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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the VF-27 had a different sort of cover. Namely, the Macross Galaxy fleet never made the legally-required disclosures of the VF-27's existence and specifications to the New UN Government. So when Brera's VF-27γ is first sighted during the mission to rescue elements of the Macross Galaxy fleet it gets reported as an unidentified aircraft. When that report is relayed to the New UN Forces by their own representative on the Macross Quarter it is quickly dismissed as a "foo fighter" without supporting evidence. Thereafter, there's the implication that Chief of Staff Mishima is working from within the Frontier NUNS to cover up Macross Galaxy's involvement until Brera openly declares his affiliation after the Gallia IV incident.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    While that probably wouldn't be very useful in combat given the main detection and ranging systems are non-visual (radar, lidar, infrared), that's not to say it wouldn't be very useful in a defensive context. Using the programmable coating to make the exterior of a parked aircraft match the color and texture of the ground underneath them would go quite a ways towards hiding aircraft from aerial or satellite photography. Like the camouflage netting used to conceal aircraft on the ground today, but built directly into the aircraft. We also see Delta Flight switch seamlessly from airshow colors to low-viz greys at one point in the series, which would also be very useful for avoiding detection and identification by strictly visual means (since they have active stealth to hide from radar).
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty normal for a Macross inclusion then... the same approach Kawamori normally uses. Drawing on both versions freely and interchangeably with an explanation that's a polite-ish way of saying "I do what I want". 😆 Yep... thanks to that smart coating technology, there's strictly speaking nothing stopping anyone in-setting from doing something like the above... which is an official plamodel kit with official decals. (The Bandai 1/72 Roid Brehm use Sv-262Hs Draken III.) Then again, the Frontier New UN Spacy didn't seem to mind its pilots putting racy paintings on their strictly-military-issue aircraft even without the benefit of the programmable smart coating: How Maruyama sold his superiors on this paintjob for frontline combat use might just be the greatest story never told. That's his commanding officer's girlfriend! Well, that or how Canaria Bernstein persuaded the famously overprotective Ozma Lee to let her paint an explicit picture of his little sister Ranka on her VB-6 Konig Monster... 🙃 Passionate Walkure was at least partly a compilation movie, so I wouldn't call that "slapdash" so much as "par for the course". Normally when a protagonist switches machines in a Macross story they move to a completely different and visually distinct aircraft. I think Macross Delta might be the first time the protagonist switches back to the old machine with a different paintjob.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Huh. I guess I've been under a rock because I didn't know Super Robot Wars Y was even out. 😆 Anyway, that noise you heard was my brain changing gears without a clutch because I honestly could not remember of the J改 was exclusive to the TV series or not. Turns out, yeah... it's not a thing in the movie timeline. The VF-31J改 only exists in the Macross Delta TV series version where Hayate's original VF-31J is destroyed on Ragna when the New UN Spacy attempts to sink the Sigur Berrentzs with a thermonuclear reaction bomb. Hayate uses Messer's VF-31F for a while after that and then switches to using the VF-31J改 for the series finale. 'course, I wouldn't be me if I stopped there would I? I decided to look into whether there are any actual differences between the VF-31J and VF-31J改... and the answer I found is "Not really". The identified differences all relate to software and calibrations, with the flight control program including some data from when Hayate was using Messer's VF-31F. The rest is just the settings of the programmable anti-beam coating the VF-31s and Sv-262s use in lieu of paint. The aircraft's colors and markings are just settings programmed into what is essentially the lovechild of an e-paper flexible display and a vinyl vehicle wrap that covers the entirety of the aircraft's armor skin and also functions as ablative armor against energy weapons. Theoretically, Hayate could change the colors of his VF-31 just as easily as Mirage changes the colors of the Sv-262Ba she steals in Passionate Walkure. If he wanted to add some black accents and a personal mark to commemorate Messer, it wouldn't require anything except a design to feed into the system and he could change the settings back whenever the mood struck him. So it's a continuity error caused by recycled footage, but also something that can be explained away very very easily.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Had a lot of great times thanks to Itagaki-san's work. When I was in HS, a bunch of us band kids used to sneak into unused classrooms after school to play video games using the big old CRT TV carts while we waited for tuesday night marching band practice to start. Dead or Alive 2 on the Sega Dreamcast was one of our go-to games for years. From what I've read about him in the past, it always sounded like he would've been a blast to work with. The industry has lost one of the real ones.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Went back and finished that third episode of Let's Play... and I have to say that the series is thought-provoking in its own way. That said, the thoughts it's provoking aren't necessarily the ones the original author intended to provoke. There are two things that it most strongly reminds me of: I'm probably going to drop this one, mainly because its story frequently devolves into pure cringe fuel. The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest is hitting all the most generic and formulaic plot beats of the "The Protagonist is Horribly Overpowered and We're All Just Lucky to Have Them" wish fulfillment story. It's not bad. The animation's fine and the story is competently organized and presented. There's just no spark of creativity to it. It's all the boring and conventional overpowered hero tropes proficiently laid out end-to-end in an almost mechanical procession devoid of human feeling. It feels cynical, like a story the author wrote because they lost a bet or wanted to prove that anyone could get a suitably generic trend-chasing fantasy story published. Let This Grieving Soul Retire does a little trolling this week, and it's actually pretty fun. Got some good chuckles out of it too.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    May I Ask for One Final Thing? continues to be an absolute treat. Not only is seeing Scarlet gleefully, dare I say giddily, beat the tar out of the very worst and most evil kind of people in high society is deeply amusing and terribly cathartic in its own right... the author of the original work was clearly having entirely too much fun subverting the usual otome narrative tropes here. True, but that cooler's usually got provisions for a few people in it (since most folks don't go camping alone) and a few brews spread over the course of an afternoon of activity is a bit different from clearing a whole case of beers in a single protracted sitting. Gen's cooler is a 24+ can capacity model and it's still visibly full after he's had like three (and we know that he didn't pack it with ice, since he mentions using the frozen pork for that purpose). There's at least one occasion earlier in the series where he runs out of beer in just one day and ends up walking to the nearest store for more. He has like, seven or eight beers just onscreen in the course of this one episode. Let's Play served up another cringeworthy episode that feels like someone asked ChatGPT to write a romance anime using nothing but the contents of TVTropes articles.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Is it? Genuinely asking. The folks I know who go camping inevitably pair camping with other outdoor activities like birdwatching, hiking, caving, kayaking, swimming, fishing, hunting, and the like. I've never encountered a camping enthusiast whose idea of camping is just "pitch a tent and get sh*tfaced". Even the campers in horror movies do more than that with their time outdoors (excl. getting chased and/or killed). Gen's cooler's like a 30+ can affair and he's emptying that sucker in a single sitting.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    On the subject of "the VF-24 as a VF-25 with different wings", it reminded me of this custom kit by VF-1Riders that they dubbed "VF-25 Messiah Legacy". The resemblance really is uncanny.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, at this point it seems like every character in Solo Camping for Two is an alcoholic and is using (solo) camping as a cover for their drinking problem.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Well, if you take Master File's word for it they do a LOT of computer modeling and virtual testing before they ever move on to a physical test article. Partly because of how hard it is to actually physically deconstruct and recycle the functionally graded composite materials used in VF and warship construction. They do have enormous manufacturing muscle with dozens of factory satellites and factory ships though, so building everything is way way faster. Mass production of the F-22 took about 15 years to get to 195 aircraft. The Macross Frontier fleet ran out 156 VF-19EFs, with multiple variants including recon and command models, in about a year. Said "bulb feature" is probably the same kind of composite sensor found on the noses of other Shinsei Industry Valkyries like the VF-19. The VF-25 and VF-27 have similar types of composite sensors, but they sit higher up on the nose. (The little blue panels seen here)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Not quite what I was getting at there... that's something different. The regular vs. special forces versions of the VF-14 and the 1st and 2nd production types of the VF-19 are variants with different appearances, sure, but they're still "universal" models available around the galaxy. It wasn't until Macross Frontier and particularly Macross the Ride that they really properly introduced the idea of emigrant governments locally developing their own major and minor variations of existing Valkyrie models. The first proper example being the VF-171EX and VF-171 Block IIIF in the TV series and movies respectively. Both used the VF-171 Block II as a starting point but modified that design to incorporate improvements and new features and capabilities based specifically on the needs and wants of the Frontier fleet's local New UN Forces and initially existed there and nowhere else. The VF-19EF Caliburn is another good example. The Frontier New UN Forces wanted their special forces to adopt the VF-19E, but they weren't happy with the performance and capabilities of the export specification VF-19E in its stock state. So they changed the design and made their own version. They altered the aerodynamics, adopted a new wing design, reintroduced the canards, included some proprietary parts, calibrations, and software, etc. and when the dust settled they had a VF-19 that was uniquely the Frontier fleet's and it'd changed so much it got a new variant letter issued as VF-19EF (VF-19E Frontier fleet specification). Macross Galaxy did something a bit less extreme with the VF-19C, tweaking the design in various minor ways leading it to be designated VF-19C/MG21 (VF-19C produced in Macross Galaxy specification). Macross Delta lowkey ran with it and the VF-171s in that series are described as a "Rim world model" or "frontier/remote space model" implying they are different from the VF-171s used elsewhere in some way.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    My Awkward Senpai is out here asking the real questions... like "What do you call a romance comedy that has no comedy to speak of and practically no romance?". Kind of a "shaped like itself" question if you think about it.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    The Earth/Central New UN Forces approved the YF-24 Evolution No.3 prototype for mass production as the VF-24 in 2057. The program's about 1 1/2 years ahead of the YF/VF-25 and YF/VF-27 programs by the Macross Frontier and Macross Galaxy emigrant fleets. The only variant yet mentioned has been the VF-24A, yes, and the details are predictably pretty sparse. Honestly though, don't let yourself feel "locked in" by what the official media says. The (partially redacted) YF-24 Evolution blueprints were shared to all New UN Government member governments galaxy-wide. It's very likely (bordering on a certainty) that multiple emigrant governments working with less resources than the fantastically wealthy Frontier and Galaxy fleets either opted to purchase export variants of the VF-24 directly from Earth's government or just used their own locally produced technology to fill in the various gaps left by the omission of Earth's proprietary developments and produced their own version of the VF-24 via a build-under-license agreement. There are likely a bunch of slightly different local variations of the VF-24A with slightly different capabilities depending on who built them, which could go anywhere from differences in equipment and armament to changes in appearance. EDIT: I should add, this same logic applies to basically ANY VF produced from the 4th Generation onwards... with the VF-19, VF-22, and VF-171 all having local variations that've appeared prominently in Macross the Ride, Macross Frontier, and Macross Delta. A beautiful official customization carte blanche for fanart and fanfics. 😉
  15. Seto Kaiba
    They did. Work on season three was delayed something like seven months due to the combined effects of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. What they seem to be implying there is that the delays caused by the strikes forced them to rush to get the scripts together for season three and get filming started, resulting in the decidedly sub-par scripts they ended up using for a lot of season three. Kind of like how the writers strike of 1988 led to TNG season two being shortened by four episodes, reusing a Star Trek Phase II draft for the season opener, and making the final episode of that season a clipshow.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace has "Comedy" listed as its genre. So why do the characters spend more than half of each episode depressed and/or crying? Seriously. This is the most depressing comedy I think I've seen since Watamote.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Star Trek is a big franchise with a well-established multi-generational fanbase, so there are always going to be at least a few fans willing to tune in and check out any new project no matter how obviously ill-considered. That there will initially be an audience is guaranteed. No guarantees are made with respect to the size or continuing existence of that audience after the first few episodes. Well, no... no it doesn't. After all, it'd be a spinoff of Star Trek: Picard and that series was neck-and-neck with Star Trek: Discovery in the race to be the worst-rated Star Trek title of all time for most of its run. It was only saved from winning that race by being shorter and going all-in on fanservice in its third and final season. Trying to build a new series around a character whose development in the prior series was one of the most harshly criticized aspects of its story and a ship that was also poorly received for its unnecessary redesign and overall aesthetic is probably not a winning strategy. We already have a series about the Enterprise exploring the cosmos, though. That's Strange New Worlds. Concurrently running two different shows with the exact same premise is probably not a winning strategy either. Variety is the spice of life, and the Star Trek franchise is big enough to accommodate more than that one type of story. Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are both very well-received on average. Not always. TOS didn't have one. DS9 only got one in its fifth season when Nog came back for sophomore year field study. ENT's eager young ensign was also the most experienced person on the ship by a huge margin. PIC didn't really have one either. Enterprise wasn't Uhura's first assignment even as a cadet on training rotation in SNW either. It's really just TNG's Wesley, VOY's Harry, and DSC's Tilly. Lotta -y's. I guess that makes those know-it-all fresh-outs a pack of Y's guys. 😜 Lower Decks's whole premise is seeing these space adventures through unjaded eyes, since the senior staff (and Beckett) have seen it all before. They're still good and experienced at most of what they do, because they've still got four years of Academy training plus mentoring and training from more experienced officers. Even people who are in their final year at the academy don't really stretch credibility IMO since they've got years of training under their belts (e.g. Tilly, SNW Uhura). It's more of a problem when you've got characters who've never been and have no training (e.g. Wesley, the Prodigy crew) or have been in Starfleet for all of five seconds (the Academy cast and the Academy cast) out saving the galaxy and never attending class.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes. The YF-24 program's stated objective was to develop a next (5th) generation main Variable Fighter for the (Earth/Central) New UN Forces. Based on what Macross Chronicle, Master File, and the Macross Frontier novelizations have had to say on the matter it does appear that a VF-24 was produced and was in the process of being adopted by the New UN Forces at the time things went to hell at the end of the Vajra conflict in 2059. Given that the only variant we've heard mention of is the VF-24A and presentation-wise it's basically a delta-wing VF-25 my inclination would be to suspect that it has an A-type head similar to the VF-25A and VF-31A. "Visor" type optics tend to be more of a "hero" option.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the latest episodes of Let This Grieving Soul Retire, Mechanical Marie, and Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota. Pretty mediocre television, all told. Not bad, but just unremarkable. For Mechanical Marie...
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Let's hope Season 4 is a return to form, because the scores for Season 3 are in and the news is not good. A 25 point plummet relative to Season 2, putting Season 3 on par with Star Trek: Picard's oft-mocked first season and only slightly better than Discovery's much-maligned first season. Paramount and the producers are blaming the broadly negative reception of Season 3 on the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in '23, though they seem to at least be willing to admit the season went too hard on comedy and too hard on La'an and Spock's dance-focused relationship. Apparently Frakes et. al. were a bit surprised that "A Space Adventure Hour" and "Four and a Half Vulcans" were not as funny as they sounded in the writers heads.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It'd probably be more accurate to say that the 5th Generation VFs like the VF-25, VF-27, and VF-31 are derivatives of the YF-24 Evolution rather than direct descendants of it. The VF-25 and VF-27 were developed using the YF-24 Evolution as a starting point. However, the design was adjusted accordingly to suit the unique requirements of the emigrant government defense forces soliciting the new development and to either replace omitted Earth-proprietary technologies with locally-developed alternatives as well as the addition of locally-developed proprietary technology. The YF-29 and YF-30 are a bit more distant, since the YF-29 is a branch of VF-25 development that shares a lot of parts in common but also includes a lot of proprietary parts that were developed for its different operational profile, and the YF-30 is more a derivative of the YF-29. Probably worth noting that the art being referenced here is from Master File, not the series proper. The blisters on top of the head are present on the VF-25F type. I've seen nothing to that effect... aside from a brief note in Macross the Ride's Visual Book Vol.1 that the YF-25's composite sensor cluster is set up for data collection.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It seems to be aimed at an audience of people who enjoyed Star Trek: Discovery and thought it was a worthy installment in the Star Trek franchise. Watching this teaser, I was struck again by the same thought that struck me after I watched Section 31. Paramount seemingly doesn't understand that most Star Trek fans did not like Discovery and were either hate-watching it or holding out hope that it would Grow The Beard like TNG did after its lamentable first season. It's following Discovery's formula in pretty close formation. The protagonist is a resentful kid full of unprocessed childhood trauma who joins Starfleet via nepotism rather than talent. There's a giant alien category traitor from a one-temperment species (a Klingon med student), a girl with apparently-untreated severe autism, and some legacy characters who are there to convince fans to tune in (USS Voyager's EMH Mk.I and Jett Reno), and a ridiculously scenery chewing villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever from a TOS-era species to make an unlikable main character seem less awful by comparison. You'd think Paramount would take stock of the audience review scores at some point and realize the pattern. Of the 64 seasons and movies put out so far, the 15 bottom ranked titles include all five seasons of Discovery, both seasons of Short Treks, Section 31, the first two seasons of Picard, and Strange New Worlds season 3. The only other titles on that list are the worst of the Old Trek movies... 5, TMP, Insurrection, and Nemesis. It seems to be a very similar premise to the unsuccessful Star Trek: Starfleet Academy comics from the 90's. That is to say, a diverse squad of freshman cadets including an everyman, an admiral's kid, proud warrior race guy, a Betazoid, and the clearly autistic one from the incoming class at Starfleet Academy's San Francisco campus are assigned to a supervising officer with multiple lifetimes of experience and pretty much never attend any classes because they're giving a ship right off the bat and spend all their time fighting threats to the Federation. The Starfleet Academy TV series has the everyman (played by Sandro Rosta), the admiral's kid (Bella Shepard), proud warrior race guy (Karim Diane), the Betazoid (Zoe Steiner), and the clearly autistic one (Kerrice Brooks). They've traded the Trill in for a half-Lanthanite played by Holly Hunter, added a spoiled rich kid (played by George Hawkins), and for a ship they have an actual starship not a Danube-class runabout, but the rest seems pretty on the nose. Having read the comic, I should probably just be grateful that they've skipped the inclusion of the other character archetype from the comic's cadet squad who was killed off and replaced by the Betazoid. The preachy Soapbox Sadie girl with the implausible backstory whose entire identity and character was tied up in oversimplifying a politically charged topic. Anson Mount carried the second season, that's why they gave him his own show... so he could carry the franchise.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest is probably going to be the first title I drop this season. The writing is beyond terrible. It's bad enough that it's one of those isekai-adjacent Gary Stu power fantasy titles full of thinly-written characters and cliched interactions. The worst part is that, as of just a couple minutes into the second episode, it's clear that the entire premise of the series is itself a gaping plot hole. The translation quality is AWFUL too.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Boldly written by Pakleds, for Pakleds. 🀮 If that trailer was supposed to make me want to watch the series, oof... mission failed with distinction. That just looks like more of everything that already wasn't working in Star Trek: Discovery.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    May I Ask for One Final Thing? is the gift that keeps on giving. Scarlet has the most delightful take-no-sh*t attitude as a protagonist and her motivations are both hilariously self-centered and delightfully effective. Her newfound pursuit of justice and desire to root out villainy is motivated by hilariously enlightened self-interest. To use her own words: She delivers that last part with a beatific smile atop a sparkling pink background framed by roses that would not have been at all out of place for a confession of true love in a romance series.
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