tout-puissant

Hey, let's talk about the Ranga Island ship! Tiny plot spoilers for Episodes 13-14 specifically, but I'm not going to use code.

The dialogue has the Windermereans calling it literally the "Ragna Island Ship" (RIS), so that's what I'll use here.

Hayate mentions that the ship hasn't flown in thirty+ years, so at least 2037 - a year before the Macross 7 fleet left Earth. I know it's a source of ongoing conjecture as to *what* fleet colonized Ragna, whether it was Macross 1 or not. The evidence shows that a lid-less colony ship that *was* larger than the RIS had landed at some point (implied to be first contact), which used the same CGI model as Frontier with a few modifications, but not the same design seen in Macross 7, that was identified as the Macross 1 herself. My conjecture is that the RIS was PART of one of those early fleets, thus fitting the lidless design motif, and that after the big Macross fleet contacted the Ragnans, the RIS was dropped off and the rest of the fleet moved on. The next most likely alternative was that the RIS was part of some non-Macross expedition that came along later.

The ship that could have originally been mated to the RIS is almost certainly not Elysion. The standard docking port doesn't look at all like a compatible shape. Assuming the designers of the show gave enough forethought to it, I'd say that it was designed for a Guantanamo-class ship. They have a couple of those in the surviving fleet, but the docking area was apparently damaged (resulting in Elysion having to mount the RIS all doggie-style) so it follows that they wouldn't simply connect one of the ships they have to the traditional area. But who knows, maybe the docking area can be reconfigured on the fly to accept other designs.

As noted elsewhere, we're given a peek into the UNS/NUNS colonization policy, in that a ship be kept ready to evacuate the colonial population IN ADDITION to a capital warship being maintained as the centre of the local defense fleet. I'm guessing then that Island One from Frontier, assuming they stayed on Vajra, would have been repaired and kept at a certain state of readiness... Still, I'd imagine that newly-established colonies could be in potential danger for many years as they established themselves on a new planet, without knowing for sure who could invade from above, how the planet fares environmentally in the long run, or who could show up from the indigenous population and start eating them or something.

The RIS took off in a hurry, and supposedly without adequate preparation or even properly warming up the engines, causing them to fail after their fold... A little odd considering everyone knew that Ragna was in the crosshairs and they might need an escape ship for the local population should things go south, which is exactly what happened. After thirty years though, it's certainly possible that the policy to maintain the ship was relaxed somewhat to a mere token state of readiness to keep the locals happy.

And who knows what the actual local population was for the Ragna colony city was, but there seems to be a crunch of space for everyone aboard. Perhaps they simply hadn't been able to assign billets to everyone, but there were a whole lot of people milling around and chilling on blankets on the ground. It makes sense that they didn't have an instant evacuation plan besides "everyone get on the ship!", so I'd be interested in seeing how the RIS changes as they get around to fixing all the damage and even just turning all the lights on.

Mark

Mark

Is there an echo in here?

Downloading now..! Macross in the morning! Goodness awaits!

Mark

Dude, we rely on unpaid volunteer time to get unlicensed and unofficial work done. They`re under no obligation to do something they feel like doing to anyone`s timetable but their own, and we are in no position to question that. No other sub group has stepped up to do Delta, and we have no choice but to be patient for our mecha and musical porn.

And we can re-watch previous episodes. We`ll get our fix, just without the usual near-instant gratification factor.

Mark

English subs makes this a Macross fan must-have. I'm still concerned that HG will try to stop it, though, whether it's meant for sale anywhere but Japan or not.

Mark

On my umpteenth rewatch whilst waiting for new subs, I only just noticed that the two non-speaking crew on the Elysion bridge were taking a coffee break when Ernie Joe brought out the Hemera Cannon. The forward stations at 19:17 or so were completely empty! They also don't seem to be there earlier in the episode, though to be fair the seats' headrests may obscure them from view (the animation frame looks like it was re-used from a previous episode or two). They WERE there in the recycled footage from the previous episode as the SV passes Elysion on the way to fold.

Guessing this episode's artists didn't get the memo that those forward stations, traditionally associated with the flying and fighting of any Macross ship, should be manned when the ship is doing just that.

Mark

All things considered, I'm expecting Elysion to give a one-two punch if only because she has two limbs capable of doing it, and no cannon to nominally occupy the other limb. Only the Movie Edition SDF-1 was also capable of such an attack, but this time we'll see a case of "we're doing it because we CAN".

Also, I think we've just discovered the real reason the two Elysion carriers' outer decks fold down - all the better for punching. And I guess, when folded down in space, any fighters launching on the non-axial inner catapults (assuming that's what they do) would not launch directly into the opposite carrier.

Mark

But we haven't really SEEN that, have we? All she's done so far is fold and defold and look really threatening which the kid was singing, without firing a shot. We have no idea of her offensive or defensive capabilities. For all we know, without the song, the Sigur Valens is a big white elephant.

Mark

Agreed. After all, remember when THIS used to be a thing?

Mark

Haya dance if he wants to. He can leave his friends behind...

Mark

Well, remember, the pre-Island Cluster domeships were much, MUCH smaller than the Macross Frontier's Island-1. The dome was only a couple hundred meters high, and pretty much every example except the original Macross-1 had buildings poking through the dome. It wasn't until the fifth-generation emigrant ships where you had a dome so large that it peaked at multiple kilometers high.

Based on its design and appearance, it's almost certain that the emigrant ship that discovered Ragna was one of the initial New Macross-class emigrant ships... either Macross-1 or Macross-2. As I'd explained in an earlier post, we know that by the time Macross-5 was completed and launched the armored shell had become a standard feature and this ship clearly doesn't have one. The whereabouts of the Macross-3 and the Macross-4 are well known, so it must be either Macross-1 or Macross-2

I understand that reasoning and can't deny the possibility. My point though is that the city ship on Ragna is far smaller than any of the New Macross City ships seen in Macross 7. There were several of those designs as you've pointed out, with and without the shell, but the Ragnan ship is a fraction of the size of even those ships, which were around 5000m long (according to the M7 lineart). The Ragna ship is even smaller, perhaps smaller in length than an NMBC.

Thus, my conclusion is that *if* Ragna was first colonized by Macross-1 or -2, the colony ship we see in Delta is not *the* City ship, but one of the smaller ones that accompanied it. Heck, we see two distinct dome ship designs in the infamous Macross-1 "historical" pic from M7, though it's not conclusive if the background ships they're mated to are NMBC or Uraga, in my estimation. Wouldn't surprise me that they had even smaller versions and one of them decided to stay on Ragna while the rest of the fleet moved on (or the other ships were disassembled for some reason).

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/newmacross/newmacross1.jpg

Yeah, that struck me as a poor decision too... even if the Macross Elysion was flying almost entirely on gravity control, skimming the rooftops with a skyscraper-sized battleship is hardly going to set the public at ease. They shouldn't have even needed to burn the main engines like that, since the ship is perfectly capable of ascending under gravity control... unless they'd maneuvered out over a colossal clam bed and decided to give the civilians a celebratory clam bake on the way out of town?

I know it's obviously meant to be a homage to the original series, but they seem to have forgot that when the SDF-1 Macross did that it was a bit of deliberately risky flying Global ordered to bully the UN Forces brass into letting him disembark the civilians... it was intended to scare people.

Yeah, which is what I meant. However, to be fair, we're decades on from those days and many people could be used to giant ships floating over their heads (starting from when the aforementioned colony ship first arrived, in the case of Ragna). And even it *we* are used to big jets flying around, but we still have safety rule preventing them from buzzing the tops of our downtowns for effect.

Mark

PS - Isn't it great that Elysion would not lift off from its resting place, but instead terrify everyone while flying directly over their city as it maneuvered to the water? I get that they probably wanted to use the ocean as a way to baffle the blast from the engines as she lifted off (much as they do in a real-life rocket launches), but why not go further out to sea instead of bathing every citizen in hot boiling steam in the process? To say nothing of the fish and mercats turned into cooked foodstuffs?

Agreed. And yes, the M5 fleet designs did all show up, however briefly, as they landed on Rax and in the aftermath that the FB gang explored. It does stand to reason that those ships (and certainly the refitted Nupitet-Vergiwefiwjhszrjh@%&%!! also in the fleet) would have some adaptation for larger-than-average crew, assuming that they were at all common post-micronization.

Still, the shots of the (replacement?) Al-Shahal fleet this week goes to show just how much Satelight is leveraging their investment. Seeing four types of NUNS ships in tight formation like that was awesome.

Whilst re-watching the Elysion launch sequence today (because AWESOME), I just have to recall that there should STILL be no reason for her to be landed in its humanoid mode - so much of the internal infrastructure would have to have the gravity control on 24/7, or otherwise be oriented to be workable (those leg-mounted flight decks for example). I'm guessing that SK simply wanted the visual aesthetic of a giant spaceship robot looming over a city as in SDFM, or else the Ragnan locals had a petition to have Elysion that way, because AWESOME.

Mark

Well, the Windermerean ships are at least heavily modified versions of the ships used by the Macross Galaxy fleet, if not outright new models. Personally, I'd tend towards the latter, just using established silhouettes for the old models. Heck, this week we see a couple apparently used by Chaos, floating around in the far background above the Elysion as the reinforcements arrived - and from what I saw, they were hand-drawn!

Speaking of models, I was looking at the domed colony ship in the Ragnan harbor as Elysion was taking off. I think that it's also hand-drawn, and going by its scale, it's DEFINITELY much smaller than the typical City-esque ship seen in Macross 7. Elysion towers over it, and if she is indeed some 823 meters tall (?), the dome ship can't be more than a kilometer or so long... Now, the model of the dome ship landing on Ragna really looked to me like a re-use of the Island 1 model with a few modifications manually added (namely the city skyline visible within), so while the intend MAY be that this ship and the one that landed were one and the same, visual evidence suggests that they were not.

Back to the Elysion, we *finally* get to see her bridge in all its glory! It's a riff off of the Macross Quarter, without a doubt. However, the heretofore-practically-unseen forward stations are enormous compared to any comparable stations from any other Macross. This suggests to me that Elysion was at least partly designed to have Earnest-sized Zentradi ergomonics in mind. In addition to the giant forward stations (which are elevated above the deck they're sitting on, another change), the stairs leading down to their deck level are much larger than human standard; also the rear door looks like it has a smaller door set within it that can open for human-standard sized people OR larger humanoids. I wonder what the reasoning behind this is; for the most part Zentradi micronized to standard human sizes. Are we seeing some alien accessibility design compromises in play here?

Mark

Should I add her to my WAIFULIST? http://i.imgur.com/a6Amttb.png

Well, when the Knights made their big debut in episode 4, that battle just sorta ended as well - so there is precedent. Who knows if they were doing a specific mission other than declaring war in a spectacular fashion, but at the time they were in the position to wipe everyone out, and instead both sides just buggered off back home between episodes. That did bug me a bit.

Mark

Also, if you accept that you're watching a movie version, some dramatic license is expected. Or alternatively, they were using a more advanced version of the VF-1 as a stand-in for an actual VF-1 to fly through a bridge for that stunt shot.

Mark

While I'd like to see more bot on bot action as well, it'd have to be justified, and IMO that justification just isn't there as much as in other shows. Valkyries were made to transform specifically to fight giant aliens hand-to-hand, humanoid or otherwise, because that's what those aliens can do. Delta doesn't have that kind of antagonist, and so there's no real need to transform.

Heck, even when they DO transform to fight, our Chaos heroes are usually doing it in response to another giant robot poncing around blowing stuff up. That sounds perfectly reasonable. IRL, if you can destroy an enemy at range, you darn well do. You stay distant, quick , and maneuverable, and for a Valkyire you do all this in fighter mode. Now, if the bad guy is close enough to punch you, then you better be ready to punch back - so yes, transform. In Delta the bad robots are usually crazy Var-inflicted combat zombies, so being in close combat mode by default makes a certain amount of sense. But the Knights are sane, educated people, and so they will fight in fighter mode whenever they can.

In this episode, anyone went to Gerwalk only when they landing or on the ground, which is again the whole point of that mode (it also lets pretty girls see you when you're asking them to sing). Again, justifiable. Maybe it's disappointing that we aren't seeing the robots, but the fighters here are variable and they use it when they need to, not when they want to.

Mark

They DID deploy the multidrones - Kaname is seen with some right after Messer talks with her. Presumably they can't quite fend an Sv-262's main cannon, so either they didn't try or they were already tasked with other defensive functions.

Mark

Also, the katakana for the drones pretty much spells them out as "Lil Draken", and not "little" - Ri-ru, not Ri-to-ru or somesuch. I got schooled on that earlier on in this thread.

Mark

Both Macross 7 and Frontier had ONE hardcore Minmay fanboy orchestrating a lot of the technology and backstory of our team of heroes. I'm betting that Lady M is of this ilk - so if not someone we already know, then someone new using the omnipresent Minmay legacy to power Chaos in their fight.

(Still want it to be a super-hot, thirty-something Mylene, though)

Mark

I was in Japan in January, and not surprisingly there was not much Delta stuff going around (I spotted some posters and a cardboard standee in Osaka's Den Den Town). Wasn't too disappointed, as the series proper had yet to begin and the merchandising machine was still toiling away prior to the full premiere.

But serendipitously I find myself returning to Japan in October (!!!), and so I'm wondering if the finale episode airdate has been announced somewhere or can be calculated? Assuming this is a 2-cour series like last time and there are no breaks, episode 24 would air on September 11 and if the show made it to episode 26, that would be September 25. I really doubt Delta will have a sequel season as has happened with some other franchises, but I guess we could still be pleasantly surprised...

I'll be back in the latter half of October and as such I'm guessing there will be plenty of merch to avail myself of, from soundtracks to model kits to figures for the mass market, to take advantage of the hype. DX and more collectors-end toys I'm guessing will be a while after that, so I won't hold up hopes of having much beyond the first generation of VF-31 to look at...

Mark

I'm guessing that the Hemera had *just* been deployed on a mission when the Knights did their diversionary recon thing; she was then immediately recalled and the 31A reinforcements were in fact from that carrier. They could have made a slightly bigger deal of it... OTOH, why weren't there more fighters launched from the Aether? Are they still short a squadron after the Knights tore through the CFs back in episode 6?

Mark