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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    My weekly watch group is going back through Tenchi Muyo!'s OVA timeline, since most of our group hasn't seen OVA 4, OVA 5, or Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari. We just finished OVA 2 last night, and having translated a bunch of Kajishima's doujins and infobooks about the setting it's extra-freaking weird watching it knowing how all the charactes are related and how many tie-ins there are to Dual!, Photon: the Idiot Adventures, and Spaceship Agga Ruter. The Summer '25 simulcast season really is just a steaming turd. So far, I've dropped: The Water Magician I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability New Saga (Dishonorable mention for being the most generic f***ing thing I've ever seen.) Welcome to the Outcast Restaurant Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra Scooped Up by an S-Rank Adventurer Lord of Mysteries Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse (Dishonorable mention for being a shameless f***ing ripoff of Re:Zero) Private Tutor to the Duke's Daughter (The worst case of "sameface" this side of Gundam SEED and it feels like the creator belongs on a government watchlist over their prurient interest in tweens.) The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses Solo Camping for Two (I cannot imagine a worse attempt at a romance plot outside of a Hallmark movie.) Detectives These Days Are Crazy! (Because "comedy" is more than just making funny faces at the viewer several times an episode.) Hotel Inhumans Turkey! Time to Strike That's a new frigging record, by an enormous margin. Crunchyroll's simulcast season page is starting to feel like the front page of the Nintendo eShop. All shovelware all the time. The bar was already low thanks to the overabundance of isekai, but it seems like these studios are holding a ****ing limbo contest. I refuse to even start The Rising of the Shield Hero season 4 because I know it's set past the point where the light novel completely jumped the shark. Dandadan has gone from being fairly interesting to fairly dull as the cast continues to grow with more and more "quirky" characters being added. I'm kind of just showing up for Secrets of the Silent Witch, Ruri Rocks, and Betrothed to My Sister's Ex at this point.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Finally sitting down to watch this one myself... Really going hard on the thematic callbacks in this opening eh? I know Alien is pretty much a creatively dead property coasting on nostalgia and nothing else, but c'mon... at least put in a token effort to do something different. OK, suspension of disbelief is punctured worse than most xenomorph victims at this point. The idea that there is no traffic on the streets at all at midday in future Bangkok is absolutely laughable. Possibly the most unbelievable thing yet. For how absurdly little damage the crash does, I am still going to say "Bangkok without traffic" remains the least realistic thing in the show so far. Anyone else think Neverland looks like ****ing Jurassic Park when they take off? This is a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to Alien sequels and spinoffs. The original Alien movie was as scary as it was because the crew of the Nostromo were professionals who did (almost) everything right and still got killed by the xenomorph. Every subsequent title in the franchise has seen a sharp decline in protagonist self-preservation instincts to or below standard horror movie levels such that by Prometheus and Covenant you'd swear the humans WANT to get eaten. When it comes to the first episode, I have to say I am not impressed. Bemused, certainly. Even a little disappointed. Is there a story here worth telling, or are they just jerking off like Fede Alvarez was in Romulus?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    "Practically everyone dies" is pretty much the default/only Alien story ending. They all get there sooner or later... the only question is how.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Possible, but unlikely IMO. Aside from the blatant creator provincialism on display the reveal of the ship's origins has little-to-nothing to do with the actual story or its Aesop. The focus of the episode's conclusion isn't the scavengers, it's what James T. Kirk learns about the weight of responsibility that comes with being in command in his first outing in the big chair. The scavengers really could have been anybody and it wouldn't have mattered much in the end. What's far more likely to provoke discussion is that this goofy ****ing thing looks right out of Warhammer 40,000.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" Jeez, the lens flares in this are bad. There's one shot where you can barely see the captain because a (pulsing) spotlight behind her is shining directly at the camera. Remember the Pakled clumpships from the Star Trek: Lower Decks season one finale? Writers David Reed and Bill Wolkoff sure hope you don't.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It was the YF-22, not the F-22... from 1990 to 1997, when the production F-22 was unveiled and officially named "Raptor".
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, her character's flippant and often silly behavior is a poor fit for the series. It's pretty obvious she was originally conceived as a Guinan-like "wise advisor" character who could dispense the wisdom from her millennia of life to help crewmembers with whatever problem they faced, but she's basically been demoted to comic relief in a series that doesn't really need it. Less a Guinan and more a Neelix. Hopefully come season four she'll end up replaced by Scotty, which is clearly the trajectory they're heading. The writers using her as their vehicle for their latest attempt to brand a new alien threat as "pure evil" is pretty silly too. Star Trek has always favored the idea that hostile aliens are not evil, just operating on different morality or different priorities, but Strange New Worlds tried to make the Gorn into "pure evil" in its first two seasons before walking it back and now we have this race of not-demons doing Exorcist things who are "pure evil" according to Pelia.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    If you look in the credits, it's her actual name. Sandra Yi Sencindiver is playing a character named "Yutani" (no first name given?) who is the current CEO of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in 2120.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It's after the merger, but before the events of the first film as far as we know. According to articles in Time, USA Today, etc. Alien: Earth is set in 2120. 16 years after Alien: Covenant and 2 years before the events of the original Alien movie (2122).
  10. Seto Kaiba
    She probably has people for that. 😆 Her tour crew has to have a fair few administrative staff dancing attendance on her wants and needs, as well as the hotel concierge staff wherever she's staying, as well as any personal shopper benefits her black card might afford her. And if that's not enough to get through preorder madness with her sanity intact she's got Grace and/or Brera, both of whom have a literal cyberwarfare suite in their brains. Hell, in Master File, Sheryl is able to get the SMS branch in Macross Olympia to not only assign a pair of VF-25s as her personal guard but to repaint them in custom livery and change their modex numbers purely for symbolic/nostalgic reasons. (To match her and Alto's birthdays... 1123 and 727 respectively.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's happening all over for the last week or so, so much so that a bunch of web hosts are now saying they will block AI crawlers by default.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Ruri Rocks continues to be excellent edutainment. IMO, it's great that it's not just gushing about mineralogy. The series frequently delves into the geology behind the formation of the minerals du jour and the scientific method(s) used to identify them and track samples back to a larger vein or deposit. Most importantly, it shows the pitfalls of taking shortcuts, using sloppy or improper methodology, and making assumptions and shows that even the experts can be wrong if they draw conclusions without all the facts. It's not just Ruri being on the receiving end of a lecture, she's actively involved and learning and making worthwhile contributions in her own right by thinking outside the box. (It's kind of making me miss Mythbusters, in a way... particularly in the sense that there's nothing wrong with being wrong as long as you're applying the scientific method and applying what you learn to refine your hypothesis.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it looks like we're getting at least the first half of the Alabasta Saga there... Reverse Mountain, Whisky Peak, and Little Garden are all in the trailer. One thing to love about Netflix's One Piece adaptation... their attention to detail. It's hard to see, but you can see in that brief shot that they've even included the bands of cigars on smoker's arms and on the front of his coat.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Catching up on a bunch of titles this week... finally got to My Dress-Up Darling S2. I'm vexed beyond words that it took so long to get a season two for My Dress-Up Darling. That one was so popular it's flat astonishing it didn't get green-lit immediately. My group (re)watched the entire first season before starting the second, and had a great time with it. Betrothed to My Sister's Ex had another good one this week, it seems our protagonist is finally coming around to realizing that being treated the way her family treated her is nothing remotely approaching "normal" never mind "healthy". Secrets of the Silent Witch also had another good episode, with Monica dealing with the practical etiquette classes and predictably freaking out over such niceties as tea parties and formal dances.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Undoubtably... though it's entirely possible what Sheryl spent on that operation itself could equal or exceed the GDP of a small country in its own right. (You'd be surprised how small the GDP of some of the smallest countries is!) (Never mind her own net worth.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Bit of a horror-heavy season, eh? All in all, I'm pretty disappointed by this episode. It's not awful or even particularly bad... but it is painfully mediocre and terribly cliched. Its only real purpose seems to be setting up Dr. Korby's TOS-era fascination with finding a practical way to achieve physical immortality (c. "What Are Little Girls Made of?"), which I have to say doesn't feel particularly necessary or value-added.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming Sheryl's "VEGA" black card works the same way as its real world equivalents, that wouldn't be a concern. That Sheryl has a black card is a pretty clear indicator that her status as the galaxy's #1 idol has made her fabulously wealthy. That the card issuer, "VEGA", doesn't decline Sheryl's attempt to charge what must have been a literal fortune to her personal card in order to hire an entire PMC is proof that she has absolutely ridiculous amounts of money at her disposal. That she's still stunned rigid by the size of the invoice is a pretty solid argument that hiring a PMC like SMS must be a hugely expensive undertaking in its own right too. 😆
  18. Seto Kaiba
    From my experience, that's a generic message that's used for a variety of minor logistical issues on FedEx's side that result in the package being delayed in transit. I've seen this status get used for things like delays caused by severe weather or natural disasters that prevent a shipment from leaving a depot, delays due to mechanical breakdowns (e.g. unscheduled aircraft maintenance or in one memorable case a train derailing), handoff issues between local contract carriers and the backbone freight service, issues in customs paperwork in inbound/outbound customs processing, or just delays in customs processing.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It's being said that it was to avoid having to worry about correctly showing long hair moving in that brief zero gravity shot as the Enterprise...
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Being trapped inside is fairly common, as are the safety protocols not working, but usually how it plays out is that some outside force somehow screws up the holodeck and the main characters have to stall for time while folks outside try to fix things or otherwise escape the holodeck through irregular means. I don't recall any offhand that required the characters to explicitly finish the program. I'm no style guru for sure... but that new hairstyle they tried out in "Shuttle to Kenfori" definitely has a lot of people saying it's not the right look for the actress. A lot of folks seem to think it looks less like a wig and more like some kind of weird hat.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Yep, I made a similar remark in my original response to the episode. They managed to work in a nod to TAS and do a holodeck episode in a way that not only doesn't contradict any prior series continuity but also provides an explanation for a remark made way back in season one of Voyager about holodecks having dedicated power systems incompatible with the rest of the ship. If only Star Trek: Discovery had showed half as much attention to detail, it might've been a vastly different and far better show.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It could very well be at the level I previously guesstimated and still be 100% in-line with her charging it to a credit card. That sounds insane, but hear me out. At the time, Sheryl Nome was in her second year as the top idol in the galaxy. She charges SMS's services to a credit card, sure... but it's a black card. That term's been devalued a bit in the years since the film came out thanks to some rebrandings and some imitators, but what they're referencing there is the most elite and exclusive by-invitation-only tier of credit cards that only the super wealthy who meet specific secret criteria have. They generally have no credit limit and a variety of other perks catering to rich and famous. (For the record, the largest known single purchase ever charged to a black card was in excess of $170M.) Sheryl's the kind of rich where money is no object. But from the promotional art for the first movie, even she is absolutely gobsmacked by the invoice from SMS after the film's events. Probably, yeah. Then again, the ammunition is also a lot more complicated than today's equivalents thanks to hybrid guidance and the need for sophisticated ECCM on many of the larger missiles so the price may not have gone down by that much.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It's not exactly the same failure... Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking there. Maybe they were trying for a more Janeway-esque aesthetic since she was in command? Not a style that suits her, IMO. Teasers for what IINM is tomorrow's episode suggest they are absolutely not throwing Ortegas's subplot away, since they're bringing her brother back.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    On a lark, I did some research and the more I think about it the more I wonder how any PMC in the Macross setting can even afford to function. Modern PMCs have it pretty easy. Equipping infantry can be done fairly cheaply, with most nations spending between $5000 and $20,000 per head for basic infantry equipment like basic uniforms, PPE, firearms, and so on. That cost can balloon out to the low six figures if specialist equipment is involved, however. That's got to be peanuts compared to PMCs in Macross, where the standard soldier is a Valkyrie pilot operating a plane that's got to cost at least the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars. I guess that explains why every PMC so far seems to have spun off of a megacorporation that was doing business in other industries. They'd need a massive amount of seed capital to start a business like that. Even a used, two-generations-old Valkyrie is not exactly cheap by all indications. The VF-1 and replica VF-0 are apparently cheap enough that the hobbyist market can afford them, but Chelsea Scarlett blows her Vanquish League winnings for the entire 2058 season on three decommissioned VF-11s in order to cobble together just one working aircraft... and that's implied to be like Formula One-level prize money (potentially hundreds of millions of dollars), and it's still two generations old at that point. It's enough to make you wonder how much these PMCs are getting paid that they can afford this equipment, and how it compares to just having a regular New UN Forces unit funded using the same amount of cash. I'm sure I'm overthinking it massively, but that's what I do. I'm an engineer, I analyze things ruthlessly.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, we've seen what happens then... you just get Bond villains and upset your tailor. 🤔 Star Trek really has gotten comfortable dropping references to TAS though, hasn't it? There was a good twenty or so years there where TAS was nearly as verboten as subject as Star Trek V: the Final Frontier, Lower Decks of course hit us with some low-key ones like that Kzinti ensign on the Cerritos, the Pandronian drill instructor, and the corpse of Spock Two on display in a collector's ship. IINM, "A Space Adventure Hour" is the first overt reference to TAS in a live-action series.
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