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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    One of the problems with CBS/ViacomCBS is that they've announced a lot of projects that don't seem to actually be approved or funded. Strange New Worlds seems to be in the same limbo state as other pitches like the untitled Section 31 series that was to star Michelle Yeoh, the Starfleet Academy series, and the Khan miniseries. I think Strange New Worlds has a much better chance of getting made than the others, though, since the casting, set design, etc. are already done. It's practically an entire series of bottle shows, which is appealing to the cash-strapped ViacomCBS and it's at least nominally giving the fans what they want... Star Trek that actually looks and feels like a Star Trek series. I think it's probably a bitter pill for ViacomCBS and especially Secret Hideout, since the warm reception the Strange New Worlds pitch got is a stark contrast to how a lot of fans greeted Discovery, Picard, and now Lower Decks.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Let us speak of that no further... for politeness's sake. Pretty screwed... but, luckily, actually doing that is impossible without incredible levels of mechanical amplification that are only possible with the most advanced overtechnology that the ancient Protoculture could muster. The Delta Wave System the Protoculture built for that purpose was so massive that the individual amplifiers/resonators occupied a significant portion of the crust of multiple planets in the Brisingr globular cluster and the completed resonator was nearly a thousand light years across. The whole thing depended on the Star Shrine on Ragna, and that was taken out of action in the Macross Delta series shortly after being activated, so actually Var-ing the entire galaxy or even a small portion of it wouldn't be possible anymore. Ideally... but it's probably impossible. For one, the ultra-high purity fold quartz necessary to produce the fold wave amplifiers that the Tactical Sound Units use is prohibitively expensive due to its scarcity. You either have to dig it out of Protoculture ruins or hunt Vajra semi-queens for it, and neither of those things is what you'd call a healthy lifestyle choice. For two, individuals who have fold receptors and are able to activate them and produce sufficiently powerful fold waves to have an effect are vanishingly rare. Xaos is an interstellar megacorp and despite holding frequent open auditions for Tactical Sound Unit membership they've only been able to turn up about 10 people with usably-strong fold receptors in the eight billion-strong population of the Brisingr globular cluster: the three members of Tactical Sound Unit Thrones and the seven members of Tactical Sound Unit Walkure. Two members of Walkure quit due to stress, one only joined under duress (Reina was given a choice between prison or service), and of the two that were actually powerful enough that they could manage the weaponized Var syndrome on their own (Mikumo and Freyja) only one was actually recruited while the other was a weaponized clone of a Protoculture bio-android. One person out of eight billion was a powerful-enough fold singer to actually combat Var syndrome. Yup... the biological fold waves in fold song that trigger or alleviate Var syndrome only have a short range unless mechanically amplified. Heinz used the shrine aboard the Sigur Berrentzs and various other mechanical aids to amplify his fold songs enough to reach the other worlds in the Brisingr globular cluster. Even then, he was only able to reach one planet at a time and the effort involved was such a strain on him that it significantly shortened his lifespan by depleting his runes to the point he was bedridden by the story's end. (Fun fact, there's a Macross VF-X2 reference in the additional equipment that Berger Stone mentions. Part of the amplification system that the Epsilon Foundation provided was Die Zauberflöte - the fold quartz-based communications system created by the Critical Path Corporation as the basis for the Sound Jamming System in Macross VF-X2.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Over the last few years, there's been a sharp increase in that kind of thing... it's an extension of the same attempt to control the conversation about their work that led the studios to buy out many of the major entertainment news websites and turn them into self-hagiographic propaganda outlets. Bad reviews hurt the bottom line directly, especially now that subscription-based streaming services are such a big part of the entertainment landscape and everyone's trying to launch their own with just a handful of "flagship" titles. Entertainingly, CBS can't seem to make its usual argument that the critics are racist sexist trolls work for Lower Decks the way they thought it did for Picard. The criticism's all focused on how derivative it is of Rick and Morty and how forced the humor is, instead of having anything to do with the characters.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Which means there's no reason to get the ADV version... because the English dub is freaking awful.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    None that I've seen... it's only been about four years since the last re-release of Macross Plus: Movie Edition on Blu-ray.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    We're all kinda hoping that the success of the Macross Delta releases with the official English subs is going to lead to the next round of re-releases will have official subs. Well, the quality on the Blu-rays is at least as good if not better than the DVDs most of the time... but admittedly if you want English subs it's usually a one-horse race for any given title except Super Dimension Fortress Macross. For that one, IIRC the Animeigo release is generally preferred.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Are you sure? There's some uncertainty on that point.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Not the Japanese blu-rays... for that, you'd have to get one of the old licensed releases like Animeigo's or ADV's.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Delta's TV series and movie have English subtitles, and one of the box sets of the Macross Frontier movies does as well.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The Goblin Slayer movie is apparently now on Crunchyroll... gonna give that a whirl later. Monster Musume no Oisha-san is pretty middling stuff still. It's pretty disappointing, because it occasionally shows something resembling actual promise when it focuses on the actual medicine side of things but it slips back into ripping off Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou at every opportunity.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    A detail more or less stated outright in the TNG Season 1 writer's bible... 24th century computer automation is so good and so far-reaching that it's perfectly possible for even a ship as large as the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise to operate with a one-man crew in the short term. A significant portion of the crew exists primarily to maintain the ship's systems (or the other members of the crew). IMO, a big part of the problem was that Rios's La Sirena was conceived as a non-Federation freighter design that'd been retrofitted with Federation mod-cons and luxury extras... and the non-Federation freighter designs in previous Star Trek shows tended to be rather uninspiring designs that were little more than boxes with engines on 'em: Etc. etc. Incidentally, Star Trek: Lower Decks dropped its first episode the other day and the reviews are not pretty. CBS is in damage control mode, filing takedown requests at the YouTube reviewer crowd in a bid to silence the unfavorable opinions of it. It currently has an audience score of 31 on Rotten Tomatoes. That's significantly worse than even Picard's debut.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Er... um... I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just going to kind of blurt it out. You're about a year late. Macross Plus's 25th Anniversary was back in 2019... as the first episode of the OVA was released on VHS and LaserDisc in Japan on August 25th, 1994.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, they did that because the fan "expert" they consulted fobbed 'em off with their headcanon instead of the official info... same reason HG thinks the Ikazuchi is twice the size it actually is.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Roy outranked Misa the entire time he was alive. Misa Hayase was a 1st Lieutenant at the start of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series. Her position was the chief air traffic controller. She was later promoted to Captain after escaping from the Zentradi fleet and finished the series as a Major. In Macross: Do You Remember Love?, she starts the story as a Captain in the same position and is promoted to Major after her escape from the Zentradi. It's not explicitly stated who the Macross's executive officer was, IIRC but the circumstantial evidence points to Colonel Maistroff. Yeah, that's @Falconkpd playing Roy Focker. I don't recall if Annika has a handle on here.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that was a Robotech-ism. IIRC, the idea that different variants had different amounts of armor originated in the Robotech RPG published by Palladium Books in the late 80's. I don't recall the idea having a lot of traction until Robotech: Battlecry came out in 2002, though it reversed the RPG's take by giving the higher-performance variants less armor instead of more. I know the so-called "2nd Edition" RPG ultimately discarded the idea altogether and gave the different variants the same armor. Yeah, that why I'm keen to find out if what I've been told about this is true. Whatever the original stance was, the VF-1J was pretty quickly written into the role of being a Japanese manufacturer's competing proposal for the UN Forces' main VF-1 variant with enhanced armament that never really caught on due to Shinnakasu's low production capacity. The double handful of VF-1Js that were stationed aboard the Macross were almost the entire production run, though it was only in the TV series that they were used as platoon leader machines. They were kind of demoted to a heavy weapons type in DYRL?, deploying the Armored Pack (supposedly due to native compatibility since they're made by the same company). He absolutely had a lot of authority aboard the Macross... but it wasn't due to his veteran status, it was due to his position in the ship's administrative hierarchy. Roy was the Macross's CAG: the Commander of the ship's Air Group. Commander of the Air Group is a position held by the most senior officer in the embarked aircraft squadrons, who functions as the aviation department head in the ship's command structure. All of the squadron leaders report to the CAG, while the CAG reports directly to the captain. Roy had a gargantuan amount of authority as CAG, considering the Macross had at least fourteen squadrons embarked at any given time. He was also perfectly positioned to offer his kouhai special treatment given his level of authority and the fact that Hikaru was already a highly qualified pilot. The VF-1S had engines tuned for greater thrust. I don't recall them saying anything about more generator output.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    By World War II, national militaries could afford to be a bit choosier about their pilots... since the hardware had improved enough to give pilots a reasonable expectation of not dying messily as a result of their own aircraft's hardware in normal operation. Enlisted pilots were usually pilots who'd been civilian-certified for things like crop dusting, airmail, etc., while officer pilots usually attended military flight school to learn to handle fighters, bombers, etc. The rank of Flight Sergeant was abolished by the US in 1942 with the Flight Officer Act of 1942, which promoted all enlisted pilots to a new warrant rank of Flight Officer and discontinued the rank of Flight Sergeant, and after 1945 the warrant position ended up being abolished because there were enough officer pilots around that it wasn't necessary anymore. Ah, that'd do it... lol Well, Max did have the VF-1A as a Sergeant and 2nd Lieutenant too, which gives him a bit more latitude... it wasn't until after he'd been promoted to 1st Lieutenant that he finally got the VF-1J. Max was also a former Destroid driver in Macross the First too, so they'd have reason to listen to his input regardless. I dunno, he is pretty serious on the job... DON'T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THAT MONITOR! *coughNEPOTISMcough* I mean, it helps that he's besties with the CAG...
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be honest, abandoning a disabled ship for a death or glory charge is the most Zentradi thing ever... Unrelated... does anyone out there have the Super Dimension Fortress Macross novelization by Inoue Toshiki from 1983? Specifically, I'm looking for the second volume (ISBN 978-4-09-440003-8). I've been told that it contains some interesting information on the subject of the VF-1J in the postscript. Specifically, what I've heard - and cannot presently verify - is that in that 1983-vintage bit of lore it talks about the VF-1J was tentatively intended to replace the VF-1A. Since I'm working on the Sky Angels doujinshi, I've been on a bit of a VF-1 kick lately. There was an interesting bit in Master File that caught my attention in connection with the above, about how the reason Hikaru was issued with a VF-1J from the outset instead of a VF-1A in the TV version was Roy "gifting" Hikaru with a spare aircraft that'd been prepared for his use when his VF-1S was having issues.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    This is becoming a bit of a trend, recently... maybe we ought to put auto-lock on any thread old enough to have a learner's permit and a part-time job? Anyway, all ranks translated Army-style as per the onscreen English text in practically every Macross title... Only at the end... Hikaru, Max, and Kakizaki all started the film at the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. Max got promoted all the way up to Captain offscreen after Roy, Hikaru, Misa, etc. got captured. Hikaru and Misa both got promoted on their return, Hikaru became a 1st Lieutenant and Misa a Major. Hikaru was a Staff Sergeant when he joined the Spacy in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. He got promoted to 2nd Lieutenant after "Bye Bye Mars", which is where he picked up Max and Kakizaki as subordinates, then to 1st Lieutenant around the time Roy died and to Captain after the First Space War ended. Max and Kakizaki were Corporals when they were added to Vermilion Platoon in episode 8. Max was pretty quickly promoted to Sergeant, then 2nd Lieutenant around the time Roy died and 1st Lieutenant and given his own platoon during the resupply of the SDF-1 Macross in "Paradise Lost". I don't recall if he gets promoted to Captain before the end of the series, but IIRC he is one at the start of Macross M3 a few years after the end of the series. Like @Roy Focker said, enlisted flyers were a thing during World War II and Max himself is a walking World War II reference. They dropped enlisted fliers from the Macross setting starting in Macross: Do You Remember Love?. Thereafter, all pilots are officers and the lowest rank we see for one is warrant officer (which in the Japanese style is more an officer candidate rank.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Not that I've seen, no... the publisher doesn't seem to offer eBook versions of these. If they did, it'd probably be region-locked and DRM'd to be unavailable outside of the JDM.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, there were a bunch of rejected Ride Armor concepts that were used in the "UEEF Marines" sourcebook... but IIRC the so-called "Super Cyclone" you're thinking of was something they came up with for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles (and all it really is is a regular VR-052 MOSPEADA painted black - because black is edgy, right? - with a bigger gun). Oh, the 126 person figure is for the coast guard cutter in question... I used the Heritage-class as an example, since it's approximately to scale with a Zentradi fleet picket in terms of the relative sizes of crew and ship. Though, as noted, the picket would have less space for actual crew since it has to accommodate a hangar as well. So in all likelihood, your headcanon's fairly close to the truth. It's been called a lot of things... for the longest time people were calling it by the name Quiltra Quelamitz and asserting it's a monitor. The ship is a gunboat, and doesn't have a class name. Fanon's weird sometimes. Though I did recently notice something that'd been bugging me and sketchley. The term "GNERL" that never seems to be used in print sources but is always used to refer to the Zentradi dogfighter pod... that's from a line in Super Dimension Fortress Macross's very first episode (about 19 minutes in).
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, yes... after they exhausted what little official setting material exists for Robotech, HG gave them permission to use the so-called "Imai Files" for what turned out to be the game's last book (of blatant filler) before the publisher's license was revoked. It was an embarrassing desperation move and a hilariously poor-quality product even by the publisher's already-low standards. Yup... if you get right down to it, in scale to its crew, the Zentradi fleet picket is about the same size as a typical US Coast Guard patrol cutter. Those have a crew of 126, and didn't have to support aircraft. The picket's got a big damn hangar at the back that's going to cut into the available space rather heavily. They scaled it back somewhat in RT2E, but at no point have they gone to the actual numbers in the OSM and noticed that the average Zentradi ship should only have a crew of about 1,500 men. There are no Monitors in the Zentradi forces... the ship you're thinking of is a gunboat. (中型砲艦) The key distinction there is that a monitor is a ship designed for ship-to-ship combat that carries disproportionately large guns while a gunboat is a ship mounting a heavy gun that's made for surface bombardment.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, she never does use those railguns... and we only ever see her fire her guided beam cannon turrets in Ep27. The Macross is extremely heavily armed compared to other UN Forces warships of the period... but its armament isn't particularly impressive compared to the larger Zentradi warships unless you count it having thermonuclear reaction munitions and various add-ons like a barrier system that the Zentradi didn't.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Hey, Quartermaster General Benny Hill's decisions about equipment will NOT be questioned! Nope, it's an emergency crowd control measure... the GMP is tapping into that hindbrain reaction that distracts people when they see a nice pair. Fun fact... it normally takes a minimum of nine years of service to reach the rank of Sergeant Major or its equivalent in most world militaries. Jeanne Francaix is a Sergeant Major at the start of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. Jeanne Francaix is also seventeen years old at the start of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. We can only assume she's been MASSIVELY overpromoted which must've happened before Glorie's military got to know her, as her frequent flier status to the stockade would normally disqualify one from any kind of promotion. (Of course, that the 15th exists at all instead of handing the soldiers dumped there their dishonorable discharge papers shows the Southern Cross Army's brass are taking the piss too.) IIRC, wasn't she a transfer from Liberte or something? Lana and Marie technically don't have that problem, since they're both 2nd Lieutenants and officer training is usually not much longer than basic training (~10-12 weeks) for those coming in on the OCS option. Like most anime that indulge in this, there's a baked-in excuse that the military had to relax its age requirements a bit in the wake of a global catastrophe (back on Earth) that took the population down a few dozen notches.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    In an unusual turn for the publisher, Palladium Books's "2nd Edition" Robotech RPG isn't atrociously inaccurate... in no small part because a lot of its information was shamelessly cribbed from Macross fan sites. So much so, in fact, that they accidentally copied things that are unique to Macross's sequels and not at all present in Robotech like the UUM-7 micro-missile pod used by the VF-1 Valkyrie. All in all, it's not a bad starting point for a homebrew Macross game. I'd argue the Macross II RPG is slightly better, despite its much greater number of content errors, because it lacks a few system-level screwups like the erroneous division of micro-missiles into "short-range missiles" and "mini-missiles" and depriving approximately half of them of guidance. (Nobody seems to have the heart to tell Kevin that an unguided missile is called a rocket.) That said, their stats for Zentradi ships tend towards the absurd because the writers of the RPGs seem to have no concept of the size of these ships relative to their crews. They end up being given ridiculously massive crew sizes and mecha complements because the writers forget the individual crew members are 125x the size of a human being, making the ships 1/5 the relative size in every dimension if you're looking at them in human terms. Relative to its crew, the largest regular Zentradi ship is only about 2/3 the size of the Macross relative to her miclone crew. Esp. in light of the fact that the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series pretty clearly depicts Zentradi ships shooting at incoming fighters with the same guided beam cannon turrets they use for anti-warship work.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It's pretty slim... we know what the basic systems are and the basic types of weaponry they use, but not specific numbers or anything like that.
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