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Seto Kaiba

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Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. No such show. That was a hallucination. Swamp gas. A weather balloon. Something like that. Given the Gundam franchise's general obsession with turning its now-vestigial War is Hell message into straight-up misery porn... I can all too readily imagine that'd end up as Puella Magi Madoka Magica but with giant robots. Not sure if that's better or worse than the comparisons made between Macross Delta and Pretty Cure...
  2. MOSPEADA's creators didn't put a ton of effort into the details of the background and one-shot characters, I'm afraid... though at least their uniforms share the same design as Lt. Bernard's own.
  3. Some of the New UN Spacy's postwar ship designs are specifically designed around the idea of operating as conventional navy vessels in addition to operating as space warships. The Battle-class and Uraga-class, as well as the Saratoga II-type, are examples of this. Others, like the Guantanamo-class, are supposedly meant for use exclusively in space but can apparently enter the atmosphere and sustain flight using gravity control. Some may be able to make water landings and then take off again using gravity control. Well, one... but it was the assault landing bow section of a Queadol Magdomilla-class command ship, which is specifically meant to enter a planet's atmosphere and land troops. On other occasions, as in Macross Delta's first episode, the Zentradi ships were shown to simply hover using gravity control rather than land. Yes, in episode 23... but it's the command ship attached to a Three Star-class factory ship. It may have been intended to disconnect itself and return to orbit. That was a water landing, though, which seems to be the preferred method for landing the larger spacecraft in Macross going back to Macross II: Lovers Again where the UN Spacy had a large water dock complex immediately adjacent to its headquarters that was servicing both captured Zentradi ships and human-built space warships.
  4. Granted, it's that way now... but as far as I know that was a mostly unbuilt trope at the time Super Dimension Fortress Macross was made. In the original Space Battleship Yamato, there was a "hero" fighter in the form of the pair of (prototype?) Cosmo Zero fighters aboard the Yamato to supplement the existing squadrons of Cosmo Tigers. It's wasn't a squadron leader machine, it was just kinda... around. The only example that really matches is in Mobile Suit Gundam, where a few of the mobile suits that Char Aznable used (the Zaku II, Z'Gok, and Gelgoog) had command variants. Though Char was the only one ever really depicted using them in the series so it wasn't immediately clear that they weren't an Ace Custom (and they were, but they were an ace custom OF a command version).
  5. So, I've basically come up dry in my research into that topic. My best guess is that it's a nod to some of the practices in the First World War where ace pilots tended to rotate through multiple aircraft and receive the latest models first, but that's less a deliberate organizational choice and more a matter of those aces being the pilots who came back alive and whose feedback was used to refine aircraft designs. Either that, or it really is a Gundam reference as @Keith said.
  6. Nah, it's pretty much just those few pencil sketches of characters like Yellow or Jim in the duty uniform from the first recapture mission. There's no real detail to it.
  7. Sounds like a good Christmas gift for my rabidly Trekkie parents. Shatner did get his short torn a fair bit in TOS.
  8. As a completionist for several other franchises, I can certainly understand why a completionist might want the Visual Archive book. For a less determined collector, I don't think it's quite worth the asking price based on the quality and availability of the same material in official Japanese artbooks. From my review of the Visual Archive books, there is a fair bit of art from the Imai Files in the MOSPEADA one that is not in the official artbooks... but, again, if you've downloaded the Imai Files you've already seen everything the Visual Archive has to show you. It'd probably have been better if they'd just published the Imai Files as-is. It was pretty disappointing (to me, at least) that they really did a terrible job framing some of that material in its historical context or didn't even make the attempt (esp. in the Southern Cross book). I'm fairly certain the art you're referring to WRT Armor Bike riding poses and indicators of what angles would cause the rider to be thrown or fall is in both of the books I mentioned.
  9. Eh... the only one of the three that's really worth getting is the Southern Cross one, if only because the only other Southern Cross artbook is even more embarrassingly bad and only really worth buying for the staff interviews. There's not really any point in getting the Robotech Visual Archive book if you've already got a copy of the Entertainment Archive MOSPEADA: Complete Art Works or Genesis Climber MOSPEADA File books and have downloaded the Imai Files at any point. Text-wise, you're basically just buying a printout of the "New Generation" section of Harmony Gold's website padded with a lot of little thumbnail-quality screenshots. (Consequently, because the info is mainly sourced from the old RT Infopedia, most of the info is just wrong.)
  10. I'm still doing some research on the topic... the aces-with-custom-paint-schemes thing was a very real thing in the Imperial German Army's Flying Corps. That much is pretty well-precedented. Having trouble finding examples of mixed-composition squadrons though.
  11. I mean, there is that... but that connection gets drawn more to Milia than anything, since her signature color is red and she's the enemy "one man army" top ace. There's no real world precedent I can find or recall for squadron leaders to be issued different variants of the squadron's aircraft with higher performance.
  12. Love it! I motion to rename the Bioroid the MS-06WPP Witness Protection Program Zaku. Maybe their real origin is from all those Space Nazis who moved to Space Argentina and assumed new identities to avoid prosecution for Space War Crimes. Might be time to make an appointment with your ophthalmologist, then... because I'm pretty sure the rest of us can see it. Hell, it's not just the outward appearance. They outright used the Zaku's sound effects in their first appearance complete with iconic "glowing eye". Their color schemes related to role match too. You've got the Standard Model (the MS-06F Zaku II) and Early Type I Bioroid) in green, the improved performance model often used by unit leaders (the MS-07B Gouf and Early Type II Bioroid) in blue, and the super-tuned ace custom several times faster than the normal model that's used by the mysterious male antagonist who is a foil to the main character (the MS-06S Zaku II Command "Char Custom" and Early Type II Custom "Seifreit Weiss special"). Later types clearly ape the design of the MS-09 Dom and other Zeon mobile suits. It's stupid levels of obvious that Ammonite was ripping of Gundam, Macross, and Yamato when they were making Southern Cross.
  13. That's not real world, though.
  14. Got caught up on My Next Life as a Villainess... and I'm really beginning to suspect that the series has run out of ideas. At this point, the series is literally on its THIRD back-to-back kidnapping-with-lethal-intent-via-dark-magic. It's like that's the only way the original author could add drama. Maybe by the end, everyone'll have been kidnapped and tortured with dark magic at least once. The kidnapper is always forgiven in the end too, which takes all the sting out of it. Sirius and his suspiciously similar stand-in Sora both got jobs as a direct consequence of their dark magic kidnappings. Odds are creepy girl is gonna land a government job because of this too. What little relationship drama the series had built up with Caterina finally realizing her fiance is actually serious about marrying her is obliterated within an episode or two when she's preoccupied by her adoptive brother going missing. Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! has kind of petered out as well. There's some going-nowhere shipping between Iruma and his two principal love interests but it's absolutely not going anywhere because Iruma is a pathological nice guy and immune to innuendo. Couldn't get into Watamote... it's just... TOO cringe.
  15. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It's an old comedy that's got a little bit of everything. It's got high comedy, it's got pratfalls and dirty jokes and buffoonery. It's got some bawdy bits. It's got some action and a nicely choreographed classic chase scene. Some memorable songs. Some great performances by actors like Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, and Michael Crawford. Like the overture claims, it's got Something for everyone! A comedy, tonight!.
  16. Funimation's improved quality of service continues to impress... though now that I'm not constantly frustrated by the poor quality of their streams I'm noticing all the other problems in their workmanship. There are translation errors all over their subtitles for Hellsing Ultimate. New releases have been pretty disappointing this season. Welcome to Demon School, Irumi-kun! has been pretty mediocre now that it's burned through the limited appeal of its fish-out-of-water "I hope nobody learns the secret that'll get me killed on sight" story line and started moving in the direction of becoming a standard shonen series similar to what happened in Rosario to Vampire. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has lost a lot of its appeal too, since the first story arc was almost a rote repeat of the final story arc of the previous season and its lack of any real compelling story arc once its oblivious protagonist no longer had foreknowledge of her fate occupying her mind kind of leaves it in awkward reverse harem territory for the rest of its run without anything interesting to bring to the table.
  17. So, Funimation pushed an update to its mobile apps and smart TV apps today that actually goes most of the way towards fixing their previously trash-tier app performance and service quality. I am legitimately impressed by the improvement. Since Hellsing Ultimate has been on my to-rewatch list for a while now and I can't bring myself to start Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle, I'm giving Hellsing Ultimate a whirl as my benchmarking of the new app. In a rare moment of utterly unqualified positivity, the new app is performing splendidly on my QLED set and the quality is virtually indistinguishable from physical media. Just buttery smooth, once it got past the initial second or two of optimization. It is slightly irritating that Funimation's subtitles went with "Arucard" instead of "Alucard" like anyone with a goddamn brain would have... but hey.
  18. This is true, though there was some variance in the design concept. Some command tanks like the Russian T-54K and (Nazi) German Sd.Kfz 267/268 Tiger II sacrificed some of their magazine capacity for additional radio equipment but were otherwise no different from the standard models. Others, like the (fascist) Italian M42 and British Valentine OP, sacrificed their main weaponry to become dedicated command and control vehicles.
  19. It was pretty good... not great, IMO, but definitely better than a fair amount of the other stuff I've watched recently. It isn't... Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to occasionally - and not unjustifiably, IMO - gets dragged by a fair portion of its viewers because a lot of its comedy comes from its protagonist unthinkingly sexually harassing his assistant(s) and suffering violent retribution for it. (He's a massive pervert with a panty shot fetish who is so oblivious that he never seems to notice the things he's saying are INCREDIBLY creepy and offensive to the women he works with, until he's facing the threat of imminent violence.)
  20. Offhand, I am not aware of anything I could point to as a firm example of an aircraft squadron leader being issued a higher-performance aircraft as a matter of regulation or protocol the way Macross depicts. Military aviation's formative years in World War I did see a number of cases of squadrons composed of a number of different models or variants of aircraft, most infamously ace of aces Baron Manfred von Richthofen's "Flying Circus". That was more a consequence of the rapid pace of aircraft design development and refinement based on feedback and the preference of the experienced pilots of the era leading directly to the rapid release of iterative improvements. The Baron von Richthofen is probably the origin of the trope, since despite his fame largely tying him to his Focker Dr.I triplane he actually frequently switched aircraft based on availability as new models were introduced and/or his current aircraft's maintenance needs. (He's also the origin of the whole "ace pilot color scheme" schtick, thanks to a decision to paint his Albatros D.III bright red.) I think, all told, the closest you'll get is probably the US Army Air Force's "Flying Tigers" (1AVG) in China during World War II... everyone was flying some extensively modified Curtiss P-40's B, C, and E variants. Mind you, it's worth noting this action figure-friendly choice is the exception rather than the rule in the New UN Forces. Most main variable fighter models are "one variant fits all" types like the VF-4, VF-11, VF-171, and VF-31.
  21. *coughs diffidently* HG seems to have sorted out the legal issues from their licensing intermediary going belly-up... so Robotech, at the very least, is now showing up in Funimation's streaming catalog. If HG is assisting with distribution of Macross titles stateside, that means Funimation is a likely port of call too.
  22. Pretty sure OP was serious... but yeah, everyone else appropriately saw this as an appalling joke. 😅
  23. After the events of Macross VF-X2 - which have since become referred to as the Second Unification War - the victorious pro-autonomy faction's reforms to the organization of the New UN Government and New UN Forces granted the individual member governments more autonomy to manage their own affairs. There was also a general housecleaning to remove the members of the fascist movement that attempted to overthrow the government by force. Part of that was creating an oversight bureau that was tasked with policing the special forces to prevent the military brass from abusing their authority to suppress political dissent, in direct response to them having done exactly that in the Second Unification War by branding a variety of anti-fascist movements as terrorists or rebels and ordering the special forces in to suppress them. (Whether or not the special forces have a heel realization and join with the largest of those anti-fascist organizations is the difference between the good end and bad end in the game.) The newly formed oversight bureau was named for the leader of the Vindirance paramilitary organization that successfully prevented the coup, Mariafokina Barnrose. (Whom Macross Chronicle claims is possibly Therese Jenius operating under a paper-thin alias using her middle name and an assumed family name.)
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