Term · Macross
Valkyrie
A jet that stands up. The design problem was making both halves look like they had always been there.
In Otakana the clue reads: Fighter jet that transforms into a robot
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Macross
- Letters
- 8 · Hard
The Valkyrie is the transforming fighter of Macross: a variable fighter that shifts between a jet, a humanoid battle form, and a halfway stance with the nose down and arms out. That third mode is called GERWALK, and it exists because the machine has to hover, walk and shoot in places a jet cannot go. The VF-1 is the original and the shape has been reused for forty years.
Shoji Kawamori designed it while studying real aircraft, and worked the transformation out with physical models rather than drawing it as a magic trick. The lineage shows. The fighter mode reads as a plausible descendant of an F-14, and the robot mode keeps every part of it somewhere, which is why toys of it have always been engineering exercises rather than simple figures.
The military fiction around it is unusually detailed for 1982, with squadron markings, a designation system, and pilots who complain about their machines. Later Macross series each introduce a new numbered variable fighter, and the audience compares them the way aviation enthusiasts compare real airframes, which is precisely the reaction the design was built to provoke.
Spelling VALKYRIE
VALKYRIE is eight letters and takes its spelling from Norse myth rather than from Japanese. The trap is the Y where your ear wants an I, and the IE ending where you might write EY. Japanese renders it ヴァルキリー, Varukirii, since there is no native V or L, so the katakana is no help. Spell the myth, not the sound.