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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the YF-29's Fold Wave System required four 1,000ct pieces of fold quartz. Mind you, that was the majority but not the entirety of the adoption of fold quartz in its systems. There was also the fold quartz used in its Inertia Store Converter, the fold wave amps, and if Master File is to be believed, all four of its engines. Not to mention the granulated fold quartz its canopy was treated with and the fold quartz used in its MDE weaponry. That's what made it so apocalyptically expensive that the Macross Frontier fleet could only build the one. One has to wonder, given that this is pretty clearly a YF-29 w/ Super Pack, what precisely this is and where it came from. The YF-29 is, as noted previously, an astonishingly expensive aircraft to build and the Brisingr globular cluster is BROKE AF. Doubly so now that it's recovering from the disruptions in trade and the damages inflicted during their brief war with the Kingdom of the Wind. Did the Brisingr Alliance just happen to have a YF-29 sitting around that went unused back during the war against Windermere? Did Xaos somehow obtain the plans for what is essentially a bleeding edge New UN Spacy VF-X Special Forces ace Valkyrie like the YF-29B? Surely nobody's got the capital to actually mass produce such an insane design. (Are we really coming to the point where the YF-29 is basically just the Macross universe's equivalent of a Gundam that you dust off every time there's a space fascist around, like how Banagher and Mineva keep the RX-0 Unicorn on ice in case its insane power is ever needed again?) While I couldn't make it out in the actual art, the text captions indicated its affiliation markings say "PARMENIDES"... though they declined to specify if Parmenides is the name of a ship or something else like a planet or an airbase. One has to wonder just how many illegal activities Lady M is involved in, that she seems to have such unlimited capital and influence. Between the damage and the potential loss of at least one, quite possibly two, VF-31 Siegfried customs in the war against Windermere it'd definitely be a big dent in Xaos's bottom line to replace them... especially given that they were already tossing around the idea of removing all of the Epsilon Foundation-provided technology from their systems during the series (and noted that'd take at least a full year's operating capital to do).
  2. Seto Kaiba
    There is the hypothesis that the new enemy Valkyrie is unmanned, and we've seen someone in the trailer who looks pretty damned cybernetic. Maybe we're Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere-ing this one?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So... a Valkyrie needs a name, and we finally have it. VF-31AX Kairos Plus That definitely raises at least as many questions as it answers. While Macross's New UN Forces have not always used designation systems consistently, since Frontier the two-letter variant code has been used mainly to identify a local derivative of a particular VF variant such as the Macross Frontier fleet's VF-19EF or the Macross Galaxy fleet's VF-22HG. This, I would assume, identifies this as "VF-31A Xaos spec". That raises the odd prospect that, for the first time, Macross protagonists are receiving an equipment downgrade rather than an upgrade. If this really is what it appears to be, a minimally-modified military spec VF-31A Kairos that's been given the Main Character treatment, then that would go a long way towards fixing the issues Xaos had with operating the Siegfried customs that the Ragna 3rd Fighter Wing Delta Flight was having. The fold quartz insets for the fold wave system are missing from this new model, which suggests it may not possess the (incredibly expensive) fold wave system that caused such durability issues for the VF-31 during the Windermere conflict. The increased size of the railguns suggests they've uprated, rather than derated, the firepower of the railguns too.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    So we now have a name and a designation to go with this art of a new VF-31 derivative used by Xaos... VF-31AX Kairos Plus. That, I suspect, lends some support to the theory that this is a downgrade from the Siegfried type rather than an upgrade. They did appear to be less heavily modified versions of the VF-31A from the outset, and I guess this seems to confirm that suspicion. Given the designation and the name, it's possible that the fold quartz that was fitted to the Siegfried type is no longer present and has been replaced by something else like sensor systems.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Even more so than last season, this feels like they're trying very hard to sell this on the basis of nostalgia... ... and didn't we do pretty much this exact plot back in "All Good Things"?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I'd heard it was kind of a coda to Unicorn, wrapping up the nonsense with the Sleeves via a rejected Char candidate and a third Unicorn Gundam to explain why this setting breaking bullsh*t isn't present after that story.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That bad? Really?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's definitely on my to-watch list, along with Narrative, but I have a hard time working up enthusiasm for UC Gundam these days. The real word is already unstintingly grim and depressing enough, y'know?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    'bout a year? They turned off the upvotes and downvotes entirely, leaving only the "Like" button, and removed the display of the upvotes/downvotes on posts that had them. You still get notified if someone likes your post, but you can only see it on your profile page.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It was an extremely unconventional design for the period, both because of its lack of GERWALK mode and being a synthesis of Variable Fighter and Zentradi Battle Suit technology... a few years before Kawamori rolled up with Macross Plus and introduced his own take on the same concept in the YF-21. Macross II's developers seem to have felt they owned fans a GERWALK though, so while the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie lacks one they added another design that is JUST GERWALK. Even that probably isn't strictly necessary, since the VF-1 has some very powerful verniers meant for those sort of braking maneuvers. The goal of those unseen 2nd Generation emigrant-use VFs was comparative low cost... but some of those expensive components would be effectively mandatory in order to meet the basic operating requirements of a Valkyrie. Among the non-official setting materials like Master File, there is at least one alternate take in the VF-1L. That was, according to its writeup in Master File, a postwar low cost VF-1 variant that reduced complexity by outright eliminating the variable system in order to maximize the onboard propellant capacity for space operations.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    They turned that one off deliberately a while back.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I now have a diagram, and I am still confused.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It does seem likely that Delta 06 will have a Windermerean pilot - I suspect Bogue Con-vaart - but I'd suspect the difference in performance between variants of Xaos's newest custom VF-31 will be as trivial as the difference between the Siegfrieds we saw in the series and first movie. The problem with eliminating Battroid mode is that most of the expected threat to an emigrant government comes from the Zentradi. Battroid mode is made for fighting them.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    So, funny story... that's probably not coincidental. Yeah, the Macross 10th anniversary feature in B-Club Magazine listed the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam among the designs in 80's mecha anime that drew inspiration from Macross and the VF-1 Valkyrie. All the way down... To be fair, the entire Zeta Plus series was basically Gundam saying to the Zeta "Why can't you be more like your father, Valkyrie?".
  15. Seto Kaiba
    One thing to remember about Char - which I'm dead certain the live action movie will screw up if he shows up - is that Casval AKA Char is a deeply damaged person. It gets explored more readily in Gundam: the Origin, but even in the main UC timeline his father's assassination and being raised in virtual exile under the threat of being assassinated himself. He's so fixated on his desire for revenge against the Zabis until the One Year War ended with almost all of them dead that afterwards he didn't really know what to do anymore now that his life's ambition had been fulfilled. He didn't so much get a redemption arc in Zeta as align himself with the AEUG because their goals for the reformation of the Earth Federation government were broadly similar to his father's, and became disillusioned with the organization once its ideological leader was assassinated and decided to burn it all down and start over instead of trying to reform the government by the time of Char's Counterattack. The "weird pedo thing" is an overplayed meme... the only one of the lot Char ever shows any romantic interest in is Lalah, and they're only about 3 years apart in age. Quess was just a useful idiot to him, since he could easily manipulate her through her obsession with powerful Newtypes. The thing to fear from an American Gundam production - aside from a repeat of G-Saviour - is a complete lack of subtlety in favor of a Michael Bay-esque borderline plotless collection of junkyard vomit robots beating each other to back into scrap with none of the character drama Gundam is known for. I would agree the recent UC stuff has been pretty weak... I would say that's mainly because it has devolved into little more than Continuity Porn for the ultra-hardcore fanbase as in Gundam Unicorn and Narrative. The former might as well retitle itself MSV Roundup. It's just not as accessible as it used to be, since the list of required watching to understand the plot of each new series keeps getting longer.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Really, I'd expect the opposite... that a "low cost" Variable Fighter would economize by removing GERWALK mode. There's not a lot of use for GERWALK mode in space and GERWALK mode was an unintentional addition to the original design (in-universe) that originally called for just Fighter and Battroid modes. Several previous space-use VF designs have omitted GERWALK mode like the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie from Macross II: Lovers Again or the non-canon VF-X3 Medusa from FamilySoft's series of Macross games. Nothing whatsoever, yeah... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried is kind of a mess, and largely disregards the New UN Forces-spec VF-31 Kairos in favor of waxing lyrical about Xaos's ace custom version. The book has a fair number of variants that aren't in the series but they're all basically just bizarre wing configurations that were clearly dreamed up to pad the book.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    When it comes to Gundam, how would you even tell if 90% of the cast were "race-flipped"? The vast majority of the characters in most any Gundam show are of ambiguous or at best uncertain ancestry, and spacenoids in particular are variously implied or outright stated to be mixed. Even names are no bloody help in the matter. Kai Shiden, for instance, has a very conspicuously Japanese-sounding name... but his profile reveals his family hails from Puerto Rico. He's far from the only one like that too just in the UC, never mind the AUs where you have conspicuously Japanese names and aliases taken on by people who are anywhere from Kurdish (00's Setsuna F. Seiei) to Russian (Wing's Heero Yuy). Hell, we've already had a version of the OYW with a female lead... that was For the Barrel. I can honestly say I've never felt hurt by a different take on a character... I've certainly been annoyed when writers substitute shameless pandering based on a character's gender or ethnicity for actual character development, but that's about the limit of it unless the new take on the character is just pure hot garbage. Gundam has already given us plenty of mutually contradictory alternate takes on the UC era, so I'm not going to be bothered if we end up with another alternate take where someone is a slightly different shade of brown or something. What'll bother me is if the writers sh*t all over Gundam's setting and themes in the name of making another boring big stompy robot movie.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Call me crazy if you like, but given that it was critically panned and was a box office flop... I have this sneaking suspicion that's objectively untrue. TBH, I think that concern is valid for Gundam in general. American producers and writers aren't big on subtle at the best of times, and Gundam's trademark character drama is likely to be lost completely between that and the temptation to go all-in on a giant robot property destruction extravaganza. That said, I'd argue that the "pointless gender and race flips" are a borderline nonevent for Gundam anyway. Between the mukokuseki animation design and the fact that many of the franchise's spacefuture settings are frequently far enough removed from modern concepts of nationality and race that it's difficult if not impossible to assign an actual national origin and ethnicity to most of the characters, it hardly feels like it matters. (So much so that this is an acknowledged issue for spacenoids, many of whom are two or more generations removed from any kind of Earth nationality and no longer identify in those terms.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    What WASN'T wrong with Speed Racer? The Wachowskis produced, wrote, and directed an adaptation of a TV anime about professional car racing and made it about everything they could think of except the actual racing that was the source material's main draw. If anything, the idea that the live action Gundam film is potentially in the hands of fans makes me more pessimistic about its prospects... not less.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Trying to guess Kawamori's direction is an exercise in futility... when he's really trying, he comes up with the weirdest sh*t and somehow makes it work. I mean, c'mon... Macross 7 was "what if an indie band fought soul-sucking space kaiju vampires with the power of rock?". We've had stories about a retired idol who became a soldier and then an air racer. We had a stage musical that was a thinly veiled criticism of Japanese rearmament and the government's reassessment of Article 9. Macross Delta was a shot at rising nationalist sentiments explored through the antics of a middle aged 14 year old teenage runaway idol singer and an aerobatics team. Let's not forget the one that was literally "save the whales". He'll come up with something that sounds completely insane on paper and he'll make it work somehow. He's an arms dealer. The ancient Protoculture left a distressing amount of advanced military hardware laying around, some of which was so distressingly powerful that they themselves were afraid to use it. Not to mention his fascination with the battlefield applications of music, which he has not-unreasonable grounds to suspect might've been their ultimate weapon.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Hey RightStuf, that's the wrong stuff! Did they even? It would not be the first time Harmony Gold "cheated" a little on a media format change and just transferred what they already had. Like how the initial Robotech DVD releases were transfers from degraded VHS tapes. My money's on this being an upsampling of Robotech Remastered.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Feeling a little flat after the last few episodes of the shows I've been following this season, so I'm going back in time to watch the original The Slayers series. I've seen most of the OVAs, but it occurred to me while I was doing some cleaning that I'd never actually seen the original show.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, no... what you found there is Brofessor's site, and it's pretty damned far from "great". To be brutally frank, it's incredibly pretentious and almost entirely unresearched faux-academic garbage that would have to improve considerably before I could call it a travesty. Its author knows precious little about Macross and even less about film theory, but is desperate to make himself out to be an expert on both. Since he can't read Japanese and do actual research on the subject matter, he instead tries to add a superficial appearance of depth to his "analysis" by throwing around film analysis terminology willy-nilly without any actual knowledge of what the terms he's using mean and ascribing deep, hidden meanings to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. He seems to have taken W.C. Fields to heart: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t." When it comes to his "analysis" of what Zentradi designs were based on, not only is he wrong but his analysis was nothing more than taking the knowledge that Zentradi designs had a basis in the organic and then attributing it to the first living thing he could think of that bore a vague resemblance. The Regult, for instance, is actually based on an earlier reverse-jointed walker design from an unrealized hard sci-fi series concept with the working title Genocidas. The design that was done for Genocidas was not organically inspired, but was an attempt to make what they felt would be a more practical and realistic ambulatory design for a giant robot. It was built on in Macross both as the VF-1's GERWALK mode and the basis for Zentradi pods, the latter of which started out as a sort of walking gun turret before taking on more organic aesthetics. It reminds me of nothing so much as a college student throwing a bunch of random garbage on an essay an hour before it's due in the hopes that the professor will grade it without actually reading it at any point.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The above is also why, on the few occasions we've seen New UN Forces-aligned Zentradi troops outside of Macross II, they've ended up as hostiles rather than friendlies... it's easier to tell what team are the "good guys" if everyone's wearing the same jersey.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    When the ancient Protoculture created the Zentradi to fight their wars for them, several measures were taken to ensure that the Zentradi wouldn't - or couldn't - turn on them. They thoroughly indoctrinated the Zentradi to limit their thinking to matters within the strict military hierarchy created for them and instill obedience to the Protoculture's directives. They also deliberately limited the education available to the Zentradi to the training needed to fulfill their military role and also forbade them any knowledge of (non-military) culture and creative/productive pursuits. This left the Zentradi dependent on the Protoculture at the top of the chain of command for their literal and figurative marching orders, and on the factory satellites created for them for every aspect their logistical support from troop replacements to production of fresh weapons and ammunition. You could say that the so-called "Lost" Zentradi who have not yet encountered Earth's culture see their technology as a series of black boxes. They know that it works, and they know how to work it, but beyond that they have no real understanding of how it works or how to repair it when it breaks down. To them, "it just works". So even if the Zentradi were to actually examine their factory satellites and clap eyes on the "blueprints" for what it was making, it wouldn't mean a thing to them because they lack both the basic knowledge and frame of reference to properly understand what they're looking at. It's not entirely true that there are no changes or upgrades. Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the Factory Satellite in the original series mentions that it has the some capacity to make incremental improvements to the standardized weapons it produces and has presumably been doing so for ~500,000 years.
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