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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Ugh... well... I've put it off long enough. Time to actually give this hot mess called GQuuuuuuX a whirl. Ever since I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time, I've always felt Hideaki Anno is one of the worst and most overrated creators in anime. GQuuuuuuX is doing little to change that view. This show has two main problems: The story is basically just a route from Gihren's Greed. The art style is a really REALLY poor fit to Gundam, both in terms of the excessively busy mechanical design ala Evangelion and the cutesy art style used for the characters.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Unlikely, IMO. Amuro was no genius or technological savant, he was just a reasonably computer-savvy teenage kid. He built and modified Frau Bow's Haro when he was 13. It's very doubtful that he did anything to that Haro that a competent engineer couldn't also come up with. The Haro in the series may have been customized by someone else, or the manufacturer may have upgraded the kit as technology improved. Even if we assume that Amuro was not among those who perished in Char's attack on Side 7 and was able to lead a normal life thereafter (which seems unlikely given that his father almost certainly still died and his mother was estranged and living on Earth, so he would be left living alone) he would still only be 21 years old at the time of GQX. That would mean at most he would be just graduating from college, not someone already well-embedded in a corporation's design department. If she didn't perish under other circumstances during the One Year War, odds are she's a part of the Newtype unit in Kycilia Zabi's Mobile Assault Force.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, that doesn't necessarily imply anything about Amuro's fate or future in this timeline. A lot of Gundam fans tend to forget that the Haro in the original Mobile Suit Gundam series was not something Amuro created. It was a commercially available kit robot sold by a company called SUN. Frau Bow's Haro was a standard Haro kit that Amuro bought, built, modified into a "pet" robot, and gifted to Frau Bow to cheer her up after her dog died. It wasn't until Amuro and White Base gained fame in the wake of the One Year War that SUN sought out Amuro and acquired the specs of his improvements to the Haro. Since the One Year War played out differently, it's likely that consignment of 4,800 Haros that was mostly lost in the war in the main timeline wasn't... and the kit robot enjoyed a wider user base.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The Sodon. Either deceased or basking in a life of irrelevancy, since he never got into the Gundam in this timeline.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It does make a certain amount of sense that a profoundly violent high-energy and high-gravity event like the collapse and explosion of a high-mass star might produce a material that is in some way connected to gravity as a force. Doubly so if Master File's view of fold carbon and fold quartz is correct and the stuff is essentially a stable crystal made from higher-dimension gravity particles.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Definitely one of the weaker episodes... between this being yet-another "Lady Lishu is bullied by her own ladies-in-waiting" episode AND another "Maomao investigates reports of a ghost" episode, it's definitely not a particularly strong story. Started Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? today over lunch. It's got a lot of energy. A LOT. Every character in this is extremely energetic. The protagonist is a quiet guy who wants to make jewelry for a living, and his best friend (the girl of the boy-girl friendship) is an astonishingly genki girl with no sense of personal space and a terrible sense of humor who enjoys teasing him. As teenage will-they-or-won't-they's go, this one's actually pretty believable in that they give off strong "No way, he/she's like a brother/sister" energy. It's quite fun so far.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Fold carbon is one of those things that has implicitly been around for a while, but was explicitly explained when it finally became relevant to the story. Explaining it was necessary for the story of Macross Frontier because the plot revolved around a sort of unofficial gold rush for a better kind of fold crystal, and allowed them to also explain how/why human-made fold systems, reaction engines, beam weapons, etc. have gotten dramatically more capable over time despite Zentradi technology being static for millennia. Most fold carbon in use is synthetic. We're told in Macross Frontier that it does occur in nature as a product of supernovae. While the Vajra are shown to mine naturally-occurring fold carbon for Queen forms to refine into fold quartz, the Protoculture developed the technology to create as much synthetic fold carbon as they needed to drive their expanding interstellar empire and its monstrously huge military. Humanity's first encounter with fold carbon was with the synthetic fold carbon found in the ASS-1's systems, and from that they seem to have worked out how to reproduce the stuff on their own. The Protoculture eventually worked out a method to synthesize fold quartz too, something Humanity has been hard at work on. Frontier-era and later materials have used improvements in Humanity's synthetic fold carbon process as a way of explaining how systems that use super dimension spatial theory like fold systems, gravity control systems, reaction engines, etc. have gotten smaller, more precise, and more capable over the years despite all having started from analysis of the essentially-mature Zentradi equipment. It seems likely that, since the Galactic Whales are living beings with fold capability, they're biologically synthesizing or at least purifying fold carbon to a level higher than what a Human ship or fighter might be using at the time of, say, Dynamite 7. Thus making those "natural" fold crystals desirable as engine parts. As far as we know, it reached all the way to the Brisingr Globular Cluster and Windermere IV on the edge of the galaxy. King Grammier is said to have participated in the Second Unification Wars somehow. We never really get a sense of the Brisingr Alliance's member governments being corrupt in the Macross Delta series or movies. We're told they have economic issues because of the cluster's isolation and are trying to boost their economy with military exports, but we never really see any sign that they're not on the up-and-up aside from their willingness to listen to, and excuse the behavior of, Lady M and the protagonists. I've got a copy of the novels on order, so I'll have to look into that when they arrive. I'd assume that the New UN Gov't considers them to have already learned their lesson, since the entire colony was subsequently overrun and enslaved by the Protodeviln and the inhabitants spiritia-drained and brainwashed in a fairly traumatic ordeal. Not to mention the fact that the party responsible for the whole mess, the rogue advsior Ivano Gunther, isn't around to take the heat (having fused with Gepernich) and most of his supporters died. It kind of depends which version of the Frontier story any subsequent work is treating as true at any given time... but Galaxy may also be off the hook on account of having f'ed around and found out with fatal results when it came to the Vajra. The fleet of millions was reduced to a handful of refugees as of Frontier's second movie and many of those got wiped out because they were actually undercover agents. No kidding. It's enough to make one assume the AIF-9B is similarly downgraded vs. the Ghost X-9. Well, yeah... he'd have to find a new bassist at that point. He only got upset because it affected their meal ticket.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Watched the second episode of The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows, and this show writing is a collection of tropes from the worst kind of amateur-hour light novel BS. This might become one of the rare titles I drop before the end. It's that bad.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Started The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows today. By about 3:30 into the first episode, I was ready to call it quits. The synopsis on Crunchyroll promised me a drama about a back-alley healer in a fantasy world running a secret clinic for the city's impoverished souls. What Studio Makaria put out, however, is a downright cringeworthy, low-quality harem series about a nondescript guy who lives with a bunch of standard anime Little Bit Beastly monster girls. It's half an episode gone before the protagonist, dressed in this season's hottest chuunibyou fashion and behaving like a standard overpowered isekai MC, gets to actually be relevant to the story in any way. (What he does isn't even healing, it's beating the stuffing out of someone followed by an exorcism.) It's eminently skippable. The other day, my watch group also watched LucasFilm's last pre-Disney non-Star Wars original feature Strange Magic. It really is quite something... in a bad way. The only way I can describe it is that it's like what you'd get if you described a Disney musical to a studio in a country where Disney musicals don't exist and then asked them to make one... it's subtly wrong in so many fundamental ways that it manages to be off-putting and even a little upsetting without actually crossing the line into being unwatchably bad. It stands quite amply as an example of why George Lucas should not write. Ever.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    When I saw this just now, the most horrid thought entered my mind and I figure "Why should I suffer alone? Share the wealth." This goofily-proportioned take on the Zaku should be the MS-06PM Zaku II PM... for "Pixar Mom". It's built like the mom from The Incredibles.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the first two episodes of Catch Me at the Ballpark. It... exists. It's not bad, but as a slice of life series what it is is nondescript. It's competently animated but absolutely nothing about it stands out or draws attention. Generic work events happen to generic employees at a generic ballpark. It has all the flavor and spice of a plain flour tortilla served with a glass of tapwater. The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside By My Fiance and Sold to Another Kingdom is... ... ... ... ... y'know how a lot of old fairy tales involve the princess or whatever being treated like total cr*p by their own family for basically no reason? Yeah, this is that but with a standard otome novel Lady Saint protagonist. Somehow, her incredible achievements, awe-inspiring Holy power, and constant service mean nothing and everyone hates her guts because she doesn't smile? Somehow, this is enough for her fiance and her own parents to gleefully and vindictively break off her engagement and literally sell her to another country. It's such a lazy and paper-thin setup for the standard "jilted girl discovers living well is the best revenge" story that it's honestly impossible to take seriously. Season two of I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years is as bland and inoffensive as I remember the previous season being. I guess they're kind of doing a Konosuba thing since the goddess responsible for isekai-ing the protagonist is now doing MLM-style public speeches after being demoted to supervising just one world for her irresponsible dispensing of standard isekai superpowers?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    There's some really good worldbuilding in some of those short stories. The audio dramas have some interesting stuff too. It's actually kind of weird how many random civvies SMS is willing to take on and train for yuks. Not just the actor who plays Shin Kudo in Bird Human, but even Sheryl Nome does a stint as an SMS trainee in the drama CDs as prep to play a pilot in a TV drama being produced in the Frontier fleet. (Kinda-sorta explaining how she's able to do a passable job of maneuvering Michel's VF-25G when he gets hurt.) Then there's the bit where Luca and L.A.I. are training to solve the whole Sharon Apple problem by creating a stable AI for unmanned fighters by basing them on the personalities of Luca's classmates.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    So... that's a bit tricky, since the short stories were run in several different publications including the Macross Frontier novelization (in Vol.4), the Macross Frontier visual collection books, Macross Ace, and in Kadokawa's bimonthly magazine The Sneaker. The easiest way to get almost all of them is to get the two anthologies: Macross Frontier: Frontier Memories and Macross Frontier: Frontier Diaries. Each volume had a new short story written exclusively for it, and between the two of them they collect all but one of the short stories that were published in Macross Ace and The Sneaker as well as the one that got published in the Sheryl Nome Visual Collection. IIRC, the only one that isn't in either volume is Cosmic Egg, which is in the 4th volume of the Macross Frontier TV novelization and in Macross Ace Vol.1. I only managed to score my copies very recently... my main copies have been the ones in Macross Ace and The Sneaker. There's dramatic and there's that. lol That's to be expected... it's a boss machine and the most advanced VF in the game that you get is one that canonically can barely keep up with it because there's nothing to keep the fleshy meats in the seat from feeling the g-forces.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Surely you jest. 😜 Mylene is Fire Bomber's Only Sane Woman! She does more to keep Basara on task than anyone else in the band or in the series as a whole. Ray's too burned-out by a decade-plus of Basara's BS to muster a decent response half the time, Veffidas is too lost in the rhythm to participate in a conversation, and their label's manager Akiko is never around. She's the lone breakwater preventing Basara's madness from sweeping the band away... and also the best character in the series. (That she at no point attempts to garrote Basara with his own guitar strings is a testament to her sheer focus, commitment, and force of will.) Mylene is seemingly so good at wrangling weirdos and eccentrics that she's briefly able to keep Quamzin Kravshera himself on-side and on-task in Macross 30. Even Vrlitwhai Kridanik and Moruk Laplapmiz struggled at that, arguably making her better qualified to claim strategic weapon status than the Ghost!
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Veering back for a moment to this strange statement from the translation of the Macross 30 novelization... This at least partly aligns with material from Macross Frontier, wherein Luca's three QF-4000 series Ghosts were also equipped with a fully autonomous air combat AI albeit under restraints and only with the special permission of the New UN Government. (It pays to be the heir to a megacorporation, I guess?) A production version of the Ghost X-9 would be under the same, or even stricter, restrictions. That said, to call it a strategic weapon with impact rivaling that of an ICBM is exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. It's a high-performance unmanned fighter with mobility exceeding 10G, but it's still only armed with like two dozen missiles and five laser machine guns. It has low operational versatility and low endurance (because of its small size, high propellant consumption, limited armament, etc.). It could probably destroy a few buildings, but it's nowhere near the threat level of even a tactical reaction warhead never mind a strategic one. That said, it's also a rather odd thing for Havamal to have... in Macross 30 it's kind of a plot point that they've gone off the grid a bit because they're acting outside their orders and are using whatever resources they can borrow from the local NUNS or use their clout to have manufactured locally. I think the AIF-7S actually makes more sense, esp. since Leon shoots down like half a dozen of the bloody things in short order, where four was a damn near insurmountable task for the most elite Special Forces of the previous generation.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/373974751561?_skw=Macross+30+Complete+Visual&itmmeta=01JR9K47P233Z5SX4QR18GV1A1&hash=item5712a1d949:g:~qIAAOSwFVlkiBx5&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA0FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1dYk6r4Z0lm4Od%2FduNfKLDLrJfTY8uhbuV95esAP1Skm1%2BlvHvfYp5Y3Kz6w9n6xJQR%2FAwPk%2FioUnXX9PIhzkVcctc3OqneZBbo8LeBy6XcyenxHUksyoCN7RpDvwY%2FMBPHu9X2x0Bo1TYRIHu%2B72L6OQieMxFHUySIln%2FBo92YMuZjK7j2A9wQ72YRWLCxfNRSFdqrRgq9qiC8OlHolAIEVMvH541XNQ0ECTM0VdwE9AgOTDVFp%2B6xu3B4F1EW%2BOo%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5T7kLPCZQ https://www.ebay.com/itm/405011821668?_skw=Macross+30+Complete+Visual&itmmeta=01JR9K47P2ADE1WGWVSRZ93395&hash=item5e4c95f464:g:8g0AAOSw9iBmW98d&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA8FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1e7I3fQaTqtjloRPqB%2B0tSfLkoTHr9OEjHoNLj%2FD1xNvNFlNCOWd3cdX0l3%2BGlTCmsJVVmr7zUsnGDEtcxFzsP4c1abDI9Vz6X1Ah1qQ2y%2BhfrJXDd%2BfN%2Bq80KQwdolW%2BTKPEs1ZNCCis3jC2aJSCGHRkRpfLtR%2FfH20aSV%2B%2F78uyrU77%2BGvfxrifktWJcYyd%2F5hNVSh4RQ%2FOGh6KD996y6%2Bgr8fnWyqaf1K3KkybW3WAkHHc6xIp75Fp%2BIkqguqeo9DtJEKoiy6yD%2BvkHdSmdyrjMFvLrP%2FXpVOqAPZHUfTw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5T7kLPCZQ There are a couple copies floating around for actually-pretty-reasonable prices on eBay. https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1292489743&ref=list&keyword=Macross 30 Visual&lang=en And one on Mandarake too, in the Nagoya store.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Eggs are too expensive for that! D'you mean the one that comes packaged with the game's Limited Edition? It's actually not very good. The paper's quite thin, making it poor for scanning, and the actual content's not much. The Visual Complete Guide is arguably better as a reference for the designs, since it's like 4x the size and the paper's higher-quality.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The AIF-9B's not in the Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy game. It seems Ukyo Kodachi gave Havamal a bit of an upgrade when writing the novel version of the story. In the game, that same scene where Leon is attacked by Ghosts shortly after he arrives in orbit of Uroboros has AIF-7S Ghosts instead. The game only has two/three versions of Ghost in it: Macross Plus's X-9 Ghost and the Frontier AIF-7S/QF-4000 Ghost, as noted in the Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy Visual Complete Guide.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Huh, thank you! 👍 I don't have a physical copy of that game, so I've never had a print copy of the manual for same. In hindsight, it's weird that every other mecha is referred to by its proper name and designation in the multiple official visual books and guidebooks and whatnot that the game had but the Ghost is just "Ghost" everywhere. It's a shame so many other resources forget that one exists too. It'd be interesting to hear how that properly fits into the development history of the other Ghosts. Esp. since it's using the developer designation not the military's.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That is the textbook definition of "damned by faint praise". The UC is something you kind of have to introduce people to in order, otherwise things just don't flow correctly. Of course, Zeta is also a product of the time in which it was made... and it very much reflects the sexist attitudes of the late Showa era in the writing for Emma and Reccoa. The things they do make sense in context, but definitely seem strange viewed through the lens of modern western cultural attitudes on gender roles. Like the song goes, "It was acceptable in the 80's". At least it's not quite as bad about it as, say, Southern Cross which directly invokes "marriage is a woman's happiness" by NAME at the very start as a way of justifying its protagonist's flaky behavior. Still havin' a great time with The Apothecary Diaries tho. That's some quality material. Enough that I'm looking into picking up the light novel.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    An explanation which doesn't at all fit with the rest of the setting. Nobody's out there using batteries powered by some high-gravity hellworld. The New UN Forces ships, fighters, and other mecha are powered by thermonuclear reactors. So are civilian spacecraft. Conventional military and civilian vehicles are powered by hydrogen combustion engines for the most part, and EX-Gear scaled power suits run on fuel cells. From what we see of emigrant planets, municipal energy grids seem to be primarily renewables with wind farms and solar panels on prominent display (presumably backed up with lossless OTM energy capacitors in place of chemical batteries for storage and probably backup power via thermonuclear reactor plants). It does not make sense if you think about it. Banipal's another one that doesn't really make sense in context. Who needs something as primitive as fossil fuels when your civilization has cheap, clean, and ubiquitous ultra-high efficiency thermonuclear power and the technology to make renewables ultra-high efficiency with room temperature superconductors and lossless energy storage media? Unless it's not really coal as we know it, but fold carbon which is sometimes (rarely) called "fold coal". Naturally occurring deposits of high purity fold carbon left over from a past supernova would be worth mining and have practical applications. (It's implied this is also why Galactic Whales are hunted.) Given the effort the New UN Forces clearly went to to put this weapons research facility in a hideously inaccessible and dangerous place, one has to suspect that it's probably up to something illegal too. It makes sense, considering the circumstances these colonies were set up under. After all, Humanity's grasp of fold technology was not exactly great at the time of the First Space War. Low purity fold carbon and an incomplete understanding of the mechanics of space folding left Human-made fold systems somewhat less precise and capable than they would have liked. Planets that were days or weeks or even months away from the Earth became a lot more accessible as Humanity's grasp of fold technology improved. Fold navigation became more precise and efficient, and fold communications networks were built up across Humanity's sphere of influence to make communication faster and more reliable. Trips that used to take weeks or months were cut to days or even hours. The kind of seismic shift in communication and transportation that occurred with the invention of things like the telegraph or steam ships that made it way more possible for a central government to keep tabs on things. Or, if you're the cynical type, an excuse to test the next main fighter prototype in live combat in a way that nobody will complain about "reckless endangerment" or "instigation". Mikumo's case was a bit different, since she was created not by the government but by a private corporation's illegal genetic laboratory. Unfortunately, Macross Delta sweeps these implications under the rug along with several other unfortunate topics it notes and then glosses over like how Xaos's participation in the war is technically illegal. I have a feeling the end result was probably something like the government insisting Mikumo be given all the same freedoms as any other sentient being protected by interstellar law. (i.e. they can't treat her like a lab animal, force her to fight, etc. the way they were doing previously.) The funny thing is that the Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet for unmanned fighters seems nearly as frustrated with it as I am, as it insistently refers to the military-use Ghosts of the Frontier era as QF-4000 series, not AIF-7 series. There are a couple sources that've mentioned improved variants of the QF-3000... the EX type comes from a Master File book, which actually launches into an explanation of how the EX variant is a model intended for "export" (meaning deep space operations with emigrant fleets) and the distinctions between the AIF and QF numbering systems. The Sky Angels QF-5000 is similar in that respect. I'm still trying to find a source that actually calls the Ghosts in Macross VF-X2 "AIF-9B". The one book I have that talks about them just calls them "Ghost", the same way that the in-game UI does. WRT manned fighters controlling unmanned ones... it's implied that VFs with electronic warfare capabilities are able to do that, though the only ones explicitly mentioned as being able to do so are IIRC the RVF-171, YF-25, RVF-25, and VF-27. (The VF-31 and Sv-262 are seemingly also able to command drones, though it is not clear if this requires any special equipment to control just two. Master File implies the VF-31 can control a large number of unmanned fighters with special equipment added.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Copying this over from the MTL thread... One of the little details that Frontier got "wrong" - or rather an inconsistency it created - is the designations of unmanned fighters. It's an incredibly trivial thing to get annoyed over, so you bet my profoundly pedantic arse is irritated by it. 🤣 Both the pre-war Earth UN Forces and the post-war New UN Forces cribbed their hull symbol system and their classification systems for aircraft, missiles, etc. from the US tri-service system. It's not a particularly surprising outcome, given Japan's strategic position as a US ally, the choice of an American fighter as the basis of the VF-1, and the main countries behind OTEC and the early Unification Government being mainly the US and its allies. Anyway, the Ghosts used during the Unification Wars, the First Space War, and afterwards are all designated QF as you'd expect the military to designate an unmanned fighter. We have the QF-2200 and the QF-3000 series. Very old lore mentions that the developers are working on a QF-5000 to replace the QF-3000E eventually (this is from '84). It wasn't until after General Galaxy was formed from the merger of OTEC and various other defense companies and Ghost production resumed under their banner that we start seeing AIF numbers. Those AIF numbers are explicitly General Galaxy's internal product code for the Ghost, with the first mentioned being AIF-3Ex as the designation for their improved version of the QF-3000E designated QF-3100EX. When General Galaxy and the Macross Concern developed next-generation unmanned fighter concepts, we got the (AIF-)X-9 Ghostbird prototype. Macross Galaxy's corporate army developed that into the AIF-9V after equipping it with anti-Vajra equipment, while the Frontier fleet used two different versions of it under the names AIF-7S and QF-4000. The problem is that the designations are backwards. The civilian PMC should be referring to their Ghosts using manufacturer model numbers (AIF-7) while the military should be using the military QF designation. In the Macross Frontier drama CDs, LAI is developing a next-generation Ghost with the company internal designation AIF-X-8S, while in the movies Macross Galaxy's corporate army's operating a non-clandestine unmanned fighter with the designation QF-5100. So the Frontier situation's this weird one-off error where the designation usage is reversed... Yeah, it's probably Dr. Neumann.🤣 Not so much back to the drawing board, since the actual X-9 design ended up being produced just without the autonomous AI. It just kind of put the New UN Forces and New UN Gov't in the position of asking themselves "Wait, some of us are old enough to have seen Terminator, right?" and curtail the use of autonomous AI as a dangerously immature technology.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    New Mobile Report Gundam Wing has a lot of western fans whom it introduced to Gundam in the 90's, but overall I believe it's still considered a pretty middling installment. It had some writing trouble, and the plot kind of meanders in the second half. Zeta, on the other hand, is arguably the gold standard by which all other Gundam titles are judged in terms of its ratings success, its commercial success, and its influence on the franchise as a whole. Iron-Blooded Orphans is a really polarizing title due to how unstintingly, relentlessly DARK its story and setting are. All the same, I consider it to be the best of modern Gundam by a long way. It has a very distinctive art style, a memorable cast, and it punches like a prize fighter when it comes to its chosen social commentary. It unflinchingly commits to the franchise's War Is Hell moral message on a level most other titles don't. Understandably, that's a turnoff to a lot of viewers.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Not seeing nearly as much "Engrish as she is spoke" or "My hovercraft is full of eels" as I'd expected, but oy... the grammar. 🤣 It's not really that surprising, TBH. The novels are their own thing separate from either version of the animation, but even in the animation's continuity EX-Gear and other tech for the VF-25 had been evaluated using older model VFs. Macross the Ride, for instance, depicts the Frontier fleet using some of its domestically-produced VF-19EF Caliburns and the custom VF-19ACTIVE Nothung as testbeds for new technologies going into the VF-25 for a year or more before the events of Macross Frontier proper. (WRT the RVF-171, it's just a VF-171 with an Aegis Pack... its specs aren't any different.) They know their audience, all right. As I mentioned above, the novels are very much their own thing story-wise. It's not presented as a new/separate/distinct aircraft from the one in the actual TV anime. It's likely just some authorial confusion, since the Ghost X-9 is the common ancestor to both the QF-4000/AIF-7S and AIF-9V. (Esp. given that the novel will later explain that Luca's QF-4000 contains an authentic reproduction of the original X-9's system core.) Considering the Frontier fleet's Island-1 is basically a pre-war Earth theme park, that the local baseball team are the Tigers makes a lot of sense. After all, Japan's most famous and beloved baseball stadium is Hanshin Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya. Home field of the Hanshin Tigers and the venue for the National High School Baseball Championship (AKA "Koshien") that features so prominently in so many Japanese sports dramas. If the Frontier fleet were going to build ANY famous stadium, there's no question they'd reconstruct Koshien. This begs the question, though... if the Tigers are always losing, is there a KFC in Island-1?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Macross M3 Episode 4 "Black Celebration" takes place about 18 years before Humanity became first aware of the Vajra's existence. As such, the answer is almost certainly "No". The mission briefing presents the insectoid biological weapons as something the military developed independently at their New Asia biological weapons lab in Area V672. The clear implication in the briefing is that the military set up the camouflaged laboratory in Area V672 on New Asia because the biological weapons R&D the facility was built for is quite thoroughly illegal. (Macross Delta would later confirm that yes, genetic engineering to create living weapons/clone soldiers is very much banned by interstellar law.) The whole mission is pitched as a highly classified face-saving coverup, as the incident would otherwise result in a large number of senior officers having to resign in disgrace.
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