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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It's all about how you spread the money around. They can afford lavish animation for backgrounds and characters when 80% of scenes are talking heads with minimal motion. When you've got high motion, you have to compromise. Caught the latest episode of Gyakuten Saiban today... I'm surprised they wrapped the whole second case of the story in a single episode with room to spare. Not the show's fault, but the incredibly limited cast definitely feels weird in a TV series. It really throws Yahari's status as the world's unluckiest man into sharp relief when he's dragged into court every couple episodes to give testimony. Gonna give Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight episode four a go after dinner and see if it's worth anything.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the reason you haven't found a topic about that probably has a lot to do with the profound lack of legal options... Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross II: the Movie, and the Macross Plus OVA are the only titles available through legitimate channels, and everything else has to come through either imported (and largely unsubtitled) DVDs and Blu-ray discs from Japan or extralegal means like torrented fansubs and bootleg streaming sites. Legally, outside of watching the watered down Americanized (I won't say that R-word) version of the original series on Crackle, Amazon is pretty much the only option. XBox TV had episodes from Macross II and Macross Plus for a while, but I think that's gone now. Looking for unauthorized uploads on YouTube is your best legal option, really. Yeah, you won't find anything else. Harmony Gold USA has the license to Super Dimension Fortress Macross and are keeping it bottled up on Amazon Prime while they promote their watered-down Americanized version on Sony's Crackle, Netflix, etc. Manga Entertainment US has been inactive and in a holding pattern since 2011, and is only just starting to come back to life after being acquired by the Lionsgate Entertainment Group's home video division back in 2017. There really isn't a reason to... new licensing is all kinds of not happening until Harmony Gold's Macross license and associated trademarks expire, which at its earliest will occur on 14 March 2021, and the existing arrangements are not prone to change often.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That's the gist of it, yes.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, the only Southern Cross Bioroid kit was Imai's 1/48 scale... and that looks too big to be one. The unevenness of some of the lines on the hands and knees makes me suspect either a bootleg kit or something someone scratch-built.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    As I've said in many previous posts, we'd expect an announcement that a new series was in the works around the end of October. No such announcement was forthcoming, so we're probably not getting a new series after all. Just another Delta movie. It's always been the #1 complaint I've seen about the series... that they were so determined to be upbeat that Bellri doesn't react to anything like a sane person.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, Macross 7 does reuse the same handful of action shots of the VF-19 Custom transforming and VF-11Cs getting blown up in practically every episode... I'm not sure those two can be put on an equal footing for the sake of comparison. Macross 7 was a success in Japan on the merits of the series as a whole. If you look to its fanworks and merchandising, you'll find a well-balanced collection of artbooks, albums, audio dramas, doujinshi, character goods, model kits, toys, and other collectibles. Macross Delta seems to be coasting entirely on the popularity of the idol group Walkure. I doubt it's even the actual characters in the show, given that three of the five members of Walkure got token or zero character development. Coverage of the non-Walkure parts of Delta is token and of almost universally poor quality, low in detail, and generally short. We've had one artbook that was exclusively character-focused and with minimal coverage outside the main trio's profiles and Walkure's. The one "artbook" for the mecha, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried, was about 50% plagiarized from the VF-25 Master File and the other half was a terrible mess that contradicted the series and itself. Character goods are almost exclusively Walkure. Magazine articles? Walkure. Promotional art? Walkure. It's all Walkure all the time... like the other 90% of the cast aren't even there. Now, that said, I suspect it has less to do with audience interests and more with what shows set the tone... the series they saw first. In Japan, you'll see a major influx of new fans every time a new Macross series airs so the fandom is always balanced between old and new fans. The western fanbase is mostly made up of long-time fans who were introduced to Macross via locally-available licensed releases. The three most commonly available licensed releases were the Robotech localization of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the heavily UC Gundam-influenced Macross II: Lovers Again OVA, and the action-focused Macross Plus OVA. All three of those are a good deal darker and more serious than the average Macross fare... and that's what the western audience derives its expectations from. The Gundam franchise had a similar, but reversed, problem in the not-too-distant past with Reconguista in G. Fans the world over were so used to Gundam shows, and the Universal Century shows in particular, being dark and gritty and depressing that when a more lighthearted and optimistic Gundam show came along in that same timeline they simply couldn't get their heads around it. It felt strange and out of place, and the lightheartedness felt silly and wrong.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, but at least they remembered that variable fighters transform... you could almost have passed Delta off as an Ace Combat anime crossing over with IDOLM@STER like Bandai is so fond of doing.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    As someone who used to be one of the most vocal critics of Macross 7 on these forums... Macross 7 is substantially better than Macross Delta. Their premises and mechanics are very similar, but Macross 7 is light years ahead in terms of the quality of its story's execution. (Fittingly, the fold amps Walkure uses are derived from Dr. Chiba and Dr. Lawrence's research from Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    As much as Kawamori supposedly dislikes the idea of direct sequels, I doubt that the new series was supposed to be a Delta sequel. He's stuck to his guns on the sequel thing for 30+ years now, I can't see him backing down from that anytime soon. I suspect it's taking a backseat to a new Delta movie because they didn't anticipate Walkure would be as popular as it is, and are looking to strike while the iron is hot.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Macross the First used the events of Macross Flash Back 2012 as a framing device, that's all. Macross's original series did indicate that time flows at a different (slower) rate in higher dimensional space and that, consequently, the amount of time experienced by a ship's crew in the course of a fold jump was less than the actual passage of time in realspace. Later shows, like Macross Frontier, added the wrinkle of distortions in higher dimension space that had the unfortunate consequence of increasing that disparity by leaps and bounds... though they also finessed that the original (severe) disparity was the result of poor quality fold system tech and guesstimates by inexperienced personnel, and that improvements in tech were continually reducing that disparity (to the point of hitting zero). AFAIK, the only time that space folds have been linked to anything like time travel in official setting materials was Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. That wasn't something that a fold-capable ship could achieve naturally or accidentally, it was the doing of an ancient Protoculture Fold Evil biotechnological superweapon that'd been purpose-built to weaponize time travel and then sealed away on Uroboros when the Protoculture realized building a thing like that was a terrible idea.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    From what I've read1, the problem of low fuel/propellant efficiency in space flight that limited the all-regime performance of the first few generations of Variable Fighter wasn't resolved until the introduction of the more efficient and powerful thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engine technology on the VF-16 and on the VF-17 from its -D variant onwards. That was the standard engine technology for the 4th Generation VFs (VF-19, VF-22, VF-171, Sv-154?) and was further improved by the Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines that were the standard for the 5th Generation VFs. The 3rd Generation's VF-11 and VF-14 predate that improvement in engine technology. The VF-11 went the VF-1 route and focused on atmospheric performance while depending on conformal fuel tanks and booster rockets in its Super Pack to give it an acceptable level of endurance in space flight. The VF-14 followed the VF-4's design philosophy and maximized its space performance at the expense of other concerns like atmospheric performance, stealthiness, and so on. 1. One of the earlier mentions I recall is on page 38 of Great Mechanics.DX 9, under the "Struggle Against the Wall of Distance and Speed" heading. There are other, similar explanations in Macross R and elsewhere.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Effectively unlimited in atmospheric service. They're going to consume more fuel if they're launching from the surface into satellite orbit, but in purely atmospheric flight even the VF-1 Valkyrie had sufficient onboard fuel for approximately a month (700 hours) of continuous operating time. The pilot's going to run out of steam way before the VF runs out of fuel. In space, "range" is expressible less in terms of distance than it is in terms of the continuous burn time of the engines at maximum thrust. As long as you can get up to speed and don't have to change course, the cruising range of a VF is limited only by the endurance of the pilot because there's no atmospheric drag slowing the VF down in level flight. Tens of minutes is the apparent standard if they're burning up a lot of fuel in a dogfight. I AM... THAT GUY! Dramatic entrance aside, the disparity between the VF-1 Valkyrie's fuel consumption in atmosphere and in space is 4,200x. The fuel that would've lasted 700 hours in atmosphere is consumed in approximately 10 minutes at maximum thrust. This, of course, is why the first-generation FAST Packs emphasized substantial conformal fuel tanks to extend the main engine fuel supply and booster rockets that would take some of the burden off the main engines. Yeah, that was a nice moment where the VF's greater fuel consumption in space was explicitly acknowledged in unusual detail. Especially nice was seeing Hayate's HUD displaying the fuel levels in the various verniers. The last time fuel was really discussed in explicit terms was Macross Zero, where Edgar was busting Shin's chops about paying attention to the fuel remaining for their VF-0D trainer, which had an aggressively short sortie range of 2,400km with standard supplemental fuel tanks thanks to its design using more conventional turbofan jet engines. It is worth noting that both the VF-17 (a Gen 3.5 VF) and the VF-19's second mass production type were space-optimized, and the VF-171 is noted to have been modified from the base model in an attempt to make it more suitable for all-regime operation, suggesting it was a less extreme version of a space-optimized generation. The 5th Generation designs we've seen so far have largely been all-regime focused, like the VF-25 and VF-31.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    *wince* Well... assuming Macross is using the most common "2D Space" galactic map orientation that puts Sol due south of the galactic center on the map's centerline, the answer would have to be "practically all of them". The galactic map in Macross Frontier's first episode, which is pretty inaccurate, shows some fleets loop off to the galactic south but then curve back towards the north. (The only popular SF title I know offhand that bucks that common 2D galactic map projection is Warhammer 40,000, which routinely puts Sol west of the galactic core rather than south.) Oh, I'm sure more than a few are if they're still launching at least one a year. By 2065 they should mostly be City-class or Island Cluster-class.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Delta put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for future Macross works too. I'm trying to stay positive about it. Since I have little use for Walkure outside of their relevance to Macross, and quite frankly scarcely any more use for them in the Macross context, I'm trying to look at the dearth of new material resulting from the franchise's current obsession with Walkure as a nice little hiatus that'll let me catch up on the small mountain of stuff I've yet to finish without being distracted by new material. (Not before time, mind you... the To-Do pile is at least 2m tall and was growing all the time!) Still, after a half-assed Macross series that was 100% about promoting an idol group, I can't escape the feeling that Kawamori finally sold out. I can only hope that this won't turn out to be the beginning of a similar trend to Sunrise's decision to abandon all pretense and turn Gundam into a thinly veiled gunpla commercial or CBS selling out Star Trek's central themes in the name of trying to be Game of Space Thrones.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Clarification request... when you say "galactic north" are you referring to actual galactic north under the galactic coordinate system (above the galactic plane) or in sense often used in science fiction where 2D space is in full effect and "north" is just "up" relative to wherever Sol is on the map's given orientation? (I ask because that's going to make an enormous difference in the answer.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's going to be a Star Trek comedy... I guess I got my sadistic wish that they'd do a Star Trek version of Red Dwarf.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    What I was getting at was more that, details of their suffering aside, you can count the number of male characters who end up on the receiving end of that violence on one hand while only a few of the prominent female characters have been exempted from it. Goblin Slayer himself is the only one of the recurring male characters who is ever nontrivially injured, and the only prominent male character to actually die is the greenhorn Warrior in the prologue. The ladies team had already racked up five graphic deaths and a rape by the time chapter four (episode two) was over and their track record really hasn't improved.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    One aspect of the Goblin Slayer light novels that's been largely left out of the Goblin Slayer anime adaptation thus far is the occasional chapter breaks that show the story in progress from the perspective of the gods (usually Truth and Illusion). The world is literally just a (tabletop) game to them. That's implied to be the reason nobody has an actual name, and is more or less explicitly stated to be why it's a crapsack world in eternal Medieval Stasis, perpetually overrun with Always Chaotic Evil monsters, and is so disproportionately fond of the Total Party Kill. (The gods are pretty vindictive GMs.) The pre-opening blurb does kind of allude to it in a vague way, with the talk about the gods rolling dice for the fate of the world. It's equal opportunity in terms of the severity of the horrible things that happen to its characters... but the women FAR outnumber the men in the "you've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" department.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    The TV anime may or may not turn out to be... the light novel it's adapted from, and the manga also adapted from it, likes to dive into fairly dark territory on a regular basis vis a vis the horrible things goblins do to people because of their general disregard for non-goblin life... the general rapey-ness of goblins aside, they're also pretty darn enthusiastic about torturing people to death for fun or revenge, openly cannibalistic and routinely force their prisoners to engage in cannibalism, employ unconventional weapons like poisoned blades and poison gas, and neither they nor Goblin Slayer are at all shy about killing children. It is pretty clearly pandering, but it's more gore porn than the regular kind.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Hajimete no Gyaru's sixth chapter has a Macross 7 nod...
  21. Seto Kaiba
    From what I've seen, I don't believe they can... but the VF-4 is so little-covered despite its relatively important role that it's hard to say for certain.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the third episode of Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight today... and the pacing is still all kinds of f*cked up. If they'd stop skipping around so much, Ulysses would be a lot more watchable. I'm still getting this really bad Seikon no Quasar vibe from it, in that it feels like the fanservice is a desperate "please like me" end unto itself, but when Jeanne starts acting like someone switched her script with one from Hellsing Ultimate it starts getting watchable. The story's clearly trying to get somewhere interesting, but after three episodes of disjointed, seemingly random exposition I can't quite say where. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the way the anime industry is currently in one of its "light and soft" periods. Shows like Overlord and Goblin Slayer look a lot darker than they actually are when the rest of the season's packed with your standard shounen and shoujo offerings, cutesy stuff, and slice of life comedies. The next darkest thing on the schedule that isn't Attack on Titan is either Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight or That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime... and those are sweetness and light by comparison. Even then, Attack on Titan has largely used up the shock value of the titans in both formats so the darkness of its setting is feeling decidedly careworn, making Goblin Slayer look all the darker for it. You also kind of have to mark OVAs to different standards, since they don't have to comply with the same censorship requirements as a TV anime. (WRT the light novel and manga versions, the sheer gratuitousness of the violence and the general rapey-ness of the goblins can be rather off-putting in that it's clearly meant to be fetishized and is all the more wrong and distressing for it.) Having read the manga version... it totally is. Rimiru is just WAY faster about getting to the same endgame Ainz is looking for. What did you think of it overall? I'm still slogging through Lupin III: the Italian Adventure... my mind keeps checking out around the time Lupin steals the Mona Lisa for what must be the sixth or seventh time.
  23. Seto Kaiba

    Hi-Metal R

    Seto Kaiba replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    First a pair of VF-2SS's, now a VF-4? Bandai is finally speaking my language.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    For the light novel and manga, that first story was starting as they meant to go on. Goblin Slayer's anime series seems to be headed in a slightly less gratuitous direction, if the second episode omitting the grisly and graphic fate of the all-female party of adventurers who found that ruin before Goblin Slayer came along is any indication. TBH, that was the point where the story picked up in the light novels too. Having an actual party to adventure with starts to make Goblin Slayer a bit less "Medieval Doomguy" and more "Medieval Batman"... even if High Elf Archer's perpetual refrain is "Stop using [extremely effective and practical anti-goblin strategy] because it's not adventurer-like".
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing that I've seen... though I'd expect the answer probably has a good deal to do with the 25mm (27mm on the military model) railguns on the VF-31's forearms. By leaving the beam gunpod stowed in the ordnance container they can fire the railguns AND the beam gunpod at the same time, as they did on a few occasions in the series. Instead of foregoing a gruntier gunpod the way the VF-4 did or making it an either-or case like the VF-22, they found a way to have their cake and eat it too.
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