Macross - Let's talk about it

[Parallax]

Recently, as many of you know, I've been really enjoying Space Battleship Yamato 2199; not only for the nostalgia factor but also simply because it's just really good sci-fi space opera (with the added bonus of some of the best theme music ever written). The problem with 2199, of course, is that it is brand new and waiting between releases can be slightly annoying.

To fill in some of that gap, I went and re-watched the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. That led me, naturally, to watching the rest of the franchise: Macross: DYRL, Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Zero, and Macross Frontier. Heck, I even ended up ordering and completing Macross 30 from Japan - which is a really fun PS3 game that features basically every mech and main character from every Macross instalment.

SDFM doesn't age particularly well and could really benefit from a 2199 style remake but it's still a rather good anti-war story at it's core. I find it interesting that they purposefully retcon parts of the Macross setting as animation and real world tech improves - changes from DYRL (an in-setting movie) were put into the Macross Universe, while tech updates could clearly be seen in Macross Zero.

All the above instalments range from entertaining to fantastic, with the exception of Macross 7 which seems to exist just to make you want to commit long and bloody violence against the protagonist. You want the bad guys to win, just so he shuts up and dies. Macross Plus is my favourite part of the franchise, it seems the most complex of the stories at a character level and seems the most mature narrative.

I think we can all agree that transforming VFs don't make a whole lot of sense from an engineering perspective. Structure weakness, for starters, would be a huge factor in the real world. But I say you can hand wave that away with 'super alien tech' reasoning - just like how a lot in Trek or Wars doesn't make sense a lot of the time.

How do you think the Macross universe works as a setting? We see things like privatised military organisations (S.M.S.), weird cross breed animals (what looks like chicken-cows in Macross Plus). Do you think the UN Spacy is portrayed as a competent/workable military force? Do you think the setting as gone too far with the whole 'power of song' angle? In SDFM it seems to be simply a case of massive culture shock but by Macross 7, it's revealed to be spiritia energy that does a whole lot of plot convenient stuff. Does the slow reveal of what the Protoculture was like work? The inclusion of the Vajra and how the Protoculture almost revered them?

How do you see Macross in terms of comparing to other sci-fi settings? Do you think they sit somewhere around the B5 level in terms of sheer power? Trek, perhaps? Considering how the UN Spacy churns out colonisation fleets, it seems their manufacturing power is impressive at the very least. A lot of their tech seems to be consumer/citizen orientated with wide ranging use of holograms in all manner of areas, from stage clothing/effects to phones and everything in-between. You do see this used in military tech as well, of course, with 360 degree HUD in VFs such as the YF/VF-19s.

In Universe, they only really entered space in 2010 or so and Frontier was set in around 2060. In fifty years they've gone from one planet to dozens of colony fleets and settling on numerous worlds (even the speed those worlds were built up is impressive - look at Eden in Plus, as an example). It makes me wonder how fast their tech has progressed and where it will end up.

[Andras]

I'm tired of the 'OMG we're getting our asses kicked, SING LOUDER' theme.

Speaking of a reanimated (lol) SDFM, have you seen the clips from the SDFM Pachinko game with new animation?

[Vendetta]

Do you think the setting as gone too far with the whole 'power of song' angle? In SDFM it seems to be simply a case of massive culture shock but by Macross 7, it's revealed to be spiritia energy that does a whole lot of plot convenient stuff.

Frontier does back off from the sillier bits of 7. And there was quite a lot that was silly in Macross 7. The singing in Frontier is back to mostly being emotional communication with otherwise implacable alien beings.

But then this is Macross, you have accept up front the idea that jpop is the most powerful force in the universe.

How do you see Macross in terms of comparing to other sci-fi settings? Do you think they sit somewhere around the B5 level in terms of sheer power? Trek, perhaps? Considering how the UN Spacy churns out colonisation fleets, it seems their manufacturing power is impressive at the very least.

Power level is probably close to B5 (ie not very high), with the exception of MDE warheads. They have good manufacturing capability because of the old Zentradi factory asteroids, of which we see one captured in the first series. They were designed to pump out massive numbers of spaceships automatically, so presumably human engineers were able to repurpose them to produce the endlessly explosive Northampton class. (the spaceship versions of Destroids, their job is to explode to make the hero ships look cool).

[Parallax]

Even the sheer number of VFs out there in civilian hands speaks of their production capabilities. It's common to see space pirates and raiders flying relatively new VFs. The Macross industrial base must be incredible to produce so many colony fleets, let alone all the VFs the UN Spacy go through. Add into that private organisations like SMS... and then how they can simply throw brand new designs (customised, no less) at idiots like Basara.

I'm also amazed how manoeuvrable all the Macross craft are seen to be, from VFs to even capital ships like the Macross Quarter series. The scene from Frontier wherein the Quarter 'surfs' down through the atmosphere to land inside the Colony ship says a lot. You see TIE Fighters slam into asteroids while chasing targets through debris fields, as a quick example, but I don't think we ever see a VF be unable to avoid such a collision...

On the other hands, I'm not sure I like the direction VF design is taking. Look at the VF-1, VF-11 and even the VF-19 and you see strong, classic designs. However, designs like the VF-25 and VF-30 are really different and seems to be departing design elements previously seen, more futuristic and less based on existing aircraft perhaps.

[Nari]

I'm also amazed how manoeuvrable all the Macross craft are seen to be, from VFs to even capital ships like the Macross Quarter series. The scene from Frontier wherein the Quarter 'surfs' down through the atmosphere to land inside the Colony ship says a lot. You see TIE Fighters slam into asteroids while chasing targets through debris fields, as a quick example, but I don't think we ever see a VF be unable to avoid such a collision...

On the other hands, I'm not sure I like the direction VF design is taking. Look at the VF-1, VF-11 and even the VF-19 and you see strong, classic designs. However, designs like the VF-25 and VF-30 are really different and seems to be departing design elements previously seen, more futuristic and less based on existing aircraft perhaps.

Even the Macross itself (a vessel of not inconsiderable mass) is seen dancing around a "Macross Missile Shower" in the main battle with the Zentraedi fleet and the VFs appear more manoeuverable than B5 Star Furies (which are themselves rare in not turning as if a stall or flat spin was a concern in space as it would be in an atmosphere). They would appear to have some very powerful sub-luminal drive systems and inertial dampers in the Macross universe.

And I completely agree on the (de-)evolution of the VF designs.

Otherwise the weaponry and armour doesn't appear that powerful. Full disclosure - most of my recollection is based on Robotech/SDFM and DYRL; I don't think I've watched any of the others apart from Zero more than once or very recently and I haven't seen Frontier and I'm completely math free here.

The main issue I'd see with assessing things is that it appears that the human's opponents seem to be pretty low grade and rely on strength in numbers so it's hard to gauge things. For example, in SDFM 20mm shells go straight through the Zentraedi ground and space forces pretty reliably whereas the VFs appear to be able to take at least a couple of hits from their opponent's beam weapons although both sides appear quite vulnerable to missiles.

Zentraedi warship weapons don't appear to go through (or clearly fatally wound) the Macross which is often not shielded (we regularly see outer armour plating ripping off when struck by enemy fire) but they appear quite capable of destroying their own ships in short order as do a number of human weapon systems.

So while the Macross' main gun and the Grand Cannon appear to be able to cut large swaths through the enemy that's may be less impressive as I recall seeing the same ships failing when hit by smaller (but presumably similar) weapons or even large missile salvos that (making the assumption that they're using similar warheads) definitely don't leave mushroom clouds or other evidence of large energy releases when used in the atmosphere of Earth.

Compare this to ye olde Wave Motion Gun which we see obliterate the floating continent on Jupiter in both the original and 2199 remake (IIRC its described as the size of Australia?) which is no insignificant task, especially using a power plant that fits comfortably within a WWII battleship hull. In 2199 they also destroy Balun which is referred to as a "planet", albeit with an "artifical core" (whatever that means), and we regularly see ships *in the vicinity of the beam* also being destroyed. I don't recall any greater demonstrations of power in the 2010 live action film (I only recall ship on ship action). And this isn't a one-off weapon system or ship (unlike the Macross) since they subsequently churn out a fleet of battleships with twin wave motion guns.

[Parallax]

I agree with most of what you say except for the last parts, even that is minor.

We see ships in vicinity of Macross cannon beams destroyed, even smaller scale versions such as seen on the Macross Quarter has some weird invisible "you're fucked" effect to this on the edges of the beam and even clearly outside it.

Likewise, by the time of Macross Plus we know that ships with macross cannons are relatively common in the Macross universe; basically every capital ship has one in one form or another.

Power wise, it seems clear that the Wave Motion Gun is considerably more powerful than the Macross Cannon. Though I'm tempted to say that the Grand Cannons, the giant tunnel weapons built into Earth, would possibly be on par with the WMG.

[Vendetta]

On the other hands, I'm not sure I like the direction VF design is taking. Look at the VF-1, VF-11 and even the VF-19 and you see strong, classic designs. However, designs like the VF-25 and VF-30 are really different and seems to be departing design elements previously seen, more futuristic and less based on existing aircraft perhaps.

The VF-25 is just a modernised sleeker version of the VF-1. Most of the other modern designs have at least as much similarity with the silhouettes of actual planes as the old ones did (VF-27 has the wing mounted engines and inward canted tailplane of the SR-71 and the YF-30 looks a bit like a PAK-FA with canards).

[Parallax]

To clarify, and I should have done this to begin with, I'm referring particularly to the battroid designs and not the fighter/plane designs. Nothing wrong at all with the fighter designs but the change in battroid designs seems quite distinct now.

[Nari]

We see ships in vicinity of Macross cannon beams destroyed, even smaller scale versions such as seen on the Macross Quarter has some weird invisible "you're fucked" effect to this on the edges of the beam and even clearly outside it.

Likewise, by the time of Macross Plus we know that ships with macross cannons are relatively common in the Macross universe; basically every capital ship has one in one form or another.

Power wise, it seems clear that the Wave Motion Gun is considerably more powerful than the Macross Cannon. Though I'm tempted to say that the Grand Cannons, the giant tunnel weapons built into Earth, would possibly be on par with the WMG.

I think I'm going to have to watch Macross Plus again . I'm trying to remember whether the Macross' main gun was described as the "main gun" or a Macross Cannon; "Macross Cannon" vessels certainly showed up in Macross II but were pretty huge compare to the other cap ships. So when they say "Macross Cannon" does that refer to the technology or that they're all similarly powerful? I don't recall their being a great deal of warship on warship action in Plus (in fact most of the action was Valk pilot w/ attitude on Valk pilot w/ attitude) and the Macross itself was just sitting in a lake? And I'm pretty sure they were knocking off the Quedlann-Raus quite close to the title sequence in the first episode with projectile gun pods?

Regarding the Main Guns vs. the Wave motion gun. I know we're already agreeing here but I'm thinking about what we see in the large battle with the Zentraedi. The Macross doesn't just blast Dolza's ship (870 miles high IIRC? so smaller than the "size of Australia" floating continent that the Yamato smokes) with it's main guns but clearly fires them several times as part of the process of breaking in to use their shield overload trick.

Admittedly Dolza's ship appears to be one big-ass egg shell with not much on the inside so perhaps Exedore/Exsedol or Breetai had counselled against just blasting it but that would appear to support "overloading shield system" > "main guns" (or at least, the blast is projected spherically rather than linearly) and I only recall a relatively small crater being left on the face of Earth when it first overloaded when trying to dump the civvies. That being said, if you're intentionally overloading it to use it offensively perhaps you can get a bit more out of it.

Its very unclear in the animation that whether the Grand Cannon strikes Dolza's ship; my take is that it didn't so all we know is a lower bound of being able to wipe out pretty otherwise glassy ships.

[Andras]

You guys may be interested in poking around my Macross conversions for the Mekton game system

[Parallax]

I did say by the time of Macross Plus, not the actual events shown in it. I'm using that since we know the production dates of different types of ships, even if they weren't shown in Macross Plus.

But you should still watch Macross Plus again, simply because it's pretty awesome. It and Zero are some of the best Macross out there, a story where they manage to mix the music and mecha action without either overbearing the other.
Unlike Macross 7 which was freaking eye meltingly awful.

With Doza's BigAss Fortress, I think it's important to note which version you're actually looking at; the original SDFM or the one seen in DYRL. They do seem to vary a lot in design, especially the interior.

[amigocabal]

How do you see Macross in terms of comparing to other sci-fi settings? Do you think they sit somewhere around the B5 level in terms of sheer power? Trek, perhaps? Considering how the UN Spacy churns out colonisation fleets, it seems their manufacturing power is impressive at the very least. A lot of their tech seems to be consumer/citizen orientated with wide ranging use of holograms in all manner of areas, from stage clothing/effects to phones and everything in-between. You do see this used in military tech as well, of course, with 360 degree HUD in VFs such as the YF/VF-19s.

In Universe, they only really entered space in 2010 or so and Frontier was set in around 2060. In fifty years they've gone from one planet to dozens of colony fleets and settling on numerous worlds (even the speed those worlds were built up is impressive - look at Eden in Plus, as an example). It makes me wonder how fast their tech has progressed and where it will end up.

What really surprised me is their ability to go to space in 2010 after ...
Spoiler

...the Zentraedi carpet bombed the Earth, ushering an apocalypse far worse than that in the Terminator trilogy

Where did they get the factories to build all those colonization ships? Where did they find people to work at the factories, let alone populate the colonies?

From the source material, I estimate that Macross's 2060 incarnation would be more powerful than Enterprise-era Trek.

[Darksider]

Where did they get the factories to build all those colonization ships? Where did they find people to work at the factories, let alone populate the colonies?

From the source material, I estimate that Macross's 2060 incarnation would be more powerful than Enterprise-era Trek.

Overtechnology magic Overtechnology.

I'd wager a lot of their "initial" manufacturing base was reconstructed using tech from the captured Zentradi asteroid factory. And I believe they also used advanced cloning tech to re-constitute their population. Actually now that I think about it some of the characters we see in the post-SDF series are probably descended from those clones given the probable ratio of clones to survivors.

[Parallax]

A lot of the Zentraedi moved to Earth and, thanks to Protoculture meddling eons back, they could breed with humans (as seen with Max and Millia). I'm pretty sure that helped the initial population shortage a bit. The population does seem to absolutely boom, it has to be said; Earth is repopulated in less than a decade, you have colony fleets taking off once or twice a year PLUS you have actual colonised planets like Eden.

And yeah, we can assume that a lot of the initial manufacturing was done at the capture Factory satellite.

[lord Martiya]

The Factory Satellite was damaged and had the warship yards off-line. Until it was at least partly repaired, warship production was done at the L-5 Manufacturing Station (production site of the [[http://macross.anime.net/wiki/ARMD ARMD-class carriers]]) and on the Moon (the Megaroad-01 was built there, at least). It probably didn't take a while (factory satellites have their own automated repair systems, so they only needed to repair and reprogram it for retooling), but the initial warship production (most probably composed of augmented Oberths and ARMDs. Not too much, but it was what they knew how to build) was not done at the Factory Satellite. VF production, on the other hand, only needed retooling on the Regult lines (many of which were still working), so I suppose it could have contributed to that from the start.
Also, the Factory Satellite had cloning chambers for Zentraedi, that would only need little reprogramming to produce humans.
Now, I have a question: do the human CLONES know they're clones, or they have fake memories telling them of how they survived the war?

[Nari]

Regarding the colony ships:

Before they captured the Factory satellites they managed to rebuild Macross city not once but *twice* while trapped in deep space aboard the Macross itself with presumably minimal raw materials (for which they likely didn't have much processing capacity) apart from what they could cannibalise from the ship

Even allowing for the possibility that they pretty much transplanted the buildings from the part of the island that came with the ship (for which there isn't much onscreen evidence IRRC as they were in a hurry to get back to earth) they managed to recreate a not insignificant town over a period of not even several weeks (basically while Hikaru/Rick and Minmei were trapped and space tuna fishing).

So after that feat the city was all torn up again when the ship subsequently transformed to Robot mode as the building permit process apparently hadn't included checking you weren't building of a bit that was going to move dramatically in a shear fashion with respect to the "ground". After which they rebuilt it again (presumably in a slightly different configuration).

It should also be noted that during this time they must have been able to churn out VF-1s (not to mention train pilots) at a prodigious rate to keep pace with their losses .

So it appears that the Macross, its crew & civilian population had a fairly significant "indigenous" manufacturing capability. To be fair, the ability to rough up 3 story buildings and VFs colony ship building capacity does not obviously make, but you know, Overtechnology.

The crewing of them is a more interesting problem although, as suggested above, Micronized Zentraedi would have to be a large component of that. Even if every woman on Earth got busy reproducing (apart from Hikaru's two love interests) we're only talking 10-12 years between the main battle and the decision to leave, so not really enough time to grow a new population.

[Darksider]

Here's another question i've always had regarding Macross/Robotech.

How much of Macross city did they actually put in the SDF-1? According to most size charts i've seen, the ship isn't even a mile long, yet they somehow had enough internal volume to pack in the "down town" section of the city where Minmei lived, and that big amphitheater thing, on top of the internal space needed for the ships weapons, reactors, engines, and hanger space for the Variable fighters?

It just seems like it doesn't add up.

[Ford Prefect]

How much of Macross city did they actually put in the SDF-1? According to most size charts i've seen, the ship isn't even a mile long, yet they somehow had enough internal volume to pack in the "down town" section of the city where Minmei lived, and that big amphitheater thing, on top of the internal space needed for the ships weapons, reactors, engines, and hanger space for the Variable fighters?

According to Do You Remember Love?, Macross City is contained wholly within the right leg of the Macross. looks like this.

DYRL? is different from the series, and to my knowledge it's never been shown how Macross City works. I reckon Kawamori was just really lax about it.

[Darksider]

Wait. That doesn't make sense. IIRC the "legs" themselves didn't have any "moving parts" in them. They just swung down as the ship transformed right?

Then how did Macross city get all smashed up from the ground shifting and stuff popping out of it when the ship transformed? Or was it the inertia of the transformation that caused the damage?

I need to go back and check my Robotech dvds.

[Connor MacLeod]

Frankly there were lots of oddities in the original Macross guaranteed to generate 'realism' questions, whether its how they got the giant spaceship to transform (It might have been an original capability of it, but IIRC from Macross they portrayed it as a modification so they could use the main gun.) to how they rigged up a pair of aircraft carriers for arms.

Knowing the 'ultra realism' crowd the answer probably involves carbon nanotubes in some way

[amigocabal]

Frankly there were lots of oddities in the original Macross guaranteed to generate 'realism' questions, whether its how they got the giant spaceship to transform (It might have been an original capability of it, but IIRC from Macross they portrayed it as a modification so they could use the main gun.) to how they rigged up a pair of aircraft carriers for arms.

Knowing the 'ultra realism' crowd the answer probably involves carbon nanotubes in some way

I am guessing the Macross's transformative capability was originally for easier maintenance access when the ship was in space dock or something. The humanoid shape of the ship was solely due to the aircraft carriers attached; it would look like a crooked letter "H" without them.

[Ford Prefect]

Within the show the fact that the Macross could turn into a giant robot was purely coincidental.

Knowing the 'ultra realism' crowd the answer probably involves carbon nanotubes in some way

Actually the Macross is made out of hypercarbon. :v

[Connor MacLeod]

There's probably some way to explain the SDF-1 and its transformation (and what it did to MAcross city) somehow if you devoted enough thought to it, I'm just too lazy to do so

Actually the Macross is made out of hypercarbon. :v

FOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD! *shakes his fist in the air*

[Parallax]

The transformation was a convenient modification made so they can harness the funky energy left when the Macross' fold system disappeared - and use that energy to fire the main cannon. A means to work around missing systems and connect everything together again, possible due to the Macross' "modular design" apparently. Later, they used that same energy to power the barrier system.

The city makes no sense. Just nod slightly and move on. If they ever remake Macross I'd assume they'd portray the rebuilt city to be in notably worse condition, much more of a jury rigged shambles that what looks like a damn near perfect contemporary city (including plumbing, roads, etc).

[Nephtys]

The City never made sense, unless you think of it as perhaps stacking layers of city on top of each other. Even then, you've got what's probably (eyeballing based on the shipp's leg section size) a 300m-400m long section that's at most, 100m wide. If you are stacking, perhaps you could get what.. 4 or 5 'decks' of city? Tops?

As for transforming... I could ALMOST buy that in SDFM. It's clear that the main booms need to separate to fire the main gun anyway, and a number of Zentraedi ships had a similar feature where their front opened for a main gun. But afterwards in the sequel series, it gets much sillier. Really, Macross 7 and Frontier's carrier flagships have a main gun, that's held like a rifle, that's also a frigate? Why not just... build a gun into the ship? And not have it turn into a robot?

I guess then aircraft carriers can't punch each other to death.