Batou

Definitely "because it's Macross". Macross is the Alpha and Omega (nyuk nyuk), as far as I'm concerned, and this series has exceeded my expectations at just about every turn so far. If this had turned out more silly a la M7, I might sing a very different tune, but this has so far been the Macross series I've been wanting to see since the original series.

I still say you guys are reading too much into it. The 11's, 19's, and 21/22's were featured in two series already, and Kawamori has moved on to something new. They're still cool, and we may see them make cameos, but they're just old old old designs now. Any official explanation released will just be justification for why he's made the design/story choices he's made. He's the George Lucas of the Macross world, and if he wants to reshoot the original Macross series digitally inserting Jar Jar in scenes and changing all the valks into pink flying unicorns that shoot rainbow confetti out of their horns, he's going to do it. And someone will create an "official" explanation as to how this is supposed to fit into continuity and make sense. And I'm sure we'd see threads at MW bitterly debating the muzzle velocity of rainbow confetti soon after.

I think trying to assign any "real world" explanation (e.g., "the '19 was too expensive") is pointless. Anything "officially" released will just be convenient excuses for Kawamori to use new/updated designs. I get the impression the only ones looking for continuity or a sense of logic in the Macross universe are the obsessive otaku in strange Internet forum sites ... (looks over shoulder)

I agree that their translation seems more accurate (for the most part), but I gave a shot at burning them to dvd and the video quality compared to AiA was just so far off I lost interest. Burning AiA to disk using Nero Vision (yeah, it sucks, but it's all I have) has yielded fantastic results for me. You really have to get in close and squint to see any hints of video compression, artifacting, etc. It's absolutely gorgeous, and I recommend everyone try watching this on a big hi-def screen (as opposed to your computer monitor, no matter what resolutions it supports). Even at just 720p it looks amazing. Edit in: I have to add, in AiA's defense, their translations just keep getting better and better. Ep 5 was by far the best version released to date, IMHO. The extra time they took with it really shows.

Yeah, looking at those fighers parked on the deck, it doesn't look any larger than a present-day aircraft carrier. I'd say it's about the same size as old Prometheus, or maybe one of the ARMD's. Did they ever release official specs? We'll be squabbling on this one for months if not ... So are all those turrets you see on Quarter controlled by computer, or is sms squirreling away a crew big enough to man that ship? 1/4 the size nothing, that thing is still huge and would take a large number of hands to make battle ready. They have to have some red shirts to blow to atoms, after all. So many questions ... Does it have any destroids pop out of hatches and shoot stuff? Can it dock with Battle 25 a la Daedelus and smack some uppity hoes around? When does the new one come out? (sigh)

You might try watching them with a different player. mkv's are practically unwatchable using vlc on my system, but gom player just chews through them without a sweat (pity, bc gom's subtittles are dodgy). If your computer can decode an avi at an acceptable framefrate, there's no reason it shouldn't be able to do the same with mkv's. If all you're using is windows media player (), I'd try some of the alternatives. You shouldn't need a hotrod computer to watch these things.

Diamond Crevasse, I think.

Judging from the results, I think it was worth the wait. Don't know if any of those guys are reading this, but outstanding job on Ep 5. That was AiA's best work yet, and all that extra work going into such a dialog-heavy (that appears to be setting up the plot for the next few ep's, I'd imagine) really paid off. I'd buy you guys a drink and let you grope my sister if I knew who you were. And if I had a sister. I think I'd live on a yacht in the Mediterranean, being fed hand-peeled grapes by a crack team of Swedish models who were trained in the art of ninjitsu. They would kidnap Kawamori-sama and force him to animate new Macross episodes from my underground Bond villian lair. When he died, I'd keep his head in a jar of formaldehyde and form a secret cult worship it as it froated majestically.

Yahoo! AiA #5 is out.

I think Lucas does all that stuff on his own dime. And I'd personally just as soon avoid the inevitable fanboy whining about Han shooting first ...

(Sigh). Still nothing in the rss feeds. I have to say the AiA releases have really been impressive so far. I thought Shinsen would wind up being my favorite, but I've honestly preferred AiA's translations overall. I've been burning these episodes to dvd so I can watch them on the big screen, and I don't know what it is, but the AiA versions just look so much sharper as well. Hardly any compression effects or video ugliness so far, which the Shinsen avi's have unfortunately shown ... don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any stretch, but AiA's just look sharp as a razor in comparison. That's not a knock on Shinsen at all: It may just be the formats they're using (mp4 vs avi) and the dvd software I'm using having an easier time decoding it. Mp4 isn't lossless, is it? I'd like to echo the huge thank yous here to all involved in subbing these. As others have stated, it's such a luxury to be able to see very professionally translated versions being released within days of hitting the airwaves in Japan. You guys are doing us fans a MASSIVE service and I can't tell you how much we all appreciate your hard work. It's a very good time to be a Macross fan, and you guys are a large part of the reason. The only way it's going to get better would be for Satan to finally come and claim Macek's soul for the collective evils of depriving us domestic releases of this stuff for decades, thus paving the way for a Macross Frontier box set in every western retail outlet. I guy can dream, damn it.

Well, it's Macross, so it's a safe bet someone is gonna buy the farm before the end. The parallels with the original SDFM series are apparent and obvious so far, but with the "twists" I imagine it will happen in a way that you probably wouldn't expect at first, but make perfect sense in hindsight. Ozma dying a la Pineapple Salad sometime mid-series seems a little too obvious to me ... I think (hope?) they're going to be more imaginitive than that. They've been clever with the twists so far, so I'm holding out faith here. Hadn't thought of Luca being on the chopping block, but that would seem to maybe fit the Kakazaki parralel. At least one or more of the main characters is pretty much guaranteed to bite it at some point, I think. Someone close to Alto, who will make even more brooding and reflect on the evils of war / question his motivations to continue in a massive bout of introspective character building ... (like the fan service, it's still anime, after all). Maybe we should start a poll? (ducks)

Wow. Just wow. For whatever it's worth, I think the spoiler tags are a little silly in the first place. If you don't want to find out Vader is actually Luke's father, then don't read past the first post. It says so right in the thread's subject ... what's the point of a discussion with all the text blacked out? That's just me, though.

He's NOT the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

Also note that the surface area is not scaling linearly since the clamshell is basically a big circle when viewed from above. Remember he surface area of a circle is pi * (radius ^ 2). If City 7 had a diameter of 5 km, it's radius is 2.5 Km and making its surface area about 19.6 sq km (assuming it's perfectly flat, blah blah). If City 7 was alternately 7 km long, it would still only be 38.5 sq km. If Frontier is in fact 15 km in diameter, the surface area available to use as land would be around 177 sq km. That is much much much larger, but seems about right if you need to haul around a population of 10 million (!!!) while providing all the creature comforts of home (bodies of water, simulated weather and day/night cycles, etc). I can't fathom how much power it would take to move something that massive, but hey, that's Macross.

There are several players that will overlay the subtitle file over the video as you watch it. The subtitle files he was referring to are timed, in that the lines will come up at the right time and everything. It's the same as watching a subtitled release in avi or somethign (kind of - let's not split hairs). I use Gom player, but there are several others out there that have this feature, all of them I'm aware of being 100% free. Open your raw, point at subtitle file, enjoy. And I think the Gattai sub release has been out for a few days, anyway.

Definitely. The raws are fun to watch, but the more character driven episodes are harder to wait for when you can only understand a random word or two at a time ... (checks watch)

You know, I'm actually kind of relieved ... I have a vacation next month and could use the spare change while I'm out of town. Cheer up, guys. We've all waited exactly how long for this now? If this means the leg doesn't fall off the first time I transform it, I say give them all the time they need.

For what it's worth, I've found it's never useful trying to convert people, as hard as it is to not try. I hear where you're coming from, but people either "get" this stuff, or they don't, and nothing you're going to show them will change their mind because of their own preconceptions. I remember trying to show M0 to my younger brother a few years ago. He couldn't have cared any less losing interest about 10 minutes into ep 1, and always gave me that cockeyed look when he saw that I'd blown another $200 on a Yammie ... And he grew up with Robotech, glued to the screen, same as I was. It's like getting annoyed at why your friends inexplicably don't like Led Zeppelin (or insert an arbitrary music group). "But listen to the the variety of their songwriting, the depth, the sophistication ... the Rain Song is a masterpiece!", you'll say. And all you're going to hear back is how immature and mysogonistic Robert Plant sounds making silly sex noises in "Whole Lotta Love". To tell you guys the truth, I've met exactly one person in the last 10 years or so that knew anything whatsoever about Macross (though he pronounced it "Ma-CROSS", which was really wierd). If I hadn't stumbled on MW a few years ago, I'd probably be concerned for my mental health being this obsessed with an (let's face it, obscure) anime series, leaping out of my chair cheering watching a hot-off-the-press raw I can't understand, and paying heaven-only-knows-how-much so far on figures and collectibles. At least I know I'm not the only one.

Agreed, but I feel obligated to point out Edward was both wacky and at times annoying.

Dear lord these threads are growing fast ... this many pages already with only raws out? For barely 24 hours a that? I'm skeptical about the anima spiritia tangent, myself. I recall seeing that MF was a "sequel" to M7, but I seriously wouldn't get too hung up on it, guys. The Hory Froating One has a rather bad habit of discarding continuity that becomes inconvenient (otaku and obsessive fans like us are the only ones who give a rat's ass - he laughs at and mocks your attempts to "realize" his fantasy world), and we're only four episodes in, anyway. By the end, I think MF is going to be as distinct a take on the Macross universe as any of the other series before it. So ... (looks at watch) ... (dweedle dweeee) ... (F5) ... (no sub yet) ... (looks at watch) ... (dweedley dwee) ... (F5) ... (damn it) ...

It's a little known fact that the nitpicking in fact fuels the Earth's rotation. If it ever stopped, it would be the end of life as we know it. That or the MW server would take a massive dump and keel over dead. I'm doing cartwheels that this thing is coming out at all. Favorite valk, and it's plusses are far too many for me to whine about the handful of minuses. No, it's not perfect, but it is you've-got-to-be-kidding-me cool. I do want to know when the heck they're planning on releasing it though ... it's the 21st now, and we're veering into "late April" now.

What I want to know is when we're going to see the Macross Whatever-the-hell-it's-called transform and start wrecking something big. Just watched this ep again, and seeing the teaser shots of that massive thing in attack mode spewing what looked like anti strikecraft fire is just too much. Do the "arms" look like big Macross cannons to you as well? I'm sure the Vajra have something big and nasty enough to shoot this thing at a few times before the series is over.

Sidestepping the entire "pervy" aspect of the OP's question, I always wondered why they made the main characters so young, even in the original SDFM series. None of the main characters other than Roy and Global were even over 20 at the beginning? It just seems a little odd that the UN government would place a bunch of teenagers barely out of basic as the bridge crew on their freshly painted new world-economy-crippling flagship, and recruit 16 and 17 year old kids to be pilots. I know, it's just anime (and SW1 was a bitch after all) but still ... I thought one of the most welcome touches of Macross Plus was that all the characters were at least old enough to drive, much less be handed the keys (figuratively) to a multi-billion dollar transforming fighter. Zero seemed to follow along with the trend. It just seemed to lend the story more credibility, that's all.

(shudder) Nothing - N-O-T-H-I-N-G - is more bile inducing than a fat guy in spandex. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single reason for a man of any sort to wear that crap in public. Don't whine to me about your bicyclists, either: We're all a little sick of looking at your smooshed up junk. Please do us all a favor and put on some pants. Thank you. As for cosplay, I never really got grown people playing dress up, but to each his or her own, I guess. Back on topic ... I actually had this infuriating song stuck in my head going to sleep last night. After seeing that rave version, tonight doesn't bode well, my friends. Not a smidgen.