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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Er... you sure you watched the show? The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series (and its sequels) are about love stories set against the backdrop of interstellar war. Even Kawamori says so. Yes, we see humanity dodges the extinction bullet and they off a couple supporting characters to drive home that war is serious business, but those are small pieces of the whole story, which cares more for the trials and tribulations of the heart as an indecisive teenage boy tries to decide which of the two girls in his life he really loves. The war is a backdrop for the love story, not vice versa. It seems that you may have completely missed the point of Macross as a whole. At the end of the day, almost the entire main cast is alive and well. Love conquers all, even Kamjin finds it before the end. The human race took one for the team, but at the end there's the promise of a brighter future as humanity moves out into the galaxy with the help of their new Zentradi allies. The warlike Zentradi learn the value of peace and discover a new life. You don't get a downer ending in Macross... unless you're watching Sayonara no Tsubasa. The hero gets the girl, love conquers all, peace is restored, and the world moves on a little wiser for having acknowledged the mistakes that led to hostility. How is Macross 7 different? It's simply the most lighthearted and exuberant series in a metaseries that specializes in being far "lighter and softer" than Gundam. It takes the themes of music and emotion as a vehicle for communication to some comically exaggerated lengths. Macross has never been, and hopefully will never be, a dark, gritty, and realistic series. EDIT: Well, I suppose in Macross 7 the hero doesn't get the girl... because he's an asexual twit who's more into his guitar than any flesh and blood person. But hey, he still lives his dream in the end. Er... Macross 7 wasn't the "least successful" title in the Macross metaseries. It's not as well-regarded in America as it was in its native Japan, but Macross 7 did better than Macross II and Macross Plus. Until Macross Frontier, no Macross title had given rise to as much material as Macross 7. The Macross 7 series may have ended in 1995, but we were still getting new Macross 7 story material well into 2001! It's also hardly the "dead past", considering that Basara and Fire Bomber were practically as big as Minmay... a fact referenced both in Macross Frontier's series and movies. It had a lasting influence in-universe, both musically and technologically. Even Macross 30 isn't shy about pointing out Fire Bomber had a lasting musical impact akin to Minmay's, one that even huge megastars like Sheryl respect.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Mentioned him a bit ago... he falls into that rare category where his ancestry is mentioned onscreen because part of his is alien (he's listed as Human-Zentradi). Grace is a freaking cyborg, she can look however she wants to look. IIRC, at one point doesn't she reveal the ability to turn her body into a man's in the Macross Frontier series?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    None that's really leaping to mind... apart from, as noted previously, the Japanese text used in Macross Frontier. Japan has made something of a habit of teaching English as a second language... and considering she spent a fair amount of time living on South Ataria Island, where English would probably have been the default language due to the working population being UN Forces and OTEC personnel from all over the globe, she probably had a LOT of opportunity to practice. (Also, wasn't her letter from a bland name version of Orion Records, which was based in North America?)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, the Japanese text in Frontier was kind of a first. Until then, practically all of the actual text in the series was presented in English... which makes a pretty strong argument for English being the default language of the UN Government. All the computer readouts and so on have been in English, and there were those blatant bits of English at the start of DYRL and Frontier too. All in all, there are a few noteworthy exceptions. Fire Bomber must actually be singing in Japanese, since they're known to have an unauthorized English language cover band. There's the apparently trilingual Macross Frontier fleet too, where we see most text in English but some areas (train stations, cell phones) also display written Japanese, sometimes in rotation with the English, and then there's all the Zentradi text around the mall. Come to think of it, Gamlin's a hard one to classify... a man of ambiguous complexion and impossible hair, with a Japanese surname and a hometown on freaking Mars.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Her biographical information, which says her lineage is "Chinese-Caucasian". Isamu is listed as being Japanese-Caucasian, and Guld as Human-Zentradi.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, there's that factor too... I don't think it's just the usual anime habit of not differentiating between races at work here, there's certainly no shortage of mixed-race or mixed-species relationships in Macross. You've got Bruno and Miho Global, Misa Hayase and Riber Fruhling, Roy Focker and Claudia LaSalle, Max and Milia Jenius, Shin Kudo and Sara Nome, technically also Minmay and either of her love interests, the three bridge bunnies and the lolicon trio... and that's from a limited cast before they'd even finished the first space war. EDIT: Also, didn't Vanessa also marry Roli after the war? Seems to me like humanity was doing an OK job of getting past defining an individual by where their ancestors were from even before the Zentradi made the point moot in the most direct fashion imaginable. Macross II: Lovers Again kind of hammered this home with the implication of Mash's comments about Ishtar, and the other bits from official publications that indicate that non-hybrid Zentradi or Meltrandi living on Earth are something of a rarity. Then you have Macross Plus, in which all three main characters are of mixed heritage... but the only one that's ever commented on was Guld being half-Zentradi.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... I think you're being too charitable here. The people who want "something more gritty and realistic" are the ones whose rose tinted memories of older shows are playing them false, because Macross has never been either of those things. Seriously. Even at its darkest, like the orbital bombardment of Earth or Guld's graphic death dogfighting the Ghost X-9, Macross has always kept its trademark lightness of tone and optimistic outlook. It really says something that the Macross Frontier movies have one of the darkest endings in Macross... since Sheryl's dying and Alto's vanished and all that. We usually end on a higher note... love triumphs, peace prevails, the hero gets the girl and (almost) everybody goes home in one piece. This is a franchise that's made teaching aliens about love and peace through the power of song into its signature move. That is neither gritty nor realistic... but it is kinda kickass. If you want dark, gritty, and realistic... you can always go to the beach and bury your head in the sand. Or you could give the Gundam franchise's Universal Century timeline a look. Either way, Macross is the wrong place to look if that's what you're after, and I like it that way.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure why... ethnic background pretty much ceases to have any relevance after the first space war, on account of the eradication of national boundaries via the eradication of nations. Most Macross titles after the original don't list the ethnic background of their characters, because those national boundaries have ceased to matter and what little remains of their cultures has started to blur together. (Like Mylene, who inexplicably wears a kimono to a marriage meeting, but whose father is Western European and whose mother is not of this Earth...) There are a few isolated cases where ancestry is specifically mentioned in someone's background info, but that's not very common after the original series and DYRL. The default language in Macross's UN Government appears to be English, with a couple examples of spoken or written Japanese here or there. The Linn family is actually part Chinese and part Chinese-Japanese. Minmay's side of the family is Chinese-Japanese, while her aunt and uncle's side is listed as Chinese. The Anti-UN Alliance pilots in Macross Zero don't have a listed background... they could be from some former Soviet Republic or they could just as easily be fifth-generation Americans with Russian surnames. All that's said for Roy Focker is that he was born in North America, the same is true for Claudia. The Macross's bridge bunnies, Vanessa, Kim, and Shammy, were French, Russian, and Finnish respectively. Global was Italian, his wife was probably Japanese (with a name like Miho...). Apart from Lam Hoa (Indian) and Alto (Japanese?), Macross Frontier's cast only seems to really mention its ancestry when the person involved is part alien. Ranka never gets more specific than "1/4 Zentradi", Michael Blanc is Human, Zentradi, and Zolan but answers to the German and French pronunciations of "Michael" just to mess with us, etc. The Compendium lists Jan Neumann as Yang Neumann for reasons unclear (mistranslation?) and lists him as being ethnically Chinese and German, though at a glance I can't find where that supposedly came from and his Macross Chronicle sheet lists his birthplace as "Under Investigation" (meaning not stated).
  9. Seto Kaiba
    There's a section on that in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie. I'll lend you a hand by Skype in a bit.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Eh? The VF-27 doesn't have a long-range sniper weapon... its beam gun pod is a rapid-fire weapon, and the "beam grenade" mode isn't exactly precise or subtle. Functionality-wise, it's not any different from the beam gun pods carried by the YF-29 and YF-30. I know Macross 30 substituted a beam sniper sort of affair for beam grenade mode so the gun's functionality would fit the game, but I don't think that's actually a thing... Once... once, in all the footage for the VF-11, do we see a gunpod jam. 's probably not something which any of the fighters the OP is concerned about need to worry about, since they're not firing bullets.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I already commented on the VF-5000's... the regular one from Macross M3 is probably part of the GU sequence, it doesn't look like it's a GU-11 variant though. Too small. The VF-14 as seen in Macross M3 was using the same gunpod as the VF-11A/B, the other one that's 35mm was probably a MC gunpod instead of GU.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    As far as I'm aware, the -C variant's gun pod is the same model as the -B variant, just after a cost-cutting session put the kibosh on the bayonet and so on.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not yet, no... but that information may yet be forthcoming in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II. Mind you, exactly when that book is going to be released is something of a mystery. It was originally marked April, but HLJ is now listing it as May. Barring an error on the cover of the previous Macross Chronicle edition's 22nd issue, I don't believe so. (The cover in question mistakenly assigned it the designation of the VF-19's gun pod... GU-15.) The VF-1 and VF-4 both used the GU-11, the VF-171 had the GU-14 and the VF-19 the GU-15, so smart money says that it's either GU-12 or GU-13. I'd suspect the latter, and that the former is probably the wedge-shaped gun pod the VF-5000B used during Macross M3.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Seems that way... Macross 30 seems to have been kind of a big deal, since the Bandai DX version of Leon Sakaki's YF-30 Chronos wasn't the only one they made for it either. IINM, they've also done Rod Baltemar's YF-29B Percival and the YF-29s flown by Ozma Lee and Isamu Dyson in the game. I loved Macross Frontier, and thought Macross Zero was pretty fine as well. Macross 7 was the only one that didn't really do anything for me (initially). I've warmed to 7 in the past year or two.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    *blink* Someone let an owl in here? Er... pretty sure that ain't it. Namco Bandai was the publisher of Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, that's why they're doing the YF-30.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Which is odd to say the least, since the Mechanic Sheet ALL 01B indicated its name was VF-19 ADVANCE.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, but as I said, it could be sold as an OVA if anyone at Studio Nue got it into their heads to make such a series. I dunno, I certainly am... but there's a lot of carping from old timers who are somehow bitterly opposed to Frontier.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the Macross-11 has a dome over it... you can kind of see it in the screen captures. It's just the dome on Macross-11 is a more extreme version of the City-7, what with the taller buildings actually poking through the top of the dome. Milia's office was in one of those taller towers in Macross 7. IIRC, one of Tenjin Hidetaka's books identifies those huge sails on the Macross-11 as an energy collection system (basically solar sails).
  19. Seto Kaiba
    ... ... ... suddenly, I feel more optimistic about our prospects for a YF-30 Chronos cover.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    At this point, I can't help but recall Mobile Suit Gundam: MS IGLOO 2: The Gravity Front... which managed to be quite interesting and more than a little awesome, yet there are no Federation mobile suit pilots in the cast until the very last episode. The first two parts were about infantry and tank crews, and the latter contains one of the best fights in Gundam (Between Lt. Yandell's tanks and a platoon of Zaku II's). If Gundam can succeed with a series that has no Gundams, then Macross could probably sell a series about Destroids if they really cared to.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    As far as the train goes, your guess is as good as mine. I vaguely recall there was a train briefly shown in the opening theme of Macross Dynamite 7, but all we saw of it was the roof of the passenger cars. Oh, I'm sure there were shipping wars. There are ALWAYS shipping wars. Heck, if you think about it, there's actually a bit of shipping going on by supporting characters in the show itself. Like when that tabloid journalist sister of Michael's publishes an article suggesting Basara and Mylene are an item, followed by an article suggesting Basara and Gamlin are an item, and a bit theorizing that Basara is Hikaru and Minmay's secret son. Milia's trying to marry Mylene off, first to Gamlin and later to Basara, and she also later tries to set Gamlin up with bridge bunny Miho. (Shyest. Couple. EVER.) All told, I think Sivil was the only woman who Basara really did more than acknowledge the existence of. Basara doesn't seem interested in women (or men) in the series, just in his music. He doesn't even notice when a Sivil-possessed Akiko and Rex are coming on to him... in the former case, his attention isn't on her, he's so oblivious that with her practically throwing herself at him he's more concerned about the hot dog she made him drop.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not that I've seen, no... but he is filthy rich, so it's not outside reason. Um... that's a good question. Macross 7 as a whole has relatively little in terms of what you called "young adult" material, there are a few moments that you probably would find inappropriate for a 9-year old. The worst offender is probably the animation in the credits, which show Mylene naked in the shower briefly. Apart from that, the series has a few blatant panty shots when a kid flips Mylene's skirt or flower girl stands in a breeze, and the series does have two cases where female characters possessed by Sivil make PG sexual advances on utterly oblivious Basara, and one case where a male character makes advances on an uninterested Mylene. There's a bit of nudity on Sivil's part when she ends up in a coma. The Macross Dynamite 7 OVA has two pretty blatant bits of "young adult" material... one being Mylene being sexually assaulted by a female manager, and one where Elma Hoyly is shown naked.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    There's the real hole in Agent ONE's carping about "highly emotional effeminate males"... Bobby Margot is simultaneously the most effeminate male in Macross and its most hotblooded character. Good times. Should we start calling you Mr. van Winkle, then? It's gonna be a while... they've only just announced the project's existence, so we've probably got a year or so.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Well, what are you asking me about? Yes, Sunrise has committed to do a four-movie animated adaptation of the manga Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin starting in 2015. To me, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like Macross the First, Gundam: the Origin isn't a straight retelling of the original story... they mix things up, they add a bunch of new stuff, and do it all without sacrificing all the stuff that made the original great. I've been following both, and I honestly enjoyed Gundam: the Origin quite a bit... esp. that new story arc that chronicles the Zabi family's rise to power and how Casval Rem Deikun came by the alias Char Aznable. Now, to be honest, I very much doubt that the new Macross series we've been promised will be an animated version of Macross the First. Why? Mainly because Macross the First still isn't very far along in its story. As of Volume 5 of the series, we've really only gotten to around the events of "Longest Birthday" (SDF:M Ep.. Laplamiz and Milia have only JUST appeared for the first time, but haven't gotten to do anything yet, and Hikaru's acquired his wingmen and given Minmay his medal. The rest of 5 is an original story arc that's a flashback to an Anti-UN attack on South Ataria on Christmas 2008... which throws us a couple of neat tidbits like VF-0's sortieing from the Asuka II's sister ship Graf Zeppelin II (CVN-100), and what looks to be the first use of VF-1 Valkyries in combat. However, Kawamori doesn't really seem the type to bow to nostalgia and retread old ground unless it's his trademark total re-imagining of the story... and Macross the First probably wouldn't fit that.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Simple... because that's what Sunrise is doing with Gundam. They've announced that Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin is getting a series of four movies starting next year, so the conclusion a lot of folks are jumping to is that Macross will follow their lead with an animated version of their own original series retelling... Macross the First.
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