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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Ironically, while it sounds super cool to have these maverick privateers faffing about the battlefield flouting orders with devil-may-care independence... it'd actually make them criminals. They'd wind up classified as unlawful combatants in wartime, as they're civilian combatants who are not part of any militia, volunteer corps, etc., don't carry fixed markings, and if they flout orders from the gov't that means they're also not under a responsible command. If they got captured, they wouldn't be eligible for the protections guaranteed to prisoners of war. They'd almost be terrorists, in terms of their legal standing. The bit about not being subject to military regulations is actually false. In fact, in Macross Frontier, the SMS Frontier branch makes it pretty clear they're subject to the authority of the fleet's New UN Forces. They needed to clear up jurisdictional matters and get approvals from the NUNS to launch the SMS Macross Quarter at all, and during wartime their contracts specifically state that they have to answer to the authority of the fleet's New UN Forces up to and including not being permitted to quit the service. (Ozma also makes it clear that the vast majority of SMS's equipment is really the property of the fleet NUNS, and is just on loan to them.) The same could have been achieved just as easily, and with a lot less stupidity, by having all the main characters belong to a New UN Spacy Independent Squadron, like the VF-X Ravens or Havamal. Well, they made it clear that SMS would stand for the highest bidder... even if it meant defying the government to which they were contracted, and aiding a foreign power that was suspected of both espionage and war crimes. That puts them solidly in villain protagonist territory. Also, their getting big guns before the NUNS has nothing to do with that. Those who were paying attention in the Macross Frontier series will note that Ozma explicitly tells Alto that the reason SMS has the new VF-25 is they were hired to test the VF-25 in combat conditions before its adoption by the fleet's New UN Forces. The VF-25s, and indeed the SMS Macross Quarter herself, are property of the Macross Frontier Government and its New UN Forces, on loan to SMS for testing purposes. (This is why Col. Wilder says they're pirates when they leave the fleet... they stole a starship that's legally New UN Forces property, along with a bunch of trial production next-gen fighters.) The actual answer, once again obligingly provided by Maj. Ozma Lee, is WAY more sinister than you think. Why are PMCs a popular option in the Macross universe? As Ozma explains, it's because the PMCs provide troops who are expendable. There's no military or government accountability for deaths of private contractors. Private contractors who die in the line of duty, even in combat, are considered to have died in accidents for legal purposes. No wrongful death lawsuits. No inquests. No widows pension. No military burial. Nothing. To a certain extent, it's also because PMCs can be relied upon to be amoral. They'll cheerfully do things that are not necessarily legal, like deceiving the New UN Government about the progress in developing a next-gen fighter on an isolated planet. Granted, the first generation of emigrant fleets weren't particularly populous... but they all have a disproportionately large military contingent, because of the ever-present danger of running into a rogue Zentradi fleet, or anti-government terrorists, etc. Even those early emigrant fleets left our solar system with more firepower than many modern militaries. There's an example given of one fairly small first-generation emigrant fleet with what is said to be approximately typical military strength for its era. It had over 700 variable fighters, 9 carriers, 16 cruisers, and 48 destroyers. It had more manpower at its disposal than the entire regular British Royal Air Force and almost twice as many fighters as the German Luftwaffe... and that's a SMALL emigrant fleet military. The 37th Large-Scale Emigrant Fleet "Macross-7" makes that look like a garden party, with 1,800 variable fighters, 600 variable attackers, 9 variable bombers, 66 carriers, and 120 frigates. To put that into a usable real-world perspective, the Macross-7 emigrant fleet New UN Forces constitutes what the New UN Forces would consider a medium-sized defense force... one that would easily be the fourth-largest air force on the planet Earth if it existed today. The entire US Air Force only has 2,025 fighters, and they're the biggest air force on Earth. That's for a fleet with a population of 1 million. Now stop and consider that the fifth-generation emigrant fleets like Macross Frontier can be almost five times the size of the Macross-7 fleet. Macross Valiant is noted to have led a fleet of over 900 ships. Scaled linearly, that fleet could have over 11,000 variable combat aircraft. That's one fleet with more air power than the US, China, and Russia COMBINED. They have carriers that hold far more aircraft than most modern nations have in their entire inventories. Fleets of that size have a population of ~10 million. Military power is seen as something of a priority by the emigrant fleets for a few reasons. The first acknowledged reason is that there are rogue Zentradi and other threats out there that will wipe an emigrant fleet out as soon as look at it. Maintaining a strong defense is vital to ensuring the fleet's civilians stay safe on their voyage to their new home. The second is that a certain amount of fleet military power is necessary for a strong negotiating position when staking claims to resources and negotiating trade agreements with rival fleets. Macross-29 is noted to have had its economy pretty much collapse outright as a result of becoming everybody's doormat in trade agreements once their timid, cowardly President (Howard Glass's brother, no less) abolished their military. You saw that in Macross Delta, actually... before their planet's government seceded from the New UN Government in 2060, Windermere IV's Aerial Knights were Windermere's New UN Forces, with help from a garrison from abroad. None of the Aerial Knights in the series except Master Hermann had any combat experience prior to their attack on Al Shahal, and just one flight of their best spanked Xaos's forces so hard they ran the whole Xaos PMC group out of the Brisingr cluster, killed Xaos's top ace casually, and pretty much won the war outright but for backstabbing by their own side.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They're mostly covered by the FAST packs in the animation. The toy had to cope with the material limitations of the plastic they were working with. It had to be made a lot thicker than the metal on the actual fighter would be in scale in order to stand up to handling.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    While my translator-y habits practically qualify me to swear in as an expert witness in the field of gift horse dentistry, I'm not gonna complain about them accidentally indulging in realism. I will, however, gripe endlessly about the useless and thoroughly unloveable pack of designated heroes they foisted on us. The crew of the SMS Macross Quarter wasn't... though technically Alto was unknowingly complicit in the whole conspiracy, having sided with the post-coup d'etat government and New UN Forces under its command. SMS's administration was certainly complicit, and knowingly so. Of course, they'd already been corruptly manipulating the Frontier fleet government for personal gain, but we're supposed to overlook that part. No, that's an actual thing. If you look at the YF-21 fighter mode vs. VF-22 fighter mode in line art, you'll notice the GV-17L gunpods are basically external mounts on the prototype, that become internal ones when the FAST packs are mounted. The VF-22 sort of absorbed those FAST packs into the airframe, so the gunpods are fully internal like the VF-17's and fire through a special door in the airframe skin.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    According to Macross Chronicle, the VF-19EF Caliburn is the base model on which the VF-19 Isamu Special1 was built. Specifically, the Mechanic Sheet for the fighter2 describes it as a VF-19EF remodeled into a YF-19, though the designation argues that it's more like a VF-19EF remodeled to mimic the aerodynamics and equipment of the initial block VF-19A Excalibur (essentially identical to YF-19-3). Given that the VF-19EF Caliburn was a local spec including hardware uniquely developed for it in the Macross Frontier fleet, one has to wonder if Jan Neumann and co. had to get the fleet's permission before using the VF-19EF as a starting point for Isamu's custom VF-19. 1. Depending on whether you put your trust in the movie's Official Complete Book, the Macross Frontier movie novelization, or its mechanic sheet in Macross Chronicle's 2nd Edition, this fighter is either the VF-19 SMS Ver., VF-19ADVANCE Excalibur ADVANCE, or VF-19EF/A Isamu Special. The Macross Chronicle explanation arguably incorporates all three, since the VF-19EF was the version of the VF-19 SMS used, VF-19ADVANCE is given as the project name internal to Shinsei, and VF-19EF/A as the final designation. 2. Macross Chronicle (2E) Macross Frontier Movie Mechanic Sheet SMS 03A "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special/VF-25A Messiah".
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It must be admitted that, had they not been the Designated Heroes and thus equipped better than the actual military, Xaos would have represented a significant step towards realism in terms of how the Macross franchise (and anime in general) depicts PMCs. Too often, fictional PMCs are depicted as being The Elite, with the very best troops, the very latest hardware, a bottomless bank account to pay for it all, and a permanent encampment on the moral high ground. A lot of authors toy with ways to justify it, but they're all usually dancing around the fundamental reality of the polar opposite: PMCs typically being staffed by the very worst who were gently shown the door by the Army over discipline problems, equipped with secondhand hardware, running on a razor-thin margin, and administrated with a level of cretinous ineptitude not normally found outside of Captain Planet villains. Usually authors try to justify it by sacrificing one of those traits on the altar of character flaws, with varying results. Like Full Metal Panic!'s MITHRIL having ultimately proven to be a NATO-funded black ops unit pretending to be a PMC for the sake of their own plausible deniability. Macross Frontier fans kind of missed the fact that despite SMS being the designated heros, their company is every bit as shifty and corrupt as Macross Galaxy was, having manipulated the entire fleet government into a conflict with the Vajra in the name of securing fold quartz to gain a monopoly on interstellar shipping, and even collaborated with a coup d'etat. Xaos was the closest we've yet seen to a realistically incompetent PMC... a pack of swaggering idiots who are nowhere near as hard as they think they are, being a pack of washouts from what amounts to the national guard of a rural state, utterly convinced they're the heroes in their own action movie while getting their butts handed to them by even the most inexperienced professional soldiers. It'd be nice to leave this nonsense behind. If we need elite-ness in our soldier-characters, let's just use the special forces. They at least have legitimate reason to be elite and better equipped, and a format already exists in Macross for them to be semi-autonomous.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, "the shapings of the protoculture" makes midichlorians seem incredibly well thought-out and logical by comparison. (Let's just say there wasn't a lot of surprise when the "Jack McKinney" novels landed on HG's 2006 list of licensee-produced material being disowned from Robotech's official setting because it wasn't able to meet Harmony Gold's own post-reboot standards for quality. When you consider that THIS unholy mess of a comic apparently meets those "lofty" standards, that says a lot about how utterly awful the novels were. End of the Circle is right up there with the Star Wars Holiday Special for its cringeworthy nonsense factor.) Considering how pants-on-head stupid this new comic has been, I can't imagine it's going to be all that much better... though at least they're ripping off something of actual quality (e.g. Macross the First). In the legal system, spurious intellectual property lawsuits are considered especially heinous. In Los Angeles, the dedicated detectives who investigate these terminally idiotic offenders are members of an elite squad known as the Special Morons Unit. These are their stories. Cut, print, sell it to NBC and tell them we found next season's flagship show. Well, yes... I suppose if you overlook the awful story, the mediocre tracing-heavy art, and the lame premise, it could be mistaken for interesting... at midnight... on an unlit street... in the middle of a London fog... at fifty paces... if one was blackout drunk and wearing opaque sunglasses. (Long story short, my dissenting opinion is that at my drunkest I wouldn't use that comic to wrap a street cart kebab. No matter how suspect the meat, the kebab doesn't deserve to touch something that horrible.) Very little has changed, really, apart from the art style. They're still tracing like crazy, the art is dreadful, the writing is appalling...
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes and no... My primary source is the two volumes of the Macross the Ride light novel itself. Particularly its first chapter "Deep Space Warbird", which features the VF-19EF Caliburn in service with Frontier's NUNS and SMS Frontier's Apollo Platoon. That page is from the companion reference materials that were published alongside the light novel when it was being serialized in Dengeki Hobby magazine, which were later reprinted as standalone artbooks under the title Macross the Ride Visual Book. Two volumes printed, one covering the first six chapters of the light novel, the second covering the last six chapters of the light novel with that bonus short manga epilogue. The relevant material is in Vol.1, from which that page comes, but is principally on the seven or so pages immediately preceding the one you posted (especially on page 11).
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So does this mean the Xenomorphs are now Disney princesses?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's more a Farce Ghost. ... the most insane part is that, before Harmony Gold rebooted Robotech and disowned all the pre-2001 licensee-created material, that would actually have made sense in context. ("Protoculture" is commonly joked about as being magic flowers, but the "magic" part used to be mostly literal.) Carl Macek's own post-facto attempt to explain how "protoculture" worked basically amounted to a technology that produced power by extracting the life force from the seeds of the so-called "flower of life" while preventing them from sprouting and somehow converting it into mechanical energy... sort of a technological equivalent of "Cast from HP" using the magic flower's HP. The novels took that even further, by having the immense life force of those flowers basically being equivalent to Star Wars's Force, with a will of its own and all.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Blame the SF writers, fifty years on and we still don't have an agreed-upon meaning for the damn word. I cringe a little harder every time I see a new prototype post or release. On the one hand, I wanna say "bless 'em, they're trying", but on the other hand everything that I've seen of theirs looks kind of off somehow... and unmistakably behind the curve by about ten years in the quality department. The same kinda wrongness I expect when looking at an Evolution Toy production model up close.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'd say so. Macross 7 is not a show that lends itself to binge-watching. You can reasonably binge Super Dimension Fortress Macross, since it has enough variety (at least before the "Two Years Later" arc) to keep it interesting. Macross 7's first half is such an unbearably slow build-up to the actual plot of the series, and is so lacking in musical variety compared to the rest of the series, that it quickly becomes unbearably repetitive. The average viewer can only stand so many episodes where the Varauta forces go attack the fleet, Basara goes out to sing, gets yelled at by Gamlin for getting in the way, accomplishes sod all, and then grumbles about how they won't listen to his song. (And, of course, because he only has the one song "Planet Dance" and is probably the franchise's second most easy-to-hate character, it quickly goes pear shaped if you try to binge it.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The first time I watched Macross 7 I made the critical mistake of marathoning it... it's definitely not a show meant to be taken in doses of more than 1-2 episodes a day. Otherwise, the first half's painfully slow buildup gets incredibly frustrating in its samey-ness and it becomes a chore. One episode a day is what I'd recommend, really, if you want to get through it and actually enjoy the experience. (I'm currently in the midst of attempting to apply that same logic to my latest attempt to slog through Gundam SEED, and thus far it's actually working.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    No, it is not. The proper romanization of バトロイド is "Batoroido" or "Battroid". No, it's your statement here that's just plain wrong. Officially, "Battroid" is a portmanteau of Battle and Android. Just as "Destroid" is a portmanteau of Destroy and Android. This isn't exactly a secret, it's even mentioned in the Animeigo DVD liner notes.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    This is one of those Zentradi things like the word "Gnerl" where the original source seems to have been lost to time... but it's undeniably official. None of the oldest artbooks give character name spellings in English, but the merchandise from the period often did. The weird part is that there's a lot of variation in spelling her first name (officially Milia, but often Millia or Miria) but they all seem to agree her last name is spelled "Fallyna" when it appears on boxes, in tampo print, stickers, waterslide decals, and so on. This goes back to the kits and toys coming out in ~1985, and seems to have become accepted enough to also be used in the official subtitles and so on.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'm now 20 episodes into Gundam SEED and I really haven't seen any of the instances of mistimed music alluded to earlier. That said, this show has an unreasonable number of flashbacks. It's not quite to Dragonball Z "Freeza's five minutes" levels, but it feels like if the characters stopped flashing back all the time this show would be at least 2 or 3 episodes shorter. So far, the most likeable character in the series seems to be a toss-up between Mwu La Flaga and Ramba Rommel... er... "Andrew Waltfeld".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    They use 市長 (Shichou, lit. "Mayor") for Milia and 大統領 (Daitouryou, "President") for Howard Glass. Presumably this has something to do with the reduction in New UN Government direct control over the emigrant fleets and/or the scale of their respective emigrant fleets. In one comedic episode of Macross 7 PLUS, Milia's sort of pitching herself and her amazing abilities as a soldier and administrator (and other merits) to the audience and ends by calling herself "Milia the President" (in conspicuous English). It is a bit of a slog, isn't it?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Being a (mercifully) short limited comic, the Robotech: Invasion series and its Mars Base One mini-comic side story flew under the radar even for most Robotech fans. The DC/Wildstorm comics did very little to promote themselves except for the Shadow Chronicles tie-in comic. It is a bit like watching a train wreck, isn't it?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Seems unlikely, IMO... they're pressed for time in the movie, and with the show already a horribly unbalanced one, it's more likely the VF-31 will be the technical cameo. Seriously though, Wright's VF-22 had such a minor role in the actual series that it's likely to end up omitted entirely in the movie version.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'm certainly finding the HD remastered edition of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED significantly less unwatchable than the SD American broadcast edition, and since all my TVs are widescreen the letterboxing doesn't bother me much. 100 x 0 still equals 0.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the available information, Var syndrome is a condition that emerged very recently in the New UN Government's sphere of influence, with the first identified cases being after the Vajra war ended in September 2059. The discovery that the disease was influenced by fold waves occurred sometime in 2062, along with the first efforts to suppress it using fold song. Berger Stone's explanation that humanity caught the fold bacteria from the Vajra doesn't pan out, which combined with other evidence suggests the fold bacteria responsible for Var syndrome have been part of the human microbiome for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. If that's the case, then it strongly suggests Var syndrome would be a very rare or nonexistent condition unless deliberately triggered by consumption of food products that contain the ingredients for seidznol or the use of inimical fold song. (Xaos didn't yet know about the combination of apples and bottled water when they linked only the incidences involving high levels of fold waves to Windermere.) That was 2065, just two years before the events of Macross Delta... when he was an officer in the local New UN Spacy garrison on Aifheim. As he and others note when they discover Windermere's apples-and-water scheme, both Windermere Exdel "Galaxy" apples and the bottled water from the ruins had been extensively consumed by the NUNS prior to halting imports from Windermere IV.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    What all did they change in the HD Remaster of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED besides the music? (Remember, I've only previously attempted to watch the series in its painfully bad, edited-for-TV American broadcast release.) With the best will in the world, I would have to argue that's a fair description of the Gundam SEED as a whole based on what I've seen of the series thus far. It feels like the show's pitch meeting was "Let's remake Soldiers of Sorrow but everyone has a Gundam and nobody has any positive character traits."
  22. Seto Kaiba
    ... so I was understating it when I guessed you meant it was going to get a whole lot worse? Watching this is enough to kinda realize that Gundam Musou 2 spoiled very little when I played it earlier this year and did the Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny campaigns. (I have to say, though, I am oddly looking forward to firing the game up on the PS3 and brutally beating the stupid out of Yzak, Athrun, and Kira.) Today's lunch break "entertainment" (torture) is PHASE 15: Burning Clouds of Sand.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Keep your hopes low and your expectations lower still, otherwise you're likely to be disappointed. Problem is, that's inconsistent with the depiction of the Protoculture - even by their own intelligent constructs - up thru the end of the Macross Delta series. The Protoculture haven't been depicted as a race of abusive precursors, they're more along the lines of "brilliant but absentminded". Several times now Macross titles have featured things the Protoculture made in an attempt to solve the problem of their civilization's collapse and burying them after realizing actually using them would be a terrible idea. Like their Evil-series super-Zentradi that became the Protodeviln, the Fold Evil with the ability to alter history on Uroboros, or the Star Shrine system's Gundam-esque design intent of eliminating conflict by giving everyone fold wave telepathy. (Aeolia Schenberg must've been a Protoculture.) Their wish, as expressed by more than one of their surviving constructs, was for their creations to live together in peace... not for them to be able to micromanage their creations as slaves. The prevailing in-universe theory is that it's because the Brisingr globular cluster was one of the Protoculture's last settlements in the galaxy, while Earth had been inside a region of space controlled by the Zentradi Army for aeons. Probably Earth, its society developed to a much more advanced level than the other sub-Protoculture species, and if the theory of the Brisingr cluster being the last Protoculture settlement is true, those sub-Protoculture species are later creations than humans who were engineered during the height of the Protoculture's civilization. The Birdhuman is explicitly based on the Vajra Queen. If there's any similarity, it's probably because the Sigur Valens was also based on the Vajra. The obvious problem with that theory being that Var syndrome isn't actually part of the system's function, it was something that Windermere IV cultivated in an attempt to make it easier for them to mind control people using just the Wind Shrine aboard the Sigur Valens. The Star Shrine was able to link the minds of everyone in the galaxy, including those who had no contact with Var syndrome.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how minimal the effort they seem to be putting into the Macross Delta movie is, they're probably waiting until after the movie has been out for a few weeks to start blitzing us with information.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    They've stopped just short of stating it in plain, simple terms... but they've pretty thoroughly ruled out every other option except the Mardook being a surviving group of Protoculture descendants.
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