The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[TG Remix]

On 11/15/2025 at 1:48 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

The New UN Forces only really fight Zentradi fleets if it's unavoidable.  Like to protect an emigrant planet, or if it's not possible for an emigrant fleet to evacuate the area in time to avoid a confrontation.  The same rules of engagement almost certainly apply to the Supervision Army if they're ever encountered.  They would probably treat the Supervision Army similarly to the Zentradi and hit 'em with the Minmay Attack while spamming Macross Cannon fire and thermonuclear reaction weapons.

I was under the assumption that the bigger NUNS body believed the Minmay Attack was a fluke, and skipped that step before ordering some unfortunately placed fleet to unleash the arsenal. 7's "Fleet of the Strongest Woman" seems to believe that, even further by Chronicle where it more or less state that the outcome of a pacified fleet hasn't happened up until that point since SWI. There's another difference from the Macross II timeline I suppose.

 

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A-class planets are said to be few and rare, and the implication from Macross Chronicle and Macross Frontier seems to be that those are ideal or near-ideal Earthlike planets that are suitable for immediate colonization and development.  Macross VF-X2 suggests that less suitable worlds (classification unknown) may require years of environmental modification to become suitable for emigration.  Presumably the amount of time and effort required to modify a planet's environment to make it suitable are factors in deciding whether a planet is worth colonizing in the eyes of a particular fleet, and whether that investment is containable for the fleet's resources and economy.  Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! has that one unnamed planet that was apparently colonized despite being a marginal case because of the presence of rare and valuable minerals.  

The Macross 30 novelization also elaborates on this as well, where it explains upon discovery of it there's two outcomes of it; there's selling the rights to a megacorporation or a emigrant fleet, and the former wouldn't give me high hopes considering the track record of Macross Galaxy. Less smoothly, there's also been armed conflicts between two different fleets that broke out over the right to claim the planet for colonization, which of course would get the Earth government to intervene. Could explain where some of those wars from Isamu's military record came from, and further explanation on the UN and Latence's stance on more direct control towards the other governments by VF-X2.

 

M3 also touches a bit on habitable the planets are. Even as early as 2014, where Eden, a Class-A planet, was established, there was Neo York that developed enough to have a territory called New Alabama (yes, really.) and several years later in 2020 it had enough inter conflict where the New York Liberation League is at odds with the local government. Since Eden has been stated to be the first colonized planet, my money is on Neo York either being a Class A planet or one that didn't need extensive terraforming before settling. Also of note is Cristrania, which was noted as a natural planet developed for Zentradi life, which I'm assuming it means it's a planet good for giants to live in, and Dahan, which was referred to as a resource planet. Considering how it looked like it only had 5 Namekian minutes left, that probably was the best use of it, whatever resources they get from it. Fold carbon/crystals maybe?

[MinmayMusicManiac]

Anybody got a list for the every episode footage differences between Robotech & Robotech Remastered. I know the intro is different but not sure about the added back in footage

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I was under the assumption that the bigger NUNS body believed the Minmay Attack was a fluke, and skipped that step before ordering some unfortunately placed fleet to unleash the arsenal. 7's "Fleet of the Strongest Woman" seems to believe that, even further by Chronicle where it more or less state that the outcome of a pacified fleet hasn't happened up until that point since SWI. There's another difference from the Macross II timeline I suppose.

That doesn't seem to be the case.

After all, the New UN Forces in Macross 7 spent literal years and vast sums of money on Project M for the sake of further developing the Minmay Attack as a military stratagem to be used against enemies without culture and as a way to make peaceful first contact with new alien races who did.  The first thing Max does in "Fleet of the Strongest Women" once the enemy are identified as a rogue Zentradi fleet is send in Sound Force for a Minmay Attack.  Similarly, in Macross Frontier, the very first suggestion Leon Mishima offers with regard to the Vajra attacks is to have them "listen to a song" (i.e. the Minmay Attack).  

Earth's insistence on destroying the Chlore fleet feels a bit weird and out of place on its own, though since Macross 7's themes lean heavily into rebelling against authority having an officious jerk to humble is a bit of necessary comedy.  Their attitude makes a bit more sense with the extra historical context from Master File, with it having been only about 9 years since the last run-in with such a large rogue fleet and that incident having started with the loss of an entire planet, 73 warships, 600+ Valkyries, and almost 600,000 lives.  Telling the crew of Battle 7 to destroy the fleet also makes a bit more sense in that context, since the Battle 7 was the flagship of the fleet mustered against the previous Zentradi fleet 9 years ago and absolutely had been able to take down a fleet that size.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Could explain where some of those wars from Isamu's military record came from, and further explanation on the UN and Latence's stance on more direct control towards the other governments by VF-X2.

Maybe.  Then again, considering how many of them there are and how short they seem to be on Isamu's service record even calling them "wars" may be giving them too much credit.  That can't be all fleets beefing with each other either... at least one of them is a civil war and another is described as a revolution, suggesting some of it is a single fleet or group of colonists from one fleet fighting another.  Others may be run-ins with Zentradi forces like the one at the start of Macross Plus's OVA version.

[Jasonc]

On 11/18/2025 at 9:33 AM, MinmayMusicManiac said:

Anybody got a list for the every episode footage differences between Robotech & Robotech Remastered. I know the intro is different but not sure about the added back in footage

As this is a Macross thread and not a Robotech thread, this probably isn't the place for that question.

 

CD Japan just put up for preorder the Macross Frontier Galaxy Live Final 2025 Blu ray. It looks to be a limited release version, and I don't know much about it. It's listed at 17.000 yen, so as of today, just over $109. 

[Scream Man]

I tried looking for the answer in here and couldn't find one, but if it's here and I missed it I apologize. 

 

 

What's the deal with the slum that Basara and Ray live in in Macross 7? I know it's called Akusho and that its attached to the outside of City 7, and that it seems to be roughly the equivalent of one of the smaller Island ships that follow the main ship, but that its either a part of the main structure or was attached later. Im just unsure why this was done, and why its allowed to consume resources when it's in such horrible shape. Was it an Island that got wrecked and they strapped it on to the main ship to save it for some reason? And are Fire Bomber the only ones living in it?

A Semi-related question: How does the Shell projection work? I guess this also counts as a Frontier question since its the same idea. From inside the dome it seems like the sky is projected onto the dome to simulate day and night. OK, I get that. But then from OUTSIDE it looks like the Shell hs the Projection on it. DOesn't that mean that from other angles the actual sky would be visible? And the Akusho wouldnt have simulated daylight or sky at all, because it's outside the dome.... right?

Edited December 28, 2025 by Scream Man

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Scream Man said:

What's the deal with the slum that Basara and Ray live in in Macross 7? I know it's called Akusho and that its attached to the outside of City 7, and that it seems to be roughly the equivalent of one of the smaller Island ships that follow the main ship, but that its either a part of the main structure or was attached later. Im just unsure why this was done, and why its allowed to consume resources when it's in such horrible shape. Was it an Island that got wrecked and they strapped it on to the main ship to save it for some reason? And are Fire Bomber the only ones living in it?

The Acshio/Akusho district is never given a proper official explanation.

Officially (in-story), the district is an environment ship that isn't registered with the 37th large scale long-distance emigrant fleet's administration.  It attached itself to one of City 7's portside docking ports and has accessed power, oxygen, and other resources from the City-class ship without authorization.  Somehow, this state of affairs was either not noticed or not corrected before the fleet departed Earth and apparently nobody has bothered to do anything about it in the seven years since then.

While there are surely laws prohibiting an emigrant fleet from simply abandoning an inhabited environment ship in deep space, that it seems like nobody has even tried to take any action on it gives it the distinct ring of a cover story.  There's a neglected environment ship the fleet government has no jurisdiction over conveniently attached directly to the fleet's capital and flagship, with a hangar and airlocks capable of supporting next-generation VFs, and it just happens to be home to the unwitting subject of a secret military program?

Macross 7 Trash at least makes it feel a little less implausible with the revelation that there are at least a few districts in the fleet that would count as "rough neighborhoods".

 

3 hours ago, Scream Man said:

A Semi-related question: How does the Shell projection work? I guess this also counts as a Frontier question since its the same idea. From inside the dome it seems like the sky is projected onto the dome to simulate day and night. OK, I get that. But then from OUTSIDE it looks like the Shell hs the Projection on it. DOesn't that mean that from other angles the actual sky would be visible? And the Akusho wouldnt have simulated daylight or sky at all, because it's outside the dome.... right?

It seems to work a little differently, series to series.

When it comes to the Megaroad-class as seen in Macross: Flash Back 2012 and Macross M3, the artificial sky appears to be projected directly onto the ship's transparent hull sections.

In Macross 7, City 7's sky is presented as being a hologram or other image projected from the interior of the shell onto the exterior of the dome.  This is demonstrated in the show's first episode when one of the operators mistakenly begins powering down the shell's artificial sky projection instead of lowering the shell the way Max ordered.  The Akushio district has an artificial sky too, though it isn't clear if that's projected from the shell or something projected locally.

In Macross Frontier, the titular emigrant ship seems to be using both approaches simultaneously with the sky of Island 1 being a projection from the shell and the skies of the various Island modules seem to be projected directly onto their domes since they use retractable armored shutters instead of a shell and most of them are tens of kilometers away from the rear end of the Island-1's shell.

[Scream Man]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

While there are surely laws prohibiting an emigrant fleet from simply abandoning an inhabited environment ship in deep space, that it seems like nobody has even tried to take any action on it gives it the distinct ring of a cover story.  There's a neglected environment ship the fleet government has no jurisdiction over conveniently attached directly to the fleet's capital and flagship, with a hangar and airlocks capable of supporting next-generation VFs, and it just happens to be home to the unwitting subject of a secret military program?

Thanks for the answers. 

So for the above to be true, does that mean Basara was on the 7 from the beginning of its launch from Earth? I mean the Project that Ray and Max cooked up was largely centred around him, right? 
My understanding is we basically know nothing about Basara outside of whats shown on screen... meaning we know basically nothing about him. 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Scream Man said:

So for the above to be true, does that mean Basara was on the 7 from the beginning of its launch from Earth? I mean the Project that Ray and Max cooked up was largely centred around him, right? 

That seems to be the implication in his bio.  He's not mentioned as having moved to the 37th fleet and it is explicitly mentioned he's not legally a citizen of the fleet... meaning he's only ever resided in that rundown unregistered district.

 

10 hours ago, Scream Man said:

My understanding is we basically know nothing about Basara outside of whats shown on screen... meaning we know basically nothing about him. 

Pretty much.  Even in-universe Basara's background is said to be unknown even to the man himself.  He doesn't know where he was born.  Ray encountered him for the first time in 2031 when Basara was 7 years old, and he was just this mysterious urchin who would occasionally show up near where Ray lived with an acoustic guitar and attempt to (literally) move the nearby mountains with his songs.  Somewhere along the way Ray became Basara's de facto (if not de jure) guardian.  They would eventually team up with street fighter turned drummer Veffidas Feaze to form Fire Bomber in 2038, the same year the 37th fleet departed Earth.

The one thing we can say with some confidence is that Basara has always been insufferable.  Mylene was the band's fourth bassist in six years because of how infuriating and hard to work with Basara was, and even she frequently wants to go upside his head.

[Scream Man]

Cool. much obliged  

i have the DX Fire Valk on the way so I've been in that sort of mood.

 

[Big s]

I know this toy is for Robotech, but it made me try and think back and I just don’t remember any zentraedi having facial hair. Maybe it was regulation in their military or that they just couldn’t grow it, could also be my memory failing me

[Seto Kaiba]

48 minutes ago, Big s said:

I know this toy is for Robotech, but it made me try and think back and I just don’t remember any zentraedi having facial hair. Maybe it was regulation in their military or that they just couldn’t grow it, could also be my memory failing me

As far as I can recall, we don't see any Zentradi with facial hair in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, or Macross II: Lovers Again.  

That said, they clearly can grow facial hair as we see several in later titles (predominantly in civilian life) who do have facial hair.  The enemy Zentradi commander in Macross Digital Mission VF-X (1997) is, IINM, the first Zentradi character to be depicted with facial hair.

In Macross Frontier, there are a few as well.  Macross Frontier fleet sponsor and SMS owner Richard Bilra is a giant Zentradi rocking a big bushy mustache and beard, and Ranka's Zentradi manager Elmo Kridanik has a mustache.

 

 

's it just me or does that bootleg-tier Robotech figure bear an odd resemblance to a young Laurence Fishburne?

Edited December 31, 2025 by Seto Kaiba

[Big s]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As far as I can recall, we don't see any Zentradi with facial hair in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, or Macross II: Lovers Again.  

That said, they clearly can grow facial hair as we see several in later titles (predominantly in civilian life) who do have facial hair.  The enemy Zentradi commander in Macross Digital Mission VF-X (1997) is, IINM, the first Zentradi character to be depicted with facial hair.

In Macross Frontier, there are a few as well.  Macross Frontier fleet sponsor and SMS owner Richard Bilra is a giant Zentradi rocking a big bushy mustache and beard, and Ranka's Zentradi manager Elmo Kridanik has a mustache.

 

 

's it just me or does that bootleg-tier Robotech figure bear an odd resemblance to a young Laurence Fishburne?

Thanks for the info, I was kinda thinking a weird hybrid of will smith and someone tougher

[Scream Man]

When the Macross crashed originally, do we know its trajectory as it came in? 

We know Macross crashed in July 1999 into South Ataria island is, AFAIK, a fictional island off the southern coast of Japan. I assume somewhere slightly westward since, as Shin describes, at the start of Macross Zero, he see's "A Second sun in the west" at the end of the contrail/smoke cloud. So it must have passed over him, or close to it, which means either Shin DIDN'T live in Japan, or the island is somewhere to the near South West of the archipelago. 

In SDFM's first episode we learn a few things. One is that, while still relatively high in the sky, The Macross created enough of a shockwave to destroys at least one city. Also it very clearly hit South Ataria Island 

Macross Compendium says:

• 1815 Japan Standard Time: Admidst a dispute between a faction advocating to destroy it by nuclear attack and factions advocating for no attack, the object named "EVA" (evangel, which means the Gospel of the Coming) enters the atmosphere above Burma. Due to the high temperatures and terrific shock waves, it reduces the summit of Mount Everest by nearly 1000 meters, destroys Moscow and Stockholm, and inflicts damage while passing over all parts of Europe. Furthermore, it travels over Iceland and Greenland, causes volcanoes to erupt in Canada, and falls onto the South Ataria Island at the southermost tip of the Ogasawara Islands above the Tropic of Cancer.

But I have no idea where it got that from. 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Scream Man said:

When the Macross crashed originally, do we know its trajectory as it came in? 

Not specifically, no.

 

1 hour ago, Scream Man said:

We know Macross crashed in July 1999 into South Ataria island is, AFAIK, a fictional island off the southern coast of Japan.

South Ataria is a fictional island in the Ogasawara islands (the Bonin islands to westerners) south of Japan.  The coordinates we're given put it about 90km south and slightly to the west of Iwo Jima and 54km to the west of South Iwo Jima.  About 1,300km almost due south of Tokyo.

 

1 hour ago, Scream Man said:

I assume somewhere slightly westward since, as Shin describes, at the start of Macross Zero, he see's "A Second sun in the west" at the end of the contrail/smoke cloud. So it must have passed over him, or close to it, which means either Shin DIDN'T live in Japan, or the island is somewhere to the near South West of the archipelago. 

In SDFM's first episode we learn a few things. One is that, while still relatively high in the sky, The Macross created enough of a shockwave to destroys at least one city. Also it very clearly hit South Ataria Island 

Macross Compendium says:

• 1815 Japan Standard Time: Admidst a dispute between a faction advocating to destroy it by nuclear attack and factions advocating for no attack, the object named "EVA" (evangel, which means the Gospel of the Coming) enters the atmosphere above Burma. Due to the high temperatures and terrific shock waves, it reduces the summit of Mount Everest by nearly 1000 meters, destroys Moscow and Stockholm, and inflicts damage while passing over all parts of Europe. Furthermore, it travels over Iceland and Greenland, causes volcanoes to erupt in Canada, and falls onto the South Ataria Island at the southermost tip of the Ogasawara Islands above the Tropic of Cancer.

But I have no idea where it got that from. 

It's not sourced on the Wiki because the Wiki got it from Egan's old site, but remarks similar to that are in a couple older artbooks.

The course described there suggests the Alien Starship 1 was traveling northwest at a high rate of speed and must have completed almost an entire orbit before crashing given that it ends up east of where it entered the atmosphere.  (Considering the course, it's likely New Zealand, New South Wales, Queensland, the Solomons, and New Guinea didn't have a great time either.)

Macross Chronicle also supports the idea that the ship was moving generally northwest on reentry and crashed into South Ataria that way.

Shin is a second-generation Japanese-American, so presumably he was living somewhere in the US when the ASS-1 came down.  Practically all of the US cities and towns with large Japanese-American populations are in Hawaii or on the west coast, so in all likelihood Shin hails from either Hawaii, California, or Washington.  (There's an outside chance he's from New Jersey, Michigan, New York, or Ohio, all of which are home to small but significant Japanese-American communities, but given Shin's not f***ing melting in the South Pacific weather on Mayan it seems unlikely he's a New Englander or a Midwesterner.  I'll forego the almost obligatory joke about Ohio.) 

Kawamori seems to really like San Francisco, given how much time was taken recreating parts of it in Macross Frontier, so I'm guessing Shin's family are probably from the bay area.

[Scream Man]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

Kawamori seems to really like San Francisco, given how much time was taken recreating parts of it in Macross Frontier, so I'm guessing Shin's family are probably from the bay area.

I had also assumed it did at least one circuit, because it hits the island and just stops, even though it destroys a lot of it. I would think if it came down steep and just slammed into it the island would be obliterated, and Earth wouldn't have been much use for awhile afterwards. 

As for Shin; He also says he woke up because the Earth shook in a way it wasn't supposed too, which either mean it didn't feel like an Earthquake (Which would potentially support your San Francisco theory) or he lives somewhere that doesn't have Quakes and he was unfamiliar with the Earth shaking at all. But who knows, really? 

Unrelated comment to that; So as I was reading the timeline, and when u think about it the development cycle after the Macross crashes is kind of insane. I know they gathered OT from the wreck, but it must have either also had instructions on how to USE some of it, or its RIDICULOUSLY easy to understand. I mean its less than 10 years before they have the Clean Nuclear reactors, the Hyber-carbon alloys, the gyros to allow for bipedal mechs, the mechanics for the transformations, the basic understanding (VERY basic it turns out) of the fold system, artificial gravity tech, better/faster engines (Since they have at least decent enough speeds for multiple inter-solar system craft, and the Macross herself makes it back to Earth from Pluto in 2 years) etc etc. Like Overtechnology is the Ikea furniture of technology it seems. 

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, Scream Man said:

I had also assumed it did at least one circuit, because it hits the island and just stops, even though it destroys a lot of it. I would think if it came down steep and just slammed into it the island would be obliterated, and Earth wouldn't have been much use for awhile afterwards. 

Macross Chronicle's History Sheet about the fall of the ASS-1 mentions, in passing, that the ship decelerated far more than should be possible after entering that atmosphere, which it presents as thought to have been an intentional braking maneuver.  The ship was going over 10km/s when it entered the atmosphere and by the time it crashed it had slowed to only about 1km/s.

Of course, something so massive hitting at "only" 1 kilometer per second still made a hell of a dent.  Macross Chronicle asserts that the impact force was equivalent to a 670 megaton explosion, creating a crater 3km in diameter, with ejecta from the impact reaching altitudes over 10km and devastating an area of 100 square kilometers with the shockwave.  It also notes that the impact reduced the size of the island somewhat to 16.9 square kilometers.

(One of the more unusual points Macross Chronicle introduces is that the island was inhabited.  A 16-man US military communications and satellite monitoring output on the island understandably did not survive the impact.)

 

18 minutes ago, Scream Man said:

As for Shin; He also says he woke up because the Earth shook in a way it wasn't supposed too, which either mean it didn't feel like an Earthquake (Which would potentially support your San Francisco theory) or he lives somewhere that doesn't have Quakes and he was unfamiliar with the Earth shaking at all. But who knows, really?

Yeah, a 670 megaton impact is likely to shake the Earth a bit different to a usual bay area earthquake.

 

18 minutes ago, Scream Man said:

Unrelated comment to that; So as I was reading the timeline, and when u think about it the development cycle after the Macross crashes is kind of insane. I know they gathered OT from the wreck, but it must have either also had instructions on how to USE some of it, or its RIDICULOUSLY easy to understand. I mean its less than 10 years before they have the Clean Nuclear reactors, the Hyber-carbon alloys, the gyros to allow for bipedal mechs, the mechanics for the transformations, the basic understanding (VERY basic it turns out) of the fold system, artificial gravity tech, better/faster engines (Since they have at least decent enough speeds for multiple inter-solar system craft, and the Macross herself makes it back to Earth from Pluto in 2 years) etc etc. Like Overtechnology is the Ikea furniture of technology it seems. 

A bit, yeah... perhaps somewhat justified in the sense that the Earth Unification Government basically threw the entire global tech industry and planetary GDP at the problem for ten years, heedless of the economic consequences, and even then ended up taking a bunch of shortcuts by reverse-engineering the materials and applying that know-how to existing theoretical and practical tech instead of trying to perfectly reproduce the alien technology.  (It may also have helped somewhat that what fell out of the sky was the Protoculture's lowest-bidder, ruggedized, keep-it-simple-stupid military hardware and not a more refined or advanced ship they might've used themselves.  Figuring out how Gravity and Inertia Control works was basically the key to a lot of the rest too, so once they had that understanding the rest probably fell into place a lot faster.)

[guyxxed]

It's been awhile since I watched Zero, but I had the impression that Shin's family lived on an island somewhere.  What I remember is him and his folks  standing on the front porch looking at the light of the impact on the horizon, and directly in front of their house was a beach.  Unlikely to be San Fran in that case, and the anti UN attack the killed his parents would be more likely somewhere other than a major US city (in my opinions, for what it's worth). 

[sketchley]

6 hours ago, Scream Man said:

I had also assumed it did at least one circuit, because it hits the island and just stops, even though it destroys a lot of it. I would think if it came down steep and just slammed into it the island would be obliterated, and Earth wouldn't have been much use for awhile afterwards. 

He could have been living on one of the more populous islands in the Bonin Islands (aka Ogasawara Islands), like Chichijima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima

 

 

6 hours ago, Scream Man said:

Unrelated comment to that; So as I was reading the timeline, and when u think about it the development cycle after the Macross crashes is kind of insane. I know they gathered OT from the wreck, but it must have either also had instructions on how to USE some of it, or its RIDICULOUSLY easy to understand.

If memory serves, they replicated the technology without fully understanding it; and this is given as the reason why the Gravity Control System and Fold Drive both go out of control and 'exit the ship' on their own accord when they are first used.

[Scream Man]

Kind of. The first shot is him in bed. 

At the end of the pan down he looks to be living on a hill, pretty high. The city is laid out before him to a waters edge.

And then the last shot of his house and family. Thats pretty much all we get. 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, guyxxed said:

It's been awhile since I watched Zero, but I had the impression that Shin's family lived on an island somewhere.  What I remember is him and his folks  standing on the front porch looking at the light of the impact on the horizon, and directly in front of their house was a beach.

The one good look we get at Shin's childhood home at the start of Macross Zero's first episode shows a house on top of a high hillside overlooking a large city directly on the coast.

Given that he says he saw the ship fall to the west and we know from his bio that he's second-gen Japanese-American, we can assume that that's a western coastline.

To me, that makes California seem like the most likely suspect.  Honalulu faces out onto the ocean, but it faces south and east not west the way it would have to for the scene to be possible there.

 

13 minutes ago, sketchley said:

He could have been living on one of the more populous islands in the Bonin Islands (aka Ogasawara Islands), like Chichijima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima

Not many Americans living in the Bonin islands, but Chichijima has another problem.  If he saw the ship fall from there, the second sun he saw would be in the south not the west.

 

27 minutes ago, sketchley said:

If memory serves, they replicated the technology without fully understanding it; and this is given as the reason why the Gravity Control System and Fold Drive both go out of control and 'exit the ship' on their own accord when they are first used.

IIRC, at the start of "Global Report", General Global attributes the failure to the booby trap compromising control of those devices.

[Bolt]

Definitely looks like the bay area. I live an hour north of SF. Kind of dramatic and a bit high, but it sure invokes the bay. Could be Mount Diablo.

Edited Friday at 04:00 AM by Bolt

[sketchley]

24 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not many Americans living in the Bonin islands, but Chichijima has another problem.  If he saw the ship fall from there, the second sun he saw would be in the south not the west.

 

Not many does not equal zero.

Also, as you earlier stated, the ship was performing controlled braking manoeuvres.  So that plume in the sky may not be "East to West", but plausibly any direction.

Therefore, in addition to Chichijima, places like Guam and Okinawa are also plausible.  However, I doubt that Shin was somewhere as far away as the coast of North America, simply because he wouldn't be able to see it due to the curvature of the Earth.  Even Hawai'i is pushing it.

Edited Friday at 04:10 AM by sketchley

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

Not many does not equal zero.

True!

 

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

Also, as you earlier stated, the ship was performing controlled braking manoeuvres.  So that plume in the sky may not be "East to West", but plausibly any direction.

Yes, though the described course suggests that it continued going in more or less a straight line from Burma northwest for almost one complete orbit before hitting the island.

 

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

Therefore, in addition to Chichijima, places like Guam and Okinawa are also plausible.  However, I doubt that Shin was somewhere as far away as the coast of North America, simply because he wouldn't be able to see it due to the curvature of the Earth.  Even Hawai'i is pushing it.

Possibly, but given that the one thing Shin really says about it is the "one sun in the east, the other in the west" I feel like we're meant to interpret that as Shin lived somewhere east of where the ship came down.  Guam is to the south and Okinawa is to the west.  

That and I just cannot shake the feeling that Shin being from California would be Kawamori's way of working his love of SoCal into Macross Zero.  It's on prominent display in Plus, 7, and Frontier, so it'd be weird if he didn't get at least a nod to it in Zero.  Zero particularly being his only chance to use ACTUAL SoCal instead of spacefuture replica SoCal.

[sketchley]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes, though the described course suggests that it continued going in more or less a straight line from Burma northwest for almost one complete orbit before hitting the island.

I should have rephrased that, the ASS-1's course immediately before "landing" could plausibly be in any direction.  In the sense of a small island in the centre of the ocean offers the largest firing range (there are no mountains blocking the shot), and the ship adjusted its course during final decent to "land" there.

 

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Possibly, but given that the one thing Shin really says about it is the "one sun in the east, the other in the west"

That line is a bit misleading, as it suggests that there is 2 suns in the sky at the same time.  The quote above states that at "18:15 JST" an object enters the atmosphere above Burma.  It's travelling at 10 km/s.

The ISS travels at roughly 7.67 km/s, and takes approx. 90 min. to orbit the Earth.  Therefore, the ASS-1 would have taken at least the same amount of time to circumnavigate the globe, putting its "landing" at around 19:45.

As it happens in July, there's a slim possibility that the dusk light from the setting sun would still be seen in the West (based on Tokyo sunset in July at just before 19:00).  Based on that, the "the other in the west" would be the sun, and "one sun in the east" would be the crash landing of the ASS-1.  By that logic, Shin would be on Okinawa, or some place to the west of South Ataria Island.

 

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That and I just cannot shake the feeling that Shin being from California would be Kawamori's way of working his love of SoCal into Macross Zero.  It's on prominent display in Plus, 7, and Frontier, so it'd be weird if he didn't get at least a nod to it in Zero.  Zero particularly being his only chance to use ACTUAL SoCal instead of spacefuture replica SoCal.

It's possible, but as a 2nd generation Japanese-American, it's also plausible that Shin had travelled back to Japan for a short time and was visiting relatives when the ASS-1 "landed".

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, sketchley said:

I should have rephrased that, the ASS-1's course immediately before "landing" could plausibly be in any direction.  In the sense of a small island in the centre of the ocean offers the largest firing range (there are no mountains blocking the shot), and the ship adjusted its course during final decent to "land" there.

I dunno... the animation, and pretty much every textual description, suggests it's essentially a ballistic reentry.  Macross Chronicle is, AFAIK, the only source to suggest that there was any semblance of control from the ship side beyond the unscheduled "lithobraking" maneuver at the terminal end of the descent, and it only mentions the ship slowing down not a turn.

 

11 minutes ago, sketchley said:

That line is a bit misleading, as it suggests that there is 2 suns in the sky at the same time.  The quote above states that at "18:15 JST" an object enters the atmosphere above Burma.  It's travelling at 10 km/s.

The ISS travels at roughly 7.67 km/s, and takes approx. 90 min. to orbit the Earth.  Therefore, the ASS-1 would have taken at least the same amount of time to circumnavigate the globe, putting its "landing" at around 19:45.

As it happens in July, there's a slim possibility that the dusk light from the setting sun would still be seen in the West (based on Tokyo sunset in July at just before 19:00).  Based on that, the "the other in the west" would be the sun, and "one sun in the east" would be the crash landing of the ASS-1.  By that logic, Shin would be on Okinawa, or some place to the west of South Ataria Island.

Depending on whether we're seeing the light and dust from impact or simply from the ship's passage overhead in that scene, that radically opens the field as to where he could've been.  

Shin could be in Novi and this would work.  Sunrise on July 17th 1999 in Novi was ~06:10 and the Macross may well have been overhead around sunrise given the -13hr time zone adjustment (19:00 JST would've been 6:00 local time).

 

11 minutes ago, sketchley said:

It's possible, but as a 2nd generation Japanese-American, it's also plausible that Shin had travelled back to Japan for a short time and was visiting relatives when the ASS-1 "landed".

Also possible.  Though given that his home seems to have been unaffected by the passage of the ASS-1 overhead, and the ship is said to have cut a swath across Asia and Europe, caused volcanic eruptions in Canada, the western US would seem like the best candidate to be unaffected given a roughly ballistic flightpath.  The severity of the impact would've likely caused at least some destruction in Japan, given that it was about 1,000km away and this was 13 times as energetic as Tsar Bomba, which blew out windows 780km away.

 

Something to mathematically model later.  

[Scream Man]

God I love this sort of nerdery

I don't think ASS1 turned. The only animation we have of it falling is the original series, and it arcs right down and in, not turning. I can buy slowing down, but even that may have been accomplished with modification of the angle of descent as opposed to reverse thrusters of some kind (Which we see no evidence of.) I'm also I'm not sure I buy it aiming for South Ataria as a way to aim the main gun for the Booby Trap. i mean MAYBE, and I have no evidence to support that it didn't, but it doesn't... feel right to me? Based on the condition of the ship herself? I dunno, I'm willing to be convinced... 

 

18 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Depending on whether we're seeing the light and dust from impact or simply from the ship's passage overhead in that scene, that radically opens the field as to where he could've been.  

I lean towards it being the trail as it came in. The way the electricity arcs COULD be something similar to lightning in a volcanic eruption, but the way the scene looks and feels I think that everyone ran outside as the blast is happening from impact. A Smoke plume that large would take longer to appear, and I think this is a "This just happened" moment, as the shot before is Shin waking up from the shake from either the impact or the shockwave as it flew over head. 

I think I'm largely with Seto; It came in East to west, slowed itself and hit, passing over somewhere in or near California. Given the size of the Macross and the trail it left I'd imagine it would have been visible from a vast majority of the western coastline. Bolt says it even looks a little like San Francisco or somewhere near it, so I think thats probably on track. Whether it did an orbit first or not I'm less sure. 

[JB0]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IIRC, at the start of "Global Report", General Global attributes the failure to the booby trap compromising control of those devices.

It does.

If I recall, some later print sources attribute it to the humans not knowing what they're doing, which is hard to align with the statements in the show. Not just Global Report, though it's the only part that just straight-up has to be cut out.

 

When they switch from anti-grav to rocket thrusters while falling, Global says something like "at least those were made on Earth". Which could easily just be angry snark at the poorly-understood space magic that exited stage up... but then Global Report says the snark was justified and human error wasn't the cause. 

Meanwhile, the replacement gravity controllers are considered trustworthy when they're hovering over canadain population centers, so clearly the homemade replacements work fine. I think they use them when landing on Mars too. That strongly implies the flaw wasn't with the hardware. It is certainly possible that flaws in the terran-made units or operational procedure were identified and addressed offscreen between Booby Trap and Burst Point. But again,  you still have Global Report's explicit root-cause statement denying that as the primary issue.

[sketchley]

5 hours ago, Scream Man said:

God I love this sort of nerdery

(...)

I lean towards it being the trail as it came in. The way the electricity arcs COULD be something similar to lightning in a volcanic eruption, but the way the scene looks and feels I think that everyone ran outside as the blast is happening from impact. A Smoke plume that large would take longer to appear, and I think this is a "This just happened" moment, as the shot before is Shin waking up from the shake from either the impact or the shockwave as it flew over head. 

More nerdery stuff for you 😉:

The big question is: is what we see in Macross Zero what actually happened, or is it an artistic representation?

Based on the "what we see is what happened" and the "lightning indicates the extent of the mushroom cloud"*, we still have to contend with the curvature of the Earth, and the proximity one would have to be to see that much of the smoke plume.

Let's presume that the plume over South Ataria is the same scale as the one produced in the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption, that reached a height of 58 km**.  One would have to be within 870 km just to be able to see the very top of the plume***.  To see a large portion of the plume, Shin would have had to be much closer.  For argument's sake, let's say his house is located on a 1,000 m tall hill.  At 500 km away, he wouldn't be able to see the bottom half of the plume (the bottom 12 km [approx.]).  That puts us into the ballpark for his maximum distance from South Ataria Island based on what was shown.

As per the Macross Compendium's location of South Ataria Island (24N, 141E), Tokyo, Okinawa, and Guam are all over 1,250 km away; too far to see any part of the plume (Wake Island is even further, over 2,500 km East).  However, islands like Hahajima and Chichijima are within viewing range, at around 315 km and 360 km distance (only the bottom 4.8 km of the plume would be obscured on that 1,000 m hill—well in the ballpark for what is shown).

So while I agree that Chichijima doesn't fit the East-West travel, its location does fit with what we're shown in Macross Zero.

 

That said, Macross is not the same as our world.  If islands like South Ataria and Mayan exist, then it is possible that other islands also exist.  Maybe there is another Guam-like island (in the sense of being a US territory and mountainous), somewhere near Iwo Jima (92 km NNE from South Atari) and South Iwo Jima (54 km ENE of South Ataria)—perhaps due south or to the south east of those real islands.  This heretofore unseen, fictitious island would satisfy all the conditions surrounding the ASS-1's "landing", and be where Shin could be in order to see what was depicted in the show.

 

* If Shin was on Chichijima, it would take about 17 min. for the sound to reach him—plenty of time for a plume to grow really big before being woken up and seeing it.  Not to mention that plumes over nuclear detonations and volcanic eruptions also develop ridiculously fast...

** the sustained height is indicated as 30+ km—the viewer would have to be closer than 630 km just to see the very top.

*** according to the Earth curvature calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature  

Edited Friday at 01:20 PM by sketchley

[Scream Man]

8 hours ago, sketchley said:

More nerdery stuff for you 😉:

The big question is: is what we see in Macross Zero what actually happened, or is it an artistic representation?

Based on the "what we see is what happened" and the "lightning indicates the extent of the mushroom cloud"*, we still have to contend with the curvature of the Earth, and the proximity one would have to be to see that much of the smoke plume.

Let's presume that the plume over South Ataria is the same scale as the one produced in the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption, that reached a height of 58 km**.  One would have to be within 870 km just to be able to see the very top of the plume***.  To see a large portion of the plume, Shin would have had to be much closer.  For argument's sake, let's say his house is located on a 1,000 m tall hill.  At 500 km away, he wouldn't be able to see the bottom half of the plume (the bottom 12 km [approx.]).  That puts us into the ballpark for his maximum distance from South Ataria Island based on what was shown.

As per the Macross Compendium's location of South Ataria Island (24N, 141E), Tokyo, Okinawa, and Guam are all over 1,250 km away; too far to see any part of the plume (Wake Island is even further, over 2,500 km East).  However, islands like Hahajima and Chichijima are within viewing range, at around 315 km and 360 km distance (only the bottom 4.8 km of the plume would be obscured on that 1,000 m hill—well in the ballpark for what is shown).

So while I agree that Chichijima doesn't fit the East-West travel, its location does fit with what we're shown in Macross Zero.

 

That said, Macross is not the same as our world.  If islands like South Ataria and Mayan exist, then it is possible that other islands also exist.  Maybe there is another Guam-like island (in the sense of being a US territory and mountainous), somewhere near Iwo Jima (92 km NNE from South Atari) and South Iwo Jima (54 km ENE of South Ataria)—perhaps due south or to the south east of those real islands.  This heretofore unseen, fictitious island would satisfy all the conditions surrounding the ASS-1's "landing", and be where Shin could be in order to see what was depicted in the show.

 

* If Shin was on Chichijima, it would take about 17 min. for the sound to reach him—plenty of time for a plume to grow really big before being woken up and seeing it.  Not to mention that plumes over nuclear detonations and volcanic eruptions also develop ridiculously fast...

** the sustained height is indicated as 30+ km—the viewer would have to be closer than 630 km just to see the very top.

*** according to the Earth curvature calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature  

I appreciate all the Math  
This DOES all assume its a smoke plume from the actual impact, and I still think its the trail of the Macross as it flew overhead. This could also have been the shake that Shin felt and that woke him up; its the shockwave, not the impact of the ship. So he feels the shockwave, goes outside and see's the glow on the western horizon. 

That does NOT explain away what you mentioned about the distance of seeing the glow. I hadn't even THOUGHT of the curvature problem. In Macross we see the boom, and it's quite large, but it wouldn't have been a sustained and long lasting light. If they are watching a sustained glowing light from the impact fires from the ship, they MUST be close enough to view that based on the EC. 
As you say, id the hill they are on is 1000m (Which honestly seems a bit high. The highest natural point in Sydney from the ocean is about 281 metres, and that matches Mt Davidson in San Francisco (The highest point in the city according to google). Views from the top of that look similar to the one's seen in the M0 image. Using the calculator above, that means to see something at Horizon level you would need to be around 60km (37ish miles) to see it. Now I think the fire would be fairly large, so let's generously double it and say 120km away. That's less than half the distance of Tasmania from the southern tip of Australia, a trip of just under 10 hours by boat. 

Sketchleys idea about a fictional location is starting to have more weight in my mind...