Seto Kaiba

That kind of utterly insane coincidence does happen occasionally. One of the best examples of that is Dennis the Menace. Hank Ketcham and David Law, the former in the US and the latter in the UK, had had no contact with each other and no way to be aware of each other's work yet they both launched a new comic titled Dennis the Menace with very similar concepts and characters on exactly the same day (March 12) in 1951. The courts had a field day trying to figure out who should own the rights to the name, and it eventually ended with them agreeing that they'd both change names in the other's home turf. Maybe they're counting on the sheer inanity of Discovery's first season to put the judge and jury to sleep if it ever goes to trial? (Part of me wants to see this revealed to be an actual coincidence, just to see the courts tie themselves in knots trying to figure out what to do with it.) Since Discovery's first season is out on Google Play, we started rewatching it out here the other day after I threw it in the Family Library so my parents (lifelong Trekkies themselves) could have a go at it. I was rather amused that my parents immediately complained about how confrontational everyone on Discovery is. My mom even flat out called the series "not Star Trek" after just two episodes. My girlfriend fielded a rather interesting theory after we finished "The Vulcan Hello". She posited that Michael Burnham's sudden change of personality from a relaxed, thoroughly well disciplined officer who implicitly trusted her captain to a hysterically paranoid martinet wasn't psychological. She theorized that Burnham was/is suffering from transporter psychosis or some similar ailment caused (or exacerbated) by the Shenzhou's obsolete transporter and/or the repairs to her radiation-damaged DNA that she stopped partway. She starts to have a number of vivid daydream-like flashbacks and at least one vision that visibly disorient and distract her, she repeatedly becomes hysterical, and begins to behave in a paranoid manner. Paranoia, psychogenic hysteria, and somatic, tactile, and visual hallucinations are all symptoms of transporter psychosis. She also seems to have trouble sleeping later in the series, which is also a symptom. (The series conveniently takes place almost exactly equidistant on the timeline between the first diagnosis of transporter psychosis and the elimination of the condition's root cause.) IMO, she made a compelling case for Burnham's mutiny and subsequent behavior being the result of undiagnosed mental illness rather than bad writing.

More or less... Star Wars is a setting full of the kind of enforced moral absolutes that only really exist in mythology and morality tales. For the audience's sake, the characters all wear their moral affiliation on their sleeve. The heroes are a virtuous and noble lot who never leave a man behind and boldly sacrifice themselves for the higher cause, while the villains in that kind of story gleefully indulge in every atrocity they can seemingly for shiggles and tend to be big believers in the Klingon Promotion. Even Rogue One, which is often (wrongly, IMO) credited as lending moral ambiguity to Star Wars only really did so superficially for the Rebels. The Imperials are still a pack of utterly irredeemable and largely faceless puppy-kicking total bastards who commit mass murder simply because they can. That, of course, was the point I was getting at when I indicated we'll likely never see a Rogue One-esque "dark" Macross story. Macross has much more in common with Star Trek in its willingness to acknowledge that the antagonists are also people, with their own goals, dreams, morals, and loved ones, and that when war occurs it's usually between two sides which both regard themselves and their goals as good, just, and righteous have stopped talking or never made an effort to start. In Macross, the antagonists are always people working for what they see as the greatest good for their own kind. Yeah, it's pretty disappointing.

I thought they settled this one a while back?

Explaining why Macross isn't a gritty war story and likely never will be always gets a bit involved... a subject that inevitably comes up when a new Macross anything is in the offing. "Peace through diplomacy is unrealistic" was a new one, I must admit. With an apparent change of direction towards more Macross Delta, this thread has kind of run out of purpose.

It looks like Star Trek: Discovery season one has hit at least one non-CBS streaming service finally... Google Play Movies has the first season now.

You keep using that word... and I'm torn between suspecting you simply don't know what it means, and being appalled by the implication that you think your morals are absolutes. Ah, no... it does not. Why? Morality is fundamentally subjective. "Good" and "Evil", "Right" and "Wrong"... these things depend on the views of the speaker. The cultural, societal, and legal norms they were raised in, their education, and their own experiences and feelings. They're subject to change over time based on changes in society and culture, personal views and experiences, health, and more. Sometimes they change rapidly, and other times it takes generations. The point is that they are not constant over time or between individuals. Case in point, there are cultures on this planet where various entries on this list are NOT considered evil. The view that human trafficking and slavery are "evil" is a relatively recent cultural development that's still a long way from universal acceptance. Until the mid-19th century, they were not only considered socially acceptable but necessary for the maintenance of society in even the most enlightened ancient cultures and modern nations like the US and UK. The last country to ban slavery (Mauritania) didn't ban it until 1981, and even then they didn't actually criminalize owning slaves until 2007. There are estimated to be somewhere between 12 and 30 million slaves in the world today. It's still widely practiced despite being illegal in much of central and southern Africa, India, Pakistan, most of Southeast Asia, Russia, and western South America. Human cannibalism likewise used to be widely practiced, socially acceptable, and even religiously significant in many cultures. There are religious and tribal groups like the Aghori and Korowai that still consider cannibalism socially acceptable and practice it. Same story with paedophilia. Standards for what ages are acceptable vary quite a bit between cultures and religions and have likewise changed over time as well. Fairly recently we had a former judge from down south who ran for office and was dogged by a scandal involving different attitudes towards acceptable ages in the same culture and country. He had been involved with girls in their young teens, which most of the country found abhorrent but which that region found more acceptable. I don't want to get into the religious side of this for obvious reasons. For drug dealers, it depends a great deal on what drug they're peddling. Until recently, selling marijuana was frowned upon. Now there's a growing number of states and countries legalizing the sale of marijuana. It no longer carries the stigma it used to. There were, likewise, times when things opium, cocaine, and heroin were socially acceptable to sell and to buy. The famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes mirrors the attitudes of the time, in that he was a recreational user of cocaine and morphine and this is treated as being quite acceptable. It's not now, but it was back then. There are a number of countries where sexual assault is still considered, if not "acceptable" then "excusable" under various circumstances. Even in allegedly enlightened countries like the US we're still struggling with groups who feel there are categories or conditions under which rape is acceptable. Killing another person is one of the best examples. Whether or not this is "evil" is SO subjective that people can have multiple, conflicting opinions on the subject based on incredibly specific circumstances. You'll find people who, in the same breath, will suggest that abortion is evil because it ends a life and that those who practice it should be put to death for doing so. Opinions are incredibly divided over what constitutes acceptable circumstances to kill in self-defense or just cause for war. There really are no moral absolutes in this world. There aren't even moral absolutes within a single culture, nation, state, city, or large group of people. Morality is a flexible abstract that we bent, twist, fold, spindle, and mutilate to fit our circumstances, views, and beliefs. I'm honestly not sure even you know what point you're trying to make... There is no objective evil. People who do things others see as evil believe themselves to righteous, or justified, or that those things were necessary, or simply don't acknowledge that the things they're doing are wrong at all because they have different standards. There's that word again. To be objectively evil would mean that, regardless of an individual's views and beliefs, that something can be factually demonstrated to be wrong. Things can't be objectively evil because morality - the concept of good and evil itself - is fundamentally subjective. You yourself acknowledge with your very next sentence that the Nazis believed they were in the right doing what they did... which refutes your premise that they were "objectively" evil. If they were objectively evil, then their evil is a demonstrable and irrefutable fact. They would see themselves as evil precisely the same way their adversaries did. They didn't... which means it's subjective. There are, distressingly enough, groups of people out there today who argue that the Nazis did nothing wrong. Even if you want to argue that they're brainwashed, that still means the perception of morality is can be changed situationally. To be frank, the Nazis could've been swayed by reason easily enough. The whole reason their party came to power in the first place was the crushing weight of war reparations the German government was obliged to pay, the ensuing hyperinflation of their currency running their economy into the dirt, and led to fears of a communist uprising. The militarism was an economic stimulus. If both sides had sat down and talked before the shooting started, the entire war could've been avoided by taking remedial action to save the German economy. Because a technologically-advanced species is, by default, going to be a social animal. You can't pass down learned knowledge from one generation to another without a social framework through which to do it. One of the cornerstones of social species is empathy: the ability to understand and/or vicariously experience the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of another. That means evolution literally neurologically hardwired them to respond to attempts to communicate. Those are not social animals, so that's kind of a BS attempt at an example case. A social species is going to have language of some kind. It may not be something intelligible to us initially, but it will exist as a quantifiable property that can be studied, analyzed, and eventually replicated to communicate. Bees communicate through dance and pheromones. Whales sing. Elephants vocalize in infrasonic ranges, and cats in the ultrasonic. Hell, cats are intelligent enough that they have a separate language in the audible range for speaking to humans. We learn easily enough to intuit what our dogs want from their behavior and vocalizations. It's not an insurmountable problem. It really does make all the difference. Macross, like Star Trek, acknowledges that a conflict with a hostile power will occur because both sides believe themselves to be in the right. That they are doing what's necessary for their people and nation. This does not make them evil in and of itself, it merely means they have a different perspective and that peace can potentially be achieved by finding common ground. Gundam is a pessimistic version of this, where peaceful resolution CAN be achieved (and humans are literally evolving psychic empathy to help it along) but the universe is run by crazy people who refuse to have a meaningful conversation with anyone who doesn't share their views 100%. The moral ambiguity is crucial, as is the point that most combatants are not bad people... just people in bad situations. Star Wars exists in a universe of moral absolutes. Fundamental drives are categorized by knowledgeable force users as explicitly and unambiguously good or evil. Dark side users seem to be quite aware they they are in fact evil, and rejoice in it with all the subtlety of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. They want to take over the galaxy just because. There's no way for the light side and dark side to reach an accord because destiny is an unavoidable actual thing enforced by a universal fundamental force and they are destined to try to destroy each other, and their users drag the rest of the galaxy into it. There's zero inlking that the dark siders have any actual goal besides despotic autocratic rule for cruelty's own sake and they're literally fueled by hate and fear. The moral ambiguity is superficial because the conflict and the people in it are explicitly divided into Light and Dark, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong.

Not gonna lie... that does sound like a huge improvement.

Aren't these pros, though? Guys from Titan's regular staff. Maybe she's just a really convincing trap?

It's the most recent one mentioned, yes. Yeah... unfortunately the non-variable stuff just isn't as action figure-friendly as the VFs.

Yeah... really, any functioning adult with a decent science education would've spotted Zeon Zum Deikun's newtype theory for the unscientific BS it is, given that it depends on the totally unscientific notion of evolutionary predestination. ... are you really trying to argue that reality is unrealistic? Yes, armed conflict is avoidable. Nations spend huge sums of money and man-hours going to great and frankly tedious lengths to avoid armed conflict with each other. They maintain armies of diplomats and dozens of embassies to facilitate communication and smooth over incidents that could lead to conflict. They invest their time and energy in vast international diplomatic organizations to prevent and mitigate conflict and foster international cooperation and peace. They bend over backwards making (sometimes insincere) apologies for stuff they've done that might've antagonized someone. They go to frankly obscene lengths to avoid armed conflict. Why? Because war is a messy, confusing, expensive undertaking that's an enormous drain on a nation's economy and tends to wear out its welcome VERY quickly among voters. Rare are the occasions when armed conflict is genuinely unavoidable... and most of the time, what we see are eminently avoidable conflicts that occurred because people either stopped trying, or never tried, to communicate and find common ground. There is no absolute good or absolute evil in the real world. The kind of abject evil and (often literally) cackling villainy you see in Star Wars and other fairy tales just doesn't exist in the real world. There is no great and irredeemable cult of evil. No omnipresent force of darkness that rises up and must be opposed by force of arms. No armies of darkness that exist to kick puppies and gloat about how evil they are. Evil is, all too often, quite subjective. One man's villain is another man's hero. History's most vilified leaders, the men who oversaw Earth's most terrible atrocities, firmly believed that what they were doing was good, right, and justified for the sake of their nation and people... and so did their followers. That's the kind of dichotomy you see in Macross or Star Trek. There are no card-carrying villains gleefully chortling about how nasty they are. The antagonists are people who are doing what they believe is right for their nation or species.

... ... ... so, does a gig like that come with business cards or is it purely word-of-mouth advertising? (Honestly, I'd love to see the HR people at my day job slowly come unglued trying to figure out a way to safely broach that topic in the hobbies and interests part of an interview... like watching an old timey movie robot cope with a logic bomb and slowly freeze up.) It's been a good year for parody, so that actually sounds like it might be pretty enjoyable. Maybe the trailer I watched is just rubbish, since my takeaway from it was more that it was just a fanservice-centric sports anime like Wanna Be The Strongest in the World. I'm not averse to fanservice, per se, but I like it to serve a purpose in the story. Gratuitous fanservice is kind of a buzzkill to me.

That's probably a more realistic option nowadays... but back when we were first tossing the idea around we were full of more ambitious ideas, and less involved in our careers. Not that I've seen... though I'll admit I have not been paying particularly close attention to this one.

While Kawamori can be unpredictable at times, a grimdark Macross series is about as unlikely as it gets. Macross is, and always has been, a fundamentally upbeat and optimistic metaseries about the power of love, communication, and music. It's closer to Star Trek than Star Wars, in that diplomacy and mutual understanding are the preferred solution and armed conflict is an avoidable result of failures to communicate and find common ground. It's basically what the Universal Century of Gundam would be if the Earth Sphere were full of functioning adults instead of borderline sociopaths.

In the final analysis, there isn't a lot of difference between an amateur who's trying and a professional who's not. Titan is phoning this in so hard that it's come clear around from "not funny" to "actually pretty funny".

Well, we'll see if they can salvage this one of if this attempted return to form is Enterprise Season 4 Mk.II.

It's a mistake, all right... just not in the way you were hoping. Considering that SEGA and SonicTeam were basically the developers that could do no right with Sonic the Hedgehog for the last twenty-five odd years, I'm a little surprised that they found someone in Hollywood drunk enough to think this was a good idea. It should've been John Goodman in a hilariously fake moustache... At least Paramount is trying to do justice to the beautiful disaster that the last twenty-five years of Sonic the Hedgehog games have been. It could be a lot worse, they could have done a movie based on the comics published by Archie.

That's the Zor Bioroid Dropship we've been seeing elsewhere on these boards and on Facebook? 'bout halfway.

TBH, from the trailer my reaction was "It's Queen's Blade for ass men". Is there actually something more to it than fanservice?

I'm trying to look at that idea optimistically, and the best I can come up with is "that might actually be horrible enough to make me look back on Macross Delta favorably".

I'm mildly bemused at how active this thread suddenly is... Surely it can't all be people queueing up to tw*t an aspiring "Robotech Defender" with sticks. Which raises only one question... where'd they trace it from? Despite Titan's strenuous efforts to the contrary, people are still buying this shoddy tome? This is what, the third time Robotech has tried this particular twist? I'd expect he's doing much the same thing this time around as the first few times, joining the military in an attempt to discover what happened to Minmei... though since this comic appears to be set to basically skip the other two sagas they've bumped it forward a bit I guess. My money's on them ending the twist the same way, with someone capping him for trying to rescue her. Well they couldn't very well use the fanliner from the Super Dimension Fortress Macross version if they were in space... Not sure why the VF-1D being armed is a surprise? There's nothing in the original Macross that would stop anyone from sticking FAST Packs and live weapons on one... the VF-1D's basically just a VF-1A that's been hastily retrofitted to accept a tandem cockpit arrangement and a monitor turret with redundant camera systems in the absence of a dedicated VF-1 training variant (the unarmed VT-1 wouldn't come in until Block 6).

Honestly, I'm flat amazed that Delta didn't do exactly that...

Rockapella's still active... maybe they can reprise the theme song from the edutainment TV series?

In all seriousness, Macross Delta is making at least a few references to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen which probably has something to do with the gratuitous German. Starting in Macross 30, Macross has been making a fair few Norse references with regard to the ancient Protoculture and Wagner did love loosely adapting Norse sagas. The choice of theme naming in Macross Delta's cast, making many of them references to famous aces and aircraft manufacturers, also contributed since many of the most famous historical aces are German or Prussian.

Hi @Brofessor. If you're worried about spoilers (really, I don't think many of us are for this topic), you can use the spoiler tag to hide the spoilers in a collapsable quote block like so... The necessary icon is the one that looks like a graphic of an eye, between the Size and Font dropdowns. Incidentally, this whole time loop schtick is just so Titan Comics doesn't have to bother adapting any farther than Robotech's adaptation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross... that's the only real purpose of it.

... why? What's next, a murder mystery thriller adaptation of Where's Wally?