Seto Kaiba

The one subtitled "The unproduced screenplay"? Because I am now very curious. If so, the book in question's available in ebook form on Play Books...

I was also looking at the VF-31AX Master File's story section, The Miracle of Foegal. It's set in March 2068, and might be the oddest one yet as it's the story of the New UN Forces and Xaos collaborating to defend an uninhabited star system that the New UN Government had designated an ecological preserve from a Zentradi main fleet whose scouting force was able to escape from a run-in with the New UN Forces. Perhaps the most interesting part is the Foegal system itself... an artificial solar system the ancient Protoculture constructed around a white dwarf star. Foegal is orbited by seven planets, five of which are Earthlike, and most of which are believed to have been moved there from other star systems by the Protoculture. Even weirder, only one of Foegal's five habitable planets is in the habitable zone. The other four are farther away from the star, but are kept habitable by a Protoculture construct in orbit of the white dwarf that uses gravitational lensing to focus the star's energy onto the planets like a giant magnifying lens to ensure they get enough solar radiation to remain in Earthlike condition.

True, but when your monster can be taken down by the simple expedient of bullets... well... it's not so scary anymore. Looking at the alternatives, I think I'll take the game.

Oooooookay, back to The Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia... When I left off, the King of Arkarelia had signed a defense contract with Xaos in the midst of the evacuation effort and Xaos's four Delta Flight VF-31s entered the fight on behalf of the Arkarelians against the Roakite invasion force occupying much of their capital city. They'd downed about twenty enemy Valkyries of different types in the first few minutes and with the 1st Lt. Christiansen's return with a full squadron's worth of unmanned and remotely operated VF-11L Thunderbolts the tide had temporarily turned in Xaos's favor until they detected the approach of another PMC fighting on behalf of the Roakites. The top of the page has a brief, quasi-related blurb about Arad's shiny new VF-31S. Its paintjob is more subdued in this version with a low-viz grey and a blue fantail out from the skull motif. It's noted that this unit was YF-31-6 as it existed in July 2066. It's also noted that the coloring is not a true paintjob, but a projection using the camouflage film that's applied to the exterior of the aircraft, which is able to dynamically change colors and even markings (as seen in the series). The low viz colors depicted were apparently the ones used for training flights. The section marked Siegfried's Battle is where sh*t finally starts to go off. Delta Flight were surprised to see some of the few existing YF-30B改 units deployed in such a remote region of space. The advantage Delta Flight had enjoyed up to that point in bullying the Roakites old 3rd Generation VF-14s and handful of 4th Generation VF-171s evaporated with the arrival of four 5th Generation YF-30B改 Chronoses. If their tuning had achieved the same performance as the 5.5th Generation VF-31S Siegfried, then the situation would immediately turn against Xaos's handful of troops even with a full 20 remotely operated VF-11L's supporting them. Arad ordered Delta 2, 3, and 4 to continue sorting out the numerically superior but technologically inferior Roakite force in the air while he led the mercenary unit operating the YF-30B改's away from the city. With the GGCF YF-30B改's in hot pursuit, Arad deployed one of his fighter's Cygnus multidrone plates directly into the flight path of the nearest pursuing YF-30B改 with its pinpoint barrier enabled. The YF-30B's pilot was unable to evade in time and the drone's barrier slammed into and sheared off his right wing. Arad was able to capitalize on the chaos and bring the now out-of-control YF-30B改 down with a burst of fire from his beam gunpod before diving towards the approaching enemy force. There's another brief digression here that talks about the VF-31's active stealth measures. It talks briefly about the ubiquity of active stealth technology being the reason that so many engagements take place at visual ranges, and that older aircraft are naturally at a disadvantage in such fights because newer and more advanced active stealth measures continually improve at deceiving enemy radar and optical target recognition systems. The VF-31 comes into this discussion specifically via the optical film on its hull that's able to freely change the aircraft's markings and coloration. It's incapable of going full Ghost in the Shell optic camo, but it can change rapidly enough to blur the aircraft's outline enough that it can briefly delay target acquisition by a few tenths of a second, which can be the difference between taking a hit and successful evasion in a fight. Cpt. Molders's VF-31S went into the dogfight with the advantage of its FF-3001/FC2 engines, significantly more powerful than the FF-3001A engines used by the VF-25 and VF-31A, and able to further increase their output by tapping into the fold wave system. Arad's plan was to essentially trick the enemy YF-30B's into attempting to match the VF-31S in terms of acceleration and turning performance, where he had a decisive advantage. Banking sharply to match their speed and changing to GERWALK mid-roll, Arad was able to land a direct hit on the cockpit of a second YF-30B改 with his beam gunpod, killing the pilot and taking the second of four aircraft out of the fight. Changing back to fighter and finishing the roll, he then applied maximum overboost, trusting the VF-31S's structural reinforcement to allow the otherwise perilous high-airspeed transformation. Because the airframe is specially strengthened to withstand the Fold Wave System and FF-3001/FC2 engines, it's able to transform and attack in 360 degrees at much higher airspeeds than usual. This type of acrobatic attack is a mainstay of VF combat against Zentradi pods, but normally at far lower speeds. Having maxed the capacity of his ISC system with that maneuver, Arad was forced to fight conservatively and rely on getting in close to the two remaining enemy aircraft in order to bleed off the accumulated g-forces and prepare for a counterattack. With enough ISC capacity restored, Arad then dived directly into the city, barely above the ground before changing to GERWALK mode, forcing the enemy YF-30B改's to pursue. While flying barely above the city streets and dodging Roakite ground forces, Arad turned 180 degrees to fly backwards and unleashed a warning shot at the two pursuing YF-30B's. Constrained by the streets, the warning shot ended up being a direct hit on one of the two remaining GGCF fighters, sneding it crashing into a building. Built-in safety measures in the YF-30B's airframe control AI activated and dumped all energy in its capacitors into its energy conversion armor, preventing major damage to the aircraft while the ISC protected the life of the pilot from the intense g-forces of the crash. However, the building then collapsed on top of the crashed YF-30B, immobilizing it and allowing a snap shot from Arad to further disable it. Having reduced the fight from 4 on 1 to 1 on 1, Arad launched vertically in Fighter mode with the remaining YF-30B in hot pursuit and threaded the needle through an enemy rear guard unit at 500m. The YF-30B, already slow to pursue, misjudged the timing and was late to turn. This hesitation allowed Arad to clear the enemy rearguard unit, reverse under maximum g-load, and launch a combined missile and beam gunpod attack on the remaining YF-30B... reducing it to a blazing wreck that plummeted to the ground. The Alkarelia defense forces, watching this outrageous engagement, raised a mighty cheer as the last YF-30B went down. Meanwhile, the Roakite air forces had been picked apart by 1st Lt. Christiansen's Siegfried, the two Kairos units, and the VF-11 drone unit. This devastating reversal and the loss of a significant part of their air power saw the Roakite army initiate a retreat. Thanks to Operation Gram and the intervention of Xaos in the politically difficult situation the NUNS had been prevented from intervening in, Alkarelia was able to repel the Roakite invasion and regain its sovereignty. The hostile political situation between the two worlds remained unchanged, but no party objected to Alkarelia voluntarily paying a PMC to help assist its defense forces. One month later, Xaos was formally contracted to provide a garrison force to assist in defense of the planet. Alkarelia's King Ragrand provided Xaos with fold quartz as part of the remuneration for their emergency aid and the price of their defense contract. It's hypothesized that Lady M may have intervened and offered a special contract price in exchange for the fold quartz. This new supply of fold quartz was, according to the text, probably used to complete the remaining VF-31 Siegfried units for Delta Flight. Cpt. Arad Molders and the other three Xaos pilots who participated in the defensive battle were also knighted by the Alkarelian royal family and Arad also received a promotion to Major for his valor in combat. An armistice would eventually be agreed between the Alkarelians and Roakites when the Roakite Prince Simka, who helped arrange the initial cease fire, deposed his father and negotiated peaceful relations between the two worlds. The Roakite military government was dissolved and the planet made a peaceful transition to industrial development. It ends with one more digression, noting that the Alkarelians were disappointed to learn that Maj. Molders was not going to be stationed on their planet. Instead, he was to return to Ragna and continue preparing the 3rd Fighter Wing's Delta Flight for joint operations with Tactical Sound Unit Walkure. It's said that when they visited Alkarelia again, the Delta Flight airshow drew louder cheers than Walkure's performance.

While the VF-4 was undeniably a better space fighter than the VF-1, because its development started before the First Space War it was still fundamentally a product of the same incorrect assumptions that drove the VF-1's development. It also shared a fair percentage of VF-1 parts because its development was completed postwar for use on emigrant ships so resource efficiency was prioritized. Kinda! I'd assume something a bit more autonomous, though, instead of needing gunners.

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies is pretty much the center of the Venn diagram of Villain-san's Day Off and Love After World Domination. It's one of those half-length short series (11 minute episodes). The premise is basically a gender-flipped version of Love After World Domination but with more of a Villain-san's Day Off slow pace. The titular and extremely polite and proper Lieutenant from the nondescript Evil Organization falls in love at first sight with the equally polite and proper Magical Girl and, due to their shared incredible commitment to politeness, proper etiquette, and fair play they never do get around to doing any fighting.

My Wife Has No Emotion's latest episode... well... hmm... This is clearly meant to be cute and funny, but I can't laugh or find it cute because the protagonist is clearly mentally ill. He's a terminally lonely wage slave projecting his frustrated affections onto a humanoid household appliance... and outside of his sister, the people who've seen them together find it appropriately creepy and cringeworthy. His sister... *inarticulate noise of disgust*... imagine writing a story where a character has to be introduced with this caption superimposed over them: 「異種間恋愛フェチ」 (lit. "interspecies love fetish"). That's how the series chooses to explain the protagonist's sister being OK with him being "married" to a robotic kitchen tool. The whole premise is still incredibly sexist.

It's not reactants they're drawing in in atmospheric flight... the compact thermonuclear reactor's running entirely on internally-carried hydrogen either way. It's that they don't have to carry supplemental propellant with them to generate thrust. They can just pull in air and heat it up like a normal turbofan jet engine. As to the main question... well... they might not have even bothered. Had the Earth UN Government and Earth UN Forces had an accurate picture of what space warfare was actually like they probably would probably have decided to focus on large-scale static and mobile anti-fleet defenses rather than anything designed for infantry combat. Grand Cannons, weapons satellites armed with high-powered beam weapons and batteries of thermonuclear reaction missiles, guided missile destroyers, etc. Weapons designed to absolutely saturate near-Earth space with thermonuclear fire in order to wipe enemy fleets with overwhelming firepower. If they bothered with Valkyries at all, I suspect we'd see something more like the VF-X3 Medusa from the FamilySoft Macross games or a VF-25 with a permanent Armored Pack... something less like an aircraft and more like a heavily armored brick of a spacecraft built to carry the absolute maximum amount of "I want it dead yesterday" firepower. Even a transformation would probably not be bothered with in favor of maximizing the ability to saturate the combat area with firepower and manufacture as many of them as possible. If they were absolutely, doggedly determined to make a VF like the VF-1... probably something akin to the VF-0+ or VF-3000. Just, the VF-1 but bigger. The size constraints on the VF-1's battroid mode were what caused its limited internal fuel capacity for space flight. The source you are probably thinking of is Macross Chronicle (2nd Edition) Technology Sheet 01E "Variable Fighter", which says things like: "Energy conversion armor is said to be a technology obtained from the combat pods left in the ASS-1, [...]"

It's a franchise... a happy ending just means they have to force a Happy Ending Override when they come back to make Alien N+1: the Search for More Money. Like what happened after Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Wistoria: Wand and Sword has a new episode today... and I'm still not sold on this one either. It was doing some interesting worldbuilding for a bit, but too much of that is starting to converge on increasingly blatant Harry Potter references. Will Serfort was already a scrawny, short, geeky kid with ill-fitting glasses attending a wizard school in the company of an obnoxious girl prodigy... but now we have a bully teacher with long dark hair and unpleasant manner intrinsically associated with snakes who is trying his damndest to get Will expelled. He's basically Professor Snape after a significant glowup looks-wise. If I had to describe it in a single sentence... "This is what Mashle would be if Mashle weren't a comedy." Now you know... and knowing is half the battle! Please see the quartermaster for the red or blue lasers that make up the other half.

Pretty much everything on the CY24 release schedule could be described that way. Alien: Romulus is just the latest attempt to soft reboot a boomer-centric horror franchise after a string of piss-poor sequels. Like what they did to Halloween in 2018. No, they didn't multiply it... they diminished it. The xenomorph was scary because of how unknown and unseen it was in the original film. Aliens was a competent action-focus spinoff of a horror movie that diminished the fear invoked by the monster by making it both a known quantity and easily killable. It's a wonderfully tense action movie, but there xenomorphs invoke no terror because they're simply very dangerous predatory animals in the movie. The third might as well have been called Alien 3: Troubled Production, going through a bunch of different concepts based on Aliens before settling on trying to pivot back to horror and ended up a borderline remake of the first film but worse in every way. Executive meddling combined with a creative team that really, truly, desperately DID NOT want to be working on an Alien prequel. Executive meddling combined with a creative team that really, truly, desperately DID NOT want to be working on an Alien prequel again. They just wanted to be left in peace to do their unauthorized Blade Runner spinoff, but the executives said "No, you have to have a xenomorph in this one Ridley." And now this... a soft reboot set between Alien and Aliens that allegedly wants to try to pivot back to horror (again) and try to make this lurching zombie of a franchise relevant to audiences who don't have to pop tylenol for their back before standing up when the film ends. The horror aficionados, meanwhile, are just looking at this and saying... The true successors to Aliens, IMO. After you've diminished your horror movie monster to the level of a dangerous animal all that's really left on that course is gratuitous splatter horror like Alien vs. Predator that's all about spectacle rather than invoking fear. Alien: Isolation is, IMO, the one true successor to Alien in that it returns the xenomorph to being an unkillable, unknowable menace that the protagonist is stuck living on borrowed time in an expansive-yet-claustrophobic space with because it's in no hurry to finish the job. We're talking about a horror/action series set in a proto-cyberpunk dystopia... happy endings are the very picture of "We don't do that here."

Watching Pseudo-Harem, and to be honest its premise is feeling pretty thin even just two episodes in. It's just two weird theater kids flirting in the most awkward way imaginable with little to nothing in the way of a plot behind it. It's cute, but it doesn't feel like there's any direction to it. Dahlia in Bloom still isn't making much of an impression. None of the characters feel like they have a distinct personality. This episode supposedly sets up the main plot, but the cast sleepwalk through the entire thing.

Firepower-wise, the YF-29 is a lot more heavily armed in its basic state. All the Sv-303 really has for built-in weapons are guns... a pair of beam machine guns, a beam gunpod, and a copy of the YF-29's MDE beam turret. Fully-equipped, they're a lot closer in terms of firepower thanks to the Sv-303's four underwing pylons for mounting missiles and six Chhaya mini-ghosts parasite fighters, each of which has a beam gun and two micro-missile launchers. We're not sure how the armor compares, since the Sv-303 uses a completely new technology different from what's been used on every previous VF. At present, they are not officially available in any language except Japanese. EDIT: ... and a few Master File books were printed in Zentradi as special editions. Partial translations by fans do exist, particularly for Macross Chronicle. Sketchley's Macross Gateway has quite a lot of that.

Since I have a free moment after dinner, I decided to start digging into the story section of the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried book that mentions the YF-30B. The Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia Normally, these story sections are set after the events of whatever TV series or OVA introduced the design. This tale's events occur a year before the events of Macross Delta's TV anime and first movie, and involve the first use of the newly completed VF-31 custom Siegfried in live combat. In 2066, the Xaos branch on Ragna was still in the process of equipping and training the four flights of its 3rd Fighter Wing stationed aboard Macross Elysion. Plans were underway to equip the first three flights with the trial production VF-31A Kairos and to outfit the fourth flight (Delta) with the Siegfried custom (what Master File calls the SYF-31). Plans for a Flight consisting entirely of Siegfried customs were being held up considerably by the sheer difficulty of obtaining fold quartz of the required size and purity to manufacture its fold wave system and FF-3001/FC2 enignes. With the Vajra having left known space, the only source available was Protoculture ruins. The first two Siegfried custom airframes were delivered by Shinsei's factory on Eden, and delivered to Xaos that year. Several pilots and support staff have been rotated there for training on the new fighter, including Cpt. Arad Molders, a 1st Lt. named Christian Christiansen, and a 2nd Lt. named Ella Kuroki. The two Siegfried test airframes were loaded on the NUNS carrier CV-458 Vikrant (named for India's first aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant) for transfer to Ragna and meant to carry out simulated combat exercises along the way. There's then an extended digression into the subject of the Brisingr globular cluster's development. It's noted that the region was discovered in the 2020s and that many planets therein are suitable for Human life and emigration to those worlds began in an era before the central government had set down detailed rules regarding how to interact with less developed alien races. Windermere is presented as an example, where the Kingdom of the Wind's royal family is described as having become a puppet government ruling under the control of the colonists and that this developed into an independence movement later on. Many civilizations in the cluster were apparently at medieval (or earlier) levels of development at the time they were first discovered by emigrant fleets, and having irresponsible aliens from beyond the stars drop out of the sky and start taking over did not do great things for society. Massive social upheaval caused by skipping centuries or millennia of social development in the transition directly from the Dung Ages to interstellar society created a lot of friction both between those civilizations and Humanity and between the civilizations that hadn't even known each other existed until that point. This apparently drove a lot of demand for the New UN Forces and PMCs to intervene in conflicts which broke out between those planets. Ragna is said to be a key hub in those worlds, and also a popular leisure destination thanks to its pleasant climate and beaches. (Romanizations get conjectural from here on out...) The story itself starts when, shortly before the final leg of the trip to the Brisingr cluster, the Vikrant receives emergency orders from the New UN Forces and Xaos to rush to the planet Arkarelia in the Lanina system in order to evacuate the planet's royal family from the capital city of Kareliad. Arkarelia is a world at a medieval level of development that prematurely entered the interstellar age when Humanity made contact with the natives, and is currently in a state of interstellar war with their neighbors the Roakites. The Roakites are described in unflattering terms as a greedy people who eagerly promoted cultural and technological advancement via contact with Humanity to enhance their own power and were savvy enough to understand the situation in the globular cluster and aim to avoid being exploited by the New UN Government. Still smarting after the huge disaster that was the Windermere war of independence, the New UN Government apparently declined to intervene as the Roakite government transitioned into a military regime through a coup and began undermining their neighbor Arkarelia's autonomy. Worse, the Roakite government is being supported by interstellar arms corporations from who the Roakites are purchasing weapons through legal channels. Since an armed intervention was not an option, the New UN Forces opted to intervene stealthily and evacuate the Alkarelian royal family to prevent the Roakites from having them assassinated in order to place the Roakite king's half-Alkarelian son on the throne. The Roakite's half-Alkarelian prince Simka covertly cooperated with the New UN Spacy's intelligence division to arrange a brief ceasefire and allow a rescue team to be sent in to extract the royal family. The Roakite king agreed to a four hour ceasefire and an immediate evacuation by just two transport aircraft with escorting Marine and VF forces on the condition that they use PMC troops instead of New UN Forces ones. Some 20 hours later, the Vikrant defolded in the Lanina system and the rescue force immediately began operations at midnight on July 9th, 2066 (Galactic standard time). Local time in Kareliad was 1400 (said to be approximately equivalent to 1pm on an Earth day). As soon as the Roakite liaison was aboard, the Vikrant dispatched two transport aircraft and an escort of four VFs including the two VF-31 Siegfrieds and two VF-31A Kairos units and several VF-171s from the Roakite forces. On their approach to the Arkarelian royal palace, the main Roakite forces (using Regults and old VF-14s) fired warning shots at them that destroyed buildings elsewhere in the city despite the liaison officer ordering their side to stand down and observe the ceasefire. On arriving in the palace itself, the rescue party discovered thousands of refugees inside the palace and a royal family that couldn't run away and leave the refugees behind. After some debate, the King agreed that he himself cannot evacuate but agrees to have the rest of his family evacuated. While the royals were loaded onto the transport, Cpt. Molders attempted to formally persuade the King to formally request a defense contract with Xaos to protect the native Alkarelians. Using his VF-31's fold wave communication system to send a report to Xaos HQ, he requested and received approval from headquarters to begin defense operations on Alkarelia. 30 minutes before the end of the ceasefire, Xaos forces mobilized under Arad's plan "Operation Gram". (Named for the holy sword Gram.) 1st Lt. Christian Christiansen's VF-31F was tasked with escorting the transports out of the area, while Cpt. Molders's VF-31S and the two VF-31As remained behind to slip out past the VF-14s chasing the transport and VF-171s still encircling the palace and head for the edge of the city. Using their data links and the advanced ARIEL III control AI, the three VF-31s were able to simultaneously shoot down all nine pursuing VF-171s with air-to-air missiles. They then proceeded to strafe the ground forces with beam gunpod and railgun fire, and lure approaching enemy VF-171 and VF-14 units in closer by deliberately reducing the effectiveness of their active stealth systems before climbing and switching back to full power with support of an ECM container carried by one of the VF-31As. With no countermeasures for the false radar information broadcast by the VF-31s, the VF-14s and VF-171s of the Roakite forces were quickly shot down. Nearly twenty enemy aircraft were downed in the first few minutes of the engagement, though a significantly larger force is quickly mustered in an attempt to counter Delta Flight. With three of Delta Flight's four members running delaying tactics against Roakite ground forces, Lt. Christiansen's VF-31F returned from orbit with reinforcements in tow. In an "exact words" situation, the Vikrant had deployed a full squadron of unmanned VF-11L's under the remote control of an drone control container attacked to Christiansen's VF-31F. The unmanned Valkyries technically did not break the terms of the cease fire since only four pilots were involved in the operation. Shortly thereafter, enemy reinforcements arrived in the combat area. YF-30B改 Chronos units from the General Galaxy Corporate Forces. There's another brief digression to talk about the YF-30B改. The YF-30B改 is described as a prototype aircraft based on the YF-30 Chronos produced to evaluate the transformation system and container system, and which was eventually developed into the VF-31. It's said to have been tested by various forces including the New UN Forces and various PMCs including GGCF. General Galaxy apparently modified its YF-30Bs with its own proprietary avionics and control systems and they were believed to possess capabilities rivaling or exceeding the VF-31A. I'll get the rest in a bit, this is a LONG one.

Because vinyl is trendy right now, and everyone else moved on to digital. Physical media in general has been on the decline for the last twenty years thanks to the superior convenience and cost-efficiency of digital downloads and on-demand streaming audio. Customers have largely moved on from CDs to digital formats the same way customers moved from LPs to CDs for their superior fidelity and capacity back in the 80's. It's driven a bit of a counterculture-type interest in vinyl, which has seen a modest rise in the last four or so years. Not to significant levels, but enough to overtake cratering interest in CDs. I'd assume ATA probably didn't bother pursuing a license for a CD release, since the albums are already available in digital formats worldwide via Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc. The main thing you do with a CD these days is rip it to MP3 or some other format and put it on your phone or cloud-based media app, so what's the bloody point?

Yeah... once you get past a certain point of building up a mystery, no explanation will be satisfying. It's probably for the best that we'll never learn why the Engineers created the xenomorphs, or what they weaponized them against. The idea that there's something out there that scared the godlike Engineers badly enough to create incredibly deadly parasitic biotechnological horrors as weapons is more than a bit creepy in its own right. I think part of it is that Prometheus, at various points in its development, changed how close its relationship to Alien was. Fox announced it as an Alien reboot in '09, then changed their story to calling it an Alien prequel, then around '10 started to diverge from a prequel to a quasi-unrelated story set in the same universe as Alien. Then, after that did OK but not great, Scott's plans to not even bother with xenomorphs in "Prometheus 2" in favor of focusing on the monster that was AI were overruled based on audience feedback from Prometheus and they had to crowbar the xenomorph into Covenant somehow to appease the crowd.

Yeah, Macross Delta did lean very heavily towards the music side of Macross's three pillars. The combat choreography definitely was lackluster by Macross's normally very high standards. It was criticized pretty harshly here and elsewhere for many dogfights forgetting the VFs could transform and for only using one maneuver: "the Scissors". Hm... I'm not sure how much I can properly explain without spoiling other Macross titles for you. It's more like very specific roles and character archetypes in Macross come with a built-in death flag... to the extent that some of them are running jokes to the fans, and at least one is a running joke to the characters themselves.

TBH, I kinda thought I already had... the aforementioned continuity snarls. Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are only separated from the events of Alien by 28 and 18 years respectively. The derelict on LV-426 has supposedly been there for thousands and thousands of years. Unless David time traveled, the xenomorph eggs in that derelict Engineer bomber are at least several millennia older than David is. The derelict was also piloted by an Engineer, and David killed all of the Engineers on Paradise between the events of Prometheus and Covenant ten years before his first successful xenomorph was born. By the time he had xenomorph eggs, there were no Engineers left on Paradise to pilot a ship carrying them, so that bomber has to predate David's genocide of the Engineers in 2094 and thus predates the creation of David's xenomorphs by over 10 years. (For what it's worth, the novelization of Alien: Covenant also comes right out and says that the Engineers created the xenomorphs, not David. David created his own strain of them by replicating the process the Engineers used.) I'm inclined to suspect the main reason that Alien: Covenant's writing team dropped the idea was because it was building on material that'd been cut from Prometheus's script well before filming ever started. Material that was probably cut from Prometheus because the studio was worried it would offend Christian viewers.

Yeah, about the only detail Master File didn't give was the Sv-303's weight. It's a four-engine VF that's using overtuned versions of the Sv-262's FF-2999/FC2 engine for its main engines and overtuned versions of the YF-29's FF-3003J/FC1 engine for the smaller secondary engines. The main engine thrust increased 20% from 1,955 kN to 2,346 kN and the secondary engine thrust jumped 34% from 1,470 kN to 1,970 kN.

👍 Same here, though I count Alien: Isolation among the good ones. It may be a video game, but it comes far closer to what made Alien the horror classic than any other title that the franchise has produced. It didn't just make the xenomorph scary, it made it pants-soilingly terrifying again. For that, I'll forever count it among The Good Ones. 3 is a mess and Resurrection is more like an SNL parody than anything. I prefer to treat them like fever dreams after a particularly ill-advised late night pizza binge. They cut that material for a number of reasons... the main one being that it sounds cool but doesn't actually make sense or work in context. The pseudo-religious angle about the Engineers worship of the Deacon was also cut from Prometheus in the early draft stage of the script, so there wasn't any proper buildup to it.

Definitely wanna know what the story behind that Barbie Pink YF-30B is...

Eh... the visual design for the series is nothing to sneeze at most of the time. The fight choreography in the lightsaber fights is a lot more visually impressive and exciting to watch than anything the sequels brought to the table. Even the story could be turned into something pretty damn interesting if only the creative team working on it weren't blinded by their love of the source material. Just to throw a couple ideas out there that I think would've made a more interesting series with little actual change to the framing of the story: Mae could've been a Jedi padawan who fell to the dark side and started killing Jedi because she discovered that the Jedi had actually taken her in after killing her family and not because she'd been willingly given up her family. That could've driven a much more personal character arc for Mae without the need for the identical twin BS, and neatly avoided the continuity-breaking Sith Lord too. The Jedi could've been pursuing Mae for the same reasons, to cover up the murder of Jedi by Jedi. Mae's Master could have been a rogue Jedi who discovered some kind of awful hidden truth about the Jedi Order and either went mad from the revelation or decided to try to bring the Jedi to justice by killing the criminal Jedi Masters to draw attention to their crimes. The Order could be pursuing them either to enforce the coverup or to simply cover up the murders. Mae could've been someone taken in and weaponized by that rogue Jedi specifically to avoid putting themselves at risk.

Official material for the YF-30 is somewhat sparse. We don't know when precisely development kicked off, but Macross 30 itself does identify the YF-30 as another original VF that was independently developed based on the YF-24 Evolution specification. So its development was at least partly in parallel to that of the VF-25, VF-27, and YF-29. We also have, in its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet, a statement that its design was reworked pretty significantly in mid-development as operational priorities changed and we know in Macross Delta backstory materials discussed in Great Mechanics etc. and the game's dialog that the YF-30 also drew on technology developed for the YF/VF-25 and YF-29. So we can reasonably assume development kicked off somewhere in the mid-to-late 2050s and was probably heavily revised somewhere around 2059. No relation to the Macross Galaxy fleet at all, as it happens. A note in the margins of that part of the VF-31 Master File explains that the General Galaxy Corporate Forces (GGCF) are a Private Military Company that spun off from the General Galaxy (mega)corporation's security division at some point after the Second Unification War (c.2051~). Basically, General Galaxy did the same thing that Bilra Transport and Xaos did: they converted the internal security division that protected their ships and facilities into a PMC that operated as a subsidiary corporation. That way, they could sell their security services to themselves but also turn that into a profit center by hiring more soldiers and renting them out to emigrant governments as a supplement to their local New UN Forces defense forces. Bilra Transport did this when they spun off their security division as Strategic Military Services (SMS), and Xaos probably did it too when they founded their PMC Division. It's rather interesting that General Galaxy's in-house PMC would take such an interest in a nominally Shinsei-developed VF like the YF-30B... I have not translated that section in full yet, but it's clear there's a story there (in the literal and figurative senses).

Failure Frame's second episode dropped on Crunchyroll the other day, so I gave that a whirl a bit ago. It's... better than the previous episode. Much of that is simply the absence of all of the other characters, though. There's definitely a very The Rising of the Shield Hero flavor to this series, with the protagonist being an underdog written off by the other "heroes" and saddled with a superficially useless isekai superpower that quickly turns out to be an incredibly broken utility power once he learns to use it properly.

Hm... it seems I've upset you, and for that I apologize. That said, you are kind of going off on a tangent here about something that was just one specific example of how the showrunner's "promoted fan" status contributed to the series having an Idiot Plot infested with one-dimensional stock characters. The point I made is that The Acolyte's creative team were so thrilled to simply be working on the High Republic era and so in love with it from the Expanded Universe works set there that once they'd brought it to life they were too afraid to actually do anything with it. So The Acolyte ended up with a directionless story that visits many lovingly rendered locations in the Star Wars galaxy but has nothing to do once it gets there except show off its attention to detail. That's why, as I pointed out, the media can find nothing to talk about WRT the series except its "Glup Shitto" moments. They're a symptom, not the problem. I don't doubt you for a second, though it's basically expected in Andor since Andor leads directly into Rogue One which leads directly into A New Hope. As I said previously, Andor is a much better story because it doesn't let affection for the source material get in the way of the story they're telling. It has loads of references, sure, but they're in service to the plot rather than distractions from it or purely decorative.