Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13279

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, she and Hux are the First Order's designated buttmonkeys... if she comes back, they'll have to humiliate her even worse to one-up her getting tossed into the trash in The Force Awakens and getting beaten up by Finn and tossed into a bottomless pit in The Last Jedi. If they bring her back again, she'll absolutely end up an anticlimax boss again. Frankly, my money is on her accidentally killing herself in some spectacularly stupid way. If Phasma was one of the Knights of Ren, she probably wouldn't be a comically incompetent stormtrooper boss. I kinda figured the guards that Rey and Ren minced were the Knights of Ren. Oh, no doubt Phasma was meant to be the new trilogy's memetic badass like Boba Fett. Unfortunately, she's a little too much like Boba Fett in that her status as a badass and The Dreaded is entirely Informed Ability and isn't actually supported by onscreen performance. I hate to say it, but it's the one point where I actually find myself in complete agreement with the allegations by the new trilogy's critics that it was trying to push a socio-political agenda. Such a fuss was made in the promotional material about Phasma being a woman, and how armor on a woman didn't need to look feminine, and then the writers missed a memo or revolted against the idea and made her completely useless.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the first two episodes of Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken over dinner, and I'm kind of indifferent to it... it doesn't really feel like it's distinct from the other, very similar Isekai series that've come out recently like Overlord and Konosuba. Honestly, it kind of feels like a crossover between the two. Like a grown-up Kazuma is living a more benign version of Overlord's plot as a slime instead of an undead. Gonna give Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight a whack tomorrow over lunch. My girlfriend put me on to that one a while ago, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Deku being a crybaby gets old pretty fast but otherwise it's really good. (Considering what the internet has done with him, All Might really ought to change his name to All Meme...) EDIT: I forget if "Peace Sign" is the second or third OP... but it's a terrible earworm. Be prepared to be humming that song for days.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    From January of last year! Still, bleh... Tochiro's probably in a better position to know than anyone else here.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Seems like a lot of the light novel adaptations coming out lately are capped at 12-13 episodes in a season. There's even odds it'll pick up enough of a following to be granted a second season on the spike in light novel sales or its viewership share. Yen Press picked up the license for the light novel and manga, so that may help drive demand for a second season as well. They seem to be adapting 3 light novel volumes at a time, so it was kind of inevitable that the third season would be a bit of a slow one. Volume 7 was basically the comedown in the wake of Momon saving the day in Re-Estize in Volume 6, Volume 8 was a breather episode made up of side stories, and Volume 9 was mostly given over to laying the foundations for the next major story arcs where Ainz takes overt action in the world as the Sorcerer King instead of under the alias of Momon. Nice, I've got that one bookmarked on Crunchyroll. Haven't started it yet. I'll admit what got me to look at it was a bloody meme about a tsundere dragon I saw on Imgur.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Let's go all the way down the McCarthyist paranoia rabbit hole and start theorizing about how the PhD who wrote the paper is really a Russian agent!
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Considering the press coverage for Discovery's second season has focused pretty heavily on how CBS is trying to appeal to the many Trekkies who were put off by the show's first season, it wouldn't come as much of a surprise. (I'm mildly amused that CBS appears to be choking down a slice of humble pie WRT their, and Jason Isaacs, boasting about not needing Trekkies in the audience.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) has a new season that just started airing recently, which adapts the third game in the original trilogy. The first episode is eminently skippable, given that it's adapting the frigging tutorial from the game, but the rest should be pretty good. I've heard good things about Goblin Slayer, and intend to catch the first episode over lunch today. The light novels'll have to tide me over for a bit until we get a fourth season of Overlord.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Doc Hammer confirmed in one of the video interviews that the original Hank and Dean Venture were born naturally, so that theory would appear to be jossed. (If it wasn't already before that when Doc told them about their mother and clone status right before their memories were wiped by OSI.) There was a pretty good theory going around for a while that Hank and Dean were actually clones of Brock and Rusty, until it was revealed that Doc already had the clones going before Brock came on in the wake of Myra's arrest and the failed Phantomos sting. It'll be interesting to see what the next season makes of... EDIT: Oh woah... a thought occurs:
  9. Seto Kaiba
    This would be a compelling argument if we were talking about most any alien-of-the-week from Star Trek, but we're talking about the Vulcans. We've seen a pretty good cross section of Vulcan society over the years... from their pre-Federation military troops and Starfleet officers to various stripes of civilians like teachers, scientists, diplomats, politicians, religious officials, housewives, children, random civilians, some political and religious dissidents, and even a serial killer and a gun-running terrorist. The only times we've seen an even slightly unkempt Vulcan was the Vulcans who'd been living rough in the desert for religious reasons like Sybok, Syran, or T'Pau... and only Sybok eschewed typical razor-straight Vulcan hair. (Vulcan grooming standards are heavily lampshaded by comic relief Vulcans like T'Vau or T'Ryssa, whose messy personal grooming is acknowledged as a rather distinctly un-Vulcan thing.) A specific type of facial hair... the Mirror Universe goatee. Disco Spock is rocking a full Riker.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Unless he was vacationing with his hippie brother Sybok, I call BS... an unkempt Vulcan is almost a contradiction in terms in a species that has favored laser-straight bangs and the clean shaven look for centuries with no sign of change. (So much so that the only unkempt Vulcans in Star Trek media are invariably the designated comic relief character, like T'Vau in How Much for Just the Planet? or T'Ryssa Chen in the TNG Relaunch.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Season 7's been a real trip... a lot of payoffs for plot threads they've been building up since the very beginning. I haven't had a chance to watch the last episode yet, but it's been wild so far. Some of the twists were pretty predictable given past seasons, like... The one I didn't see coming was...
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Are we getting Spock's rebellious phase? That beard seems weirdly out of place and unkempt for a species that seems to prefer laser-like precision in their personal grooming. You'd expect Vulcan facial hair to be a little neater.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... if they're anything like the whiny ponce they answer to, I'll bet cash money they get Worf'd to show how strong Rey has gotten. When did a convoluted explanation of that come in? The one of the only things I remember from the few Star Wars books I'd read as a kid (mine was a Star Trek household) was that the Jedi used whatever crystals they could find. I have this vague memory of an entire story centered around a master (was it Luke?) telling his trainees to f*ck off and find their own damn crystals, which led to stuff like going spelunking inside an active volcano, growing them in a lab, nicking parts from an old display, and smashing up family heirlooms for gemstones. I think it was that same series that said that the dark side users all have red because their crystals are made in a factory and that's just how they come out?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    One of the problems with those family tree designs is that, once you get to the YF-24's derivatives, no two of them seem to be in complete agreement. The most precise explanation would be that the Macross Frontier fleet's local branches of Shinsei and LAI were developing the YF-25 Prophecy and YF-29 Durandal concurrently based on the YF-24's data they obtained from the New UN Government. Development of the YF-29 stalled early on due to the fleet not having access to fold quartz of the necessary size and purity to build a workable prototype. The YF-25 advancing to trial production as the VF-25 provided a viable substitute test platform for a few of the YF-29's key features like the wingtip engines and beam turret via their incorporation into the VF-25's all-regime Tornado Pack. Test data from the VF-25's development and practical testing with the Tornado Pack, as well as a fair number of parts appropriated from the VF-25 itself, enabled the Frontier fleet to hastily complete the YF-29 prototype in 2059 using fold quartz they obtained in the course of their conflict with the Vajra. So the YF-29 isn't derived from the VF-25 or Tornado Pack, but the YF-29 prototype we see was only able to be completed because data from the VF-25 and Tornado Pack took the place of the test data they couldn't get while they were waiting for the necessary materials to build it. Yeah, I hate it when they print stuff in teeny-weeny Eye-Strain-O-Vision™. It's for stuff like that that I keep a 4x magnifying lens paperweight around. That line of text says「情報流出？」, or "Information Leakage?". What it's referring to is, as @Sildani mentioned, the fact that the design of the production VF-27 was influenced by the Macross Galaxy fleet illicitly obtaining development data from the Macross Frontier fleet's YF-29 program via intentional leaks at LAI.
  15. Seto Kaiba
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Adam Savage once said "Reality makes for a crappy special effects crew." There is a similar principle at work in both the Star Wars prequel trilogy's conclusion and more recent entries like Rogue One, The Force Awakens, and The Last Jedi. The original Star Wars trilogy was a pure science fantasy story arc with an almost literal black-and-white morality to it as the noble and selfless seekers of liberty in the Rebellion clash with the vile minions of tyranny from the Galactic Empire. Since the Senate was dissolved offscreen early in the first film, the only politicians we see are Leia Organa, Mon Mothma, and Lando Calrissian. Lando is the only one who behaves even remotely realistically in that he's mainly just looking out for his own interests and those of his constituents even if it means kowtowing to obviously evil parties to do so. He's still shown behaving as a selfless heroic individual once evil finally pushes him too far... which isn't particularly realistic for a politician. Starting in the prequel trilogy, a deeper look into the corrupt politics of the Old Republic shows us a very familiar "ripped from the headlines" picture of a governing body wherein the politicians invested in maintaining the status quo have little interest in doing anything involving the "greater good" unless their own interests are under direct and immediate threat and otherwise spend their time furthering their own agendas and those of the special interests who back them. The Galactic Civil War was literally started when the Senate issued a rare rebuke to a corporate special interest group (the Trade Federation) after its leadership got busted engaging in blatantly illegal activity and the government of the victimized world made enough noise about it that protecting that corporate special interest group from prosecution by burying the matter in a subcommittee was no longer possible. The actual war was literally the Chancellor wielding the corporate special interests that ran the Confederacy of Independent Systems as an elaborate distraction so that the self-obsessed politicians would gleefully erode the foundations of democracy for him by voting more and more power to him as long as he promised to make the boogeyman he created go away and stop threatening their interests. Likewise, the New Republic Senate being so busy and self-involved as it bickered over scaling back its armed forces and a million other trivial nothings involving establishing its public policy that it almost completely missed a threat that was practically right in front of them is, to borrow a turn of phrase from Disney itself, practically a Tale as old as time. Fairly half of the large empires that fell in antiquity fell for that exact reason... they were so preoccupied with internal matters that they didn't notice or minimized the threat of an invading power until its boot was descending upon their necks. That kind of incredible, incomprehensible stupidity is in fact distressingly common in politics even today. It just doesn't make for particularly exciting storytelling. Realistic depictions of routine politics seldom make for riveting entertainment... that's why C-SPAN's viewership is so low.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    VF-4 development began in 2005, officially. That said, that is pretty clearly the production VF-4 that didn't exist until 2012.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The First Order doesn't need to occupy every planet in the galaxy in order to become its de facto rulers... they just need to be able to project more force than any other interested party. With the bulk of the New Republic fleet having been wiped out along with all the planets in the Hosnian system, they are now the dominant military power in the galaxy. They're essentially ruling the galaxy using the Klaus Wolfenbach method: "Don't make me come over there." What makes this possible is that Star Wars is a setting where interstellar faster-than-light travel on a pangalactic scale is available to all and sundry. It doesn't take an inordinate amount of effort for the First Order to shift a fleet with more firepower than any one system's defenses can hope to resist, and that fleet can be on your doorstep in a matter of days. It doesn't help that the New Republic, like the Old Republic before it, seemingly concentrated all of its military power into a single centralized armed force. The Old Republic's member worlds had no way to realistically defend themselves from the Grand Army once it turned on them to serve Palpatine. With the New Republic defense forces crippled by the loss of their main fleet, most if not all of its member worlds likely have little in the way of defenses. Had the New Republic not been scaling down its military, it might not be screwed. (IIRC wasn't it a thing in the now-Legends continuity that many of the Rebellion's warships were modified starliners and the like.) That blowing up their massive headquarters installation (Starkiller Base) doesn't seem to have slowed them down much, I think we can surmise that the First Order is VERY VERY BIG. IIRC it's supposed to have been started by Imperial Forces who didn't surrender after Jakku. I'm sure the Disney EU has a lengthy and detailed explanation as to how the New Republic stupidly (yet realistically) ignored a huge and painfully obvious threat brewing on their doorstep. Didn't they also abduct a crap-ton of kids and indoctrinate them into troops like Finn? They're probably only just finding out around the time The Last Jedi takes place. The total loss of the Hosnian system barely gave the people there enough time to look up and go "What's that?", so the sudden loss of communication would not have instantly be interpreted as "The First Order blew it up". It would be down to the Resistance to get word out, and they don't seem to be as big or as connected as the Rebellion was.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'll admit I unapologetically ship Mylene x Gamlin in no small part because those two are the only ones outside of Colonel Barton who actually attempt to chastise Basara for his asinine behavior.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    ... this feels like it might be a bad idea. I mean, I know Star Wars fans love Boba Fett and all, but this seems like kind of a one-note concept that'll get old very fast.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I may be completely wrong, but the impression I got was that the First Order's entire schtick was that they regard themselves as the Galactic Empire's de facto government-in-exile and that the main goal of their overthrow of the New Republic was to restore Imperial governance across the galaxy. That's kind of an awful thing for most of the galaxy, since IIRC the Empire saw non-humans as second class citizens at best and had legal slavery and all kinds of other atrocious behaviors. If the map I found is accurate, we're talking at least half the galaxy... relocating THAT population is a rather big ask, and abandoning them to their fate isn't something the former Rebellion/New Republic would find ethically sound. (Plus, the First Order isn't likely to just let them go and would probably pursue them to wipe them out.) The galaxy's a populous place? I mean, the Old Republic-turned-Empire supposedly controlled most of it, and the First Order's looking to recapture that. Being Space Rome, the rest is the unexplored wilderness and full of who knows how many hostile powers who might resent massive amounts of refugees flooding their space. Stupidity, mostly.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of... it helps to look at WWII organization for the US forces too, since the UN Spacy's squadron organization is a weird melange of US and Imperial Japanese practices drawn from their respective armies, navies, and air forces. They seem to be pulling unit sizes from the Air Force side, IMO. The standard squadron size is the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service's 15 planes, while the maximum in the US Army Air Force in the same period was 24. It's a slightly awkward situation, translation-wise, thanks to the UN Spacy's organization being such an odd mixture of different branches of service and that the IJN organization doesn't line up neatly with the USAF/USN ones. Partly, this is because there is no organizational level between NATO II (Battalion/Squadron) and NATO ••• (Platoon/Flight) in the aviation context. So instead of being Squadron > ??? > Flight, it comes out as Squadron > Flight > Element. Though, in possibly deference to the Battroid's status as a land warfare weapon, they seem to have opted to make Platoon the official translation for that lowest level since that same number (3-4) is what you get in a tank platoon. It's a messy bit of translation, that's for sure.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    No, she just has the outgoing innocent sweetness and periodic foul temper of a teenage girl whose crush is a completely oblivious prat.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Militarily, at least, it's not an unprecedented loss. What the First Order achieved by destroying the Hosnian system is basically what Imperial Japan attempted to accomplish with the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. One swift strike to destroy their enemy's fleet and cripple any attempt to coordinate counter-offensives aimed at preventing their advance. The First Order just had a lot more success since they did it with a super-WMD instead of through a sneak attack with conventional weapons. (WRT putting all one's eggs in a single basket... it's worth remembering that the United States keeps its capitol building and its supreme military headquarters in extremely close proximity to each other as well. They're only about four miles apart, as the crow flies.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    That's one of the plot threads in The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens that doesn't really make sense when you think about it. The whole reason the Resistance exists is because the New Republic was organizationally aligned to Lawful Stupid, not only having left a significant Imperial remnant kicking around the galaxy but also disbanding a large part of its armed forces to make some kind of bass-ackwards political point. For them to have allies in another part of the galaxy who are powerful enough to realistically challenge the entire First Order militarily but can't be arsed to intervene to save the Resistance kind of means they're not actually allies. If they were supplying the Resistance with weapons and training, it'd be them using the Resistance for plausibly deniable proxy warfare with the First Order the way the US used Afghani insurgents against the Soviets. IIRC, the official explanation of the assertion that the First Order had effectively overthrown the New Republic simply by destroying the Hosnian system was that the Hosnian system happened to be the seat of the New Republic government AND where the bulk of its defense fleet was based. So when the whole system suffered an earth-shattering kaboom, it took the New Republic's entire supranational (supraplanetary?) government and military out of the picture. Really, I don't think Rian Johnson was deliberately setting out to f*ck things up out of malice or even idiocy. He noticed - because you'd have to be a real idiot not to - that The Force Awakens was just a by-the-numbers remake of A New Hope and that the sequel was set to be more of same. He wasn't going to get away with a total plot derailment, so he attacked the script with the manic energy of a writer-director who is either a brilliant visionary or a card-carrying member of the Dunning-Kruger club and injected a few ill-considered twists in an effort to subvert the usual Star Wars narrative of The Chosen One. On some levels it worked pretty well, IMO. Rey is a more interesting character as a blank slate who isn't being railroaded down her path by family ties and a mysterious past. She has more agency as the lead character that way. She's less The Chosen One and more The One Who Chose. On others... well... Canto Bight.
×
×
  • Create New...