The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

[Seto Kaiba]

Say, who actually produce the space ships for the Exploration Fleets, and where? Making these things must had been an incredibly big undertaking.

Oh, there are a variety of shipyards and starship design firms... Shinsei Industry, General Galaxy, Three Star Heavy Industry, Hashuu Heavy Industry, Yaesu Heavy Industry, and OTEC Group are known to design and manufacture the ships seen in Macross. After the New UN Government made a point of appropriating the Zentradi Army's own automated factory satellites, a lot of the shipbuilding seems to be done in those. Presumably those manufacturers lease part or all of a factory satellite from the New UN Government. The Sol system was noted to have at least 20 captured and renovated factory satellites, Eden is noted to have had several, there was one orbiting Uroboros, and numerous others that are captured and relocated whenever someone locates one. 20-50 factory satellites were the logistical backbone of each Zentradi Army main fleet, so the New UN Government basically has the shipbuilding and manufacturing capabilities to sustain a force many orders of magnitude larger than what they actually have.

Emigrant fleets bring their own factory facilities with them on their voyages. The underside of the City-class emigrant ships like Macross-5 and Macross-7 was noted to have two spacedock facilities capable of accepting even Battle-class supercarriers. Those early fleets also had manufacturing ships like the Three Star-class in their numbers, and those were noted to be capable of making more or less anything from consumer electronics up the scale to space battleships. Presumably those manufacturing capabilities were rolled into the main bodies of larger emigrant ships like the Island Cluster-class.

[False Prophet]

Say, who actually produce the space ships for the Exploration Fleets, and where? Making these things must had been an incredibly big undertaking.

Oh, there are a variety of shipyards and starship design firms... Shinsei Industry, General Galaxy, Three Star Heavy Industry, Hashuu Heavy Industry, Yaesu Heavy Industry, and OTEC Group are known to design and manufacture the ships seen in Macross. After the New UN Government made a point of appropriating the Zentradi Army's own automated factory satellites, a lot of the shipbuilding seems to be done in those. Presumably those manufacturers lease part or all of a factory satellite from the New UN Government. The Sol system was noted to have at least 20 captured and renovated factory satellites, Eden is noted to have had several, there was one orbiting Uroboros, and numerous others that are captured and relocated whenever someone locates one. 20-50 factory satellites were the logistical backbone of each Zentradi Army main fleet, so the New UN Government basically has the shipbuilding and manufacturing capabilities to sustain a force many orders of magnitude larger than what they actually have.

Emigrant fleets bring their own factory facilities with them on their voyages. The underside of the City-class emigrant ships like Macross-5 and Macross-7 was noted to have two spacedock facilities capable of accepting even Battle-class supercarriers. Those early fleets also had manufacturing ships like the Three Star-class in their numbers, and those were noted to be capable of making more or less anything from consumer electronics up the scale to space battleships. Presumably those manufacturing capabilities were rolled into the main bodies of larger emigrant ships like the Island Cluster-class.

Maybe the fact that there exist galaxy-spanning conglomerates like General Galaxy and Shinsei is because of operating businesses like shipbuilding demanding a huge accumulation of capital, and one thing led to another...

Say, do we have any idea about defensive systems in the Solar system, like how many Macross are stationed there? I imagine after the Isamu's debacle, the Vajra, and VF-X, things much have been really tights.

[Seto Kaiba]

Say, do we have any idea about defensive systems in the Solar system, like how many Macross are stationed there? I imagine after the Isamu's debacle, the Vajra, and VF-X, things much have been really tights.

Earth is supposedly the most heavily defended planet in the New UN Government's sphere of influence... being both the seat of the New UN Government and the galactic leader in technology development and manufacturing power.

Earth's defenses appear to be primarily space-based. There's a semi-autonomous satellite defense network made up of numerous orbital weapons platforms and satellites armed with beam weaponry and missile launchers, as well as a substantial New UN Spacy defense fleet armed with the most advanced weapons available and commanded from the state-of-the-art Battle-class supercarrier codenamed Macross-13. In 2051, the fleet was equipped with VF-19s, VF-22s, and a mass production version of the AIF-X-9 Ghost designated AIF-9B. By 2059, the fleet was on its second Macross-13* and was transitioning to the new VF-24.

Presumably the New UN Forces haven't changed their defense policy from around the First Space War with respect to stationing small flotillas of warships to protect space-based settlements like the colonies on the moon. Some sources contend that ARMD-06, ARMD-08, and a handful of Oberth-class destroyers survived the First Space War by being assigned to Luna's Apollo Base.




* The first/original Macross-13 was hijacked by the Earth-supremacist group/faction Latence in 2051 as a part of the group's attempted coup d'etat, outfitted with a Sound Jamming System to prevent missiles from being used against it, and subsequently destroyed by the VF-X Ravens and the paramilitary group Vindirance. Another Macross-13 was built, and c.2059 was under the command of General Kim Kabirov, former SDF-1 Macross bridge operator.

(As a side note, Macross-13 is not the 13th New Macross-class... it's a codename assigned to Macross warships that are classified military secrets.)

[pirx]

Does original SDF-1 still counts as a part of Earth defense? After all even permanently docked in Macross city it is capable of firing it's main canon at the orbital targets.

[Seto Kaiba]

Does original SDF-1 still counts as a part of Earth defense? After all even permanently docked in Macross city it is capable of firing it's main canon at the orbital targets.

One thing that's consistent in both official Macross timelines is that the SDF-1 Macross doesn't seem to be counted among Earth's planetary defenses anymore after 2012... implied to be because it's obsolete and/or because of its symbolic role despite being a fully operational space battleship.

The New UN Forces made it into their equivalent of the Pentagon (the New Unification Army Command) c.2010, and it's been serving in that capacity as a glorified office building ever since.

It's not the only first-generation Macross to meet that fate either. SDFN-04 General Vrlitwhai Kridanik and an unidentified SDFN nicknamed Macross Extra both ended up permanently grounded on the planets which were colonized by the emigrant fleets they were escorting. The General Vrlitwhai Kridanik was repurposed for use as a long-term habitat, being redesignated Vrlitwhai City, and the Macross Extra was sold off by the Pipure's local government to Epsilon Foundation representative Ramla Saied, who in turn gave it to Zelgar Heavy Industries senior researcher Ivan Polywanov. As you know, SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global was loaned out to the 117th Research Fleet and sunk by the Vajra. Presumably SDFN-01 General Takashi Hayase was grounded somewhere, though we don't know its actual fate.

[yazi88]

I wonder if UN Spacey or New UN Spacey ever thought of making more Grand Cannons, it was effective at the end of Space War 1.

[Seto Kaiba]

I wonder if UN Spacey or New UN Spacey ever thought of making more Grand Cannons, it was effective at the end of Space War 1.

Probably not, IMO.

The UN Forces' Grand Cannon systems were a monstrous investment of time, resources, manpower, and money that ultimately didn't pay off for the UN Government. They approved the construction of five of them for the planetary defense of Earth, but it took a prohibitively huge workforce eight solid years to complete the first one under a rush order and the price tag nearly bankrupted the entire world economy in conjunction with restoration work on Alien Starship One. Between the Anti-Unification Alliance successfully ruining one construction site and the other three being largely incomplete when the Zentradi arrived, the whole affair turned out to have been a colossal misuse of defense funding.

Apart from their excessively high construction cost and manpower requirements, the biggest of the Grand Cannon system's many flaws was that its fixed position meant you had to have several to actually defend a planet and the surface-based firing meant you couldn't use them until your own forces were wiped out or you'd create the mother of all friendly fire problems. It's way easier and more effective to just build really, incredibly over-the-top powerful reaction warheads like the ones on the Varauta system defense flagship (which were multiple warhead affairs with twenty-four 10 gigaton warheads apiece). Building something like a Grand Cannon just isn't in the cards when you have an average emigrant population of less than 100,000 people.

[yazi88]

Ironically those under construction Grand Cannon's saved a lot of people too during the Zentradi shelling of Earth...

[Seto Kaiba]

Ironically those under construction Grand Cannon's saved a lot of people too during the Zentradi shelling of Earth...

Yeah, though as bomb shelters go they were kind of overkill at 6km deep.

[False Prophet]

Any news regarding the new Macross series?

Also, is there any yearly meetings, conventions, concerts, etc. for Macross in the States and Japan that I should know, other than the Super Dimension Convention?

[yazi88]

Its a long long production process and we haven't seen a poster or anything. Probably sometime next year we'll see or hear anything new.

And given that there is another Delta movie announced, this new TV series might be pushed back to focus on the new Delta movie and all the marketing that comes with it. Strike the hammer when its still hot to maximize Delta's still very popular merchandise.

[Seto Kaiba]

Any news regarding the new Macross series?

Nothing. It's looking like all we're getting next year is an all-original Macross Delta movie, which had many of us going "Not this sh*t again".

Also, is there any yearly meetings, conventions, concerts, etc. for Macross in the States and Japan that I should know, other than the Super Dimension Convention?

There are semi-regular meet-ups at the various anime conventions, but Super Dimension Convention is the one that's best-attended since those other meet-ups are usually organized by people involved with Super Dimension Convention anyway.

[False Prophet]

Say, how was the people's response to the second Frontier movie? From what I've read, a lot of people were caught offguard, right?

And is there anything new in the first Delta movie that probably can be explored in the next movie?

[Seto Kaiba]

Say, how was the people's response to the second Frontier movie? From what I've read, a lot of people were caught offguard, right?

The ending sure as hell did... I know a lot of people were expecting another cop-out "you are both my wings" ending, and instead we got Alto actually picking one before disappearing.

All told, Sayonara no Tsubasa got an overwhelmingly positive reception IIRC.

And is there anything new in the first Delta movie that probably can be explored in the next movie?

Nothing that leaps to mind.

Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure was a lot closer to being a standard compilation movie than is typical for the Macross franchise. The few times the movie appreciably deviates from the series were to facilitate compacting the TV series story into a two hour movie, like King Grammier VI already being dead at the start of the story, Hayate already being a member of Delta Flight when he meets Freyja, or the Aerial Knights capturing Walkure at Al Shahal's ruins right after Messer dies instead of on Windermere IV weeks later.

(Let's be honest, Macross Delta had a LOT of terrible ideas... but none were so aggressively stupid as trying to use the most recognizable idol group in the globular cluster as undercover operatives with no more disguise than a cheap Wal-mart Halloween costume. Never mind that they'd be recognized right away because they're celebrities and therefore compromised pretty much immediately, being soldiers out of uniform means your enemy can legally hang them as spies when their incompetent asses get caught!)

The only thing that really changed in the ending is Windermere IV is supposedly requesting peace negotiations after losing the Star Shrine on Ragna, instead of just taking their ball and going home the way they did in the TV series... which would explain why the new movie is being advertised as an all-new story.

[pirx]

I wish Macross Zero would've had a compilation movie a la Plus which would fix last part of OVA, mostly second part of episode 4 and ending of episode 5

[False Prophet]

(Let's be honest, Macross Delta had a LOT of terrible ideas... but none were so aggressively stupid as trying to use the most recognizable idol group in the globular cluster as undercover operatives with no more disguise than a cheap Wal-mart Halloween costume. Never mind that they'd be recognized right away because they're celebrities and therefore compromised pretty much immediately, being soldiers out of uniform means your enemy can legally hang them as spies when their incompetent asses get caught!)

There is this one argument that pops out almost always in in my country's small Macross fandom: Is Delta dumber than 7? The main point is that while 7 is ridiculous, it wholeheartedly embraced its zaniness and riffed on it, unlike Delta on-off seriousness.

[Seto Kaiba]

There is this one argument that pops out almost always in in my country's small Macross fandom: Is Delta dumber than 7? The main point is that while 7 is ridiculous, it wholeheartedly embraced its zaniness and riffed on it, unlike Delta on-off seriousness.

Honestly, I don't think that Macross Delta is necessarily "dumber" than Macross 7. I think that Delta simply has writing that is significantly worse than 7's.

The Macross Delta series did less innovating with its setting than any previous series since Macross II, and it shows. There really aren't any surprises in it. Everything there is something that the fans saw in a previous series and accepted without complaint. It took no risks and it pushed no envelopes. The reason it gets so much hate from fans outside Japan is that it's just badly presented. It has a good pace at the outset, but it keeps breaking flow so it can fit in more Walkure songs, engage in fanservice, or try to tick off arbitrary Macross plot obligations like the ace mentor dying. The cast is huge, but most of them are undeveloped or minimally-developed stock characters the writers couldn't be arsed to do anything with. The antagonist side's entire backstory got jettisoned to a manga side story. The story is so badly conceived that there's no real sense that the characters are actually achieving anything, since most of the time anything they do just plays right into Roid's hands, and with them having failed in their main goal of protecting the Brisingr Alliance from Windermere at the midseason climax the entire second half feels like pure filler. Exposition is handled so poorly that they had to throw in several entire episodes in the second half that were devoted to talking heads dumping exposition like they forgot they weren't in a Hideo Kojima game. There's a climactic battle at the end of the series that doesn't actually resolve anything, and a resolution to the conflict that comes out of nowhere and feels incredibly weak and unsatisfying.

The Macross 7 series got off to a glacially slow start and it took almost twenty episodes to actually kick off its main plot, but outside of those early pacing issues the story is a tight, well-written one that flows well. The series explains the things that need to be explained, skips the things that don't, takes the time to develop the characters well enough for the audience to know what everyone's about and why they're there, and it all builds to a climax in which the plot is resolved, lessons are learned, and our characters get closure. It's goofy, sure... but the writing is good enough that it's fun because it's a bit goofy and defies convention. It's like Macross's version of G Gundam.

TL;DR... they're basically the same series concept, just 7 is well-executed and Delta isn't.

[False Prophet]

Honestly, I don't think that Macross Delta is necessarily "dumber" than Macross 7. I think that Delta simply has writing that is significantly worse than 7's.

The Macross Delta series did less innovating with its setting than any previous series since Macross II, and it shows. There really aren't any surprises in it. Everything there is something that the fans saw in a previous series and accepted without complaint. It took no risks and it pushed no envelopes. The reason it gets so much hate from fans outside Japan is that it's just badly presented. It has a good pace at the outset, but it keeps breaking flow so it can fit in more Walkure songs, engage in fanservice, or try to tick off arbitrary Macross plot obligations like the ace mentor dying. The cast is huge, but most of them are undeveloped or minimally-developed stock characters the writers couldn't be arsed to do anything with. The antagonist side's entire backstory got jettisoned to a manga side story. The story is so badly conceived that there's no real sense that the characters are actually achieving anything, since most of the time anything they do just plays right into Roid's hands, and with them having failed in their main goal of protecting the Brisingr Alliance from Windermere at the midseason climax the entire second half feels like pure filler. Exposition is handled so poorly that they had to throw in several entire episodes in the second half that were devoted to talking heads dumping exposition like they forgot they weren't in a Hideo Kojima game. There's a climactic battle at the end of the series that doesn't actually resolve anything, and a resolution to the conflict that comes out of nowhere and feels incredibly weak and unsatisfying.

The Macross 7 series got off to a glacially slow start and it took almost twenty episodes to actually kick off its main plot, but outside of those early pacing issues the story is a tight, well-written one that flows well. The series explains the things that need to be explained, skips the things that don't, takes the time to develop the characters well enough for the audience to know what everyone's about and why they're there, and it all builds to a climax in which the plot is resolved, lessons are learned, and our characters get closure. It's goofy, sure... but the writing is good enough that it's fun because it's a bit goofy and defies convention. It's like Macross's version of G Gundam.

TL;DR... they're basically the same series concept, just 7 is well-executed and Delta isn't.

But what about in Japan? From what I heard here and elsewhere, Japanese accepted Delta well enough, and they seemed to really like Walkure.

Say, I've just read about Musiculture on Deculture shock. Can an exploration fleet make a decision not to have any Valkyrie at all? Again, how much leeway does NUNS give to the fleet? And how big is Nyan-Nyan by the time of Delta?

Also, is there any other Macross stage play than Musiculture? Nowadays pretty much every manga and anime has a stage play, so maybe Macross should get another one, too. I'd like to see people dramatize the already goofiness shows on the stage.

[Seto Kaiba]

But what about in Japan? From what I heard here and elsewhere, Japanese accepted Delta well enough, and they seemed to really like Walkure.

To be frank, I am not convinced that Macross Delta itself has that strong a following in Japan.

Looking at the merchandising and fan works, it seems pretty obvious that Walkure was carrying the series in Japan. There's very little in the way of non-Walkure character goods for the series. Even Hayate, the main character, had relatively little merch compared to characters like Makina and Reina who had only a handful of lines and almost no plot-relevance for the entire series and movie. Chuck, Arad, and the Aerial Knights are almost ignored entirely. A few model kits and toys aside, the only non-Walkure VF-31 was a web-exclusive instead of a general preorder, the series artbooks are noticeably fewer and of poorer quality compared to Frontier, and the one mecha-centric publication to date was of such comically poor quality that half of it is LITERALLY PLAGIARIZED from another book from that same series, diagrams and all.

Say, I've just read about Musiculture on Deculture shock. Can an exploration fleet make a decision not to have any Valkyrie at all? Again, how much leeway does NUNS give to the fleet? And how big is Nyan-Nyan by the time of Delta?

Yes, an emigrant fleet's government is essentially an autonomous (mobile) New UN Government member state... so it has authority over its local New UN Forces defenses.

The 59th Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet "Macross-29" is the only one we know about that has opted to dissolve their New UN Forces garrison and adopt a philosophy of total pacifism. There aren't likely to be imitators, because that decision was only reached thanks to the 59th fleet becoming a sort of gathering place for people who moved away from conflict spots elsewhere in the New UN Government's sphere of influence. It's also unlikely to be imitated by other fleets given that it essentially destroyed the 59th fleet's economy. Confrontation-averse diplomatic policies left it a diplomatic doormat to its neighbors and resulted in its economy collapsing under the weight of a colossal trade deficit that sharply increased unemployment and led to rioting that eventually gave rise to an anti-pacifism political movement that is central to the musical's plot.

Nyan-Nyan is an interstellar chain with dozens of locations in various emigrant fleets and colonized planets in the 2060s. They're not megacorp big, but they're highly successful restaurant chain big.

Also, is there any other Macross stage play than Musiculture? Nowadays pretty much every manga and anime has a stage play, so maybe Macross should get another one, too. I'd like to see people dramatize the already goofiness shows on the stage.

Macross the Musiculture is the only one thus far... of course, it's hard to do that kind of thing as a mecha series.

[False Prophet]

The 59th Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet "Macross-29" is the only one we know about that has opted to dissolve their New UN Forces garrison and adopt a philosophy of total pacifism. There aren't likely to be imitators, because that decision was only reached thanks to the 59th fleet becoming a sort of gathering place for people who moved away from conflict spots elsewhere in the New UN Government's sphere of influence. It's also unlikely to be imitated by other fleets given that it essentially destroyed the 59th fleet's economy. Confrontation-averse diplomatic policies left it a diplomatic doormat to its neighbors and resulted in its economy collapsing under the weight of a colossal trade deficit that sharply increased unemployment and led to rioting that eventually gave rise to an anti-pacifism political movement that is central to the musical's plot.

How did you find out about that? Was there a booklet given away at the show explaining all of these? Also, what would happen when two fleets decided to wage war against each other? Would NUNS jump in?