Alan had an illegitimate child, Keith was the illegitimate child. Never mind that Alan was into girls and both of Keith's implied love interests are men. Alan also had a sense of humor, where Keith smoulders with generic rage 24/7. Bogue and Dilandau were both hotheads, for sure... but Dilandau was in charge and a badass, while Bogue is the youngest Aerial Knight and treated like a junior even by people who joined the Knights after he did (Qasim and the twins). There isn't a sniff of a distressed damsel in Bogue's backstory either, where Dilandau WAS the distressed damsel. The Aerial Knights also don't really cut it as elite mooks either. They're a prettyboy platoon like Dilandau's Dragon Slayers, but the similarity pretty much ends there since they're not sneaky or genre savvy. Most of them are honor-before-reason idiots who were entirely dependent on the edge given to them by the Song of the Wind and their more advanced fighter, and couldn't hold their own against skilled troops on a level footing. One thing you can say for Dilandau's troops... it took someone with plot armor to actually start killing them, and even then it took a lot of work, justifying their role as The Dreaded. Everyone was kind of betting, going into Delta, that we'd be getting Der Ring des Nibelung in space... boy were WE wrong. Which is kind of a shame, since Macross Delta only superficially built on the Protoculture-Norse theme that was going on in Macross 30. All things considered, I suspect they'd wonder why the show has a character whose only role is to show enough cleavage to hide a small armored cavalry squadron in. (Theres nothing wrong with a bit of fanservice, but it does get a bit jarring when a character exists for that reason only... Klan Klan was arguably Frontier's Ms. Fanservice, and she managed to have an interesting character arc and a lot of development. In such a character-driven series as Macross, there really is no excuse for a flat character.)
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