technoblue
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Posts posted by technoblue
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I enjoyed Outer Range.
Danger, major spoilers inside. Don’t click if you want to watch the show spoiler free:
SpoilerI had a notion early on that Autumn was linked to Rebecca somehow but I wasn’t able to guess that she was Amy. It seems tragic, given what we’re told about Autumn this season, especially since we see how she needs medication to remain stable as an adult. Not an uncommon thing but a stark change from her younger self. I can understand why some fans think it is a little suss.
Royal spilling the beans on his past was totally unexpected. I loved that.
Of course, Rebecca is still a mystery herself and the hole has created something of a conundrum with all the timey-wimey back and forth. I mean, if the future that Royal saw early in the season is still set (with the mining company moving in, with Perry back, and Billy alive), then I wonder how the timeline will resolve itself?
The side story with Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk, all the crap she’s putting up with to solve the Abbot/Tillerson case, and then we see how she follows the time sludge into far history when the character’s ancestors still roamed the valley—that was moving. This show brought quite a few moving scenes.
Anyway, I’m glad I got to see it. I’ll be tuning in for season 2.
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Okay. I am suitably teased. I’ll just wait on the side over here for Takara to release a hi-res photo. I’m curious about the detail in those extra faces and I find the return of the swappable bumper/grille most welcome too.
As an aside, Trailbreaker moves the MP line into the group of G1 toys that I had no exposure to as a kid.
That makes this something new to me.
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Yes, per Kappa's website.
Even though the price was tempting, I went with ToyDojo since they have a pay later option on pre-orders. Alas, it comes with the premium late tax on domestic orders but there is free shipping and no sales tax to me.
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Hm. I like the out-of-the box colors, but seeing anime accurate paint jobs for all four would be pretty cool too.
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My condolences, @Keith.
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I do appreciate how these early releases influenced the lines of Transformers that came after them. That Alternity Prime has almost a primordial Bayverse feel in its bot mode design for instance. The limited articulation, though… I’m relieved that Hastak has moved away from this for the most part.
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On 4/23/2022 at 1:49 PM, baesmentman2045 said:
Any would be great, but could I see Let's Fire and Second Fire?
(After starting this topic, I realized I should have all this stuff in my CD collection again anyway, but I'm probably a few months out from ordering)
Sure. Here are the production notes from Let's Fire and Second Fire (in that order). Warning, even after scanning and resizing, the PNG files are ~3MB in size. Edit: I've nested the images within spoiler tags in case that helps with page load times.
Spoiler
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Spoiler
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47 minutes ago, Scyla said:
What I don’t understand is why anyone would choose a Planet X release over an MMC one. I have a couple of WfC/FoC toys from Planet X and they are all of lesser quality than most MMC releases (the Reformatted Lockdown mold being the exception).
Hm. Scyla really hits on all the main points. Planet X’s turn toward aggressive competition with MMC I think surprised everyone, to be fair. Alas, I was holding out hope for Cacus but ultimately skipped that release because of the nonsense with the other releases in their IDW line-up.
For FoC, I feel that Planet X was at their pinnacle with Vulcun and Apollo. The releases since have been okay to middling to poor. Ironhide and Ratchet are the ugliest of the FoC designs and Pluto (their Megatron) had all those unfortunate QC issues out of the box.
MMC isn’t perfect but the’ve had plenty of fun Reformatted releases. The company itself is a force to reckon with when they bring their ‘A’ game to a design. Admittedly, though, Ocular Max has been getting more of my focus since the line was introduced. I’m content with playing mostly in their MP sandbox these days.
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With the 40th anniversary Dougram HMR releases being a thing, I was hoping we would have a hint to Bandai’s plan for some new Macross releases in anniversary packaging too but the silence on this point is nerve wracking.
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On 4/14/2022 at 3:37 PM, baesmentman2045 said:
Hello all, I'm just wondering if someone here can help. I had a small collection of M7 CD's that I had bought in the 90's, and now.... I no longer have them. I was trying to get a closer look at the production credits in the booklets. I had been trying to find scans of them online, if anyone has them or can point me in the right direction, it would be appreciated. But even a phone photo would work, I'm just trying to confirm something that's been rattling around the back of my head for 25 years.
Thanks!
Is there any particular album of interest that you need to reference? I own the following M7 CDs:
- Ultra Fire!!
- Let's Fire!!
- Second Fire!!
- Re.Fire!!
- Fukuyama Fire!!
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1 hour ago, nightmareB4macross said:
How do you figure during a lockdown in China once again?
At this point I don’t think there is any QA team to inspect these and possibly no workers to build more beyond the picture of the line up of YF-19(s) in the previous picture.
At this point I am highly considering pulling all my pre-orders and just wait for supply to be verified upon receipt by vendors. Sure, I’ll pay more but the product will be tangible.
Honestly the way things have shifted, I wouldn’t be surprised if the tub of cream cheese you are looking at today couldn’t have been your VF-19 parts.
Sorry for the rant.
Huh? I don’t know where you pulled that cream cheese commentary from but okay.
I was just communicating my interpretation of Arcadia’s tweet. The company certainly has the ability to check what new YF-19s they have on hand so they did and they are happy with what they see. Even a bad web translator was able to communicate that much.
The OP was also curious if the YF-19 release was back on schedule. Alas, it’s still delayed with no new release date. I wasn’t trying to troll or be an arse. I don’t see why I should get that kind of response for trying to help another member out. Eh, whatevs…
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Oops. I searched but now I have no idea where I got that number--my bad.
Anyway, yeah...KC's Valkyrie stands a whole head and shoulders above Bandai's HMR so it would be a noticeable difference in size. Not necessarily a deterrent to those who want a complete set of Destroids but still worth noting, I guess.
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4 hours ago, NoctisTalem said:
So does this mean that the regular release is still set to release this month now?
It means that Arcadia is taking advantage of the delay to perform extra quality checks.
Given how factory QC issues have come back to bite the company in the past, this is only a good thing all around..
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5 hours ago, sqidd said:
A HMR VF-1 in Battroid is 6.375" at the antennae.
According to anymoon, it's real close. The v2 KitzConcept VF-1 stands 197mm in Batroid whereas the HMR stands 193mm in the same mode.
If the same holds true for the Destroids, then sweet.
I'm still flip-flopping about picking up any of the v2 KC Valkyries, though.
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13 minutes ago, Big s said:
These are just prototypes that are unpainted. They probably just molded those parts on the same runner as the clear parts and will be painted later. Then again who knows
True. What KC will do with those parts is all speculation at this point.
Given how their VF-1 compares to Bandai's Hi-Metal R, though, I'm thinking that these Destroids are not going to be a good option for 1:100 scale purists.
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I'm into those Destroid prototypes. HaHa! Who knew KC would get to the Tomahawk and Phalanx before Bandai?
Still, it's very cool to see them included in this initial trio. Looking forward to seeing them all painted.
Hm. Are those KC's signature LEDs on the Defender? That could be a cool added play function on these.
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I'll be watching Russian Doll S2, for sure. As others have noted above, it also took a few episodes for the show to grab my full attention but I'm also not a village native (I'm an upstate native) so a lot of the inner-city nuance was lost on me in the very beginning. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to where the show takes its outside-the-lines speculative slant on a modern time-travel story.
The Legend of Vox Machina was a show that surprised me too. Very fun. I wasn't aware of the crowdfund for it, so I didn't realize it was based on an actual game led by VO artist/actor Matt Mercer and a handful of his friends and industry peers. I'm used to the humble live action independent movies like Journey Quest and The Gamers.
I would recommend all of them, though.
And if table-top role playing is your thing, you can search for Critical Roll to go on a deeper dive and see the games as they were played live. Warning: falling into the video archives is a considerable time sink.
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On the one hand, I was looking forward to the PF YF-19. On the other hand, I am not bothered at all by the indefinite delay, especially given the mitigating circumstances. If Arcadia is still able to do it, it will release when it's ready. If not, then I do hope that they are still able to pursue other projects down the road as things get sorted.
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Thanks for the alert, @Shawn. No issues doing the needful on my side.
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7 hours ago, Keith said:
Watched the first 2.5 eps, not as good as "The Witcher", "LOTR", "Netflix Castlevania", or even "Hercules" & "Xena." It has nothing to do with the presence/lack of whatever the male/female magic dynamic is supposed to be, I just didn't find it particularly fun, dramatic or exciting.
I at least expect a fantasy show to be as exciting as the old D&D cartoon.
I agree with you about Amazon's show not being quite up to the level of Jackson's 'The Lord of the Rings' or Netflix's 'The Witcher' series. In particular, if we take the first Jackson movie of the LotR trilogy and the first season of 'The Witcher' and compare it to this first WoT season, I still think the other two adaptations come out on top. That's even with the time skips that are part of the first season of 'The Witcher' and which confused some ardent fans. I didn't have any problem following that plot device, myself.
The others in your first list? Those are interesting comparisons but I'm not sure I agree that I would consider them high fantasy. IMO, Castlevania is an example of the supernatural genre and it's a video game adaptation that was well received. Hercules and Xena are mythic fantasy adaptations. These too are successful broadcast television series, both sharing well-known mythological tropes and both running for 6 seasons.
The D&D cartoon...I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Is this a joke? Sure the 1980s cartoon has a strong cult following from nostalgic fans today (I'm one too), but ultimately it wasn't given a chance and is considered to have hit well before its time. I mean, look at how popular the isekai genre is in Japan nowadays. Anyway, the D&D cartoon was cancelled after a short run. Viewership was down, TSR was in a rut because the game itself was getting attacked in the press, and ultimately the show was a kids show and so it leaned toward age-appropriate silly moments. In the 1980s it was a controversial thing---not so much now.
Today, Amazon's WoT is also a controversial thing and everyone has an opinion about it. It will be interesting to see how people look back on it 30-odd years later (since we are bringing up and comparing old cartoons). With regard to how the showrunner is dealing with gender versus sex, that doesn't bother me at all, although I do wish more of what the books discussed had made it into the first season of the show. I don't think these things need to be mutually exclusive. That's all I have to add on that point.
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1 hour ago, levzloi said:
Spoilers on the ending of the finale and loooong (I took way longer on this than i should have, but I guess I've still got a lot to unpack about this series.).
<snip>Thanks for taking the time to go over all these points, @levzloi.
SpoilerThat's unfortunate. If the books are giving a commentary on male and female roles and giving their own critique on how these roles can be warped in such a way as to stifle understanding and progress, then yeah I think I get how Amazon's adaptation has lost the plot by a fair bit. I'm now tempted to read 'The Eye of the World' to get started on the rest of the story, as it were.
Anyway, if I understand you correctly, the show seems to have taken this complimentary (yin and yang) nature of magic and grossly oversimplified it. Males are shown as corrupting magic or being corrupted by it---driven to insanity. Females are shown as being adept and well able to control it if they have the required skillset. The nuances that you describe about how the books say magic works between the two sexes is lost.
I thought that having females come across as domineering was going to be a way to show that things are out of balance. I was also hoping that this would lead us to a scene where a female magic user somehow fails in her ability and goes dark (like one of the red Aes Sedai). But if the showrunner is changing the rules and making their own for this adaptation, then that now seems unlikely.
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For me, JJ Abrams isn't all that either. I mean, there are some shows that he's been connected to that I did enjoy like "Person of Interest" and "Fringe." However, I've never seen 'Felicity' or 'Lost.' Of his movies, I liked "Super 8." The new Star Trek and Star Wars trilogies could have been much better. Alas, they both fell apart with their second films.
I guess I don't have enough context to be heavy handed in my own criticisms of Amazon's WoT, but there are some things that stand out to me.
SpoilerSo maybe it is the writing, but I was clued in early on (within the first two episodes) that Rand was the dragon reborn and that his home situation at the Two Rivers was not all that it appeared to be. The fact that this season of the show kept trying to force the audience into guessing who among the five was the dragon reborn came across to me as an obvious feint. I kept waiting for them to show Rand's power and give us the real deal. Thankfully, they did in those final episodes but I don't think it was necessary to draw it out. They could have focused on other things.
I am confused why Moiraine just let Rand go at the end (not that she could do anything about it). Still, it seems the exact opposite of what her intent was at the beginning.
The other complaint I have is with Mat (Matrim) Cauthon and this is a little unfair because I learned that they had to recast him. That said, I wish they had delayed things or worked on the script a bit more to make this unfortunate real-life SNAFU less obvious to those of us in the audience. I'm also confused about where they are taking the character. Is he supposed to be a lovable rogue who is devoted to his sisters? Or is he secretly a psychopath and was his dark Judas nature brought to the surface when he picked up that cursed dagger? I have no idea? This is where not having book context hurts because it just comes across as confusing in the live action adaptation.
Oh! I am glad that they didn't push that love triangle idea between Rand, Egwene, and Perrin. That would have been boring and silly.
That's all I have to say for now. I am interested to see where the show goes next so there's that too.
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I was happy with the first season. I’ve been reading the Ars Technica episode commentary as well. The writers who put it together are avid WoT book fans (something I can’t claim). I have observed that Amazon’s adaptation is controversial if you are coming from that side of it. I think I lucked out having fewer expectations on this. I was just keen to see more high fantasy on the small screen. It is curious, though, reading about how much was changed.
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8 hours ago, TehPW said:
Thank you, this pic is epic. I'm extremely curious for this season (can we call it that?) as i know so little of the original (although 3 seasons were aired in some parts of the US in the late 70's, only Iscandar and The Comet Empire seasons were aired on local TV in Cleveland in 1979 +/-).
This short series/OVA is a reimagining of Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage, a film from 1979 that takes place after the war with the Comet Empire. There’s no word yet on if we will get an update to Yamato 3 (aka Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars).
All that said, I was thinking we were going to jump right into a modern retelling of Yamato 3 too, so getting this side story instead is a nice surprise.
General TV & Streaming thread
in Anime or Science Fiction
Posted
Indeed. The main conceit of the show is still a big question mark/mystery box. I understand the creative team is trying to normalize it with the feud between the families, but it’s not easy to force wave something of that magnitude. It’s obvious they want to hook their audience. My only concern is that this could turn into another Amazon Original like The Tick, which was fun and well done, but cut too short after just two seasons.
This season was focused more on world building and character moments. The creative team could bring that geologist back in—the one that Royal spoke to after swiping Autumn’s rock. It’s too bad they let that path hit a dead end this season.
The lack of exposition reminds me of the early days of Doctor Who. I guess I’m used to it with these stories that are built around time travel shenanigans. With DW, the timey-wimey stuff was accepted as a plot contrivance simply because the Doctor was an alien and had access to greater technology. The finer details were fleshed out later on.
I do hope Outer Range takes a moment to revisit its ‘why’ at some point. They don’t even have to explain all of it, just establish if the hole is something magical, supernatural, or scientific. For the moment, my hunch is that it may be more of a supernatural phenomena.