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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    One of my coworkers pointed this out to me, and I can't un-realize it... Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Picard is a space boomer. He's acting like exactly the kind of person "OK Boomer" was intended for. He's out of touch, he doesn't realize things no longer work the way they did when he was younger, and he's absolutely convinced he knows better than everyone else and that his moral code was superior to the modern one. (Sadly, "space boomer" was actually a term used in Star Trek before for Travis Mayweather's generation so it's unlikely to have come around again.) It's this ridiculous era of social media outrage and virtue signaling fake social justice advocacy. Ironically, it's basically a product of trying to create a Roddenberry-esque better world. We've started to internalize the idea that we ought to be celebrating differences and treating everyone with equal human dignity, but we haven't quite reached that point where it's been normalized to the extent where we don't have to be afraid of hurting people with words. We'll get it figured out eventually. I have faith. (Not of the heart tho, the regular kind... because that song was awful.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That'd be what I'm dreading most about Star Trek: Picard. Patrick Stewart has been fairly open about seeing Star Trek: Picard as his personal political soapbox and he has a voice in the production planning. I dread the prospect that, since Jean-Luc Picard is now a sockpuppet for Patrick Stewart's political views, he won't allow the writers to depict his character as being wrong or in the wrong no matter what... regardless of how hypocritical or contradictory his in-universe viewpoint may become. Basically, I'm dreading another Michael Burnham. Another character who the writers are so utterly determined has to be in the right that the universe itself has to bend over backwards to make it so, at the expense of common sense, logic, and a coherent narrative. We've already seen the start of it too. Admiral Clancey flatly declines to even consider that Jean-Luc Picard may have witnessed covert Romulan activity on Earth, and the commodore she consults about it is...
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Starting Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru today... sounds like it should be a fun ride.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Your computer doesn't soliloquize on the nature of being and what it means to be human, does it? I mean, it's harder to see something like an android as a dumb machine when it exhibits humanlike behavior and even curiosity. We anthropomorphize everything... so it's kind of weird that such a humanlike android would be the object of such naked animosity. Yeah, I'm not sure if the writers realized that Admiral Clancey drew a line under one of the biggest plot holes in Star Trek: Picard. Jean-Luc Picard's narrative about Starfleet having done NOTHING to help the Romulans doesn't scan, even within the context of his own remarks. Starfleet bent over backwards to try to help the Romulans, over the objections of a number of Federation member worlds, and was left unable to render significant assistance despite their intentions to do so because they were attacked and the aid fleet destroyed. Star Trek: Picard's writers clearly want the audience to see Jean-Luc Picard as the One Sane Man, but his take on events doesn't seem to fit with objective reality even in the context of the series itself. To me, he comes off more as a self-righteous, entitled, slightly egotistical old man who views the entire world as wrong when it doesn't comply with his narrow views of what is right and true. Kind of the opposite, really... as heavily lampshaded by Captain Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise's "Dear Doctor". The Prime Directive exists to prevent Starfleet from playing god with less advanced civilizations. Their more advanced technology could dramatically change the course of civilizations that are still developing, accelerating or hindering their progression, causing wars and paranoia, and changing the very direction of their evolution. It's a rule that exists to prevent Starfleet officers from making decisions about what (lesser) civilizations are worthy to continue existing. That principle doesn't apply to other warp-capable civilizations, which are generally viewed as mature enough to be the masters of their own destiny, though it still prohibits Starfleet from interfering in the internal affairs of other warp-capable civilizations unless their involvement is specifically requested by an appropriate authority. So, the Admiral is kind of off-base there when she said that Starfleet can decide who lives or dies. That's very much against the spirit and letter of the Prime Directive.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Star Trek: the Next Generation seems to have set the tone there with "Measure of a Man" and a half dozen other episodes that determinedly explored whether AIs dream of electric sheep. Voyager was probably the one that flogged it the hardest, what with all the Doctor-heavy episodes stealing the bloody show late in the series. Deep Space Nine was the only one that didn't really play with the idea at all, outside of its one episode where Bariel died. This is an unusually heavy-handed take though, what with the seemingly universal sneering disdain people treat androids with and the whole... You're not alone. Isn't this only ten episodes long per season or something like that? Two episodes on, and Jean-Luc Picard is still trying to get his travel papers together, find his shoes, and let LifeAlert know he's going to be out of town for a bit. That was one guy... and the attitude he copped evaporated by the end of the episode.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... I gave the Strange Machine Games Robotech RPG open beta a whirl a while back and found it pretty unremarkable. I remember thinking it was a pretty poor effort even for a Robotech product. It's not a bad system, but IMO it was even less suitable for replicting the feel of the Macross (or Robotech) setting than Palladium Books's old system is... and that' system wasn't any prize either. Most people who buy it will probably end up using it to run Macross games, though, so if you want to put in the effort then I would say it's safe to say it won't go to waste. Personally, I'm not going to buy a copy because it's Robotech-branded and supports Harmony Gold's efforts to block Macross from markets worldwide. Even if those efforts aren't as fruitful as they used to be, I'm not about to give them any money that they could spend on lawsuits or on trying to hold on their license a little longer. The sooner they fold, the better.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    *sigh* Barely halfway into Star Trek: Picard's second episode and from the sound of it they're ALREADY setting up Patrick Stewart's exit from the series. I'm vaguely bothered by how poorly tailored the new Starfleet uniforms look on the extras in this episode. So far, the best moment in this episode has been the quietly snarky Romulan safety supervisor aboard the salvaged Borg cube. He dispenses a lot of quiet snark while giving his very boring sounding safety briefing that Dahj's sister talks over. It's a shame that she doesn't realize this nameless background character is far more interesting than she will ever be. Romulan Science Guy, whose name I have already forgotten because he is boring cliche, seems to be trying really hard to channel Spock from Star Trek: Discovery season two. BIG mistake. There is literally a moment in this episode where Patrick Stewart is basically explaining to his Romulan housekeeper that the show can't afford to bring back the TNG cast for more than cameos. So Picard's ragtag crew here are apparently going to be a crew of outcast privateers on a personally-owned ship. What little we see of the ship, it's pretty ugly and generic... it really feels a bit like they're trying to make this Star Trek: Firefly or knock off Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Responsible readers remember to wrap the comic in an asbestos blanket and safely dispose of it in a nuclear waste storage facility after reading... or before, ideally.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Messer did a lot of Battroid mode and GERWALK mode stuff during the space battles... but from the sound of it, even Hayate's handling in fighter mode was pushing his VF-31J well beyond its normal limits and causing damage. Yup, there's no mention of them finding any alien crew aboard the wrecked ship in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series or Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie, and I don't recall any mention of finding crew in Macross the First either. I'd imagine a lot of the ship's fixtures would have kind of given the game away... like the gigantic, completely recognizable-at-a-glance toilets. I can just imagine the first work crews exploring the ship... "Golly, I wonder what kind of amazing alien lifeforms inhabited this mysterious ship from beyond the stars?" "Oh damnit, that's a giant toilet. We're on some Gulliver's Travels bullsh*t now." "Don't get so down, at least we're not doing that one TAS episode with the giant Spock and the plant people."
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well... if nothing else, you have to applaud Titan's efforts to make the covers awful enough to be a representative sample of the contents. They're working hard to ensure that you CAN judge a book by its cover.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I get the feeling that for most of us this isn't in "guilty pleasure" territory so much as "ironic punishment from the greco-roman gods" territory...
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Finished Demi-chan wa Kataritai a few minutes ago... great show, too short. I want 13 more episodes, stat. This was just plain well-written. The story made me care about the characters with surprising swiftness and without resorting to cheats like fanservice. This is exactly the kind of character-driven drama that should be 26 or 50 episodes, not 13. This was good enough that I am seriously looking at getting the official licensed US release.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the so-called "Immelmann Dance" kind of fell by the wayside after just a few episodes... one has to wonder if it was because the maintenance team made him stop doing it, as the series had at least one bit of dialog from Makina acknowledging that the Immelmann Dance was rough as hell on Hayate's VF-31J and, compared to Messer's style, it was coming back all beat-up just from his style of flying. There was a really nice bit a few episodes on where Hayate and Freyja went for a night flight in his VF-31J and had a whole dancing segment before Messer rained on their parade and threatened them with charges for AWOL. That line from Makina about how Hayate's handling of his VF-31J was so rough that it was incurring extra repair time between sorties was one of the odder things we've had in terms of technical remarks. How many G's was Hayate putting on that airframe that it needed more repair between sorties than someone aggressively dogfighting like Messer? VFs are stressed for dozens of G's above and beyond the almost-30G buffering limit of the ISC. Hayate was either astonishingly rough on his VF-31, or the performance enhancements in the Xaos VF-31 customs already overloaded the airframe in normal operation.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    When the designers start messing with the core concept of VF transformation, one of the most common outcomes is that they end up removing GERWALK mode altogether. We saw this a couple times in the 90's, like the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie from the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA and the VF-X3 Medusa from Macross: Remember Me. The logic is usually that GERWALK mode doesn't have a lot of utility in space besides deceleration and that Battroid can do that just as easily. I've often thought that Macross Frontier neglected GERWALK mode too much, and one of the few things Macross Delta did right in the TV series was to make fairly extensive use of GERWALK mode. There was, of course, that one memorable time that a designer decided to add a fourth mode instead and we got the Metal Siren's Gundroid mode in Macross II, which was explained as a GERWALK-like mode meant for space dogfighting. That same designer is also responsible for the "poor man's VF" that had JUST a GERWALK mode (the GERWALKroid, also from Macross II).
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I am torn between the dullahan, Machi, and the succubus teacher Satou. Demi-chan wa Kataritai is so damn pure... it's a feel-good series that really deserves the title.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I'll say this much, this series is RELENTLESSLY wholesome. A largely fanservice-free character drama is right where I'm at right now, so I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I have heard nothing but good of it, and it seems that trend is destined to continue here.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, if a viewer felt the Kirk Summation of the week was aimed at them and found it insulting... then it was doing its job. The whole point of episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was to throw the sh*ttyness of certain types of human behavior into sharp relief, and in so doing encourage positive change. It was hamfisted as f*ck but boy did it work, and it was woven into the narrative well enough that it didn't feel like being preached at (most of the time). Gene Roddenberry took the same thinly disguised morality tale format that'd sold so well in westerns at the time and simply repurposed it for his sci-fi series. "Wagon train to the stars" indeed. I kinda have my doubts whether Star Trek: Picard can achieve that, given that Patrick Stewart seems to be aiming for nothing more sophisticated or morally complex than "Brexit is bad".
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'm about to take a whack at Interviews with Monster Girls. Seems like a harmless-enough slice of life-y comedy, quite unlike that other title Kodansha really seems to want people to think it's related to... Daily Life with Monster Girls... which is more or less pure fanservice.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That's one of the few shows I started that I just wasn't able to finish. It just feels... wrong. Like it's blatant lolicon fanservice to the extent that I was two or three episodes in and couldn't shake the feeling Chris Hansen was going to burst through my wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-25 technically had it first, since the VF-171EX was a mid-war development in the Vajra conflict.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Miniaturized pinpoint barrier systems were developed for Project Super Nova as one of the major requirements for a 4th Generation Main VF, so the first VFs to get them would be the YF-19 and YF-21 prototypes. Due to the New UN Forces' dropping the VF-19 and VF-22 from large-scale production, the first mass production VF to mount a pinpoint barrier was the VF-171 Nightmare Plus. The oldest VF we've seen mount a barrier system after they achieved production status was Mylene's VF-11MAXL Custom, which was built in 2045 (after the technology had reached a production level on the VF-19 and VF-22). The first VFs with both a pinpoint barrier AND an Armored Pack were the VF-25 and VF-171EX.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    There's no denying TOS was campy as f*ck, but then consider when it was made. Despite its problematic production values, it was still a highly thought-of series that was one of the network's best-performing TV series in its programming block. TOS is a terrible show? Audiences certainly didn't think so. Yeah, Gene was... a character. Dude REALLY wanted to hire strippers as actresses, all of his story treatment descriptions of female characters are skeevy as hell and he often called for female characters to be played by actresses with "strip queen" builds. What he conceptualized as far as the bright future that Star Trek belonged to still struck a massive chord with viewers. In the middle of the Cold War, here was a show that dared to dream of a world where we'd put petty political pissing contests and other human evils like racism, sexism, religious discrimination, etc. behind us and created a mature society that was worthy of heading out to explore and settle the great wilderness of space. That belief that humans could be better than they are lasted until Star Trek: Discovery, which took a turn for the dystopian with a racist main character who wore her racism like a badge of honor and rampant sexism throughout the second season. That the bleak and hopeless tone seem to be continuing into Picard is an enormous negative for the series in my opinion.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Gencidas was one of two early concepts that evolved into the designs in Macross, the other was actually a powered suit that turned into a fighter. There's a use for a place to stick a high-gain camera cluster and a gun turret that can rotate independently of the direction of motion of the mecha. Depends on how you want to define "a slight edge"... the VF-25 should have slightly higher flight performance on account of having a marginally higher thrust-to-weight ratio, while the VF-31 has a more passively stealthy profile that tries to compensate for a loss of payload versatility with the ordnance container. Er... 2, 3, and 4 there are all the same thing actually. All told, I'd say the VF-31 is probably the better aircraft for cost performance whereas the VF-25 is probably a better overall performer due to being able to specialize at the expense of greater cost.
  25. Seto Kaiba
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