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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It occurred to me while I was eating dinner, there is one case I can think of of non-standard markings indicative of affiliation with a specfic planet/system rather than just New UN Forces. Variable Fighter Episode Archive, which I have yet to work on, has some pictures of VFs badged as affiliated with the Sewell Independent Space Force.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    He did, kind of... After Macross II: Lovers Again, Kawamori integrated the idea of non-military mecha into Macross in several different ways. Macross 7 introduced the idea of the New UN Forces selling off decommissioned Destroids and Valkyries to private citizens as heavy machinery and/or leisure craft, and also had two new non-military transformable mecha (an armored car and a tiltrotor) used by the City 7 police department for public safety work. Macross Dynamite 7 doubled down on that by showing that the Earth New UN Forces were loaning old model VFs armed with nonlethal weapons to the Zola Patrol's officers for wildlife conservation work AND introduced a dedicated built-for-civilians VF variant (VT-1C). Macross Frontier and its novelization also introduced a dedicated built-for-civilians training version of the VF-1 in the VF-1C, civilian-use Destroids in the Destroid Work, and also the idea of civilian VF air racing including a dedicated News Valkyrie. (Of course, the VC-079 there is part of a design lineage that was developed for use in Department of Natural Resources-type field work and civilian search-and-rescue before also finding a secondary market as a leisure craft.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Ameku M.D. is a trashfire as always... it's on its third episode of trying to make something out of that ridiculous "is it a curse or isn't it?" storyline, and the twist is even dumber than I had expected. Bravo. Has the Imagine my surprise to learn that the author of the original light novel is a board-certified physician... Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time and Bogus Skill <Fruitmaster> continue to disappoint as expected. There really is no originality left in that genre.😅
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Unless they miss the point entirely or try to "reinvent" it. Most western attempts to adapt anime end up eye-bleedingly awful either because the studio working on it completely missed what made the original work interesting and enjoyable or because some "creative" decides to put their own spin on it in what amounts to a massive show of disrespect for the original. Hopefully Bandai will steer them into doing an AU, so the project can be either exploited or disowned without issue and so fewer of the fanbase's sacred cows are in danger of ending up as hamburger.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    There's not really a difference, TBH. Emigrant fleet defense forces become the emigrant planet defense force when the fleet finds a suitable planet to colonize. Whether those designations are actual ones or just the ones used internally by the Special Forces for that specific operation are anyone's guess, but the unit names and designations we see in other works are more in line with modern ones. Given what we see in the game, likely just infantry and light armored vehicles like self-propelled AA guns and tanks. Maybe some leftover First Space War-era destroids or Regults. Yeah, the Macross Frontier novelizations (TV and Movie) make this connection quite explicit.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Quite high.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Not exactly Gundam's "first" live-action film project... G-Saviour may have been a made-for-TV movie, but it was still a live-action Gundam film and it predates this by like twenty-five years.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's a more flavorful way of calling someone a particularly annoying idiot. Of course, given his hyperfixation on music and inability to pick up social cues, he's probably just high-functioning autistic rather than an idiot... not that that makes him any less obnoxious. Either way, it's easier to treat him as a walking plot device rather than a character in his own right.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I've rewatched Macross 7 a few times over the years. I remember I absolutely hated it when I first watched it, partly because of the awful subs and the first half endlessly recycling the same 2-3 songs, but mainly because Basara is a pillock. Some 20 years later, I love Macross 7. I still think Basara is a pillock, but I sympathize so much with Mylene, Gamlin, and even Gigile being absolutely confounded by his bullsh*t and visibly restraining their desire to throttle him at many points in the series.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Macross, being animation, isn't bound by a lot of the practical limitations that apply to live-action science fiction... so it's free to get weird with its setting-specific take on artificial gravity. Gravity control technology in Macross is presented as being a lot more precise and flexible than your average SF artificial gravity system. It's used in thermonuclear reactors as a way to provide fuel compression and plasma confinement, it's used to focus and collimate particle streams in beam weapons, it's used to tie spacetime in knots in order to make ships teleport interstellar distances, for reactionless flight in planetary atmospheres, and of course for providing artificial gravity for the living spaces in spacecraft. In DYRL? and other titles we see them make gravity fields that intersect at 90 or 180 degree angles within the same space, creating an environment where "down" has more to do with where you're physically standing than the orientation of the ship as a whole. This is really blatant in the Macross Frontier movies, where we see that Island-1 has three separate layers of cityscape at 180 degree angles to each other, with two facing "up" relative to the ship's orientation and the middle one being "upside-down" attached to the underside of the same bulkhead supporting the uppermost layer. Because artificial gravity (and other gravity-control functions like reactionless flight) are created by a network of gravity control systems scattered throughout the ship, it's possible for two immediately adjacent areas to have completely different gravity levels. The outage in the area where Hikaru and Minmay were trapped immediately adjoining the area that still has normal gravity is an extreme example (one repeated in Macross Delta's 14th episode), but this kind of thing is also done entirely on purpose for carrier recovery on ships like the Prometheus and Macross Quarter. A low-power gravity field is projected up from the carrier deck to allow fighters to gently fall towards the deck for arrested recovery, and stronger living area-suitable gravity is available inside the adjoining hangars and the other areas of the ship. We also see this in the very start of Macross Frontier, where a spaceport hallway gradually ramps up its gravity from 0g to 0.75g.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I bought those two posters from a booth at Super Dimension Convention in Torrance, CA. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the seller's store. One of the event coordinators could probably tell you which store it was, since they were regulars at the con every years and always had a large collection of posters for sale.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    It's been delayed enough they should call it Haruhiko Mikimoto Forever.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    The whole premise of Alien: Earth seems like a massive continuity problem all on its lonesome... I have a feeling they're relying on Weyland-Yutani being the Evil Megacorporation staffed by Lying Liars Who Lie to spackle over the massive plot holes. Either that or they're going to fall back on the idea that the company is just SO big that its left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing. Mind you, how much the company knew about the threat on LV-426 prior to Aliens has effectively been retconned several times. The theatrical cut implied they didn't know about the derelict on LV-426 or why the Nostromo had been lost, though the special edition cut suggests they were at least aware based on the colony's distress calls before all contact was lost. Then, of course, Alien: Romulus and Alien: Isolation suggest they knew about the xenomorph 37-42 years before Aliens thanks to the recovery of the Nostromo's flight data recorder by the Anisedora and the recovery of Big Chap from the Nostromo's wreckage. Maybe this is a hamfisted attempt by Scott et. al. to pivot back to the abandoned plot thread about David supposedly creating the xenomorphs.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class has reached its final form... which is to say, its story has developed into one of those isekai-adjacent jfantasy stories that relies heavily on isekai tropes like a world that runs on JRPG/MMORPG logic and a loser protagonist who effortlessly gains godlike power, a harem, and fame, just without the part about being reincarnated into another world. For bonus points, the protagonist even has weeb fanfic self-insert traits like superpower-induced heterochromia, super speed bordering on being able to teleport, and using a katana in a setting where everything else is modeled on western fantasy aesthetics. All they're really missing at this point is white hair and a Nomura-esque questionable-at-best understanding of how belts are meant to be worn. As deep as Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class is in bad fan-fiction trope territory, it's actually pretty painful to watch. It's played absolutely straight, but it feels like watching someone's chuunibyou power fantasy delusions play out in their imagination. It's definitely a strong contender for this season's must-skip series!
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, and the internal bay in the lower leg is not actually in the official spec in most publications either... which makes one question whether it's standard gear on the C-type or some kind of improvised equipment. Yeah. Later titles like Macross 30 did the same despite having ample power to render underwing missiles. I suspect by that point the motive changed from saving on processor resources to just not knowing what to draw.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Ameku M.D. is really an amazing series in its own way. Not because it's a good mystery series, no. Because it's an atrociously bad one where the solution to the mystery is either Insane Troll Logic or Dora the Explorer levels of obvious to everyone but the characters. The most recent episode is a murder-by-arson case where the victims are the world's worst archaeologists from the previous case who nearly died from huffing grave mold, and it takes a distressingly long time and multiple firebombings for anyone to suspect that the culprit might be the guy who directly told the victims AND THE INVESTIGATORS they'd die in a fire in the previous episode. Bonus stupidity points for the fact that there aren't even any red herrings here... he is the ONLY CHARACTER in this story who is not either part of the investigation team or a victim.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    CDJapan still has it available at time of writing. https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/BCQA-20
  18. Seto Kaiba
    As far as we know, all of the Valkyries used by the 727th Independent Squadron are stock. No unusual variants, ace customs, non-standard equipment etc. Macross VF-X2 also has the VF-1 Valkyrie as a selectable aircraft, and it is also able to spam missiles without a Super Pack equipped. What that says to me is that the Valkyries in-game are meant to have missiles hung on their underwing pylons which were not modeled for some reason (likely game engine or system limitations).
  19. Seto Kaiba
    My copy just arrived. Box was a bit dinged-up, but the contents arrived undamaged.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    CDJapan's delivery flew close to the ground, I've just been informed a batch including mine is already out for delivery in multiple cities in the east coast and midwest.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    There are, but those are few and far between. Normally when an idea sounds dumb on paper it's because it's dumb in any medium. 😅 There is an outside chance that Alien: Earth could be good... but it's such a long shot even compulsive gamblers wouldn't bet on it. The best we can realistically hope for is another bland but serviceable splatter story like Alien: Romulus, where a pack of too-dumb-to-live Wey-Yu wagies seemingly do everything in their mortal power to get themselves eaten. Well, that and continuity problems. This whole premise sounds like a buttload of continuity problems.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Teaser trailers are supposed to build anticipation for a release... this is kind of achieving the opposite. Oh boy, another brief shot of a xenomorph frantically scrambling along the walls and ceiling of a nondescript metal corridor at high speed like we haven't seen exactly that dozens and dozens of times already in practically every title outside the original movie. Woo... 🙄 After Romulus, my hopes for a return to actual horror are basically nil... this is gonna be another story where a pack of standard horror movie morons do everything possible to get eaten by a dangerous wild animal, like backpackers hiking across a national park in clothes made entirely from raw beef steak.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Online stores catering to international buyers have officially started shipping preorders of the new DYRL? box set as of about two hours ago (JST). CDJapan notified me a short time ago that my copy has shipped, and should be here before the week is out. 😁
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Not so much as a word. I was actually pretty confused by it, since up until the very last second it looked like Georgiou was going to... Doing that would've been a pretty big retcon, though. I can only assume the showrunners remember exactly how badly previous retcons in Discovery went over with fans and decided to play it safe. Well, we'll see what comes of the interviews now that the movie has pretty definitively bombed. Back when Section 31 was first pitched to the public, I'm sure Michelle Yeoh was probably very enthusiastic about it. She'd signed on to Star Trek: Discovery knowing it was meant to be a seven season commitment to a major studio's flagship property and the lynchpin of an entire streaming service. A nice, steady paycheck in other words. Paramount then offered her what was essentially a contract extension and a pay raise to disembark the sinking Discovery for the starring role in a series. More, and bigger, steady paychecks. Whether she's happy with the character... well... a few interviews have seen her express her dissatisfaction with playing "bitchy" characters like femme fatales. Quite a bit of what she's said about the character suggests the producers promised a "redemption arc" and an opportunity to pivot her character away from being typecast like that if she signed on with Section 31. I guess that's why the movie makes an attempt to gradually scale back Georgiou's signature cattiness, her habit of reminding the people she talks to that she's VERY promiscuous, and her visible enjoyment of others fear and suffering. They ultimately didn't scale it back very far, and did so in a very halfhearted and desultory way, as that basically accounts for her entire character outside of her last episode on Discovery.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Indeed you did, but I was determined... and I managed to watch this dreck without giving Paramount one thin dime. If anything, the camera work in the bar scene screamed "parody". It's the kind of camera work you'd expect in a spy movie spoof like Austin Powers, Johnny English, etc. That's the thing... it doesn't. Mind you, this isn't something we can credit the writers of Section 31 with even a little as it was foreshadowed as far back as the original Mirror Universe episode "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS) in 2267 and established to have already happened by the time of "Crossover" (DS9) in 2370. The Terran Empire was a profoundly unstable and unsustainable government that was forever at risk of collapsing in on itself like a failed souffle. The "glue" that kept the Empire together at the societal level was a combination of militant xenophobia and an extreme form of Social Darwinism. The Terrans are products of an alternate history full of awfulness that left them societally paranoid, and the event that led to the Empire's formation was the ultimate paranoia fuel: the existence of aliens. First Contact in 2063 led the Terrans to form the Terran Empire for fear of being invaded and conquered by hostile aliens. They've basically been burning the universe down ever since, having channeled their xenophobia into a Humanity-first master race ideology. That paranoia-fueled initial violent expansion into the greater galaxy became a self-fulfilling doom spiral. The Empire could only be maintained by keeping the population focused on external threats, to the point that it became circular logic. The Empire needed more resources because it was expanding and conquering new territory, and it was expanding and conquering new territory because it needed more resources. Eventually they were going to run up against an enemy they couldn't beat or the pace of their expansion would exceed the rate of new resources coming in and the whole thing would fall apart. Mirror!Spock predicted in 2267 that the Terran Empire would last at most another 240 years unless its internal policies changed dramatically. We already knew from "Crossover" (DS9) that Mirror!Spock's prediction turned out to be excessively optimistic and the Terran Empire had long since been overthrown by the Klingon Cardassian Alliance as of 2370 (103 years later). As of 2324 in Section 31, the Terran Empire seems to be at death's door because it has run out of resources and can no longer sustain the expansionism that's keeping its populace united. Pre-Kurtzman materials suggested that Mirror!Spock became Emperor at some point after 2267 and tried to reform the Empire into a more peaceful democratic society like the Federation, only for it to be subsequently overrun and conquered by the vengeful Klingon Cardassian Alliance in 2295. The novels from the Relaunch series also suggested that, after the Terran rebellion overthrew the Klingon Cardassian Alliance in the 2370s, they had learned enough about the value of cooperation and compassion to form a Federation-like government of their own and had made peaceful first contact with the (much kinder and more benevolent) Mirror!Dominion. Kurtzman-era materials seem to be a lot more pessimistic. Unless that rift is doing some timey-wimey stuff, the Terran Empire seems to still be around (but actively falling apart under the weight of a resourse crisis) in 2324. We also know from Prodigy that they didn't learn anything and simply reformed the Empire by 2384 after defeating the Klingon Cardassian Alliance
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