Seto Kaiba

Oh, yeah... it sounds like he meant Jet Alone, which was developed by a private corporation for the Japanese gov't as a competitor/replacement for incredibly expensive-to-maintain EVA units which made its first and only appearance in the 7th episode of the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series. I think there was actually a second Jet Alone unit that showed up during one of the visual novels or games. I've got no idea how Wanzerfan came to believe it belonged to the US military. Really? I thought she sounded familiar, though I never had the presence of mind to actually sit through the credits to see who was singing. I was always skipping them to get to the next episode. I'm almost done watching the original 1971 Lupin III TV series. I was kind of leery about the idea of watching a show so old, but it's surprisingly well executed, despite the kind of campy theme music and the atrocious animation in the OP, and is still quite an enjoyable show. The episode titles aren't quite as pun-laden as the second series, but I'm getting to that one next.

Why does this remind me of the Ten Commandments scene in that one episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law? Definitely... Beltane70 got it right away: I'd also promise pictures of my ex in her Ishtar costume, if only she'd stop being so damn uptight about it.

Your argument here hinges on a number of faulty and/or unwise assumptions... namely, that the Metal Siren was built for the same combat role as previous models, that the Metal Siren was intended as a successor to the Valkyrie II, and that it has a strictly linear design evolution. I'm afraid the latter two were explicitly ruled out by "word of god" from the show's creators, and there is no pressing evidence for the former. Prior to Big West quietly posting an official designation for the Metal Siren on Macross.co.jp at some point around 2004, the Metal Siren had no official designation. The few official publications in which it appears all refer to it simply as "Metal Siren", and the two-seater demo aircraft from the Moon Festival as "Metal Siren Replica". The first people to take a stab at giving it an official designation in print were the writers at Palladium Books, who either didn't bother proofreading the finished product or couldn't make up their minds, as the books alternately refer to it as the "VF-1MS" and "VF-MS", the former making no sense at all, and the latter just looking goofy. In the late 90s, the "Anti-Kevs" tried to fix a lot of what ailed the RPG, and in the offing gave the Metal Siren a number of new designations, most of which made no sense and one of which was ALREADY in use in that continuity. The Anti-Kevs called it a variety of things, including the VF-3, VF-5, and a number of variations on "VF-4" including VF-X-4 and VF-4SS, neither of which should ever have been used as the VF-4 does exist in the Macross II continuity and figures rather prominently in one of its two canon prequel games under the designations of "VF-X-4 Siren" and "VF-4 Siren", the former being used only in the manual, and the latter used in the game itself. The official designation Big West came up with actually makes a reasonable deal of sense. The destruction of an entire fleet command battleship at the hands of a single Metal Siren was likely what prompted it to be classified as a Variable Attacker rather than a Variable Fighter. It would, then, be the first model of Variable Attacker in that continuity, which would logically make it the VA-1. The rest just tells us which variant it is and which regime it was designed for. Ours is not to reason why, ours is simply to sit down, scratch our heads, and wonder what the hell the powers that be were thinking. As I explained above, the VA-1 designation makes a good deal more sense than any of the other proposals, and it does make a fair deal more sense than oddly non-sequential designations of the main variable fighters... which includes one fighter with no number at all, though some of that could be explained in terms of which fighter is nominally succeeding the current main VF. Nah, if they wanted to go with the 2 motif which Macross II plays on almost as heavily as Macross 7 and 7 or Macross Frontier and 25, they would've gone with VA-2SS.

Yeah, GearsOnline is a good resource, though in some cases it's maddeningly incomplete. Once I've finished my work on Macross II and the whole alternate universe continuity, I'm seriously considering making a similar comprehensive reference guide for Five Star Stories. If you want to catch the rest of the series, I know the English translations of Books I through X (Vol.1-26 I think) are available online thru torrent and RapidShare... I don't think anyone has ever finished translating Books XI and XII, but I know there's a translation of Prima Classe Hugtrang that was done a while back.

I'm inclined to agree, but remember that I'm just reiterating what the few Southern Cross fans I've encountered have said about their reasons for loving the series. I've never understood that either... the more vocal Robotech fans have this crazy desire to make the show out to be some kind of serious space opera. I guess it's another one of those things they've convinced themselves are true in order to prop up the belief that Robotech is a wildly popular epic story instead of a forgotten, anachronistic, highly disorganized patchwork of unrelated shows that has post-facto pretensions to epicness. Would someone please remind Pete that we're not a real cult... also, shouldn't it be more like "down with HG" and "out with Sheryl's boobs"? You have no idea... half of what was causing Pizza the Hutt to act out like he did was what we were saying about him and MEMO here. I actually got accused of trolling once by a user called "sanman" on RT.com after I pointed out that Macross is usually listed as a "must-watch" title when people ask for recommendations on mecha anime, and Robotech is generally reviled by those same crowds... he told me I was a liar and that I was clearly just there to harsh his buzz. I don't think they want to know they truth, they just want to continue deluding themselves. Okay, so /b/ isn't my personal army, but MacrossWorld is? Trust me, you have no idea the havoc a "nobody" can cause in what's left of the Robotech fandom. I'm a nobody too, at least according to Doug Bendo, and yet while doing nothing more than telling the simple truth about the legal situation surrounding Macross and the current standing of Robotech, I've caused a veritable panic and sent Tommy Yune, Steve Yun, Kevin McKeever, MEMO1DOMINION, Maverick_LSC, Pizza the Hutt, Doug Bendo, and a half dozen others scrambling to put a stop to my "dangerous ideas" by any means necessary. To Robotech fans, I'm practically a one-man army waging war against their little fantasy world... and I didn't even need a mask and a goofy alias to do it! Though with all the Robotech fans talking about me being the leader of a sinister cult, the sovereign of some guild of calamitous intent (and I'm not even David Bowie!), and the dark lord of an unspeakable army of malicious beings that feed on human suffering, going back to school to get my PhD seems almost like a step backwards. Maybe I should get a nice tailored suit of ominous-looking armor and start building my conquering army for the Ragnarok.

Don't worry, I'm drafting an updated, more detailed version that I'll post here on MacrossWorld over the Christmas break. lol, don't worry. I've got official publications to back up everything that's in there (with the exception of the aforementioned corrections, which are due to ambiguous remarks by Kenichi Yatagai). Between that and the tiny bit of new info published in Macross Chronicle, we've got possibly the clearest view of the VF-2SS's capabilities that we've ever had... I think it may be the only VF other than the VF-1 for which a canon reactor output is actually given in addition to its engine thrust... 'course those thrust figures only cover the fighter's main engines... Unfortunately, I have no in-universe explanation for why the Macross was fitted with two pairs of additional booms for the main gun. According to Kenichi Yatagai, the U.N. Spacy was refitting the Macross with the intention of returning to ship to service, and that work on the ship (which included fitting it with a new main cannon) was terminated at the start of one of the later conflicts with the Zentradi, after which the still-functional ship was retired and made into a monument. Kenichi Yatagai doesn't get any more specific than that, unfortunately... and doesn't specify which conflict caused the U.N. Spacy to abort their restoration work on the ship.

Yeah, Renato's review was rather a lot of unexpected vitriol directed at a movie that has thus far been getting favorable, though not exactly glowing, reviews from most viewers. Haven't seen it myself, but a few friends of mine overseas have, and they said it wasn't mind-blowing, but that it was at least pretty good... mind you they're not big Macross fans, so they're viewing it as more-or-less objective outsiders. Wishing no offense to Renato, when I see a pronouncement like this: followed by a pronouncement like this: coming from a Macross 7 fan with a Fire Bomber avatar, I know what I'm about to read is coming from someone whose tastes are completely alien to me, and that I can probably expect it to be heavily biased. I'm reserving judgment on the movie until I see it for myself (it'll be a while, unless the business trip fairy leaves another all-expenses-paid trip under my pillow next year), but I'm cautiously optimistic given what I've seen of the designs for the movie and what I've heard from friends over in Japan who've gone to see it. This one vehemently negative review doesn't so much make me question the other reviewers as much as it leaves me wondering if he had a really bad day before he went to the theater, or if he went in there determined to find something wrong with it. I agree wholeheartedly... when I watched Macross 7 for the first time it very nearly killed Macross for me. I would disagree with Renato's assertion that the show's all about characters and their interactions. My assessment was that it was much more about the lack of normal social interaction between Basara and the other characters as they try, largely in vain, to hammer simple concepts through his malformed three-inch-thick skull. I felt the vast majority of the Macross 7 characters had less depth than a common tablespoon, so naturally I found the main cast of Macross Frontier (except Ranka) to be a vast improvement on their predecessors. Alto broke a lot of the common tropes for teenage boy robot pilots when he actually decided to man up instead of having a breakdown and whining for half of the show. In a more-or-less complete reversal from Macross 7, there was only one character I DIDN'T have a use for, and that was Ranka... who I felt was only in the show so the much better written and much more likable Sheryl would have a rival and they could inject a bit of additional moe into the series. The more the movie marginalizes Ranka, the happier I'll be. It sounds (at least from the reviews I've read so far) like they tried to do an almost entirely character-driven movie and largely leave out the giant fighting robots but found that they had too much material and not enough time to work with, and that's kind of disappointing. I know they had pacing issues near the end of Frontier, but I had hoped they'd manage their time a bit more effectively with the movie.

Bravo... very nice. I'm particularly liking that A-toll.

I'm an avowed atheist and yet somehow I've been multiply branded as a cult leader... what the hell? I reckon that's a large part of it, especially after JT let the cat out of the bag and announced that he's got an interview with Michael Bradley lined up for his 12th episode. It also probably has a lot to do with JT failing to exhibit the desired responses of admiration for Doug's so-called achievements in podcasting and fear when Doug tries to intimidate him. It seems being ignored doesn't sit well with Bendo, particularly when he's trying to be intimidating (and failing extravagantly). Well, we know Michael Bradley and his manager do... and word has it Tom Bateman does as well. Maverick_LSC also seems to visit JT's podcast site alarmingly often... I wonder if he's spying on him for Steve and Tommy, or if he's just obsessing over a podcaster who doesn't think the sun shines out of the collective apefaces of Warner Bros and Harmony Gold? Yeah, I noticed that too... kinda lulzy really, since JT openly admits the only Macross show he's ever seen is DYRL, though we're making arrangements to hook him up with some Macross Frontier-y goodness. I don't think you could really lump people like Tom Bateman and Michael Bradley in with "Macross Groupies" either... unless they've been part of the mysterious cult I didn't know I had for a while. Eh... not anymore really. Now it's just a venue for MEMO to preach his pro-Harmony Gold delusions like they're fact and lock threads so people can't correct him. Ah... good times. Speakin' as someone who was actually friends with most of the participants, I have to say that this hardly lines up with what SIGHUP did... at the very least Saraphys, Doug Bendo, and Hibiki EARNED their bans there by being equally foul to each other, whereas the people arguing with Bendo on RTX did nothing nastier than responding to accusations of child molestation with some amusing image macros of the Robotech Masters in drag.

Just a minor correction to these two statements posted earlier this evening... as it turns out, MEMO actually had nothing to do with this latest ThinkPol-style purge in the fanbase. The bannings on RobotechX were actually the work of SIGHUP, the site's other administrator. It seems he's gone off the deep end in response to all of Doug Bendo's antics. It seems he was ignoring a fairly sizable number of complaints and requests for admin intervention when Bendo first started getting out of hand, and apparently decided to ban not only Bendo, but the people Bendo was threatening, harassing, and slandering. I think what Einherjar said about RobotechX now being just as bad as Robotech.com might be a bit of an understatement.

To be brutally frank, that RobotechX would one day become just as big of a shithole as Robotech.com was never in any doubt. After all, the site's owner is none other than Captain Capslock himself, MEMO1DOMINION. Having the day-to-day operation of the site handled by SIGHUP, a reasonable but incredibly apathetic administrator, did little to slow the site's gradual decay into an Orwellian mess where dissenting opinions about Robotech and the Harmony Gold company line are punishable by termination. The only real difference is that instead of being run by an oppressive "Big Brother", RobotechX is run by a habitual bootlicker. I can think of a fair few people who'd be sold on the idea of a Macross OVA about destroid pilots. Even when I was watching Robotech for the first time I had very little use for the show's adaptation of Southern Cross. I eventually bought ADV's 2-for-1 box set containing Southern Cross and Mospeada out of simple curiously (and because it was on sale at the time) and gave the show a try. It did absolutely nothing for me. I found it a bit less obnoxious than Robotech's Masters Saga, though that's largely a function of watching it subtitled instead of having to listen to Harmony Gold's atrocious voice acting. All the same, I couldn't really be arsed to give a damn about any of the characters apart from wanting Jeanne to die in the most horrible fashion imaginable, and I found virtually all of the show's mechanical designs ugly and uninspired. After watching Southern Cross all the way through, I found myself completely in agreement with the network's decision to cancel the show. After I got my hands on This is Animation #10: Southern Cross, I had to revise my opinion somewhat... it's a show that had promise back in the early phases of development, and had they stopped about halfway through the revision process and worked with what they had, the show would've been a LOT better.

Can't say I've had much in the way of interaction with him, barring a few brief chats back when I used to use AIM, but on those occasions when Robotech fans start complaining about the incomplete state of the Infopedia, they always bring up my name for the Macross Saga, BRL for the Masters Saga, and Cyclone for the New Generation as the experts Harmony Gold should tap for the project. So far, despite actually seeking out and watching the original Southern Cross for myself, I've only encountered three, maybe four actual Southern Cross fans. Whether or not Doug Bendover counts is dubious, since he only cares about the Robotech adaptation. I've never managed to discern BRL's reasons for loving the series so much, except that he might really like the mechanical designs. The other major proponents of the series were the duo of Hover Tanker and Ryoko. I know HT had a deep-seated loathing of the officer class, so having the show with a largely NCO cast which all too often depicted senior officers as ignorant desk-jockeys and opportunists probably appealed to him... as did the fact that the show concerned the adventures of a pack of ground-pounders rather than pilots. I think Ryoko just had a preference for ground mecha. You could make a case for Robotech actually improving Southern Cross, if only by tying it into much better shows like Macross, Mospeada, and Megazone 23.

On a few separate occasions Bendo has ranted about he has a lot of respect for Khyron_Prime and how Khyron_Prime did the right thing by pieing Tommy Yune at that convention. Just goes to show the sort of unbalanced folks he looks up to.

Nah, what started this whole brouhaha was Bendo's absurd proclamation that Ranka is 12 and thus Macross Frontier is child pornography. When NOBODY took him seriously, and most of the site's membership told him to shut his ignorant ass up, he took it personally and tried to take the fight to his podcast. When that didn't work (and earned him more than one show with a 100% hostile live audience) he fell back on threatening retribution against JT for things other people say about him, and trying unsuccessfully to intimidate JT into renouncing everyone who doesn't agree that Ranka is 12 and Macross Frontier fans are all pedophiles. After that, pretty much every thread where he continued to argue degenerated into people trolling him just to wind him up. Ain't it great? Hell, we could easily and safely wish them a happy FIFTH year of waiting for anything new. I dunno, but his latest kick before he got banned (apparently by MEMO) from RobotechX is that Macross fandom is some kind of cult, and I'm apparently the cult leader... I keep tossing out jokes how since I apparently have all these disciples that I should've been oppressing lobster people and building giant battlefortresses instead of wasting my time watching Bendo caper for my amusement. That's about the letter of it... the Robotech lunatic fringe, and a substantial portion of the mainstream fandom, has always had a "you're either with us or against us" mentality... that's what led to all the fan wars between the purists and whoever their victim of the week is. It's safe to say that unless you're one of the VERY few people who listen to MEMO, Bendo, and/or PTH, they consider you the enemy, and apparently because I'm outspoken and still a fairly prominent figure in the Robotech fandom, I've become the designated Big Bad. I forget what his handle is here, he used to also go by "Rabid Southern Cross Fan", but Brooklyn Red Leg is/was the designated Masters Saga/Southern Cross expert on RT.com and pretty much its only vocal defender after Bendo got banned and HoverTanker said FGSFDS and left RT.com. Protoculture is another RT.com member, don't know if he has the same handle here or is even on this site... but he's another one of those "expert fans" from RT.com.

Well, I think with an introduction like this it should go without saying that I absolutely LOVE Five Star Stories. I have all twelve books, that're out thus far, plus the movie and a bunch of the artbooks. I've only ever attempted the model kits with help from my now-ex-girlfriend BlackRose, since I'm better with assembly than I am painting, and painting FSS kits requires a reasonably skilled painter. I was first introduced to Five Star Stories by one of my coworkers at one of my summer jobs back in college. I was working as a tour guide at a museum, and ended up swapping anime titles with one of the tech support guys who worked there. He was big into Blame! and Five Star Stories, and was even building a model Mortar Headd (I think it might've been the Jagd Mirage) in his cubicle. Ended up borrowing a couple volumes of the Toypress translation from him to read on my breaks and between groups of tourists and obnoxious VIPs, and later the first few volumes of Blame! as well... though I didn't thrill to that nearly as much as I did FSS. I love the mecha designs, though the giant robot high heels do get on my nerves a bit... it's the characters that really sell it for me... especially Kaien. My favorite MHs from the series are definitely the original Knight of Gold (not Upandla Raymu's Knight of Gold II), the Kaien's Schpeltor, and the Jagd Mirage (if only because Schaft and Parthenon are good value).

It must be in one of the adverts, or a browser-sensitive ActiveX plugin... I'm using Firefox and AdBlock Plus and I'm not running into any malware. If I did, it oughta light my system's overprotective security setup up like a christmas tree. I'm not talking about the novels, I'm talking about the official continuity of the animated series and canon comics, wherein Dana sort of degenerates into Zor's sidekick and then ends up traumatized after he dies, so much so that seeing another clone of Zor (Rem, from Sentinels) completely freaks her out in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Holy crap, it intruded into the real world too... it started back in 1985. Speaking of our dear friend Mr. Capslock, it looks like he finally got sick of dougbendo causing all kinds of fights over on RobotechX, but he unwisely opted to use it as an excuse to ban a few "undesirables" who regularly call him out on his lies and crazy theories as well. He's gonna find RobotechX just became a MUCH quieter and less active place.

Yeah, there's a LOT of misinformation out there about the Macross II continuity, due in part to the fact that the only widely-available English-language publication covering the OVA is Palladium's wildly inaccurate Macross II RPG, goofs made by fans trying to correct Palladium's work without access to official source material, and errors made over the years like Macross Ace's incorrect timeline placing Macross II in 2090 in the main continuity, which is wrong on a number of levels. Some time ago, I got bored and wrote out this mildly detailed continuity, though some elements of it need to be changed in light of new information... particularly the period when the Macross was partially refitted by the U.N. Spacy. I can't post the changes there anymore because I was banned for pointing out the facts of the Macross licensing situation when I saw one of the mods there spreading misinformation about it: http://www.robotech.com/community/forum/re...&forumid=24 That'd be me... and I wrote that timeline out of boredom using the sources at my disposal to give people a general idea of what the Macross continuity looked like prior to Kawamori booting Macross II over to parallel world status and inserting Macross Plus in its place. Flattery will get you everywhere. However, I still don't get why every member of the Robotech lunatic fringe singles ME out as the "ringleader" whenever anyone decides to argue with them. Sometimes I'm not even involved and people attribute it to me.

Would you believe me if I told you that the lengthy explanation of the AU's VF design progression from my last post was actually the short version of that explanation? I originally gave a much more lengthy answer and had to perform a heavy-handed edit to get it down to a length that wouldn't automatically inspire a "tl;dr" in 90% of readers. I've gleaned a lot of new and interesting information from my digging around in old, forgotten publications, all of which will hopefully be made available for public consumption in the near future. Yeah, that's pretty much my feelings on the OVA as well. To me, Macross II: Lovers Again is the last Macross show that built on all of the themes and tone that made Macross a truly great series. Macross Frontier kind of met me halfway on the themes and tone aspect, so I'm rather fond of that show too. Yes and no... I have a site, but it's been down for renovation for a while now. What started as a minor modernization effort on a seriously amateurish design I did back when I was a website design n00b ended up as a major ground-up redesign after a massive influx of new information made it obvious that we were going to have to rewrite every single article and add at least a dozen more. It's slower going than I'm used to, since I lost a few people to all the economic woes and the various military antics in the middle east, but we're soldiering on regardless. (If you know anyone who's really good with CSS and wants to help, do feel free to let me know)

This is one of those things about Robotech that I just don't understand. The more vocal Robotech fans have always had a marked tendency to gush about how deep and sophisticated the Robotech story is and how it deals with profound real-world themes like the oil crisis, the empowerment of women, and the importance of tolerance and understanding... but it's all a crock of poo. No matter what "generation" you're watching, the story is always the just a variation on the following program: 10 "Evil" aliens come to Earth in search of something important and invariably protoculture-related. 20 Humanity responds to the alien presence by shooting first and asking questions later. 30 The conflict degenerates into a series of minor skirmishes largely won by the Earth forces largely because the aliens can't be arsed to mobile all their forces to address such a minor threat. 40 One or more "evil" aliens abandon their people and their way of life to join the human "good guys". 50 The "evil" aliens finally run out of patience with their failure to defeat the barely sapient protagonist(s) and decide to do the galaxy a favor by committing all of their forces to wiping them out. 60 Due to the intervention of the token "good" alien(s), humanity narrowly triumphs over and wipes out the "evil" aliens after they devastate Earth and annihilate out most of humanity. 70 GOTO 10 Not only does this pattern hold true for the three existing "sagas" of Robotech, the leaked draft of the "Shadow Saga" movies also fits this established pattern perfectly... with Haydonite commander Veidt getting exiled for failing in Shadow Chronicles and joining the humans to destroy the other Haydonites. The only change is that for the last bit you have to substitute "Tirol" for "Earth". As you can see, the story itself has all the subtlety of a good swift kick in the balls, and it's a safe bet that any or all of the alleged profound messages and sophisticated moral themes exist only in the minds of the viewers who read things into the story that the "writers" never intended. Robotech was, after all, "created" to be a shallow, mildly diverting TV show intended to sell transforming robot toys to young children. It was never intended to be the sophisticated sci-fi epic its few fans claim it to be. That's all post-facto BS from Carl Macek and company. Virtually all of the claims the fans make about the show having profound themes are completely absurd that it's practically impossible to take them or the fans seriously. It couldn't be more obvious that the alleged parallels to the oil crisis are fans seeing a coincidence and wrongly assuming it was intentional. The "empowerment of women" aspect runs aground rather early after the majority of the female characters are forced by various circumstances to settle down, quit their careers, leave the fighting to the men, and start popping out babies. By the end of the Masters Saga, which is pointed to as the best example of female empowerment in Robotech, Dana, Maia, and Nova have all given up any pretense of being strong, independent women in favor of having steady boyfriends. Not only does "Zor Prime" completely usurp the position of main character from his girlfriend Dana, he gives his life to win a squabble with an old man over a jar of flowers, not just breaking her heart but leaving her a shattered, emotionally fragile wreck for her entire adult life. This business about Robotech teaching tolerance is just as absurd as the rest... humanity never makes an honest attempt to understand the aliens they're constantly picking fights with, they shoot first and ask questions later, then get their asses kicked for starting fights above their weight class. After the war is over and the human forces have exterminated all the "evil" aliens, the few alien survivors are forced (at gunpoint no less) to integrate into human society, after which they promptly die out or, if they're lucky, become expendable soldiers for the war against the next "alien menace". Even the "friendly" aliens that humanity supposedly liberates from the tyranny of the Invid Regent in Sentinels and Prelude ultimately find themselves trading one despot for another when their liberators immediately enlist them in sustaining their massive and ongoing war effort. When you actually sit down and think about it, Robotech's story is actually kind of disturbing... with only one major exception, the "evil" aliens had no intention of starting a fight and were just trying to reclaim something that had been stolen from them by someone else. Ultimately, they end up being slaughtered by a bunch of human bellends who can't be arsed to ask why the aliens are even there, and the survivors are forcibly integrated into human society where they can look forward to either dying out peaceably between wars or being forced into servitude in the human war machine in order to further humanity's manifest destiny as the undisputed rulers of the cosmos. Actually, I think I might be on to something here...

Gubaba raises an excellent point, no amount of justification can make it suck less as a plot device. If I remember correctly, in the TV series it was the original Zor who encountered the Flowers of Life and sorted out how to harness protoculture on the Invid homeworld, then the Masters defoliated the Invid homeworld to feed their war machine, and the Invid attacked them for it, then Zor, who saw what went down, sent the last protoculture matrix thingy (which is used to make more protoculture fuel) to his ship and sent it on a blind jump through hyperspace where it then crashed on Earth and started the whole shenanigans of the TV series.

No, that's actually one of several fairly common misconceptions about Macross II and the whole parallel world continuity caused by a shortage of decent coverage by American publications and misinformation spread in the RPG books by Palladium. The now-alternate continuity leading up to Macross II: Lovers Again does place a bit more emphasis on the crisis of resources caused by the destruction of Earth's surface and the near-annihilation of humanity, so understandably Earth's military doesn't bounce back quite as quickly. As such, they seem to follow a somewhat different design methodology in their VFs than the main timeline does. Rather than develop and introduce a whole new fighter every ten years or so like they do in the main continuity, the existing fighters receive periodic evolutionary upgrades to enhance their performance and extend their useful service lives, rather like what's done with many modern, real-world aircraft. In truth, there are five known models of VF separating the service lives of the original VF-1 Valkyrie and the VF-2SS Valkyrie II. The first new fighter introduced was the VF-4 Siren, a number of which were assigned to the Megaroad-01 prior to its departure in 2014. After that came the VF-1R Valkyrie Kai, an all-systems evolutionary upgrade of the VF-1 Valkyrie developed somewhere between 2014 and 2030, which was the U.N. Spacy's main space VF by 2036 and first appeared in Macross 2036. After that came an evolutionary upgrade to the VF-4 Siren, the VF-4S, which was first seen in 2037 (Macross: Eternal Love Song) and came in three flavors, the basic VF-4S, the super pack-equipped VF-4SP, and the funnels-equipped VF-4ST. After that came the capture of a second factory satellite, and a major jump for the U.N. Spacy's tech level... which led to the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie, originally as a technology demonstrator and later a military-use VF in the 2060s. Then you have the original all-regime VF-2 Valkyrie II introduced in 2072, and nine years later in 2081, a space-based evolutionary upgrade of the S-variant... the VF-2SS Valkyrie II used in Macross II, was introduced. Exactly why the numbering system is like that, I can't tell you. What I can tell you is that the VF-2SS Valkyrie II is only 11 years old when the Macross II OVA starts in 2092, and that at least five models precede it. Vifam covered this pretty well... so I think I don't need to say anything about it. Waste not, want not... the official continuity for the now-alternate universe establishes that the U.N. Spacy was having semi-regular skirmishes and run-ins with small Zentradi fleets between 2011 and 2082, with three other major run-ins with large Zentradi fleets in 2036, 2037, and 2054, the latter of which decimated the U.N. Spacy's forces, prior to which they had only one known class of ship... the Daedalus II-class ARMD, which is sort of a synthesis of the TV series ARMD and the Daedalus-class assault carrier, in that it had the same weapons, but could also perform the Daedalus Attack. After the December 2054 capture of a second factory satellite, the U.N. Spacy developed all the new classes of ship we see in Macross II. The converted Zentradi ships were used simply because they were convenient, they had a lot of them, and they kept capturing more with every Zentradi fleet they encountered and defeated. Zentradi ships are very low-maintenance and extremely durable, so it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. It's a hell of a lot more efficient converting them for U.N. Spacy use than discarding or scrapping them to build new ships. I very much doubt it's a factory satellite... probably an asteroid-type space station ala Gundam. We do know, however, that the U.N. Spacy had at least two captured Zentradi factory satellites... the one captured shortly after Space War 1 which figures prominently in Macross 2036, and the one captured in December 2054 which was the source of the new technology used in the VF-XX and VF-2SS. Just one correction... the assumption would have been that the Zentradi and Meltrandi fleet remnants were the only threats remaining. There is no Supervision Army in the Macross II continuity. The SDF-1 Macross was originally a Meltrandi ship in DYRL.

For the longest time, I've entertained the pet theory that the main batteries on the Macross Cannon-class gunships don't just look like Zentradi Nupetiet-Vergnitzs-class battleships... that they are, in all likelihood, a resource-saving move on the part of the post-2054 U.N. Spacy. Instead of building an immense gunship with converging beam cannons hundreds of times the power of the Macross's main cannon, why not draw on the surfeit of captured Zentradi ships for existing spaceframes to modify and save a lot of time, effort, and materials in the bargain? Budget superweapons. I hoped against hope that Macross Chronicle might actually go yea or nay on this one, but no luck.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. Robotech was one of the shows that got me interested in anime, and Macross II: Lovers Again was my first foray into real Macross. It's a Christmas miracle!

Viper and I both did, several times... though the time it came up the most was in that podcast he put up right after his flash-scheduled Thanksgiving Day one that he used to badmouth us behind our backs... the same one where he admitted that he thinks he knows all about Macross Frontier after watching the show unsubtitled. Yeah, I heard about that too... he was claiming that he was one of the people who was in charge of developing that mod on another one of his shows, which is, as far as I have been able to discern, a lie.

No kidding. The whole business with Pizza the Hutt flying off the handle and screaming about how Macross Frontier was "pro-gay propaganda" and then accusing those who tried to explain to him that Alto was neither gay nor a crossdresser of trying to force their pro-gay agenda on everyone, before making the bizarre pronouncement that if we get our way, homosexuality'll be compulsory within a couple decades. Prior to that, Pizza and I were actually on reasonably good terms, mainly due to the fact that I helped hook him up with DYRL, which he thought was absolutely awesome. That insane rant made me start to see that he wasn't all there in the head. Eh... like I said, we have good reason to suspect that he's not actually getting ~900 visitors like he claims he is. He had his show set to an A-rating, which meant that anyone (even search bots) could get to it, and he was linkspamming all over the place. Now that only registered TalkShoe members aged 18+ can get even load the page, I think we'll see a major drop in his number of listeners... of course he'll probably lie about it all the same, just like how he claimed the first podcast of his that I attended had 20+ live listeners when in truth it only had four or five people at any one time. None taken... I'm kind of perplexed by this myself. I mean, I may be the resident Macross II expert, but by no means am I the leader of the entire Macross fandom or even a small portion thereof. I think, for them, it's a coping mechanism. It's much more comfortable for them to believe that their lunatic fringe views on Robotech and Macross are the commonly-held beliefs or the gospel truth and that any opposition they may encounter comes from Macross fans who hate Robotech and want to ruin everybody's good time. That way, it gives them a handy straw man to rail against whenever things aren't going their way. I seem to have been appointed the "face" of this straw man army for a variety of reasons. I suspect the main factor is simply that by simple coincidence I'm the one who ends up running into them first, so when everyone else posts after me saying essentially the same thing I am, they assume it's a coordinated effort rather than consider the possibility that what they wrote was so wrong that it prompted more than one person to respond. I think if my history on Robotech.com has anything to do with it, it's probably because of my status as the site's resident Macross expert (prior to my banning) and/or the fact that even after I was banned (or possibly BECAUSE of it) I'm still a fairly well-respected figure in the community... so much so that I continue to receive e-mails containing questions about Robotech and Macross from members there who've gotten sick of trying to get a straight answer from the ignorant masses. It actually gives me hope for the Robotech fanbase... it's proof that the idiots and ego-tripping witch-hunting members of the "Robotech purists" haven't managed to completely purge intelligent and reasonable people from their midst. Hey, don't get me wrong... I love the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series so much that I happily bought it twice (AnimEigo and ADV), I have a lot of respect for Macross Plus even though it doesn't feel like a Macross show (didn't stop me from getting both versions), and Macross Frontier restored my faith in the show's future and had me actually impatient for each new episode, which, as many of my friends will tell you, is bloody unprecedented. I prefer the Macross II continuity on the grounds that it does follow the themes and tone of the original series and DYRL much more closely than Kawamori's sequels do, that the timeline stresses how strained resources were with the reclamation of Earth's surface, and that the mecha feel like a more logical evolution from the VF-1 than some of the later main continuity Valkyries... but that's a topic for another thread. Indeed. He doesn't want to admit it, but a LOT of his previous shows, and indeed many of his current and planned ones, are only superficially related to Robotech. I very much doubt anyone could actually run a podcast for ~340 shows without having to abandon the premise of it being a Robotech podcast around episode 9 or so... there's just not enough material there. Now if it were something enormous like Lupin III, Macross, or Gundam, you may be able to hang on for 100 episodes or so before running out of material. Oh god, where to start... this was either put up specifically to troll Macross fans because the guy who runs it is a butthurt Robotech fan, or he's one of those people who professes to be an anime fan but has that borderline xenophobic attitude that makes him hate on any example of other cultures. #8. Aside from replacing Max's deep, manly voice with a somewhat effeminate one, Robotech didn't really change anything there... except that in Robotech "Miriya" is reduced to a hanger-on for Lisa in the Sentinels material, popping out kids and not seeing much of any combat, while she was deleted outright in the whole RTSC business. Her Macross counterpart not only raises seven kids and adopts another, but continues to be a military bigshot ace fighter pilot, then turns to training the next generation of fighter aces, and then for a break becomes the mayor of an entire colony city. Of course, if the TR author mentioned that, he wouldn't have been able to construct his claim at all. #7. Robotech is longer? No it isn't. If we don't count failed and aborted projects, Robotech is a mere 85 episodes, 23 of which most Robotech fans consider repellant, and only 36 of which the fans actually care about, and a single low-budget movie. Macross's original series may have fewer episodes, but Macross as a whole positively dwarfs Robotech with 110 TV series episodes, 23 OVA episodes, and 3 movies (not counting the movie adaptations of II and Plus, or the second forthcoming Frontier movie). You could also respond with "Yes, we can make Macross longer too by making a weak excuse and then dicking with the subtitles for Legend of Galactic Heroes". #6. Really? Half their out-of-continuity protagonists are named Jack! Jack Archer, Jack Baker, and I'm sure there's a "Jack Candlestickmaker" somewhere. Most of the Robotech names aren't materially different from their original versions, with only minor spelling differences. Of course, how is "Lunk" a sensible name? Or, for that matter, "Zor Prime", or "Musica, Allegra, and Octavia"... or to really start hitting below the belt, "Kazianna Hesh", "Veidt", "Janice Em2", "Corg", and "Eli Anatole Leonard"? #5. Another writ of "bullshit by false example" please... "empowered women"? They reduce tough gal Miriya to a housewife and KEEP HER THERE, reducing her role in the story to virtually nothing and then deleting her outright. Lisa Hayes gets it in the arse after everyone in the original series forgets she's in charge and refers to Admiral RICK Hunter, and then she gets injured while waiting to take her RETIREMENT so she can stay at home popping out babies in Prelude, then breaks down after she has a miscarriage, quits the service, and becomes a token diplomat with no authority. Dana Sterling isn't an empowered woman, he cites examples of what a ditz she is... risking her subordinates lives so she can afford a new dress, reading magazines during briefings and during operations, she's self-centered, lazy, vain, and more than a bit stupid. Nova Satori and Marie Crystal both end up bowing out and taking minor roles so Dana can have center stage. The most empowered woman in the "New Generation" is a man disguised as a woman. Let's have a look at empowered women in Macross... Milia Jenius marries a top ace, has seven kids, adopts another, and does it all while kicking ass and taking names as a fighter ace, test pilot, flight trainer, and later mayor of an entire city and is shown to be fully capable of kicking ass and taking names at 50+. Misa Hayase... marries, has a kid, and commands an entire colony fleet. Sylvie Gena is one of the top Valkyrie pilots in the Sol system at only age 17. Ishtar defies her entire race and saves her people from annihilation at the hands of their commander before going off to spread songs of peace and love to the stars. Mylene Jenius, Emilia Jenius, and Veffidas Feaze help defeat a threat to the entire galaxy with nothing but the power of song and their own determination. I don't need to bring up the contributions of Sheryl Nome, Ranka Lee, Grace O'Connor, and Catherine Glass, since we've all seen that show recently. #4. Shorten this to "Robotech inspired fewer videogames" and you have the centerpiece of this argument. It only inspired fewer BAD videogames because it only ever inspired a handful of videogames to begin with, most of which were STILL bad... like the cell phone games and Robotech: Invasion. #3. Whether a sequel is "good" or "bad" is a subjective value judgment, though it cannot be argued that Robotech has more FAILED sequels and that Macross has inspired more successful sequels. #2. No it didn't result in Clash of the Bionoids... but it DID result in a hamhanded hackjob rewrite of Megazone 23, and a number of other spectacular failures. #1. If you're a big fan of 80's synth-pop, then yes... otherwise, no.