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Seto Kaiba

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Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    It's explicitly an all-original story... which means that ain't it.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Have you looked at Gundam recently? They're on their third show that is literally JUST a gunpla commercial.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    During the most recent Crossover Live, IIRC.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The villain of the story... who knows? Maybe it'll be Lady M, once the New UN Government, New UN Forces, and Brisingr Alliance local governments finally overcome bureaucratic inertia and initiate legal proceedings against her and her company for a laundry list of criminal and questionable activity. The real villains, of course, are the production committee and Kawamori for back-burnering or canceling a new series in favor of inflicting another serving of Delta's weaksauce on us all.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Lately I've been re-reading some old favorites like Kaichou wa Maid-sama! and B Gata H Kei, mixed in with some newer stuff including Kaguya wants to be confessed to and the 4koma spinoff We Want to Talk About Kaguya, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Overlord, and the re-release of Macross the First. I recently finished re-reading Blame! thanks to that lovely new edition that came out over the last year or so. I've been looking for recommendations to broaden my reading list, so I'm glad you made this thread. I hope to glean many useful recommendations from it in the future. I have... though my opinion of it is not high. Like the ONA, the Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt manga is relentlessly dark to the point that it quickly becomes relentlessly dull. It'd probably be a pretty good action series if only it were possible to get invested in the characters. The problem is that the series is so thoroughly committed to gritty grimdark grim darkness that the cast is mostly made up of complete bastards. It's not like Yazan Gable's often-comedic sociopathy, these are just unapologetically sh*tty human beings 24/7/365. TL;DR it's a Gundam manga that really wants to be Attack on Titan written by Buckets-of-Blood guy. The art quality is consistently excellent though. The only thing I can really complain about there is that the Atlas Gundam is one of the most hideous Mobile Suits I've ever laid eyes on and the character art style makes many characters (esp. Claudia) look like they were supposed to be in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and wandered onto the wrong set. I don't know about you, but seeing a Federation division leader unironically trying to rock a pompadour takes me right out of the story. If you want an oddly lighthearted, charming Gundam manga, I highly recommend Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam before the One Year War. It's about the team at a little engineering subcontractor that developed the first Minovsky reactor-powered prototype for the MS-05 Zaku I.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It only appeared once, but yeah... the entire cockpit block can be ejected, and it has a modest rocket engine for propulsion. We only ever see it manually deployed on that VF-1D Hikaru borrowed early in the original series. The Sky Angels book depicts it in use in two of the five methods of emergency escape the VF-1 had. The other three use the ejection seat. But the text is useless... it feels like it was drunkenly hammered out over a long weekend spent mixing drinks.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It's Robotech. The brand as a whole never left 1986. To be fair, the same could be said for Southern Cross's mechanical designs themselves... Tatsunoko Production didn't exactly bring their A-game to the series. Even the show's own promotional materials take the piss out of the Logan on a regular basis.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Only a few VFs have ever been depicted with that capability... For the VF-1, the only resource I know of that talks about it in any level of detail is the old and lamentably hard to come by Sky Angels doujinshi. You may be in luck, though, since there's a Variable Fighter Master File volume devoted to the VF-11 Thunderbolt allegedly coming out in late February (being SoftBank, expect mid-March if not later). The VF-11 was far and away the most prominent user of that escape capsule concept thanks to reused animation in Macross 7. I'm not aware of any resource that talks about the Fz-109's escape pod in any detail.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I found that out the hard way a couple days ago on the shipping score... Pretty much cleaned them out of their remaining stock of old Master File volumes for my translation project.... the box was heavy enough that FedEx sent two guys to deliver it.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    On a lark, I read the first fifty or so chapters of the manga. That show isn't likely to reach the part in the story where it actually becomes interesting in one season. (It seriously took about 43 chapters to get past the story being more or less entirely about leveling up.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Doomcock looks suspiciously like those "automated personnel units" from Star Trek: Voyager.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Bummer. I would've liked an Auroran kit... but I can certainly understand not wanting to risk provoking a lawsuit-happy outfit like Harmony Gold.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Kaguya-sama: Love and War's second episode is solid gold... it's on track to be my favorite for this season. The overdramatic narration adds a certain je ne sais quoi that enhances the absurdity of the entire affair and makes it twice as funny. My latest slowpoke item is Lupin III Part V. I'm not sure what I think of a Lupin III that seems to have gone half Ghost in the Shell with Lupin having a monocle computer that can hack security systems.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Reading the dialog once was one time too many...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. His last mentioned assignment was the "outer space special science force" in 2039 October. The specific model Isamu wore is said to be the standard model used by the (New) UN Forces c.2040. IIRC there's something in Master File about earlier marks of that suit being white instead of blue, but that's not official setting material. It's marked up in the line art as a sensor system in the line art, so it's probably supposed to be a polarized cover like the ones on the YF-19, YF-21, etc. As to what kind, probably the VF-11's FLIR cameras, LIDAR array, and optical sensors like the similar hybrid sensor clusters on the aforementioned VFs and their successors. The VF-11 Master File, if it's written properly, may clear that up somewhat. The animation generally represents it as an opaque panel though.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I've just finished the latest episode of The Price of Smiles. The Price of Smiles is clearly aiming for both Macross's "both sides are good people" and Universal Century Gundam-style dark and depressing... and so far, they've got the Gundam side down pat. A little too well, I think. It's going to be really difficult to see any of the Empire of Grandiga's soldiers as sympathetic after this though. Stella, who the OP makes out to be the new main character in the wake of Joshua's death, crosses a few lines that you generally don't get to come back from in a show like this. So... the Imperial Army murders a bunch of dudes and our new leading lady has enough psychological problems to make Sousuke Sagara look like a model of mental health. We're clearly meant to think of these enemy soldiers as sympathetic, but it's kinda hard to when they have very little problem with blowing up a town (implied to kill a bunch of civilians on top of the soldiers they murder to plant the bombs). If I wasn't cheering for the Kingdom of Soliel before, I sure as hell am now. They at least seem to fight with something resembling morals.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    The Texas Instruments/Raytheon AGM-88 HARM was originally designed with a passive radar homing system with home-on-jam capability to defeat noise jamming. The later AGM-88E AARGM upgrade added GPS and inertial guidance systems as well as an EHF active radar homing system for terminal guidance in the event that the target moves or attempts to shut its radar down before the missile reaches it. Quite frankly, I'm on the side of "looks good" over 100% accuracy. For the classic TV VF-1J, the red accents on the missiles will really pop against the white airframe.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    At time of writing, they have 2 years and 55 days before the term of Harmony Gold USA's license ends and the rights revert back to Tatsunoko Production's control. If it were a simple case of money owed, it would be one thing... but you're missing a LOT of important context that completely turns your premise upside-down. That sum that Tatsunoko "owes" is an arbitration order to pay Harmony Gold's court costs and attorney fees. Tatsunoko is refusing to pay that sum, in order to lure Harmony Gold back to court to overturn the arbitration's findings. Why? Because Tatsunoko hasn't abandoned its contention that Harmony Gold is skimming off the top of royalties owed to them for home video sales, streaming of the animation, and merchandising. They want to overturn that arbitration's findings and secure a judgement against HG for money they contend HG owes them. They aren't exactly on good terms. Then, of course, there was that sidebar argument in the arbitration where Harmony Gold claimed that its use (with permission) of Tatsunoko's IP made it owner of that IP and that they could continue using it after the license expired. Tatsunoko had to deliver a pointed reminder that 1. copyright law doesn't work that way, 2. they don't appreciate Harmony Gold falsely claiming ownership of their property, and 3. Harmony Gold's rights expire 14 March 2021. Mind you, Tatsunoko Production itself is "under new management". When Nippon TV bought a majority stake in them back in '14, they made it clear they want to maintain tighter control over Tatsunoko's catalog. Tatsunoko has also been on much better terms with Big West, and would throw Harmony Gold to the wolves in a heartbeat in exchange for a cut of the Macross sequel profits (a cut they so aredently desire that they went to court twice unsuccessfully trying to get a piece last decade). So, yeah... Tatsunoko owes Harmony Gold some money (for now). But, by the same token, Tatsunoko sincerely believes that HG has been (and still is) systematically stealing royalties owed to them for the Robotech license. They've seen Harmony Gold make false claims of ownership of Tatsunoko's property as part of a legal proceeding. Their new management wants to keep licensees on a short leash and is courting Big West. They took pains to draw a line under the fact that Harmony Gold's license expires 14th March 2021 and that all rights revert back to them at that point. Where renewal of the Robotech is concerned, as a magic 8-ball might say... "Outlook not so good". HG generally doesn't even acknowledge the anniversaries of the source material behind Robotech, let alone celebrate them.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That would probably be prohibitively small... at 1/100 scale it'd be about 2 1/3 inches tall in Battle Sniper mode (61mm if we're scaling from Imai's 1/32 scale plans). About 1.5x as tall as a Lego minifigure or 2/3 the height of a typical GI Joe. (A bit less than half as tall as a HiMetal R destroid.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    "You idiots! These aren't them! You've drawn their stunt doubles!" I swear, the ideas we come up with poking fun at the comic sound way more fun and interesting than the comic we're actually getting.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    They'd have to go to the animation, most likely. Southern Cross has a lamentable shortage of line art printed at any size... let alone good, clear front and side views. They could, I suppose, use the old Imai model kit plans for reference at least for Battle Sniper mode. The first iteration was even in the same scale as this intended toy.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    For what it's worth, you're actually not that far off. The more detailed art from later Macross shows like Macross Zero and Macross Frontier does suggest the UN Forces and New UN Forces adhere to an ordnance color coding system similar to the one used by the US Armed Forces... complete with a few gaffes in Macross Zero where it's clear the reference photographs the artists were working from were showing dummy ammunition (based on their color banding). It seems to be used for warhead type, at least. That said, art from the same period for the AMM-1 generally depicts it as plain white with a single black band (possibly marking it out as an anti-armor warhead, though the official description suggests it's an anti-armor blast-fragmentation type). Guidance is a stickier wicket. Most missiles in the Macross universe use hybrid guidance systems due to the prevalence of powerful OTM-based ECM and active radar stealth tech on variable fighters. The AMM-1A Arrow is noted to use a combination of ECCM-supported active radar homing, passive imaging infrared homing, and optical contrast seeker guidance systems to guide itself onto its target. VFs by their very nature being inclined to high maneuverability, semi-active homing is vanishingly rare except on bombs since it necessitates a firing aircraft stay relatively in line with the missile.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Accidental progress still counts as progress, right?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    That's just the universal order reasserting itself. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Robotech abhors quality in any form. Hey, Robotech made enormous strides in their handling of female characters in the last ten years. The female characters are actually realistically proportioned this time around... you don't see any of the bad pornstar boob jobs the Waltrips loved to draw on every female character, and you see some variation in body types instead of Tommy Yune's insistence on drawing every woman with an identical pornstar body and in a skintight catsuit.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    About 2 1/2 inches tall in robot mode...
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