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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Given the title, I'm actually a little surprised at the lack of 420 jokes about the creative staff.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    One thing worth noting is that every Macross sequel from Flash Back 2012 onwards blends aspects from both the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series and the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie when flashing back to the events of the First Space War. Kawamori's "broad strokes" attitude towards continuity means there really isn't a single fixed interpretation of the First Space War. Do You Remember Love? is a movie in the universe, but the in-universe version is also apparently different to the one we've seen given footage from it shown in Macross 7 that includes Max and Milia's wedding and other scenes which were not in the theatrical film. Several other takes, like Macross II: Lovers Again's parallel world continuity, the DYRL? novelization, and Macross the First all have takes on the timeline that merge aspects of the TV and Movie storylines. Macross Chronicle offers no guidance as to when the song emerged. It's possible that it was recorded for one of the earlier docu-drama projects, like the one mentioned in Master File that dramatized the events of the First Space War's start. Or it may be that the version of Flash Back 2012 we saw was itself a later dramatization from one of the many dramas about Minmay's life mentioned in later shows, that draws upon the material of the 2031 movie. Minmay's enduring popularity seems to have a lot more to do with dramatizations of her life than it does her actual career.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    George Lucas was the same way from the outset in Star Wars's development... what he wrote was not readable, let alone filmable. He was a great idea man, but he needed writers, editors, and producers holding his leash and hammering his ideas into something people might actually watch. It was both, really... he wasn't happy with some core TOS characters being depicted as racist, and he was also unhappy with the idea that a militaristic Starfleet might actually WANT to go to war with the Klingons. The latter is reportedly why Rene Auberjonois' character, Colonel West, ended up on the cutting room floor. He was the one who, in meetings with the Federation President, was vocally agitating for armed conflict with the Klingons. Like I said, even under Gene Roddenberry's immediate control the Federation Starfleet seemed to wear a LOT of hats. Most of the assignments we see the crew of the Enterprise undertake are diplomatic or scientific in nature, but we do also see a wide array of other stuff like border patrols, wartime planetary defense, managing interstellar cargo shipments, law enforcement operations, coordinating interstellar colonization, etc. If there was a thing you needed a government agency to do, they did it.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's not a plot hole, it's an ethical concern. Creating an army of clones to fight your wars for you is slavery... clones are people too, after all. When the clones have the same memories, training, and talents of the originals, you're also stuck with the problem that you now have two identical people who both lay claim to the same past and the same property. The New UN Government did use cloning to increase the availability of people with essential skills, but this was mainly used for staffing emigrant fleets so you didn't have two of the same person in the same place making things weird for everyone. A lot of people would find living and working with an identical copy of themselves supremely disconcerting... never mind a legion of them. Because these clones are people able to think and feel rather than brainwashed borderline organic automata like the clone troopers in Star Wars, you could also very quickly end up with an uprising of PO'd clones. Max and Milia were also important to the New UN Government as public figures, the hard proof that peace was possible between Humans and Zentradi. Duplicating them willy-nilly would dilute the significance of their relationship in propaganda terms. We get an aside note in Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure that cloning for military purposes is very definitely illegal under the New UN Government. I'd expect a big part of it was having identifiable characters among the clones who were important to the story like Vrlitwhai, Exsedol, Boddole Zer, Quamzin, Laplamiz, Oigul, and the lolicon trio (Roli, Warera, and Conda). Having a completely homogeneous clone population also means that you won't see individuals who excel in particular areas.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of. Starfleet's "mildly military" nature was present from a fairly early point in Star Trek's development due to, ironically, the influence of Gene Roddenberry. A lot of inspiration for the organization was drawn from the US Navy from the outset - which is why almost every Constitution-class ship in TOS are is named for a World War II-era aircraft carrier - but Gene would paradoxically insist it was not a military organization and then liken it to the (US) Coast Guard (which IS one). He'd also contributed to a number of stories where Starfleet were depicted as responsible for the Federation's border security (e.g. TMP) and even the general defense of the Federation in wartime (e.g. TOS "Errand of Mercy"). EDIT: Perhaps one of the most blatant items being that the initial Starfleet Tech Manual Gene was so proud of contained things like Starfleet DREADNOUGHTS. Meyer and Moore essentially just acknowledged what was already there... that one of the many hats Starfleet wears is that of the Federation's de facto military, though the organization isn't explicitly military in nature like its counterparts in the Klingon Empire, Romulan Empire, Cardassian Union, Dominion, etc. Gene wasn't a particularly consistent fellow even when he was in good health, TBH.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Nah... Gene was unhappy the militaristic aspect of things was present at all. Rene Auberjonois' character, Col. West, was all but completely cut from the film on Roddenberry's insistence for that reason. According to Shatner, after viewing the theatrical cut of the film, Gene Roddenberry had his lawyer start preparing a demand for a further fifteen minutes of material to be cut from the film. He passed away two days later, and the demand went undelivered.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    He's not nothing on Shammy... she had ELEVEN. For a while there, there were two rabbits on the moon... Still, can you imagine how stressful that time of the month must've been for Max as the only man in a house with nine women? Yikes. (There's a great piece of art by Noboru Ishiguro in This is Animation #5: Super Dimension Fortress Macross Part II that shows Max and Milia in the bedroom. He's holding a book titled "ENJOY OF SHOYA"1 but has been knocked out by her as she tries out things she read in the book she's holding: "HOW TO KARATE". The piece is captioned "I handed her a book of karate by mistake and it was a long first night ahaha... / Max".) 1. Presumably 初夜 - "First Night", acceptably translated as "Bridal Night". I assume I don't need to spell out the implications there.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    CBS's chief obstacle in this current generation of Star Trek properties is that they're so expensive to develop and produce that the network is unwilling or unable to put up the vast sums of money required to do it all themselves. It's too big of a risk. They sank vast sums - reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars - into just the development of Star Trek: Discovery. The demand for such a vast number of high quality CG sequences and digital VFX sequences, combined with set-building, props, and location shooting meant that production was going to cost a second king's ransom. The production budget was $8-8.5 million per episode, and a number of actors have indicated they were over budget on practically every episode due to reshoots and producer shenanigans. That's about $250 million for just the 29 episodes produced so far. Seven seasons, assuming season length stays the same as season two, would incur production costs of nearly $875 million. Factor in development costs, actor negotiating raises, and so on... and you're talking about an undertaking well in excess of a billion dollars. (CBS's quarterly net earnings only total around $1.5 billion, to give you an idea about why a sum like that might make them a bit gunshy, based on their published earnings for FY2019.) Star Trek VI was the one where Gene was preparing to sue and died before the lawsuit could be filed.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The smartarse in me wants to answer with "big ones". The ancient Protoculture's cloning technology is capable of copying everything, even an individual's memories, though the Zentradi appear to allow their clones to gain experience naturally. (That's actually how micloning machines work. They just grow a new body and pipe the consciousness over to it, then break the old one down for raw material.) Sure. Mind you, other clones off the same base template as her wouldn't have her specific memories and experience she does that made her such a superb pilot. In all likelihood, there were several Milias kicking around at any given time. She's Milia 639 in the Do You Remember Love? movie. Nope. Yup. The New UN Government made extensive use of captured Zentradi Army cloning tech to shore up humanity's population for about twenty years following the conclusion of the First Space War. They only stopped because the excessive use of cloning was linked to a rise in the incidence of recessive genetic illnesses in subsequent generations of natural-born people. Yes. There are "identical" clones, they're just not all one series of clones like the Grand Army of the Republic in Star Wars was. We've seen cases where there are two or more clones based off the same genetic profile, like Quamzin in the original series and his double Temjin in Macross Frontier. Presumably the factory satellites producing clones have been working to the same program of patient refinement that the factory satellites producing equipment have been, taking feedback from units in the field and remedying weaknesses and deficiencies to produce a better weapon.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It's unsurprising to say the least... with animated Robotech once again dead after a pair of embarrassing failures, no sign of the proposed live action movie, and Titan's one comic being regarded as something of a cringeworthy joke, these "indie" toys are about all Robotech fans have to cling to to convince themselves the franchise isn't dead. Admittedly, I was rather surprised to see another indie outfit trying their hand at Southern Cross so soon after the last outfit went under in a case of stupidity-induced self-destruction. The scale is a REALLY weird choice that I suspect is going to give them a LOT of issues. 1/48 was the smallest scale Imai Kagaku considered doing a model kit of the Spartas at, and it wasn't an articulated model. A 129mm/5.1" inch tall fully-articulated transforming toy is going to be pretty fragile. I'd have expected them to go for something more like 1/24 (a 10 1/8" toy).
  11. Seto Kaiba
    You're not wrong, but that's not really what I was getting at... poor quality is simply Robotech's natural condition, they've seemingly never considered not doing a sh*tty job because the fans will buy whatever they make regardless of quality.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well it IS branded as the dreaded R-word... they haven't learned that lesson in 35 years, so it's unlikely they intend to start now.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    At least they're consistent. Yeah, a Spartas at 1/48 would be approximately 5 inches tall (12.5cm).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes and no... CBS announced that they were planning to renew Star Trek: Picard for a second season, but because they aren't the ones picking up the check for production it means virtually nothing. If Amazon does what Netflix almost did after Discovery's second season and refuses to put up a budget to produce season two, the show is cancelled whether CBS likes it or not. This is why Section 31 hasn't gotten produced thus far. CBS's brain trust green lit it, but nobody was willing to put money into it. Quite the opposite... if he reacted anything like he did to the marginally more military Starfleet in the last couple TOS movies, Gene Roddenberry would be suing CBS. Paramount was only rescued from that looming lawsuit when he up and died.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    That would certainly explain the smiles...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Bad Robot and Secret Hideout have been trying to turn Star Trek into a generic edgy sci-fi property since Star Trek '09... and doing a pretty sh*t job of it, which makes it all the more perplexing that people keep giving them money to try the same bad idea over and over again.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    OK... just cleared a tough-AF work week, and now it's time to sit down and give Star Trek: Picard the beating it so richly deserves this week thanks to "Stardust City Rag". Perhaps future Star Trek conventions can replace autograph lines with "punch the producers" lines? The Good The Bad The Ugly
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Haven't watched the episode yet, thank goodness, but this prompted some thought from me... There are actually a fair few instances in Trek implying that interspecies pregnancies occasionally require a helping hand from genetic medicine. DS9 and ENT were the ones to lay it on real thick, with Bashir cautioning Dax that getting Trill and Klingon DNA to play nicely enough to have a baby might not even be possible and ENT showing an unsuccessful binary clone child that was half-Vulcan. That was never depicted as illegal or even questionably legal though. Bashir was able to proceed with Dax and Worf's fertility treatments without any kind of special permission or pushback from Starfleet or civilian authorities. (Tom and B'Elanna didn't need genetic engineering help to have a kid tho, they needed it to correct a Klingon birth defect that ran in B'Elanna's family.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Finished a binge rewatch of Overlord... to remind myself of what good isekai is like when we're currently being deluged with bad isekai. Enrolled Demon Iruma is about 3/4 over, and so far it's turned out to be a mildly entertaining but toothless and entirely predictable take on the whole "kid enrolled in a school who has to keep their true nature secret or face expulsion or worse" schtick that was done better in Rosario+Vampire and Actually, I am.... Fun to watch, but it does so little to surprise that it's almost paint-by-numbers. Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It kind of petered out pretty quick there. It was a cute concept, but it feels like the original author had exactly one joke and proceeded to wear it out VERY quickly. It's going to run for 12 episodes, but as of episode 8 it feels like it's just treading water. Isekai Quartet's staying weird and proud of it. Now that I've seen three of the four shows it's mainly referencing, the humor's a little better. I still have to get around to Re:ZERO, but the combination of Overlord, KonoSuba, and Yojo Senki is definitely a breeding ground for TONS of weird. They made a lot of noise about including the cast of Shield Hero this season, but they're basically a glorified cameo. My Hero Academia's into one of the manga's weaker arcs... it feels like they should've saved Overhaul's arc for a longer run. Definitely over too soon. My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, as I Expected is a pretty dreary show so far. I feel like I'm forcing myself to watch it because there is ZERO character development. Hachiman is such an unrepentant misanthrope that he can't develop. Five Equal Brides (The Quintessential Quintuplets) is a bit of a slog too... what's with this recent trend of half-assed harem shows where the protagonist is an impoverished academic?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Looking back at the 2007 release calendar, I don't think they did miss it... 2007 was the year that gave us TV anime like Nagasarete Airantou, Shuffle!, Gurren Lagann, and Gundam 00. They just seem to have rather cynically believed that buxom women in catsuits was, on its own, going to make the OVA irresistable to the serious anime hobbyists. It was a rather glaring demonstration that the morons at HG didn't have a clue about the very industry they erroneously claimed they created. I won't even attempt to argue that fanservice on its own doesn't sell (Queen's Blade and To-Love-Ru proved that point well enough), but if you're going to try and sell your series using fanservice alone you have to go lewder to get the SO RONERY crowd's attention, and if you're not then the tame fanservice needs to be a sideshow to a compelling story, well-developed characters, and animation at a much higher level of quality. Nope, they're still batting a 0.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Eh, I still like senior management's ending better: "F*ck off, we're not wasting any more money on your sh*t." For one, it's Robotech... a title of such low potential that even a small time outfit specializing in licensed comics like Titan made no effort to bring their A game. If they can't be bothered to do a decent job with the art - the thing that sells comic books - why would they put any effort into the writing? For two, it's Robotech... the target audience are 40- and 50-somethings who saw the series when it aired in 1985 but haven't given up on it yet. If you look at what passes for storytelling in Robotech of days past, they're not here for thought-provoking tales or to have characters espouse high-minded moralizing. They're here for "humans good, aliens bad, kill them with giant robots". That's about as sophisticated as Robotech gets when it's not ripping something else off... and when it is, it isn't much better. For three, it's Robotech... subtlety is as alien to the property as the Invid/Inbit were to humanity. Its "creators" thought the the way to bring in a mature anime-viewing audience was a ton of pointless T&A. They're either hopelessly inept or surprisingly aware of what their faithful audience is actually like.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Historically speaking, there's a good argument for "PC culture" having actually gotten started in the 70's... though that is merely the latest name for a socio-political debate that's been ongoing for at least as long as we've had the written word, and probably a good deal of time before that. Captain Planet and the Planeteers, though, wasn't diverse simply for diversity's sake... it was attempting to make a well-intentioned point that environmental issues are global problems in a manner every bit as hamfisted as the rest of the show's writing. You had two planeteers from the major world powers of the day (US and USSR), two who were from areas that are ecological crisis zones (the Amazon rainforest and the advancing edge of the Sahara desert), and one who's just sorta there to round out the classical elements (possibly because the show's writers didn't feel comfortable having the American outnumbered 2-1 by communists?). That said, if you're seeing a socio-political agenda in Titan's Robotech or Robotech Remix, your eyes are playing tricks on you. They're so incoherent that it's doubtful the writers could rouse themselves from their absinthe-stupor to voice a thought of any type. They're writing by throwing darts at a wall full of trope titles printed out at random.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, they'll go for the old hot take on that... Lancer's Rockers. Don't you just think this guy is screaming for a gritty modern adaptation?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    A little from column A, and a little from column B... it's written and illustrated by the cheapest "talent" available because it's Robotech. Looking for a sociopolitical agenda in a story so incoherent it borders on straight-up Dadaism is a waste of time. It's a midnight search in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn't there.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    When a series only has ten episodes in a season, it needs to hit the ground running to have any chance of getting anywhere in that short span of screen time. Star Trek: Picard hit the ground like a centenarian with a broken hip and promptly took off at a blistering pace rivaled only by the East Fort Myers zimmer frame relay team. Next episode is the halfway point in Star Trek: Picard's first - and, great bird of the galaxy willing, only - season and they've only just finished assembling the main cast. Never mind that none of the original characters are developed at all, and that there's been zero sense of direction to the story thus far. It's a random series of events connected only by a sad and elderly Jean-Luc Picard saying how sorry he is over and over again to a succession of people we neither know nor care about. Really, I'm kind of surprised that La Sirena has a commbadge at all... that's a gimmick that was always reserved for Starfleet or the militaries of the Federation's neighbors. You'd expect a civilian freighter like La Sirena to be using something more primitive, like a handheld communciator or a wrist-mounted one like the Cardassians had in DS9. Or covering the Discovery blue pajamas uniform with tiny brass starfleet chevrons?
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