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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The last actual news, AFAIK, was a bit over a year ago... back in August 2020 in Entertainment Archive Alpha: Genesis Climber MOSPEADA File. That artbook had a featurette on it reprinting some of the 2007 Hobby Japan issue where Hideki Kakinuma reimagined some of the mecha from MOSPEADA and a two-page article on the setting which goes into more (and darker) detail about MOSPEADA's backstory than the series ever did and offers a (very) brief explanation of the title's significance and a little bit of additional detail. Tatsunoko's website for it may offer more information, but it's region-locked well enough to defeat my normal VPN tool...
  2. Seto Kaiba
    So... I've been doing a little reading and it looks like Hobby Japan are the first to offer some insights into the designs of Absolute Live!!!!!!. Probably the most relevant statement it makes is that the YF-29 is still very much the top dog of VFs, referred to therein as "The Strongest Valkyrie". Not unexpected, but worth at least mentioning given that someone was in here a while back with the unlikely hypothesis that the Kairos Plus was going to supplant it as the most powerful VF. On that note, the VF-31AX Kairos Plus isn't exactly described in glowing terms. It's referred to as a refurbished machine that applies spare parts from Xaos's VF-31 Custom Siegfried to the stock (trial production) VF-31A Kairos. The only improvements mentioned are the obvious ones mentioned previously: that the railgun pods have been exchanged for a larger one with more power, that the beam gunpod has been exchanged for a larger and more powerful one, and that the fold quartz used in its fold wave system and fold amps is larger than in the Siegfried (presumably meaning better output there). I'm guessing it probably has the same FF-3001/FC2 engines the Siegfrieds use, otherwise it'd be a downgrade rather than an upgrade. (Apparently the remodeling of the aircraft made it incompatible with the older model FAST Pack as well.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So, the only times we're shown a regular Northampton-class launching fighters are in Macross 7 PLUS's episode "Spiritia Dreaming" as seen below... ... and during Operation Stargazer when the Stargazer launched VFs in reentry pods from its missile launchers like so: Of course, the problem with the first one is that it's really hard to tell where the hell that hatch is, exactly. It's clearly on the underside of the ship, rom the angle, and the panel line running down the middle of the match suggests that this hatch is along the ship's centerline. That, combined with the fact that we can see the nacelles where the frigate's primary weapons are housed, suggests it's on the underside along the centerline of the ship between the sensor dome and the lip of the engine nozzle.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's a typo... in Bandai Monthly Making Journal. Both the initial teaser in the November 1991 issue of Animage and subsequent coverage use "VF-XS". The name "VF-XS Valkyrie II" was used for several different designs as development of the series went on, it started out as the name of the proto-VF-2SS and eventually jumped to the design that became the VF-2JA and one or two others before vanishing entirely. Yes, both articles are from relatively early in the OVA's development when the series concept was for a setting 300 years after the First Space War (c.2312) instead of 100 years from the then-present day and 80 years from the end of the First Space War (2092). Beam cannon, but yes.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not. As limited as the VF-4's appearances in official setting Macross works are, the VF-4 is a fan favorite design hailed even in-universe for its beauty. (That was a backhanded way of throwing a Macross II reference into the main timeline, acknowledging that the so well-regarded for its beauty that it's nicknamed the "Siren"... its name in the Macross II timeline.) The VF-4 Master File was, IIRC, also the first one to be teased in another volume of Master File... several years before it actually came out.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, yeah... I just hope we don't have to wait through another few half-arsed books before we get it. The VF-4, VF-22, and VF-31 books were a conga line of disappointment and half-arsery.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, Robotech usually only uses the Early Bioroid Type I and II and the Middle Bioroid Type I and II because those are the ones that actually appear in the series proper. Since Robotech fans are slavishly devoted to the "original 85", they tend not to deviate from it. It took a few minutes to remember who that even was...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    There is a yellow Bioroid glimpsed in the opening... but good luck identifying the model. It only appears in a few frames, since it is obscured by the right leg of the Spartas and then an explosion.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the Glaug (SDFM Zentradi Mechanic Sheet 02A) indicates the legs are still attached. "The booster is installed in such a way that the Glaug's legs are stored inside the booster." It is not a separate mecha, it's just a Glaug with a booster pack bolted to its butt.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I'm still waiting for a VF-171 Nightmare Plus Master File... they've covered every major model from Shinsei/Stonewell/Bellcom (VF-0, VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-19, VF-25, VF-31) but only one major General Galaxy design (VF-22).
  11. Seto Kaiba
    All in all, that kind of naming can be done relatively easily and made to look consistent... Apart from the Macross, the pre-war UN Forces seemed to favor naming their space carriers after famous naval warships or classes of naval warship (e.g. Invincible, Enterprise) or after heads of state of the Unification Government (Harlan J. Niven, Robert A. Rhysling). The space destroyers seem to be named after significant figures in the development of spaceflight technology (Oberth, Goddard, Tsiolkovsky). After the First Space War, the New UN Forces seem to be quite fond of naming their ships after various prewar municipalities... often either historically significant in their own right or ones where classes of historically significant ship were named for them. The Uraga-class is named for Uraga, a historical port town now a part of Yokosuka in Kanegawa. Some of its sister ships are named for similar municipalities like Aberdeen or Keflavik. The Guantanamo-class is named for the port town of the same name home to the infamous military base in Cuba, and several of its sister ships are also named for harbors like Maizuru, Mamoi, etc. You get a couple odd birds in the mix that are seemingly named for famous people or places where famous battles occurred (or the ships named after them) like Vella Gulf, Vandegrift, or Belleau Wood. The Northampton-class is presumably named for the US Navy's cruiser by the same name, and seems to have kind of an anything goes lack of a naming convention, with references to Bologna (the city), Glendale, Amagi, etc. IMO, the logical port of call for naming something like the stealth cruiser would be other infamous classes of escort. Since the stealth cruiser is a modified Northampton-class frame, it'd make sense to name it after the real world cruiser class that was also a modified Northampton-class... the Portland-class. Or the New Orleans-class, the successor to the Portland-class which brought the second-most-decorated warship in the US Navy in World War II (USS San Francisco). Even Master File mostly sticks to that convention, with the occasional head of state popping up on the Uraga-class (e.g. CV-339 Bruno J. Global) and most being named for places like Altamira (VF-1 Vol.2), Grand Forks (VF-19), etc. Yeah, it's kind of a big gap... though Macross Delta in general is pretty detail-sparse.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Every now and then they decide they really like something from those books and incorporate it into the official setting. The Macross Chronicle sheets for the QF-3000 Ghost, SF-3A Lancer II, and some details for the ARMD-class are taken almost whole cloth from the original Macross tech manual book Sky Angels.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Very little. It also mentions the carriers that make up the arms are Enterprise-class, though that's no more official than anything else in those books. They do self-disclaim as not official setting material, so everything in 'em needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Yeah, that was a fan publication... circle FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    It's possible... though given that it's a YF-29 and not a YF-29B, and that it's operating out in an area where the emigrant governments and even the megacorps seem to be operating on hair shirt budgets, I'd assume it was probably made using a fair amount of the same VF-25 hardware adopted by the VF-31 to keep costs down. It's Max... he and Milia are basically the two best ace pilots to ever set foot in a cockpit. The dude's basically running life with cheats enabled. I'm sure Max would've found it challenging, but he's got Creator's Pet-tier plot armor. The only character I can think of who has that level or better in plot armor is Kira "Jesus" Yamato from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. Yeah, the YF-19-1 and YF-19-2 were kinda janky due to their use of a previous-gen airframe control AI and their high thrust-to-weight ratio and those control issues put several less-than-exceptional pilots in the ICU or in the grave, but Max is Max. He handles a VF-22 like it's nothing, and there isn't a very large difference in their thrust to weight ratios. I think he would quickly adapt to the peaky handling of the YF-19, though probably not to the extent of actually enjoying it like that nutjob Isamu.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    None that I've seen. From what's been said, it's some kind of improvised field modification that uses more fold quartz than the Siegfried type did. Search me. Can't be that good if all it's doing is bodying a bunch of third string nobodies like Xaos and Windermere IV's Aerial Knights. 😴
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the trailer definitely doesn't promise any trajectory changes. It'd be one thing if Picard were still the dignified, principled, moral pillar of Federation Starfleet he was in Star Trek: the Next Generation. TNG Picard would have had some devastating speech to give about an alternate past where the Federation became a totalitarian fascist state. Instead, we're going to have PIC Picard delivering an awful lot of entitled senior citizen whining. I guess the budget must be in really dire straits if they're having to set an entire season in the present day to cut down on the effects budget. Amazon must've slashed their contribution to Picard the way Netflix did after Discovery premiered.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I meant the franchise as a whole. It's a matter of record that the post-Abrams brand of generic dystopian fiction branded as Star Trek isn't doing very well. ViacomCBS had to sell stock to dredge up the money for Strange New Worlds, and they're already in such dire shape they're in danger of being found in violation of the terms of their merger agreement by the US Gov't. If things don't pick up soon, there might not be a Star Trek franchise left in a couple years. Star Trek: Discovery's on its third major retooling in as many seasons in a bid to fix what's fundamentally unfixable. Star Trek: Picard's on its second. Remember when this series was supposed to focus on the new characters, and not just be a badly-written TNG cast reunion with some hamfisted political commentary?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's a big steaming pile of Do Not Want. I've heard CBS is having trouble finding funding for Star Trek again... hopefully they'll start changing ears instead of flying her into the ground.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Strange Machine Games is just a teeny-tiny "indie" game publisher that does small batch print-on-demand printing for its products. Look at the actual pledge tiers, and the reason the normalized average pledge is disproportionately high relative to the cost-of-entry is obvious. The book they're Kickstarting has only the remains of the die-hard Robotech fandom as a target audience, many of whom are buying the game as a collectible rather than a game, so they're using the same tactic that comic book publishers use to inflate sales: limited editions and cover variants. Of the 230 pledges so far, more than 10% of backers (26) pledged for the more expensive limited edition cover and 31% (72) pledged at tiers that offer two or all three cover variants. If you wanna make money on a small fanbase, that's one way to go about it that doesn't require a lot of work. (It's also worth noting that Strange Machine Games isn't really using Kickstarter for its intended purpose of funding development of a product... they're using it basically as a preorder vendor for an already-finished product that just hasn't been printed yet.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, if anything that Kickstarter's funding goal was shockingly low... so much so that it would've easily been possible for one person to fund the entire thing themselves. The funding trajectory strongly resembles that of RPG Tactics too. Extremely low backer numbers, but a disproportionately high average pledge. The entry pricepoint is effectively $60 (the tiers that get you a print copy), but the average pledge is more than twice that at $148+/-$2.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... in all fairness, the Robotech RPG Tactics game was always going to fail. Palladium's inept handling of the Kickstater only slightly accelerated the inevitable. The Robotech fanbase was never large enough to sustain a high cost-of-entry tabletop game like RPG Tactics, even before Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles ended up undoing what little gains Harmony Gold had made in brand awareness after relaunching the franchise in 2001. The game was ill-conceived, with a shortsighted choice of scale for its miniatures that all but guaranteed the game would never move past the Macross IP, and dogged by quality issues due to poor design and manufacturing. What ended up accelerating its swift demise was that Palladium's owner Kevin Siembieda judged the Kickstarter's success the same way @Podtastic did, by the raw pledge total. He was so blown away by the much greater than expected pledge total that it never really dawned on him that the pledge total was as high as it was because the high cost of entry inflated the average pledge size, not because there were a substantial number of backers. The belief that he was going to make megabucks on the game motivated many of the short-sighted, ill-considered decisions that marched the game the rest of the way into its early, and shallow, grave. He didn't set out to rip people off... he just didn't have a realistic view of the game's prospects. So he over-promised even more than usual regarding the game's readiness, overspent on development of the miniatures, rushed into production without adequate planning, failed to account for logistical costs like international shipping, and then when he realized that hed made a mess of its finances he tried to undo the damage by tapping into what he'd let the pledge total convince him was a massive untapped revenue stream in retail sales. By letting the raw pledge total bias his view of the game's retail prospects, he ended up betting it all on a nonexistent audience's interest in the game and losing everything. That's a good example of why, if your Kickstarter is developing a product for retail, it's so important to base your decisions on the total number of pledges and the size of the average pledge after normalization to remove significant outliers rather than the raw total pledged. Otherwise, you can end up making bad decisions based on metrics that are less meaningful than they appear. Getting over 4x your pledge target sounds impressive on its own, but if that goal is tiny ($5,400, equivalent to just 90 average-tier pledges) and the number of pledges needed to reach it is small, it doesn't mean much. Really, I'd consider it more of an indictment of their taste if they drink that charred-black mud masquerading as coffee than backing an indie RPG for Robotech's least-loved sagas. That... is a helpful attitude given the circumstances. When it comes to Robotech, keep your expectations as low as possible and you siginficantly decrease your chances of being disappointed.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not exactly an impressive feat, given how low the bar was set. The funding goal was just $5,400... equivalent to just 90 backers willing to pay $60 for a physical copy of the book. As with the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter, the sum collected is misleading. They might be more than 4x the pledge goal ($23,520), but that's because the paltry number of backers (just 156, 70% more than the absolute minimum) are disproportionately pledging for the most expensive tiers.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I could get on board with that.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    To be surprised. Trying to predict someone who prides themselves on their auteur approach to their signature franchise feels like a fool's errand.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Y'know, for you to even pretend to behave like an educator even in jest is an enormous slur on the professional conduct of everyone here who is, or has been, an actual educator. Really, the only response that would truly do justice to what you've done is Jim Downey's line to Adam Sandler in the last part of the Academic Decathlon scene from Billy Madison. There is nothing in what you've said or done that bears even the slightest superficial resemblance to good academic practice. It's thoroughly obvious that it's just pretentious faux-academic garbage.
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