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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The main problem with the Clan Battles is that they don't make sense in the context of the setting the way Duels in The Witch from Mercury do. G-Witch's Duels were mock battles with detuned weapons held as a way for the Benerit Group's various defense companies to demonstrate their latest products in combat and benchmark their rivals latest developments. Junking a few MS's in a student pissing match or for sport is small potatoes for companies who control the economy of the entire solar system. GQuuuuuuX's Clan Battles... well... the Pomaranians and some other clans are refugees living in illegal tenaments in Side 6, who nevertheless somehow have the kind of money necessary to buy the equivalent of a fighter jet on the black market and keep it fully fueled, armed, and operational. It's an illegal sport, and even with the illegal gambling on the events it doesn't quite make sense how civilian randos can manage that. The lack of a story hook is perhaps its biggest weakness. It's leaning real hard on its "What if?" storyline, but that's not enough to make it interesting.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Once Upon a Witch's Death and Catch Me at The Ballpark are pretty unremarkable again this week. The Apothecary Diaries is heating up, though, so there's that.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Another Tuesday, another painfully mediocre episode of GQuuuuuuX. It looks like we're going to be seeing a fair amount of recycled no-background zooming and twirling from the titular Gundam going forward. We get to see a very quick Clan Battle with recycled footage, and then people protesting against the Sodon's presence in Side 6. There's a second clan battle against a team sponsored by a PMC that normally uses Federation MS's. It's still pretty dull stuff. The Federation ace is a one-trick pony who lasts a couple minutes but never manages to land a real hit on either Gundam... Like a Newtype ghost, it's all flash and no substance.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Same. I would consider it one of the finest, if not THE finest, stories Star Wars has ever produced.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    How hard the Star Wars fandom has to reach to find something in the series to complain about, and how petty those complaints are, is truly a ringing testimonial to the quality of the series. Other shows in the franchise like The Acolyte or Ahsoka are so flawed that the fans have no end of legitimate significant narrative problems to chew on. In Andor, they're reduced to picking nits about the dancing at the wedding reception, the dance mixes of the in-universe popular music, or that they have brick buildings on Ferrix. 🤣
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Adults might enjoy that, but I suspect Disney might find an attraction all but guaranteed to make children cry a little off-brand for their family-friendly amusement parks. Hell, I remember the Alien part of the Great Hollywood ride scared the beejezus out of me as a kid of ~6.🤣
  7. Seto Kaiba
    's all right, once really was enough for that stinker. Not really... I've played several of those songs back in my music days, and they really aren't anything particularly unusual. The Mon Mothma we've seen in Andor, in Rogue One, Rebels, and Ahsoka is a very stiff and formal person... and in this case, she's also the host of the party. Given her personality and her day job, you'd expect her to be doing the rounds and chatting up the various members of Chandrila's Great and Good. That she's drunk and dancing instead is itself a conspicuous out-of-character moment. (She pounded three shots in thirty seconds, which is definitely out of character given that previous episodes show she's very good at moderating her alcohol intake at parties.) She's also visibly upset where everyone else is smiling and laughing and generally having a good time. And we can say with certainty that it was conspicuous, because we can see characters in-story notice that something is wrong. Perrin is initially seen dancing happily with the guests, but once he catches sight of Mon we see him stop dead to look at her with a very concerned expression.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    This is a very odd thing to get hung up on, IMO. Typically, the only thing alien about the "alien" music in Star Wars is the performers. The Mos Eisley cantina band is playing swing. The band at Jabba's palace was playing a very 80's funk piece in the original '83 theatrical cut and was updated to a horn-heavy 90's pop-rock piece in the '97 special edition. It doesn't strike me as out of place at all that there would be techno/EDM popular music in a setting with so many sentient androids. It's a big galaxy, I'd assume there's room for a lot of different musical tastes and genres. They went with a club/rave mix of the song because, hey, they're playing it at a wedding reception for guests to dance to. (Two other mixes of the same song have showed up back in season one.) (The only reason Kirk's infatuation with the Beastie Boys in the Abrams Star Trek trilogy seems so odd and out of place is that Star Trek habitually stuck with self-composed and public-domain music for cost reasons, meaning most of the diegetic music in Trek is classical by default.) Her drinking and dancing is supposed to be conspicuous and off-putting. She's so distressed that she's doing something wildly out of character in a sort of silent cry for help. She can't confide in anyone there besides Luthen without making them Luthen's next target, and Luthen is not exactly a sympathetic ear. Either that or they felt it would come off as sexist if she ran off to cry inconsolably. I'd assume they're probably trying to set something up between her and her husband Perrin, since he clearly notices her out-of-character behavior towards the end of the episode... he might not have noticed if she'd just left the party since he is a party boy.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    So, I don't know how it is where you live... but in the Americas, Western Europe, etc. this would not even register as unusual to a lot of people. All it is, is a traditional wedding ceremony followed by a modern wedding reception. The pomp and solemn ceremony of centuries-old religious tradition immediately followed by an unrestrained party where the wedding guests get absolutely stinko at the open bar and dance badly to the set list of a DJ with questionable taste. A fair description of my own younger brother's wedding, TBH. The scene works just fine. It's an alien wedding on an alien planet with an alien culture... and even then, the wedding itself is noted to be abnormal because it's driven by the wants of a bridezilla who overcompensates in establishing her own cultural identity while living abroad by fetishizing her people's traditions.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    My read of her character from Andor and other related titles is that it's at least as much other characters like Luthen made a concerted effort to keep her out of that world for their own sanity as much as hers. She wasn't prepared to deal with the mental or emotional toll of having people kill and die on her orders, and they didn't have the time or energy to be entertaining her protests about every decision and consequence involved in running an armed insurgency. We saw a bit of this in season one when Mon was deeply upset at the prospect of a post-Aldhani Imperial crackdown causing widespread suffering, and Luthen having to rather coldly explain that that was a good thing for the cause and run the op without her knowledge or involvement. For Mon Mothma, Tay Kolma is the moment the war finally came home and became real. Yup. It's A Long Time Ago... in a Galaxy Far Far Away. Musical tastes can be different. Mind you, it's not a rave either. It's a bunch of upper class rich folks drunk dancing to popular music at the reception after a three day long stifling traditional wedding ceremony. It's not meant to be a coordinated Bollywood musical number. From what I've read, the song playing at the reception is a remix of the same (presumably popular) song playing on that resort planet Cassian hides out on after Aldhani.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    That's kind of the point, though. She's taking advantage of two vices freely available at a wedding reception - excessive consumption of alcohol and uninhibited dancing - as a way to dissociate in a public setting so she won't have to immediately deal with the emotional toll from the events of the day. Her dancing is clearly meant to show that she is emphatically NOT OK... something that other characters are also meant to notice (e.g. Perrin, who clearly notices she's in distress at the end of the episode).
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that was certainly a fever dream...
  13. Seto Kaiba
    The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is a bit of a weak offering this week. Mostly just high school mean girl shenanigans.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    After a bit of wiki-surfing, it looks like that's what happened in the non-canon pre-Disney version of the Ghorman massacre. I don't think we've seen anything teasing an appearance by Tarkin for Andor's second season, so the actual events of the massacre may be rather different. Unfortunately, the subsequent death of Bail Organa on Alderaan leaves her the de facto leader of the Rebel Alliance's Republic government-in-exile. That, in turn, sets her up to become the Supreme Chancellor of the New Republic where her desire to return to the status quo ante rather than make meaningful reforms to fix the Republic's broken system ultimately paves the way for the rise of the First Order and the subsequent overthrow of the New Republic a few years after her retirement. That's hardly her fault. After all, the whole reason she's trying to lose herself in alcohol and dancing at the wedding reception to avoid dwelling on the knowledge that Luthen is presently... It seems like Mon Mothma has finally hit the point where she can no longer avert her eyes from the fact that people are killing, and/or dying, for the cause. The YouTube channel Generation Tech has a thoughtful analysis of the situation. I originally linked it below, but in hindsight because it uses real world political references I am removing the link out of concern that it may be of issue WRT the forum rules.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It may be a different event from what was previously described in terms of what happens, but they've been setting it up since the first season of Andor. It is essentially the key moment that sets up the formation of the Rebel Alliance, so it's a natural inclusion in a series like this about the early rebellion. I'm guessing we'll learn that Cassian was part of the detail that helped extract her from Coruscant.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not seeing it, TBH. There's no meaningful conflict in Mon Mothma's part in Andor. The few problems facing her are all solved for her by other people... whether it's Cassian and Luthen robbing the Imperial payroll, Tay and Davo doctoring her bank ledgers, or Luthen disposing of her would-be blackmailer. She hasn't learned anything or grown as a result of these events, to Luthen's considerable dismay in S2 E3. We're not seeing a character on a journey. We're seeing a character in a holding pattern waiting for the one specific event that they are a vital participant in. For Mon Mothma, that event is...
  17. Seto Kaiba
    With this many teasers, it kind of feels like the studio lacks confidence in the series and are concerned it'll be overshadowed by other high-profile streaming titles coming out this year.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Her scenes so far are just filler. It's a shame, really. Genevieve O'Reilly is wasted on this show and on Star Wars in general. If her character actually lived up to the promise of that speech she gives to Tay Kolma about having learned from Palpatine's methods and so on, she'd have been an amazing addition to the story. Instead she's stuck playing the role of the sheltered political idealist who can only clutch her pearls at the prospect of violence from the safety of her (sometimes literal) ivory tower while everyone around her just gets increasingly exasperated by how incredibly out-of-touch she is. Whether it's her own daughter, her friend and banker, or Luthen. This version of Mon Mothma feels like a Star Trek character who wandered into Star Wars by mistake.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, if they were going that route they'd have to title it something Star Wars: Not Fanwank For Once or Competent Writing: a Rare Star Wars Story. The other Disney+ Star Wars showrunners must be a bit embarrassed by how easily Tony Gilroy et. al. make their work look like high-budget fan films in comparison.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Cassian's definitely the main character. Practically every significant event in the series is either centered around him specifically or a direct result of something he does... all leading inexorably towards his ultimate fate on the Rogue One mission to Scarif. Regardless, calling it Rebellion or similar would probably be seen as a bad idea for reasons related to brand confusion and distinctiveness. Disney+ already has a Star Wars series with the title of Star Wars: Rebels. Whoever is doing brand management at Disney LucasFilm would probably find those titles insufficiently distinct from one another and would be very much inclined to avoid any potential for audiences to mix up their eminently kid-friendly Star Wars cartoon about the early rebellion with a much darker and more violent Star Wars series about the "The Revolution will not be civilized" years of the rebellion meant for mature audiences. Resistance would've been a great title, but of course they'd already wasted that one twice over on the sequel trilogy and then on a mediocre and even more kid-friendly knockoff of Rebels that sets up parts of the sequel trilogy.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    That bar is set so low that it's a trip hazard in Satan's wine cellar. Or the entire trilogy. It's not like the Canto Bight plot tumor in The Last Jedi is the only example of nonsensical writing in the sequels. He only comes off as weird because he's part of an idiot plot. On his own, he's a pretty straightforward character who's smart enough to know that the arms dealers are the only real winners since they're selling to both sides, and uninterested enough in galactic politics to not really care who wins as long as he gets to live his life. Probably a lot of folks in the galaxy like him.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Why wouldn't it be? Most of the Disney+ Star Wars originals have Protagonist Titles (e.g. Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi), and this series is about Cassian Andor's personal journey from his ordinary life as a disenfranchised Imperial citizen living on the fringes of Ferrix society to the jaded revolutionary he is when Jyn Erso encounters him in Rogue One. It's not an ensemble cast series like Rebels or Resistance, or an anthology series like the Tales of titles, so Andor makes the most sense as a title. The rest of the cast are all people who are, for one reason or another, caught up in the events of Cassian's life and are forever changed by them. Whether that's his neighbors from Ferrix (Bix, Brasso, Salman), the corpo-cops who tried and failed to arrest him (Karn and Mosk), the ISB agent who jumps to the right conclusion from wrong evidence she found of his thefts from a naval supply warehouse, the rebel spymaster planning to recruit him for the cause, or the failing politician secretly funding the rebellion who gains much needed breathing room because of a heist he pulls off. Calling it something like Cassian Andor and the Plot-Irrelevant Space W.A.S.P.s might be a bit on-the-nose, but too evocative of Harry Potter. I guess they could go the LN route and call it That Time I Tried to Go On The Run After Committing Double Homicide in Self-Defense, Got Rescued by a Rebel Leader, Falsely Imprisoned, and Become a Revolutionary Guerilla: My New Stressful Life Burning the Empire Down! or something to that effect. Borrowing from the original version of Maarva's speech and calling it F*** the Empire: a Star Wars Story might be a bit too much, and probably sets a very different expectation.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Initially, I wrote that I watched more of Classic Stars today. But that didn't feel right. I subjected myself to more of Classic Stars today... because this series is so inscruitable and is so bad with exposition that watching it is like wrestling with an octopus in a completely lightless room. You're never quite certain what the hell is going on or why, and the whole proceeding feels more than subtly wrong.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    She's supposed to be way more than just a figurehead, though... she's described as being one of the key founders of the Rebel Alliance and the commander-in-chief of the rebel forces during the war. 🤷‍♂️ Someone who commands respect and actual authority. The more I watch and read, the more it feels like Disney is walking back every positive aspect the character had piece by piece. She just feels unnecessary in Andor. Like she's only there because it's a story about the early rebellion and they felt they had to include her somehow because she's meant to be one of the rebellion's bigshots later on. Her segments of the story don't really connect to the rest of it in any meaningful way thus far. You could delete most of her scenes and there'd be no real impact to the plot. As beautifully composed as this whole wedding thing is, it's completely unnecessary to Cassian's story. Now that is an assessment I can agree with. That and Tony Gilroy's remarks about how she's really a well-meaning person at heart, but just doesn't realize or can't accept that she's fighting for a lost cause trying to fix the system from within because Palpatine et. al. do not care about the norms and mechanisms of the Republic's democratic system that she holds sacred.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the first three episodes of Andor S2 in my weekly watch group. It's good. It's real good. I am a bit disappointed, but not the least bit surprised, that Mon Mothma's part is once again a largely unnecessary sideshow about covering her own arse. All in all, a pretty damn great story. Between this, Rebels, Ahsoka, and The Mask of Fear, I'm really starting to think that Disney or someone in charge of the creative team (e.g. Filoni) has something against Mon Mothma as a character though.
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