The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

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Seto Kaiba
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Henyo wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:57 pm just saw this news while checking fb.

https://comicbook.com/anime/amp/2019/10 ... h-america/
Pretty much the epitome of non-news... a mostly-forgotten piece of 80's esoterica hops from one streaming service to another, with a heaping helping of laughably false advertising like claims of "cutting-edge CG". :lol:


Henyo wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:57 pm not much details. on a related note ive read that remastering robotech animated works is a hard thing/impossible to do. something about 2nd gen master films or something...
Perhaps not as difficult as it used to be... Harmony Gold used to insist that it was flatly impossible.

Y'see, the master tapes for Robotech had been destroyed in a basement flood at Harmony Gold's headquarters in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Key production materials like the unmixed audio tracks and edit decision list that was used to make all the cuts and other editing decisions that separated the show from its source material were, as far as anyone knew at the time, forever lost. Consequently, when Harmony Gold tried to reboot and relaunch the brand after the failure of Robotech 3000, their new home video licensee was in a bit of a bind. Cleaning the series up was an impossibility with only the VHS mixed master audio and video to work from, so Robotech's first few DVD releases were just transfers of age- and duplication-degraded VHS masters. HG announced that they wouldn't be remastering Robotech when the DVDs came out, so fans were pretty incensed when HG announced a remastered edition just two or three years later. They found backup copies of the unmixed audio in offsite storage in 2002, and negotiated to have a remastered Robotech piggyback on the video restoration work ADV Films was doing for its remasters of Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA... which were inferior to the AnimEigo version by a decently large margin but still a massive improvement over the washed-out, grainy, distorted mess they were working with just two years earlier. Unfortunately, the production costs were quite high due to having to commission a new edit of the series in the absence of the original edit decision lists, so it wasn't a very profitable venture and many fans hated the show's new edit with a passion due to a healthy dose of "they changed it, now it sucks".

Robotech will likely never see a true high-definition re-release because the costs involved would make it much too expensive. They'd need access to the original video and audio masters, pay a mint to restore them themselves (since there's no way Big West is going to let them use theirs) and then hope they get enough in sales to recoup everything they'd spent on it (fat chance).

So they're essentially stuck in an eternal loop of re-shopping the 480i Robotech home video release around to the various streaming platforms. It's questionable if they'll still be at it five years from now, with Big West having taken the trademarks back in many key markets.

Henyo wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:57 pm and this probably means that funimation possibly bringing the original macross unaltered is kaput.(or there was never any possibilty ro begin with?)
As long as FUNimation is doing business with Harmony Gold, it's a safe bet Big West will never do business with them.

Fortunately, this latest go-round of the Robotech license will probably only last a couple of years just as every other occasion has.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Say, which voice actor would you want to return to the series, either as a cameo or a straight up another character?

Also, is Maximilian still alive by the time of Delta? How old is he then?

(And, is it strange for Max and Milia only have daughters? Is it something related to Milia being a Meltrandi?)

And can anyone here please explain M7: Trash to me?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Max should be 74 by the time of Delta, so I'm sure he would still be alive, but I don't know if he'd still be piloting Valkyries. Come to think of it, we've never seen any really old people be pilots in Macross. Max and Milia themselves are the limit, each being 52 and 51, respectively, in Macross 7.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

False Prophet wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:55 am Say, which voice actor would you want to return to the series, either as a cameo or a straight up another character?
Most fans would probably say Yoshiki Fukuyama and Nobutoshi Hayashi as the singing and dialog voices of Basara.

FWIW, I'd rather have Takehito Koyasu back as the voice of Gamlin Kizaki.

(Though if I could have any voice actor in a Macross series, I'd love to get Norio Wakamoto hamming it up.)


False Prophet wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:55 am Also, is Maximilian still alive by the time of Delta? How old is he then?
As far as I'm aware, we haven't had any statements about his status in 2067... but he'd be 74 years old, and with the advanced medical technology in the Macross universe he's almost certainly still alive, hale, and hearty even at that age. I'd assume he'd have retired from the New UN Forces by that point though.


False Prophet wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:55 am (And, is it strange for Max and Milia only have daughters? Is it something related to Milia being a Meltrandi?)
Given that it's the father who determines the gender of the offspring genetically, it seems a safe bet that it's not something related to Milia being a Zentradi... and Zentradi are all but identical to humans genetically anyway so there shouldn't be anything in there that biases them towards one gender or the other in normal reproduction.

It's statistically unlikely to have that many children of one gender in a row, but not impossible... my own family nearly managed it, they had all boys and one girl.


False Prophet wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:55 am And can anyone here please explain M7: Trash to me?
Macross 7 Trash is a Macross 7 side story set in early 2046... some contextual clues in-story point to it being set somewhere between episodes 38 and 42 of Macross 7.
Spoiler
In 2039, a Macross 7 fleet research scientist named Dr. Akiko Mido working on Project M discovers a new form of bio-energy tied to a person's mental/emotional state and creates a technological system to harness that energy and convert it into physical power. The fleet's New UN Forces experiment with applying Dr. Mido's "Mind System" as a weapon, leading to the accidental death of a pilot trainee on a test flight due to the mind system's failure. Some officers in the fleet's NUNS continue clandestine testing on the mind system thereafter.

In 2046, Macross 7 fleet NUNS 2nd Lieutenant Mahara Fabrio retires from the military at age 27. While on her way into City-7 after ending his final duty shift as a NUNS fighter pilot, she is offered a ride by the father of the pilot trainee who died in the mind system accident. He attempts to murder her by faking a car accident, blaming her for his son's death, but is rescued from the car crash by Dr. Mido's son Shiba Mido. Shiba is a student athlete in a particularly odd extreme team sport called Tornado Crash that is essentially a halfpipe race using "air blades" (a kind of hovercraft version of inline skates) but with all the physicality of a rugby match. His skill is held in high regard despite his lone wolf tendencies, to the point that he's rumored to be the secret son of none other than Colonel Maximilian Jenius, who had discreetly been looking out for Shiba after his mother's untimely death due to him living in one of the fleet's rougher neighborhoods (the habitat section of the fleet's cemetery ship, Heaven 7. Mahara attempts to convince Shiba to join the military and become a fighter pilot, while he cheers on his friend Enika Cellini while she competes in a Miss Macross-esque singing contest called Minmay Voice in the hopes of becoming a pro idol.

Things finally come to a head when it's revealed that a faction in the fleet military continued development of the mind system and that Mahara was sent by Max to find a free agent they could clandestinely use to put a stop to it publicly. Colonel Abraham de Vasselon plans to use the mind system to infuse Zentradi troops with negative mind energy to create a new, more powerful breed of clone soldiers to defend the fleet. To test their prototype, they hold a Tornado Crash individual tournament... which uses much of the same equipment as the team sport, but is more focused on actual hand-to-hand combat (though in this case enhanced with the mind system, making it very like psychic combat too). After a good deal of that, Shiba is able to defeat the prototype "Devil Doll, a Zentradi named Jebil Luxor, and infuse her with positive emotions from his mind system to cancel out her berserk rage... giving Max the witnesses and leverage he needs to prosecute Colonel de Vasselon for all manner of crimes.
Spoiler
The story concludes with Max confirming that Shiba Mido is NOT his child, and that keeping a close eye on him was something Max saw as a debt owed to his friend Dr. Mido.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Chris wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 1:20 pm Max should be 74 by the time of Delta, so I'm sure he would still be alive, but I don't know if he'd still be piloting Valkyries. Come to think of it, we've never seen any really old people be pilots in Macross. Max and Milia themselves are the limit, each being 52 and 51, respectively, in Macross 7.
Naresuan in Macross R may have them beat... he was a subordinate commander in the Zentradi Boddole Zer main fleet in the First Space War who defected to the Earth forces after the war. He served with distinction in the New UN Forces, including heading up a NUNS Special Forces squadron (SVF-473 Shooting Stars) as part of the 37th long-distance emigrant fleet Macross 7 during the Protodeviln conflict, fought for the Latence faction during the Second Unification War (2050-2051 Macross VF-X2), and then became leader of one of the splinter groups of Latence troops who refused to surrender after losing the war. He was still actively a fighter pilot when his group, FASCES, attacked the Macross Frontier and Macross Galaxy fleets in 2058.

If Naresuan (Ogol 7312) was of similar age to the other prominent First Space War Zentradi commanders, he'd be anywhere from 70 to 87 years old when he led FASCES in its final offensive in a bid to capture the resort ship Evna and hold it hostage... and he was more than capable of keeping up with former Special Forces aces who were still in their twenties and teens!

The VFs he flies during Macross R's story are nothing to sneeze at either... the VBP-1/VA-110 Neo Glaug bis - a manned conversion of the Neo Glaug unmanned VF from Macross Plus: Game Edition that was a rival design to the AIF-X-9 Ghost (which means it almost certainly has performance exceeding even the VF-19S), and the YF-27-5 Shahar-F prototype.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Timothy Daldhanton is another example of a really old ace, from Macross VF-X2.

He was another Zentradi soldier from the First Space War, and logged a whopping 32 years in the New UN Forces as a VF pilot after defecting to Earth's side then went rogue as part of the anti-government (really Anti-Latence) group Black Rainbow and continuing to fight for another eight years before being killed in combat with the NUNS Special Forces 727th Independent Squadron "VF-X Ravens" in December 2050. He would've been at least 58 when he died, and he was a top ace on the Feios Valkyrie.

Neither he nor Naruesuan really look their age though... they've got that Max and Milia thing working for them.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:37 pmNeither he nor Naruesuan really look their age though... they've got that Max and Milia thing working for them.
I feel like a lot of anime is very youth-biased in terms of how old people look. Max and Milia definitely don't look their ages. And all these senpai characters like Roy, Ozma and Arad don't look their ages either. If I'm supposed to believe that Ozma is only 27 in Frontier, he looks pretty awful for his age. And yet we're also supposed to believe in MSG that Ramba Ral is 35 and not the 20 years older that he really looks like.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Chris wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:31 pm I feel like a lot of anime is very youth-biased in terms of how old people look. Max and Milia definitely don't look their ages. And all these senpai characters like Roy, Ozma and Arad don't look their ages either.
To be fair, this feels like a case of Truth in Television... I've met fairly few people who actually look their age, more often than not they either look older or younger than their actual age. It's also probably pretty damn hard to make characters look a very specific age with such a low level of detail.

For example, one of my coworkers is a good eleven years younger than I am. As long as he has his beard, he looks a lot older than he actually is, so we appear to be the same age. When he shaves it off, he looks like a high school freshman.


Chris wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:31 pm If I'm supposed to believe that Ozma is only 27 in Frontier, he looks pretty awful for his age. And yet we're also supposed to believe in MSG that Ramba Ral is 35 and not the 20 years older that he really looks like.
Ozma Lee and Ramba Ral both lived pretty rough, stressful lives before we saw them for the first time in their respective shows... the kind of stuff that can age a person beyond their years.

Ramba Ral lived through the unrest in Zeon surrounding the assassination of Zeon Deikun and the Zabi family's seizing power, then all the atrocities of the One Year War up to that point...and even in Origin he looks older than his years thanks to that facial hair and his serious demeanor.

As a fresh-faced New UN Spacy recruit attached to the 117th Research Fleet, Ozma Lee was witness to a massacre on Gallia IV. He was essentially helpless to prevent the Vajra from attacking and destroying most of the fleet, including its flagship the Bruno J. Global, killing thousands of people. He was broken by what he'd seen. So much so that even being debriefed about the incident was too much. He didn't leave the New UN Spacy voluntarily... he was thrown out of the service after flying into a rage and assaulting the 117th Research Fleet's sponsor (Manfred Brando) in the midst of the debriefing session. Stack ten years of stress from being a single parent to his adopted sister Ranka and taking the job as a mercenary for Strategic Military Services because being stripped of his commission and discharged from the military for violent assault doesn't open a lot of doors on top of that, and it's not surprising he looks rather old and worn down. Between the loss of the 117th Research Fleet in 2048, the Zentradi attack on Frontier in 2055, and the terrorist attacks by Fasces in 2058, the dude's seen a LOT of stress.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

seiyuu cameo? definitely hayami show. and if its old max hayami can use his SUPA SEKSHI voice. seriously, thats one of the main reasons i still watch radiant. hayami is the narrator.

alao agree with wakamoto in a macross. maybe we'll get him in Delta movie 2. to balance out all of those idol voices.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

I am curious... do pure blood Zentradi/manufactored/cloned Zentradi have a longer lifespan than humans? Or are they pretty much the exact same? Although given the advance of technology and medicine human life expectancy is longer now too after Space War 1...
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:48 pm To be fair, this feels like a case of Truth in Television... I've met fairly few people who actually look their age, more often than not they either look older or younger than their actual age. It's also probably pretty damn hard to make characters look a very specific age with such a low level of detail.

For example, one of my coworkers is a good eleven years younger than I am. As long as he has his beard, he looks a lot older than he actually is, so we appear to be the same age. When he shaves it off, he looks like a high school freshman.
I can confirm this. Most people in my family looked like they are ten years younger (fifteen if they dye their grey hair like my father)
Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:26 pm The VFs he flies during Macross R's story are nothing to sneeze at either... the VBP-1/VA-110 Neo Glaug bis - a manned conversion of the Neo Glaug unmanned VF from Macross Plus: Game Edition that was a rival design to the AIF-X-9 Ghost (which means it almost certainly has performance exceeding even the VF-19S), and the YF-27-5 Shahar-F prototype.
How can they modified an unmanned variable pod into a manned one? Wouldn't the performance suffer a bit for the need to support a flesh-and-blood pilot?

(On a side note, why variable battle pods aren't more widespread by the time of the Frontier? How good is the Neo Glaug to the Queadluun Rhea?)

Also, does this Naresuan guy have any cybernetics to pilot the YF-27? And is their anything special about his prototype to the normal Lucifer?

And does anyone here have a screencap from Macross 30 of Isamu-colored YF-29?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 1:06 am I am curious... do pure blood Zentradi/manufactored/cloned Zentradi have a longer lifespan than humans? Or are they pretty much the exact same? Although given the advance of technology and medicine human life expectancy is longer now too after Space War 1...
The natural lifespan of a Zentradi is an acknowledged open question in Macross.

Specifically, it's acknowledged as an open question at the start of the Macross 7 Encore episode "Which One Do You Love?" as the setup for a rather cringe-worthy comedy episode where Milia believes she's dying due to her having self-diagnosed her spacefuture common cold using what sounds like a spacefuture version of WebMD (this episode aired 110 days before WebMD launched in 1996) and in true WebMD form concludes that she's got only a few days to live.. most of the episode's comedy coming from her attempts to wrap up her bucket list before she kicks off, only for the conclusion at the end to be poor Dr. Chiba confirming the entire episode was one massive overreaction to a common cold. Milia acknowledges that the natural lifespan for a Zentradi miclone isn't known and leaps straight to the conclusion that her illness is imminent death rather than the case of the sniffles that it actually was.


False Prophet wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:28 am How can they modified an unmanned variable pod into a manned one? Wouldn't the performance suffer a bit for the need to support a flesh-and-blood pilot?
Well, it helps that the unmanned variable pod was originally a manned variable pod design that was converted to an unmanned one...

The development history of the Variable Glaug is an odd one to say the least. It was developed by a Zentradi anti-government paramilitary group using a stolen/captured VF-4 Lightning III as a starting point and combining it with Zentradi overtechnology from battle suits and battle pods. The end result was the Variable Glaug, which was designed for use by a (short) Zentradi at their normal giant size. The New UN Forces captured one (and its pilot, Moaramia Jifon), and liked it well enough to modify and reproduce the design with a miclone-suitable cockpit. Its pilot, Moaramia Jifon, was adopted by Max and Milia Jenius and would go on to join their New UN Spacy Special Forces squadron "Dancing Skulls" piloting one of the miclone-use Variable Glaugs General Galaxy produced at the New Nile Arsenal. (The New UN Forces classified the model for Zentradi giant use as VBP-1 and the miclone model as VA-110... in an apparent nod to Project Constant Peg, the United States program for competitive benchmarking captured enemy aircraft.)

The Macross Concern and General Galaxy would later use the Variable Glaug as a starting point for development of an unmanned variable fighter concept as an alternative proposal to the AIF-X-9 Ghost in the New UN Forces next-generation unmanned fighter program that ran parallel to Project Super Nova. The completed design was called the Neo Glaug, and it debuted in Macross Plus: Game Edition when Sharon Apple hijacked a prototype and used it to attack Isamu before he could reach Macross City the way she used the AIF-X-9 Ghost to intercept Guld.

Thanks to the Sharon Apple incident souring public and private opinions of advanced AI technology, the New UN Forces scrubbed their plans to go for an all-unmanned air force. Hobbled versions of the AIF-X-9 were put into production anyway as the AIF-7/QF-4000 Ghost and AIF-9 Ghost, and the Neo Glaug apparently impressed them sufficiently to be further developed as a manned upgrade to the existing Variable Glaug. The Neo Glaug bis (lit. "Neo Glaug custom") is essentially a reworking of the unmanned Neo Glaug back into a manned Variable Glaug while retaining all of the technological improvements that were introduced in the upgrade to its unmanned Neo Glaug form... turning it into a 4th Generation-equivalent VF for Zentradi use. The New UN Spacy Marine Corps were apparently quite fond of the VBP-1 Neo Glaug bis, using it as one of their main mecha in Macross Frontier's novelization alongside the Queadluun-Rhea/56. At least one such unit ended up in the hands of Fasces c.2058, and was Naresuan's personal mecha in the series.


False Prophet wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:28 am (On a side note, why variable battle pods aren't more widespread by the time of the Frontier? How good is the Neo Glaug to the Queadluun Rhea?)
They are widespread, just offscreen in novelizations and manga... presumably to prevent confusion about which side they're on as was the case with Zentradi warships being only rarely shown as New UN Forces vessels. It may also be a cost issue, having one less VF to model in full 3D.

As far as Frontier goes, when the series was made it was assumed the Variable Glaug program had ended in 2040 with the Neo Glaug prototype... it wasn't until the novelization and the Macross the Ride light novel that it was established that the Neo Glaug had been redeveloped into a manned VF and adopted by the NUNSMC.


False Prophet wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:28 am Also, does this Naresuan guy have any cybernetics to pilot the YF-27? And is their anything special about his prototype to the normal Lucifer?
Cybernetics weren't necessary to operate the YF-27s in Macross the Ride. They did have the brain direct interface, but as with the VF-27 they had manual controls built into a suit of EGP-03/05 EX-Gear as well. They were much less extreme in terms of performance than the production VF-27, having partly been produced as a feint intended to misdirect people as to the true capabilities of the VF-27 that was already in production (that they'd completed using illicitly obtained YF-29 development data). As long as performance was limited, even normal people could use the VF-27 safely. Cybernetics were used to harden the pilot against the fighter's full performance that exceeded what the ISC could protect against and offer the instant control and precision the YF-21 had been intended to realize, but conventional controls could also be used.

The YF-27-5 Shahar-♀ had lower performance than the YF-25 Prophecy, thanks to having similar mass but being a twin-engine VF using two of the VF-27's less powerful FF-3011C engines instead of the quad-engine configuration the VF-27 used. It still greatly exceeded the performance of the 4th Generation VFs in use at the time, but was not much of a match for the YF-25 Paladin Prophecy and VF-0改 "Zeak" (which was basically a YF-25 in a VF-0-shaped container). The YF-27-3 Shahar-♂ that Chelsea Scarlett boards at one point in the story is said to have higher performance than the YF-27-5, but it's not known by how much... and can't be THAT much since Chelsea Scarlett is also not a cyborg. (The YF-27-3 was Brera's VF before switching to the production VF-27, the YF-27-5 belonged to Maris Stella, a prototype cyborg from one of Galaxy's shadier cyborg soldier programs...)

(In case you're wondering WTF a "Shahar" is, it's a deity from the Ugaritic pantheon... the god of dawn, which is referenced in the Book of Isaiah in a line which is the origin of the term Lucifer in the Vulgate. The morning star (Venus), also called the light-bringer (aka "Lucifer") was the son of Shahar in that belief system. So the YF-27 Shahar is the father of the VF-27 Lucifer, as it were... a neat but terribly obscure little in-joke in a similar vein to the VF-25 Messiah's prototype being named Prophecy. Identifying the in-joke wasn't helped by the fact that it was freaking misspelled in the Macross the Ride visual books... Hebrew by way of Japanese in katakana is hard enough without typos.)


False Prophet wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:28 am And does anyone here have a screencap from Macross 30 of Isamu-colored YF-29?
Not on hand?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 11:59 am Cybernetics weren't necessary to operate the YF-27s in Macross the Ride. They did have the brain direct interface, but as with the VF-27 they had manual controls built into a suit of EGP-03/05 EX-Gear as well. They were much less extreme in terms of performance than the production VF-27, having partly been produced as a feint intended to misdirect people as to the true capabilities of the VF-27 that was already in production (that they'd completed using illicitly obtained YF-29 development data). As long as performance was limited, even normal people could use the VF-27 safely. Cybernetics were used to harden the pilot against the fighter's full performance that exceeded what the ISC could protect against and offer the instant control and precision the YF-21 had been intended to realize, but conventional controls could also be used.

The YF-27-5 Shahar-♀ had lower performance than the YF-25 Prophecy, thanks to having similar mass but being a twin-engine VF using two of the VF-27's less powerful FF-3011C engines instead of the quad-engine configuration the VF-27 used. It still greatly exceeded the performance of the 4th Generation VFs in use at the time, but was not much of a match for the YF-25 Paladin Prophecy and VF-0改 "Zeak" (which was basically a YF-25 in a VF-0-shaped container). The YF-27-3 Shahar-♂ that Chelsea Scarlett boards at one point in the story is said to have higher performance than the YF-27-5, but it's not known by how much... and can't be THAT much since Chelsea Scarlett is also not a cyborg. (The YF-27-3 was Brera's VF before switching to the production VF-27, the YF-27-5 belonged to Maris Stella, a prototype cyborg from one of Galaxy's shadier cyborg soldier programs...)

(In case you're wondering WTF a "Shahar" is, it's a deity from the Ugaritic pantheon... the god of dawn, which is referenced in the Book of Isaiah in a line which is the origin of the term Lucifer in the Vulgate. The morning star (Venus), also called the light-bringer (aka "Lucifer") was the son of Shahar in that belief system. So the YF-27 Shahar is the father of the VF-27 Lucifer, as it were... a neat but terribly obscure little in-joke in a similar vein to the VF-25 Messiah's prototype being named Prophecy. Identifying the in-joke wasn't helped by the fact that it was freaking misspelled in the Macross the Ride visual books... Hebrew by way of Japanese in katakana is hard enough without typos.)
So... How good was that downgraded YF-27 compared to the production VF-24? And do you think Macross Galaxy seriously intend to sell the mass-production VF-27 as it was piloted by Brera but with the appropriate changes to accommodate normal pilots, or would they sell ian even more monkey-ed model?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

False Prophet wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 5:24 am So... How good was that downgraded YF-27 compared to the production VF-24?
Not very.

All told, the YF-27-5 had inferior performance to the YF-25. The VF-24 is alleged to be on par with, or superior to, the YF-29... which significantly outclasses the VF-25 and even the VF-27 without Super Parts.


False Prophet wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 5:24 am And do you think Macross Galaxy seriously intend to sell the mass-production VF-27 as it was piloted by Brera but with the appropriate changes to accommodate normal pilots, or would they sell ian even more monkey-ed model?
No, I suspect Macross Galaxy never seriously intended to market their VF-27 Lucifer outside of their fleet. That they participated in codevelopment with Frontier and Olympia at all seems to have been a smokescreen to obtain various technologies from those fleets without having to resort to blatantly illegal tactics like information theft or backroom deals with defense contractors as they did when they illegally obtained the YF-29 development data from LAI. They didn't disclose the specs of the VF-27 to the New UN Government as required by galaxy law either, the whole project was completed and put into production in the kind of complete secrecy that's only possible when almost your entire population is living permanently in a controllable cybernetic augmented reality.

They basically intended to rule the galaxy after their plan succeeded, so there wouldn't have been a point in selling their VF-27 design to anyone when they wanted to control everyone.

It's unclear - as in "totally unexplained" - how individuals apparently unconnected to the Macross Galaxy fleet have been able to obtain privately-owned VF-27 Lucifers. Mei Leeron of the Uroboros Hunters Guild was the owner of a private VF-27γ Lucifer in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and Ivan Polivanov (alias Ivan Tsari) of Zelgar Heavy Industries on planet Piper also had a private VF-27γ Lucifer. Whether Mei Leeron is a cyborg or not is also unknown, but Ivan Polivanov was based on what we see of his insides after he's shot with an anti-materiel rifle that blasts him completely in half.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Say, I wonder how is living in augmented reality in Macross as a cyborg? I mean, normal people found it distracting enough just to wear the Google Glasses. Imagine processing so much information that come with each step that you take.

Also, I remember somewhere in Frontier it was mentioned that most of the people living in Macross Galaxy were employees of the corporations, so I expect the cybernetics they received were some sort of employee's benefits. That could mean when the parts broke down, you could get them repaired and the company would foot the bill--which means that being a cyborgs AND unemployed sucks so much.

(Ghost in the Shell Arise was the first show I watched that make the point of how expensive cybernetics were to maintain. I wonder if there are any other sci-fi works that talk about that subject.)

Speaking of Macross Galaxy, how exactly does the ship's stealth mechanism work?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am Say, I wonder how is living in augmented reality in Macross as a cyborg? I mean, normal people found it distracting enough just to wear the Google Glasses. Imagine processing so much information that come with each step that you take.
All told, it's a much more seamless and immersive experience because the cybernetic residents of Macross Galaxy aren't experiencing it through a special pair of glasses that project information onto the lens or through a camera and screen. The implants in their brains are directly editing their perceptions of the world around them, like the augmented reality conferences in Ghost in the Shell, and aren't limited to just visual perception... they can provide feedback for smell, taste, touch, and hearing as well, and all in real time. The experience is such that a user can't readily distinguish between objective reality and augmented reality because the implants are doing all the editing at the perceptual level in the brain itself.

Of course, this lends itself to precisely the kinds of abuses so frequently featured in Ghost in the Shell with the company essentially controlling the minds of everyone who works for it.

The 51st Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet "Macross Galaxy" isn't a very nice place to live. It's basically a massive techno-industrial corporate research and development complex in the form of a massive spaceship. The fleet doesn't have an elected government, it's run by (and as) a corporation Weyland-Yutani style. The fleet isn't exactly a pleasant place to live thanks to the company's ruthless drive for efficiency. The support ships that had that were intended for production of natural foods (e.g. the Riviera-class resort and aquaculture ships and Sunnyflower-class agriculture ships) were retooled into factories to produce lower-cost synthetic food and the habitat ships are mostly urban industrial sprawls of apartments, factories, and so on. Augmented reality's a convenience feature of access to the fleet's network as far as most of its inhabitants believe. It can make them perceive empty industrial spaces as beautiful parks, allow them to play games that would be impossible for real life, and make the unpleasant synthetic food and drink taste look, smell, and taste like the most delicious high-quality gourmet cuisine. The ugliness of the fleet is hidden from its inhabitants behind a veil of digitally edited perceptual data.

Visitors to the fleet can experience a limited scope of this using what are essentially advanced AR goggles which the company provide... and in-universe it's acknowledged to be somewhat unsettling and off-putting for visitors.


False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am Also, I remember somewhere in Frontier it was mentioned that most of the people living in Macross Galaxy were employees of the corporations, so I expect the cybernetics they received were some sort of employee's benefits. That could mean when the parts broke down, you could get them repaired and the company would foot the bill--which means that being a cyborgs AND unemployed sucks so much.
Yes, the Macross Galaxy fleet isn't a flying city with a civilian government... it's a flying corporation that's run by the Macross Galaxy corporation, a subsidiary of General Galaxy. Its inhabitants are the corporation's employees.

It's not clear if implants are provided as part of employee benefits or if it's something residents have to purchase, but for most residents/employees the adoption of implants usually starts and ends with the brain implants which allow network communication and augmented reality. They're not going in for elective replacement of complete body parts. It's only the highest-ranking officials and the (illegal) combat cyborgs that have the more extensive adoption of cybernetics on an elective basis.


False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am (Ghost in the Shell Arise was the first show I watched that make the point of how expensive cybernetics were to maintain. I wonder if there are any other sci-fi works that talk about that subject.)
Yeah, Ghost in the Shell's various incarnations go into a lot of the problems with cybernetics... and many of them apply in Macross as well.

For most civilians, cybernetic implants start and end with the minimally-invasive network implants that let them connect their brains to the internet. Consumer-grade cybernetic limb replacements to repair severe injuries are just as responsive as a flesh and blood limb, but are visibly mechanical and look more like the automail from the Fullmetal Alchemist series as in the case of Shinsei Industry-sponsored air racer Oscar Brauhitsch's left arm and Temjin's right eye. Cybernetics generally won't exceed the performance of the flesh and blood they replace due to the possibility of damaging the flesh and blood person they're attached to.

The wealthy and connected like Grace O'Connor can afford more extensive and high-tech cybernetics to improve their bodies or even outright replace them, achieving similar levels of augmentation to Major Kusangai. Macross Galaxy's creation of cybernetic soldiers ("cyber grunts") is illegal as all get-out under New UN Government law... but because they were half a galaxy away there wasn't much to do to enforce those laws and nobody to tattle in the fleet itself with the corporation having everyone's perceptions of reality under their control. Macross Galaxy experimented with several different types of augmented soldiers. Some, like Brera Sterne, are just soldiers who have network implants in their brains and enhanced bodies. The experimental Stella series cyborg soldiers were regular civilians who received the same full-body enhancements but have additional implants that provide all of the necessary combat skills without the need for training. Then, of course, there was the short-lived prototype Meridian project that created bio-androids from dead soldiers by using implants to reprogram their brains with a new personality and installing them in a new cybernetic body. (It says a lot that even mind-controlled troops like Brera Sterne found the Meridian project profoundly distasteful.)


False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am Speaking of Macross Galaxy, how exactly does the ship's stealth mechanism work?
Presumably it's the same stealth technology used by VFs... a mixture of passive stealth design and active stealth systems.

Passive stealthiness would, of course, come from designing the hull in a shape that deflects radar and fold wave radar beams away from the enemy radar system's receivers and minimizing reflection with hull coatings that will absorb radar waves or fold waves.

Active stealth technology in Macross uses active cancellation... which is basically an electromagnetic wave version of the active noise cancellation technology, using destructive interference to cancel out the amplitude of the wave. The incoming radar pulse is analyzed, and the system produces a directional radar beam aimed at the sending enemy radar that has the same frequency and amplitude but is 180 degrees out of phase. Even though a hostile radar is receiving both the return of its pulse AND the active stealth system's radar pulse, the two waves cancel each other out via the superposition principle so the sum amplitude of the two waves becomes zero or so close to it that it reads as zero to the enemy radar. This creates the illusion that the enemy radar didn't receive any return at all, thus making the ship or aircraft technically invisible to the enemy radar.
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False Prophet
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:59 pm For most civilians, cybernetic implants start and end with the minimally-invasive network implants that let them connect their brains to the internet. Consumer-grade cybernetic limb replacements to repair severe injuries are just as responsive as a flesh and blood limb, but are visibly mechanical and look more like the automail from the Fullmetal Alchemist series as in the case of Shinsei Industry-sponsored air racer Oscar Brauhitsch's left arm and Temjin's right eye. Cybernetics generally won't exceed the performance of the flesh and blood they replace due to the possibility of damaging the flesh and blood person they're attached to.

The wealthy and connected like Grace O'Connor can afford more extensive and high-tech cybernetics to improve their bodies or even outright replace them, achieving similar levels of augmentation to Major Kusangai. Macross Galaxy's creation of cybernetic soldiers ("cyber grunts") is illegal as all get-out under New UN Government law... but because they were half a galaxy away there wasn't much to do to enforce those laws and nobody to tattle in the fleet itself with the corporation having everyone's perceptions of reality under their control. Macross Galaxy experimented with several different types of augmented soldiers. Some, like Brera Sterne, are just soldiers who have network implants in their brains and enhanced bodies. The experimental Stella series cyborg soldiers were regular civilians who received the same full-body enhancements but have additional implants that provide all of the necessary combat skills without the need for training. Then, of course, there was the short-lived prototype Meridian project that created bio-androids from dead soldiers by using implants to reprogram their brains with a new personality and installing them in a new cybernetic body. (It says a lot that even mind-controlled troops like Brera Sterne found the Meridian project profoundly distasteful.)
I wonder if even General Galaxy was spooked about the Sharon Apple incident so much that they had to rely so heavily on cyborgs. If not, then by the time they resorted to cyborg-zombie, they might as well built truly intelligent combat androids. (It actually reminds me of Warhammer 40K)

Also, were Grace and Sheryl actually employees of a subsidiary of General Galaxy, or just Grace worked for them in secret?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 10:18 pm I wonder if even General Galaxy was spooked about the Sharon Apple incident so much that they had to rely so heavily on cyborgs. If not, then by the time they resorted to cyborg-zombie, they might as well built truly intelligent combat androids. (It actually reminds me of Warhammer 40K)
I'm not sure "spooked" is the right word.

The Sharon Apple incident confirmed what they no doubt already knew about bio-neural processors being highly dangerous and fundamentally unstable thanks to their tendency to produce self-preservation instincts in the AI running on that hardware. The problem with AI in the Macross universe is that they react in a predictable manner, which isn't exactly ideal in a combat AI. To produce an AI that can react unpredictably the way a flesh and blood soldier could you need that dangerously unstable bio-neural processor technology. The last thing you need is an unstable AI that fears for its life and is connected to both a military computer network and indecent amounts of live weaponry.

So three basic approaches to armed forces came into being:
  • Earth pioneered the 5th Generation main VFs that used various systems to reduce the burden on the pilot and improve the aircraft's responsiveness to pilot input. This took the form of the Inertia Store Converter which was instituted to protect the cockpit from high g-forces incurred during maneuvers and EX-Gear, which incorporated electromyographic sensors, force feedback, and an AI learning computer to improve the precision of the control system and give the pilot the intuitive feeling of "wearing" rather than piloting the VF.
  • Some emigrant fleets decided that predictable AIs that were still able to react faster than a flesh-and-blood soldier were still preferable, since that way combat wouldn't put as many people's lives at risk. They went with all-Ghost air forces, figuring that numbers could cover quality with the AIF-7 being 1/3 as expensive as even the cheap 4th Gen VFs like the VF-171 Nightmare Plus.
  • Macross Galaxy ironically took the same approach the ancient Protoculture did... they built a better pilot for their state-of-the-art weapons. By improving the pilot's body with cybernetics, they could achieve faster-than-human reaction times, unprecedented coordination via fold wave communications, and highly precise control of ultra-high-performance aircraft by directly controlling the fighters by thought. The sticky wicket being that the pilots still had to be recruited and trained, you couldn't mass produce them arbitrarily. That was why the Stella program was instituted... to shortcut around the lengthy training process by simply installing combat skills onto prospective soldiers. The Meridian project was another way around the problem, trying to create bio-androids which could be mass-manufactured from casualties and which didn't have the danger of going rogue like a bio-neural processor-driven Ghost would.
TL;DR, purely technological sentient combat androids aren't a workable idea because the hardware tends to go literally insane.


False Prophet wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 10:18 pm Also, were Grace and Sheryl actually employees of a subsidiary of General Galaxy, or just Grace worked for them in secret?
Whatever agency Grace O'Connor worked for was probably a subsidiary or shell company set up by Macross Galaxy to facilitate Sheryl's involvement in their plans for galactic domination... it's not really talked about.

Macross Galaxy itself was a subsidiary of General Galaxy, albeit one with a lot of autonomy by dint of its mission to the galactic core in search of fold quartz resources and its status as a flying R&D laboratory.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

So... back on Tuesday (5 Nov), Big West scored another legal victory over Harmony Gold USA.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office officially awarded ownership of the Macross trademarks in the European Union market to Big West, over Harmony Gold's objections.
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DragoMaster009
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

So Harmony Gold's running out of time on the anime front, if things like this keep up?
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