Currently watching Macross 7

[Valkyrie addict]

you can actually see Roy on the second episode of SDFM shooting down a Regult with it's head laser i battroid

[Keith]

Pretty sure only the anime friend episodes contaned non-canon animation errors, the head laser that Roy used should definately count.

Edited November 8, 2007 by Keith

[Exsedol]

I could have sworn I saw the head mounts used a few times. Roy used them once and Hikaru rescued misa, the second time, with them.

[Zinjo]

I could have sworn I saw the head mounts used a few times. Roy used them once and Hikaru rescued misa, the second time, with them.

The only time we see that head used like that was in Zero was when Hikaru rescues Misa, near the end of the series. Maybe SK had it in his bag o tricks for a long time until he had the opportunity to use it in Zero. None of the other animated fighter designs had a similar head config to do it.

There may have been a few times Max used his VF-1A head laser but that would have been a split second of screen time for it to really register much.

An animefriend error used the forward sensors on the nose as lasers, which HG incorporated into their Veritech technical guide...

[azrael]

I could have sworn I saw the head mounts used a few times. Roy used them once and Hikaru rescued misa, the second time, with them.

Oh they were, but their usage was someone inconsistant between the Anime-Friend episodes and the Artland studio episodes. But these days, hopefully those inconsistencies shouldn't be that much of an issue.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Also don't forget that Max gets in a good pot shot with his 1S'es head cannons on Milia in their dogfight in DYRL.

[RichterX]

Also don't forget that Max gets in a good pot shot with his 1S'es head cannons on Milia in their dogfight in DYRL.

yeah that was one of the best scenes ever!

So how effect are the head lasers, I assume they were build for air defense like

Roy used them in M0 to shoot down all the missiles that were send towards him, but other than that are they effect in actual combat, not paying attention to the animation error we saw in Macross where they disabled all those pods

[Zinjo]

yeah that was one of the best scenes ever!

So how effect are the head lasers, I assume they were build for air defense like

Roy used them in M0 to shoot down all the missiles that were send towards him, but other than that are they effect in actual combat, not paying attention to the animation error we saw in Macross where they disabled all those pods

For some reason I remember Roy using it offensively, but I can't for the life of me remember when!

[Mr March]

Quite right, Zinjobbar. SDF Macross Episode 2 "Countdown" shows Roy Focker firing all four VF-1S laser cannons to destroy a Reguld at time index 17:10.

[JsARCLIGHT]

yeah that was one of the best scenes ever!

So how effect are the head lasers, I assume they were build for air defense like

Roy used them in M0 to shoot down all the missiles that were send towards him, but other than that are they effect in actual combat, not paying attention to the animation error we saw in Macross where they disabled all those pods

I have always figured that the Valkyries were made to be the "foot soldiers" to fight the giant aliens. As most people know you send a foot soldier into combat with a rifle, grenades and a pistol as a last ditch weapon. I have always seen the head lasers on the Valkyries as their "pistol", a last ditch backup weapon that the pilot could use when needed. But unlike a soldier's pistol the head lasers also serve a functional utility use as cutting tools in an emergency (as shown several times in SDFM). So in that effect the head lasers are kind of a combination of a soldier's pistol, knife and perhaps his ration can opener.

[Sumdumgai]

Well it makes more sense that the lasers would be able to be used as a last ditch weapon or a supplemental weapon, rather than a "the goggles, they do nothing" blinding type of thing.

[eugimon]

thats just one of the things I appreciate about macross. lasers are useful for specific tasks and don't cause things to blow up "just because." If you think about it, a laser has relatively little stopping power and would be more useful for taking down smaller objects (more likely to hit something important). But so often in these type of shows, some giant building sized mech/vehicle gets shot with somthing the width of a pencil and it just explodes like the whole thing was made out dynamite.

[RichterX]

And in Macross they were very realistic with the head lasers, when Hikaru, Kakizaki and Max were in that ship cutting a wall, they were taking turns to avoid overheating.

[Valkyrie addict]

Actually all over SDFM the head laser is used quite a lot if you look closely, here are some still, this are all I could remember and find, I'm sure there are a few other shots I may have missed

EPISODE 2 -- Countdown --Roy shoots down a Regult while asking Hikaru for Minmei

EPISODE 9 -- Miss Macross -- Hikaru shoots down the Boquomouxy Quel-Quallie

EPISODE 10 -- Blind Game -- Max and Kakizaki are trying to cut trough the door with their head lasers

EPISODE 11 -- First Contact -- Hikaru get's owned by Breetai

EPISODE 18 -- Pineapple Salad -- Cannon Fodder squadron engaging Milia's attack

[Valkyrie addict]

EPISODE 19 -- Brust Point -- Hikaru shows his skills on Roy's Skull 1

EPISODE 27 -- -- Hikaru rescuing Misa

EPISODE 35 -- -- Lonely Cannon Fodder engaging Kamjin in the city

Macross DYRL

OUCH! Max shows Milia how's it done

SUCKS TO BE BODOLZA RIGHT NOW

as mentioned before, this is one of the things that we love about SDFM, such attention to detail, and on a tight budget... those were the times

here's looking for Macross F!!

[Zinjo]

The problem with SDFM is they kept swtiching it from guns to lasers which only confused matters...

If it was a projectile weapon it's uses in engaging ground targets would be considerable.

Edited November 9, 2007 by Zinjo

[Mr March]

Awesome work va. I remember Hikaru using them in the battle against the Quel-Quallie. I don't know if there is much of a problem with pulse versus continuous fire. The lasers could easily have separate firing modes and it's not like that assumption is unreasonable given the technology of Macross.

Edited November 10, 2007 by Mr March

[Exsedol]

Kick ass screenshot work

Also don't forget that Max gets in a good pot shot with his 1S'es head cannons on Milia in their dogfight in DYRL.

Haha totaly. Best Macross battle EVER

[JB0]

thats just one of the things I appreciate about macross. lasers are useful for specific tasks and don't cause things to blow up "just because." If you think about it, a laser has relatively little stopping power and would be more useful for taking down smaller objects (more likely to hit something important). But so often in these type of shows, some giant building sized mech/vehicle gets shot with somthing the width of a pencil and it just explodes like the whole thing was made out dynamite.

The lasers are officially anti-aircraft weapons.

And whether something explodes or not is gonna be a function of how rapidly you dump energy into it, and where you're dumping that energy. You can get a good bang out of a fairly low-power shot if you melt a hole in the fusion core. Outside of that, you have to dump a lot of energy into the target in a fairly short period of time.

Armor-wise, you want...

A. Reflective surfaces.

B. Curved surfaces.

Or my personal favorite...

C. Thermally superconductive armor.

A is obvious. With a perfect reflector, you're invincible... Of course, a perfect reflector violates the laws of thermodynamics, and won't stay perfect for long as dust and scuffs accumulate.

But even an imperfect one greatly reduces the energy you absorb. Thus, white valks are safer to fly than brownies... and now you know the secret to Hikaru's high survivability.

B spreads the laser over a wider impact area increasing the amount of power you need for a given effect.

There's also some weird optical properties with curved surfaces that I don't understand.

C spreads the heat over the entire armor piece, meaning you have to dump MASSIVELY larger amounts of power into the target to get an effect.

But if you can pour enough energy in to vaporize a large piece... it ain't gonna be pretty.

Lasers are weird weapons. I think it's safe to say that no sci-fi does them right.

Awesome work va. I remember Hikaru using them in the battle against the Quel-Quallie. I don't know if there is much of a problem with pulse versus continuous fire. The lasers could easily have separate firing modes and it's not like that assumption is unreasonable given the technology of Macross.

By the Compendium's specs, the head lasers ARE pulsed. 6000 pulses per minute.

You could attribute variances to pilot usage more easily than variable pulse rates, IMO.

They're probably trained to fire short controlled bursts, as the gunpod carries little ammo and the lasers overheat with sustained fire.

Or you can take the artistic license angle, as the beam shouldn't be visible AT ALL in space regardless of fire mode.

In an atmosphere... I don't know. There's no available wavelength or power ratings.

And that's really out of my depth anyways. I don't know what sort of power level you'd need to get a visible beam, though I know it's possible.

The animation can't be used as a guideline, as it shows beams, no beams, and gunpowder muzzle flare in both environments. Occasionally with machine-gun noises.

It also shows a combined visible beam+muzzle flare that makes it appear as if, rather than an actual laser, the gun uses a mass of energy that accumulates at the tip of the barrel and the beam emits from that mass. Aesthetically pleasing, certainly, but utterly impossible for a laser.

Either way, I'd be willing to bet the head lasers are used more than we think.

Several scenes have lasers emitting from the FLIR sensor bulges. These likely would have been from the head lasers, had the animation teams responsible understood the Valk's design better.

Ironically, these are consistently treated as lasers, despite being COMPLETELY WRONG. I can't think of any scenes that used machine-gun effects for the FLIR sensors.

And given the highly variable animation(the gunpod often fires lasers, and the head lasers often fire bullets), there's no way to tell if a given shot came from the gunpod or head turret in fighter mode, unless we actually see which gun is firing.

[Uxi]

Yeah just watched Countdown yesterday from my new Animeigo set and I remembered Hikaru using them in his 1J from my Robotech set. Who could forget the DYRL Hikaru. Nice summary, though VA!

[VFTF1]

Err... getting back to Macross 7 ....

I finally finished the whole series.

I'm going to list my main gripes; absent from which will be things like "Bassra is annoying" or "The beginning is excessively repetative" because these are blatantly obvious...

GRIPES WITH MACROSS 7:

1. WHY did they do something cheesy like "bring back Gamlin"? He should have stayed dead - it would have made the entire episode so much more moving, not to mention making the series so much more moving.

2. Why did they spend 3/4 of the show developing Gigil just to have him dissapear when he got very very interesting?

3. Why didn't Bassara demand that Lord Gemelitch return the body of Advisor Dudewholookslikegirl back to him? I mean - in the end, Lord Gepelnitch just up and flew away in a body that was not his own...

There's more - but they are really minor.

Over all - I LIKE this series. I REALLY like Submarine Street.... my favorite song; with Power to the Universe being second, and some of Mylene's slower renditions also taking top marks.

It's a good show. I'm glad I watched it.

VFTF1

[Keith]

Gigil died because it was an awesome plot point. Great scene, and really, where would he have fit in on the 7 fleet?

Basara didn't demand the possessed bodies back because it was too late for them. Extended periods of possession make it impossible to seperate one entity from the other. It's the same reason the EVIL bodies wouldn't have been able to be given back.

Why did they bring back Gamlin? They already killed Gigil in Kinryu, losing Gamlin also would have negated the triangle amongst other things.

[Kelsain]

Gigil died because it was an awesome plot point. Great scene, and really, where would he have fit in on the 7 fleet?

I agree. I think Gigil sacrificing himself out of love for Sivil was the most moving scene in the entire series. Especially b/c of the way he sings to Sivil with his dying breath - and you can see clearly that, only then, does she realize how much Gigil loved her.

Why did they bring back Gamlin? They already killed Gigil in Kinryu, losing Gamlin also would have negated the triangle amongst other things.

Kinryu's death didn't seem to have to much on the series as a whole, except the loss of an interesting mental picture with the bridge bunnies. I think Gamlin's death would have been more powerful, as he along with Mylene, was the heart of the story. It's true, we would have lost the G-M-B triangle, but they could have shifted more to the Basara-Mylene-Sivil triangle and explored the emotions of the Protodeviln a little more. As it is, I'm happy he lived, he's a good guy. He even handled Mylene's rejection very maturely, showing how much he'd grown since the "Get off the battlefield! Ghaa!" early episodes.

edit-grammar

Edited November 19, 2007 by Kelsain

[Exsedol]

If anyone should have died it's Basara LoL

[Radd]

1. WHY did they do something cheesy like "bring back Gamlin"? He should have stayed dead - it would have made the entire episode so much more moving, not to mention making the series so much more moving.

2. Why did they spend 3/4 of the show developing Gigil just to have him dissapear when he got very very interesting?

Heh, I kinda find it funny you have both these questions here. They killed Gigil for the same reason you suggest they ought to have killed Gamlin. Personally, I thought that episode was one of the best in the series for that very reason, and Gigil became one of my favourite characters.

I think the big flaw with "death" in the show was not how they brought back Gamlin, though I do see and even agree with what you're saying, but how they handled the characters that did die, other than Gigil. People tend to forget Physicaa and Kinryu, and I think that is due more to how they were handled when they were alive, than their death sequences. Kinryu spent a good deal of time comatose in a hospital bed, and didn't make a particularly strong impression when he was up and about before that, like if Fokker had never gotten any screen time or had been shown to have strong relationships with Hikaru and Claudia. He never seemed like a part of the main cast, nor given the ties to them.

Physicaa was even more of a wall flower, which is a shame because his death, and the epilogue to it, were executed extremely well and made him an interesting character post-mortem.

There was also the issue with Docker getting a death sequence but then getting shown being pulled alive from his downed 19. I suspect people don't complain about that because he was on the same level as Kinryu and Physicaa on the character totem pole. His death would have made very little impact.

This is why, as Kelsain put it, Gamlin's death would have been more powerful. He was established, and like Gigil he had grown as a character. In fact, he'd grown and matured a lot more, more than anyone else in the series, really. Of course, that's also why killing him would have been detrimental to the series. No one else had come so far since the beginning, and I believe it was after that not-quite-death-scene where they really drive that point home, and show just how far he's come.

[Sumdumgai]

Man, I so knew Physica was going to die when his family started being heavily mentioned. It's the classic "My kid gave me this to bring me luck". WRONG! Your kid gave you that to make sure you die and momma gets the life insurance money. It's cursed so you'll die! Hmmm... that means Mylene tried to kill Gamlin.

I'll voice up and say I was disappointed that Docker survived. I didn't like him.

[Keith]

Telegraphed as it was, Physica did have a great death scene/epilogue. The shot straight through the cockpit, the burning music box, and then his wife having moved on before he even died. Truly one of anime's alltime great deaths!

[wolfx]

Man, I so knew Physica was going to die when his family started being heavily mentioned. It's the classic "My kid gave me this to bring me luck". WRONG! Your kid gave you that to make sure you die and momma gets the life insurance money. It's cursed so you'll die! Hmmm... that means Mylene tried to kill Gamlin.

I'll voice up and say I was disappointed that Docker survived. I didn't like him.

i lol-ed. That does bring up the "death flag" eh? "This is my kid/wife/mom. He/she gave me this." DEATH FLAG ALERT!!

[Sumdumgai]

While he was at it, he should have put on a red shirt and said "I don't have a last name".

[Radd]

"Honey, honey! The insurance papers!"

"Oh, I'll sign those when I get back. What could go wrong?"

Edited November 20, 2007 by Radd

[danth]

Gigil died because it was an awesome plot point. Great scene, and really, where would he have fit in on the 7 fleet?

Basara didn't demand the possessed bodies back because it was too late for them. Extended periods of possession make it impossible to seperate one entity from the other. It's the same reason the EVIL bodies wouldn't have been able to be given back.

Why did they bring back Gamlin? They already killed Gigil in Kinryu, losing Gamlin also would have negated the triangle amongst other things.

Wow, you really are an apologist. Not to get personal, but that's honestly the first thing I thought when reading your post. I love Macross 7 and all, don't get me wrong, but it has its flaws.

Killing off characters right when they get interesting isn't good writing. Where would Gigil have fit in on the 7 fleet? That sounds like a problem, and problems are interesting. Too bad they didn't explore that and give him more time in the show while he was interesting. The "awesome plot point" of his death could have happened later, and it would have been a better show for it.

Gamlin's death was incredibly lame. Bringing a main character back from the dead is worthy of ridicule. Comic books and soap operas are infamous for that sort of crap. It's just not good writing. Gamlin's death hit me hard, and when he came back, I felt cheated. Breaking the triangle wouldn't have matter so much since his "death" happened at THE END OF THE SERIES.

Telegraphed as it was, Physica did have a great death scene/epilogue. The shot straight through the cockpit, the burning music box, and then his wife having moved on before he even died. Truly one of anime's alltime great deaths!

Um...Please tell me you're being sarcastic. That was the weakest, most predictable death ever. I actively didn't care -- that's right, I saw it coming and consciously rebeled against the idea of caring for some stupid non-character's death. Although I agree with you about Physica's wife...it was pretty hardcore that she was already with another dude.

Edited November 21, 2007 by danth

[Kelsain]

Um...Please tell me you're being sarcastic. That was the weakest, most predictable death ever. I actively didn't care -- that's right, I saw it coming and consciously rebeled against the idea of caring for some stupid non-character's death. Although I agree with you about Physica's wife...it was pretty hardcore that she was already with another dude.

Haha, yeah. The only time I've gotten a stronger "This guy's toast" vibe was the doofus at the beginning of Transformers...

"Anybody remember weekends?" *Unzips body bag*

Physica's wife cheating on him made him more interesting posthumously. All of the sudden you could look back at the guy and realize that he was a poor abandoned sap, playing the "If I'm a better pilot, maybe she'll take me back" role.

Really, I think Gigil died at the right time. We'd already learned a lot about him through his interaction with Sivil & Basara. What wasn't well followed was that the torch should have been passed to Sivil. We did learn more a bit about her and she did play a major role in the latter half of the series, but she remained fairly shallow. They could have pushed her interaction with Basara just a little further AFAIC.

Edited November 21, 2007 by Kelsain

[VFTF1]

I wrote a pretty lengthy post about Physica a while back... and I was thoroughly impressed by the way it was handled...don't want to repeat myself but...

Physica's wife wasn't cheating on him - I didn't read it that way - I think she didn't even know where he was, whether he was dead or alive and I think that he was so gung-ho about his job that he didn't really care.... his kid was just some token to be mentioned that made him feel better... but it's not like he was there for the kid, taking care of the kid, living a family life... he was off piloting his Valkyrie...and...like the old Minmey song has it "he loves his airplane more than he loves me."

Physica's wife didn't so much cheat on him as she simply accepted the she lived in seperation from her husband.

Gamlin's reaction - so overtly emotionally immature (as were most of his reactions to cultural customs in civilian life) were simply more proof of how disattached the military is from the civilians...

again - remember the narrator in SDFM after Hikaru's first battle - "he felt that he was loosing his emotions" - becoming just a killer - well - Gamlin, Physica, that's exactly what UN Spacey made them - and that's why they found Bassara annoying...

I find Bassara annoying on a completely different level then the military. I just happen to disagree with a lot of Bassara's aesthetics - albeit I like his music - I just don't like his body language, his style... but the military doesn't like his independence and down-to-earth care-free attitude...aka - they resent that Bassara is free and not bound by a sense of duty, let alone a chain of command. These are things for which I admire Bassara - or at the very least - things I think are important and personified in Bassara.

VFTF1

[Sumdumgai]

Well they were married, she cheated on him. If marriage was that bad, there's divorce. I'm not saying the way you see it is wrong, VFTF1. But, they were married and she was going out with another man.

[Nexx Stalker]

There were actually a few love triangles in 7.

-Physica, his cheating whore wife, & his cheating whore wife's new husband

Well, first of all you are assuming that Physica was a good husband/father when, in the few scenes he is present, doesn't come out as particularly brilliant. Secondly, you misanderstood the scene (perhaps it is due to the subtitles, that can be misleading): there is no man with his wife and child, Gamlin simply imagines Physica going back to his family but that scene of happyness (that will never be) tears him apart and makes him run away. That's it.

Edited July 16, 2008 by Nexx Stalker