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Seto Kaiba

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Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Oh boy, a grand final confrontation between two massively overhyped characters... 🤣 On the Republic side, Hera Syndulla... a "tactical genius" who makes surprised Pikachu faces whenever flying directly at the enemy and getting shot down doesn't win the day. On the Empire side, Grand Admiral Thrawn... a man whose "tactical genius" amounts to little more than not being comically incompetent and delegating the inevitable screwup which lets the Rebels win and escape to a subordinate with more ambition than brains.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Disney+ Star Wars is pretty problematic in general because it's run by Filoni and staffed by creatives who are mainly fans of Filoni's work on The Clone Wars. Ahsoka is kind of its logical extreme... a Disney+ original series by Filoni with a story that is composed almost exclusively out of callbacks to previous Filoni Star Wars titles. The sheer density of the callbacks, in-jokes, and homages is a problem in and of itself but the main problem with the writing is that it's a "The Adventure Continues" story where all of the characters are past the end of their respective story arcs and there's no clear direction in which they can continue to grow and develop. The story feels thin and directionless because it's not being driven by the development of the characters. It's just sort of happening in their general vicinity, because it's actually an Excuse Plot meant to set up the return of fan favorite BBEG Grand Admiral Thrawn after he went down like a Scooby-Doo villain at the end of Rebels.🤣
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That was basically inevitable, though. The Mandalorians are Star Wars's Klingons. A culture of Proud Warrior Race Guys dogmatically following the vaguely Social Darwinist warrior code laid down by their culture's founding father to its often-counterproductive or self-destructive conclusion and love to invoke variations of the No True Scotsman whenever someone deviates. We saw this invoked directly in season 2 itself in how Din reacts to Boba Fett. Din Djarin initially refuses to give Boba Fett his armor back because beskar belongs (only) to the Mandalorians and Boba's Not a Real Mandalorian because he never took the Creed. Fett only gets his armor back after convincing Din that it's his by right of familial inheritence, since his father was a foundling raised by Real Mandalorians. Din violates the Creed to rescue Grogu from the Empire. According to the rigid and inflexible warrior code his people follow, he is Not a Real Mandalorian. So of course he has to go on a quest to restore his honor and become a Real Mandalorian again, because the show's title is The Mandalorian not Technically a Mandalorian or That Guy Who Isn't a Real Mandalorian but Wears Mandalorian Armor. It's basically obligatory. It's basically the same as Worf's big story arc in Star Trek: the Next Generation. Worf loses his honor for the greater good, but as a result is Not a Real Klingon. He then has to live with the shame and the scorn of his people for a while before he has the opportunity to reclaim his honor and become a Real Klingon again. Leaving him permanently dishonored was literally never on the table to begin wtih.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe they all die out. After all, that their warrior culture is so toxic and so incredibly self-destructive that they'd already practically destroyed themselves several times before the Empire ever rolled up to finish things is a recurring theme with them. It'll make bank. Count on it. Above all else, it's a safe project that leans heavily on well-established and well-received characters that've tested well in merchandising already. Unlike Solo, it's a sequel rather than a prequel, so they won't fall prey to the many perils of writing backstory for an already-established character either. It probably won't set the world on fire, but between Baby Yoda and its mindless summer action movie potential of Din John Wick-ing his way through an army of hapless stormtroopers it'll probably do respectable business at the box office.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That a second season exists is a pretty solid argument that they haven't. No matter how many fanservice-y callbacks Filoni et. al. throw in, at its core Ahsoka is still a completely unnecessary sequel to Rebels that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the characters or their story.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    That seems unlikely. Char's capture of the Gundam completely derailed Mobile Suit and Mobile Armor development on both sides during the One Year War. It's implied that many of the familiar Zeon "enemy MS of the week" machines of the original Gundam series were either never developed or never completed and put into production because the Principality's government suspended current projects in favor of studying and reverse-engineering the captured Gundam. The Federation, likewise, had to cope with the loss of the Gundam prototypes to Zeon and proceeded to develop a Gundam-Guncannon hybrid machine called the Light Guncannon that became their main MS in place of the GM. One design that was confirmed to never be completed in this timeline is the MS-14 Gelgoog. It's mentioned in the timeline that its development was cancelled because of the Gundam's capture. Two that have been confirmed to still exist are the Braw Bro (now called Kikeroga) and the Big Zam, with the latter only being completed because of Dozle Zabi's administrative clout and ultimately being what gets him killed in this timeline too. Maybe. The whole duel thing in The Witch from Mercury was a pretty stupid plot device that was handled really poorly throughout the series and was one of several recurring Get Out of Jail Free cards for the characters. Clan battles in GQuuuuuuX seem like they'll be a lot worse, since random civvies and refugees living in illegally-built housing are probably not going to have a plausible source of money to afford to refurbish, repair, and resupply any kind of MS never mind an ex-military one. It's even harder to believe that they might be buying them from Zeon, since a MS doubtless costs the equivalent tens of millions of dollars. Installer keys sound like they were a postwar invention, meaning it's weird that any war surplus Zaku would need one unless it was specifically retrofitted to. Ones salvaged from battlefields by the junk guild shouldn't even have that system... or if they did, the key would surely still be inside the downed MS, since a MS with a surviving pilot would likely be recovered. (Unrelated... the installer keys are kinda big, aren't they? The starter keys for the Federation's GMs in Requiem for Vengenace were the size of thumb drives.) Probably.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Episode 3 is headed back towards the same questionable formula that Bandai Namco used to put mobile suit battles into The Witch from Mercury without doing a war story... mobile suit duels as a sporting event. It's just going to make a lot less sense in GQuuuuuuX, since instead of The Witch from Mercury's duels between the heirs-apparent of the Earth Sphere's wealthiest to showcase the mobile suits their companies make and for status it's refugees having illegal underground tandem fights while somehow being able to supply, repair, and store mobile suits without drawing attention from the authorities.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    There are links to PDFs of the corrected pages on the Japanese Wikipedia article found here: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/マクロスΔのディスコグラフィ#CD I assume this is what you're looking for? Here are direct links: https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_04_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_08_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_09_20160708.pdf https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/img/artist_top/A025373/booklet_10_20160708.pdf
  9. Seto Kaiba
    "Good" is wholly subjective... but it's a fair question nevertheless. Disney was still leaning on the familiar OT designs or variations thereof through the end of the sequel trilogy. My (cynical) assumption would be that they would continue to lean on the same designs to minimize risk (based on the new movie being set only a short time after the sequel trilogy) and save a new design for a major event like a new trilogy. Maybe they'll dust off an old design as "new" the way they did for Ahsoka's first season.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, ok. I guess credit for finally getting off the dime and moving the story forward a bit? There are certainly worse ideas than Top Gun: a Star Wars Story. With that timeframe it sounds like a refreshingly Jedi-free narrative, which is enough to pique my interest.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    OK, so it's a title card. Still feel like a further continuation of Din and Grogu's story is kinda unnecessary.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's vague... Are they remaking the 2001 Star Wars game by the same title? Adapt one of the starfighter-specific games? Just doing a story about fighter pilots?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Finally got shipping confirmation on those light novels today... I can hardly wait to dig in. I know I probably can't hope for much from some of those - like the Macross 7 fleet VF-25s - but I'll take what I can get. Given that it appears in Master File, I wonder if it was something Kodachi came up with and Master File ran with or vice versa? Vol.2 of the movie novelization was published only a few months before the Master File was...
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I don't think there's anything deep or significant there. Char doesn't have any choice but to play the long game in GQuuuuuuX. His revenge plan progressed at the brisk pace it did in the prime Universal Century timeline thanks to the actions of the White Base/Pegasus crew creating opportunities for him. The ship never landed on Earth under Federation control, so Char was never able to manipulate Garma into the suicide run that killed him in the prime timeline. Dozle ironically still died at Solomon, but under different circumstances. Without the White Base crew turning the tide against Zeon on Earth and in space, Zeon's forces were not put on the defensive the way they were in the prime timeline so Degwin never opened the peace talks that prompted Gihren to assassinate him with the Solar Ray, so Kycilia never had to execute him for regicide, and thus Char never got his opportunity to assassinate Kycilia in the ensuing confusion. GQuuuuuuX's Char is a Char who never got a plausibly deniable opportunity to bump off a member of the Zabi family until the Second Battle of Solomon, where he tried to allow Federation forces to drop the fortress on Kycilia's base at Granada.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    This might serve as a good example of why one shouldn't judge a book by its cover... or its author. Master File's explanation of the New UN Forces history, produced under Kawamori's supervision, is more an attempt to reconcile an onscreen contradiction and is firmly based on official setting material. The contradiction in question being that we don't see the New UN Forces livery onscreen until (Ozma's flashbacks to) 2048 in Macross Frontier's TV series, but the New UN Forces were first mentioned in the post-war arc of the original Macross TV series some 37 in-universe years and 25 real world years earlier. Kodachi's explanation isn't really based on anything except the idea that the government imposed reforms on the military after the events of Macross VF-X2 and the fact that the NUNS livery is seen for the first time in Macross Frontier... even though we also see it in a flashback to events BEFORE Kodachi claims the NUNS existed.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's mixed with a bit of Gihren's Greed too. This isn't the first time there's been a Char's custom Gundam or a UC story where Zeon ends up winning the war.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    That'd depend on which of two contradictory takes you ascribe to. Macross the Ride's explanation is that the New UN Forces were a product of the military reorganization that occurred in the wake of the Second Unification Wars in 2051. Master File presents a different view that the New UN Forces existed from the same point as the New UN Government (2010) and that the areas around Earth simply held onto the old livery until the Second Unification War as a point of pride and a symbol of their Earth-first ideology. There's evidence for both versions, but as usual Macross loves a multiple guess past... but in both cases they supposedly basically went directly from the one to the other. Seven years after Macross 7 would be 2053, well after the NUNS mark was in use in either case Given that Sound Force were irregulars, and this manga basically features "Sound Force II"... well... it's probably just some personal mark or something. Well, they can't all be winners. Macross Ace at least had a lot to compensate for the occasional weak manga installment.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, this episode just leaves me thinking "Why couldn't you just use this art style for the main series and not the excessively twee style we got?" By the end of it... I'm just bored. This was supposed to be impactful backstory that shapes the entire setting and worldview of the series we're watching. Instead, it just feels like an afterthought... or maybe a bad fanfic by a Zeon fanboy. The whole episode can be summed up as "Zeon is invincible because Char got a Gundam". Did Anno forget that Zeon was already at the breaking point in September UC 0079 before the Federation ever got the Gundam? It's not like one of the major events of the war was General Revil escaping and giving a speech about it.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Started Classic Stars... a series that does such a bad job of explaining its own premise that I'm still not sure what it's actually about. The best part is, nobody else seems to know either. Its English wikipedia page has no real info, and its Japanese wikipedia page doesn't exist. (It literally just redirects to the stub article for the production company.) What little I can glean from this atrociously written mess is that the protagonist is a teenage boxing enthusiast who suffered a career ending eye injury, and in exchange for a very pricy surgery to restore his vision he agreed to attend an exclusive private school. What he wasn't told (or didn't pay attention to?) was that he was to attend as a music major not as an athlete and that he was to be involved in some kind of project to study emotions (or manufacture a boy band? I can't tell) using a massive holographic stage and pop songs based on public domain classical music. EDIT: No amount of context can make this make sense. At one point, a character says without a trace of irony "That's right! You can even punch people with songs!". F***ING WHAT. Nobody tell Basara. 🤣
  20. Seto Kaiba
    In the next episode? Probably... though it's a flashback so it's technically already happened several years ago by the time of GQuuuuuuX. Whether there will be a third one, or some other atrocity, will really depend on the direction the story goes. One thing about GQuuuuuuX's story that really worries me is the sneaking feeling that it's going to continue where Requiem for Vengeance left off in terms of trying to make Zeon characters sympathetic by avoiding the whole subject of their war crimes.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is... quite something. I'm not completely certain what, but it's definitely something! It's the story of a girl in a fantasy world who just wants a slow life and to be normal... only to find out at a coming-of-age sort of ceremony when teens receive a blessing from animal spirits/gods that confers special abilities that she's found the favor of the Gorilla god. So this petite little lass who wants nothing more than to fly under the radar finds herself all but drafted into the knighthood because her blessing confers MASSIVE (and unladylike) speed, strength, and resilience far beyond what the men around her have... catapulting her into a reverse harem sort of situation where she's got a few prettyboy knights all surrounding her. Once Upon a Witch's Death is also quite something. The story of a witch's apprentice in what appears to be an alternate Earth where magic is just a thing nobody really questions, who is told by her mentor on her 17th birthday that she's going to die in a year because of an inherited death curse. So this slightly bratty witch has to collect 1,000 tears of pure joy in order to concoct a magical solution that will prevent her from dying on her 18th birthday. Aside from its incredibly genki protagonist, it's pretty much just the protagonist going around causing Hallmark moments with magic. Nothing to write home about.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    So, two points here... both of which make it worse. The O'Neill cylinder-type space colonies used in Gundam's Universal Century (and other timelines) typically have a population of several million people, not thousands. Those people aren't usually alive by the time the colony is launched as an improvised ballistic projectile. One of the many, MANY war crimes perpetrated by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War was the use of poison gas to indiscriminately massacre the populations of entire colonies in the Federation-aligned Sides. Island Iffish, the colony from Side 2 that was used in the original colony drop ("Operation British"), had its population gassed to death with GG gas as part of Zeon's preparations to convert the colony into a ballistic weapon. Just in case the audience needed to be reminded that the Principality of Zeon's forces are Complete Monsters, the previously backstory-only massacre was animated as part of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin's fifth episode showing how unbothered those Principality forces planning and carrying out the massacre were. (Ironically Stardust Memory depicts the rest of the Zeon forces as being disgusted by this after the fact, to the extent of deliberately leaving the forces responsible for it behind during the retreat to Axis.) As for the goal of colony drops... well... it's usually a terror weapon, meant to cause mass death through both the impact and the environmental damage caused by such a huge object impacting Earth's surface. The Zabis were arguably the most reserved of the lot, aiming only to destroy Earth Federation Forces HQ in a massive nuke-proof underground complex in South America. Delaz's forces tried to cause mass starvation by dropping a colony on central North America to destroy farmland, the Titans were trying to destroy a factory-city (Von Braun) that was supporting the AEUG, and both Neo Zeon and Char's New Neo Zeon were trying to destroy the Federation capital (wiping out Dublin, Ireland and Lhasa, Tibet in the process.) Char's endgame was different, though... he wanted serial colony drops to render Earth completely uninhabitable rather than just win some war. Char wasn't a cyber-newtype. Mind you, this timeline's Char might be more insane than the one in the main UC timeline. Zeon didn't lose the war, but he sure as hell did. He wasn't able to carry out his plan to arrange the deaths of the entire Zabi family under the cover of the One Year War the way he did in the prime timeline. According to promotional materials...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I don't envy you that... I hate working in Photoshop/GIMP. It's been a dog's age since I read that one, since I stopped following it after Macross Ace ended serialization. Did it have anything interesting tech-wise, besides being one of the few appearances of a VF-9?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Thanks. I keep forgetting to grab this, so I appreciate the efforts to keep it available despite the best efforts of Mega.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I know... he's done a lot of great translation work. I really wish the mods here would let him come back to the community because he is a great contributor to the fandom. I've got some of his translations of older works like My Fair Minmay, The Lost Two Years, and The Plundering Fleet on my tablet. One thing I really love about the fan community working on translations is we each kind of have our own little areas of private practice that just sort of organically popped up and we're spread out pretty well to cover the most ground we can. No formal agreements or anything, just a bunch of people who love Macross doing the best they can to share as much of it as possible with the fandom spreading out across as much of it as we can according to our own personal inclinations. 😁 Several novels are on my to-do pile, but they've always been a lower priority than the technical materials to me. Now that my day job is finally returning to something resembling work-life balance after... jeez like four or five years of constant OT... I've finally had the time and resources to knuckle down, finish the renovations on my hobby space, and get all the equipment upgrades I wanted to really dig into my hobby properly again. (Distractions from other light novel titles notwithstanding... there was a good long period where my girlfriend had me binging multiple light novel series with her, like Overlord, The Ascendance of a Bookworm, Goblin Slayer, and lately The Apothecary Diaries. Gundam has been a bit of a distraction too, since I also got all the Master Archive books for the UC setting while I was getting the Master File books for Ace Combat, Full Metal Panic!, and Patlabor.)
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