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tout-puissant

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Everything posted by tout-puissant

  1. tout-puissant
    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
  2. tout-puissant
    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
  3. tout-puissant
    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
  4. tout-puissant
    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
  5. tout-puissant
    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
  6. tout-puissant
    At this point I'd lay odds on the main cannon(s) being in the booms, but with each boom housing its own cannon in a sort of steeping stone to the more self-contained weapon versus the tuning fork configuration. If Elysion is indeed a precursor to Quarter, having some visual nods to the older SDF style designs would b really cool... We don't really have any clues as to the age of the Elysion, though we see in a couple places that the paint is worn on the Aether's flight deck when Hayate is dangling his legs off of it in one episode. That's tough to judge though, since most real-world naval vessels and even planes have to repaint all the time to deal with corrosion from atmosphere or water. Mark
  7. tout-puissant
    Mark
  8. tout-puissant
    Hey, Elysion is the Macross version of Zeta Gundam's Dogosse Giar! http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Dogosse_Giar-class The ship mode is better than Quarter, but only just - and I'm a fan of the latter. The split prow is what makes the difference, IMO. With the twin booms sticking up front and not really connected on Quarter, the ship really was just a crouching version of the robot mode. Same thing on Elysion, but they've got the legs folding up more compactly and the shoulders also closer to the centreline, which improves the spaceship model silhouette tremendously. I didn't *hate* the Quarter design, it just felt unfinished in many ways. However, there are still things carried over from Quarter that stick out (literally). The vertical towers above Elysion's head in robot mode simply flip backwards when transformed, just as on Quarter; and the head unit doesn't shift around at all either. Not BAD choices, but it doesn't do as much to hide the humanoid form.I do wonder what this means for any potential Macross cannon on this ship. There really OUGHT to be one, but where? And re: the bridge, we've seen it several times now, deliberately not in full view - as on Frontier, we'll likely have to wait until Elysion actually takes off for us to see the set piece in all its glory. In any case, it seems to be a larger version of the Quarter bridge, with both aft bunny stations off to one side, but on two levels with the forward bunny stations and a larger chair for Captain Johnson isolated a couple steps down from the other stations. It'll be worth the wait to see, I'm sure. Mark
  9. tout-puissant
    Loved the episode. The VF-31 feels more rounded compared to the Messiah, visually as well as dramatically. The '25 always just seemed to be just *there* with no other purpose than to be the latest plane. Here I think we get the impression that the Seigfried is customized specifically for what our heroes are meant to be doing, which endears it to us in the audience. And who is Lady M? Assuming they're teasing an existing Macross character, I agree that Mylene would be the best choice. She'd be 36 and still smokin' hot, if her mom's genes have anything to say about it, plus thematically she has a rational stake in operating a Sound Force esque team to save the galaxy. Second up would be Miria (who in her late 60s would ALSO still be smokin' hot, I'm sure) or slightly more likely one of her kids. Thematically I think it would be great to explore the notion that Mirage is there because of her family ties over being a genuine Jenius, as if THAT weren't pressure enough. But who else could it be? Not likely Myung, she'd be the sort of producer to pull this sort of thing off but I doubt they'd mine Macross Plus for any sort of storyline, despite it including things like song-induced mind control. Minmei? Naw, SK has pretty consistently said that her story is over (thus likely precluding Misa as well). And of course Mao has apparently left our mortal coil behind. Of course, this whole thing could be SK's latest red herring and it's a completely new character who gets introduced Green Ranger style to kick butt halfway through the series. Or, we just see a one-second scene as at the end of Frontier where it's revealed that the WHOLE THING was orchestrated by one zealous otaku. Mark
  10. tout-puissant
    I can respect that viewpoint and disagree with it at the same time. I'm the type to take visual evidence over one mention in a book written long before Frontier or Delta came out, and try to rationalize it rather than dismiss it as an animation error / inconsistency (so yes, I think the erronious VF-1 with three head lasers in the original SDF Macross IS a thing, despite NO literature backing it up). IMO, Macross 1 is absolutely a possibility but far from a firm yes. We can discuss this for hours without a firm conclusion either way - that's what makes us nerds for this thing, after all! Mark
  11. tout-puissant
    Granted, if it's written somewhere it's likely to have been the intent at the time. But who knows for sure, it's not the first time something in print was later contradicted by visual evidence - or as noted above, the shell could have been jettisoned or lost along the way. Since we don't see an NMC for sure, and since the City ship here looks both different and smaller than the ones in the picture I linked, I think that it could easily NOT be Macross 1, as much as I'd love to have that consistency maintained. Mark
  12. tout-puissant
    That little blob of a ship is not likely anything special. And while the evidence suggests that Ragna could have been initially settled by the Macross 1 fleet (or perhaps just a part of it, since the the one shot in the Macross 7 intro segment shows FOUR Battle/City ship combos of two distinct designs), there's enough leeway to interpret it as any of the other early NMC fleets. We don't know for sure when they started building CIty ships with the clamshells, or if EVERY ship after Macross 5 (at the earliest) had them; so it could concievably be anyone from Macross 1-4 within reason. http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/newmacross/newmacross1.jpg Now, why would two ships potentially launched years apart end up within a few hundred light years of each other at roughly the same time? That's not THAT much of a stretch... Macross 5 and 7 were in the same neck of the woods after all, and then Frontier and Galaxy ended up together as well. In both cases they were separated by two fleet designations and at LEAST a couple years between launches. Coming back to Ragna and Windermere, they could have launched years apart but their courses and the length of their stopovers would bring them together at about the same time. Alternatively, the Megaroad could have passed Ragna, seen the native population as nice and friendly, and marked it for a visit by the next available colony while they moved on to Windermere which was better suited to their tastes (or something). A next fleet to launch from Earth / Eden figured on cutting out the "wandering space for decades" thing and booted it straight for Ragna. Mark
  13. tout-puissant
    The older Windemere fighters are a cross between the SV-51 from Macross Zero and the real-life F-104 Starfighter. Can't really see if they're transformable, but the way it's animated suggests it's a CG model - and if so, if it's transformable that's already built-in. Given the plot showing a LOT of stuff originating seven years ago when these ships were flying, I'm guessing we'll see these things in action via flashback at some point - and if so, we'll also see whatever NUNS was flying against them. Probably the ubiquitous VF-171, but who knows - the VF-25 is TECHNICALLY available... There's been some discussion on the episode thread about WHAT ships did the colonization forty years ago, which is also technical discussion. Obviously a Megaroad-class ship made contact with Windermere, which if it happened in the late 2020s means they'd probably run out of repurposed Zentradi ships to act as the escort fleet by that point... The escorts were not quite discernable, but one of them looked to be the model seen later over Vordor, itself perhaps a variant on the "Macross Galaxy refugee ship" from Frontier (with an asymmetrical forward end, perhaps even based on Quarter?). Speaking of which, the smaller ships are definitely based on the Deneb-class ships from the same fleet, though are not identical. One wonders who makes these things? As for the fleet that landed on Ragna (did they just shore up like that, all at once? No one analyzes a planet for months from orbit, determining a good place to land an advance party to make first contact? How un-Trekkish..), the island/city ship that landed is the one we see in the central city in the present day. We can't really tell if the ship that's attached to the front is a New Macross class carrier or whatever Elysion is, but the escorts are the stock models for the Northampton / Uraga / Stealth Cruiser we've already seen, suggesting the latter is an older design that simply wasn't seen in Macross Plus / 7 for whatever reason. The City ship itself seems never to have had a clamshell, suggesting it was an earlier design, but still not NECESSARILY a New Macross class ship. Oh, and on the Aether, we see that the darkened room they were using in the first episode is their briefing room, though who knows if they have several identical rooms like it on the carrier ships and the Elysion herself. Comfy enough place, though. Got plants and everything. Mark
  14. tout-puissant
    The addition of CG basically canned the M+ / M7 looks. The CG models don't "lie" as easily as hand-drawn perspectives and so to be consistent the Battroid modes of various Valkyries suddenly got a LOT skinnier to match the sleek fighter modes. Still, there's room for some innovation, mostly around where to put the extra bits and bobs that aren't the main limbs. Putting the carnards on the shoulders on the VF-30/31s was a nice touch, and the Sv-262 transverse limb arrangement allows some bigger / evil-er shoulders to be squished in there, for example. I like the VF-171. It's bascally the VF-11 of the current generation, the trusty workhorse that's been around in at least two series. Chronologically speaking, the VF-17 series has been around longer than bascially ANY of the main characters have been alive (first flight was 2035, making senior pilot Arad one year old at the time). It's been the ubiquitous UNS/NUNS fighter for two decades, too. No surprise any amateur pilot can feel they can just jump into one and save the day. Mark PS - Ranka Beach. Ha!
  15. tout-puissant
    Hah! Whaddya know. SK being playful. Mark
  16. tout-puissant
    It's in the OP, you can see the what looks like Elysion's right hand in a sort of karate chop pose with the not-Aether ship partially covering it. Not sure if that's deliberate or not, you can't see any fingers in a similar shot of the Aether departing, in this week's episode. Mark
  17. tout-puissant
    The new images have a caption underneath... I can only read the katakana, but it seems to indicate that the drones might be called "Lear Draken" (Ri-ru Do-ra-ke-n). "Ri-ru" can be interpreted as "Real" or "Leeloo" as well (especially if SK liked "The Fifth Element" movie), so I could be wrong. The same caption mentions the leg-mounted missle pods, which suggests that "Lear Draken" is referring to the drones. Can anyone with a better command of kanji offer some more clues? Mark
  18. tout-puissant
    The gunship had already been taken out by Battle Galaxy's own cannon attack. They pretty much HAD to do what they did with the ARMD-L! Mark
  19. tout-puissant
    Come to think of it, on Quarter the arms and the two doohickeys aft of the main superstructure were ALL supposed to be capable of independent flight - the two smaller ones were called "BASTER-L" and "BASTER-R" (Buster?), and were independent "battery warships", whatever that means. They were never seen actually doing anything except flip over as the Quarter transformed. Elysion has equivalent limbs, so perhaps the two tower structures have a similar purpose. They look about the same as it is, being somewhere between the SDF-1 Macross design and that of Quarter. I'd love to see a DX of Elysion. Mind you, I'm still waiting for the New Macross class, but... Mark
  20. tout-puissant
    True enough. But just imagine the awesomeness. Re: The CF VF-171s, I'm sure they were from the local garrison. Among things, their markings and pilot suits featured the usual NUNS logos. Come to think of it, if Ragna has ONLY the Elysion as its garrison ship, it's rather less well defended than some planets. Ah-Shahal had a fair-size fleet in orbit, including the trusty Northampton, Guantanamo and Uraga class ships, plus the Stealth carriers first seen in Frontier. This may add up to several hundred fighters. Is Ragna so backwater that they don't need it? Or is the Chaos gang all they figure they need? Presumably the human settlement was established when Elysion or some other ship landed with that (still looks smaller than City 7) dome in tow. Were they on their lonesome, or did that fleet get reassigned and had the Elysion plopped in place as a permanent guardian? Interesting speculation to be sure. Mark
  21. tout-puissant
    I've been in civil props, so I can imagine an order of magnitude worse than that. However, ever since the very first Macross they've never had ANY problem hearing or speaking with anyone, be it on the comm or to anyone else in the cockpit (even if it was open to the outside while moving!). I've always figured it was some sort of over-technology sound insulation that canceled noise and amplified speech in a way we couldn't possibly conceive. At least Macross Zero seemed to show that the pre-Macross tech F-14s still had people putting their masks on to talk with anyone. Mark
  22. tout-puissant
    Maybe, maybe not. Sheryl wore a suit in the first episode of Frontier, but later she seemed to not be wearing one when she got changed between songs even though that concert was basically a repeat of the first. In later usages for costume changes (notably in the Frontier finale), both Sheryl and Ranka seemed to change without putting any sort of suit on; however it could just have easily been projected onto them by their respective stages aboard Quarter and Battle Frontier. In the movies, both of them performed with the same glowey sort of effect that we see Walkure have here when they're on stage; so it could be similar technology. Still, the glow may indicate their suits' built in fold receptor tech working, since at points in this week's episode some of them are not glowing while their outfits are still there. I think the evidence points to the use of multiple technologies for holography and probably PPB projection, whether it be in whatever they're wearing, on the stage, or even from the fighters. I'm willing to be that Kawamori and co. have a general idea of what's making it all work, but like everything else in these shows we're expected to sit back, enjoy what we're seeing, and trust in the notion that something indistinguishable from magic is at work here. I agree it's getting close to my personal limit for suspension for disbelief, but my wife and I watch this show in the same session as Sailor Moon Crystal, so we're not too far from accepting more of the same. Mark
  23. tout-puissant
    On helmets... It's not like a pilot really NEEDS one, given the inertial dampening qualities of most Valkyries (Hikaru did it in a couple instances of Macross, and Basara went bascially his whole series without one). It follows that in a modern VF-31, if anything hit him with enough force to overpower whatever the inertial dampeners can handle, he'd end up as chunky salsa on the inside of the cockpit no matter what. The Knights seem to do without them as well, unless they're just holographed out as what seems to be the case Walkure's outfits. Still, they make a big deal of modifying Hayate's plane so he can fly without one. In practice, he doesn't need one for HUD properties either since they seem perfectly okay with free-floating displays anywhere they're actually needed, plus the ones one the actual screens in front of him. But what happens when he wants to do the Zero/Frontier googly-eye missile lock-on? Deploy the Ex-Gear? On the ships... Yeah, it's written ELYSION on the back of its bridge in big red letters. No missing out that this is the intended spelling at this point. Cool name for the carrier. I'm willing to bet the other carrier carries the Elysion's complement of CF fighters... The ship seems to be the sole vessel of Ragna's garrison (that we know of), and if it is, thus it makes sense it doesn't go anywhere until the fight comes to them, sending off these cool carrier arms to do the mission at hand. On that, the Aether seems to transform for space / interstellar operations, which I *suppose* may make sense in certain scenarios when there's no gravity. Looking at screencaps, the carrier deck splits into three and the outboard sponsons angle down. This reveals additional bays from which fighters can launch along the catapult rails instead of the upper deck - which may still be able to launch craft? It does make a certain amount of sense. But we really haven't seen the bridge of the Aether, have we? Some of the gang were monitoring things from a darkened room in the first episode, which may have had consoles in the background in addition to some desk space for Kaname's laptop. That might be the bridge... And hey, anyone notice that the Aether appears to move through fold space without the characteristic "afterimage" effects seen in other Macross series? Frontier seems to have largely ignored them except in the first episode, but most of the rest had them. Omission, or advancing technology? On Walkure's outfits... So is there a consensus on how these things work? Extrapolating from what Sheryl was wearing in the first episode of Frontier, I'd always figured that they were wearing some sort of skin-tight suit which includes (in Delta) some kind of advanced holography to make it appear that they're wearing whatever costume they want. In episode 1, Reina is wearing a full-on spacesuit, helmet included. Where does that go when she pops into her performance gear? I'd like to think that they could be wearing them the whole time - sending them out into an open combat zone without head protection really seems silly. The girls' normal performance outfit includes a sort of hip-mounted crinoline visible on all their outfits (with variations) which contains the jet thrusters we've seen them use even when they swap to the outfits they use in Episode 4. We may never see these suits when they're "off", but I hope they address this in some fashion since they spend a whole lot of time on the mechanics of the rest of the universe... It seems that they haven't quite reached the level of magical matter synthesis like on Star Trek, but they might be getting close. Is this the Macross franchise's take on tactile and haptic feedback? Perhaps the suit has some PPB field that can imitate the fabric and hair to a certain extent? Mark
  24. tout-puissant
    Having been enslaved by Neko Atsume for much of the past year, I've started naming these mercats. The one that shows up at Ragnyannyan is Tubbs, obviously. Mark
  25. tout-puissant
    We still haven't gotten a very good look at the bridge of the Elysium. Until we do, we're only given a few hints at what the interior looks like from when we see Arad, Chuck, Earnest and the bridge bunnies during the dogfight in Episode 3. From the looks of it, it's largely Quarter-esque in layout, albeit with the bunny stations being elevated on a rear deck above the level where he two classic forward stations sit (unmanned in this episode), plus Earnest in his oversized chair. I suspect they had this layout so the captain isn't always looking down on his officers. Interestingly, the "Vanessa" bunny station off to the side (with the big dedicated holographic monitors) has a sort of warning or danger signage on the floor around it. Does it move around or something? Is that particular bunny off limits to everyone else? Hopefully we'll learn this secret. The aft stations seem nothing special, altough they are side by side a la Quarter, instead of being separated by the entry hatch as on the SDF-1. Admittedly it makes the inevitable gossip scenes easier. Mark
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