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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah it just looks a bit odd because the art that was done for Master File is lit more realistically than the series.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Those are fold boosters. If you recall, in Macross Frontier's sixth episode we see RVF-171s sortieing for advance recon ahead of the Frontier fleet's mission to reinforce the survivors of the Macross Galaxy fleet. Because the Aegis Pack gets in the way of center-mounting the booster, all the RVF-171s that deployed mounted one fold booster on the top of each wing. (About 12:40 in the episode.) Sound boosters were normally for performers, so they needed the Sound Energy System to power them in the first place.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    All told, I think this specific brand of (MMO)RPG-themed Isekai storytelling has worn out its welcome. We got a few really good, innovative titles out of it like Overlord... but it was swiftly overwhelmed by cut-rate imitators with increasingly convoluted titles like Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku O! or The Rising of the Shield Hero that were initially interesting but quickly revealed themselves as one-trick ponies, leading to crap like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and Isekai Cheat Magician.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Really, it's a bad sign when I sit down to watch a series and after about ten minutes have to ask myself why I haven't turned it off yet. I'd like to think I've got a pretty open mind when it comes to entertainment, but this season seems to have some of the most spectacularly lazy, stupid, and shameless garbage on the air. It's to the point where I'm honestly left wondering how some of these shows got approved at all. It's like the industry just collectively stopped trying this year. Isekai Cheat Magician might as well retitle itself Form Letter Isekai Series, given that every aspect of the series from its story and setting down to its design works and animation is so incredibly generic that you can practically feel the staff's boredom leaking through the TV. I'd call it half-assed, but really that makes it sound like they might've been trying at some point... even quarter-assed is generous. It's so phoned-in the OP should've just been ninety seconds of fax machine noises. Do You Love Your Mother and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks is about the most shamelessly stupid thing I've seen this year. Its TVTropes page claims that the series is actually meant to be a parody/satire of the overused Not-Blood-Related-Familial-Love-Interest trope, but if it IS satire it's so badly done that there's no obvious difference between mocking the trope and embracing it wholeheartedly. About the only thing that prevented my eyes from rolling clean out of my head in the first episode was a "hey, it's that voice!" moment when I found that Shirase is voiced by Satomi Arai, in precisely the same style she used when she was voicing Hata-san in Seitokai Yakuindomo (a MUCH funnier show). I put on episode 2 today and found that, if anything, episode 2 is slightly worse than episode 1, including standard fanservice fantasy crap like clothes-eating slimes and a lot of accidental innuendo. Started Saiyuki Reload: Blast to wash the bad taste out of my mouth and found the first episode of THAT pretty good. After Tokuyama Hidenori's OPs for the original Gensomaden Saiyuki anime and BUZZLIP's "Wild Rock" for Saiyuki Reload, GRANRODEO feels a bit out of place among the franchise's OPs. Not a bad tune, but it just feels odd, in kind of the same way Star Trek: Enterprise did when they went with a pop ballad instead of an orchestral OP. Couldn't help noticing Sanzo's gun now uses the sound effect of an actual gun, rather than the downmixed pew pew magical sound it used in previous titles.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, no data has been revealed that would indicate whether the license is a per annum renewal option or it a fixed multi-year term. The license has never had to be aired in a court of law, which is about the only way we'd ever get details about its terms. We don't even know when Warner Bros dropped the Robotech live action movie license because the minimal "news" coverage the project got never really progressed past the occasional short piece (falsely) claiming that someone or other had been tapped to direct or write the film. My guess would be that it was a five or seven year license in both cases, with an option to renew/extend should the studio decide to move forward with production... meaning Sony has to decide to sh*t or get off the pot in either 2020 or 2022. I'm guessing, given that they didn't know if they would be able to renew their license with Tatsunoko, that Harmony Gold wrote Sony a five year license terminating in 2020 unless extended. It's probably not a case of Harmony Gold's usual chicanery, as it's fairly common practice for Hollywood studios to react to a particular title being a smash hit by buying up rights to similar titles... either to cash in on a trend if one forms, or simply to deny them to each other. Let's just say it's no accident that Warner Bros suddenly developed an interest in Robotech shortly after Paramount released the first of the Michael Bay Transformers movies to great acclaim and a box office return 50% bigger than even Paramount itself had expected. The Robotech license was picked up by Warner Bros because Robotech happened to be one of the contemporaries of the Transformers cartoon in 1985, and likewise featured giant transforming robots. It's highly probable that Sony's decision to pick up the license after it was let go by Warner Bros was motivated by the critic-defying box office success of Transformers: Age of Extinction in summer 2014. Like Warner Bros, Sony Pictures likely had no actual intention of ever making a movie... but holding onto the rights is a cheap way to have a potential competitor to Transformers should giant fighting robots become something which other studios start picking up on. Harmony Gold claims that what they secured was a renewal/extension of their existing licensing agreement with Tatsunoko, rather than any kind of reworked contract.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, IMO... the whole goal of the ISC is to shield the cockpit from high g-forces, so you'd naturally want it to be as close to the cockpit as possible to keep the pilot in the center of its effect. The longer nose on the Y/VF-25 appears to be a result of enlarging the avionics bay to accommodate optional hardware like the FCF-21b precision fire control booster unit used by the VF-25G or the AE-35 electronic warfare system booster used by the RVF-25. (Why this specialized equipment is modularized when they're still building special-purpose variants for the specific roles in question is not clear. It might be something similar to the VF-14's overlarge airframe being leveraged to make the aircraft easier to upgrade to extend its service life or add new capabilities.) Very likely yes, given that what we've seen for line art has all allegedly been the final prototype demonstrated for the NUNS in 2057 that was approved for adoption as the VF-24. Given the YF-24 is what the VF-25 and other 5th Generation VFs were derived from, it'd probably be more accurate to ask why the VF-25's shield was enlarged. I've got two separate, but potentially related, suspicions on this front: On the VF-19, we saw a reduction in anti-projectile shield size between the fighter's early mass production type (VF-19A thru E) and the more robust late mass production type (VF-19F and beyond), coupled with more visible use of the pinpoint barrier to provide a comprehensive defense. We see something similar with the YF-21/VF-22 as well as the VF-31, where they have much smaller anti-projectile shields and rely more on pinpoint barrier coverage for defense. The VF-25 seems to rely much more on its physical shield for defense, bolstering the already formidable ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor with a bolt-on plate of additional armor that nearly doubles this shield's thickness. Given the VF-24's technological superiority, it's possible it relies more on the pinpoint barrier where the VF-25 either has less generator output or needed that power in other parts of the airframe. Given the indicated technological superiority of Earth and the VF-24, it's possible the VF-25's shield was enlarged because the armor materials available for the shield and the rest of the fighter were inferior to the original YF-24 Evolution spec so they felt compelled to improve their defensive ability with a great big bolted-on slab of ASWAG.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    On production and production-intent aircraft, the ISC is a lot more compact than the original engineering test article was so it's up in the nose instead. The prototype ISC was... bulky. On the original YF-24 it was quite large, and even on the early YF-24 Evolution prototype it was bulky enough back there to earn the aircraft an unflattering nickname like "Camel". Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah specifies where in the nose it happens to reside... it's practically inside the cockpit, apparently being directly underneath the bulk of the hardware for the pilot's main cockpit display screen. It's number 3 on the cutaway on page 44.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The initial batch of YF-24s that were built in the 2040s were nameless. The "Evolution" name was picked up by the second batch of YF-24s built in 2055 that Shinsei Industry produced without General Galaxy's involvement using more mature versions of the linear actuator and inertia store converter technology that caused so many problems for the original series of prototypes. The first of the YF-24 Evolution prototypes was nicknamed the "Camel" because of the large dorsal bulge caused by the inertia store converter's placement in the airframe. AFAIK, a name has not been given for Shinsei's completed production spec VF-24.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It might've been less stupid that way, yeah... instead of these allegedly-amazing magical knights who can see the future blindly walking to their own extermination.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Until they remake it like ten years from now, anyway.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I vaguely remember reading something about their fleet having been orbiting said burnt-to-ash planet and consequently didn't fare too well when the planet blew up. As far as having someone in charge, outside of the original trilogy the Star Wars franchise has always struck me as having this odd pro-authoritarian slant where the heroes are always pro-democracy but democracy always seems short-lived and dictatorial rule always seems inevitable and the only stable form of government. Originality is a perspective issue when your main source of films for the longest time was adapting fairy tales, folk tales, and old novels.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing says "we're here to save democracy" like Darth Vader's daughter rolling up in in her 7'2" asthmatic gimp daddy's old instrument of galactic oppression. (Really, I think we can rule that latter one out for the same reason Kawamori has generally kept the Zentradi ships out of the NUNS fleet shots... no sense letting audiences get confused about which one of the extremely similar-looking ships the good guys are on.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the planet they're parked on just has REALLY uptight parking enforcement... Vader parked his fleet there and went for a soak, and woke up to find his massive armada had been booted.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    A bad idea that was arrived at, IIRC, because the studio believed that general audiences wouldn't understand the Wachowskis original concept that the machines were networking the brains of their captive human population together in order to use them as wetware processors to augment their own computing power. Server farms, rather than power plants. If all you needed humans for was thermal energy generation, it'd be a lot easier to lobotomize them at birth. Not to mention it'd render the planet nearly uninhabitable in the short term, and actually uninhabitable long term with no photosynthesis going on to replenish atmospheric oxygen... accumulation of pollution and oxygen depletion would gradually turn the planet into a barren wasteland covered in unbreathable toxic smog. Come to that, a new Matrix sequel is going to be set in a pretty grim place unless it takes place in the actual Matrix. Who wants to be the slumlord of craphole county living out on the toxic, radioactive wasteland leftover from the war with the machines?
  15. Seto Kaiba
    There's something on the trailing edge of the wing that looks like the kind of small thrusters the VF-25 had. No official confirmation that's what it is, but it's a decent guess.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well that didn't take long.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Really, I suspect it was Revell. Why would the networks object to an anthology? Force Five was already a proven winner. Revell needed to promote Macross so they could make some money on their failed Transformers knockoff, so the goal wasn't "get a series on the air" so much as "make the part that we already have the rights to long enough for syndication". Harmony Gold didn't have a license to Dorvack, Dougram, etc.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The prequel trilogy was kinda going the other direction, TBH... Failure was the Only Option because the Jedi were mostly oblivious Lawful Good paladin types (what RPG-ers would call Lawful Stupid) up against a hyper-competent Lawful Evil antagonist.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe they should... but only after spending fifteen minutes artfully posing, Jojo style.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Really, I think the first brick in the wall between Big West and Harmony Gold was laid when Harmony Gold decided to strip all the original creators names out of the credits in favor of a blanket credit to Tatsunoko Production only. Nothing says "douchebag" like taking an author's name off their work and claiming it as your own. Their best, most Big West-friendly way forward would've been to run Robotech as a Force Five-style anthology series, but (IIRC) Revell wasn't having any of it.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Really? I could've sworn I'd read something on TVTropes Palpatine being involved. Well, it's kind of hard for a character to NOT end up as one when their role in the story is to be The Chosen One, Ultimate Hero of Ultimate Destiny, Anointed Savior by the Magical Energy Field that Controls Fate Itself. That isn't just an unusually literal case of Designated Hero, it's about as close to an omniscient morality license as it gets. Let's be honest, if the Empire and First Order weren't holding an idiot ball the size of the second Death Star 24/7 this would've been a VERY different series... and recent films keep drawing lines under this fact like they've got stock in Bic. You kidding? Look at the evil intent seething in those dead, empty eyestalks... the malice in that horrible grin... The Jedi library's copy of Laser Swords, Sabers, and Staffs: A DIY Guide got wet in the rain.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The Rebellion was up against long odds in the original trilogy, but they had an actual war fleet in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi... enough to at least briefly hold their own against the Imperial Navy. From this teaser, it looks like they're set to attack a fleet every bit as big as the one from Return of the Jedi with a single beat-up light freighter, a diplomatic courier ship of a type that made its debut losing an entirely one-sided fight with a single old model Star Destroyer, a double handful of fighters, and a single infantry platoon. That's a TALL order even by Star Wars's standards... especially when the godmode chosen one isn't a fighter pilot this time. The older Star Wars movies weren't quite so blatant with the idea that "good will always triumph because evil is dumb". Isn't that basically how we got Anakin in the first place?
  23. Seto Kaiba
    You came up with more or less the exact same answer that a thousand Robotech fans before you came up with when asked how they would have edited Robotech in accordance with more modern industry practices. No no no... this is when we get out our really good Sunday torches and pitchforks. Not our "wear around town" torches and pitchforks, the ones for special occasions. Which begs the question why you're energetically trying to assimilate the Kazon.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Flattery will get you nowhere. Huh. So that was a thing. I'm not sure what the takeaway from that was supposed to be, but it's certainly a thing that exists. If that shot of the sky literally filled with old-school Star Destroyers is any indication, there's going to be some next-level BS going on to allow the Resistance's meager handful of soldiers to win.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Max and Rick there look like they're on their first week at Rob Liefeld's gym.
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