Seto Kaiba

Y'know... I'd be a lot kinder to Robotech as a whole if its writers had sat down and figured out exactly what exposure to protoculture does to you. Exactly what happens changes almost on an individual basis, and varies between depictions... sometimes it's harmless ("Lunk" reports that it tastes awful, but has apparently suffered no ill effects from tasting it), on other occasions it's a powerful hallucinogenic substance, sometimes it causes evolution while large amounts cause totally Akira-esque mutation... I could go on. It's really funny how the Rick Hunter on the cover looks NOTHING like the one in the comic itself. On the cover, he looks more like a badly drawn Hikaru Ichijo with a really ugly jacket. In the book itself, he looks like Hideo Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig. His hair's black or really dark brown for the first few pages, then Lisa has a miscarriage and there's a jump cut of one year, and when he reappears he's gone completely gray. Because, like as not, without Prelude the story of Shadow Chronicles makes even less sense... since it's in Prelude where the motivations of the Haydonites are established, among other things. It also sets up the scene with a bunch of really lame Sentinels references (like the return of Rem and Cabell, the existence of the Sentinels Council, and the red turd SDF-3). Nah, in the last volume of the Waltrip bros. Sentinels comics he certainly makes it sound like he's boned Minmei too... he tells Kyle that she's crap in the sack while they're wrestling over a gun, right before he shoots (and kills!) Kyle (yay!) and absconds with Minmei over his gently-steaming corpse. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say "Because he does". It's not implied, it's given as fact... he murders Kyle and kidnaps her, and she spends a year as his hostage before being rescued... they find her floating in a tube and they seem pretty farting shocked by whatever happened to her...

Um... what? I hate to rain on your parade and all, but the symbol inside the NUNS diamond looks nothing like a Greek letter "nu". The uppercase Nu is Ν and the lowercase Nu is ν. It looks far more like a lopsided lowercase sigma (σ).

True enough... but that isn't what Tak was getting at. In the current climate it's entirely understandable for some of these people to have never seen the majority of the Macross sequels out there, or that they don't know the difference between those and RT, particularly if they're not exactly tech-savvy. What he's saying is that these people have essentially no excuse for not knowing these Macross sequels exist when information about them can be obtained in fifteen seconds or less from a quick Google search. The objectionable behavior is not their failure to watch the shows, but rather their failure to check their facts before running off at the mouth.

Of course it's stupid... but let's not forget these are Robotech fans, many of whom came to this thread spoiling for a fight or trying to troll us because they can't stand the idea that people criticize Robotech and the complete bellends who created and maintain it. Honestly, after all that time wasted at Robotech.com, I know all too well that there are plenty of Robotech fans out there who unquestioningly buy Tommy Yune's line that Macross is no big deal, that it isn't that successful, and that its only real importance is as the first installment of Robotech. Just from my experience, his behavior is typical of the what remains of the loyal Robotech fanbase. Hell, back when he first registered on Robotech.com PTH spent a good deal of time telling Macross fans off for criticizing Robotech's failure to produce a sequel because he wasn't aware of any Macross show newer than DYRL.

Odds are they'll probably run an extension to cover the movie material and that'll be it for the time being... though I wouldn't say no to a VF-2SS Master File.

Granted... but I doubt he was really given a choice in the matter. Despite their many faults, The Powers That Be in Harmony Gold's senior management aren't completely stupid. Even as early as 1986 they knew full well that Macross was the only part of Robotech its viewers actually gave a toss about, and they tried to act accordingly with subsequent productions... with predictably disastrous results. At least with regard to "Macross Saga" merch, Tommy has no choice by to try to imitate Mikimoto, because if he tried to put his own spin on the art the fans'd crucify him for it. In a word... you said it. Not entirely accurate... but an adequate summary. Since I'm a firm believer in being precise, let me toss out a somewhat more detailed account of the waxing and waning bullshittery of Pizza the Hutt. It seems he's going in cycles, and he'll likely soon be back to ragging on Macross. Back when he first registered on RT.com under the handle "Wraith_Knight", our boy PTH had clearly bought Tommy and Carl's line about Robotech being a universally-beloved, industry-redefining instant classic hook, line, and sinker. Almost right away he was bickering with other members when he posted a thread about the need for a new Robotech game for next-generation consoles that stopped just short of accusing Harmony Gold of major negligence. What really got him hacked off was when a few people, myself included, pointed out that Harmony Gold likely didn't see the need for such a thing because of Battlecry's lukewarm sales and Invasion's pathetic showing, and particularly not for the PS3, which was (and still is) a distant third place in the console market. He eventually chilled the hell out after BlackRose talked to him, but that didn't last. Our boy then, in genuine ignorance, latched onto the idea that Macross fans were being unfair by bagging on Robotech for having only turned out a single mediocre movie in 20+ years of trying. So he came right out and promptly jammed his foot in his mouth by denouncing Macross fans for being unfair and claiming that Macross hadn't done any better... while, at the time, blissfully unaware of the existence of everything made after Flashback 2012 and having never seen any of the shows he knew about. Being the helpful sort, I corrected him and even pointed him towards the fansubs so he could see what he'd been missing out on. For a good month or two he was positively GUSHING about how awesome DYRL was and how much Macross kicked ass, until he get to Macross Frontier and started in with the gay-bashing because he thought Alto was a cross-dresser and found Bobby just plain offensive. Once people started getting on his case for that, he changed tacks again and started saying how he never thought Macross was THAT good and how Robotech was so much better... eventually settling on his long-running line that Macross fans were at the root of all the Robotech fanbase's problems. Now it seems the pendulum is starting to swing the other away again, and he's come to another unpleasant realization about Robotech that'll push him towards the Macross camp for a while before his nostalgia and crackpot conspiracy theories reemerge and drown his common sense.

In the interest of fairness, the overall quality of the promotional art he did for the masterpiece collection isn't exactly an accurate representation of what he's capable of. I get the feeling he has a lot of trouble imitating Mikimoto's drawing style, and that unless his work is being marketed as a product in its own right he doesn't bother to give it his best effort. In particular, it seems like he only bothers to turn out the occasional piece of promotional art or the occasional desktop wallpaper when some kind of major event or pressure from above force him to.

Precisely right. It even manifests in the little details like the rank insignia which first appeared in Macross: Do You Remember Love? and were also used in Macross II: Lovers Again. Like the ranks of the Japanese Air Self Defense Force (and the old Imperial Japanese Army, and the police, etc.) the rank insignia worn by the U.N. Forces follow the same progression of threes, and in Macross II even share the same general coloration pattern (switching from red to gold for General officers). Okay, one of those four assertions can be backed up, the other three are opinion stated as fact. Yes, the "standard destroid" (whichever model that is) is rumored to be approximately 1/20th the cost of the VF-1. Whether or not it's true is another matter entirely, though logically the non-transforming destroid designs should be easier to build and possibly to maintain (barring potentially high-wear equipment like particle beam cannons). Whether they are easy to train on, employ enlisted soldiers, and are actually easy to maintain is unknown, and thus should not be entered as supporting evidence for any kind of assertion. With regard to the ease of operation where destroids are concerned, what makes you assume Valkyries are any exception? I could point to a handful of pilots who were simply dropped into the cockpit with little or no time for training and produce results ranging from muddling along acceptably to shaming the best aces of the era. Such examples on the low end include Hikaru Ichijo and Shin Kudo, both of whom did reasonably well in their first outing in a VF despite minimal (or absent) training, and Alto Saotome, whose pilot training and EX-Gear experience let him save the girl and get away with his life and his dignity. On the "embarrassing our aces" front we have Milia Fallyna Jenius, who would only have had a week or two to familiarize herself with the real McCoy before going into battle, and Misty Klaus, who on her very first outing and with no prior preparation manages to shame the best pilots of the Prometheus taskforce by singlehandedly defending the Prometheus II from a sustained Zentradi attack. Touche... though even the Compendium offers at least those few details about mobility and increased range of motion from EB51 thanks to the efforts of Azrael. Try searching.

Here's the problem... belief. Rather than going by the available evidence which suggests that learning to operate a Valkyrie isn't necessarily all that difficult or time-consuming (as we see in SDF Macross), you're projecting your beliefs based on something that is at best a poor analogue for the technology being used onto the situation. Aside from flight training, both destroid and Valkyrie pilots are going to have to learn ground combat, the difference being that a destroid operator might have to learn to operate more than one type of destroid during basic, whereas a Valkyrie pilot will, in most cases, only have to learn one VF at a time. As far as the actual ground combat training goes, it can't honestly be THAT different, since Hikaru displayed reasonable aptitude at operating a MBR-07-Mk.II Spartan on the fly. Unless that expenditure translates into increased survivability, which according to Chronicle was one of the main reasons for implementing the EX-Gear on Valkyries. There's a difference between logical inference based on in-universe evidence and trying to apply something only tangentially related from the real world. Pretty much what I was getting at... Gamlin might've been a bit green as of 2045, but he was good enough to be assigned to a special operations unit right after graduation. That's not average by any means. You'd be right if they were evaluating the production model. But if you're examining a new design and implementations of new technology, you're going to want to push that new design to its limits. Once you've established whether the new technologies work or not, and pushed the design to its limits to find out what it's capable of in actual testing, then you can worry about tuning it towards the needs of an average pilot (or in the case of the VF-22, an above-average pilot for a special operations bird) and be fairly confident that the average pilot won't be able to fly the damn thing to pieces. Among other things, one of the goals of Project Super Nova was to evaluate several new technologies, including the Brainwave Control System, so an above average pilot who'd be able to handle not just flying the damn thing, but managing data collection and keeping it airborne as long as possible if things start to go awry would be in order. Either you're referring to the Giant Monster (in which case you're somewhat inaccurate) or you've never actually done any research into the destroids I'm talking about. Two of the key design features in Macross II's destroids that're mentioned repeatedly are the greater range of motion in the joints and rollers installed in the feet to make the mecha faster. Mobility was improved in the second generation, not sacrificed. (At least for the majority, we can't speak for the Giant Monster because the damn thing is never actually seen moving, and the official artbooks only spare thought for HOW it gets around, not how quickly). All the same, there's total overkill and then there's that... though I suppose it must be some comfort to know you can annihilate even the most heavily armored enemy combat mecha in a single shot when it comes down to it and potentially give a low-flying battleship a hard time if you need to. Stick a Phalanx Kai next to that Defender EX and you're looking at more than 3x the firepower of a SAP-equipped VF-2SS.

Calling it my "preferred date" wouldn't exactly do it justice... particularly since when you examine the official chronology published in B-Club 79 and the dialogue of the OVA itself, 2092 is the ONLY date where everything actually works out. It certainly doesn't hurt my feelings any that the booklet Japanese edition of the soundtrack says flat-out that Macross II is set in 2092 either. It's somewhat unsurprising that books like Macross Ace and Macross Chronicle are somewhat inconsistent in dating Macross II, as neither one seems to have bothered paying much attention to stuff outside of the OVA itself. Exactly how we arrived at 2092 as the year in which the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA is set was, as I said, by a combination of dialogue from the show and one particularly important date in the official series chronology. Both Hibiki and Mash establish that roughly eighty years have passed since the end of Space War 1, which gives us a lower bound for the date of 2090. What firmly establishes the date is the last Zentradi invasion, the one that inspired Hibiki to study journalism, which occurred ten years before the events of the OVA. The chronology the OVA's creators developed as a means of linking Macross II to DYRL firmly places the last Zentradi incursion in 2082. It doesn't take a minor in applied mathematics to deduce that 2082 + 10 = 2092. It's also pretty bloody obvious these numbers weren't chosen arbitrarily... the 10 years is obviously significant (it IS the 10th Anniversary OVA after all), and when you subtract 100 (10^2) from both dates you get 1982 and 1992, which as we all know are the release dates for the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series and the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA respectively.

So far, I haven't been able to find any canon explanation for what "NUNS" stands for in Macross II, though nothing thus far has addressed the military in the OVA as the "New U.N. Spacy", not even Macross Chronicle. The service patch located on the right arm of the standard uniform is generally obscured at least partially, so most of the time it's illegible, leaving us to go by the lineart which shows only two variants of it... one which reads SPACY, and the other which reads ARMY, the latter having only one example... the khaki-clad guy commanding the destroid defenses. Exactly what branch those other guys in "Zentradi green" and dark green belong to is something of a mystery, as are the baby blue uniforms briefly seen in the peace treaty scene. (My guess would be U.N. Zentradi forces, U.N. Marines, and U.N. Air Force respectively) I know... what I'm saying is that these design elements were fairly common in "real robot" mecha anime prior to the development of Macross Zero and Macross Frontier, so it's somewhat unlikely that Macross II inspired either. Yeah, in the very first issue Macross Ace tacked Macross II onto the back end of the timeline as occurring in 2090. How they expected it to fit is anybody's guess.

It certainly doesn't help that there're one or two extra branches of the service that appear to be redundant or otherwise somewhat unclear in their particular role... the one that leaps to mind being the U.N. Spacy Air Force, which has no clear reason for existing. After all, we already have both a U.N. Spacy and U.N. Air Force, to say nothing of the U.N. Army, the U.N. Navy, the U.N. Marines, and the U.N. Spacy Marines. So far, at least four branches of the service could easily offer a reasonable justification for the inclusion of destroid units among their ranks. Obviously, the U.N. Spacy could justify their use as mobile air defense platforms on their larger ships and for the odd ARMD/Daedalus/Macross Attack, which may or may not fall be the jurisdiction of the U.N. Spacy Marines. Likewise, both the U.N. Army and U.N. Marines could make a case for the inclusion of destroid armored units for ground combat (their intended purpose, after all) and as ad-hoc anti-aircraft emplacements for the defense of planetside bases, naval vessels, and cities in the event that things go seriously pear-shaped and their opponents (Zentradi, Mardook, etc.) make it past the fleet and the orbital defenses (as they did in Macross II). As to who actually owns the destroids... in the main continuity the finger seems to be pointed primarily at the U.N. Spacy, given that even the early ADR-03 Cheyennes used aboard the Asuka II bore the legend "U.N. SPACY" on their gun arms, and all subsequent models in Super Dimension Fortress Macross are listed as operating under the U.N. Spacy as well. Other branches might have their own, but the ones we've seen so far belong to the Spacy. In the parallel world continuity's Macross II: Lovers Again OVA, we're offered possible evidence of more than one branch of the service using destroids at one time... with the battleship-based destroids likely serving under the auspices of the U.N. Spacy and the ground-based units under the command of a U.N. Army officer.

Hmmm... the worst science fiction book of all time? Considering the sheer volume of piss-dribblingly bad sci-fi on bookstore shelves these days, singling out the worst of the bad lot is going to be no mean feat. At the very least, each and every one of the licensed Star Trek novels and the Star Wars expanded universe novels deserves a (dis)honorable mention either for bordering on the unreadable or being the very worst kind of fanwankery, if not both. Also noteworthy is the Ultramarines series of Warhammer 40,000 novels by Graham McNeill, whose dubious talents as a wordsmith have brought forth a protagonist who is so profoundly one-dimensional that he isn't just impossible to like... he's impossible to relate to in any way, shape, or form. While it certainly feels like reaching for the low-hanging fruit, it would be remiss of me not to also nominate the Robotech novelizations written by James Luceno and Brian Daley under the pseudonym "Jack McKinney", as their Sentinels books could quite easily be called one of the worst crimes against the English language since the invention of ebonics. I would also include Like a Phoenix From the Flames: The Founding of the 597th and Like a Phoenix on the Wing: The Early Campaigns and Glorious Victories of the Valhallan 597th by General Jenit Sulla, though they (and the truly staggering amounts of overly purple prose they contain) must be excused on the grounds that the books themselves are fictional, and only "excerpts" from them were ever actually published in the Ciaphas Cain novels written by Alex Stewart under the penname "Sandy Mitchell". That having been said, my nominee for the worst science fiction book ever written is The Return, a Star Trek novel penned by William Shatner after the release of Star Trek: Generations. In this horrid crime against both the Star Trek franchise and the literary arts as a whole, the author (Mr. Shatner) takes it upon himself to unkill James T. Kirk and involve him in a pointlessly overcomplicated plot by a Borg-Romulan alliance to assassinate Jean-Luc Picard, allowing him to indulge in a series of Mary Sue-esque antics like beating up Worf, outwitting Data, and dying gloriously while singlehandedly crippling the entire Borg collective and sucker-punching Picard to show him who's boss. Of course... Shatner didn't let Kirk STAY dead... and promptly revived him with an almost equally bullshit excuse in the next novel, only to be dragged into the Mirror Universe to confront his alternate self, who has become the ruler of the Terran Empire.

I'm kind of astonished that, blunt as I am about most things, that you need me to reiterate it... but okay, I'm game. My point here is that while you are entitled to your opinion and all that, you're basing your objections (or rather, grievances) on a series of faulty assumptions... namely, comparing destroid training and its inherent costs to much lower-tech real world equipment and the training necessary to use it, and the particularly odd choice of the US Army as a model, when Macross's creators are Japanese, and thus modeled some elements of the U.N. Spacy on the SDF (most noticably, rank insignia in the DYRL scheme). Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all VF pilots (or destroid pilots for that matter) attend a military academy or even anything beyond their basic training. That all VF pilots must be officers who graduated from a military academy is demonstrably faulty, as we have the previously-offered evidence that not all pilots are officers, and that the training to operate a VF in combat definitely does not require years of study. Well, you have to consider things like the current military situation (quite a few Macross pilots have been trained or had their training abbreviated during a time of war, incl. Hikaru Ichijyo, Maximilian Jenius, Hayao Kakizaki, Komilia Maria Jenius (M2036), Lott Sheen, Hayato Kiryu, etc. etc. etc.) and other concerns like changes in technology. Ostensibly, one of the primary motivations for equipping EX-Gear is to make the fighters easier for pilots to control and facilitate training cutbacks without significantly impairing their performance in the field. One does have to wonder how the EX-Gear might improve the destroids of the era too... since they don't have to worry about concerns like transforming I'd imagine that weak variant of the BCS might drastically improve their performance and accuracy... but that's just my particular hypothesis. Okay, let's not ASSUME anything. Assumptions invariably come back to bite the one doing the assuming in the arse. We have a post-facto statement that the VF-17 was somewhat difficult to control compared to the VF-171. That is pretty much the only VF actually singled out as abnormally difficult to operate in any way, barring prototypes which would not be mass produced. Whether the VF-17 is ACTUALLY difficult to control or just more difficult than the VF-171 is kind of ambiguous. 'kay... let's go back and re-read that citation, the VF-19 isn't singled out like the VF-17 is. It's mentioned that the YF-19 was difficult, but that usability was improved in the mass-production model, so that leaves our one and only problem child being the VF-17, a special forces bird that no rookie has any business being in unless they're hot poo already. It would've been nice for Macross Frontier to use something newer than the Cheyenne, but it was only going to be a background mecha anyway, and they already had a 3D model for it... so waste not, want not. Thank you, I do try... Something that will always perplex me... though not quite as much as EB51 sparing a thought for how the Giant Monster (or as Chronicle mistakenly calls it, the Monster II) moves on the deck of a carrier, but it never actually appears on one (that I've been able to discern). I gotta admit, I find the Defender EX to be possibly the single most frightening AA unit the U.N. Spacy's ever produced... if only because it's an anti-aircraft unit armed with four anti-battleship railguns.

The guys writing Macross Ace already tried... though they got the date Macross II is set in wrong.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the U.N. Spacy is not the U.S. Army, and destroids are not tanks. You can belabor this all you wish, but it won't make your assertion any less faulty. Again, pointing out obvious facts you've tried to shift aside... not all Valkyrie pilots are officers. Prior to his promotion to 2nd Lt, Hikaru held the rank of Staff Sergeant. Hayao Kakizaki and Maximilian Jenius were also NCOs, prior to Kakizaki's death and Jenius's string of promotions. You're drawing another false conclusion about the training and status of Valkyrie pilots. If only because it doesn't necessarily include piloting. One would imagine the most difficult part would be in common between the two programs... piloting a giant walker without falling on your ass. What WAS true for Gamlin may not necessarily hold true for academies on all colony worlds, or in different parts of the timeline... one would imagine training would be somewhat abbreviated in the SW1 era and immediate aftermath, and it was reportedly reduced by the time the NUNS rolled around, due to the increased emphasis on unmanned combat units (AIF-7S/AIF-9V Ghost). Joy... here we go with citations to prove a point that never had a factual basis to begin with. As I said in my previous post, the difficult-to-operate VFs are the EXCEPTION rather than the RULE. In fact, you even cited proof of what I was saying unintentionally. Yes, the VF-171's ease of control was a major factor in its adoption as the NUNS's main VF, its predecessor, the VF-17 Nightmare, was a special forces bird... not the sort of thing you hand over to an average pilot, and definitely not something you give to a rookie. My point still stands. Also, your assertion about the VF-19 disproves your own argument, as the only difficult-to-control member of that design family is the YF-19 prototype, and as I said, prototypes don't count on the grounds that they too would only be in the care of exceptionally skilled pilots. The mass production model was made substantially easier to control, thus it is not a difficult-to-operate VF. Like I said, destroids are not just ground-pounders, they're background-pounders. They appear on an as-needed basis in the story. Having an overabundance of destroids trotting around would've been detrimental to the story of the Macross 7 TV series and Macross Plus OVA, so they were simply omitted. They do appear when it suits the story for them to be there. As ground units operating in space, the number of uses they can be feasibly put to are a bit on the limited side story-wise, a problem not helped in the least by the relatively small size of most U.N. Spacy ships in the main continuity. Destroids would simply be too bulky to be an effective AA solution on all but the largest of ships, as the ships wouldn't be able to carry enough to matter, and be large targets AND get in the way of the ship's weapons as well. The largest ships, like the battle sections, would benefit from destroid coverage because they're large enough that the destroids won't get in the way of anything and can carry enough of them to make a difference. This particular issue doesn't really matter in the parallel world continuity, since the smallest U.N. Spacy ships are pushing 500m and by any reasonable estimate the standard battleship's over 900m long, thus making them large enough for destroid air defenses to be practical. Battles in Macross stories seldom take place on the ground for any length of time, so the one regime where the destroids would be most effective is almost never used... the notable exception being Macross II: Lovers Again.

Now I'm usually first in line to toot Macross II's horn, but I believe in being realistic too, so I've got a few corrections for your list where things are inaccurate or false parallels are drawn: While it's true that the acronym "NUNS" does appear in the animation of Macross II, no character ever refers to the military as the New U.N. Spacy, nor does "NUNS" appear anywhere on the uniforms of the U.N. Spacy officers. The patch worn on the right arm simply reads "SPACY", with the notable exception of the khaki-clad gentleman in who commanded Earth's ground defenses to open fire, whose shoulder patch reads "ARMY" according to the artbooks. It's speculated that "NUNS" may actually refer to the U.N. Spacy's propaganda/news bureau, as its appearances are always tied to those of news and propaganda broadcasts. I'll come back and add more to this later, as I have an obligation in about 20 minutes that I need to get ready for. It's also true that the new generation of destroid designs in Macross II are the first in Macross to sport wheels in the feet for higher mobility. It is not, however, necessarily the reason for the wheeled feet of the ADR-03 Cheyenne and Cheyenne II. It's possible, yes, especially given some of the structural similarities in the area of the arms, but back when Macross Zero was still in development, wheel-footed mecha were not exactly unheard-of. If memory serves, Blue Gender was on the air around the time development started, and the giant robots there got around almost exclusively on wheeled feet. Okay, aside from the obvious "beam sword" references one might make to Gundam SEED and the like, you might actually have a point here, at least as far as the wings go. Admittedly, the Metal Siren's wings did a lot more than just flap about increasing the mecha's target profile, they were also where the mecha kept its gunpods and also contained sub-engine systems which were used in Gundroid mode (and possibly as verniers, though they appear to have thrust vectoring flaps in the lineart). At the risk of really demolishing this one, I'm just going to point to the abundance of similar weapons in Gundam (bits, funnels, fin funnels, fangs, whathaveyou) and call it a day. Drone units under the control of a giant robot aren't anything new. Yes, the Valkyrie II was the first VF to do it, but all the same... 's not a new thing by any means.

While your line of reasoning here is almost sound, it seems highly unlikely that the training and upkeep for destroid operators isn't the same, or at least similar, from a cost perspective. The equipment itself might be more expensive (VFs are rumored to be ~20x the cost of destroids according to the artbooks), but there shouldn't be a terrible disparity in the cost to train them, since they're both living in the barracks, eating in the mess hall, and presumably draw similar benefits packages. Considering there's rather a large area of difference between operating a tracked vehicle (which doesn't really require much in the way of new skill sets to drive) and operating a ten meter tall walker, I wouldn't be so quick to make the assumption that destroid pilots are the sort of people who are churned out in vast numbers by a fifteen week training class. Of course, we could also take the opposite route and completely demolish the assertion that Valkyrie pilot training is an expensive and time consuming process by pointing out that Hikaru enlisted in the U.N. Spacy in March '09, and cleared basic AND his VF pilot training by no later than 15 April '09. Additionally, Hikaru's teammates Max and Hayao were both recent enlistees themselves, and were in service no later than 10 October '09, which assuming they were civilians prior to the Macross's departure means they would barely have had time to complete basic and a fifteen week course after the city section was finished, let alone three years at the academy. With regard to average pilots having difficulty operating some models of VF... prototypes don't count, as they would only be flown by test pilots, who are generally at least above average if not exceptional, as was the case with Isamu Alva Dyson. These designs are the exception rather than the rule, and thus should not materially impact costs related to pilot training. Destroids are background mecha with a very limited range of operational capabilities... and thus rather limited roles in the story. Macross II: Lovers Again provided enough leeway to actually fit some into the story in their common role as anti-aircraft defenses on the ground and in space. They simply weren't appropriate or necessary in Macross Plus, and Macross 7 was a less serious story, so using big shooty anti-aircraft platforms would've detracted a bit from the need for Basara to charge out there and warble his obnoxious music at them. They became appropriate again in Macross Zero, which was set during the development of the Space War 1 mecha, and stayed relevant enough in Macross Frontier out of necessity in a somewhat more serious war story with a far larger colony to defend. Granted, Macross will always be about Valkyries and pilots because Kawamori has had a long love affair with aircraft design. Destroids are just a convenient means to an end as far as the story is concerned, so they appear and disappear as necessary.

Oh you have NO idea how happy that would make me... but it'll never happen. About the best we can reasonably hope for is a VF-4 cover page. By all accounts Chronicle's editors would much rather use main timeline designs for the cover, even if they're sinfully ugly like the VB-6, VF-19 Kai, VF-11MAXL, etc. etc. etc.

Not that I'm aware of... apart from her involvement as a voice actor on the original Macross TV series and the ADV dub of same, I don't think she's ever really had anything to do with Robotech. About the closest she's ever come to direct involvement in a Robotech title is the aborted Robotech Perfect Collection VHS series which put both the Robotech rewrites and the original Macross episodes (subtitled, albeit inaccurately) on the same cassettes. Honestly, I think their reasons for inviting Mari Iijima to some of their convention tour stops are less a matter of her being relevant to Robotech and more a matter of trying to get Macross fans to attend their lame-ass panels too.

C'mon... it's Carl Macek talking. The man has spent the last twenty-five years distorting the truth and telling increasingly ridiculous lies to inflate his own importance and justify the string of failures Robotech experienced when he was still serving as the franchise's creative director. Virtually nothing the man says can be taken at face value... there's always a spin to it. Even if he said water was wet, I'd still go elsewhere to check the validity of his statements. His claim that Robotech sold better than Neon Genesis Evangelion is a textbook case of misdirection by faulty comparison. I could, for example, construct a similar bit of misdirection by saying that, to date, the Ford F-350 has sold better as a light cargo vehicle than the Ford Transit Connect in the US. On the surface, this statement is entirely honest, though it glosses over an otherwise-inconvenient fact that the fleet sales figures span ten model years while the Transit Connect has only been available for one. Now there's a ridiculous claim if ever I saw one... it's less viable to import and distribute new shows without merchandise or with limited merchandising in a niche market than it is to produce merchandise for a franchise with a rapidly shrinking fanbase that hasn't produced a viable sequel in over 25 years of trying? Maybe that's why Carl Macek got into the anime market... he couldn't pass Economics 101 in business school. The ONLY reason Robotech has been able to hang on this long is because animation is, at best, a side business to Harmony Gold. Any company specializing in production would've cut the deadweight franchise loose back in '86 when the movie bombed and Sentinels went under.

Well, it's not like any of their enemies to date have bothered with any tactic other than spraying and praying or charging directly into hand-to-hand combat... I guess they're not terribly worried about the marksmanship of their enemies after three marksmanship-free apocalyptic wars. All the same, one has to wonder exactly what value they put on their troops, especially in later wars where their pilots are either exposed when operating their giant fighting robots, or are wearing what we can only jokingly call a flightsuit that consists of only a handful of pieces of body armor and is about as airtight as a screen door.

In some cases, yes... but there are notable exceptions. Clearly SMS, and to a lesser extent the Macross Frontier fleet, felt that the use of destroids could improve their AA capabilities... hence the widespread use of updated versions of the ADR-03 Cheyenne. Um... you may want to go back and review the footage. While it's true that the majority of the screen time devoted to the destroids in Macross II depicts their use as mobile anti-aircraft defenses by the U.N.'s ground forces*, the destroids are also frequently shown operating as space-based anti-aircraft defenses aboard the U.N. Spacy's battleships.** *: It's highly probable that the destroids in question belong to the U.N. Army rather than the U.N. Spacy, as the official artbooks identify the khaki-clad officer in command of the ground-based defenses as belonging to that branch of the service. **: Quite a few examples of the U.N. Spacy's standard battleship are shown with sizable destroid complements serving as their anti-aircraft defenses. The majority are Defender EX and Phalanx Kai units, though a handful of Tomahawk IIs are also seen. It's noteworthy that while the Giant Monster is never seen operating in space, its entry in Entertainment Bible 51 identifies its means of space-based locomotion. A trend that may no longer be confined to the main continuity... for the first time we have possible size data for the destroids of Macross II, courtesy of Macross Chronicle. Chronicle's sizes put most of the destroids as being about 2m shorter than their SW1-era counterparts... with the notable exceptions of the Defender EX, which is about the same size, and the Giant Monster, which is about 3m taller than its predecessor.

In this and several other cases, it's not really a desire to make every plane, train, and automobile into a giant fighting robot... it's more like a desire to find a way to exonerate Robotech's writers of the guilt for all their poor decisions, imbecilic errors, and inconsistencies. I'd guess that the logic behind it, if it can even be called that, is that they want to figure out ways to explain away the plot errors so they can at least pretend that Robotech isn't the mess everyone says it is. It's the same thing they do when they have those long circular arguments trying to figure out where a second SDF-type ship could be in the last episode of the "Macross Saga". Actually, the "VM-9L Silverback" was created by Tommy Yune for Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles... it's not Palladium's fault.

It's not exactly a problem limited to the Space War 1-era destroids, y'know. Unless they were equipped with plot armor because they were carrying a named character, Zentradi beam weapons tended to do pretty much the same thing to the lightly-armored Valkyries of the day as well. Even plot armor didn't save Hikaru's VF-1J from being torn to shreds during hand-to-hand combat, and the only other major instance of Valkyries going into hand-to-hand combat was faked for the benefit of Quamzin... whereas the Spartan at least comported itself reasonably well after the war as a police unit for the specific mission of controlling violent Zentradi.