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About Seto Kaiba
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- Birthday August 22
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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)
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Interests
Anime (duh), Antique Firearms, Cryptography, Mechanical Design
Seto Kaiba's Achievements
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Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru Witch from Mercury
Seto Kaiba replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
As narratively unnecessary and painfully dull as the movie was, I can honestly say I feel no inclination whatsoever to watch its equally dull and unnecessary prequel. On the scale of "better things to do with my time", watching Freedom Zero is going to fall somewhere below teaching myself to play the bluegrass banjo with my feet, catching the flu for purely recreational purposes, or rewriting the entirety of the European Union's tax code in dactylic hexameter pig Latin and publishing it as an epic poem. A hard pass even then.- 3598 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
That alone was enough to get my attention. So much of Star Wars is focused on military affairs or the life of ne'er-do-wells on the fringes of society that there's little indication of what life is like for the billions upon billions of normal workaday folks who aren't living and working in the almost-literal ivory towers of the rich and powerful, the wretched hives of the crime lords, or the little farming villages in the middle of nowhere. Skeleton Crew'll be doing some interesting worldbuilding.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Nothing is too weird for the Star Wars setting as a whole. Disney's in this to make money, though... so I expect the writers of this kid's show will keep the weirdness to a kid-friendly and marketably controversy-free level. (Elective cybernetics might veer too closely to a politically-polarizing real world topic for Disney's comfort.)- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Star Wars's Galaxy Far Far Away is an absolutely gargantuan setting that's allegedly home to over 20 million sentient species. I'd assume the only practical limits on "weird" are the imagination of the writers and the size of the budget for practical and digital effects. In a way, isn't that kind of the theme here? Skeleton Crew is a story about some bored kids from a nice, safe, middle class neighborhood where nothing interesting ever happens digging up a buried spaceship and finding out how weird, wild, and dangerous the rest of the Galaxy Far Far Away really is.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
In a way, it is oddly impressive that Disney LucasFilm's writers managed to make "Lesbian Space Witches" unappealing to Star Wars's predominantly male audience. (Even more so given that pre-Disney LucasFilm managed to sell fans on the idea twice. Once in the EU novels and once in The Clone Wars.) That said, pre-Disney Star Wars had its fair share of "Holy my beer" bad narrative decisionmaking too. Phantom Menace introducing three different alien species that read like racist political cartoons, absolutely every bit of dialog between Anakin and Padme, so very much of the Expanded Universe. It is not a new development by any means. It's gotta be there for a reason. AFAIK, Star Wars cybernetics are mostly organ/limb replacements for people with life-altering injuries. The few exceptions are low level clerks and functionaries who get elective surgery to boost their brains with computer hardware. That's why I hypothesized she might be blind. The casting does seem to be aiming to make the group of kids as diverse and representational as you'd expect for a kids show (which is not a bad thing, to be clear). Social media does absolutely feed the toxic fandom... but on the other hand, Star Wars has also served up enough disappointments in its rapid-fire release schedule since Disney took the helm that general audiences are greeting new titles with less enthusiasm and more skepticism/suspicion too. For every Rebels, The Mandalorian, or Andor there's a The Acolyte, The Book of Boba Fett, or The Rise of Skywalker serving up a bland and disappointing viewing experience or irritatingly bad writing.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Nah, she's probably meant to be an inclusive character for viewers with disabilities. Like Geordi LaForge was in Star Trek: the Next Generation. It'd be a bit too weird for Disney to make a kid into a cybernetics fetishist like that ridiculous moped gang from The Book of Boba Fett. As memorable as he is, I'm sure I'll forget him again soon enough. And if not, there's bourbon.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I completely forgot that he exists. I think my brain glossed over his existence entirely, since he looks like an especially ugly Chia Pet and he and his crew managed to be slightly less intimidating than stormtroopers.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Yeah, it'd just feel wrong to have a space pirate story in Star Wars without Hondo... seemingly Star Wars's only space pirate.- 126 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Honestly, that sounds like a recipe for hilarity to me. I would watch that. The undead Emperor just... getting completely casually disrespected by a bunch of exciteable kids who have no idea who he is, trying to keep his flesh from falling off his bones at the same time he's trying to keep their grubby mitts off his Sith artifacts until he can find someone to dump them on so he can have a moment's peace. The most dangerous and deadly villain in the galaxy treated like a Scooby-Doo villain for a few episodes. (And you can't tell me Star Wars has never done that kind of thing before. I've seen the episodes of The Clone Wars where Dooku is taken hostage by that magnificent ham Hondo and ends up chained to Anakin and Obi-wan.)- 126 replies
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Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Release Thread
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Movies and TV Series
I ordered mine from Crunchyroll and it arrived with no issues to speak of despite spending several additional days in the care of the USPS. They're definitely not going overboard with the padding the way I've seen HLJ and CDJapan do, but mine came wrapped in several layers of paper padding. It looks like yours got mangled in a sort facility though...- 204 replies
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Distance from the Skywalker saga has proven to be a pretty good idea... at least as far as good ideas go under the stewardship of Disney. There are just too many sacred cows on Skywalker Ranch for telling more stories there to be a good idea.- 126 replies
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Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru Witch from Mercury
Seto Kaiba replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Oh boy... more lifeless and unnecessary garbage from Gundam's most overrated, least capable director. 🤮- 3598 replies
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Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Release Thread
Seto Kaiba replied to sh9000's topic in Movies and TV Series
My copy arrived today. I was surprised by how hefty the box is. Definitely not thrilled with the decision to put the discs inside of the book instead of in a separate case. The print quality of the art seems nice though.- 204 replies
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Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!
Seto Kaiba replied to Valkyrie Driver's topic in Movies and TV Series
It's likely, given that Isamu is from Eden and never signed on with an emigrant fleet's escort detail as far as we know. (Personally, I suspect the reassignment to New Edwards was Isamu's CO trying not just to make him someone else's problem but to put him in a position where he might remove himself from being anyone's problem. By that point, the YF-19 had put two test pilots in the ICU and two more in the ground.) Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix takes that view. The Restored Phoenix story section mentions, in passing, a government-led cultural and technological restoration project that spent the twenty years after the First Space War combing through the ruins of pre-war Earth for any surviving cultural artifacts and technology. It was one of that project's expeditions to Edwards AFB that discovered a cargo container with two wrecked VF-0s from the Asuka II's air group and led to the reverse-engineering and restoration of the VF-0. While Battleships of the Galaxy is a doujinshi, we do at least know that the Battle-class was not limited to use by emigrant fleets. There was, of course, the second Macross 13 that was the flagship of Earth's defense forces under Gen. Kim Kabirov in the Macross Frontier novelization and more recently Battle Astraea from the NUNS's 7th Fleet that became the flagship of Heimdall in Absolute Live!!!!!!. Master File, while also not strictly official setting, does seem to suggest there weren't initially that many of them since Battle 7 was borrowed for the mission to suppress the main fleet that destroyed Spica III. Oh, absolutely. Traveling by space fold has always been a "speed of plot" way to get around. It's easier to leave the distances between places vague or undefined and have people get there when it's dramatic/necessary to do so rather than set up a bunch of detailed rules and stats that they'd then have to worry about following or breaking later on. This bit of intentional vagueness and the increasing casualness of interstellar travel is justified in-story in several ways. The introduction of fold faults as a navigational obstacle that can prevent ships from taking the shortest possible route and/or greatly increase the error in time measurement is practically a get out of jail free card for inconsistencies in presentation. Humanity's ever-advancing technology has allowed them to manufacture more precise and reliable fold systems and advances in fold carbon synthesis have made those systems more capable and efficient. They've also simply gotten better at using them through experience. Those are pretty extreme examples, though. Humanity in Macross isn't quite a monoculture, but most of the galaxy hasn't been separated for long enough to really develop their own ingrained independent cultures and traditions. The closest we can reliably get is emigrant planets that already had a native alien species living on them, like Windermere IV or Ragna. Though Macross being Macross, "not so different" is almost always in play and even these alien cultures end up being more like Human culture than they are different. Supplemental material like Macross the Ride and Master File suggest that the Macross Frontier fleet isn't quite as isolated as the series makes out and that there are several other fleets (incl. Galaxy) and some inhabited planets within semi-easy fold distance of the fleet. (~500ly, according to Master File.) The exact details are left to Macross's usual "broad strokes" continuity, but it's worth noting that both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta materials effectively treat the game's Vindirance route as the Good/True Ending of its story. Vindirance and the pro-autonomy faction triumph, the government and military are reorganized, the pro-centrists end up punished for their crimes and some become terrorists (like Naresuan) or mercenaries (like Ernest Johnson). -
Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!
Seto Kaiba replied to Valkyrie Driver's topic in Movies and TV Series
This got me thinking... how many worlds within that bubble do we actually know about? As noted before, Macross doesn't often mention how far apart various planets/systems are so it's hard to know if we've actually seen any systems within that 100 light year radius bubble explored by the short-distance emigrant fleet besides Eden. Legible backwards text in the first episode of Macross Plus (during Isamu's dressing-down by his CO) describe several emigrant planets including "Planet Barnard", which apparently orbits Barnard's Star 5.978 light years from Earth. That may imply that the other planets Isamu is threatened with a dead-end assignment to (incl. Micross Minus and Banipal) are within that same zone. It's also possible that many of the planets visited in the course of Macross M3 are in that same zone. (Honestly, in astronomy terms, the idea of someone finding a planet at Barnard's star is quietly hilarious... considering how many real-world refuted arguments for a planet there have been made over the years. Sadly, it seems whatever fleet found it didn't have the sense of humor to name is Vandekamp or something like that after the late Peter van de Kamp, who argued for many years that there was a planet there.) Any space big enough to hold Battroids should be plenty capable of accommodating Zentran. You'd just have to be willing to put up with the drain on resources, which from what the Macross Frontier series implies, was a rare case indeed. Either. Quite possibly both. The Uraga-class is certainly not the only example... the Battle-class and the later Saratoga II-type are also designed for blue water operation. Probably not, considering how fundamentally wrongheaded the Earth UN Forces beliefs about an alien invasion and the strategies involved turned out to be. The Daedalus-class, Prometheus-class, and Destroids were all products of the assumption that Earth would one day face a classic alien invasion scenario with ground troops and efforts to capture terrain for resources or prisoners. That turned out to be lamentably wide of the mark. There is still some kind of blue water Navy in play though, as Isamu's service record mentions him serving about the Navy's Enterprise. Considering the disparity in munitions capabilities... probably. Largest ________ metrics are a bit muddy in real world terms thanks to several countries that play fast and loose with what counts as a military ship or aircraft. Based on officially published numbers, if you parked the Macross 7 fleet on Earth today it'd technically be the 4th largest air force in the world in terms of the total number of military aircraft, behind only China, Russia, and the United States. As of the 2050s, that's a solidly medium-sized fleet. Nothing specific... it's known that they can be artificially created by the Protoculture's technology and the Vajra's biotechnology, so presumably they understand how these things work. They're not really explained to the audience beyond essentially just being a higher-dimension navigational hazard that ranges in severity from "speedbump" to "pothole bad enough to mess up your tires/suspension/alignment", "sinkhole big enough to swallow your car whole", and finally "that's not a sinkhole that's a **** damn canyon". If we were to extrapolate from official materials, Macross Chronicle's Technology Sheet for barrier system suggests that a barrier is essentially a deliberately created fold fault: a region where the geometry of space-time is twisted into an impassible obstacle. So a fold fault is presumably a region of higher dimension space that's been warped by some (gravitational?) force (stellar gravity, black holes, stray pockets of heavy quanta?). They're one of those things that Humanity is still studying, having cheated their way to having interstellar flight via very lucky/unlucky first contact events.