Seto Kaiba

The Too-Perfect Saint's latest episode is really... eech... let's just say it's stretching the limits of suspension of disbelief enough to resemble a slinky.

7 hours ago, Big s said:

The Hambrabi did look like there wasn’t much different, but I need a better look on that one. The gyan on the other hand looks very different. There’s a little bit of a facial similarity and just a bit in the lowered legs. Maybe the only thing that doesn’t look totally redesigned would be the backpack, other than that it looks very alien. But the joints aren’t weird and I kinda think it might be a favorite of mine for the show so far. I want a better look though at the Hambrabi before I make a judgement on it because sometimes something looks great in the show until you really see its details.

The Gyan hasn't actually changed that much... they've stylized it a bit, but it looks like all they really did was round off the sharp corners on the MS-15B Gyan from [i]Twilight of Zeon[/i], lose the skirt, and sweep back the top of the conical head.  It still has a lot of the original Gyan's odder design choics like the flared ankles, the scuba tank-style backpack, etc.  It even has a similarly-designed spear and shield.  Which is nice, IMO the 15B is probably the best looking version on the Gyan.  This looks like it could be out of an episode of [i]Gundam Evolve[/i] instead of the incredibly overdesigned hot nonsense going on with the Gundams and Zakus that just look like someone said "How busy can we make this, visually?".  

Kind of says a lot that that this is one of the show's best looking designs thus far, and it also seems to be one of the ones their designer screwed with the least.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

I kinda figured that would get derailed fast since the team had been bought out and the preview showed the refrigeration unit in action.

I kind of figured the opposite... that they were bothering to show the fight in the trailer, so there was probably a lot more of it since it was being shown as a centerpeice of the next episode.  My mistake, I suppose. 

1 hour ago, Big s said:

I don’t think it’s that weird of an obsession. Most girls when I was that age would rather go for the long haired oddball than a basic guy that’s got their stuff together. Shuji may or may not be exactly a love interest as much as the guy with something to offer. For one girl he’s the escape from boredom that she’s been desperately craving and his partnership offered that awakening to her. To the other girl, it’s basically necessity for basic survival. He can get her away from her financial responsibilities. A teenage girl and a good amount of adult women will always pick a mess of a guy that’s offers a hint of a dream over sensibility and stability, even if there’s a high chance of derailing their life

That's not quite what I'm getting at.

There's not really a sense of how much time has passed since the first episode, but Machu and Nyan have spent very little time with Shuji in the series thus far.  What little they've had in terms of interactions has mostly been Shuji talking to/about the Red Gundam or watching him graffiti everything that isn't nailed down.  It'd be one thing for them to both be so attached to him if the series had actually shown a developing relationship between them, but Machu and Nyan seem to jump straight from being strangers to a dangerous level of obsessed with him.  Machu basically goes from treating him like a stranger to suddenly having a massive emotional breakdown over Nyan having seen the "kira kira" because it was just for her and him, to robbing the Pomeranians and threatening to shoot the team's sponsor to protect him... all in what's implied to be maybe a couple of weeks at most.  It all seems to revolve around the "kira kira" too, which kind of suggests that this isn't natural... they're being brainwashed somehow.

Caught today's episode of GQuuuuuuX over lunch... it was pretty disappointing.

Last episode sold us the idea that there was going to be a big, climactic confrontation between the Twelve Olympians and Pomeranians for first place in Clan Battle and a possible double assassination attempt on Kycilia Zabi.  We get none of that.  The Gundams don't even fight.

The writing in this episode is back to being a hot mess... particularly when it comes to the two main girls weird obsession with Shuji, a personality-less character they've spent almost no onscreen time with.  Their sudden devotion to him and willingness to both fight over him and kill for him comes off as downright psychotic.

The new designs being introduced are getting progressively less fugly.  However, that appears to be a function of Studio Khara's ham-handed designer having to divide their limited time across multiple machines and therefore not having enough time to ruin each classic machine to the same extent as the Gundam and Zaku.  The Psycho Gundam Mark II looks fine and almost UC-like until it starts dropping its armor and becomes an off-brand Evangelion in a maroon banana hammock for some reason, but the Gyan and Hambrabi made it past Khara's designer seemingly without more than a very minor aesthetic overhaul.

1 hour ago, Duke Togo said:

20s is young.

Must be my apparent youthfulness talking (😅), but I'm not sure "kids" and "young" are words I'd use to describe the Star Wars: the Clone Wars fandom.  Unless, of course, it were in a sentence like "they probably have young kids by now".  Tales of the Underworld is aimed at people who were tweens and teens when The Clone Wars came out... almost 17 years ago.

Musings on whether 30 really is the new 20 aside, the Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld series is very much a Star Wars series by and for the most die-hard of Star Wars fans.  It doesn't really have anything for the casual audience because its stories are so heavily dependent on fanservice.  Both stories feel like they were written more to pad out the Wiki pages for their respective characters than because there was anything worthwhile to do with the characters.  Worse even than the usual Filoni fanservice-first halfassery.

2 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

Yeah, but do the kids like it? I accept that the animated stuff is made for a young crowd and I just skip it. Outside of Visions.

That "young crowd" is strictly imaginary.  This is a spin-off from a 2008 TV series. Anyone familiar with these characters in their original context is likely at least in their mid-20s.🤣

Watched Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld today.

If I had to pick two words to describe it, those words would be "unremarkable" and "unnecessary".  It's another Dave Filoni Star Wars animated title marked by all his usual creative excesses and his "fanservice first" writing style.  Raspy-voiced Sith assassin Asajj Ventress and walking Western movie reference Cad Bane were clearly chosen becaue they were fan favorite minor characters in The Clone Wars and not because Dave Filoni and Matt Michnovetz had any story about either of them that was worth telling.

12 hours ago, Big s said:

Senator Binx was too loyal to the empire to be imprisoned by them.

Supervisor Meero almost certainly believed the same was true of herself.

That she was surely too loyal to the Empire to ever be arrested and sent to a space gulag.

I can only imagine the vast numbers of people who might begin dreaming up false charges in order to free themselves from Senator Binks's company.🤣

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

That's Sentor Binx in a New Republic cell.....lol

1 minute ago, Big s said:

I don’t think the new republic really had prison cells, just transport ships where prisoners escape easily and become pirates or First Order members. 
I think Binx and Deedra met in transition and that’s where Phasma was conceived. that’s how Phasma gained her luck abilities, unfortunately Dedra’s bad luck powers counteracted Binx’s doof luck powers.

Most of the Empire's prisons were Republic and/or Separatist prisons first... and probably went right back to being Republic prisons after the war.

The only thing more horrible than that hypothesis is the cursed knowledge imparted to me by The Clone Wars... the terrible, forbidden knowledge that...

Maybe Director Krennic will arrange for Dedra to have an appropriately entertaining bunk mate to help the time pass more easily during her stay on Narkina 5. I can think of a few people in the Star Wars universe who would make ideal companions for her...

The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl has finally decided to veer into romance... which I guess is a nice change of pace from the main girl bashfully shoving the main guy through the nearest wall with her super-strength every time he gets close.

30 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

You must have forgotten that as great as Andor was...it's still "Star Wars"......a franchise where characters can return from even death.....somehow

Yeah, the power of dogsh*t-tier writing is a pathway to many plot developments some consider to be unnatural.

That said, in Star Wars, I think we've only seen one person actually return from death and that was just recently.

Emperor Palpatine and Mother Talzin both tried to avoid dying for real by using the dark side to turn themselves into the undead.  Palpatine used the dark side to anchor his mind to his dead-and-rotting corpse like a classic voodoo zombie or a lich.  Talzin used the dark side to turn herself into the galaxy's nastiest lingering fart, existing as a vampiric mist made of "magical ichor".  Both of them needed to feed on the life energy of other people to regain a functional body and avoid dying for real.

Boba Fett just pulls a "reports of my death-by-felching in a giant anus monster in the desert were greatly exaggerated" since he suffers a classic Disney villain "death" offscreen during Return of the Jedi.  

Dedra Meero... well... her ticket is likely to get punched in a less survivable, more verifiable manner.

4 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

I do think it’s odd that the movie made K2 seem like a lifetime buddy to Andor, but I guess he barely knew him and really only took him on 1 mission before that. Reminds me of how it seemed like Han Solo went on a bunch of adventures and it turned out that all his wild stories were events during on weekend.

5 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

Seems lady stink face is stuck in jail for a bit, but I guess that it might only be for a year or two before the rebels take over. I figure there would possibly be a chance of release and her possibly being held up as a hero finally, except for the rebellion since the records would show she was arrested as a rebel spy and pretty much everyone that knew otherwise had died

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level season two has lost a lot of the wit and charm that made the first season enjoyable.  All I can really say for it now is it's bland and inoffensive white noise.

Classic Stars... yeesh.  Seven episodes on and still as unintelligible as ever.  On a lark I decided to check what its rating was in Crunchyroll's app, and it's barely holding onto a 3... which considering you have to REALLY screw up to get below 4 on Crunchyroll is pretty impressive.

Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? remains pretty watchable, if rather formuliac.

The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows has not really improved in any way.  It remains, as it has been, one of those isekai-adjacent, low-effort, generic power fantasy titles.  In other words, the laziest kind of slop imaginable.

For my money, this season's standout is The Apothecary Diaries S2.  Just as enjoyable as season one, and with the promise of quite the explosive payoff at the end of a major story arc from the light novel.  

Very excited for that.

Strange New Worlds might not be the most groundbreaking Star Trek series out there, but it really does a fantastic job of recapturing that lighthearted cameraderie, that feeling of high adventure, and the sense of wonder that was such an integral part of the original Star Trek and its successors in the 80's and 90's.  Even my parents, who are OG Trekkies, absolutely love Strange New Worlds.  They've been eagerly waiting for news of when the new season would drop ever since I first got them to watch the series.

8 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

I would love to know what Filoni thinks of Andor. 

I've seen video of him praising Andor's writing, particularly its handling of the Empire, at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023.  He seems to hold it in high regard, though in some other interviews he also seems to want to cling to Star Wars's kid-friendly roots as one might expect from a guy whose entire portfolio is spinoffs of a cartoon.

6 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Pretty sure he's the kind of Star Wars fan that actually likes anything associated with Star Wars.....

That certainly seems to be the case.  If nothing else, he's passionate about the job.

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

When I read that, I couldn't get this clip out of my head:

 

That is... yes.  That's it exactly.

49 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Remove the Sequel Trilogy from canon  and have Tony Gilroy the helm?

As much as I would love that, Tony Gilroy has indicated he's not really interested in a long-term commitment to franchise filmmaking and there is no way Disney is brazen enough to do a partial reboot on Star Wars so soon after rebooting it the first time in order to get rid of the unremarkable and unsatisfying but financially successful sequel trilogy.

48 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

Star War is going to suck now.

It sucked before... we're just going to be more aware of how much it sucks now that Star Wars has, by luck or good judgement, produced a series that doesn't.

Going back to shows that read like Dave Filoni playing with his Clone Wars and Rebels action figures is going to feel like one giant leap backwards creatively, but it's far too late for them to recalibrate their creative process for Ahsoka season two or Maul: Shadow Lord, both of which are Clone Wars/Rebels spinoffs.

7 hours ago, jvmacross said:

You'd think the topic is so inane that there is no way it would be brought up in Star Wars, but IIRC...didn't Mando's bounty in the first episode request to use the loo aboard his ship?  So I guess some ships have toilets...and the rest probably have some onboard mechanics to deal with it....

... y'know, you're right.  There is a visible toilet on the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian.  

I guess poor Mando just has to cross his legs and wait now that he's got that Naboo starfighter. 🤣

2 hours ago, tekering said:

The gulf in quality between Andor and Rise of Skywalker could only be measured in parsecs. 

Kiloparsecs.  It's difficult to believe Andor and The Rise of Skywalker are even in the same franchise, so vast is the difference in quality.

Imagine what we could have had if the likes of Tony Gilroy had been given creative control of the sequel trilogy instead of Jar-Jar Abrams.

37 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

So, as much as I really enjoyed "Andor", there is one little thing thats been bugging me... and thats travel times. It seems like most of the locations visited are within a "days" travel from anywhere else. That doesn't bother me too much for, say Corsucant and Ghorman, but it does make it feel like a certain Rebel base is pretty damn close to the seat of Imperial power. It may just be because I remember how hyperspace worked in the old West End Games RPGs so it just feels a bit odd in comparison...

That seems to be the case for practically any hyperspace trip in Star Wars.

Jump cuts are used to preserve the flow of the story, but it definitely feels like Star Wars hyperdrives are so fast that you can get anywhere in the galaxy within a day or two.  Luke and Obi-Wan's trip to Alderaan in A New Hope seems to take only a few hours.  Anakin's trip from Tatooine to Coruscant in The Phantom Menace seems to be an overnight flight at most.  So very many characters take interstellar flights in small fighters with no evident way to deal with basic biological necessities (and are never shown racing to the john right after landing) that it seems to suggest most hyperspace trips are a matter of a few hours at most.  

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

When Star Wars actually caters to the OG (rapidly aging) Star Wars fans...you get Andor.....when Star Wars wants to force (pun intended) itself upon the preferred demographics or even the original, non-existant demographics (kids)...you get everything else.....Acolyte and Space Pirates....both trash in their own way....one failed because it alienated half their audience...the other failed because kids don't give a sh!t about Star Wars....

Nah, that's not quite right IMO.

Disney has been fairly consistent in trying to keep Disney+ Star Wars titles at least as family-friendly as the Star Wars main series movies. 

However, only a few titles are actually made specifically for children.  That's your LEGO Star Wars titles and Young Jedi Adventures, and arguably Skeleton Crew.

Most of their output is nostalgia-driven, fanservice-based material that's aimed at an audience with fond memories of the Prequel Trilogy.  Filoni's shows are practically all based on his The Clone Wars cartoon from 2008.  Rebels and The Bad Batch are both direct sequels to The Clone Wars.  With, I think, one exception the three seasons of Tales of are all prequels or sequels to specific character arcs from The Clone Wars and/or the prequels.  Most of the stuff about Mandalorians in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett is from The Clone Wars and supported by Rebels, particularly the darksaber and Mando's weird cult.  Obi-Wan Kenobi is built on fandom's profound affection for Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequels and the character's sassmaster role in The Clone Wars.  They're not aimed at kids, they're capitalizing on the nostalgia of people who were kids (or die-hard fans) in the 2000s when the prequels and The Clone Wars were new.

The Acolyte is one major exception there in that it's not directly tied into any pre-existing movie or series.  It's a tie-in to an ongoing Expanded Universe multimedia project instead, and suffered badly from being run by a promoted fan who was a devotee of that specific part of Star Wars history.

Andor, though... Andor is what happens when Disney stops trying to pander to Star Wars's aging audience with promoted fans writing glorified fan fiction in an attempt to set the Guinness record for most franchise references per minute of screen time and, instead, hires talented non-fan creators from outside to develop and tell a character-focused story for more than just Star Wars fans.

My group just finished Andor S2 Ep10-12.

Honestly, just cancel the other Disney+ Star Wars shows at this point.  Tony Gilroy and Andor have set the bar unfeasibly, unachievably, insurmountably high in a single Herculean work of cinematic mastery.  This is an unfollowable act.  Andor should be the model for future Star Wars stories.  We have no need of the Jedi and the Sith, their lightsabers and heavy-handed talk of destiny and moral absolutes.  This authentic, human drama about regular people living in the Star Wars universe has far more impact than anything else the franchise has done besides Rogue One.   

Like, I were working on one of the other in-development Disney+ Star Wars titles right now I'd be sweating bullets because this is what every other Disney+ Star Wars show will be compared to going forward.  Hopefully the critics will have some perspective and not simply murder the next series for not being on Andor's level.

Caught today's episode of GQuuuuuuX.

It's... actually not bad.  The series is getting off the dime and deciding to actually do something.

Classic Stars remains delightfully unintelligible for another week.

I have watched... six!... six episodes of this hot mess and I still have absolutely no f***ing clue what it's about.  None.  It's like that one episode of Deep Space Nine where everyone's got aphasia and can't form coherent sentences.  Things sure are happening, but I don't know what any of it means.

6 hours ago, PixelatedShinobi said:

I'm looking for art reference specifically. Thank you!

OK, the section in Macross Big Encyclopedia isn't very large... it's basically 2/3 of a page on pg94.

The bit in Variable Fighter Designer's Note is a lot bigger, multiple full pages, starting on page 232 thru page 239.

There's a concept art section for it in Shoji Kawamori Designer's Note starting from pg577 to 581 which has some good detail shots of the internals of the pack.

The movie's Official Complete Book has some decent color reference too.

3 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

I'm doing a rewatch of 7-9 tonight, ahead of tomorrow's finale.

My group won't be able to get together to watch it 'til Wednesday, but we've decided to make a double-header out of it... Andor S2 #10-12 followed by dinner and then Rogue One.  Gonna make an occasion out of the conclusion of what, by ratings, is likely the best Star Wars title ever made. 😁

1 hour ago, Big s said:

And that would be due to poor writing 

Reality, it must be admitted, has terrible writing.