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Seto Kaiba

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About Seto Kaiba

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    http://www.Macross2.net/m3/m3.html
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    MacrossMike

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    Male
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    Lagrange Terrace (a stable community)
  • Interests
    Anime (duh), Antique Firearms, Cryptography, Mechanical Design

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The Protodeviln? They aren't, as far as we know. Probably never have been, in the direct sense. It's a fairly safe bet that the mind control tech the Protodeviln used on the Varauta forces is the same stuff they used for the Supervision Army, and the way it's described in-series and in supplemental materials it's basically Hollywood hypnosis. They drain a person's spiritia to weaken their mental defenses and then equip them with a sonic device that emits special sound waves to keep them in a sort of hypnotic trance so they're suggestible enough to follow orders. The only people the Protodeviln have really controlled in a direct sense are the people they possess in Macross 7 like Gepernich, Gigile, or (occasionally) Sivil.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They would have to be. The war between the Zentradi and the Supervision Army has been going on for 500,000 years. The captured and brainwashed Protoculture civilians and Zentradi soldiers who made up the original generation of Supervision Army soldiers are no more immune to injury or to the ravages of time than a Human. Given that the Protodeviln and their Supervision Army drove the Protoculture to the brink of extinction in a few short years, there would be only one way for the Supervision Army to feasibly sustain itself long-term: using the existing factory satellite infrastructure in the territory they controlled to create fresh clone soldiers, mobile weapons, and ships for their cause. Ultimately, the Zentradi and Supervision Army are two inexhaustible armies of Zentradi clones locked in a Forever War with each other because their last orders were to "destroy the enemy" and anyone capable of ordering them to stop died or disappeared half a million years ago. They didn't really ditch the Supervision Army. They were defeated, captured, and turned into Sealed Evil in a Can by the Protoculture's Anima Spiritia. They remained sealed for 500,000 years until Humanity colonized the Varauta system and started poking around in the Protoculture ruins on one of the other planets in the system, where the Protodeviln happened to have been sealed. They accidentally let the Protodeviln out, causing the events of Macross 7. Of course, since the Protodeviln were simply the Supervision Army's top-level commanders rather than being some kind of puppeteer parasite controlling those people directly, their defeat and sealing did nothing to actually stop the Supervision Army. Their brainwashed troops just kept right on fighting according to their last orders.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing, in all likelihood. The Protodeviln aren't controlling their forces with telepathy or space magic or anything like that where No Ontological Inertia might apply. Being drained of spiritia (mental energy) puts people in a state of mental collapse that makes them more vulnerable to technological mind control. As shown in Macross 7, the spiritia-drained Varauta forces were kept in line by mind control devices built into their helmets and other headgear. The Protodeviln learning to generate their own spiritia and taking off wouldn't free them from control. Only the removal of the mind control devices and a good blast of sound energy to help them regenerate the lost spiritia can bring them out of it. Kind of the same reason the Supervision Army wasn't really slowed down much at all by the Protodeviln being defeated and sealed away by the anima spiritia in ancient history.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    There hasn't been any mention of direct contact with the Supervision Army in any official media AFAIK. Macross 7 depicts the New UN Forces encountering the Supervision Army's creators/leaders (the Protodeviln) and fighting a war against what is essentially Supervision Army v2.0, but nothing is said of the original Supervision Army forces still fighting the Zentradi across the galaxy. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a Zentradi force from a Supervision Army one at a glance though. The Supervision Army wasn't a bespoke army created from the ground up to fight for the Protodeviln the way the Zentradi were developed to be the Protoculture's army. The Supervision Army got its start as an ad hoc force made up of anyone and everyone the Protodeviln could capture, drain of spiritia, and mind control into doing their bidding and in their initial rampage across the galaxy their forces grew mainly by the simple expedient of doing the same to everyone they captured and making use of existing ships, weapons, facilities, etc. from those they captured. Most of their forces would have been captured and mind controlled Zentradi, and that's probably even more true in the modern day 500,000 years later. Their forces likely consist almost exclusively (if not entirely exclusively) of Zentradi clones using equipment produced in captured factory satellites. Aside from ship classes and some equipment that may have been unique to certain regions and Protoculture emigrant governments, their forces probably look almost exactly like the Zentradi at a glance. Since the New UN Forces practice a policy of "avoid whenever possible" when it comes to the "wild"/"lost" Zentradi roaming the galaxy, it's entirely possible they've detected several Supervision Army fleets and simply not stuck around long enough to tell them apart from the regular Zentradi.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That might have something to do with their international agreement with HG, who still have the exclusive merchandising rights to the original series outside Japan. Now, I'm not a super-big collector but IIRC the VF-31A was a very hot ticket item when it came out... made quite a bit of cash for the scalper crowd. IMO, it's not a bad thing that they're revisiting in-demand items that didn't get widely distributed for the benefit of the international crowd too. Wasn't the problem that it was a web exclusive because they didn't think anyone would want the CF version compared to the character models, only for it to turn out to be a high-demand item that got scalped to hell and back?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Now, I'm not saying they're the same picture, but... ... well, when the group is a blonde "prince" leader, a cold and calculating megane who actually runs things, mischievous twins, an immature kid and a gigantic stoic... well... let's just say it could be hard to tell which one you're referring to without some extra context. 😆 Honestly, that there hasn't been a parody bit under the title Darwent Castle Host Club is both a shame and a waste. I assume they left Qasim and/or Hermann out of the wall scroll because they're not as photogenic as the other five.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Probably owes a fair bit to how most anime licensing flows through the US, and the US distribution situation immediately screwed it up by splitting the license up among multiple companies.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how fiercely sought-after the original DX VF-31A release was, I imagine this'll be fairly well-received. It's still the best looking of all the VF-31s, ironically.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Capturing and relocating enough factory satellites to make a noticeable dent in the logistics of the Zentradi's Forever War with the Supervision Army is probably impossible with the resources Humanity currently has or will have at any point in the foreseeable future. According to Macross Chronicle, each individual fleet (not a main fleet, a regular one like Vrlitwhai's) has a logistical support backbone of approximately 20-50 factory satellites. Each main fleet is made up of hundreds or thousands of branch fleets, and at the Zentradi's peak there were approximately 5,000 main fleets. The Mechanic Sheet for the SDF:M TV series factory satellite asserts that there are millions of factory satellites out there just making battle pods day in and day out. Tens of thousands making battleships. Hundreds building the huge fleet motherships/mobile fortresses. And because the Protoculture can never resist going overboard, there's also a factory satellite making other factory satellites.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    So, it's a bit difficult to say for a couple reasons. First, several different estimates for the number of Zentradi main fleets still active in the Milky Way have been given over the years. "Over 1,000", "between 1,000 and 2,000", and "between 2,000 and 3,000" have all been given at various points. IIRC in DYRL?, Perfect Memory, and SDF:M TV respectively. So there's a rather broad range of possibilities there. If we assume Boddole Zer's 118th/425th (depending on version) main fleet is typical, that's anywhere from 4.8 billion to possibly 14.4 billion. Second, it's possible that not all main fleets are the same size. The only one we've seen animated is Boddole Zer's fleet of approximately 4.8 million warships. Macross II prequel games Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song both went for the "millions of ships" route for the three main fleets presented between the two games and the fourth one the timeline mentions encountering later. While it's not strictly official setting, Master File mentions a main fleet (the 1,534th) that is "only" 120,000 ships strong. Third, factory satellites are in play. The Zentradi forces have their galaxy-spanning network of factory satellites churning out new ships, pods, and soldiers constantly and the big fleet motherships are no exception. Depending on how much opposition they're facing from the Supervision Army at any given point, that number could be going down OR up. Thus far, the only confirmed intergalactic travelers are the Vajra. Presumably this is because they benefit from the superior abilities of fold quartz-based "super" fold navigation.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    So, is it Goo or Mobile Saurian Godzilla 00? Or does Godzilla just have terrible version control? Another couple films and we've got Godzilla 98, Godzilla Me, Godzilla XP, and Godzilla Vista!
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Getting to around the midpoint of the season, and I'm a little disappointed by how many titles I've tried have faded into glorified white noise. Let This Grieving Soul Retire, Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota, My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me, A Gatherer's Adventure in Isekai, Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right, and A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace all just feel like background noise-tier TV now. Most of them aren't really doing anything with their premises at all and the ones that are are doing the bare minimum formulaic effort. I've been having a lot more fun revisiting some older titles with my watch group. We're crawling through the entire Tenchi-verse one title at a time in parallel with some other titles from past seasons like The Ascendance of a Bookworm and Overtake!.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix kinda-sorta answers that question in the section SV-51 Last Stand: the SV-51's Final Air Battle. (Pg108) I summarized it a bit here, but the even-shorter version is that when the Anti-Unification Alliance remnants tried one of the several "Hail Mary" attempts to revive their lost cause after the Alliance itself collapsed in 2008 they got absolutely clowned on by a bunch of VF-0+'s in one of the largest VF air battles before the First Space War. Operation Scoria, an attempt to launch a surprise attack from a base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and capture the UN Forces Alaska Base, was foiled literally before it ever got off the ground when a mixed force of B-52s and VF-0+'s attacked their base. The story, recounted by the leader of the SV-51 unit, reads as a mounting series of "Oh cr*p" moments as what he expected would be mopping up a bunch of out-of-fuel VF-0s turned into his own forces getting stomped:
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Right here.✋ So much. What a stupid idea, making The Machine of Inexorable Horror into a kid-friendly action buddy. There is one Terminator movie. Everything else is just swamp gas or a mirage or something.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    $20 an hour sounds like a lot, but we're talking about downtown Los Angeles where cost of living is sky high.
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