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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It would not be the first time that happened... or even the first time that happened specifically to Char. Unlikely, IMO... those machines look like derivatives of the RX-78 Gundam. We know Zeon halted development of new mobile suits in order to reverse-engineer and replicate the captured RX-78-2 Gundam. The Federation, on the other hand, modified the design of the Guncannon for its main MS the RGM-79 Guncannon Light-type. We know what that machine looks like via the movie and Beginnings pamphlet.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Watching episode 3, and early on one of the secondary characters lampshades how stupid the show's name is. If nothing else, I feel a bit better about making fun of it since even the show's creators are backhandedly admitting it's kind of dumb. On the whole, GQuuuuuuX is still pretty damn boring. We finally get introduced to the Red Gundam's pilot. ... it's actually kind of crazy that this series is making me look back fondly at G-Witch of all things. Probably Zeon's next-gen MS based on reverse-engineering the stolen RX-78 Gundam. The one that de facto replaced the Gelgoog in this timeline.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Like Rogue One, it's a more mature kind of Star Wars story that eschews a lot of the inherently self-limiting concepts found elsewhere in the franchise. Aiming just for the hardcore fandom is a self-limiting strategy too... you have to try new things if you want to bring in new viewers, and the various tropes surrounding the Jedi and other Force users are so old and so well-trodden that they feel quite stale. My earnest hope is that Andor's second season will prove that Star Wars doesn't NEED the glowstick society to be embedded in every aspect of storytelling to succeed. It's a big galaxy, and the Jedi can't be involved in everything interesting or momentous going on. Andor was one of those few Disney+ titles that steadily gained viewers as it went, rather than losing them with each episode. With reviewers raving about it (a 98% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes so far), and the series being pretty favorably looked-upon in general, I have a good feeling about season two.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    General Hux wasn't a spy all along. He started leaking intelligence to the Resistance after the events of The Last Jedi because he hates Kylo Ren and Kylo Ren took over the First Order in The Last Jedi after he assassinated Supreme Leader Snoke. Like he tells the main characters, he doesn't really care who wins anymore he just needs Kylo Ren to lose. It's basically a lazy and less interesting version of ISB agent Kallus's defection to the Rebel Alliance that occurred in Rebels around the time work on The Rise of Skywalker started. He was the rebellion's man on the inside in Thrawn's organization, but unlike Hux his change of heart was more genuine and after being outed he escapes to work for the rebellion full-time. Seems like that's the idea... the great and feared Grand Admiral Thrawn dramatically returns and gets beaten into the ground like a tent peg, affirming the New Republic's existing belief that the remaining Imperials are no real threat.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Neat! Grabbed a couple copies today. Some of that art is new to me... mainly the ones that look like evolutions of the Armored Gerwalk from the original series concept art.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Witch Watch's 3rd episode has cemented my first impression of the series... it's basically a less-ecchi version of To Love Ru. Nico is just Lala if you substitute magic for alien tech... a pink haired girl with no common sense not-so-innocently cohabitating with the guy she wants to marry, and causing havoc each episode because her lack of common sense will inevitably drive her to turn a small problem into a huge one by supernatural means she doesn't fully understand or can't fully control. It's funny once or twice... but without another payoff (a decent joke, some ecchi, something) it quickly becomes frustrating esp. when the "solution" was obviously never fit for purpose in the first place. Morihito's straight man routine is practically the only thing keeping me watching. At 4 episodes, Catch Me at The Ballpark! is still a rather bland slice of life series. A good slice-of-life series should be mundane on some level since it's meant to be everyday life... but this series is mundane in a way that isn't interesting. It has no "hook". Nothing to get the audience engaged in the daily life of the characters. They're just ballpark staff doing ballpark staff things. There are a few interesting/amusing moments like the American player who's initially keen to return to the American leagues but decides to stay because he develops a crush on the gyaru vendor girl mid-game, or the ballpark announcer with a crush on one of the players who accidentally confesses in her banter while announcing the home team's starting lineup. Most of its is borderline white noise, though.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Indeed... it would not be unreasonable to assume Disney's three-at-a-time release plan for Andor's second season is built on understanding why that was a mistake. Still, Andor holds up REALLY well in rewatching. My folks enjoyed seeing it enough to ask me 'round tomorrow specifically for the next three. They're not even really that into Star Wars fans, but Andor seems to have really hooked them.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It works way better if you watch all three in one sitting, rather than the two and then one that Disney did on launch.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    For reasons of copyright and fair use laws, I don't think I can post the unedited originals publicly on my own site... but I can probably release the ensuing translations. I'd have to ask around to explore alternative options for the transcriptions.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I got my parents started watching Andor tonight after months of bending their ear about using those streaming services I pay for... They absolutely loved the first three episodes, and are keen to see more. 😁 I can hardly wait for S2.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Now, I can see one way out... but it's absolutely guaranteed to piss off the Thrawn glazers in the Star Wars fandom. Thrawn has to show up to do his very best Anavel Gato impression and then immediately and unceremoniously get his teeth kicked in by the New Republic. Despite the fans making him out to be a Tactical Genius and the most feared Imperial Admiral, he spends most of his screen time in Rebels catching L's and that doesn't seem to have changed much in Ahsoka. He just needs to catch an L of such magnitude that Gimlin, son of Gloin, would count it as two. If the great, feared Grand Admiral Thrawn goes down like an absolute chump (again) then it explains perfectly why the New Republic thought the First Order ain't sh*t until Starkiller Base took their capital and fleet off the map with one shot. Honestly? I disagree. General Hux might be a dork, and his forces might lose some high-profile engagements... but at the end of the day he's still winning at the strategic level through the entire sequel trilogy up to the point where he changes sides and dies. There's a good chance the Resistance would've lost if Hux hadn't turned traitor simply because he didn't like his new boss. Grand Admiral Thrawn, on the other hand, is oversold as this super-cool genius... but what little he makes in minor tactical gains using overwhelming force against Hera's tiny and under-equipped rebel cell is offset by the huge strategic losses he keeps taking. Hux might be an utterly unlikeable heel, but Thrawn is the king of the jobbers.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Today's haul... all four volumes of the Macross Frontier TV novelization, both volumes of the Macross Frontier movie novelization, both Macross Frontier short story collections, and both volumes of the Macross Delta novelization.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Quite a haul today... all four Macross Frontier TV novels, both Macross Frontier movie novels, both Macross Delta novels, and both Macross Frontier shortstory collections. Gonna get cracking on those over the next couple days and start digitizing them before the end of the quarter.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Oh boy, a grand final confrontation between two massively overhyped characters... 🤣 On the Republic side, Hera Syndulla... a "tactical genius" who makes surprised Pikachu faces whenever flying directly at the enemy and getting shot down doesn't win the day. On the Empire side, Grand Admiral Thrawn... a man whose "tactical genius" amounts to little more than not being comically incompetent and delegating the inevitable screwup which lets the Rebels win and escape to a subordinate with more ambition than brains.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Disney+ Star Wars is pretty problematic in general because it's run by Filoni and staffed by creatives who are mainly fans of Filoni's work on The Clone Wars. Ahsoka is kind of its logical extreme... a Disney+ original series by Filoni with a story that is composed almost exclusively out of callbacks to previous Filoni Star Wars titles. The sheer density of the callbacks, in-jokes, and homages is a problem in and of itself but the main problem with the writing is that it's a "The Adventure Continues" story where all of the characters are past the end of their respective story arcs and there's no clear direction in which they can continue to grow and develop. The story feels thin and directionless because it's not being driven by the development of the characters. It's just sort of happening in their general vicinity, because it's actually an Excuse Plot meant to set up the return of fan favorite BBEG Grand Admiral Thrawn after he went down like a Scooby-Doo villain at the end of Rebels.🤣
  16. Seto Kaiba
    That was basically inevitable, though. The Mandalorians are Star Wars's Klingons. A culture of Proud Warrior Race Guys dogmatically following the vaguely Social Darwinist warrior code laid down by their culture's founding father to its often-counterproductive or self-destructive conclusion and love to invoke variations of the No True Scotsman whenever someone deviates. We saw this invoked directly in season 2 itself in how Din reacts to Boba Fett. Din Djarin initially refuses to give Boba Fett his armor back because beskar belongs (only) to the Mandalorians and Boba's Not a Real Mandalorian because he never took the Creed. Fett only gets his armor back after convincing Din that it's his by right of familial inheritence, since his father was a foundling raised by Real Mandalorians. Din violates the Creed to rescue Grogu from the Empire. According to the rigid and inflexible warrior code his people follow, he is Not a Real Mandalorian. So of course he has to go on a quest to restore his honor and become a Real Mandalorian again, because the show's title is The Mandalorian not Technically a Mandalorian or That Guy Who Isn't a Real Mandalorian but Wears Mandalorian Armor. It's basically obligatory. It's basically the same as Worf's big story arc in Star Trek: the Next Generation. Worf loses his honor for the greater good, but as a result is Not a Real Klingon. He then has to live with the shame and the scorn of his people for a while before he has the opportunity to reclaim his honor and become a Real Klingon again. Leaving him permanently dishonored was literally never on the table to begin wtih.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe they all die out. After all, that their warrior culture is so toxic and so incredibly self-destructive that they'd already practically destroyed themselves several times before the Empire ever rolled up to finish things is a recurring theme with them. It'll make bank. Count on it. Above all else, it's a safe project that leans heavily on well-established and well-received characters that've tested well in merchandising already. Unlike Solo, it's a sequel rather than a prequel, so they won't fall prey to the many perils of writing backstory for an already-established character either. It probably won't set the world on fire, but between Baby Yoda and its mindless summer action movie potential of Din John Wick-ing his way through an army of hapless stormtroopers it'll probably do respectable business at the box office.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That a second season exists is a pretty solid argument that they haven't. No matter how many fanservice-y callbacks Filoni et. al. throw in, at its core Ahsoka is still a completely unnecessary sequel to Rebels that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the characters or their story.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That seems unlikely. Char's capture of the Gundam completely derailed Mobile Suit and Mobile Armor development on both sides during the One Year War. It's implied that many of the familiar Zeon "enemy MS of the week" machines of the original Gundam series were either never developed or never completed and put into production because the Principality's government suspended current projects in favor of studying and reverse-engineering the captured Gundam. The Federation, likewise, had to cope with the loss of the Gundam prototypes to Zeon and proceeded to develop a Gundam-Guncannon hybrid machine called the Light Guncannon that became their main MS in place of the GM. One design that was confirmed to never be completed in this timeline is the MS-14 Gelgoog. It's mentioned in the timeline that its development was cancelled because of the Gundam's capture. Two that have been confirmed to still exist are the Braw Bro (now called Kikeroga) and the Big Zam, with the latter only being completed because of Dozle Zabi's administrative clout and ultimately being what gets him killed in this timeline too. Maybe. The whole duel thing in The Witch from Mercury was a pretty stupid plot device that was handled really poorly throughout the series and was one of several recurring Get Out of Jail Free cards for the characters. Clan battles in GQuuuuuuX seem like they'll be a lot worse, since random civvies and refugees living in illegally-built housing are probably not going to have a plausible source of money to afford to refurbish, repair, and resupply any kind of MS never mind an ex-military one. It's even harder to believe that they might be buying them from Zeon, since a MS doubtless costs the equivalent tens of millions of dollars. Installer keys sound like they were a postwar invention, meaning it's weird that any war surplus Zaku would need one unless it was specifically retrofitted to. Ones salvaged from battlefields by the junk guild shouldn't even have that system... or if they did, the key would surely still be inside the downed MS, since a MS with a surviving pilot would likely be recovered. (Unrelated... the installer keys are kinda big, aren't they? The starter keys for the Federation's GMs in Requiem for Vengenace were the size of thumb drives.) Probably.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Episode 3 is headed back towards the same questionable formula that Bandai Namco used to put mobile suit battles into The Witch from Mercury without doing a war story... mobile suit duels as a sporting event. It's just going to make a lot less sense in GQuuuuuuX, since instead of The Witch from Mercury's duels between the heirs-apparent of the Earth Sphere's wealthiest to showcase the mobile suits their companies make and for status it's refugees having illegal underground tandem fights while somehow being able to supply, repair, and store mobile suits without drawing attention from the authorities.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    There are links to PDFs of the corrected pages on the Japanese Wikipedia article found here: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/マクロスΔのディスコグラフィ#CD I assume this is what you're looking for? Here are direct links: https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_04_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_08_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_09_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_10_20160708.pdf
  22. Seto Kaiba
    "Good" is wholly subjective... but it's a fair question nevertheless. Disney was still leaning on the familiar OT designs or variations thereof through the end of the sequel trilogy. My (cynical) assumption would be that they would continue to lean on the same designs to minimize risk (based on the new movie being set only a short time after the sequel trilogy) and save a new design for a major event like a new trilogy. Maybe they'll dust off an old design as "new" the way they did for Ahsoka's first season.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, ok. I guess credit for finally getting off the dime and moving the story forward a bit? There are certainly worse ideas than Top Gun: a Star Wars Story. With that timeframe it sounds like a refreshingly Jedi-free narrative, which is enough to pique my interest.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    OK, so it's a title card. Still feel like a further continuation of Din and Grogu's story is kinda unnecessary.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's vague... Are they remaking the 2001 Star Wars game by the same title? Adapt one of the starfighter-specific games? Just doing a story about fighter pilots?
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