Seto Kaiba

Ironic, isn't it? The one website out there where people are talking about real Robotech news instead of the pet theories of fanatical fanboys and the Harmony Gold company line is a Macross fansite where Robotech is basically persona non grata outside of a single thread. Oh, come on... if the idiots at Harmony Gold were actually capable of making an interesting Robotech show, they wouldn't be in the mess they've been in since 1986. It's just not fair to mark them to the same standards you'd use for a competent studio staffed by professionals.

This made me IRL. You've constructed a circular argument that requires you to believe what you're trying to prove in the first place. You're basically citing your unfounded assumption that the Zolans are a designer sub-Protoculture species to support the idea that only a manufactured sub-Protoculture species can use a micloning machine, and then claiming that because we've seen one example of a Zolan who's used one that must mean the species was created by the Protoculture. For one, there's no evidence to support the assertion that only a genetically-engineered sub-Protoculture species can use a micloning machine. For all we know you could chuck a standard poodle in there and have it come out the size of an elephant. It would certainly explain why we've seen hydras in sizes ranging from "common housecat" all the way up to "Bengal tiger" (house cat size... for a Zentradi). So, really, that Graham Hoyly could use a micloning machine to become a giant doesn't prove that Zolans are a sub-Protoculture designer species. In fact, there's no hard evidence to suggest that they are... the question of Michael Blanc's unclear heritage notwithstanding. For all we know, they could be the descendants of the actual Protoculture (ala the Mardook), or just a coincidental quirk of convergent evolution (see many examples).

Ha... yeah, I'm kind of surprised that the Robotech lunatic fringe is getting this worked up over a single piece of concept art. I'm not surprised in the least that certain individuals are rushing to lay the blame on Tom Bateman for "leaking" it though. They've never been shy about trying to demonize anyone who criticizes Tommy Yune or his handling of Robotech in the most ridiculous ways... like claiming that all the people who took issue with the blatant lies those same people were telling about the Macross legal issues were a sinister army Tom and I had assembled to destroy Robotech from within, or that I use my mysterious influence to clout Harmony Gold's legal department into shutting down Robotech fan projects for fun. Clearly they do... though if you put it in perspective, it's not exactly hard to see why they're so worked up over this. Not to put too fine a point on it, but having you "leak" this one piece of rejected concept art is the only bit of actual production news Robotech fans have had since early 2007. Even though it's a rejected concept for an already-released movie, it's still something new and tangible that the fanbase hasn't seen before... and that's BIG NEWS for them. To us it might seem trivial, but we're spoiled by having high-quality Macross shows coming out on a semi-regular basis, accompanied by many detail-rich publications and myriad products. To them, your "leaked" concept art is literally the first new conversation topic they've had in years. Unlike the consistent and empty assurances that "we're working on it" and that "great things are happening, but we can't talk about it", this rejected Ark Angel concept piece is something tangible that proves that Harmony Gold was actually trying to do something with Robotech in the not-too-distant past. Well, yeah... that's what guys like MEMO do. If something makes Tommy and/or his version of Robotech look bad or otherwise upsets Tommy, you can bet they'll be looking for someone to blame. Particularly on RT.com, vocal Robotech fans have a bit of a persecution complex... they're determined to see any implicit or explicit criticism of Robotech as an attack on them and the fanbase as a whole by Macross fans... often regardless of whether the person making the criticism is a Macross fan or has even seen Macross.

Or... since Macross's creators still keep DYRL in some kind of Schrodinger's canon, it's also possible there was a long-term Protoculture presence on Earth and that the Birdhuman was left behind during their evacuation some 20,000 years before Space War 1. Radiocarbon dating has been known to be somewhat imprecise if conditions at the sample site are less than ideal... it seems all too possible that exposure to alien materials and whatever weird radiation an alien mecha might give off could skew the sample date. ... if there was actually any hard evidence to support the idea of a Protoculture intervention there at any point in time, let alone during the fall of their civilization. It's plausible, but that doesn't make it fact. Bad choice of example... Michael Blanc's heritage is disputed at best. Try as I might, I've been unable to turn up anything related to the animation that explicitly calls him part-Zolan. On the other hand, 2059:Memories labels him part-Zentradi... so I would be extremely reluctant to cite him as proof of Human-Zolan genetic compatibility. There is also the well-known and oft-referenced line in Macross Dynamite 7, but that seems more like an anatomical quibble related to child-rearing than a question of whether conception is even possible. Or, to play it more closely to what's actually said... they were banking on one of the sub-protoculture species they created solving their problem after they were gone. After all, they went to a lot of trouble to leave behind an enormous combat mecha to wipe humanity out if they went to space without solving their internal conflicts first, and a record on Lux that would only activate in the presence of a Zentradi hybrid.

Huh... if that were true, I'm not sure if I would have a good laugh at his expense or just shake my head at the folly of Harmony Gold's staffing decisions. Since he kept getting work, I'm inclined to suspect that he did in fact graduate. I can't see DC putting a dropout to work on one of their flagship titles, however briefly. He's no mechanical designer... but if he can be said to excel at anything, it's drawing cheesecake. If he'd stuck with his draft designs, the Shadow Chronicles movie might have only been a profound disappointment instead of an embarrassment to Robotech and Mospeada fans alike. I won't even talk about his writing "skills", since that'll lead to a tirade that'll make The Lord of the Rings look like a short story. The flat-out astonishing part is that in terms of his success rate, he's a marked improvement over Carl Macek. Oh, of course... the various boot-lickers, toadies, and assorted hangers-on who comprise what remains of the "hardcore" Robotech fanbase are always keen to find conspiracies in anything that makes Tommy look bad. I'm not surprised in the least that Tom's name has cropped up there... nor would I be surprised if my own showed up as well. It's best just to ignore them, doing anything else will only egg them on to greater heights of idiotic behavior as they attempt to defend a failed SF franchise most of the world stopped caring about back in 1986. Well... that's not entirely fair either. Doing nothing at all will also egg them on to greater heights of idiotic behavior, because some of them are stupid enough to believe someone actually cares what they think, despite all evidence to the contrary. The upshot of ignoring them is, I guess, that it will egg fewer idiots on.

Eh... mind you, it's not like Harmony Gold hired just anyone who put in for the post of Creative Director. Tommy might be a self-righteous hack on an epic ego trip, but he's not completely without credentials. He's supposedly from a good art school, though admittedly that's no guarantee of talent. He also had prior experience in (badly) imitating a manga aesthetic. The biggest problem with making Tommy the creative director is that he has pretty much no experience with mecha and SF. Prior to getting involved in Robotech, his one specialization was making cheesecake-heavy action comics. That's not exactly an ideal skill set to have when your task is to try to salvage a terminally-mismanaged mecha/SF franchise that only ever met with lukewarm success after its inept "creator" spent the better part of 15 years finding new and interesting ways to run it into the ground. Tommy's no mechanical designer, and he's certainly no writer... but that he's actually managed to do what his predecessor couldn't and overcome incompetence and a crippling lack of originality to squeeze out a sequel is oddly impressive...

Granted, but isn't that more or less exactly what we're dealing with here? Instead of a F-15D built in Japan for the JASDF, we're talking about an export-specification VF-19E (presumably) built on Frontier for the fleet's New UN Spacy garrison and the attached SMS forces. This does take place like fifty years after whatever was left of NATO went up in smoke, so it's not like they're wedded to the NATO designation system... and I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of precedent for "改" as a variant letter under NATO's guidelines either.

... the hell? Was that a VF-25 in Brera's colors?

Eh... the use of a double-suffix may be more common in Macross II's parallel world continuity, but it's not like it's unique to it. In the confines of Macross II's official setting, the second suffix letter denotes either a unit carrying special purpose equipment (VF-1xR, VF-4S[P/T]), or the operational regime it was designed for (VF-2x[A/S]). The use of second suffix letters is far less consistent in the main continuity and sources based on it. The use in this particular case is consistent with some versions of US fighters built either for experimental purposes (F-16XL) or under license by foreign powers (F-15DJ). No, it actually doesn't... at least not entirely. There's always the VF-5000T-G, the VF-11MAXL, VF-171EX, etc... or non-canon customs like the VF-19ES and VF-25Gu. One would assume that, as with the F-15DJ and the still-in-testing F-16IN, the atypical use of a second suffix letter denotes that it's a VF-19E is either being built for, or under license by, (and to a somewhat different spec) what is technically a foreign power (from Earth's perspective)... the Frontier government.

Uh, no... to expand on what sketchley has already said, the VF-19EF Caliburn and its "leader" variant are not a replacement for a preexisting design. The Dengeki website for Macross the Ride explains the VF-19EF as being a stripped-down export version (a "monkey model") of the VF-19E. As the "Master File" books apparently aren't part of the official setting, this is actually the first halfway-reliable mention of the VF-19E's existence. Even if the Master File books were part of the official setting, the VF-19EF wouldn't be replacing anything... the VF-19EF and Basara's VF-19改 would presumably just be variations on the stock VF-19E. Personally, I'm hoping for a model kit... or at least directions for kitbashing your own.

That's a question for another thread, but the short version is that it's nowhere near as secure or capable as the major third-party alternatives. It enjoys a large share of the web browser "market" because it's a pre-installed component of every modern Microsoft Windows OS, which accounts for a little over 83% of the world's personal computers. There are plenty of reasons to dump on IE, but that's a matter for another thread... On the note of cell phones, one of my other pet peeves cropped up today... most phones these days try to get you to buy custom ringtones and whatnot from the service provider, and go WELL out of their way to stop you from just putting some music clips on your phone's memory card manually and using those. Every new phone I've gotten in the last half-dozen years has required some kind of firmware crack or other trickery to get it to let me load my own custom backgrounds and ringtones onto it without a fuss.

Likewise... it's a stylistic clusterf*ck of elements from several different previous VFs that just do not work well together. I'd much rather see Alto stick to flying his VF-25F Tornado Messiah or the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus than have that horrid thing take center stage. There's ugly and then there's ugly... and being a mishmash of conflicting design elements from the SV-51, VF-19, VF-25, and VF-27 firmly puts the YF-29 in the ugly category, IMO. I have a sneaking suspicion that the YF-29's the main Macross continuity's answer to the Metal Siren... a painfully ugly and painfully overpowered prototype pressed into combat in extremis at the climax of the movie. I'll second that emotion...

Eh... this is literally the first we've seen or heard of the bloody thing and the movie won't be out for another 2 months, so we're not going to have an answer to that question. The piece describes it as being Alto's, but the movie is still forthcoming... so I'm not surprised that they have almost nothing to say about it. The main thrust of the piece is exactly as sketchley summarized in the SCOOPDA thread... it's a new valkyrie made for the 2nd Macross Frontier movie, supposedly piloted by Alto, and Bandai is tentatively making a 1/100 scale model of it to sell for 1260 yen. That's all there is (of significance) in there... there ain't no more. So far, the only screen captures from the movie that we've seen have shown Alto still flying his Tornado Messiah.

It does... but the odd part is that it really looks like a SW-XAII Schneegans from VF-Experiment.

One or the other... I don't recall having seen that in his post at the time I posted. It might've been blocked by my IP range filter if it was running when I made that post. Oh well...

There's also concept art of what appears to be an early version of Basara's Fire Valkyrie modeled on the VF-11 with a guitar on the contents pages of Kawamori's Macross Design Works book...

Yes, that would seem to be the case... and was also apparently the genesis of research into better anti-g-force measures that culminated in the YF-24 Evolution and its inertia store converter.

Yeah, it does... though since the VF-171 is a background mecha for almost the entire series, the gun pod it had before being upgraded to the VF-171EX (the GU-14B) rarely appears. One would assume that it has to be kept inside the leg, since we never see a stock VF-171 carrying one externally. The only time we do see the gun pod carried externally is on Alto's VF-171EX command spec., which has additional armor on the legs that likely blocks access to the gun pod's usual internal holster. There's not exactly a surfeit of art for the VF-171 either, so none of the art I'm aware of shows munitions bays in the legs... though there is an aperture on the inside of the knee which looks suspiciously like a pair of micro-missile launchers similar to those on the underside of the VF-22.

Yup... gonna have to second that emotion the same way Xx-SKULL-ONE-xX's did. +1 again. It breaks my heart to think of what Macross 7 could've been if Gamlin had just pulled the damn trigger!

Nah... wasn't splitting hairs to begin with, just dealing with some people who are ordinarily pretty sharp that seem to be having reading comprehension issues today. To (briefly) reiterate, this was never about who had the first concept art for the VF-4's transformation or anything like that. It was about who got their completed VF-4 design and name out first... Macross II's creators beat Kawamori to the punch by ~5 years. For reasons unknown, Gubaba misinterpreted what I said to mean that Kawamori had never intended the VF-4 to have a transformation until he did the Lighting III in 1995... which would, of course, be untrue had I actually said it. Then you jumped in in medias res and tried to make it a battle of who had the first concept art rather than who finished their version first. Somehow, we got way off track from my simple statement that I'm particularly fond of the VF-4 because it has a highly colorful design history that gives it one fighter mode, but two separate sets of transformation modes and names... the first being the "Siren" version from 1992's Macross: Eternal Love Song, and the second being the "Lightning III" version from 1997's Macross Digital Mission VF-X. That's all... nothing more than that.

lol wut? It's pretty obvious from just looking at the GERWALK mode art on p66 that it's the VF-X-4. Check the airframe's "neck" between the cockpit and the wing surface... it's not nearly long enough to be the VF-4 from Macross Flashback 2012. What's right above it is also indisputably a VF-X-4 from the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series... it's identical to the clearly labeled VF-X-4 on the bottom left of the very next page, it's even drawn from the same angle. EDIT: The same goes for your linked picture... it's clearly a VF-X-4 not the VF-4 from Flashback 2012. You provided a link to concept art... not a finished design. This is not, nor was it ever, about who had the first concept art.

Uh... the VF-X-4 and VF-4 aren't the same plane, for one. Please also note that I'm not talking about "ideas for transformation", I'm talking about a finished design. There's no denying that he obviously toyed with ways that the VF-4 could transform... I would be rather surprised if he hadn't. However, there's also no denying that the completed VF-4 Siren appeared five years before Kawamori's completed VF-4 Lightning III ever did... and a good three years before he finalized his version of the VF-4's battroid and GERWALK modes. You, me, and Gubaba are kind of talking past each other... you guys are raising objections to things that aren't even part of what I'm saying. I'm not talking about who had the first piece of concept art (Kawamori, duh), I'm talking about who was first to market with a finished design and an official name for the VF-4. The finished VF-4 Siren appeared in 1992's Macross: Eternal Love Song, while the finished VF-4 Lightning III didn't appear until 1997's Macross Digital Mission VF-X... this ought to be a no-brainer.

Huh... that could be a looooooooong list. To be honest, I can't say anything for or against the recent trend of 3D movies because I only rarely go to the cinema anymore. There's just too much flash and not nearly enough substance to warrant paying eight bucks, and I just don't see the appeal. If there's one technology I can say I have nothing but loathing for, smart phones would definitely be it. I could maybe look the other way if they were a "power toy" for executives with more money than sense or business owners who actually need to be reachable at all times... but they're not. I've yet to see anyone actually using their smart phone for business purposes. The only smart phones users I see are the spoiled teenagers and twenty-somethings who suffer from a crippling addiction to whatever the social networking flavor of the week happens to be, and as a result think every insignificant detail of their lives is of vital importance to all of the 6+ billion people on Earth. After seeing the way my kid sister behaved with hers when she bought one for herself, I'm seriously convinced they're a cause or exacerbating factor in ADD. Social networking sites and services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and whatever the flavor of the week is are all equally useless in my opinion. Every time I hear about one of my friends having a facebook-induced squabble with someone, I wonder how the sheer amounts of unnecessary drama those services accumulate doesn't just collapse on itself and form a black hole. The last annoying technology trend that really grinds me gears these days is the inexplicable popularity of the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Yes, it's free... but unless you have a super premium stereo in your house, the kind with a six-figure price tag, you won't hear any appreciable difference between FLAC audio and MP3 at 320kbps. The only appreciable difference is that the FLAC file is, on average, about three times the size of the MP3 for the same song. I realize that large HDDs are cheap these days, but there's no reason to waste space storing massive lossless audio files when they're utterly indistinguishable from last-generation lossy MP3 over computer speakers. It's a waste of time, bandwidth, and storage space.

Ugh... look, if you're going to correct me, I would really appreciate it if you made sure of your facts beforehand. For starters, that "fallacy" explanation you quoted off the Macross Compendium doesn't say anything like what you're claiming it does. At no point does it say that Kawamori had already worked out a transformation for his VF-4 design. All it does say is that he always intended for the VF-4 to be transformable, something that should be self-evident given its designation of VF-4... rather than the SF-4 or F-4 we would expect from a plane that wasn't transformation-capable. Go back and read my post... never once do I suggest that Shoji Kawamori did not intend for the VF-4 to transform. For two, the idea that Kawamori had the VF-4's transformation worked out from the get-go is thoroughly and completely ruled out by his own Design Works book. If you have a copy, please open it and turn to page 68. I'd like you to please tell me the date on the VF-4's transformation line art. For those of you unwilling to wait, the sketchy transformation line art is dated March 1995... as is the completed battroid mode. The complete GERWALK design sketch on page 67 is dated April of that same year. The earliest indication that he gave any thought to how the VF-4 would transform is a chibi-VF-4 sketch that looks like a VF-1 wearing goofy shoulder pads dated May 1990. The book makes no secret that the VF-4's transformation, and the final battroid mode and GERWALK mode designs were created for the 1997 videogame Macross Digital Mission VF-X... putting the finished design in the Game and Advanced Valkyrie section.

'k... I realize I'm dusting off an old thread that hasn't seen activity for a while, but this isn't worth making a new thread and it's strictly relevant to the above-quoted translation. That the production model VF-22 uses a limited version of the Brain Direct interface System for operator assistance came as a surprise to us when we first read azrael's translation, but it turns out it's actually not a new development. After my discussion with Talos about the VF-171's size, I was idly flipping through Macross Dynamite 7: Mylene Beat and happened to pause on the page where Gamlin is doing pre-flight checks on his VF-22S before going to look for Basara. Lo and behold, the four items on his pre-flight checklist were the fold booster, verniers, thrust vectoring flaps and the BDS. The collected edition was published in August 1998, so clearly this has been there for a while... maybe that's where Chronicle's writers sourced it from?