Seto Kaiba

Believe me, the point of your post got through just fine. Of course you're missing a few key points there yourself. For starters, the Valkyrie II is a "SPACE VALKYRIE." Flying in the atmosphere is more or less moot, since the entire point of the thing is to go into space and pretty much stay there. In space, flying by lift is moot, because outside of planetary orbit, you're not worrying about gravity. Yes, it's very likely that the VF-1, VF-0, SV-51, VF-11 and YF-21 would fly, likewise the VF-2JA Icarus, and in a pinch, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II. There's enough wing surface and aerodynamic structure that given sufficient thrust, it will fly on lift. It will not be the most maneuverable plane flying on lift, but it will likely fly. My point, which you again missed, is that your willing suspension of disbelief is horribly lopsided. You yourself stated that this is whether or not these fictional fighters look as though they could fly via lift in atmosphere, with minimal suspension of disbelief. There's enough evidence to make the conjecture that the Valkyrie II would fly relatively well on lift, if not being the most maneuverable planes out there. The control systems of the fighters are immensely relevant to the subject of whether or not a plane can fly, as a certain degree of precision is necessary to control the aircraft in atmosphere. Therefore my point about Basara's guitar-control interface remains valid. Please do READ my posts, don't just skim them. You might learn something.

True, most of the fighters in Macross are basically just revisions of or meldings of modern aircraft. Good examples being the VF-17, which looks virtually identical to the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, the VF-22, which is almost line for line a F/A-22 Raptor, the VF-1 Valkyrie, which everyone knows is pretty much a F-14 Tomcat, and the VF-4 Lightning, which greatly resembles a miniature, streamlined XB-70 Valkyrie bomber. Still, you have to note that as time goes on, at least in the Macross Plus/7 branch, there's a marked trend towards making battroids look like Nosjadeul-Ger power armor. Look at the body structure of the VF-19 against the male power armor, looks mighty similar, no? And the VF-22 is pretty much a Queadluun Rau in disguise, both in it's fighting style and in it's looks. We really could've done without the Zentradi-ification of the mecha, and especially not the incredably outlandish Ultraman-esque VF-19 Kai Fire Valkyrie, Mylene's VF-11, and the rest of the Sound Force technology, most of which is baldly ignorant of both style, and of little principles like acoustics. I always thought the VF-22 wasn't very menacing looking, to me it looked more like a giant cockroach, or some other large beetle. If you're willing to suspend disbelief for the incredably impractical transformation sequence of the YF-19 prototype in which it's entire body breaks up at the hips. Or for the ridiculous gunpod deployment scheme of the VF-17 Nightmare in which is blasts outward from the hip. Or all that complete BS about the magical weaponry potential of anima spirita and music, which can be written off as pseudo-religious BS. Or giant space monsters that can control your brain and stop your spaceship dead in it's tracks with a thought, and all this other Magical stuff in Macross 7, then suspending disbelief for the Valkyries of Macross II should be small potatoes and easily within your grasp. Heck, the only application of "spirita" that actually makes sense is from Macross II. The Marduk's emulators use music in conjunction with various other technologies to manipulate the aggressive impulses of the Zentradi they use as soldiers. That, unlike "Anima Spirita" and Sound Force's weaponry, has a solid basis in firm, unrelenting science fact. Using sounds, smells or tastes as hypnotic cues isn't a mystery, it's not magical, and it's done largely on an everyday basis by hypnotherepists for proceedures as mundane as helping people quit smoking. It could also be taken as Pavlovian conditioning, which is another well understood psychological endeavor. Sound Force's technology is largely the product of wishful thinking on Kawamori's part, where the abysmally poor singing of a few lost causes makes aliens shrivel up and die, frees brainwashed citizens and explodes enemy sensors. It has NO BASIS WHATSOEVER in the land of science fact, putting it several standard deviations higher than my general willingness to suspend disbelief. The only thing that the power of Basara's singing, and anima spirita does is make me hit "mute" on my remote control until he's done singing. That's the power of spirita. You want to talk spirita-related design standards, insofar as making fighters go? What about the absurdly impractical guitar, bass, or drum set controls for the sound force valkyries! Macross II's control systems aren't much different from the controls of your average F/A-22 or F-14! However, if you expect me to believe that you can fly such a bewilderingly complex machine using nothing but a bass guitar or a drum kit, you've got another thing coming. The technology in the engines is all well and good, but in the face of such a patently ludicrous control system, they might as well be running on fairy dust and floss, because until you build it and prove otherwise, you can't fly a plane with a guitar. I hope that I have proven to you all which set of Valkyries is really the ones with which your suspension of disbelief should be suffering. If you can suspend disbelief for Mr. Nekki Basara and his amazing flying Ultraman Valkyrie controlled by a hideous guitar and his songs, then suspending disbelief for Macross II's Valkyries should pose you no difficulty whatsoever. EDIT: Added some "oomph" to my last paragraph. The former ending lacked it somewhat.

And in the other two modes it's some sick engineer's mad mistake. A battroid so utterly topheavy it'll fall over if you so much as look at it the wrong way. In a way it's probably a service to Macross that Kawamori never really focussed on the VF-4 past it's fighter mode. Conceded, I'd overlooked the mass/inertia relation in my last post, but the lack of drag from zero gravity does apply, because stellar bodies below the approximate mass of our moon can't maintain a stable atmosphere, and when in the absence of gravity, atmosphere is a foregone conclusion. And yes even I, a heavily biased Macross II fan, will admit that the Metal Siren is one ugly bird. Fortunately it's also a painfully effective bird, so I'm willing to overlook it's beating with the ugly stick. Like I said earlier, it was much more attractive before they added the elongated nose/right arm segment and the extra bits on the engines/legs. EDIT: Sorry about leaving this so painfully incomplete, one of my website clients had a huge complaint about a hacker attack that required my immediate attention.

I beg to differ, your HTML skills are pretty good for someone who doesn't do this sort of thing for a living. Your site's well organized and assembled, and the only real concerns about it are matters of visual style and that navigational applet's loading time. Maybe in time you could move towards a more advanced design, using an iframe-based layout, or maybe even flash.

Mr. March, I'd never really put it to compare the Yukikaze designs to the Macross II ones, but there is a similar school of thought there after all. Again, since it's science fiction, it doesn't really have to be practical looking, most people will be happy just that it looks great. Stuff sticking out of the body on a Valkyrie in space really is a non-issue, since little graviational and atmospheric foibles like drag, air friction, etc. no longer apply. That's why things like the NP-BP-01 FAST packs in DYRL or the SAP packs in Macross II are actually alarmingly practical. You're adding extra maneuvering jets, extra thrusters, and a bevy of additional weapons to enhance the functionality of the craft in space, and give it a little more weaponry, since the weight of the fighter is no longer an issue either. NO GRAVITY = NO DRAG, NO LIFT-WEIGHT RATIOS AND NO AIR FRICTION. Effectively once you got the fighter into orbit, it's no-holds-barred on arming it. It's the age-old sci-fi argument, "Why do we make aerodynamic space ships when aerodynamics is a non-entity in space?" With anime mecha, style is a big key to how it's supposed to perform. For example, let's take the RX-78B Gundam. It was big, plodding and powerful looking, and that's exactly how it moved. The original VF-1 Valkyrie was sturdy looking, utilitarian, and a little boxy, so it wasn't the fastest thing on it's feet in battroid mode. The FFR-44MR/D Mave was streamlined, aerodynamic and looked fast even sitting still, so naturally the animators made it fast as all-get-out in the animation. So it makes sense for the Valkyries to get progressively more streamlined, and generally more hot-rod-esque. This trend's clearly visible even in Macross Plus and 7, where they move from chunky designs like the Valkyrie and Lightning III, towards the more streamlined and revolutionary looking Excalibur and Sturmvogel. To clear up an earlier statement about the VF-11... I actually rather like the standard VF-11 Thunderbolt. It's got nice lines, and is a superbly functional mecha. Can't say I care for it's battroid mode so much, but it looks generally good. The VF-11 sound force variant flown by Mylene was just HIDEOUS. It was a felonious crime committed against the eyes of the entire audience. Radd, true assertion there. But sometimes the line isn't as clear as we'd like it to be. True, the XB-70 is utilitarian-ugly. But there were some who thought that revolutionary craft like the Bell X-1 supersonic prototype were just plain gaudy, without the consideration that the gaudiness of the plane was largely a side effect of functionality. Like the fact that the X-1 looked like a sci-fi rocket ship, and was really designed to look like a flying bullet for aerodynamic reasons. Ugly as sin, true. Gaudy? Possibly. Gets the job done? Hell yes. Phalanx, you're scaring me. SpaceAce, you took the words right outta my mouth.

Woah, that index.html page of yours is IMPOSSIBLE to read. Way too visually active, and the text over that picture of the SDF-1 is well, I had to highlight it just to make sense of the fact that it really was text. Try something a little plainer behind the text, or a background that isn't visibly tiled. I'd say like a starfield, or something similar. It's just too hard to read as-is.

ComicKaze, you'd be right about the Metal Siren, by all accounts. Actually looking at Nexx's fighting style in it, it does give off the impression that it was made for battroid combat in a very DBZ-esque way. By all accounts, it was meant to be very much the "Super Saiyan" of Valkyries, and blast the living daylights out of large ships and large numbers of enemies with little-to-no harm to itself. Like I said earlier, it's like the XB-70, ugly but for a good reason. Look at the XB-70, cruising in the multi-mach range so fast that to a conventional radar it looks to be in two places at once. Add to that the fact that it's carrying several different nucelar missiles with the capability of wiping whole cities off the map. Suddenly aesthetic concerns take a back seat to functionality. I'll concede that the Metal Siren would've been better off if they'd left it like they had during the Moon Festival, without the enormous elongated nose that became part of the right arm, or the extra engine vents on the legs, and that fourth transformation wasn't really that useful. They could've also stood to use a more traditional design for the head, but hey, it was supposed to be a revolutionary fighter, and I suppose it is. But other than that it's a supremely functional aircraft, by Macross standards. Almost no ornimentation whatsoever. It doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to do the job. The VF-2JA, well, it's a slightly more aerodynamic version of the VF-2SS, sure battroid mode is a little on the boxy side, but you pay for those aerodynamics somewhere.

Ah, always nice to see another fan of the Valkyrie II running around. I'm a huge fan of it, personally. I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-300 pics of it lying around my hard drive, which'll become part of my website soon, assuming I can make Photoshop cooperate with me. The Valkyrie II is just a joy to behold. Those lines just SCREAM dragster. The CEO of Indian motorcycles once said that streamlining was the art of making something look fast, even when it's standing still. That's what they did with the Valkyrie II. It harkens back to the good ol' reliable VF-1S Valkyrie, with a whole other attitude about it. Add to that it's hideously large armament with those FAST packs, even if they're not the prettiest thing in the world, and you've still got a mecha that kicks ass and looks good doing it. This, my friends, is the Porsche of Valkyries. The Metal Siren is a whole other story. It's from the same school of design as the XB-70 Valkyrie prototype that Kawamori loves so much. The XB-70 Valkyrie is UGLY. It's SINFULLY UGLY. But it's the meanest, fastest, most heavily armed son of a bitch in the air, and with firepower like that, who's really going to care if it's ugly? It moves like a bat outta hell, and carries enough payload to remove several cities from the map. It's the same with the Metal Siren. The design says it all: "This isn't a fighter for posing with at the airshow. This is a fighter for going out and making people dead. If that means sticking pointy bits and huge engines and lots of guns on it, SO BE IT. So long as it goes out there, blows lots of poo up, and brings it's pilot home safely, who's really going to care if it's the ugliest thing in the skies?" With firepower like the Metal Siren's, what enemy's really going to have time to do a detailed critique of the fighter's appearance? Nobody. They'll all be too busy dying or taking cover to care if it's ugly. When something that small can wipe out an entire Marduk battlecruiser some 4000m long, if I'm fighting alongside one, I don't really care if it's butt-ugly, it's one hell of a killing machine. You might say it's so ugly that it's beautiful. No matter what way you shake it, it's more aesthetically pleasing than that gods-awful set of Sound Force valkyries from Macross 7. Basara's VF-19 looks unnervingly too much like some mock-up of Ultraman in a Valkyrie costume, and I won't even get into the VF-11. Just DISGUSTINGLY bad. I've always contended that they were his revenge on Macross fans for Macross II. Still, their prototypes look excellent.

Nah, he didn't lose anything important, we keep all the site's component files backed up on a massive 10TB network drive. It did set back the launch of my new website by almost a week though, losing an entire computer like that. Unfortunately in the intervening time between my last post and this one, we lost ANOTHER computer when it's power supply died, mercifully this one was old, and on the verge of being replaced anyways. I should have a smallish link banner for my site out to you in the package with your site's new banners in a day or two. Since I don't think I have write permissions in the FTP access to your server, I'll just drop them in a .rar or a .zip and send them from my Webmaster e-mail address.

Minor hitch detected... Our staff artists Hibiki (no relation to one on this site) had a minor/major computer problem. His poor choice of equipment for his work (an iMac with the Intel Core Duo processor) burned out it's video card, effectively rendering itself rather on the useless side. So he's a little behind on those banners, while the store refunds his money and he buys a real computer. He's on my Alienware laptop for the time being. The banners are coming along real nice, we've got about eight concepts for you to look at, and I'll try and get those sent out as soon as they're finished. Reviews, well I've got two guys writing reviews for Full Metal Panic, Macross and Mospeada right now. They're kinda slow typists but their work's pretty good. I'd say another two-three days. I'll send them in .rtf format instead of my usual .pdf.

I put two of my better graphics guys on your banner request, they're working on them right now and should be finished by midnight tonight.

Got your e-mail, would love to contribute some of my spare personnel from my own project to write reviews, make banners, etc. I also sent you three little items for your Yukikaze section.

Something is phenominally wrong with the applet you're using on the index.html, it locked up my entire browser for the better part of three minutes each time I've loaded it so far. You might wanna abandon that, because it deep-sixed Firefox altogether and IE froze until it finished loading. I sent you that code snippet I promised, and an offer of helping with some of the areas your site mentions need help. The PM I sent you also has some contact info in case you wanna get in touch with some of my site's artists.

I'll send you a little code snippet I've been using for that later tonight. It works wonders.

The type of menu you selected, the scrolling menu, is extremely difficult to navigate with. Maybe try a dropdown menu or something that you can use to get at all the options at once?

Will this suffice? It's not the largest one I have but it's the highest overall quality. Sized at about 250x250. It's the version that appears on the DYRL Skull Squadron.

Actually, since the VF-2SS is a space superiority fighter, the black paint scheme is the actualy low-vis version... Very COOL! 349751[/snapback] Yeah, that was what I was thinking when I made the black-on-black cobra paint scheme. Followed the principle that since grey is used to make a fighter blend in with the clouds, and space tends to be a flat, black, empty expanse, the most logical low-vis paint scheme would as much black as possible. I've got a low-vis paint scheme set for the other Macross II fighters I'll be posting in this post later once my network drive is online again.

I do somewhere, lemme dig 'em up and I'll edit this post when I do.

Wow. That looks even better than I thought it would. You sir, are the king. I can't wait to show that to the rest of the Cobras back on Macross2.net and see what they think.

1. Quedalun Rau 2. Gilgamesh (Mac II) 3. Defender 4. Tomahawk 5. Spartan 346971[/snapback] Gotcha covered there Zinjo. I sent'cha a PM detailing what I can provide you with.

Hikaru, keep up the good work man! Nice VF-2SS there. Very nice indeed.

Yeah, I scored both. My volume 1 is in english print, from US Renditions, and volume 2 is printed in Japanese. Still, both are excellently done albums, and I by some happy accident, I have two copies of each one. Some tracks are on both, and there are some tracks that I swear never appeared in the DVD edition on there as well. And a lot of the tracks include more than was shown (heard) in the movie. Star, the new comp is courtesy of a few wonderful friends of mine who helped me slap that thing together in such a short span of time. It's amazing what you can find when you shop at computer parts stores in college towns. We decided to pick a URL that everyone could remember this time. There's just no graceful way to spell the old url without someone dropping the dash in there. As to getting the site running, I'm installing my website design tools (Dreamweaver 8, Adobe Creative Suite 2, Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 and my dummy MySQL server) now, so expect to see some progress showing up on the new site sometime around Monday at the earliest, and possibly Wednesday at the latest, in the form of the avatar galleries, and mecha info pages.

Stargazer, my most profound apologies for the delay. My computer committed hardware suicide, so I'm replacing the entire machine, then pulling the 3 500gb storage drives from the old machine and adding them to the new one. Should be doing that this upcoming weekend. I gotta tell ya, it was cheaper to buy a new one, when my motherboard and almost everything plugged into it died all at once. Anyways, the title of the song you're looking for is "Only My Friend" sung in three variants. Instrumental (which is pretty much obligatory), Ishtar's humming version, and Wendy Rider's vocal during the U.N. Spacy Moon Festival. Two variants are included on volumes one and two of the Macross II soundtrack CDs. Version 3, the humming, is only on the DVD. I should have something thrown back together as soon as I finish migrating to my new computer. Also Star, I have a new e-mail address and website. We've decided that since interest in the site is up, to move to a new domain, and get that running, and expand our public collections of Macross II art, screencaps, and reference materials. The new website's gonna be pretty easy to remember, since it's URL is www.Macross2.net. However, I will warn you we're REALLY threadbare right now while I migrate between computers. The discussion boards are available right now, but the avatar gallery is misbehaving in some of the styles. It can be accessed at www.Macross2.net/boards/index.php. My new e-mail is Webmaster@Macross2.net. I'll post a download in the forums for that song. I'm not sure how I'll define the permissions for the download, so you might have to register to get the file. After that, it'll be put into the Compendium database. (The new computer's substantially more powerful than the one I was using. Athlon FX-57 processor, nForce4 SLI motherboard, 2gb Ultra Low Latency DDR 400, 2 GeForce 7800 GTX KO video cards, and the boot drive is a pair of 10000rpm Raptors in RAID 0)

Yeah, I've actually been working on errumating the Macross II RPG book stats in an attempt to make them somewhat closer to the sizes that are seen on screen (by comparison to nearby known classes, like the Nupetiet Vergnitz classes, etc). Buddy, there's no way in hell the Macross Cannon is only 480m long. it's carrying the front halves of FOUR Nupetiet Vergnitz cruisers around. That thing's a good 4000m and counting. (Effectively ranged between about 3500 and 4400m by my maths.) If you'd like, I can send you my calculations for the proper sizes.

You mean the kind of uniforms that the bridge bunnies use?