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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    One example that shows up four times in what you've posted there is "New United Nations". That's not correct to the text of the novel or the official terminology of the setting. I know that's what's in the Disney+ subtitles, but they're demonstrably incorrect in this and several other areas. "New United Nations Forces" would be 新国際連合軍 (Shin kokusai rengou-gun). That's not what's in the book or in the animation. What's in the text of the book and in the animation is 新統合軍 (Shin tougou-gun), the official/correct translations of which are "New Unification Forces" or "New Unity Forces". The name of the government in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross is 地球統合政府 (Chikyuu tougou seifu) and its military is the 地球統合軍 (Chikyuu tougou-gun). The Earth Unification Government and Earth Unification Forces. Animeigo used "Unity" instead of "Unification", but both are equally acceptable correct translations. This distinction matters because the modern United Nations (国際連合 Kokusai rengou) is a separate entity from the Earth Unification Government in the official Macross setting. It drafted the framework for the Earth Unification Government in 1999-2000 and briefly served as a transitional world government before the Earth Unification Government was ready to officially assume power at the start of 2001. It effectively ceased to exist when the Earth Unification Government started. There hasn't been a United Nations for 57 years at this point. The government that replaced the Earth Unification Government (地球統合政府 Chikyuu tougou seifu) after the First Space War is the New Unification Government (新統合政府 Shin tougou seifu). Its armed forces are the aforementioned New Unification Forces (新統合軍 Shin tougou-gun). Another one that's based on a common misconception is translating 小隊 as "Squadron". That's actually officially translated as "Platoon" and has been used as such in a bunch of official Japanese merch. It's a much smaller formation... a subunit of a squadron made up of 3-4 planes. Probably best not to confuse those two. It looks like the ranks are also translated incorrectly. Official Macross translations, onscreen in-series text, and katakana transliterations throughout the franchise use Army/Air Force ranks for Space Forces characters. The Japanese terminology is interchangeable between Army and Navy, but they've made a point to consistently translate it using the Army ranks for in-series English text, official media, and goods for decades. (This is a bit of truth in television as real world space forces are typically under the Air Force, which Stargate inexplicably got correct but almost nobody else did! Yes, the Spacy is not a Space Navy, it's a Space Army or Space Force etymologically.) Chelsea's correct rank is given as 中尉 (Chuui), she's a First Lieutenant. Just "Lieutenant" is one paygrade higher and in the Navy rank system, equivalent to the rank of Captain (大尉 Taii) in the Army/Air Force style system Macross uses. There's also a moment where the phrase "gun encampment" is used... the correct term would be "gun emplacement".
  2. Seto Kaiba
    For a "cheap and cheerful" translation, this came out better than I'd expected. It has some rough spots, a fair amount of evident trouble with terminology and few romanizations, but the flow of the prose was preserved pretty well and that's what matters most. Well... yes and no? It's relative? Kind of a double-edged sword if you'll forgive the pun? In practical terms, the VF-19EF Caliburn has higher performance than the New UN Forces VF-171 Nightmare Plus that will be the main fighter of the New UN Forces into the next decade but it's actually less capable/powerful than a "normal" VF-19. Macross the Ride describes it using an old Cold War-era term: it calls it a "Monkey model". That term has a very specific meaning. Namely, an export variant of a piece of military hardware that has significantly reduced capabilities compared to the standard version. Earth restricted its arms exports after the events of Macross Plus and so the Frontier fleet had to both fill in some gaps in its specs with their own tech and apply limiters to some of its hardware to reduce its performance enough for legal production. Even then it's still kind of stuck as a small batch Special Forces VF because it's very expensive and its performance is still more than the average pilot can handle.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Starting the first of this season's new series... Always a Catch! It seems we're once again generously oversupplied with otome anime. The now-standard opening of "The prince broke off his engagement to the protagonist and now she has to find a new fiance" thing is getting kind of weird. You have to wonder if any of the authors who use this almost form letter opening ever stop to consider that having the prince of a kingdom arbitrarily dump a girl who is usually the daughter and heir of a Duke powerful enough to arrange for his daughter to marry into the royal family ought to have WAY more consequences than just "the girl is upset". Like, this ought to be a massive political faux pas that risks turning a very powerful ally of the king into an enemy if he has any kind of pride at all. Always a Catch! has all the usual staples, though the twist this time around is the protagonist is actually the cousin and best friend of the duke's daughter who gets dumped by the prince. She's an unladylike muscleheaded tomboy who's staying with her cousin to hunt for a fiance of her own because her parents finally had a boy after years of trying and she therefore isn't the family heir anymore. (That her family's coat of arms, and her hairpin, appear to be brass knuckles kind of says all that needs to be said about her.)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Compared to today, Earth is rather sparsely populated in Macross after the First Space War. We see a number of emerging cities and towns in the aftermath arc of the original series, but thereafter we don't really get to see much of the planet aside from Macross City in Alaska. Presumably any housing that they put up for housing clones destined for emigrant fleets was either demolished or subsequently repurposed as regular housing for Earth's ever growing population. It's far from the only place to live in the solar system, though. There are space colonies at the LaGrange points, surface bases and cities on the moon and Mars, "satellite cities" orbiting Venus and several outer solar system gas giants, resource stations on various other moons etc.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's far from expensive. About $37 from CD Japan.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Or Admiral Kuznetsov. By all evidence that thing is even more cursed than the Kamchatka. Some might say the Admiral Kuznetsov is unsinkable... because a seemingly unending string of accidents, mechanical and electrical failures, and other calamities make it unlikely she'll ever leave drydock again.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    No, it's nowhere near that bad. Most sources agree that the number of Human survivors of the First Space War numbered approximately 1 million.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. In fact, the reason given for why the cloning program was discontinued in 2030 was a marked rise in hereditary diseases in children. (Gene therapy exists in Macross, so presumably they were able to fix at least some of that.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Imagine my surprise to see the G-Self charted at all. I love G-Reco, but I swear it's a borderline "Hear me out..." among Gundam fans. I'm surprised to see the pig-ugly GQuuuuuuX Gundam charted at all. Blech. The usual suspects at the top tho. Nu, Zeta, Wing (ver. Ka), Strike Freedom, etc.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Zentradi and Meltrandi battle suits aren't powered armor in the sense that you're probably thinking. They're armor-shaped, but in principle they're closer to being humanoid battle pods and the pilot's body is located almost entirely (or in some cases entirely) inside the mecha's torso. The only part of the pilot's body that might be at risk that way would be their lower legs, which on some models protrude into the mecha's own upper legs. Presumably there are cases where the cockpit hatch has to be pried open if it's damaged, though since the Zentradi don't really have a concept of "repairing" this would probably be done without regard for trying to reuse the suit later. (Not to mention Zentradi and Meltrandi mobile weapons are generally lightly armored enough that anything that might make escape of the craft impossible would probably have killed the pilot anyway.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Humanity used the cloning technology they acquired from the Zentradi to carry out a large-scale Human cloning program designed to bolster the overall Human population, artificially boost the availability of personnel with essential skills and training, and support the provisioning of the early emigrant fleets with military crews and emigrants. A lot of the Humans living across the galaxy in the late 2050s and 2060s are the descendants of the clones produced between 2010 and 2030 before the program was halted. It's not clear if it was commonplace, but several characters who started families in that post-war period ended up having large numbers of children. Max and Milia's seven daughters are the most talked-about example, though Shammy Milliome and her husband supposedly had eleven children after she retired from the military. The population ratios aren't talked about, but Humans are still treated like the default/main species in the New UN Government into the 2060s. Part-Zentradi are common enough that nobody seems to find them at all remarkable and as the number of other Protoculture-created species joining the New UN Government grows we can assume that there'll be more interspecies marriages in the future. (It's already been going on long enough for there to be at least one named character with three-species ancestry: Michael Blanc from Macross Frontier.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Definitely my favorite... it's one of the rare cases where my tendency to overanalyze things is actually useful. 😅 I've been doing a bit more poking at the VF-25, VF-31, and VF-31AX Master File books for more details on stealth technology lately. There's some bizarre concepts in there. I think the weirdest being the idea that the VF-17's passive stealth coating is made up of microvilli-like structures similar to an intestinal lining to maximize its surface area to allow it to intercept and absorb radar waves from all angles.
  13. Seto Kaiba
  14. Seto Kaiba
    So... I did a little bit of looking into this and the answer I found is mildly spoileriffic, and thus has been put in a spoiler tag below. It's not in Hathaway's head, but it's about to be all up in his face.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    "But I will have my revenge!" - Maul, being confidently - dare I say hilariously - wrong. This strong contender for Star Wars's #1 chronically aura-farming full-time jobber will, in fact, not have revenge of any kind. He'll be a mild nuisance to the Empire for a while, try to groom a kid, take a second whack at being a crime lord (apparently unsuccessfully), become a nuisance to the crew of the Ghost for a bit, try to groom a different kid, have a force vision about Palpatine's downfall, and then get unceremoniously killed off for real in the desert by Obi-wan Kenobi in a "fight" that barely lasts five actual seconds (three of which are him unnecessarily twirling like the Disney princess he is).
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well, if Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway ends the same was as the Hathaway's Flash light novel then I can promise you Hathaway won't vanish and Gigi won't be in a coma.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Quess wishes she had a hundredth of Ranka's personality or charm. Gigi wishes she had one ten thousandth of Sheryl's. Also Quess is dead. She's not going to make any progress in a love triangle as a Newtype ghost or a memory haunting Hathaway.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I know that feeling. 😅 In the last 6 years? Well, the biggest bullet point would have to be the 2021 release of the second Macross Delta movie Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! with its all-new story and Macross Frontier's short film epilogue Macross Frontier: the Labyrinth of Time. That gave us a look at 6th Generation VFs and Ghosts, some info about Lady M, the fate of the Megaroad-01, a little hint about the fate of Alto and Sheryl after The Wings of Goodbye, and an array of other related topics. (Not to mention 2021 being when the Macross licensing embargo finally broke, with select Macross titles now available on Hulu/Disney+.) There's been a few more artbooks, a new Master File for Absolute Live!!!!!!'s new Valkyrie, some fan efforts to translate the Macross Frontier, Macross Delta, and Macross the Ride light novels, the promise of a new Macross series from Bandai Namco Filmworks at some point, etc.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Well, every new title adds new mecha and new trivia and we're translating more stuff all the time. 👍
  20. Seto Kaiba
    How "official" do you consider a song that was re-recorded by a dub voice actress during localization? Because this is, IINM, the re-recorded version of Mou Ichidou that was produced by US Renditions for the sixth episode of Macross II: Lovers Again using Ishtar's US/English voice actress Debbie Rogers. Re-recording songs like this was trendy for a while in the 90's. Some even had the original artist record the English version too (e.g. Tenchi Universe) while others had an English-speaking performer record over the original (e.g. Sailor Moon's "Moonlight Densetsu" or Tenchi Muyo! OVA 2's "Pioneer").
  21. Seto Kaiba
    So... apparently Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's performance was SO bad that Skydance Paramount has reportedly opted to end the arrangement that gave Secret Hideout exclusive creative control of the franchise. Something they really should have done after Discovery spun in, IMO, but better late than never and I can't imagine many fans will miss them. Which is weird, because the transwarp network was explicitly destroyed at the end of Star Trek: Voyager. Even if some of the Borg conduits survived because the Queen did, albeit in a diminished state, they shouldn't still be around centuries later after the Borg went extinct.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I'll definitely plan to go see it in the theater. Let's hope it's not quite so long until the third and final part. 🤔
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Apparently Hathaway II: the Sorcery of Nymph Circe is coming to US theaters on 15 May.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Huh... I'm not sure what to make of a pronouncement like that. Granted, G-Witch and SEED Freedom were some weak sh*t in the writing department with the latter's story being entirely unnecessary but they were still light years ahead of the torrent of optical diarrhea that was Netflix's bastardization of Cowboy Bebop. Their stories were at least functional. Western attempts to adapt anime tend to miss the point of the original story with distressing thoroughness. Just asking... but is your day job to greet people who solve a cursed puzzle box? I guess statistically speaking someone had to like it. Most folks considered it to be distilled disgust, and the very picture of sh*tting on a classic for no real reason.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Another highly questionable hiring decision from this project. Honestly, it's starting to feel like Netflix is trying to fail with these live-action anime adaptations. His filmography is far from confidence-inducing... he seems to have been somewhat typecast as "ethnic drug dealer" given that his main acting credit of note is playing a cartel member named "Nacho" in Better Call Saul and he was fired from a starring role as another drug-dealer character in an Apple+ original crime drama called Dope Thief for getting into a fistfight with another actor. >Gundam >Do something original with it 🤣 It's Gundam, the odds of encountering original thought are close to zero unless this ends up being one of those in-name-only adaptations like the last Silent Hill, the new Resident Evil movie, etc. Look back at Netflix's Cowboy Bebop and tell me that's going to be a challenge. I dare you.
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