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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The Arnold J. Rimmer energy in this still is overwhelming. "There's a saying amongst the officers: If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to Karn. He aches for responsibility but constantly fails the security exam. Astoundingly zealous. Possibly mad. Probably has more teeth than brain cells. Promotion prospects: comical." Out of context, this looks like Cassian's being lectured on the importance of good grooming by a disappointed hairdresser in a day spa. "You see, Cassian... conditioner is so important."
  2. Seto Kaiba
    There's certainly a sound argument to be made that shooting Skeen, a man who by any rational standard will be missed or mourned by exactly nobody, dead out of disgust is a great deal safer than betraying Luthen and risking him... expressing his irritation... through an immense galaxy-spanning network of spies, saboteurs, infiltrators, insurrectionists, violent anarchists, and terrorists who would all very much like to have 40 million credits to bankroll their war against the Empire.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I don't see our views of Cassian Andor as mutually exclusive. Cassian is clearly a very self-involved person. He was clearly embroiled in some shady business on Ferrix well before the series started. They imply he's a thief who steals hardware from ships sent in to be scrapped and resells it. He owes enough money to multiple creditors for one to try coercing him into repayment with the implicit threat of violence. He's gotten in trouble severe enough to be incarcerated by the Empire once before. We do see Cassian do unselfish things... but in the end, the reason is always that it's personal. He makes money by shady means to take care of Maarva because she's his (foster) mother. We see a scene that implies his first arrest and prison term was for assaulting Imperial soldiers to take revenge for his foster father's execution. He commits murder on Morlana One to save his own skin, and ultimately meets Luthen in a bid to rustle up enough cash for him to take himself (and maybe Maarva) somewhere else. He decides to take Luthen up on his offer for an outrageous sum of money that'd let him clear his debts, move his mother somewhere nice, and live comfortably. He kills Skeen out of disgust for his craven nature. Now he's serving an unearned prison term that will doubtless motivate him to further acts against the Empire in the name of revenge. It's a safe bet he doesn't join the Rebellion for the sake of principles... but because it's personal.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Like tachyons and reversing the polarity! Fold faults are a kind of anomaly found in higher dimension space (AKA "fold space"). They're regions of distorted/discontinuous higher dimension spacetime that interfere with fold navigation and fold communications. You could say they're the higher-dimension equivalent of a reef or a pothole in terms of navigational hazards. In principle, they're quite similar to the distorted spacetime that barrier systems produce for defensive purposes, but (mostly) naturally-occurring and entirely confined to higher dimensions. Exactly what causes them is unclear, but they were/are a major obstacle to creating an interstellar civilization because of the challenges they pose for maintaining communications and travel between star systems. Fold communications can be delayed, distorted, or totally disrupted depending on the size and severity of the fold fault(s) in the path of the transmission. The New UN Gov't tries to work around this problem by outfitting emigrant fleets with extremely powerful fold wave communications systems and having them deploy relay pods to route signals around areas with intense fold faults. Fold navigation across a fold fault has its own, much worse, problems. The least of a ship's worries when trying to cross a fold fault during a fold jump is that, if the fault is mild enough to cross, the fold jump will take longer and the error in time measurement between the ship and clocks in realspace greatly increases. For instance, on Sheryl and Alto's trip to Gallia IV in Macross Frontier, a fold jump that Leon notes would have been almost instantaneous in favorable conditions instead takes hours (from the ship's perspective) and the faults add over a week to the time that passed in realspace during the jump. Other potential complications are more life-threatening. Fold faults require a great deal more energy to cross (when they can be crossed at all), which can lead to ships running out of power and becoming trapped in fold space. Crossing a severe fold fault can damage or even destroy the folding ship. Lucky ones might be able to drop back into realspace heavily damaged like Megaroad-04 did when it hit the faults surrounding Windermere IV. Unlucky ones... well... they're simply never heard from again. The safest way to deal with fold faults is to simply avoid them, either by calculating a jump that doesn't cross any or multiple jumps that use the downtime between jumps to cut across the fault's equivalent coordinates in realspace. Fold quartz is an improved/purer form of fold carbon that the Vajra synthesize biologically and the Protoculture later learned how to create synthetically. You could say that it's the key to perfecting fold technology. Fold carbon is an exotic material that is essential for technologies that interface with higher dimensional spacetime (fold space). It occurs in nature as a byproduct of supernovae and as a biological product of certain life forms that have evolved to be capable of fold navigation like galactic whales and the Vajra. Most of the fold carbon in technological use is synthetic. It serves two main purposes: it's the fold wave equivalent of a radio crystal and it's also used as a catalyst to produce a type of ultra-high mass exotic matter referred to as "heavy quantum" that is used for gravity manipulation in things like gravity control systems, thermonuclear reactors, thermonuclear weapons, fold systems, and dimensional beam weaponry. The purity of the fold carbon affects the quality of the fold waves and heavy quantum it can produce. Fold quartz, as an ultra-pure form of fold carbon, produces fold waves that are unimpeded by fold faults and other distortions of higher dimensional spacetime and also produces heavy quantum that exerts MUCH more force than the kind produced by fold carbon. Enough so that a fold system outfitted with fold quartz can cross fold faults without risk and without any disparity between ship time and realspace time, and applying the heavy quantum it produces to a reaction warhead or dimensional beam weapon produces black hole-like gravitational effects that pull matter into fold space (the "dimension eater" and "MDE" weapons of Frontier.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Like Sith Lords, there are exactly two filler episodes in Andor... and they are episodes 1 and 2. There's maybe five minutes actual plot-relevant goings-on at the very start of the first episode and nothing remotely important, interesting, or plot-relevant happens again until episode 3. Cassian just goes on a walking tour of the dingy industrial town he lives in and keeps bumping into "colorful" undeveloped stock character locals. Aaaaaaaanyway, on to Season 1 Episode 8 "Narkina 5". They're building a lot of tension in this one. It's pretty clear the sh*t is about to hit the fan in a big way that will lead to further Imperial crackdowns and bring the Rebellion into actual armed opposition to the Empire. Luthen, Saw Gerrera, the unseen Emperor Palpatine, and others are all pouring huge amounts of gasoline into the fire pit and we're just waiting for someone to strike a match. There are some hints that suggest there might be a prison riot or something in Cassian's immediate future, while there's likely to be some overt and very bloody rebel activity on Ferrix soon.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Of course, when it comes to space folds the sticky wicket is that we know in general terms how it works and we know the "why" of various things like the difference in how much time passes aboard ship vs. in realspace during fold navigation, but the exact mechanism by how they exchance the two different sets of coordinates in higher dimensional space is never described in any detail. I'm sure if someone were to ask how it works, we'd get a nonanswer like "it works very well". My best guess, based on the onscreen depictions, is that the higher dimension space the relative coordinates of the destination are either pulled all the way back to overlap the ship's relative coordinates and it then rides that space as it springs back into place or that there's an accordion-like motion going on where the ship is repeatedly smashing two sets of fold space coordinates into each other and riding the exchange from one end to the other as the points overlap. The latter would explain how it's possible to run into a fold fault mid-fold without seeing the spike in energy requirement at the start.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the first descriptions of how fold navigation work go back to the original series-era materials. The creators of Macross were sci-fi fans and didn't hesitate to throw in the occasional nod here and there to their other favorites like Star Trek, Star Wars, Gundam, Yamato, etc. Its choice of FTL mechanics seems to be based on the Holtzman drives of Dune, which either originated or at least popularized the idea of folded-space teleportation using a higher dimension as a means of getting about the universe quickly. Terms like "Fold space" and so on were coined there. Sort of... the ships usually aren't actually drawn moving... we just see a lot of fancy lighting effects surrounding it on almost every occasion. One of the few occasions where a folding ship was depicted as actually moving in some way during a fold jump was the zero-time fold jump Michael Blanc took to get to Gallia IV. In practice, it's art evolution... the light show has changed as animation technology has improved and allowed for more impressive visual effects. Even the new versions do carry over the traits of the old ones, like the ships glowing as they enter fold space (though they do so gradually instead of all at once now) or the fold effect going beyond the physical bounds of the ship itself and being able to carry objects outside the ship along with it that becomes a plot point in both Macross 7 and Macross Frontier. Of course, you could say that that first and most bombastic space fold is an example of those traits being taken to the extreme since the Macross's first and only fold jump saw it take a chunk of atmosphere, ocean, and planetary crust with it. EVERYTHING in the bounds of the fold effect gets taken along for the ride... even the photons making up the light moving through that region of space. Mind you, it is also slowed down for drama's sake. Much like the space folds in Dune, fold accidents are a thing in Macross complete with a similar remark about early fold systems being unreliable enough that ships tended to go missing every so often. Of course, we also know from a few isolated incidents that when something does go horribly awry the folding ship is usually either destroyed (which, I'd assume, probably undoes the fold) or is knocked out of fold space which somehow resolves the fold jump. Mind you, the possibility of using a fold system to accomplish time travel is implied to be possible in Macross Zero... though it may require fold quartz and some special changes to the fold system or at least the math it's operating on. The Protoculture don't seem to have realized it could do that until their civilization was on its last legs though, by which point the ship had long since sailed regarding widespread adoption of fold technology. Probably a product of Luceno and Daley borrowing heavily from Star Wars and Dune in that particular set of novels.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Cassian in Rogue One is someone who's spent, apparently, years working in Rebel Intelligence doing all kinds of unpleasant things in the fight against the Empire. At the start of Andor, Cassian is just a civilian ex-con with an active dislike of the Empire who's being held up by a pair of crooked cops. He didn't come to Morlana One looking for a fight, and he certainly wasn't naive enough to think he'd be let off with a boys-will-be-boys after accidentally killing the first cop even if it was in self-defense. He clearly hesitates to kill an unarmed man begging for his life, and in the end it's his sense of self-preservation that wins out because his options are to leave a witness who'd ID him and probably go to jail on a murder charge despite the killing being accidental or kill the witness and hope to slip through the cracks of Preox-Morlana's hopelessly inept justice system. Skeen... well... Skeen's a piece of **** and Cassian is clearly disgusted by him. For all his fuss and noise about being a mercenary only in it for the money Cassian is clearly deeply and profoundly disgusted by Skeen's willingness to betray the "true believer" Rebels who survived the operation on Aldhani. That, I think, more than even the risk that Skeen might identify them if caught by the Empire with 40 million credits in stolen Imperial payroll drove him to gun Skeen down before he could betray them (or him). Gunning down the informant who brought him the information about the cargo pilot in Rogue One... well... aren't the Imperials big believers in torture as a method of interrogation and apparently just for fun? They tortured Leia offscreen in A New Hope as part of an interrogation and they torture Han and Chewie in Empire seemingly just because they can... so one can imagine Cassian's informant would be in for a REAL bad time if he fell into Imperial hands and was exposed as a Rebel intelligence informant. Giving him a quick and relatively painless death rather than leaving him to be captured and tortured was arguably an act of kindness from someone who knows only too well what the Imperials are like.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The ship is noted to have been approaching Earth at 5.88km/sec when it was detected by Space Station New Frontier, but whether that was because her engines were still lit or momentum that was conserved from before it folded out at lunar orbit is anyone's guess.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    To be frank, I doubt the show's creators or the writers of Macross Chronicle thought it out even that far. It's a background design, and most of those really aren't thought out in any detail at all. They just are. Many of them have no names, no description, no real known purpose aside from what they're shown to do in the series. They're given boilerplate names on the rare occasion they appear in print material, unless they're part of some major merchandising push. For instance, Isamu's VF-19 from the second Macross Frontier movie was originally just "VF-19 SMS Ver." in official materials until they decided to put it in greater prominence in the novelization and push a toy. That got it promoted to having an actual backstory and designation. The 5th Generation Island Cluster-class emigrant ships are much larger than the previous generations of ship like the 3rd Generation City-class seen in Macross 7. The many and varied support functions that previous generations of ship needed large auxiliary vessels for are built directly into the Island Cluster-class. This is apparently a semi-new development at the time of Macross Frontier, since the 5th Generation ships themselves are relatively new and the Macross Galaxy fleet that has a 4th Generation Mainland ship still uses at least some auxiliary ships of the same types seen in Macross 7. (Macross the Ride's final story arc kicks off with a raid on the Macross Galaxy fleet's Riviera-class resort ship, and it's mentioned in TV series material that they converted many of their auxiliary ships that previously made natural foods to factories to manufacture cheaper synthetic food.) It's worth noting that there is no actual change in how the mechanics of folding are described. The visual effect for the ship's transition to higher dimensional space did change with newer animation tech, but the "gate" effect is shown to move along the length of the ship when the ship is stationary. They're probably not actually "flying into" the gate so much as the gate is fixed relative to the ship and moving along its length, giving the appearance that the moving ship is flying into it.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle refers to it as a warship of the New UN Forces... though that seems rather odd as it has no evident defenses of any kind. The Episode Sheet for that episode is the ONLY source I've found so far that refers to that ship at all. The Macross Frontier fleet doesn't appear to have a Three Star Heavy Industries factory ship.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it is a doujinshi... so a lot of the content is going to be dictated by what the author felt was cool/interesting/consistent/etc. Some of it is pretty "out there". Other things are pretty sensible. Some of it, like the stealth cruiser with the underslung Macross Cannon, are not technically unfeasible but sure are impractical looking.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, fold bombs are a thing... but they work a bit differently from that. They're called Dimension Eaters, and debuted in Macross Frontier. They work by using the super-heavy quantum created by fold quartz to generate a super-intense fold effect that behaves like a short-lived miniature black hole, destroying everything in the blast radius with an ultra-intense gravitational field and pulling it all into fold space. Master File alleges that the idea for the Dimension Eater originated from a General Galaxy transport ship that was attacked in the 2040s and, for lack of suitable weapons, created a space-time distortion bomb by weaponizing a Valkyrie's fold booster.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Traveling by space fold doesn't entail any acceleration - or even movement - on the part of the folding ship. Fold navigation is essentially a form of teleportation. The fold system manipulates higher dimensional space using gravity control so that the volume of space containing the ship switches places with an equivalent volume of space at the destination. Ships typically don't fold into or out of a planet's atmosphere because the gravity well of a planet can mess up the folding process and you're either teleporting a chunk of atmosphere into deep space or creating a massive region of vacuum that'll collapse inside the atmosphere with very destructive effect.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    If I had to guess, probably a cargo ship given that it looks like a space big rig?. Could we perhaps be a little less vague?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's not bad, but it's not exactly memorable either. None of the tracks on the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! soundtrack are very memorable. Nothing there really jumps out as THE song for Absolute Live!!!!!!.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    It's from a doujinshi... that kind of goes without saying. One of the things that makes this doujinshi series so interesting is the artist frequently "shows their work" by drawing their concepts for ships or classes that are described in official material but never actually shown. The Takashi Hayase in that image is one of those obscure bits of official setting trivia. The first mass-production Macross-class ship was the SDFN-01 General Takashi Hayase, one of the twelve mass-produced Macross-class ships and one of only three of them to be named thus far. The other two are SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global that appeared as a wreck that crashed on Gallia IV in Macross Frontier and the SDFN-08 General Vrlitwhai Kridanik that semi-permanently landed on Uroboros and was known as Vrlitwhai City in the Macross 30 game. (There is a fan theory that the General Takashi Hayase was the ship that was "cast" as the SDF-1 Macross in the in-universe movie Do You Remember Love?.) There are several other bits of fun trivia scattered around that doujinshi series like Zentradi ships converted for use as emigrant ships (which was what was done for short distance emigrant fleets) and the air defense and enhanced firepower versions of the Northampton-class.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, this season is coming along nicely... the shows I'm following (Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, etc.) are all sticking fairly close to the original manga and remain pretty consistently well-executed. All in all, I'm quite happy... between this season's multitude of interesting offerings and Andor, I've got no shortage of things to watch. The Raven of the Inner Palace remains my stand-out title for the season. It remains consistently hard to pin down but inexplicably compelling in terms of character-focused drama with some elements of mystery, fantasy, and the slightest hint of romance. It's been a long time since a show grabbed me like this one and left me not just curious but genuinely impatient to see what happens next.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    ... I just realized it can't do a lengthy timeskip. The series started with not quite five years before Cassian's supposed to die in Rogue One. He can't serve a six year prison term unless he's actually two people,.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    ... actually, yes.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It's the CIC. Macross Chronicle makes a big deal out of explaining the different acronyms used for it like CIC (Combat Information Center), CDC (Combat Direction Center), and C4 (Command, Control, Communications, and Computers) on its Mechanic Sheet. In the Macross Frontier TV anime and movies, the Battle Frontier's captain and commander of the fleet are the same officer (Brigadier General Pelliot) who seems to prefer to lead from the CIC rather than the bridge of his ship. In the novelizations, those two roles are divided between two separate minor characters. The equivalent to Pelliot is a general by the name of Kevin Backflight who serves as overall commander of the Frontier New UN Forces and Battle Frontier's captain is one of his subordinates named Jean-Luc Tarkovsky.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    All in all, I think we can/should probably resign ourselves to the fact that any future official explanation that's offered for the Megaroad-01's circumstances in the second Macross Delta movie will be at least as stupid and contrived as the circumstances themselves.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    That'd raise the awkward question of "from where?". The SDF-2 Megaroad-01 wasn't a remodeled alien starship like the SDF-1 Macross. She was planned as a 100% human-made copy of the Macross-class and construction began on that premise, before the First Space War forced a change of plan that saw the partially-completed warship remodeled into a 100% human-made long-distance emigrant ship for the first long-distance emigrant fleet. She wasn't hiding any surprises. She disappeared just four years after launch without finding any inhabitable planets.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I haven't said she's dumb... I've been saying from the beginning that she's sharp. Meero's problem, until now, was that she was right for the wrong reasons. She was drawing incorrect inferences from reports on things Cassian did and using those as evidence of a pattern of coordinated rebel activity that did exist, but wasn't actually related to the cases she was investigating. The irony in Meero's stance in this latest episode now that she's been vindicated is that she seems to think the Imperial response is insufficiently harsh, because they're treating the Aldhani incident ONLY as a robbery and not as a statement of intent from the rebels. (She's arguably wrong about that as well, sinc it was a needs-must-as-the-devil-drives sort of situation where the rebels just needed the money.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    With the near-total lack of information for Absolute Live!!!!!! at the present time, we can't quite say. As disappointing as the liner notes were, hopefully the Master File will pick up some of the slack.
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