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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... sh*t that's a good one. Have you considered applying for a writing position with Disney LucasFilm? Honestly... that is a way funnier image than it should be. The mental image of Darth Vader choosing to live in a nice three-bedroom house in a quiet suburban neighborhood somewhere instead of brooding eternally in his lava-lit Doom Fortress on Mustafar like a video game final boss is inherently funny for some reason. Like, imagine buying the house next door not knowing that your new neighbor was Darth-freaking-Vader and discovering that the Emperor's merciless and universally feared enforcer keeps an immaculate lawn, decorates his yard with incredibly precise topiaries cut using his lightsaber, is a committed recycler and composter to reduce waste, and naturally chairs the homeowner's association meetings. Give us that show, Disney, instead of off-brand Star Trek: Prodigy. Robot Chicken made it work, I'm sure you can do it too.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... I dunno. Uwe Boll's House of the Dead is undeniably a bad movie. That said, I'd argue it has more to offer in terms of sincere entertainment value because the people working on it clearly understood the assignment. They knew they were working on a video game adaptation of an infamously campy, low-quality, arcade cabinet rail shooter with an excuse plot for a story. So they had fun with it by making it campy, over-the-top, schlocky zombie killing mindless fun. It's bad, but it's bad in a way that's fun to both watch and poke fun at. Eli Roth's Borderlands is also undeniably a bad movie. However, Borderlands is a bad movie that takes itself completely seriously. As I understand it, Borderlands the games are somewhat campy looter-shooters full of goofy, over-the-top characters and lots of comedic sociopathy. There's no such sense of fun to Borderlands the movie. The characters, excl. Tina and Claptrap, conduct themselves with grim seriousness at all times as they chase the poorly explained macguffin that is the Vault Key (which resembles nothing so much as a bedazzled buttplug) and then the Vault itself. That puts them heavily at odds with the movie's visual design, which is brightly colored and vaguely cartoony in almost every scene. That it takes itself so seriously despite how it looks is what really kills any "so bad it's good" entertainment value it might've had as a result of the awful writing, the terrible performances, and the mediocre digital effects work. If I were asked to pick which movie I considered more fun to watch... sorry, it'd be House of the Dead all the way. TBH, one thing that really doesn't help Borderlands is that Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis are all about 20-30 years too old to be in this kind of movie. It's not just that they're all clearly bored to tears working on this project, it's that they look absolutely terrible doing it. Kevin Hart looks very out of place trying to play a badass soldier. Jamie Lee Curtis somehow manages to look even older than her 65 years, possibly because her delivery comes off as senile 90% of the time. Cate Blanchett gets it the worst, though. The flame-red wig, the tight outfit, and the very heavy makeup intended to make her look young and sexy and athletic just make her look like a 50-something cougar trying way too hard to look young. IMAX resolution is not her friend here. They could've just cast some fresh-outs in their early 20's and the whole thing would've looked a lot more natural, and cost quite a bit less too. ... huh, I'm honestly not sure what that says about the games. Yeah, this is definitely one that would've been better off dying in development hell.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    We should just be thankful the writers didn't give her one of Star Wars's signature on-the-nose names like "Sheez Gun Di" or "Perforat Eed". (And if you think that joke is too far, I'd like to remind you The Clone Wars had a Jedi Master named "Ima Gun Di"... literally "I'm Gonna Die".) Not just that, it's that suburbs have long been narrative shorthand for a safe (and boring) environment. Cities are stereotyped as dangerous places where crime, and especially violent crime, is far more commonplace (even when it's not actually true). The suburbs, on the other hand, are stereotyped as a safe space away from the dangers and stresses of the city. They're the epitome of uneventful living. That's why so many horror franchises are set in suburbs, because they're supposed to be safe spaces away from Bad Things and taking away that safe space is part of what invokes the fear. These kids crave adventure because they're growing up in the suburbs, a safe place away from anything exciting or dangerous.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    All righty then, I have just returned home from the 7pm showing of the IMAX edition of Borderlands at my local theatre. First and foremost, I would like to remind the gentle readers out there that I know the square root of f*ck all about Borderlands lore and have never played any of the games. The full extent of my exposure to Borderlands was watching some friends play one of the games on a Discord stream during the pandemic for an afternoon. In the event that you are a Borderlands fan... I would like to offer my sincerest condolences, and a hug should you require it. I cannot recommend watching this movie, because advocating self-harm is a terrible thing that I would never do. Reviewers of Borderlands promised me a bad movie. Some, like WhatCulture, promised me one of the worst video game movies ever committed to film. Strong, hysterical words from a group of lifelong gamers with profound affection for the source material... but not that wide of the mark if we're being honest with each other. Writer and director Eli Roth (The Last Exorcism, Clown, Haunt) delivered an experience almost, but not quite, entirely unlike entertainment. This is not a "So bad it's good" movie or even a "So bad it's awful" movie. Borderlands is "So bad it's actually pretty worrying and hard to believe anyone at Lionsgate, Gearbox Software, or 2K Games watched this movie before greenlighting it to release to theaters." This exists on a similar level to the 1993 Super Marios Bros movie. In summation, Borderlands is a VERY bad movie and it is VERY obvious that everyone involved (except possibly Eli Roth) understood that it was a VERY bad movie while principal photography was still underway. It is, in a way, fitting that there's a scene where the four main characters literally get sh*t on because that's what this movie did to the actors and audience alike. How this film got green-lit for release in this state is a mystery for the ages. I refuse to believe that this movie was subjected to any kind of test screening, because I still have just enough faith in Humanity to believe that no Human audience watched this and said "Yeah, that's a good time". Especially not the IP owner (Gearbox), the game's publisher (2K), or the distributor (Lionsgate).
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's easy to forget the Daedalus-class and Prometheus-class are 50% larger than the largest modern aircraft carriers at the time the original series was made (the Nimitz-class) and that that's still broadly true with the new and only slightly larger Gerald R. Ford-class. The Daedalus-class in particular is about twice the size of the next-largest marine amphibious assault ship (Wasp-class). The overkill was intentional on the UN Forces' part... the combination of a Prometheus-class supercarrier and Daedalus-class amphibious assault ship (with escorts) were meant to basically be a self-contained mobile army able to crush any enemy force that landed within their area of operations. (Master File asserts that there were supposed to be five pairs, each roving a specific stretch of coastline around the world.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    This one point, I actually agree with... not becuase I think it's inherently anti-Star Wars, but because no other Star Wars title I've seen has shown me anywhere in the Galaxy Far Far Away that actually looks like a place normal people would want to live. The writers usually only ever take us to the sterile and lifeless ivory towers of the galaxy's ruling elite, little villages of impoverished dirt farmers out in the arse end of nowhere, and the various flavors of "wretched hive of scum and villainy" like the lower levels of overpopulated ecumenopolises, rundown industrial towns, and shantytowns ruled by crime lords where the galaxy's disreputable individuals hang out. With that being the norm in Star Wars, this... ... looks like it came from another franchise entirely. Specifically, Star Trek. This vista wouldn't feel at all out of place as a suburb on some really nice Federation planet like Earth, Betazed, or Trill.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    @twich is completely correct. The UN Forces SLV-111 Daedalus is an amphibious assault ship in the style of a modern marine amphibious assault ship... just much bigger. Its oldest technical writeup actually says it was designed by the US Navy and US Marine Corps. Like a modern amphibious assault ship, it does support a modest number of aircraft for its size (mainly helicopters) which are used for a variety of purposes including logistical support, anti-submarine warfare, close air support of ground troops, and combat air patrols. Daedalus's upper hull is configured as a flight deck which, due to the ship's incredible size for its role, is said to be able to simultaneously support either 22 regular-sized helicopters, 12 Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters, or 12 VF-1 Battroids for VTOL takeoff. As the ship spent most of its very brief actual service life in space, it had very little opportunity to put those capabilities to use. Based on the oldest versions of its technical writeup from series mechanical setting coordinator Masahiro Chiba, yes it can. Not many, but it can. The description provided says Battroids for VTOL takeoff, so presumably they're stored as Battroids too. The only source to actually discuss the VF-0C's operations is the non-official setting Variable Fighter Master File, which acknowledges the Hasegawa kit and provides some minor details related to it. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix describes all twelve production VF-0Cs having been delivered to the UN Marine Corps VMFAT-203 Hawks in Hawaii for evaluation and model conversion training before "about eight" of those aircraft were sent to the SLV-111 Daedalus at South Ataria island. They operated there as patrol aircraft and provided direct air cover for UN Navy ships during an Anti-Unification Alliance attack on the island (though it doesn't say when, possibly the final Christmas offensive of 2008 depicted in the Macross the First manga, which also had participation of VF-0s from the CVN-99 Asuka II's sister ship CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II). Nothing is said about how exactly they operated from the Daedalus's flight deck, though it may be simply that they used the length of the flight deck and their V/STOL capability to save fuel rather than go full VTOL.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Is anyone else completely thrown by Star Wars showing a planet that actually looks like a legitimately nice place to live? The trailer definitely doesn't do much to diminish the impression this is just a Star Wars version of Star Trek: Prodigy though.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    All right, I'm gonna go behold the IMAX edition of this turdburger of a movie in person tomorrow to see if it's as bad as it's cracked up to be.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The pre-existing thread for it:
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, the worse the reviews get the more I kinda wanna actually go see it just to see how much of a dumpster fire it really is. 🤣
  12. Seto Kaiba
    You're as sane as I am... which now that I think about it probably isn't at all reassuring. This is overpriced by at least a factor of four considering it's just a metal version of the Playschool toy with LEDs and a screen that displays three different animated GIFs.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yowch... $800.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    We all knew it was gonna be schlock... so the only thing that's really surprising about the reviews is how much they're struggling to find anything nice to say about the movie. 🤣 I disagree with IGN's claim that there's no videogame movie curse. There very clearly is one, because this film by any indication is one hell of a cursed object.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    If you think about it, it does feel a bit out-of-character for a company like Disney that has prided itself for a literal century on being a provider of unobjectionable, appropriate-for-all-ages, family friendly fun and entertainment to start carrying a medium like anime that often contains violence, potentially offensive humor, and fanservice of a sexual nature. Esp. now that Disney+ and Hulu have effectively merged and you can access Hulu's catalog via the Disney+ app. It's just a weird thought to think that something with as much blatant fanservice as Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture can be watched on Disney+ now. 🤣
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Right back at'cha, matey. But instead of getting upset, we could do the rational thing and recognize these opinions as representative samples of the anime hobbyist community. It's illustrative of why most distributors releasing newly licensed shows to streaming release them subs-only at first: because that's what a plurality, if not the majority, of the hobbyist community wants from new releases anyway. They can loop back and add the dub later and it's no skin off anyone's back as long as there's enough interest to justify the expense.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    From what I've seen, the anime is a fairly faithful adaptation of the light novel... which suggests none of the versions of the story are very good because the story itself is generic. With the anime, at least we get to see Jun Fukuyama do his very best Satoshi Hino impression. 🤪 The one title this season that's really stood out for me is the rather cute little romcom The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant... though I'm increasingly feeling like that's less due to it doing anything particularly distinctive and more due to the rest of the simulcast season being devoid of attention-getters.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Signs point to yes? There's a throwaway line in the second-to-last episode of Star Trek: Discovery ("Lagrange Point") where Ensign Tal mentions the Earth Defense Force has been visiting Mars in the 32nd century. Whether it's been recolonized or not, it's apparently at least safe to go there.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Apparently he'll be playing a space pirate that requires heavy makeup... quite a bit of fan speculation seems to be that he'll be playing recurring pirate Hondo from The Clone Wars.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    He could change that, he just didn't want to... as in "Life Line" when he actually gets upset with Dr. Zimmerman for changing it as part of an attempt to upgrade him with some quality-of-life improvements. The bigger problem is, IMO, that he's still around at all. He's over 800 years old, technologically, and by the time of Starfleet Academy even his mobile emitter is ~300 years old. He probably should've been taken offline like B4 was during the Federation's ban on artificial lifeforms and even in the 32nd century Starfleet prohibits self-aware AIs on its ships and bases... so if he's not really self-aware/sentient then why does he still exist at all, and if he is, why is he allowed anywhere in Starfleet?
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Nearly halfway into the current Summer 2024 simulcast season, and whooboy did this season turn out to be a crop of stinkers. Wistoria: Wand and Sword's fourth episode dropped this week... and I am so tired of its protagonist Will Serfort. He's a blatant Harry Potter expy, but even Harry Potter had far more grit than this guy. Will Serfort's a whiny, indecisive, absolute doormat and the longer the story drags on the more obvious it becomes that the other students who bully him and say that he doesn't belong at their magic school are, despite their rudeness, objectively correct. He can't use magic, so he's incapable of doing most of the coursework and would have long since flunked out if not for one professor keeping him enrolled via credits from field work he can complete using his physical prowess. Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools took five entire episodes to actually get to its main plot, and what it delivered was almost comically lazy. It's one of those weird revenge-fantasy sort of romance stories that starts with the protagonist's partner ending their relationship to be with someone else and then an impossibly perfect Hallmark hubby practically falls out of the f***ing sky and takes an immediate unprompted intense romantic interest in the newly single person. It's actually kind of unintentionally funny in how utterly lazy it is and how blatantly it's pandering. My Deer Friend Nokotan is just an Excel Saga-style drug trip. It's actually pretty fun for all of that, but it lacks those moments of self-awareness that took Excel Saga from merely weird to outrageously funny. My Wife Has No Emotion never really stops being cringeworthy. This is, after all, a romcom about a guy who's so terminally lonely that he fell in love with a ChatGPT-enabled kitchen appliance because it's vaguely girl-shaped and his definition of "woman" seemingly goes no farther than "domestic servant". 🙄 It's one of those titles where I really want to just find the original author and send them to therapy. Failure Frame is a pretty unremarkable isekai series. It's actually gotten a lot better for the lack of the protagonist's classmates, who are shown to be actually pretty incompetent despite their advanced skills. It is veering heavily into the fanservice side of matters now with the protagonist having acquired an elf girl sidekick who seems to have never heard about this marvelous invention called the "shirt". Every antagonistic male character seems to feel compelled to rant at length about how hot she is and how they want to sexually assault her... and at least one of them actually makes the attempt. The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army was a Human is pretty unremarkable as fantasy stuff goes. The animation is pretty consistently low quality and the writing is form letter for the most part.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    If Simmons's case is typical, Mars Base's candidates for cyborg soldier augmentation are frontline troops (infantry and pilots) who are killed or wounded unto death but whose bodies can be recovered, preserved or kept barely alive on life support, and shipped back to Mars. Simmons himself is in the latter category. He was wounded beyond any hope of survival on Earth but shipped back to Mars on life support, only to die while his transport was on approach to Mars colony. Well, there's nothing called a "Shadow Fighter" in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA or in Genesis Breaker... are you referring to the Dark Legioss? Genesis Breaker doesn't appear to have changed anything with respect to the Dark Legioss. The regular version is still a conventional Legioss that's had some stealth upgrades to mask its HBT emissions and make it harder to detect by other means. The unmanned Dark Legioss is still described as an unmanned conversion of the Dark Legioss fighter that's controlled by an onboard AI computer. There's nothing called "Mars City" in MOSPEADA either, as far as I can recall. As far as official material, there is "Mars Base" the military installation and "Mars colony" which refers to the actual civilian settlement(s). It doesn't really get any more specific than that. Some sources appear to conflate the two and refer to both as "Mars Base", like MOSPEADA Color Graffiti, which refers to the residential block that Stick grew up in as "Mars Base 22" and lists Stick and Yellow's hometown simply as "Mars Base". It's never actually seen except for Stick's one flashback in "Jonathan's Elegy", so we don't really have anything to go on. Genesis Breaker further muddies the waters there by treating "Mars Base" as the name of a specific armed service rather than one specific installation. Specifically, it presents "Mars Base" as another name for the Mars Army... a new armed service separate and distinct from Mars's defense forces that exists specifically and solely for the business of retaking Earth (and subsequently governing it as a colonial dominion of Mars). It does suggest that proper development of Mars for large-scale habitation was done after the unification of Earth, such that the individual experimental research stations were all folded into a single Mars colonization program.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    You mean Simmons? Somewhere between a Dreadnought and Robocop, yeah. He's basically just a head, a spinal cord, and a bit of upper torso grafted into a military-grade robotic body. In one sense, it might actually be worse than both since Simmons and the other "robot" soldiers had their brains forcibly reactivated after clinical death to be offered the choice of accepting their demise or being installed in robotic bodies and sent back into the fight. Simmons is said to have died multiple times. His Ride Armor's closer to a 40K Dreadknight though. Genesis Breaker really REALLY reenvisioned MOSPEADA as an absolute hellhole of a setting... and not even on Earth, it's Mars that's the absolute hellhole.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    In all fairness, I'd say that's a certifiable non-issue. Unlike Data, who was a physical construct with a fixed appearance, the Doctor is a hologram. Every aspect of his appearance is entirely arbitrary and mutable. We've seen that he can modify his appearance to change his projected clothes (e.g. Fair Haven), to appear to be a member of another species ("Blink of an Eye") and/or gender ("Life Line"), or even to impersonate specific people ("Renaissance Man"). We know these abilities aren't unique either, because we've seen another EMH Mk.I reconfigured the same way in "Dr. Bashir, I Presume" to take on the appearance of Dr. Bashir. Appearing to age a bit is so far within what we already know he can do that it's readily excusible. He can play the "Screw you, I can look how I want" card every bit as effectively as the Founders. If they wanna digitally de-age him, they can even chalk the uncanny valley effect up to him being an obsolete hologram from 800 years ago.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    For the curious, Chapter X-1 "Simmons & Necessary" is a one-chapter short story that gives the broad strokes of Simmons's backstory. He was a miner working a deep sea mining platform in 2050 when the Invit first invaded, how he was gravely wounded in a friendly fire accident early in the resistance against the Invit occupation, escaped to Mars, and was rebuilt as a Robocop-style cyborg soldier to continue fighting. It ends with him being introduced to Necessary and inducted into the Breakers. Chapter X-2 "Case of Every" talks about Every's backstory and how she came to join the Breakers. Most of it covers her early career as a pharmaceuticals researcher developing a combat drug for the Mars Army in anticipation of a war of independence against Earth, before joining the anti-war/anti-Mars Gov't group "Woodpeckers". It briefly talks about her final, doomed mission as an anti-gov't operative to destroy a secret Mars Army thermonuclear weapons lab on Ganymede that culminated in her being captured and sentenced to 320 years of imprisonment in cryogenic suspension for her crimes. It ends with the Mars Base administration thawing her out 46 years later in 2082 to inform her she was being drafted to serve in the 2nd Earth Recapture mission. Chapter X-3 "Case of Eagle" talks about how Eagle came to join the Breakers. It starts with him being injured in an accident during a routine escort flight over Mars, then being briefeed on how his remote connections to the extremely wealthy family that founded the Intelligence Bureau led to him being selected for its secret mission to Earth during the 2nd Earth Recapture operation as a bodyguard for the mission's leader, Gate. It ends with him training Gate at a firing range and realizing, belatedly, that his memories of his life before the accident had been tampered with.
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