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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure I would characterize not having an armored canopy cover as an obsolete design choice... The armored canopy cover is useful in very specific scenarios, but comes with its own drawbacks like a dependence on external camera systems that can be interfered with via ECM or disrupted by damage and adding additional complications to the ejector seat mechanism. It's rather telling that it's only used on two models of Valkyrie to date - the General Galaxy's VF-27 Lucifer and Sv-262 Draken III - both of which are designed almost exclusively to fight at point-blank ranges.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It doesn't have to be a replacement for a normal canopy... it could just be to provide a wider field of view for the pilot the way the cockpit monitors did for the VF-17 and VF-19, which had a canopy on the top half of the cockpit and monitors on the bottom half to create a passable illusion of full visibility. Who could forget the only good moment of the series involving Messer? The moment he stopped being a stain on the series and started being a stain on the upholstery. It would not be the first time, or even the second, that a VF was outfitted with wraparound displays of one type or another to produce a similar effect in the name of improving a pilot's situational awareness. This is just a more immersive version of a cockpit configuration that already existed on the VF-17, VF-19, and VF-171, and was emulated using the BDI system on the VF-22. (Personally, I suspect that Kawamori-san is simply not trying very hard with the Macross Delta series and movies since all the attention and budget is going to the idol singers.) Ah yes, the fabled Kairos Double Plus. Or since they've already used "Double Plus" for other Valkyries maybe they'll call it the Kairos Increment? 😛
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So, wait... if there was no DNA in the mix besides Shmi's own, wouldn't that mean Anakin's a haploid life form and therefore sterile? New theory. Anakin's a sterile, milkman-trusting, total drama queen and literally anyone else (Panaka, Palpatine, or even Jar-Jar Binks) is the father of Luke and Leia. Have you ever tried to argue with DNA? It just sits there going ATGCTTCGGCAAGACTCAAAAAATA and so on for bloody ever...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not aware of any official explanation for why the YF-29 Super Pack is designed the way it is... If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the positioning of the booster probably has a lot to do with the concealed MDE beam cannon turret being positioned where it is inboard of the stabilizers and the pack as a whole trying to keep a low profile.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It was me who said that Craig's Bond felt more like a "dumb thug". That's the impression I got of him right from the outset when I saw Casino Royale in a little Minnesota theater during the winter break in '06. Prior incarnations of James Bond, novels included, had always been rather hands-off about killing and either explicitly or implicitly found hand-to-hand combat distasteful. Those moments when the situation compels him to throw hands are usually the moments where he's up against The Heavy (e.g. Jaws, Odd Job, etc.) and he wins by guile rather than skill. We're introduced to Daniel Craig's rendition of James Bond with a black and white scene of him in the men's room brutally beating a man half to death before attempting to drown him in the sink... about the most un-James Bond thing imaginable. (A close second being that he's later shown driving a Ford Mondeo, of all the insane things, later in the same film. He manages to trade up later, but it's still James Bond driving a lower mid-level rental fleet queen of a car.) So much of the class that you expect from Bond is just missing from Craig's version. TBH, I don't quite buy the idea that it wasn't a revenge thing... it was pretty clear even from the ending of Casino Royale that taking revenge for Vesper's death was something personal even if it was also business. It struck me more as him saying he had nowhere else to go rather than that he never left, since without 00 status he's just a spree killer.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Finished Uzaki-chan Wants to Play... a cute little series, if comedically belligerent sexual tension is your thing. Feels almost too short, much like the titular character. Gonna start the HD Remaster of the first Tenchi Muyo! OVA next... after translating most of the Kajishima Onsen doujins with extra setting materials for the series, watching this is going to be much more bizarre than any other time I've seen the series. It says a lot that the fact that quite a few of his love interests are blood-related to him* and/or to each other** is on the less bizarre and disturbing side of things. Let's just say if they remade OVA 1 today, translators would have an interesting time with Kagato's backstory and pronouns. Whatever gender symbol someone in his unique situation uses must look like a subway map of Stockholm.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, Bond does spend a lot of time in Casino Royale being reactive rather than proactive... though the revenge quest that drives the next few of Craig's Bond movies is about the most un-Bond thing ever. I was kind of hoping Idris Elba would be picked to be the next Bond after Craig's time was up.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    True, they do... though that's just hardware compatibility. The hardware itself had to come from somewhere and the Epsilon Foundation's the biggest player in the globular cluster. Or Megamanning... maybe the Kairos Plus's upgrades came from downed Draken III's. Yeah, but those are just endemic to the species. Some of the oldest surviving letters (c.1750 BCE) are multiple letters of complaint written to a shady merchant named Ea-nasir about him selling copper ingots of inferior quality. But yeah, in a Truth in Television moment a lot of the megacorporations in Macross are involved in at least mild to moderately shady stuff.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It's less WTF-y than it sounds... Johansson's trying to recover what she sees as lost profit share from Black Widow, yes? She can sue Disney, but the allegations made in her suit about breach of contract are beyond flimsy and she's unlikely to get anywhere if it actually goes before a judge. Success or failure there is dependent on how willing Disney is willing to pay her to STFU in order to silence the modest amount of bad PR news of the suit is generating. One way to recoup that "loss" due to what is arguably negligent handling of the contract is to have the company insurance pay out part of the difference. 😉 It deserves a resounding "eh"... Honestly? The hilariously bad fake Russian accents are one of the best parts of the film. It's so accidentally ham that it really lends a note of unintended comedy to the whole affair. It's (nominally) a superhero movie, so I think it kind of gets a free pass partly because it's depicting Cartoonish Villainy and partly because superhero features are expected to have a certain air of strained realism.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Hopefully not the Epsilon Foundation, though they're the most likely culprit given that the VF-31AX Kairos Plus seems to have acquired some tech from Dian Cecht's Sv-262 Draken III.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Shot straight through Witch Hunter Robin... it's less good than I remember it being, the animation definitely doesn't hold up as well as Outlaw Star's did. Finally getting some mileage out of that Funimation subscription though, so my little group is starting Uzaki-chan Wants to Play next.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Not a joke so much as a genuine musing that Johansson probably isn't too happy with her representation for costing her millions by failing basic legal diligence. (Mind you, as long as there are certain insurances in place it's quite possible to sue a business you own - or even yourself - to collect an insurance payout in some circumstances without the business being sued incurring a significant loss as a result.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Ironically, "grounded" and "gritty" Bond is a pretty reasonable fit for the first few actual James Bond novels... but the movies always had more of a post-Doctor No dramatic flair to them under Connery, Moore, and Brosnan. Craig's Bond just kind of comes off as a dumb thug half the time, which isn't even a good fit for novel Bond who was disdainful of mindless violence and disliked killing. Lucky they stopped him, he had the perfect dry wit for the role in the mold of previous iconic movie Bonds. His movies wouldn't have been nearly as good if he'd been playing them razor straight.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Just for that, the next kit will be ALL stickers. You have to stick them together in a certain order to get the shape of the VF, like additive foam build-up.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    For most intents and purposes, an Executive Producer is someone who has just enough clout that the producers have to at least pretend to consult them on decisions regarding the production but not enough clout that the producers have to actually heed their opinion. Granted, Periwinkle Ent. probably aren't Johansson's favorite people right now and they're probably quite keen to redirect her ire towards Disney and Marvel Studios... but I'd wager a greater portion of their motivation is money. Odds are their compensation comes in the form of a percentage of Johansson's fee and bonuses for performing, meaning the decision Disney made to send Black Widow to streaming in parallel with its theatrical release resulted in a non-trivial loss of income for them as well. (As noted previously, the reason that the filing is so fixated on the idea that Black Widow would've done better if delayed indefinitely until theaters recovered from the pandemic may have been that they expected the film to repeat Captain Marvel's $1B+ box office draw.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Eh, yeah... the novel version of James Bond owes a lot to Ian Fleming's own personal views, opinions, and preferences. I've read a few analyses that argue that Bond is intentionally an awful person in the novels because they were intended as a parody of contemporary spy thrillers, but a lot of the questionable content is the author's own literary soapbox. From the casual misogyny all the way down the spectrum to the vocal disdain for tea. Novel Bond was absolutely kind of an arsehole. The movies toned him down rather a lot, I think. (Remember, there's less than 20 years separating Ian Fleming and the notoriously racist work of H.P. Lovecraft in terms of what kind of sh*t flew back then... though even at the time Live and Let Die was seen as over the top.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Same... though I didn't really have much fun with Casino Royale either. Daniel Craig's incarnation of 007 has the action sequences under control, but it feels like he's missing most of the dry wit and charm that were at least as much a part of the character's identity under Connery, Moore, and Brosnan. IMO, he's more of a deadpan action hero in line with the likes of Bruce Willis. I'm probably not going to see it in theaters because of COVID, but I'll absolutely get it if it goes day-and-date streaming and when it goes to digital library as well. My completionist streak wouldn't let me do any less.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Giving Witch Hunter Robin a HD rewatch next. Good times. Sunrise had a lot going for it back in the late 90's and early 2000s.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It's all about what's probable. Really, Johansson probably should be considering suing Periwinkle Ent. over the negligent handling of her contract. That the attorneys representing them, and her, in negotiations with Disney's Marvel Studios focused exclusively on bonuses tied to the gross box office receipts shows a lack of foresight completely independent of the changes that the pandemic forced upon the industry. Streaming has been on the rise for ages as a supplement/replacement for the home video market, and "personal digital library" sort of streaming arrangements like Apple's and Google's are a nontrivial profit center for studios. If her agency had asked for a share of streaming revenues from the film too, she'd be sitting pretty on a share of the $60 million and counting Disney+ has raked in from Black Widow to console herself about the loss of box office bonuses with.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Since Funimation added it to their catalog a while back, I just finished up the high-def remaster of Outlaw Star. It's impressive how well this series holds up over twenty years after its release. Kind of a bloody tragedy the spinoff was complete garbage.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Hopefully the film or its supplemental materials will offer an explanation in the not-too-distant future. As strapped as Xaos was for cash during the closing phases of the war with Windermere, it's kind of hard to credit that they would have the capital to do a major overhaul on their VFs for Delta Flight when something like 1/3 of their forces were wiped out and their motherships are heavily damaged.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Exactly... this whole brouhaha is about the fundamental assumptions that were made when the contracts were drafted pre-pandemic. Periwinkle Entertainment - and likely most of the rest of the industry - didn't think it was worth the extra trouble to explicitly define various terms in the contract they negotiated in light of how the industry operated at the time. When the pandemic forced theaters to close, the industry had to radically rethink its whole mode of operation and the assumptions underpinning those undefined terms were no longer valid. So now you have this situation where Disney complied with the letter of the contract, but Periwinkle and Johansson are crying foul because the new reality of the industry means the assumptions they tied their compensation to were faulty and won't produce as much money. EDIT: I suspect Periwinkle Ent. was expecting Black Widow to be a billion dollar affair like Captain Marvel, and are especially put out that its box office performance is middling at best. That definitely explains the wishful-thinking argument that they make that the movie would've made megabucks if only Marvel kept delaying it until the theaters recover (if they ever do). Disney lists the current global take from Black Widow at $334.5M. That said, those budgets don't include advertising spending... which, all things considered, likely means another $150-200M in spending that needs to be recouped for the film to break even. With the Disney+ sales factored in, they're likely close to, or already past, the break-even point for the film. I've seen it said that receipts for Disney+ put sales of the film at around $60M just for premium streaming. At the very least, it's in no danger of being the worst-performing MCU film... it's already blown well past the 2008 The Incredible Hulk film that only grossed $265M on a $150M budget. I wouldn't go so far as to call it trash. It's definitely a bad movie, IMO... but if you find everyone doing their worst fake Russian accent amusing it could almost be a good-bad movie. Many of the MCU movies were practically a license to print money, so Johansson and Periwinkle Ent.'s belief that this movie could've been a blockbuster aren't exactly unfounded. Especially since this was supposed to be a big to-do for the girl power crowd similar to Captain Marvel. ... you could lose the "on the internet" part and it'd still be true. It's been true of humanity in general for... as long as there's been humanity in general.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    ... I'm beginning to see that, yes. So much of the Star Wars plot seems to depend on coincidence and sheer dumb luck, or as the writers call it "the will of the force". I loathe that as a literary device, because it robs the characters of any semblance of agency. (In that context, I can also kind of see why fans are so enamored of Grand Admiral Thrawn from the old novels. He seems to be the only character in the entire franchise who actually had his sh*t together and whose plans made actual logical sense.) At least half the cast of Rise of Skywalker falls into that category... and one of them is heavily implied to be an actual Calrissian.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... as I pointed out a few posts ago, the actual goal behind this lawsuit is pretty transparent. This lawsuit is so short on legal merit that it has very little chance of success if it gets to a judicial review, discovery, and petitioning. It's clearly not meant to succeed. It's performative litigation. Its goal is to be publicized as widely as possible and in as inflammatory a manner as possible. They want to use the public pressure generated by the 24/7 news cycle and a horde of internet white knights to twist Disney's arm in the public sphere so Disney'll cut them a check to make the bad PR go away. The actual content of the suit is pretty stupid, but the tactic isn't, and its lack of legal merit is borderline irrelevant because it's not intended to ever go before a judge. It's a tool.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yes and no. If you read the filing, Johansson and Periwinkle Ent.'s attorneys openly admit the contract doesn't actually stipulate that. The only language they were able to find in the contract that defined "wide theatrical release" was a condition regarding the minimum acceptable number of screens showing the film (1,500). The actual argument being made in the filing is that Johansson and Periwinkle Entertainment believed the term "wide theatrical release" to also mean "released exclusively in theaters" based on pre-pandemic business practices in which a release to streaming was broadly analogous in nature and scheduling to a home video release. It's not actually defined that way in the contract. They're asking the court to enforce their belief of what the contract should mean over what it actually says. The contract also, incidentally, mentions that the release is at the producer's discretion and that Johansson is entitled to "consultation" about the release... but there's nothing that her attorneys could present to say she had any leverage to renegotiate the contract based on changes in the release plan. This suit has very little chance of gaining any traction at all, because Periwinkle and Johansson are arguing against the language of the contract as it is written. It's unfortunate, but this is a good lesson in why you always explicitly define any terms which are not defined by the law in your contracts.
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