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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... unironically? Big F.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    I've just started Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to and I think I set an all-time record for "show that had me looking at my watch the fastest". Ecchi comedy is a fruit so low-hanging you need a deep bore mine to pick it, and yet this show still manages to be bad at it... which is oddly impressive in a depressing sort of way. It's like watching someone die in a freak shoe-tying accident. You just can't help being impressed when bearing witness to such a master class in failure. It's not funny and it's not entertaining. It's just faintly embarrassing. If I were siding with Japan's "won't someone think of the children" moral guardian types and wanted to show that anime and manga are a bad influence on the country's youth, it'd be a toss-up between picking this or Strike Witches to build a case around.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, lol... I think I was still in high school when that site was at the apex of its popularity. The timeframe of Macross Dynamite 7 is about right for the discovery, in-setting, that there were biological lifeforms that possessed more advanced and powerful fold abilities than a manufactured starship. First contact with the Vajra had been around seven years ago, and the 117th Research Fleet's great expedition to Vajra space was already well underway with Critical Path Corporation (pioneers in fold quartz tech) footing the bill. Given that the Vahla Ena are a protected species, the likely client for whale carcasses is a private business interest with a vested interest in securing vast quantities of high purity fold crystals. This train of thought can go in an uncomfortable direction when you realize that most of the likely buyers for those materials are "heroic" companies from later shows, with the most likely culprit being none other than SMS's parent company Bilra Transport. None of my players ever showed any interest in the VF-17... they were always about the VF-11 or the VF-19. We had a similar situation in the Macross II game I used to run, with my players referring to the big damn railgun on the VF-2SS's Super Armed Pack as the "F-You Button" since using it for a called shot on an enemy mecha was basically a one-hit kill on any particularly frustrating enemy. (Justified, in that we see them splashing Gigameshes with the railgun in the OVA itself, and they're basically the heaviest-armored thing the Mardook have.) There are a few mentions of an electrical connection in the hand that provides power and data connections to the gunpod of some of the earlier model of VF. I'd assume that that didn't go away in later models. I doubt they'd have something like the G-Self's reflector pack from Reconguista in G though... damage from beam weapons was mostly dealt with using ablative anti-beam coatings and good old fashioned getting out of the way.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Oh man, I had forgotten about SteelFalcon. So much outdated info, lol. That whale poaching outfit in Dynamite 7 was suspiciously well-equipped... like, they had a fold-capable ship, a bunch of VA-3s, and were buying all kinds of black market weaponry like a thermonuclear reaction warhead. They were never entirely clear on how galactic whale carcasses are used, but the implication was that they could be easily made into materials for a fold system. I suspect they're a source of high-purity fold carbon, which would be very valuable in a pre-fold quartz galaxy. Yeah, it's a surprisingly small module for the kind of firepower Gamlin gets out of it... though IIRC we never see one fire twice, so it may be one-and-done. They go back and forth on how FAST Pack-mounted energy weapons are powered. Some, like the VF-1's Strike Pack, are indicated to be powered by the VF's own reactors or running off a rechargeable battery/capacitor that is constantly trickle-charging off the VF's reactors. Others, like the VF-11's Armored Pack or VF-25's Armored Pack, are supposedly running off internal capacitors only. With stopping power like that, I'd assume it's probably powered by the VF's reactors given how small it seems to be.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It works well in the sense that it keeps new Macross features largely accessible to new viewers... because it's an effective way to prevent the kind of continuity lockout problems that the Universal Century Gundam shows have become increasingly prone to. On the other hand, the more inquisitive casual viewers and fans can find this position frustrating since it makes it difficult to have a definitive answer to many questions. This, I suspect, is why Macross publications try to go both ways on it... Kawamori has his view, while some printed works take a firmer attitude towards continuity. Everyone gets what they want, and (almost) nobody goes home unhappy.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Much like the Robotech fandom, Khorne's standards have gotten lower over the years... ... which, in the case of Southern Cross, is asking the impossible.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    I suppose it would... though I've often wondered why fans seem willing to now give a pass to the prequel trilogy that did the exact same thing to Darth Vader and pretty much every other dark side user. Rogue One tries very hard to cover up the damage with the badass action scene at the end, but for me Darth Vader will never escape being Little Orphan Anni who doesn't like sand. Like his whiny grandson, he's just an emo kid in a gimp suit who only gets away with his magic strangletantrums because he's in a highly suspect relationship with a powerful creepy old man.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah... and still made billions of dollars doing it. Mind you, I'd say failure was the only option for Disney. Star Wars fans were never going to gracefully accept the new trilogy no matter what it turned out to be because it retconned out the setting as they knew it for something else entirely. For those who weren't invested in what came before, they were more successful (or at least failing less hard).
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Max and Milia formed the NUNS Special Forces team "Dancing Skulls" in 2014 aboard the cruiser Algenicus. During their tenure with the Dancing Skulls, Max and Milia participating in the flight testing of a number of different prototype VFs including the VF-5000, VF-9, VF-11, and VF-14. The VF-9 is noted to have been strongly influenced by Milia's preferences, and Max and Milia's input was also the deciding factor in adopting canards on the VF-11. Max was later (2028) appointed captain of the stealth space cruiser Haruna, while Milia was appointed as an instructor at the Eagle's Nest Air Tactics Center (basically TOPGUN for the Spacy). They served aboard the space carrier Red Moon in 2031 where Mylene was born. In 2038, Max was granted command of Battle 7 as part of the 37th long-distance emigration fleet and Milia was attached as his XO. She also served as a chief flight instructor for the Spacy forces based in the fleet where she trained Gamlin. Milia retired from the Spacy in 2042 to become Mayor of City 7.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, well there we go. What a freaking weird place to end it... cliffhangers are all well and good but this just kind of came out of nowhere. 23's a weird number to end on too... normally it's 25 or 26.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's not that they were being lazy... they were playing it safe. Under Disney, Star Wars is taking no risks and pushing no envelopes. Disney went into the sequel trilogy trying VERY hard to make a Star Wars movie that'd have the broadest appeal possible and do as little as possible to alienate the well-established fanbase that was such a merchandising cash cow for the franchise. The easy answer to that set of goals is simply to change nothing... or as little as you can get away with, on the reasoning that if it ain't broke don't fix it. None of them would.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    That's kind of an awful paintjob... it just looks dirty, like a car that went down a dirt road during a rainstorm.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Blend S was pretty good while it lasted. Admittedly, once they introduced the trap I started to get the distinct feeling I'd seen this all before... and then it hit me. This is Kaichou wa Maid-sama as a pure comedy. Still, that didn't detract much from enjoying the series. Mairimashita! Iruma-kun is plodding towards its end with all the vigor of an old-school zombie. I'm not sure that's really a problem in the story so much as a lack of compression in the introductions. They've only just properly introduced most of the main cast, and it has like two episodes left in its broadcast run unless it gets a second season. It's like they're going to try to cram the first real story arc into the very end of the series in a big hurry. Isekai Quartet 2 is still doing its in-joke thing and at least having fun with it even if a few of the gags aren't so fresh.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, the new design teased a while back has an undeniable General Galaxy aesthetic and a vaguely VF-14-esque profile... but it has the wrong proportions to be either the Spiritia Dreaming VF-14 or the Macross M3 VF-14. Spoiler: the new threat teased in promotional materials is audiences realizing that Delta's characters are all painfully underdeveloped and boring. (Either that or the NUNS finally came calling to arrest Lady M and Ernest Johnson for their many crimes.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Being a dedicated special forces VF, it's not altogether surprising that it didn't have many appearances. Apart from the few units sitting out on the tarmac at New Edwards in Macross Plus, Diamond Force's three units in Macross 7, and the handful of VF-17s being sold on the black market to whale poachers in Macross Dynamite 7, the only significant appearances I recall the VF-17 having were as playable mecha in Macross Digital Mission VF-X and Macross VF-X2, being a background character's racing mecha in Macross the Ride, and being used by the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army in the novelization of Macross Frontier. General Galaxy only built 718 of them, so that they're THAT widespread is actually kind of surprising.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    So, since this season has turned into such a massive disappointment, I went trawling through Crunchyroll's back catalog and found some older shows I haven't seen yet. Started a series called Blend-S, which has so far proved to be an entertainingly warped take on the "eccentric part-time cafe" slice of life sort of story. It's especially entertaining watching the Italian weeb manager and reverse-weeb main character flounder in the gap between each other's expectations and reality.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shōmei Shite Mita continues to be a pretty mediocre experience too. It was funny and clever for two or three episodes, but the humor is very much a one-trick pony so it got stale with alarming speed. At least I have a second season of Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai - Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunōsen to look forward to in a few days time. Apart from that and a new season of Shokugeki no Soma, next season looks like pretty slim pickings too.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I'm done with OreGairu... and it was a decidedly mediocre and unsatisfying experience. It seems like the only way they could think of for Hachiman to not seem like a complete dick was to make everyone else as broken and miserable as him, but better at hiding it.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, a level 3 chemsuit just isn't flash enough... This is absolutely what the discerning gentleman will be wearing this plague season.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    I've almost finished Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatteiru... I found it pretty dull, for the most part. It's a lot like Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dō Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! but the social ineptitude-induced cringe response is treated as a source of cheap drama instead of a source of cheap laughs. It seems to be heading towards an unearned happy ending where Hachiman's status as a Jerk with a Heart of Also Jerk is somehow recast as Jerk with a Heart of Gold without him actually changing at all. That said, it comes nowhere close to the level of misery porn now embodied by Attack on Titan. I got caught up on that manga the other day while I was waiting for an automated task to finish at work and damn if it isn't bleak as hell. The protagonist has achieved a level of nationalist, xenophobic, genocidal prick that would make even Hitler tell him to tone it the hell down and his rival isn't any better... they literally get into a big argument over which one of them has a more appropriate target for genocide. Even the reveal of the origin of the Titans ended up as an unexplained copout.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    A good long road trip in mixed driving conditions... like a freeway through a rural area.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... credit where credit is due, a large portion of the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter's success was a double handful of big spenders and the high cost of entry for a tabletop game. It also helped that you had BattleTech fans getting in on that to get miniatures for the Unseen. Similarly - credit where it's due - the Robotech Academy Kickstarter tanked in no small part because it offended the nostalgia of Robotech fans by 1. being yet another story set around the Sentinels period without actually being a resolution of Robotech II: the Sentinels, 2. blatantly attempting to surf Carl Macek's coffin to fully-funded status while using his corpse as a human shield against criticism, and 3. sporting even worse animation than the failed and much-maligned Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles OVA. It was a triple-threat of Do Not Want for nostalgia-driven Robotech fans. Titan's Robotech comic seems to be in similar straits to RPG Tactics... it's an ugly mess and almost nobody seems to have anything nice to say about it, but it's limping along thanks to some die-hards who are digging deep to Collect Them All even though they'll be worth less than their cover price in a couple years. Knowing the guy in question, I'm pretty sure it's not just that he's a bad typist...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    So... Star Trek: Picard is trying to be intellectual today. Episode 7's title is Nepenthe, the mythical medicine from The Odyssey that cures your sorrows by making you forget them using laser-guided amnesia. I think after this season is over, we'll all be wanting a serving to forget this awful mess of a show. The Good The Bad The Ugly
  24. Seto Kaiba
    ... marrying or even dating Worf is a serious occupational hazard in Star Trek. The guy's had two legal wives murdered, and in the relaunch novelverse just dating him was as sure a death sentence as putting on a red shirt to beam down with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. At least one of his girlfriends got vaporized by a Breen commando unit.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    After seven seasons and three movies of "Will they or won't they?", a lot of fans would be depressed as hell if it turned out Riker and Troi didn't have a happy marriage.
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