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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the remaining conformal packs would disrupt the boundary layer airflow and lead to increased drag that would disrupt handling and impede the operation of the boundary layer control system and vortex flow control system. It wouldn't be a dealbreaker for powered flight, the decrease in lift coupled with the increase in drag and mass would definitely lower maneuverability. The main reason I can see that they wouldn't retain the other conformal packs in the transition from space flight to atmospheric flight would be that they're not really hanging onto anything of value. Option packs affixed to the boosters are where most of the actual armament is. The conformal packs mounted elsewhere hold relatively little in terms of micro-missiles. For the most part, they're conformal fuel tanks holding the additional cryogenic fuel slush necessary to give the VF a longer operating time in space and cool the reactors inside the engines. Thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are thousands of times more fuel efficient in atmosphere than they are in space, and their internal tanks normally hold sufficient fuel for weeks of continuous operation as it is, so they don't really need that extra fuel slush.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Delta's writers forgot about her "woe is me, I am the merely average Jenius" character arc almost right away after they introduced it in the sixth episode. Definitely a "they wasted a perfectly good plot" moment, after Mirage completely took a backseat to Freyja in the second half of the series and she just mysteriously became as good as Hayate for the finale. She just became the tsundere girl who couldn't spit it out for thirteen episodes. Absolutely, yes. Macross Delta: the White Knight of the Black Wing shouldn't have been a separate side story manga. Its story absolutely should've been a flashback episode or two of the Macross Delta series proper. Without that extra context, the Macross Delta audience never really gets that signature Macross moral ambiguity where where antagonists aren't really bad people. Someone who only sees the anime never gets the Why of the Kingdom of the Wind's grievances against the New UN Government. All they get to go in is a vague remark about a "profoundly unequal treaty" in Roid's declaration of war, and a lot of hinting that all is not as it seems before the very late introduction of the truth about the New UN Government having bombed Carlyle with a dimensional warhead. If you add in the material from the manga, and it puts an entirely different dimension on the whole conflict. Roid's remark about the unequal treaty and second class citizen status turns out to be a masterpiece of understatement and makes their stated desire to liberate the other natives from the New UN Government seem rather reasonable (if misguided).
  3. Seto Kaiba
    >implying Mirage got development. The writing was just an absolute fiasco, start-to-finish. It's not so much "they wasted a perfectly good character" as "they wasted a perfectly good cast". Kind of a bad idea to require the whole audience to buy a manga side story to even figure out what the enemy's motivation is. Savage, but undeniably true.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Macross Delta is incredibly stingy with technical detail... probably because the mecha are out-of-focus in the series. I'd guess around 120-180rpm based on the animation.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    They're talking about whacking Mirage, not Freyja. Only a handful of them actually had backstories... and most of the ones that did had only the most cursory kind, with barely one bullet point's worth of information. Hayate's dad had more backstory than almost the entire main cast, and he was a posthumous character! The backstory for the main frigging character was "he's a shiftless space bum who moves a lot because he can't keep a job". Some of them, like Makina and Reina, have a "backstory" that's entirely Informed Ability that's not actually in evidence in the show.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Very likely, yes... but has it explicitly come up in any interview or other publication? That's kind of what I was going for with that list. The inspirations that've been explicitly identified in various books, magazines, etc.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The first OP is the only time she's actually shown doing anything vaguely mechanic-like. The show doesn't actually depict her working on Hayate's VF-31 or EX-Gear, she just shows up to tell him it'd been tuned up for him. If they're not gonna kill Makina and/or Reina off, it'd be nice if they actually lived up to what their official bios said about them the way the other Walkure members do instead of just being the galaxy's most inept undercover team. Heck, why not go all the way and have Xaos actually behave like the (strictly mythical) competent PMC the show was supposed to make us believe they were? They're no SMS, but it was incredibly bizarre seeing them walk blindly into every trap Windermere set in the series. The reduced movie runtime might help a lot in that regard, since just two hours leaves less time for Xaos to be played for fools by Windermere before saving the day.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Mirage is bulletproof... they'll never let this one out of the gate without a proper romantic foil for Freyja. It might've been workable if Mirage hadn't been made the serious girl in the obligatory love triangle. (Also she's more maroon than mauve... but hey.) Well, they've got the dying part down in the series... what with King Grammier, Qasim, Roid, and Keith all dying and Heinz at death's door due to overuse of his rune. All the architects of the war have been killed. The only Aerial Knight aces left are the ones who either opposed the campaign against the New UN Government or were spreading Walkure fandom around behind the scenes. Safe bet they'll be suffering after the war ended as well. Their Kingdom of the Wind's government is either an absolute monarchy or very close to it, and the royal family is on the brink of dying out. Its economy is in tatters with its only marketable exports unsellable for health reasons. To put the cherry on it, their source of technological aid bailed on them, so they have no way to even mount a new offensive or keep their existing aircraft operating for very long.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    How dare you, sir! That's the best character in the show. Someone give the mercat a VF-31 damnit.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... the ones I know that've been explicitly stated in one publication or another: Sv-51 = Su-27 VF-0 = F-14D Tomcat VF-1 Valkyrie = F-14A Tomcat VF-3000 Crusader = F-14A Tomcat VF-4 Lightning III = XB-70 Valkyrie / SR-71 Blackbird VF-5 = F2Y Sea Dart VF-X-7 Ghost Valkyrie = Martin Marietta X-24B V-BR-2 = SR-71 Blackbird VF-5000 = F-16C/D Fighting Falcon VA-X-3 = None acknowledged1 VAB-2 = None acknowledged1 VA-3 Invader = A-6 Intruder VF-9 Cutlass = Grumman X-29 VF-X-10 = Grumman X-29 VF-11 Thunderbolt III = Su-27K/Su-33 Flanker-D VF-11MAXL = F-16XL Fighting Falcon VF-14 Vampire = SR-71 Blackbird VF-17 Nightmare = F-117A Nighthawk Y/VF-19 Excalibur = Su-27 Flanker/X-29 YF-21/VF-22 Sturmvogel II = YF-23 Black Widow II VF-171 Nightmare Plus = F-117A Nighthawk YF-24 Evolution = F-22A Raptor VF-25 Messiah = F-14D Tomcat/Su-27 Flanker VF-27 Lucifer = F-14D Tomcat/Su-27 Flanker/SR-71 Blackbird YF-29 Durandal = None acknowledged2 YF-30 Chronos = None acknowledged3 VF-31 Kairos/Siegfried = None acknowledged4 Sv-154 Svard = F-104 Starfighter Sv-262 Draken III = Saab J 35 Draken One could be forgiven for getting the impression Kawamori-sensei has a very great enthusiasm for the Su-27 Flanker's many variations and the F-14 Tomcat. 1. None stated, but almost certainly the B-2 Spirit bomber. 2. It's widely hinted-at, but not explicitly confirmed, that the YF-29 Durandal is a modified reuse of the SW-XA II Schneegans from Kawamori's VF-Experiment column in Character Model magazine, which would make the YF-29 indirectly inspired by the Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut (NATO: Firkin). 3. Explicitly derived in-universe from the YF-24 Evolution, suggesting it's probably another F-22A Raptor-inspired design. 4. Directly derivative of the YF-30 Chronos, making it arguably indirectly derivative of the F-22A.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    So, Arad going out for revenge after Windermere conquers Ragna and cuts him off from his supply of jellyfish snacks?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno~! Macross Chronicle is the only source I know of that talks in-depth about the VF-19EF/A, but it doesn't say anything about why it only adopted the NP-FAD-23 wing boosters from the VF-25's SPS-25S/MF25 Super Pack. If I had to guess, my guess would be that the NP-FAD-23 was the only part of the SPS-25S/MF25 that could be easily adapted for use on the VF-19EF/A that wasn't also redundant in the face of the existing VF-19 Super Pack parts like the NP-AB-20 (leg) and NP-FB-FA07 (shoulder) conformal tanks. There'd be some significant remodeling involved to get the other parts of the SPS-25S/MF25 to fit the differently-shaped limbs, body, and shield of the VF-19.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    A strange guy indeed, though in this case I think he probably had second thoughts about where to put Reconguista in G after writing began in earnest and he realized there'd be a huge plot hole or ten if he kept it as a prequel to Turn A. I'm launching my latest effort to get through Gundam SEED today... I fear this will be another doomed expedition into the wilds of the darkest Cosmic Era.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, I can only hope this'll be the reverse of the Macross Frontier movies sparing Michael Blanc... and they'll actually whack Makina, Reina, and maybe a few other deadweight flat characters in the cast. The trailer's underwhelming as hell compared to even the teaser trailer for Macross Delta's TV series.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    What don't know exactly what it's made of, just that when it's energized it catalyzes the creation of heavy quantum... and that the raw form of the stuff is apparently a byproduct of supernovas.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Not a fuel source, but a fuel catalyst. When used in a fold reactor, the fold carbon or fold quartz is part of the Gravity Inertia Controller in the reactor core. It produces the heavy quanta that the GIC system uses to catalyze thermonuclear fusion in the reactor's fuel and to contain the resulting plasma.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Initially, when Reconguista in G was being promoted he'd said it was a prequel to ∀ Gundam but once the series was out he started asserting it was a sequel to ∀ Gundam set ~500 years after it. The latter makes more sense, IMO, given that the Earthnoids in ∀ Gundam couldn't possibly have built that orbital elevator on their own when they could barely build copies of archaeotech mobile suits. Their ignorance of the Moonrace's existence in the Correct Century also wouldn't fit if they'd spent several centuries dependent on the Moonrace's lunar colony of Towasanga and the photon batteries it produced for their entire energy infrastructure. It fits better if the troubled times of the early Reguild Century occurred after the Moonrace started trying to recolonize Earth and then gave up for a time to support its recovery before planning their reconquest of the planet.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The Bird Human is a bio-technological construct that the ancient Protoculture created, inspired by the Vajra Queen. The statuary modeled on it is something the Protoculture created and left behind on various worlds... it's their calling card. That does seem to be the case, yes. The "magic floating rocks" (no I don't have a better term) are also presumably some of their sufficiently advanced technology. There's the interesting related question of whether the megastructure on the Vajra planet in Macross Frontier was something that the Vajra built or something the Protoculture built for the Vajra, considering both have an organic design aesthetic and the part in which the Vajra hive is situated is a large spiral design very similar in appearance to the icon associated with the Protoculture on several occasions. It raises the question of whether the Protoculture created a home for the Vajra and then tagged it with their Stellar Republic's insignia or whether the Republic adopted the Vajra's hive design as their formal emblem.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Being holier-than-thou arseholes whose entire reason for invading the rest of the Brisingr cluster was that the New UN Gov't had dropped one on their planet, they probably would've considered actually using a dimensional warhead themselves to be quite an evil deed for a group who saw their activity as almost literal white knight-ing for the allegedly oppressed races of the Brisingr globular cluster. Given how shady the Epsilon Foundation has proven to be, and that they have ties to General Galaxy and potentially the Macross Galaxy fleet considering they were able to furnish Ivan Tsari with a VF-27 and cybernetic body, I suspect that if Epsilon was paid with fold quartz from Windermere IV's mines for their technical support of the Kingdom of the Wind's offensive, that they'll have resold the fold quartz to other corporations under the table. It's like conflict diamonds, only worse.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Exactly how much time occurs between each case of some jerk finding a Moonlight Butterfly-enabled mobile suit and resetting the world is unclear. The only example we can put even a rough figure on is the Universal Century, implied to be the last one which had finally broken the cycle. Per the character bios in Mobile Suit Gundam UC, the Earth Federation formally changed over to using their Universal Century calendar on the 1st of January, 2045 AD. The events of ∀ Gundam can tentatively be placed via an in-universe history text that put an approximate number of years between itself and the "present day" in the Correct Century as somewhere in the early 7000s AD, with Reconguista in G somewheres around 8160 AD based on my math. Given that the Gundam shows usually point to development of ESP as the next big thing in human evolution and ESPers are always wiped out in whatever Gundam timeline's conflict du jour, that may be an evolutionary roadblock (in addition to a few millennia of a technological step back having undone some of humanity's post-civilization progress). As far as "relatively unchanged", it's hard to say if humanity is or not in some of them. Quite a few characters evidence odd traits that aren't part of our normal gene pool, like an explicit acknowledgement that spacenoids have weird hair colors, or apparent super-strength or super-agility on the part of a few otherwise normal people. "Sequel" might be stretching it, but Tomino has indicated that Reconguista in G is set in the same timeline as ∀ Gundam, just five hundred years or so further down the road. Ameria and several other things from ∀ Gundam are also mentioned, there are a few Gundams that have moonlight butterfly systems present (e.g. the G-Lucifer, the G-Self w/ Perfect Pack), etc. Some horrible stuff apparently went down around the time the moonrace started trying to resettle Earth, ending in sanctioned cannibalism and other atrocities that were only ended by the AG-tech taboo and the Space Umbilical Cord orbital elevator. ... is he... in anguish... or what? Last time I heard a person make a noise like that, it was a friend's college roommate who was having an episode of explosive diarrhea after being tricked into eating half a dozen MRE servings in a single sitting.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Gundam SEED was kind of a "fun with acronyms" moment on that front, coming up with a couple different meanings for GUNDAM IIRC. (My friend Jack Verse is a big Gundam SEED fan, so I've absorbed a bit of information about the series that way, despite having never been able to get through the first half of the first series myself.) Maybe I just have more pop culture-conscious coworkers? I've had a few coworkers at FCA identify my desktop collection of Valkyries (a VF-4G, VF-2SS, VF-171, VF-25, and lately a VF-31J) as being from Macross, a few others who hazarded Robotech as a guess based on the Super Packs, but the majority confuse them for Transformers. (A pretty chill bunch, regardless... I've been using my lunch breaks to speed up my rewatch of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. I've finally gotten to the point where the 00 Gundam has the 0 Raiser and isn't useless anymore.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The bit that's really convenient for Windermereans was a few paragraphs further on... Windermere IV is a planet rich in fold quartz, to the extent that its current (5th) generation main VF - the Sv-262 Draken III - was able to adopt a scaled-back version of the fold wave system for mass production! It doesn't confer fold dimensional energy conversion capability, but Windermere's Fold Reheat technology offers a 25-30% engine power boost... up to twice the engine performance gain offered by the fold wave system in the VF-31 Siegfried.1 1. The Ba variant issued to normal pilots has a reheat system that produces a 25% improvement in main engine output. The Hs variant issued to squadron leaders offers a 30% improvement in main engine output. The VF-31 Siegfried's fold wave system only improves output 15%.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Indubitably. Nein. Thus far, the Fold Dimensional Resonance system has only been implemented on the YF-30 Chronos prototype operated by Rion Sakaki. We know SMS went to considerable lengths to avoid disclosing the specs for the technology, but it's not clear if it either was never disclosed, or wasn't suitable for production due to cost or stability issues. Surya Aerospace's VF-31 Kairos left out any kind of fold wave system derivative when they used the YF-30 as a starting point, and Xaos's own custom version was built with a fold wave system.1 They kept most of the YF-30's other features, including the Brunhilde-type ARIEL II airframe control AI, ordnance container system, etc. No I won't, because it's never been properly explained HOW the fold wave system improves engine performance and so on. I mean, I can guess... but I can't speak with authority on the matter. If I had to guess, I would assume the improvement in performance is coming from either using the fold dimensional energy conversion feature to replace the generator output from the engine's CTR, allowing it to devote 100% of the reaction energy to thrust production, or that the fold waves from the system allow the GIC's dimensional resonator inside the CTR to produce superheavy quantum instead of regular heavy quantum, making the reaction more energetic via better gravitational fuel compression or perhaps substituting heavy quantum for fuel entirely (turning the engine into a low-powered Macross Cannon used for thrust). The non-proprietary stuff in the YF-30 has, like the ordnance container and its choice of airframe control AI (the YF-25's ARIEL II/Brunhilde). Fold quartz adoption is likely to remain constrained to essential systems in the near term, as the New UN Government still restricts [mining/harvesting] and trade in fold quartz to slow down the proliferation of dimensional warheads. Synthetic fold quartz like the Protoculture were eventually able to produce is beyond the capabilities of the New UN Government at this time. The reason given for the change in the design of the aircraft's nose in Macross Chronicle2 is that it was lengthened to improve and refine the fighter's aerodynamic profile in the name of boosting its all-regime performance. Being designed mainly for space, the VF-17 is noted as having been a bit deficient in atmospheric performance and the VF-171 sought to address that. The changes to the transformation were intended to simplify the overall transformation of the VF-171 for the purposes of cost reduction and maintenance simplification of the mass production unit.3 1. Or, if you trust the few non-contradictory portions of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried, the Xaos Valkyrie Works outfitted the VF-31 Custom Siegfried units built for the Ragna branch's 3rd Fighter Wing Δ Flight with a seriously cut-down version of the fold wave system that uses much less fold quartz. It uses the same two pieces of high-purity fold quartz for both fold wave projectors AND the fold wave system core, thus letting them build three VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds with the same amount of fold quartz that'd go into one YF-29 Durandal at the expense of high performance. 2. Mechanic Sheet Macross Frontier NUNS 02A VF-171 Nightmare Plus, bizarrely mentioned under the Battroid Mode section rather than in the Fighter mode section. 3. At least initially, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus was the K.I.S.S. version of the VF-17 ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") meant to economize the design for the kind of large-scale mass production and operation that the VF-17 never got with its sub-1000 unit initial production run. Later improvements made in Blocks II and III boosted its performance such that it was actually superior to the Generation 3.5 VF-17 in almost every respect.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    ... normally I don't pay the slightest attention to American superhero stuff, but this looks so downright bizarre that I think I'm going to have to keep this one on my radar.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    A few shots were also taken at it in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Skull Heart. Umon Samon had customized his RB-79 Ball to look like a Gundam head (jokingly called the B Gundam), which raised impressive amounts of completely unintentional hell in the Battle of A Baoa Qu when part of Zeon's forces (incl. Anavel Gato's 302nd Patrol Squadron) mistakenly believed it to be the severed head of Amuro Ray's RX-78-2 Gundam and left their position to investigate, allowing Federation Forces that had launched from White Base to slip through the lines while other, more observant forces noticed the scale was off and created a persistent rumor that the Federation had built a GIANT Gundam... resulting in Axis Zeon wasting resources on completing another Zeong in Char's Deleted Affair. Has anyone let them know we get the same damned thing here in the US, except everyone mistakes every robot for something from Transformers?
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