dreamweaver13

yes, me too!! here that, Big West? put up that legal fund now!! or how about this: "for every purchase of original macross merchandise, 10 percent will be given to the Big West CRUSH HG legal fund. buy now!"

i have the book, and i've read it 4 times i think. and it's by joe haldeman, IIRC, so that alone makes it worth reading. the story and concept is interesting enough. it's the production value and the mecha that bothered me. but it was, i guess, good enough for its time. but it won't stop me from referring to it over and over again when i need a comparison to today's CGI-laden robot effects. that being said, you can't beat the robot jox!! achilles will pwn rick hunter's ass.

Kronnang Dunn... the new macross compendium. seriously, i agree with you 100 percent that brera is ranka's brother. but i wouldn't go so far as to declare it an absolute certainty etched in stone. this is kawamori we're talking about, author of the WTF-1.

Great thread! Time dilation and fold faults would seem to be related topics, at the very least. At best, one is the proximate cause of the other. Adding on to your theory, I would surmise that it's not as simple as equating the fold fault to time dilation. I am going back to Mac F episode 7. from the diagrams and readings on luca's console, fold faults seem to take up actual space. i had the impression that it is a sort of "null space/dimension" in space that cannot be crossed through fold technology ("don't cross the streams!!" said Spengler to Venkman). likewise, fold communications would suffer from delay since it would actually have to go around these fold faults. This would explain why luca was so surprised that the vajra mothership was able to go through the fold fault, instead of around it. He was not expecting any enemy to appear from that specific area, because as far as he knew, it was physically impossible to fold in from that particular area in space. I know it might sound too simplistic (my science background is iffy, at best), but the fold faults seem to be dimensional anomalies that actually occupy space in space. While unseen to the naked eye, and while they may be crossed through traditional space travel in real-time, it would seem that they cannot be crossed through fold travel. Assuming that a fold fault takes up actual space, then let us assume further that such a fold fault or faults exist between point A (origin) and point B (destination). My theory is that this fold fault could have two possible effects on fold travel, depending on the position or nature of the fold fault. One, the fold fault causes significant time dilation during fold travel. Hence, traveling from point A (Frontier) to point B (Galia 4) would take some time. (A week from perspective of real time, a day from the perspective of fold-time). Second, the fold fault, if it completely blocks the path, would cause the fold to cease at one point (let’s call it the Midpoint), and the vessel would have to re-enter fold from that midpoint. This is similar to the limitation of FTL in battlestar galactica. It can only jump a certain distance, and then re-jump to get further. I got the impression of this second effect during episode 7. Instead of jumping directly to where Galaxy was, the macros quarter rescue group could only travel to a rendezvous point and wait for galaxy there. Or maybe the quarter was preparing to make the second fold when the galaxy ships arrived at the rendezvous point (midpoint). Ok, now to answer the question: are these fold faults new phenomenon, or old ones that are just being explained recently? I would have to agree with Dex… there are indications that these fold faults have been affecting the macross universe since SDFM. Dex already mentioned episode 11 of SDFM (first contact) where misa observes the time dilation. As far as speculation goes, I would go as far back as episode 2. Maybe, the first encounter of humanity with a fold fault was when the SDF-1 tried to jump from the earth’s surface to the moon. I think it was the earth’s gravity that caused the fold to haywire and end up near Pluto instead, but the interesting part is the disappearance of the fold drives. Maybe the SDF-1 grazed a portion of space with a fold fault, and the adverse effect was the disappearance of the fold drives themselves. Ok, admittedly that’s a stretch. But here’s a more solid example of a space fault. It took britai and his fleet ten years to trace the fold signature of the ASS-1 to earth. The long amount of time could reflect the effect of a fold fault on fold communications and travel from point A (point of encounter between britai fleet and the SA gunboat) to point B (earth). As for the second effect of the fold fault, I could point to ep 30 of SDFM (viva maria) where britai’s UNG fleet had to make a stop over before continuing to point B (the factory satellite). And the satellite also had to fold twice before returning to earthspace. This would also explain why some folds in the macros universe would seem to be instantaneous (i.e. macross 7, macross plus). Maybe it’s simply because there was no fold fault between points A and B. or if there is any, the effects could be very minimal. Then in comes LAI to finally find a way to go through the fold fault instead of around it. Hence, significantly eliminating the time dilation, and (theoretically) allowing single fold jump to any point in the chartered universe. I would equate the LAI’s new technology to the discovery of instantaneous philotic travel in the later Enderverse novels (i.e. children of the mind). Whew. Ok that will do for now. it's a mouthful already as it is.

i'm suddenly reminded of Cain and Abel from the House of Mystery/Secrets (Sandman comics). Cain always insisted that a good mystery lives forever... but it dies once revealed (or something like that). he even killed his brother for revealing one of his mysteries one time (big deal, he always kills his brother ). anyway, my point is, the mystery behind what happened to megaroad 1 has lingered on precisely because it is still unrevealed to this day. sure i would love a resolution or an answer, and i would be the first to watch it. but I personally wouldn't mind it too much if it remained a mystery forever. in that way, it will live forever. after all, i actually have this lingering fear of the day that SK will suddenly decide to finally tell the story, and that the story would be awful. it could be a big whopping letdown after 25 years of now knowing. if that would be the case, maybe i'd rather not know.

it all started because someone mentioned the word "retcon".... oops. oh no....

i didn't even know there was a second.

someone gave me an approximate number of earthside survivors before (i think it was mr. march) from the compendium, so aside from misa, i think there are others. oh no, now you've done it. i hope they didn't hear you.. shhhh....

c'mon, how could you NOT like robot jox?? it's the bee's knees!! and you can't kill me, unless you're the Ultimate Killing Machine. Part Man Part Metal! Bwahahaha!!! ok gotta stop now... if i go on, i'd kill me. hehe.

Bwahahaha. The devilish plan worked! The Hory Froating Head now owns your soul! Same with me. it was a gradual and seemless transition, and i didn't even notice it until you brought it up. damn that kawamori, what a brilliant ploy. i wonder at what point it started to grow into its own...

there were survivors earthside, if you follow the series as the canon (i.e. misa hayase). it's only in the DYRL movie that there were 0 survivors after the zentraedi bomardment. i don't think she was aboard the macross, otherwise she would have been hanging out with fokker all the time (and teasing claudia that she isn't roy's true love. ). but then again, what do i know? the hory froating head just might turn the world upside down again and declare that mao nome was on the SDF-1 somewhere. as proposed somewhere before, mao's desire to find out what happened to her sister and short-time kiss partner would have moslt likely prompted her to join research fleets in investigating the possible destination of the aphos/birdman. wouldn't be surprised if she showed up in the series later on and explain everything. as to what type of doctor, i can speculatye that she followed in aries turner's footsteps (who in turn followed the footsteps of her old professor) in archeology/ancient civilization/genetics to continue protoculture research.

In memory of the doomed fanboys from the 33rd advance fleet, i hereby change my avatar. i salute you!

no way. robot jox will still rule!!!

wait.... aren't they twin brother and sister??? no wonder ranka has a genetic defect with her hair, and in her tummy. it wasn't a zentraedi thing or a vajra thing after all!

poor misa. always the rebound girl.

i dunno.. the hybrid in alien resurrection looked pretty weak, specially when he was facing his mommy. gubaba might have given him a run for his money. gubaba, you'd like that, wouldn't you? hehe. now what did humanity do to you to deserve an ass kicking, huh?

i disagree. random cannon fodder pilot number 36 has some skill. i think it's 42 who's gonna go down. 36 will live another day.

haha. now that you mention it, you're right. seems like ages ago when people were whining about overcooked homages. but i sense a pattern now. put in heavy homages at the start to get the old fans interested and feeling "yeah, this is our anime!", then put the series into another direction to make it more contemporary and to get new fans, but still dropping little, subtle (yet not distracting to the plot) homages to keep the old fans interested without alienating the new fans too much. if the purpose of this pattern is to get both the old and new fans, i hope it's working!

i agree wholeheartedly, and i hope you're right. i would like to think a majority of old school fans are loving frontier, and will continue to love the franchise. Like you and d3v, my love for the original series was reinvigorated and intensified by frontier. so far, it has been a fantastic series, whether you consider it as a continuation of the old franchise, or as a new series in itself.

yeah, it's the speed of the destruction that is impressive about the dimension eater. from a small anti-matter/blackhole, it gathered enough mass in a short amount of time to cover a quarter of the planet. I don't know how high alto's and michael's altitude was when they dimension eater was activated, but i got the impression that they were already in the upper atmosphere... and still the dimension eater was almost able to catch up with them.

actually, this is an interesting concept you have there. a relation between the dimension eater and the fold dislocations is likely given the amount of discussion the fold dislocations have been getting. so the dimension eater not only destroys, it literally takes it away, or eats the dimension it is in, rendering it a null or anti-matter part of the galaxy where a fold cannot take place. hence, the name. given that LAI has been researching extensively on the nature of the fold dislocation, and that they had finally developed fold technology that can go around it, it would also follow that they would have developed a weapon based on the very fold dislocation phenomenon that they were studying.

wh-hat?? you mean gubaba can kick humanity's ass anytime?

i think it is, hands down. no alaska base, grand cannon or misa hayase can survive that one. so it even trumps a fleet of ships, IMO.

klanklan hater!! booooo! hehe. grace (or eventually her mother brain, wherever it is) is my sure bet. too late for ozma to die by this time (too little exposure, so his death wouldn't be that much of a big deal anymore), so i'm betting he'll survive. brera's a good bet to die, and in exactly the way you mentioned. predictable, yes, but most likely. i hate to admit it, but if klan klan does die, it will have the most significant impact by this time. so i can't discount the possibility.

darn it, why did you have to take my Ford casting call seriously? that takes the fun out of it. face it, it can't be anyone else other than Ian McKellen. Imagine this in his Magneto voice: "Face the greatest sight in the history of mankind.... transformation!"