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Seto Kaiba

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Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    If I could change any one thing, I'd have kept the F-bomb in the conclusion of Maarva's speech in "Rix Road".
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Andor has always been among the very best Star Wars has had to offer... IMO, it crossed the line to being The Best back in "One Way Out" and cemented its permanent residency in the top spot with "Rix Road". Haven't seen the new episodes yet (that's tonight), but I am VERY much looking forward to it.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    To be honest, the main cast of GQuuuuuuX is so underdeveloped that I can't say that either Machu or Nyan feels particularly distinct. Ep5 seems to suggest that the reason we have two female leads is to tease a possible love triangle centered on Shuji. Why either of the girls would be interested in a boy with no apparent personality traits to speak of and the emotional range of a cress sandwich remains to be established. Five'll get you twenty the Red Gundam's Alpha Psycommu is...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    IMO, Hikaru's getting an unfairly bad rap there... he was ordered to take off directly into enemy fire, got hit almost right away, and crashed because his aircraft lost power. He did fumble with the Battroid, but at least part of that is also attributable to the battle damage his Valkyrie had suffered making it even harder for him to control. Alto had prior experience on older model Valkyries before he jumped into the VF-25 at the start of Macross Frontier. It doesn't come up in the TV anime directly, but supplemental material, the TV-adjacent short stories, audio dramas, and alternate versions of the story like the novelizations and manga all indicate that Mihoshi Academy's aerospace classes involve training with real Valkyries. Specifically, Mihoshi Academy is said to have a number of civilian market VF-1C Valkyries kitted out as flight training aircraft. In the TV series short story "Actor's Sky" and the Macross Frontier TV novelization, Alto takes the guy playing Shin Kudo in the Bird Human movie up for a training flight in one to help him prep for the role. That's part of why he's able to fly his borrowed VF-25 as effectively as he does, since all he's really unfamiliar with at that point are the weapons.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Please do not give Dave Filoni ideas... as third Tales of series clearly shows, he is clearly desperate enough that he's not particularly picky.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the new episode of GQuuuuuuX today over lunch... and it's legitimately boring. Once again, the most interesting part of the story is the implication that Big Things are happening offscreen back in Side 3 and we just don't get to see any of it because it's much more important that we watch a 16 year old spoiled rich kid sunbathe or get stuck in a train station locker. Since GQuuuuuuX is Studio Khara's baby, I think my nickname for it is going to be "Kharbage". Short for "Khara's Garbage". The writing is incredibly weak, the characters are badly underdeveloped even five episodes in, and many of the designs are sinfully ugly. It's like Studio Khara showed up to a game and creativity pitched a perfect no-hitter. The most interesting part of it thus far has been finding out what became of the iconic One Year War characters in this alternate history.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming Andor's story continues to skip forward one year for each three episode story arc, the Ghorman massacre and Mon Mothma's speech about it should occur in the block of episodes that drops tonight. Season 2's first block of episodes started in 4 BBY. The second block was in 3 BBY. This next block should be set in 2 BBY, the same year as the Star Wars: Rebels episode "Secret Cargo". That was the episode that depicted the final leg of Mon Mothma's escape from Coruscant to the rebel base on Dantooine after she made a speech in the Senate about the Ghorman Massacre. That last batch of episodes should be in 1 BBY, the year before Rogue One.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, you got about nine hours left. DARK.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Oh come on, Star Wars was already double dipping with May the 4th and Revenge of the 5th. It can't annex the whole bloody month.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    ... honestly, I can't think of any. Macross is pretty good about establishing that anyone who jumps/falls into a Valkyrie's cockpit with the intent to fly it has at least some relevant training. Thinking back to all the major Macross titles, I don't think we've ever had a totally unqualified person jump into the cockpit in the manner that so often happens in Gundam.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Hondo Ohnaka, and it's not literal. More a habitual expression of exasperation (shared with the in-series characters). He's an incredibly flamboyant and theatrical pirate captain who debuted in Star Wars: the Clone Wars and managed to get on the wrong side of most of the major characters with his shenanigans. He was enough of a fan favorite that he got brought back for Star Wars: Rebels and is the host of the preshow at the Smuggler's Run ride at Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge. He's absolutely got the right level of flamboyant ham to consider a career as a talk show host.
  12. Seto Kaiba
  13. Seto Kaiba
    ... that is almost exactly what I pictured in my head. This would actually have felt a lot more natural than the hosts of Good Morning Coruscant who looked like they wandered onto the wrong set from a Hunger Games spinoff. With the Hutts reputation for being kind of sleazy (and in The Clone Wars, pretty hammy), they'd make ideal talk show hosts. Especially with their incination to big, booming laughter and their sluglike body profile that'd make them naturals at slouching over a host's desk. About the only Star Wars character who'd make a better talk show host would be f***ing Hondo... but he spends this same period hamming it up as an itinerant space pirate and bothering Hera Syndulla's rebel cell.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the latest episodes of The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl, Witch Watch, I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years, Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive, The Brilliant Healer's New Life, and The Too Perfect Saint. This season is painfully light on talent. No real standouts so far, just a lot of serviceable but unremarkable middle-of-the-road formula shows. The only series I'm really waiting for every week is The Apothecary Diaries. There are a few real stinkers, though. Classic Stars is so incoherent I still don't know what it's even about five episodes on. Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is exactly as poorly thought out as its literal placeholder title implies. Yandere Dark Elf marketed itself like a romcom but it's basically softcore porn. Kinda disappointed... but my watch group is getting a lot of mileage out of The Apothecary Diaries and our rewatch of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure in celebration of the announcement of Steel Ball Run. I might try to pick up one or two more simulcast titles to see if I'm missing anything good. Maybe The Beginning After The End, Kowloon Generic Romance, or Shoshimin.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Seems that way, yeah... they've come up with a couple good excuses for why the tech isn't used more widely, a lot of which are some flavor of acknowledging that repeated use of LEGO Genetics in the real world would be a very unhealthy thing to do even if they weren't for the massive changes in biochemistry necessary to work around the square cube law. Admittedly, investigating this question led me to that very uncomfortable detail I hadn't been aware of before about Ernest Johnson's unusual proportions being a miclone system-induced deformity. If a few too many trips through the miclone system without perfectly system-compatible genes can leave you with permanent physical and genetic alterations, that's a good reason to only use it sparingly.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    That is an excellent question we do not currently have an answer for. We know there are some health conditions, principally genetic ones, which prevent a person from safely using a micloning system and we know that the miclone system can both remove and install biotechnological components of the body like the Meltran bio-fiber optic nervous system or a records officer's expanded memory. There's no word on whether micloning can work with cybernetics or even more minimal body mods like tattoos and piercings. Since giant Zentradi are prohibited on Earth and aren't present in most emigrant fleets or planets for resource reasons, this may be something of an academic question even in-universe. Supplemental material for Macross 7 indicates that Exsedol did spend time among Humans as a miclone toward the end of the First Space War as we saw in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series. It's noted that, by the time of the Macross 7 fleet's departure, he had returned to his giant size and original body plan because he was concerned that his miclone form's smaller size might mean reduced memory and information analysis capability compared to his specialized giant form. Ernest Johnson is a half-Zentradi "peace child". Exactly what's going on with that metal on the back of his head is unclear, but it may be related to his unusual body proportions. Macross Delta Character Design Works has some notes that suggest Ernest's height and unusual proportions are not natural, but are instead the result of some quirk of his half-Zentradi genetics not playing nice with repeated use of micloning systems and leaving him slightly deformed with a Hellboy-like physique. It's possible that metal bit is reinforcing his skull due to those micloning-related health issues, or perhaps it's simply an affectation because he's bald? (For instance, TV Vrlitwhai's "eyepatch" wasn't an implant... it was basically just an outlandish eyepatch bolted directly to his skull to cover up an injury.) That's a good question, which we don't have an answer for. Perhaps it's too great of a strain on the body and mind for a severely injured person. Maybe the system really is THAT doggedly precise that it'll recreate injuries and scar tissue not just run off a copy of the body based on its DNA. Or maybe it's something to do with the genetic issues that prevent some people from using micloning systems safely that have been mentioned several times since Macross Frontier. Klan Klan, Michael Blanc, and Ernest Johnson are all mentioned to have (or be at risk for) issues caused by miclone systems.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    While I was thinking on this one I did a bit of research, and it turned out to be quite a rabbit hole when it comes to technologies for improving medical prosthetics. Col. Johnson's artificial leg is described as a "robotic prosthetic" limb rather than a cybernetic one. There's apparently a key distinction there in terms of how the prothesis is being controlled. Cybernetic prosthetics would be directly integrated into the nervous system and controlled like a biological limb. Robotic prosthetics, on the other hand, are indirectly monitoring motor nerves via EMG sensors, via magnets implanted in the muscles themselves, or using computer models to guess what the correct posture is instead of working like a biological limb. So it sounds like Millard's leg is not actually tied into his nervous system... which explains why that was a career-ending injury. It's enough to let him walk normally, but he likely doesn't have any feeling in that leg and limited-at-best control over the motions of the joints.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Y'know, I'd always assumed that Millard Johnson's prosthetic leg in Macross Plus was a conventional prosthesis... but it appears you are correct. His Macross Chronicle Character Sheet explicitly refers to his artificial leg as a "robotic prosthetic".
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It's more or less the same as your hypothesis... just slightly narrower in scope since the New UN Gov't initially apparently didn't consider more civil war a possibility.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... that and other fodder for licensed spinoff comics and short story collections where the Glup Shittos of the Galaxy Far Far Away get their time to shine like the polished turds they are. (NGL, a late night talk show starring a Hutt is a weird mental image I kind of actually want to see tho. I have this bizarre mental image of a Hutt squeezing itself into a suit and tie doing a Stephen Colbert-style late show.) It's a noodle incident at best. They were off on some nonspecific mission and someone saw their faces on the way out so Cassian removed the witness. Could've been a literal milk run anywhere there are wanted posters of them up.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Technology "Macross Galaxy Fleet Technology" (a Macross Frontier movie one) suggests the New UN Gov't was worried the Zentradi might use cyborg tech to become more of a threat if development wasn't carefully supervised and restricted. Basically, the didn't want Zentradi cyborg supersoldiers in the next Zentradi riot.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Frontier and later works use the term "implant" as a generic/catch-all term for any kind of cybernetic implant. Both the series proper and supplemental material indicate that there are laws governing the use of implant technology both at the local government level and the central New UN Government level. The New UN Government imposed strict regulations and restrictions on cybernetics research after the First Space War in order to keep humanity's cybernetics research focused on humane and ethically-sound medical applications and outlaw research aimed at weaponizing cyborgs. The kind of implants that are legal everywhere (incl. Frontier) are medically-necessary organ and limb replacements. The kind of thing used to repair catastrophic injuries like the loss of a limb or an eye. The few examples we've seen suggest that these implants don't exceed the performance of the original human body parts they replaced and look visibly artificial. (Macross R's Oscar Brauhitsch has a cybernetic arm, which looks more like Ed's automail arm from Fullmetal Alchemist than a convincing counterfeit human arm.) The restrictions on elective implants seem to have been relaxed a little c. the late 2040s, since that's when we see the Macross Galaxy fleet change its local laws to explicitly permit elective implant surgery for things like "the internet in your brain" multimedia/network implants. We've seen a few wealthy and well-connected folks living elsewhere also have those implants, so presumably they were legalized in other places as well after restrictions were relaxed. Frontier's ban on all but medically necessary implants is supposedly driven mainly by the fleet's bioplant environment system which recycles all organic material. Implants aren't biodegradable/recyclable after all, and would have to be manually removed from the body before processing could take place. Summing up... Frontier, Uroboros, etc. are probably far more representative of the galactic norm on cybernetics. You might get a couple rich idiots who paid a fortune to get their brains hooked up to the WiFi, but most people are in factory condition.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Hmm... I can see it, in a way. We are seeing "the highlights" in a sense, but it's because we're seeing the periods of time when Things Are Happening and skipping the time inbetween where people are laying low after an op, gathering intel for the next one, and generally doing all the unexciting groundwork to set the stage for their faction's next move. We're seeing the few important days of Cassian's life that happened in that year, and skipping the ~11 months afterwards where nothing much was going on.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing clownish about it... it just has a hero mecha paintjob.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    They kept the original blue-white coloration that was chosen back in the days when Gundam's animation was hand-drawn. It was chosen because a pure white makes it harder to draw light effects. 'course, the whole "White Gundam" thing goes back to the original series where the Gundam was called the "White Guy" or "White Devil" by Zeon for its white paintjob... and Tomino's desire to have the whole thing just be flat white before getting overruled by marketing.
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