Seto Kaiba
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You've heard me say this before, so it shouldn't come as any great surprise... Yes, you are... and I'm surprised you're surprised about it. You've seen what the Robotech fandom is like these days with your own eyes. It's been kind of dodgy ever since the mid-90's, but ever since robotech.com opened it's become more of a cult than a cult fandom. Now that the renewed lack of forward motion and the strenuous efforts of Tommy's goon squad have succeeded in driving most of the casual and moderate fans away from the Robotech franchise, the only ones left are the frothy-mouthed fanatics of various creeds and the handful of fans who continue to love Robotech quietly and/or from a distance. To be blunt, an outspoken Robotech fan who hasn't sacrificed his sanity and sense of perspective to the great Carl Macek and his prophet Tommy Yune and isn't drinking the Harmony Gold Kool-Aid was practically unheard of when you started your podcast, and that condition's in no danger of changing.
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Favorite VF pilot? (not necessarily the best)
Seto Kaiba replied to Xx-SKULL-ONE-xX's topic in Movies and TV Series
Hm... my favorite would be Sylvie Geena from Macross II: Lovers Again, with Maximilian Jenius being a close second. She's one of my favorite Mikimoto character designs, and she was the first ace pilot from a real Macross title I ever saw. It certainly doesn't hurt that she pilots my favorite VF ever, and that she's canonically one of the two best pilots in the entire Sol system circa 2092. -
Robotech II: the Sentinels was limited and confined by its very nature as a minimum-effort sequel and as literal plot spackle for Robotech's overarching story. The creative staff responsible for the Sentinels series clearly had neither the talent nor the wherewithal to make engaging original characters of their own for the show, so they took the path of least resistance and based the story around existing characters for whom all of the hard work had already been done by the creators of the original shows. That way, they could safely push shallow stock characters like Jack Baker and Karen Penn into the background and rely on familiar names with not-so-familiar faces like Rick Hunter to carry the series. 's actually one of the reasons I think the Invid Regent is the best damn character in the entire Sentinels series, and probably the best villain in Robotech as a whole. The other villains in Robotech take themselves seriously... they try to pass themselves off as deep and complex even after Robotech's (re)writers thoroughly washed any trace of subtlety out of the original shows. Even Edwards tried to be all complex and tragic, and it just felt SO stilted and false. The Invid Regent's not having any truck with that nonsense... no sir! He's an unapologetic saturday morning children's show villain. If there was an Invid space puppy around, he'd kick it because that's just what guys like him do. He laughs maniacally, he verbally abuses his incompetent underlings, and all of his evil plans are so shallow, simple, and pointless that even a grade school kid could figure them out without any trouble. More often than not, he's evil simply for the sake of being evil. The Regent is the one character in the entirety of Robotech who seems to realize just how amateurish and high-camp Robotech is... and he plays it to the hilt. That's what makes him great. Having actually read the Sentinels comics by the Waltrips, I didn't think wrapping it up with the 5-issue Prelude miniseries did them any injustice (that hadn't already been done to them by their own authors). Really... the idea of a vacillating ninny like Rick Hunter becoming a great, legendary war hero and leader of men is kind of insulting in its own right. Not to the character, but to the rest of the military in Robotech. If a twit like him is the great leader of what appears to be Earth's postwar military dictatorship, then it's really no surprise that things go as badly as they do later on. Now if it were Lisa, then it might be easier to accept that Admiral Hunter was a great war hero and talented commander... but noooooooo, Robotech can't handle the idea of a woman in authority, so she had to take a backseat to her spineless hubby. Macross's Misa commands Earth's first-ever space colonization mission. Robotech's Lisa becomes the bus driver who carts around her allegedly (and undeservedly) legendary husband while he calls all the shots and eventually quits the service altogether so he can have the spotlight to himself.
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Cost was a factor, yes... but apparently the main factor that killed widespread deployment of the VF-19 and the VF-22 was that they were difficult to operate and the high g-force loads the more powerful engines put on their pilots were causing pilots to lose control of the plane. They didn't have a solution (at the time), so widespread deployment of the VF-19 and VF-22 got shelved. IIRC, they later considered sticking an inertia store converter in the VF-19 cost-effective, but opted to continue development on the YF-24 Evolution because it was thought the Vajra's abilities would exceed the VF-19's, and to preserve military jobs.
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Eh... the Robotech II: the Sentinels series might not have (directly) borrowed substantially from the original Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, but in terms of originality it still belonged to the same category of shameless knockoffs as Space Gandam V and Astro Plan. Personally, I think having Robotech II: the Sentinels continue the story of Robotech's most popular saga (the Macross Saga) is actually a strong argument against the show. Instead of trying to do something new and original with the Robotech story and concept, which would entail actual work and talent, the "creative team" responsible for Sentinels opted to put forth the minimum possible effort by slapping together a series out of existing characters and set pieces. From what little they produced before the project fell apart, it was quite obvious they were relying on the appeal of holdover characters from Macross to camouflage the show's low quality. As much as I'd like to say that the fans would've been kinder to Robotech II: the Sentinels if Carl Macek and company had put in the time and effort to make something halfway original, we all know how it turned out when he tried. A million times zero is still zero. I would think the answer would be obvious. They would cheap out on the production of the comics or novels... partly as a result of being unable to afford anyone with real talent, and partly out of senior management's well justified stance that Robotech isn't worth taking any significant financial risks. We probably would've seen more comics of the same (generally low) quality as the "From the Stars" miniseries or the "Prelude" miniseries, and a novel probably wouldn't have even drawn the attention of most Robotech fans. They keep trying to make new animation because the majority of fans are still hung up on the Macross Saga cast and want a continuation of their story... only this time they had twenty years of desperate self-delusion influencing their assessment of its quality.
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Yeah... I know what you're feeling seeing that thing. I kinda wish they'd opted to save the Tornado packs and make those Alto's mid-season upgrade instead. Every time I see that bloody thing, I can't help but wonder if a model kit company foisted that one on the movie... it looks, for all the world, like a VF-25-themed freshening of Kawamori's SW-XAII Schneegans...
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Nah... if what little art we've seen is anything to go by, it's the wrong color to be Hakuna Aoba's VF-1, which appears to be a blue VF-1A. As Talos said, the one we see in the trailer is a red VF-1J.
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Based on what I've heard and read about that, I can only assume it's because they were just bowing to the will of the network. They kept the show chugging along long enough that they were able to wrap it up gracefully enough, even though doing so meant an incredibly unsubtle cast change for T&A value. Now Robotech's creative staff... how those twits stayed employed is a mystery for the ages.
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Ugh... no matter how many times I see it, I still find the YF-29 downright ugly and I can't imagine why they would need a mid-season upgrade that doesn't seem to offer anything they didn't already have in the VF-25 and VF-27. Eh? So far, its applications seem limited to only fold-related technologies like fold drives, communications, the dimensional shift thingy that makes the ISC go, and pin-point barriers. That's hardly a magic "make anything better" material. Now if you want to talk about tachyons or Robotech's magic flowers...
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I would assume so, since it doesn't mention regime-specific performance for the system.
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Dunno... fold quartz is apparently something the Vajra mine from dead stars and process biomechanically using V-type bacteria. It's possible the New UN Spacy could find a way to refine the raw materials by themselves if they really wanted to.
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Hell if I know... presumably something to do with fold waves or something like that, since fold quartz is what makes the ISC go. The early prototype handled 2G for ~5 seconds... the production model in the VF-25 apparently handles 27.5G for 120 seconds.
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In the YF-24.
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's far as I'm aware, the EX-Gear doesn't actually play any (direct) role in the reduction of g-force loads. It's just a more advanced and precise control system that works by a mixture of conventional controls and monitoring nerve impulses in the pilot's muscles, and combines that with an advanced self-learning feature to memorize the user's habits for precision control. All in all, it's supposed to provide the sensation of "wearing" a variable fighter, while also doubling as an ejection seat and powered suit/EVA equipment. To put it succinctly, if Gundam's your thing it might be easier to think of the military version of EX-Gear as a core fighter you can wear. The only mention of it helping to reduce g loads I can find is that it supposedly automatically changes the angle of the seat to optimize the pilot's g-force resistance. The civilian models (yes, plural) aren't nearly as full-featured, and presumably don't confer all of the benefits of military grade equipment (mostly notably lacking the self-learning function and having shorter operation times). The system that's supposedly responsible for reducing the bulk of the g-force burden on the pilot and the airframe is the Inertia Store Converter, which apparently siphons off excess inertia beyond what the pilot and airframe can stand and converts it into "dimension distortion field energy" before slowly returning it to the plane at manageable (and survivable) levels. It's apparently the more capable cousin of the inertia vector control system used on the Q-Rau and YF-21/VF-22. EX-Gear alone probably wouldn't have done anything for Guld...
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Eh... they sorted that in later generation suits, where the beak of the visor was made from clear plastic or some kind of OTM analogue for same. Either way, the pointy beak of the helmet is supposedly where they house the sensors for the optically-cued targeting system. On examination of a few other sources, I would hazard a guess that the enlarged shoulders and the bulky bits around the lower legs house some of the machinery for the powered motion assist system that the DYRL suit supposedly had, and that subsequent models presumably had as well. That's just me having a shot in the dark though...
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Newbie Questions thread merge, here we come... That's a very good question though... one I don't think we have an answer for. I know in DYRL they're shown glowing in the dark, presumably as some kind of rescue beacon/"watch me for safety" light. On certain fighters (mostly the VF-22 and the Macross II ones) the shoulder pads are used as part of the pilot's restraints, but that doesn't seem to hold true for most designs. On some suits, like the Macross M3 one and the Macross Plus one, they seem to be practically cosmetic (though I would guess they still glow in the dark). I'd guess the small and flat ones on the 2050s era suit are probably attachment points for EX-Gear, but the rest is kind of a mystery... it's also worth nothing that not ever design has them. Most of the ones in Macross 7 don't, nor do the VF-22's suit, the Feios's suit, etc.
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Oh, that? Yeah, that outcome wasn't a surprise. In my experience, most Robotech fans are perfectly happy to accept baseless speculation as though it were fact... so long as it supports whatever crackpot point they think they're proving. Robotech was without an official source of information for so long that most fans don't want to accept the official source because it doesn't agree with the last fifteen years of fanon, pet theories, and utterly baseless speculation. It certainly doesn't help that many Robotech fans are used to American style SF, wherein any materials outside the show itself are "Expanded Universe" and therefore automatically non-canon. They're so used to having no facts to go on that the very idea of being able to back your claims up with documented evidence is practically an alien concept... and having a fan-site base its stats on official stats is essentially an impossibility in Robotech, so I suppose their confusion is understandable. Nah, let's hold off on that until I've invented something really useful... like a way to smite Robotech fans over TCP/IP.
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Nah... as big a pack of idiots and apefaces as they are, there are other reasons why some Macross shows would be difficult to license and distribute outside of Japan. Likewise, if the property owners for Battletech and MechWarrior stayed away from the "unseen" mecha, HG would have no grounds to complain or interfere. In practical terms, there's nothing stopping distributors outside those regions where HG has trademarks on the Macross name and logo from licensing other Macross shows. There are a few roadblocks related to the cost of licensing the music that make obtaining Macross 7 and likely Macross Frontier as well a tricky and expensive proposition. Since HG has covered the major nations where dubbing and distribution is handled, they've pretty effectively shut out Macross from most countries. Essentially zero... unless Warner decides that Robotech is going to be the next big thing (fat chance, since they seem to be sitting on their hands waiting for the license to expire), that's unlikely to happen.
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He's not the only one... even though he can't post here anymore, MEMO's best buddy Maverick_LSC is still periodically creeping this thread and my profile here to see what I've been saying about Robotech and Harmony Gold, and what I think is a feature on dougbendo's podcast so frequently that there've probably been more Robotech fan podcasts about me than Carl Macek and Tommy Yune put together by now. I'm even a frequent topic for discussion on the other lunatic conspiracy theory podcast run by JuanRT. Seems like I'm the one guy the entire Robotech lunatic fringe is obsessing over. It's like being that fruity f**ker from Twilight, except it's ugly dateless men obsessing over me instead of ugly dateless girls and neglected housewives.
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MEMO is short for MEMO1DOMINION... he's one of thought police/volunteer moderators on robotech.com and the owner/admin of robotechx.com. He's a long-time wanna-be bigshot in the Robotech fandom who has done a lot of backstabbing and taking credit for the handiwork of others to raise his stock in the eyes of Tommy Yune. He's one of the worst of Robotech's die-hard lunatic fringe, and the slanderer-in-chief holding Bendo and JuanRT's strings. He's reportedly doing all this because he thinks if he kisses Tommy's ass hard enough he'll land himself a job at Harmony Gold. Word has it his Robotech obsession was even the reason his wife divorced him...
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The most recent example was February 2010, when Harmony Gold put the screws to the almost-finished Robotech Genesis, a fan-made animated Robotech feature... sent them a cease and desist letter demanding they stop use of the Robotech name and images similar to those in the 1985 Robotech TV series. You can read the piece on Kena Cubed about it here or the RobotechX news piece on it here. Yeah... when UEG first received the cease and desist order, MEMO contacted UEG Productions to claim that I had used my influence at Harmony Gold to have the project shut down for some unclear and petty reason. As soon as the news became public, he changed his story and started claiming that the irregularities in the cease and desist order were because I had faked the documents to trick them into shutting down. Later, I ended up having a chat with UEG's head honcho and he assured me he wasn't buying MEMO's BS for a second, and he filled me in on what really went down.
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Yeah... but unlike the problem children we're "at war" with overseas, this nutjob's grip on reality is so tenuous that he actually thinks his views are that of the majority and that he's a respected and admired spokesman for the entire Robotech fandom. I'd say he just can't tell the difference between "laughing with" and "laughing at", but his problems are deeper than that. I'm no clinical psychologist, but you don't need a Psy.D to see that he's got a massive inferiority complex, that he's trying to compensate for his humiliating minimum wage job and lack of a future by being an internet tough guy, and that he has a penis fixation so pronounced that even Sigmund Freud would've found it excessive. As I see it, his tendency to ignore niceties like spelling and grammar to the winds and typing like someone in dire need of a copy of "English for Dummies" is the least of his problems. Totally... if half the stuff they said about me were true, Robotech wouldn't be in the state it's in today. If I had the kind of clout they say I do, I wouldn't be wasting my time using it to get Harmony Gold's lawyers to put the kibosh on fan films. I'd have long since scuttled the whole worthless franchise and sold the rights to the three original shows off to someone with a working brain. Of course, I'd also have to worry about the upkeep costs and landscaping for my suburban volcano doom fortress and legion of witless minions. If you're really serious about having their behavior examined, I know a guy who could help... he doesn't have his degree yet, but he's a senior level student in a good clinical psychology program.
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What's your favorite manga series?
Seto Kaiba replied to CrusherJ's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Hm... presently, my favorites are Macross the First, B Gata H Kei, and Trinity Blood. -
You ain't seen nothin' yet. Believe it or not, what you're reading is Bendo on his best behavior and at his most balanced. To him, it probably is... mind you, he's probably spending a substantial percentage of his own income on his Robotech-related activities. I understand he's pushing 30, lives at home with his mother, and works full time as a "sales floor associate" at a BestBuy in Ohio.
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Woah... now that is a new experience, hearing about another site's online drama on MacrossWorld that I'd first heard about ages ago from my father of all people. To be honest, I wasn't aware there was still anything like activity on that site. The few old time Robotech fans I still talk to nowadays usually described RDF HQ as a ghost town, and I see it's not without cause. Looks like that one isolated drama thread is about the only sign that the place hasn't completely dried up and died. There's too much concentrated stupid in that thread for me to consider giving it a thorough read-through though.