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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Considering the Var syndrome problem seems to have been caused principally by Windermere IV's deliberate efforts to trigger the disease and control the afflicted, the problem will probably go away with the end of Macross Delta. At that point, fans would be well entitled to ask Kawamori if he's taking the piss when he says he hasn't seen Macross II... because ancient Protoculture survivors using songs to create a brainwashed army with controllable berserk aggression with an eye toward destroying that which they find displeases them or is incompatible with their culture is basically a quick description of the Mardook and their raison d'etre.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The ghost dude, who is presumably the Robotech equivalent of Macross's Riber Fruhling. Misa has several trippy hallucinations about Riber during her short visit to Salla Base in Macross the First. You are correct that in the original Macross version, Mars Base Salla had been deliberately abandoned by the UN Forces and the fleet returning the base personnel to Earth was ambushed and destroyed by the Oberth-class space destroyer Tsiolkovsky on 8 September 2005, killing a total 3,055 people. (Hunting down and destroying the hijacked destroyer was what made Global famous and probably got him a job commanding the SDF-1.) The event badly-drawn Britai is referring to in the Robotech comic above is in a sidestory mini-comic that was included in the DC/Wildstorm Robotech: Invasion comic in the faint hope that having some Macross Saga stuff might prop up sales. It told a version of Mars Base's abandonment that was very different from Macross's. That comic, entitled Mars Base One, depicted an unrecorded-in-history conflict in which a single Zentradi medium-scale gunboat found the Sol system years before Britai's fleet. The ship folded into Mars orbit and attacked Mars Base, and the base commanders ordered an evacuation which was brought rather abruptly to an end when the evacuation ship was destroyed and the Zentradi ship was destroyed in turn by a prototype Grand Cannon system, leaving Riber the sole survivor of the base and stranded on Mars indefinitely... at which point he wanders off into the Martian desert to die for no clear reason despite having working radio systems, a crapload of food and supplies, and life support that'd last years.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I have a sneaking suspicion that is a "it's about to get a whole lot worse". Well, I already know Kira's memetic status as a godmode sue of the very worst order... my old buddy @Jack Verse is a huge fan of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, so I've picked up a few things by osmosis over the last fourteen years or so.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Sorta? In fiction, the definition of the term "android" is not as formalized as the definition for "robot". Most authors fall back on one of two key points to differentiate them: An android is a robotic construct with a self-aware, autonomous artificial intelligence capable of independent thought and action, while a conventional robot uses a "dumb" AI that simply follows preprogrammed instructions. An android is a robot made in the human image, either undetectably human-looking or very close to it, while a robot is visibly artificial and/or looks nothing like a human or humanoid. Star Trek: the Next Generation did a lot to popularize the notion of androids as fitting both of those categories. One way in which the definition of "android" is used more flexibly is that is that some authors have extended the definition to mean wholly-artificial self-aware automata that are based on, or composed entirely of, biotechnological or biological parts. Sort of like a cyborg, except it was built from scratch as a mixture of organics and technology instead of being an organic being altered through the replacement of parts with machinery. These are sometimes called bio-androids. A bio-android might have a bio-technological computer for a brain, a composite material skeleton, all wrapped in vat-grown flesh and blood, or it might have a machine brain and nervous system puppeteering an organic technology body of organs, blood, and bone, or it may be composed entirely of organic technology programmed at the genetic level to fulfill a certain task. Some good examples of bio-androids in anime would include: Mikumo Guynemer, obviously, who is a cloned human with legacy genetic codes left behind by the Protoculture that contain an autonomous program that enabled (forced) her to operate the Star Shrine. (The wholly-biological type programmed at a genetic level.) The version of Commander Boddole Zer in Macross: Do You Remember Love? arguably qualifies, as he was a sentient and wholly organic/bio-technological living computer in approximately humanoid form. Melfina VSD02C from Outlaw Star. A bio-android with an artificial bio-technological brain and artificial skeleton wrapped in vat-cultured flesh and blood with some artificial and some cloned natural organs. Meifon Li, the protagonist of the Outlaw Star spinoff Angel Links is the fully bio-technological type, a wholly artificial lifeform made of biological technology from a wrecked alien ship of unknown origin, who was programmed to live and grow normally as if she were the child the android was to replace until she found the target that she was supposed to assassinate. The Innovades (fake Innovators) in Gundam 00, and arguably Team Trinity, who were biological and bio-technological, living, independently sentient terminals for the quantum supercomputer Veda with technological augmentations enabling them to function more effectively in space for long periods. The Angeroids in Heaven's Lost Property are principally biological, artificial constructs that are fully sentient. War Prince Nataku in Gensoumaden Saiyuki may also qualify, as he was an artificially-created combat organism that his "father" Li Touten created by using technology to modify reengineer his own genes to grow the perfect warrior-son in a cloning tank. They're all over Tenchi Muyo!, with Ryoko Hakubi being the most obvious one: a genetically engineered, artificially cultivated "child" made by fusing Washu's own genes with an inorganic lifeform called a Mass, with a mind that is at least partly a pre-programmed computer. Ryo-Ohki and Fuku may count if you waive the part about looking human (which they rarely do), as they're organic technology sentient constructs. Doll and the other artificial humans from Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari also count, for much the same reason as Ryoko. Mackie Stingray (but only the version in Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040) is one as well, being a bio-technological Boomer in human form with a brain based on Sylia's own. The Ilia probe from Star Trek: the Motion Picture also fits the definition, as an organic technology probe created from the pattern (but not the actual body) of the recently deceased Lt. Ilia. Dragon Ball and Dragonball Z's use of the term "android" is one of the most famous questionable translation choices in the history of the American anime industry. The actual term used is 人造人間 (lit. "Artificial Human"), and among their numbers were a mix of true androids (e.g. No.16 and No.19), and cyborgs (e.g. No.8, No.17, No.18, No.20 AKA Dr. Gero). This questionable choice by the translators is so famous that even Dragonball Z Abridged felt the need to throw a few jokes in about it.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    As someone who took Latin in school, I'll try not to be offended on Virgil's behalf. Yeah, that's the one bit that doesn't quite fit. Aether and Hemera make sense because, depending on which scholar you read, both were either the children of Chaos directly or his grandchildren via his children Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night). Elysion doesn't really fit the obvious convention since it's not a deity itself but a place where those chosen by the gods go after death. It may fit better on a less obvious level, since Elysion is occasionally described as a realm existing in perpetually sunny day (Hemera) and cooled by strong winds of the upper air the gods breathe (Aether). Someone on the show's staff seems to be a fan of Hyginus.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Do the battles in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ever stop being one-sided? I'm 13 episodes in, and it's feeling more like New Mobile Report Gundam Wing in here with ZAFT's four GAT-X series machines effortlessly spanking legions of Earth Federation mobile armors and shrugging off fire from multiple capital ships like it's nothing. Once Kira and the Strike launch, the fights are just one-sided going the other way.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Looks like Titan Comics decided to rip off the Mars Base Salla sequence from Macross the First for their comic...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet(s) for Alto's YF-29 Durandal do suggest that to be the case... an increase in performance vs. its production-level contemporaries is specifically noted under its Fighter and Battroid sections. Outside of possible confrontations in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, that's probably the only time the VF-27 ever squared off against the fighter whose specs Macross Galaxy illegally obtained via L.A.I. to complete it.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Focslain said it best, she's referring to her lack of cybernetic implants... she probably had some cavities filled, some teach bleached, etc. Though from the angle of Alto's view when she said it, you bet your bottom dollar JB0 is also correct.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    As a fun aside, if the Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E manga is any fair indication, the science and technology behind Tactical Sound Units for suppressing Var syndrome is an indirect continuation of the research Dr. Gadget M. Chiba and Dr. Lawrence did back in Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7 on song energy. Dr. Elma Hoyly seems to have been Dr. Lawrence's pupil, and was a major contributor to the first Tactical Sound Unit's equipment and field testing.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Wouldn't be a reason for the prefix "bio-" if it wasn't... the Sharon Apple system was using computer abstractions of a living brain and its biochemical emotional responses to model Sharon's "personality" on stage, but she didn't become truly alive until she got that bio-neural processor installed. She was an artificial intelligence with fairly sophisticated network capabilities, so she may have had built-in fold communications hardware to allow her to interface with the galaxy network... or she may have had to interface with a starship's fold communications system like she almost certainly had to in order to control Earth's defense grid. Biological fold waves wouldn't be properly documented and codified by Dr. Gadget M. Chiba for another five years or so... but the mechanics of artificial fold waves were well understood and a basis for long-range (incl. interstellar) communications, FTL radar, and so on. Marj's official bio makes it pretty evident that he was mentally ill. He was Sharon Apple's creator, and was so utterly obsessed with pursuing the project to completion by making Sharon a "living" AI that his obsession turned into a delusion-fueled romantic love for the Sharon Apple AI. Let's just say that boy ain't right... and he dreams of electric sheep.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, she wasn't exactly 0% organic anymore when she finally jumped off the slippery slope at the end of the Macross Plus OVA. Marj upgraded her with an (illegal) bio-neural processor prior to the ill-fated concert to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the First Space War armistice. Mind you, it's entirely possible she could've had fold wave devices built into her... there were small, man-portable cross-dimension radar systems as early as 2008.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Chelsea Scarlett quit frontline combat service in SMS Frontier's Apollo Platoon at the start of Macross R. She was a talented pilot but couldn't bring herself to shoot the rogue Zentradi she'd been deployed to fight in her first combat engagement, so she got reassigned to be SMS's sponsored Vanquish League pilot. At the end of Macross R, she'd taken her leave of SMS and was racing as a private/independent entry in the league after spending a big chunk of her winnings on several VF-11B fuselages at a military disposal sale to construct a custom VF-11B she called the Nothung II. After the Vajra conflict, she apparently went into government and was the Macross Frontier fleet's representative to the New UN Government parliament in 2067.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Most of the principal characters were civilians in 2058, so it's unlikely they did much of anything apart from try to go on with their lives as air racers on the pro circuit and/or go on with their lives in the private sector like Magdalena Zielonaska. The only ones whose activity during the Vajra War we can talk with certainty about are the ones who were holdovers or cameos from the Macross Frontier series... Ozma Lee and Brera Sterne.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, it's not a "could be"... almost every aspect of Berger Stone's expository dialog about the Vajra and the origins of Var syndrome is demonstrably wrong. The annoying part is that Macross Delta's own prequels disprove portions of it, and Xaos should not be in the dark about that fact because one of their branch offices was directly involved in events that disprove key assertions in Berger Stone's hypothesis. The Vajra departed this universe for another? Nope. It's like Berger Stone and the Xaos staff aren't aware that the Vajra hive that the Macross Frontier fleet and Macross Galaxy fleet encountered wasn't the only one in the Milky Way. Even weirder, the image in Berger's presentation is the Macross Frontier TV series version in which the headless but still very much alive and aware queen of the Vajra hive in question led her hive on a space fold to another galaxy to mate with another Vajra hive there. They never left the universe, except in the sense that they were briefly in fold space during their fold jump. Both Berger and the Xaos staff should've known that the Vajra were still very much present in the Milky Way because the Epsilon Foundation was able to capture a Vajra in the Pipure system in 2062 with the help of Zelgar Heavy Industries and briefly attempted to use it against Xaos's Pipure branch in the middle of the Project Thrones field testing of Tactical Sound Units for Var suppression. Xaos's Ranga branch also has Aisha Blanchett from Macross 30 working on Var research there in the novelization's version, and she ought to remember the Vajra had been very much present on Uroboros even before Havamal's dicking around with the ruins tied spacetime in knots. The real question is why did nobody in the Xaos Ragna branch office call Berger on his obvious lies? Are they just that dense, or what? Must be, because they don't even know who Lady M is, and they bloody well report to her directly on several occasions... plus she signs their paychecks. Yeah, the idea that fold songs are "new" doesn't jive at all with any prior information. The worst contradiction is obviously Macross Zero, in which Sara and Mao Nome both exhibited significant fold song abilities that were, per official sources, something their ancestors were engineered to have to maintain the biotechnological Birdhuman. Their fold song was powerful enough to be detectable by even the crude cross-dimension radar systems of the pre-First Space War UN Forces... and not even high-powered ship-mounted units, small man-portable ones! Macross Chronicle also points to anyone with Song Energy abilities generating a particular type of fold wave in their songs, which includes Lynn Minmay (whose recordings alone could generate 10,000+ Chiba units of song energy) and most every other singer in Macross with the possible exception of Sharon Apple. Even weirder is that Berger and co. somehow believe that the fold bacterium responsible for Var syndrome came from the Vajra... when we know it resides in the brain, and we know from Macross Frontier making it a critical plot point that having the v-type fold bacteria in your brain causes your standard anime incurable bloody cough of death and is incurable by conventional means, save for the movies indicating a major blood transfusion from someone who was infected by V-type bacteria in the womb and thus an antibody for it could treat the disease. Given that Ranka probably can't have donated several dozen pints of blood to every single person in the galaxy in the space of eight years, and the galaxy isn't an open mass grave of humanoids dying off because they've been infected with an incurable brain disease with a 100% mortality rate and untreated life expectency of only a few years, it's an obviously ridiculous claim that the Var syndrome-causing fold bacteria are the Vajra's v-type bacterium.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    None that I've seen.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, whatever it was in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED that appealed to that new generation of viewers, it seems I'm either oblivious to it or immune to its dubious charms. I'm watching Phase 8 right now on my lunch break and I have yet to find a single character in the series that I genuinely like. I can stomach Mwu La Flaga and Rau Le Creuset, but it feels like 2/3 of the cast only exist to make some exaggerated sad faces and sit in awkward silence with each other every time Flay lets rip with that casual bigotry or Lacus has another one of those moments where her IQ seems to drop fifty points. I'll say this for it, I'm definitely having an easier time getting through the subs-only HD remaster of the series than I did when I tried watching the dubbed broadcast edition a decade ago. If I get to episode 13 I'll have lasted longer on this attempt than any previous one. The mechanical design works for the series are all right, though I confess the structure of the PLANT colony modules bothers me. How do they have gravity in a setting without artificial gravity tech and an incorrect axis of rotation for simulated gravity?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Fighter: VF-4G Lightning III (decal'd to look like Hikaru's VF-4A-0) GERWALK: Sv-51γ (D.D. Ivanov colors) Battroid: VF-2SS Valkyrie II w/ Super Armed Pack Pretty much everything I have on display is in Fighter mode, though, as I generally feel that's the best looking mode.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Since it's appropriate here as well, probably more here than there, here's a post I recently did for the Newbie thread concerning a few aerodynamic helpers that VFs have. Every VF, save a few that went in for canards instead, uses boundary layer control. From the VF-19 and VF-22 onward, VFC is also used.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    None that appeared in Macross R, but as a relatively standard local derivative of the VF-19E it should've had some.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the Siegfried version is less well-armed than the standard VF-31A Kairos, so every little bit helps. Most were, but even the ones that weren't aren't depicted as using FAST packs on a regular basis on space (e.g. the VF-19EF Caliburn).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing concrete, no... just that the 55th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet established its permanent colony on the former Vajra hive world. Variable Fighter Master File and Variable Fighter Episode Archive come the closest to commenting upon their doings, but that's almost exclusively talk about the VF-25 finally being approved for the start of mass production and its adoption by Frontier's local New UN Forces and the forces of their allies and closest trading partners as either export sales or local build-under-license agreements. The Macross Delta novelization offers one other tidbit. Its second volume establishes that the MP representing the former Macross Frontier emigrant fleet in the New UN Government parliament is none other than Macross the Ride main character Chelsea Scarlett. Island-1 is a cert for the planetary capital, given that it already houses most of the fleet's population and the fleet's entire government. Since city ships are, by their very nature, given to water landings it'll probably end up parked in a bay or lake with causeways linking it to a bayshore city the way the habitat ship in Barette City on Ragna was.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Pilots, as a rule, like being able to steer and the worse your drag problem the rougher your ride is going to be... though the unfortunate implications for fuel economy are less of an issue for a VF's thermonuclear reaction turbine engines than they would be for something running with traditional combustion engines. (Really bad laminar flow separation can cut fuel efficiency 30%, decrease its stalling angle of attack, and make handling more difficult.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Aids to maneuverability. The Boundary Layer Control System (BLCS) is a collection of air pumps situated in the main and sub-intakes and inside the control surfaces which collectively work to manipulate the laminar airflow over the airframe. Two different real world methods are used. The first, boundary layer suction, is used via air pumps in the main intake and a dedicated sub-intake above the main intake, to extract the boundary layer (the air closest to the surface) and thus prevent it from breaking away from the surface and forming drag-increasing low pressure zones in the aircraft's wake (flow separation). It also employs what are called "blown" control surfaces, which use air drawn from the turbines and blown out a series of vents in the trailing edge of the wing to shape the airflow downwards, which increases the lift coefficient by delaying boundary layer flow separation. This manipulation of the boundary layer results in reduced drag that increases fuel efficiency, and also offers improved lift, low-speed performance, and increases the stalling angle of attack, making the aircraft more agile and even offering limited maneuverability without control surfaces if applied asymmetrically. The Vortex Flow Controller (VFC) is a more recent addition to VFs that injects trace amounts of neutral gas into the boundary layer to asymmetrically change the pressure gradient on the aircraft skin. The gas causes a vortex to form or an existing vortex to change position, shifting the airflow pressure on the aircraft enough to actually change the direction of flight. Essentially, an attitude control system that uses the air moving over the airframe as a control surface. (And yes, boundary layer suction, blown control surfaces, and vortex flow controllers are all real-world technologies.) Yeah, though the YF-29's Super Pack is specifically designed to cause as little disruption to the fighter's aerodynamics as possible and is pretty minimal in all respects. For more fun with boundary layers, you may find it enjoyable to watch the Mythbusters episodes for the Tailgate up or down? myth and the Blue Ice myth.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Truth be told, the VF-19 Excalibur probably doesn't belong on that list. Two of its three animated appearances with Super Packs equipped were in atmospheric operations (Macross Plus and Macross 7's 44th episode), and for almost the entirety of Macross 7 it was operating in space without any bolt-on hardware at all. Improvements in engine technology that were adopted in the 4th Generation VFs1 that increased fuel efficiency, combined with larger airframes having more room for internal fuel storage, reduced the need for FAST packs during normal space operations. Essentially, the design focus of FAST packs transitioned from maximizing operating time in space while adding some extra weaponry to maximizing armament while adding extra verniers and boosters to prevent the additional mass from degrading the fighter's performance. When that extra weaponry isn't needed, they operate without the packs, as the VF-17s and VF-19s in Macross 7, and the VF-171s in Macross Frontier did. (When it comes to the VF-25s in Frontier, let's just say when you're fighting an enemy at least as well equipped and rather more numerous than your own forces, there's no harm in bringing along enough missiles for a three-ring Itano Circus.) The VF-11s are earlier (3rd Gen) models that predate the adoption of the more efficient engine technology, so like the VF-1 they're actually dependent on conformal tanks and booster rockets as a way of extending their operating time to a practical level for deep space operations. Getting down to the actual question you asked after that long and tedious digression on my part (sorry!), the VF-17 is the only one of the three that's noted as having any kind of a deficiency in atmospheric performance. Its passively stealthy design and space-centric operating profile meant that some concessions were made in its aerodynamic profile. Those issues were later corrected in the simplified all-regime rebuild designated VF-171. The VF-22 is an all-regime fighter, and its unique transformation leaves a lot of empty space that can be used for internally-carried ordnance and fuel. It's hard to classify the VF-27 since it bears some hallmarks of an all-regime fighter and some of a space-optimized fighter, but with the amount of thrust it's throwing around it's less more a "I have enough thrust to go wherever I darn well please" fighter.
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