Keith

I reconsile things this way, everything in the TV seires is 100% canon, but the Zentradi there do not represent the whole of Zentradi in the universe. TV, DYRL, & 7 give us plenty of info to wrap everythign into a neat little canon package, with Frontier continuing to solidify it. When you take into account the long history of the Protoculture, and the extended period that they used Zentradi, it's quite easy to accept that different generations of Zentradi had different clothing and or sihp/mecha variations. When looking at the TV seires incarnation of the Bodolza fleet by itself, we're met with the cunnundrum of why male & female Zentradi, though entirely seperate, are still rolled up into one larger fleet, with the only main difference between them being the color of their ships (green & purpole), and the mecha they use (Regult & Quadran Rau). At which point you have to wonder just what the hell the Protoculture were thinking by keeping the genders seperate, but still maintaining them in the same side of their fighting force. DYRL goes to lengths to correct this issue, showing us males & females on opposite ends of a conflict, with dramatically different ship designs, problem being they got complete wardrobe makovers too. In addition to that, the technology used by Bodolza is far more advanced & bio-mechanical. Then 7 comes along, and reconsiles the two issues. From that series we learn that yes, the males & females were used on opposite sides of the Protoculture conflict. But due to severe losses against the PD/SA, the civil war was resolved, and Zentradi fleets were combined to maximize firepower. In this instance, it's easy to see how a female battalian could come under Bodolza's command, and resources would result in male hardwar (capitol ships) would fall into female use, i.e. necessity required it. In different circumstances, such as the Chloe fleet, females would maintain standard issue equipment, i.e. the ship & uniform styles seen in DYRL. As you mentioned, an apparent anomoly in why Milia would hae her classic VF-1J, and TV series style uniform, in addition to Basara being portrayed with a DYRL styled uniform would seem to conflict at first. But then when you take into account that everything (including mecha & unform designs) did happen as of the 2009-2012 era, while mecha & unifrom designs advanced to the DYRL stage by the 2030 era, you have a clear reason of why both styles can appear together. Its the same issue when you look at the Zentradi in Frontier. Some here are shown with TV style unifroms, some shown with DYRL style unifforms, all apparently equipped with male paint varients of Quadran Rau. At first, the whole situation appears to be a contradiction, but when you take into account that the group could easily be combined of two different generations of Zentradi (one decended from an earlier generation that used TV style unifroms, one descended from a later generation that used DYRL style uniforms), and all likely getting provisional mecha allocations of what was available to them at the time, Q-Rau, you have an easy explanation of why things appear as they do. Yes, we all know the designs & concepts shown in DYRL weren't concieved of when the TV series first aired, and yes there was a period where Kawamori did state that both versions were alternate takes on the same universe (which isn't an uncommon practice at all in anime), he also wisely realized that there were plenty of fans of both interpretations, and alienatign either fanbase would be a mistake. That's why I believe when finaly being coerced into continuing the franchise, he took great care in bringing the two canons together in a believable manner. Not an easy thing to do, but I think it worked. So when the question comes up, was Bodolza's ship a giant space turd, or was he a head in a jar in a giant space venus fly trap, the answer is clearly he captained a giant space turd. However, in later years, the U.N. Spacy did come across giant fly traps lead by heads in jars, and with those being the more common of the Zentrradi fleets after SW1, that was the style depicted in DYRL. For all we know, Bodolza had the last giant space turd ship that Earth has seen, and with that being of an older design, it would be the less common type to come across. The same may be true for female lfeets, likely not many remained that had been integraded into male fleets, with the more common rogue type being of the more familiar Meltran DYRL style designs. While we don't have any source clearly stating that the Protoculture made different generations of Zentradi tech, we do have information showing that the Protoculture did seek to escelate their combat ability (Evil), so its not so much of a leap to believe that they'd try to imprve the Zentradi hardware in succesive generations. My long winded point is that there doesn't need to be a fracture between oldschool/newschool Macross fans. Enough care was taken to reconsole the different canons so that we can have sequals like 7 & Frontier that appael to both. But then some people will never be happy, wanting things either one way, or another way. Me, I'm fine believing that the Macross was red white & blue, with the Daedelus & Prometheus until 2012, when it was refitted to be bigger, silver, & had newly built ARMD carriers. I'm also fine believing that the Laplamiz fleet flew in purple Zentradi turds under Bodolza's command, but other "unmixed" Meltran fleets like the Chloe fleet exist out there with pretter more mechanical looking ship designs. But that's me.

Well, if we're lucky, the whole live action movie thing will fall through, HG will finally go bankrupt, Bandai will swoop in and swallow them up, and things can go back to business as usual for Macross fans. Robotech fans won't care, since they're so used to crappy fanfiction by now anyway

Shhh, don't tell me about new Yamato releases, I've decided that if I pretend they don't exist, I won't be insanely driven to buy them You can't imagine how hard it was passing on the VF-0S & 1/60 YF-19.

I keep forgetting to buy that damn movie! (robot jox). Not sure if it was posted anywhere else, but apparently at the recent AX, someone asked Bandai Ent about licening Macross Frontier. The studio rep there said one of the obsticles was HG still claiming rights over the Macross name in the U.S., so I doubt Big West will be playing nice with them over the robotech movie.

Did they fix the laggy xmb durring gameplay & whatever the hell was screwing with voice chat (well even more) in MGO?

I've had the first volume for over a week

DYRL is a movie within the canon, accept it!!

Oops, meant Ranka, it's now been corrected.

Also regarding Grace, I don't think there ever was anyone who was replaced, I think she intentionally raised/groomed Sheryl to fill the role that Ranka appeared & stole/took. Think about it, Sheryl was an orphan, then reappears as the Galactic Fiary Sheryl "Nome." Likely Grace was somehow involved with what happened to the 117, lost track of Ranka, and then came up with a backup (Sheryl) in her stead. For all we know, Sheryl's mother didn't leave her those earrings at all, it may have been Grace that stuck her with them as bait. Though by appearances, Sheryl didn't have enough, for lack of better terms, "spiritia" to activate them as bait.

Theory, maybe Mao is the Queen Vajra? Maybe the purpose of the 117th fleet was to re-engineer Protoculture through the blood of their direct decendants, and due to having her blood mixed with the AFOS, they accidentally created the Vajra. Perhaps Ranka went through an incomplete transformation, which is why her belly glows, and why she felt the pain of the attack on the hive. Just seems odd that when specifically in the Vajra's prssence, Mao Ranka had memories of her mother, and asked about the origins of Aimo. If that does turn out to be the case, then that would still leave the Shin/Sara issue for a later series/OVA/movie. Unless they pop up ofr soem reason at the crux of this. The Queen Vajra clearly didn't want to hurt Mao, it captured her, and put her in the protective bubble to prevent Alto from snagging her. You watch, the end of this series will involve the Vajra evolving into a more human like species.

I'd honestly settle for SF 4 having cel shading like these characters, but oh well.

At this point, nothing coming in the series will surprise me. Though taking a look at the picture of Ranka's mom, the bust line & hair color, as well as the tribal style necklace all lead to the possability of it being Mao.

I'm impressed that they went this direction, and a little dissapointed they didn't give more explanation for what was there. But all in all, a great mislead. At the very least, something interesting better come of the information Alto downloaded from the Global's computer. Aside from that, I obviously concede the multi-Macross class issue, though i was right about it being destroyed

Apparently that's all crazy talk in the face of near fanfic speculation levels

I only played fo ra copule hours last night, and only switched through the xmb to test it, but no problems. Though the XMB does seem a bit laggy when you're playing a game.

I stopped dealing with Best Buy after they decided they needed to take a "rubbing" of my credit card, despite the fact that it went through with the slide, compute charged it, and I signed the receipt. I promptly told them where they can stick their rubbing, and had the transaction refunded (since they wouldn't let me leave with my items if I didn't let them take a rubbing). Suffice it to say, I'm quite done with their idiocy.

Exactly how is a convoluted and unsupported claim that there are suddenly mutliple ships that look like the Macross "the simplist answer." The simplist answer is that the damn thing is the Macross. As for fold drives, what the hell do you think they did durring the refit? Do you honestly mean to tell me you'd believe that multiple look alike ships (with fold drives) being built are more likely than "1" new fold drive being built? come on!

Doesn't seem to be a mic issue from what I can tell, seems to be a software issue.

Hopefully Gundam Battle Universe will feature wider playfields. If it's fixed there, it'll befinately be fixed in Ace Frontier.

In lieau of replying to you, I want to to make this your new Mantra: "Abscence of evidence is not evidence. The burdon of proof lies on the one trying to prove something thats not htere, not disproving something that's not there."

Egging will get you nowhere, you never found Waldo. As for the Macross's transformation, its 1 part accident, 1 part necessity (power), & 1 part Overtech. Protoculture technology, amongst many other things, allows a ship to seal off damn near any hole that may get punched in it, that's part of the modular nature. The engineers just exploided that ability to transofrm t he ships configuration, rather than use it as a repair ability. Either that, or there was a Chiba-esque eingineer on the reconstruction staff who loved super robots!

it'd be stupid to keep releasing Diebuster without Gunbuster, but stranger things have happened. If they re-released it with the proper music again, I'd be all over it.

They seriously need to upgrade the voice chat in the game. It seems entirely random who you'll be able to hear, and who you won't be. And it's usually not who you want to

Can't believe I missed this topic for this long. I can't wait to pre-order this. Having Basara as a playable character makes me feel not so bad about missing the old Gameboy Macross 7 game. And being from the makers of the Gundam Battle series near guaruntee's awesome. A sidenote, I used the excite translator on one of the pages listed above, and it translated Gamlin' sname as this "Chewing gum phosphorus" Truly one of the funniest mis-translations I've ever seen. http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/ http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080627/maf.htm

It's gotten at least one more sale, this episode finally wore me down, and I just ordered all the isngles currently out