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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I don't think so, no... If you go back to the materials for Macross Plus and Macross 7 - e.g. This is Animation Special: Macross Plus - there is no mention of a fourth company named Shinsei going into the merger. "Development began as a joint project between Shinnakasu Heavy Industries and Stonewell Bellcom in 2011. However, in 2012, just one year after development began, the aircraft development divisions of Shinnakasu Heavy Industries and Stonewell Bellcom merged to form the new Shinsei Industry, making this [the VF-5000] the first aircraft developed by Shinsei Industry." - This is Animation Special: Macross Plus pg68 3rd sentence. I'll check more extensively later today, but I'm reasonably sure that most other works that discuss the merger don't mention a fourth company already named Shinsei in the merger that produced Shinsei Industry. EDIT: Macross Chronicle's Worldguide Sheet 06A "Military Manufacturers" describes Shinsei industry in the same terms as above.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    ... having zero familiarity with the content creator in question, I question the necessity of the jab at their content. Yes... but not to the extent shown in that YouTube video. I'm guessing whatever models they're using - physical or CG - are not built to the same scale. It's like they used a 1/60 scale Valkyrie next to a 1/72 scale Legioss. Macross's VF-1 Valkyrie is 12.68m tall in Battroid mode. MOSPEADA's AFC-01 Legioss is 8.75m tall in Armo-Soldier mode. As such, the Legioss should be approximately 2/3 as tall as the Valkyrie if both are in their respective humanoid robot forms.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Hmm... pass. Tomb Raider lost a lot of its charm and sense of fun when the games made the move from being an Indiana Jones by way of James Bond pulpy sort of action-adventure series to a more grounded survival-focused series. New Lara's too much of a generic action hero to get me interested.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Kawamori has done a lot to change the context of the events of Macross VF-X2 in the last 20 years. It graduated from "an isolated incident" to "the cause of the government reformation" to "a symptom of the government reformation" to "a small part of a larger series of smaller conflicts over the structure of the New UN Government". Macross VF-X2's story makes you think it's something that's isolated to just Earth's "neighborhood", but Macross Delta has revealed that the conflict was fought as far afield as the Brisingr globular cluster... which is about as far from Earth as it gets. We've seen some radically different approaches to airframe retention over the years in Macross, so it may vary depending on the perceived need of the local military at the time. For instance, Earth in Macross Plus was shown using decommissioned VF-11A units as remotely operated target aircraft in the Ghost X-9's testing c.2040 while Macross Frontier was sold off a bunch of its old VF-11s to civilians when the military deemed them no longer service-worthy. Yeah, you'd think an alleged mega-conglomerate like Xaos would have the funds to afford a more reasonable training aircraft for new pilots like a VF-11D, a VF-171T, or even a VF-31D. Then again, the fact that Xaos's PMC division runs out of money within days of being chased out of the Brisingr cluster by the Aerial Knights says that they were either not getting paid properly or were living paycheck to paycheck as a corporation which is even worse. Just the designs from the original series, as far as we've heard. I think it's equally as much a way to justify in lore why VF vs VF combat is almost always a dogfight. Normally, fighters would stand off against each other with long and medium range missiles before ever attempting to dogfight. Macross's explanation for skipping right to the good bits is that missiles need powerful ECCM to counter the active stealth Valkyries have, so long and medium range missiles that rely on radar guidance are less effective in combat than short range missiles that rely on emissions that can't be masked like infrared radiation from engine exhaust and optical seekers.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    They became Shinsei. Shinsei Industry was formed in 2012 when VF-1 and VF-4 codevelopers Stonewell and Bellcom merged with each other and with FAST Pack and thermonuclear engine manufacturer Shinnakasu Heavy Industry. General Galaxy was also formed by a merger of existing defense companies several years later in 2017. The overtechnology research and development firm OTEC merged with other surviving defense industry companies. Obvious things like industrial espionage aside, the one illegal activity I'm fairly certain Shinsei Industry will have engaged in is covertly selling weapons to the anti-government forces during the Second Unification War. (The obvious copout there being that said "anti-government" forces were actually the paramilitary volunteer forces of the pro-autonomy faction in the Second Unification War, the "good guys" backed by Max et. al. who were resisting the fascist abuse of governmental authority by the pro-centralization faction. It's illegal, but nobody's going to prosecute the company because the pro-autonomy forces won.) There's a limit to it, though... No longer being the latest and greatest model doesn't mean a fighter immediately becomes useless. Older models that have either recently been phased out or are in the process of being phased out can still be used in a lot of different capacities because they're not immediately obsolete. We see this a few titles like Macross 7 Trash, where the Macross 7 fleet NUNS has a number of old VF-4's that it uses for things like training flights and evaluating experimental technologies. They can still be updated and modernized up to a point, with engine swaps and avionics upgrades and the like. Not every government feels compelled to upgrade to the latest and greatest right away either. Like in Macross Dynamite 7, the Zola Patrol were a police force for a government that generally believed in pacifism and didn't have a ton of money to throw around, so the export model VF-5000G suited their needs just fine. With the exception of the VF-1, the point where retirement and replacement seems to be necessary is when a design is two generations old. For instance, the Zola Patrol in Macross Dynamite 7 was upgrading from their 2nd Gen VF-5000s to 4th Gen VF-19 monkey models. Or the Macross Frontier fleet retiring and selling off its 3rd Gen VF-11s as it prepared to begin its transition from its 4th Gen VF-171s to its locally-developed 5th Gen VF-25 in Macross the Ride. As far as we know, those are still unofficial. The closest we've seen to a direct reference to them is a YF-29 in the SW-XAII's colors in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. Probably not for much longer, thanks to the international distribution agreement supposedly requiring them to "retire" the designs shared with the original series in any works that are meant for international distribution. That said, it was already getting quite silly even before Macross Delta. After all, the VF-1 is a 1st Generation VF and it was hilariously outdated by the time the VF-11 was introduced. Look no further than Gamlin's comical reaction to piloting Milia's old VF-1J Super Valkyrie in Macross 7 ep18. He trained on the VF-11C Super Thunderbolt before he moved to the special forces, and he's absolutely flabbergasted at how low the VF-1's performance is. It's enough of a moment that his reaction is presented in big bold text in the Macross Chronicle episode sheet:「ちぃ、これで全開なのか!?」"Tch.... is this full throttle!?". And of course, he gets shot down because the VF-1's performance is so much lower than even the baseline of what he's used to. It makes sense that it's become popular as a civilian model due to having had decades to polish its performance and handling after being retired from military service, and that it's a popular choice to teach people the rudiments of how to pilot a Valkyrie because of that low cost and low performance. Like how Mihoshi Academy in Macross Frontier uses a civilian model VF-1 for its pilot trainees. That said, as a training aircraft for military use like in Macross Delta it's pretty absurd because its performance is SO LOW compared to what the pilot is training to fly that it's a joke to even consider using it. At that point, it's four (and a half) generations out of date and its performance is a tiny fraction of even the base model VF-31's. Using one to train a pilot for a VF-31 would be like using a go-kart to train someone to race in the Indianapolis 500. All Valkyries have stealth systems.... thanks to a retcon in Macross Zero. Macross Plus was the first title to explicitly mention and depict the existence of active stealth technology, but Macross Zero retroactively established that all VFs have had an active stealth system. Macross Frontier would later clarify that the new active stealth system in the Project Super Nova prototypes was the debut of the 3rd Generation of active stealth systems. The picture painted by subsequent material incl. Master File has been that there's sort of a pendulum effect as detection systems and active stealth systems advance in opposition to each other. Because active stealth in Macross is a form of destructive interference-based ECM that operates by analyzing incoming radar beams and then producing a matching offset antiphase wave that reduces or zeroes the amplitude of the radar waves reflected from the aircraft's skin, the larger the aircraft is and the less passively stealthy its design is the harder the active stealth system has to work to mask its radar returns. So it's kind of an arms race. As radar systems get better ECCM and adapt to existing active stealth, the active stealth has to improve and/or VFs have to be made more passively stealthy to reduce the burden on the active stealth system. The VF-14 and VF-17 are on the large side, and came in during the 2nd Generation of active stealth systems, so it was advantageous for them to adopt a more passively stealthy profile. Especially the attacker-focused models like the VA-14 and VF-17, which have to contend with more powerful ship-based and ground-based radar systems in addition to the radars of enemy aircraft. As active stealth gains an edge, we see more externally-carried weaponry and such, and when radars start to catch up again we see a move towards internaly-carried weapons and passively stealthy designs. Yeah, it's big. 126.7 meters long and 57.8 meters wide... making it 20% longer, but slightly narrower, than a FIFA regulation football pitch (105m x 68m). Or to put it in another perspective, end to end it's about two Boeing 747-700s in length. Stood on end, it'd be about 35 storeys tall. It's almost exactly the same length as the US Navy's old Forrest Sherman-class destroyer, but about four times as wide.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I'm sure they have at least some... after all, Shinsei Industry is one of the oldest, most successful, and most influential corporations in Humanity's defense industry. That's not a position you earn, or keep, without having at least a few skeletons in your closet. We do know their predecessors Stonewell and Bellcom employed former Anti-Unification Alliance engineers from the SV-51 program after the Unification Wars. That's how Alexei Kurakin, General Galaxy's cofounder, survived the war. He was on Luna doing space testing on the VF-4 when everything went to pot. Maybe... though the designs of that era are kind of a Lost Generation in terms of depiction in Macross works. We only ever got to see the 3rd Generation on the way in in Macross M3 and on the way out in Macross 7. That said, I'm inclined to doubt that the VF-14 would've received the same kind of excessive service life extension the VF-1 got. The VF-1's unending utility is practically a running joke, and the main reason it's stuck around as long as it has after being aged out of main military service is because civilian market VF/VT-1s are so ubiquitous that the military's Special Forces supposed use VF-1X derivatives because they're as close to inconspicuous as a 12+ meter tall transforming robot can be. Macross Chronicle's descriptions of the Fz-109 series suggest that the Elgersoln's performance improvements owe a lot ot other areas beyond simply raw power... it's said that they made refinements to basically every system, though the transformation is specially noted to be much smoother than the original aircraft's due to their improvements. The overall performance is said to greatly exceed the original VF-14's, which yeah... I guess makes the Macross 5 and Macross 7 fleet's VF-11s supremely unlucky to run into enemy forces who are fielding a Gen 3.5-equivalent as standard.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... I'm not sure it's "everyone has a lightsaber" so much as it is the franchise's obnoxious tendency to put the vanishingly tiny minority of Force users at the center of every major event in galactic history. The Jedi represent just one ten-trillionth - 0.00000000001% - of the galactic population before Order 66. After it, they're on the order of one ten-quadrillionth of the population... but any even slightly important event seems to involve at least one. I only noticed that detail recently, but damn if it doesn't bother me. I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't we already have something like that in The Last Jedi? Not the memes, I mean, but those guard in Snoke's room had a bunch of weird lightsaber-like weapons including a whip. After getting almost two seasons into The Clone Wars, I'll settle for lightsabers being treated like actual deadly weapons and not just paddles for games of laser ping-pong.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    One aspect of the period spanning the events of Macross Frontier and Macross Delta that is often overlooked in the face of the conflict itself is the rise of corporate power and the huge amount of influence those large corporations wield. Macross Galaxy is the best/worst example, being a subsidary corporation of General Galaxy that was set up as a literal corporate state. With that kind of power behind them, it's not surprising that the wealthy and influential choose to flout the law whenever it becomes inconvenient like Ivan Tsari did. How Mei Leeron, the relatively humble head of a mercenary NGO on a remote planet came by something like a VF-27... we'll never know. Probably not, yeah. Well, Fasces had certain incentives to use the Varauta models where possible. They had control of the factory satellite that was producing them, so they didn't have to worry about issues with illegal procurement or little things like having to pay for them. That they were also roughly comparable in performance to a VF-17 or VF-171 didn't hurt their feelings either I suspect. There probably wouldn't have been much of a push to adapt the Varauta forces improvements to the VF-14 and VA-14 given the timing involved. Their performance was around the same as the Gen 3.5 VF-16 and VF-17 and inferior to the VF-19 and VF-22. And just two years after the conflict ended the 4th Generation VF-171 debuted and began to replace the VF-11s and VF-14s in service at the time.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It seems a reasonably safe bet that the VF-27 is not a lost/phantom design after 2059 given that several of them do show up in stories set years after the events of the Macross Frontier series/movies. That said, both of the VF-27s we see after the events of Macross Frontier appear in side stories and are shown to be in the possession of (extremely well-connected) civilians. If you don't count the generic VF-27 in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and the unlockable Havamal colors for same, the only time we've seen it in a pure NUNS livery is in the VF-25's Master File. (On page 27, by happy coincidence.) The two we see in civilian hands are: Mei Leeron's personal VF-27γ in Macross 30. The Uroboros Hunter's Guild boss seldom takes to the field, but when she does she's shown to have a VF-27γ Lucifer with a unique white and purple color scheme and Hunter's Guild markings. Ivan Tsari in Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E. The head of Zelgaar Heavy Industry is shown to have a personal VF-27γ Lucifer with "jet black" coloring that he uses during the events of the story in 2062. He, unlike Mei Leeron, is also confirmed to be a full-body cyborg.
  11. Seto Kaiba

    Macross 30

    Seto Kaiba replied to Tochiro's topic in Games

    Good to know. I've got multiple copies, but my old PS3 is showing its years... and replacing it with emulation seems like a good way to replay the game into the future.👍
  12. Seto Kaiba
    That news is actually about ten years old now. Next Generation Air Dominance requirements came out in '14, and multiple governments have been publicly working on unmanned "loyal wingman" systems since at least '15. The US has been flying prototypes since at least March '19 (with the Kratos QX-58 Valkyrie). Mind you, the idea of unmanned escorts in fiction is a pretty old one too. It goes back to at least the 1960s as far as I'm aware... and seems to have been the logical consequence of late 1910s and 1920s advances in remote control of vehicles via radio making their way into the commercial sector in the 1950s and a growing interest in the idea of AI and robotics kindled by 1940s developments in computing and popular fiction from writers like Isaac Asimov. By the late 1960's and early 1970's the idea had enough traction to get used in Star Trek at least twice, with the most blatant example being Kirk's Enterprise using two unmanned Antares-class "robot ships" as wingmen against the Klingons. That said, Macross didn't actually start doing "loyal wingman" style drones until 2008's Macross Frontier debuted the RVF-171 and RVF-25 acting as motherships for groups of QF-4000 Ghosts. The Squire used by the VF-2SS Valkyrie II in Macross II: Lovers Again is not a true unmanned fighter like the Ghosts used in other Macross titles. Rather than being an AI wingman capable of independent operation, Squires are "dumb" drones that are controlled remotely by the onboard computers of the Valkyrie II they're assigned to. All of the thinking behind their operation is done by the Valkyrie II's computers, the Squire is just a remote weapons terminal. That's why Macross II's official materials refer to Squire using a borrowed term from Gundam: they're Bits, not Ghosts... just controlled by computer over radio instead of via psychic waves from an ESPer. The Macross II timeline version of the VF-4 had funnels ala Gundam too, though with the same computer-based control system. (The distinction between funnels and bits in Macross appears to be exactly the same as in Gundam too.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Keanu would 100% be cast as a Jedi. Keanu has a definite preference for playing the showy invincible hero (or at worst, antihero) who happens to be a stoic loner, which is basically the short definition of "Jedi". Not to mention his typically wooden delivery makes him an ideal candidate to play a flat character with a little-to-no emotional range due to a lifetime of detachment and repression like a Jedi the same way it makes him a good choice to play flat character stoic action movie heroes too cool or too grizzled to react to anything. He doesn't have the range to play an excessively melodramatic villain like a Sith Lord. For that, you need someone who really play to the back row with the dental fortitude to leave no piece of scenery unchewed. Hugo Weaving would make a great Sith Lord. Sam Neill would probably make a pretty good Sith Lord too, IMO. Besides, we already had "Keanu Reeves from Wish.com" in the sequel trilogy, and it wasn't that well received. 🤣
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Imagine my amusement that this was apparently a topic George Lucas felt merited his attention and an official response. "Word of God" from George is that you're right, they get fool around just in a commitment-free manner. 🤣 No wonder so many Force users are messed up.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Still waiting for my copy to roll in, but from what I can see in those photos there's nothing new there except the VF-31AX's Armored Pack. It's all information you can find on the Compendium, the Mecha Manual, Sketchley's gateway, etc. I did a breakdown of the 31AX over in the Super Mecha thread back when the Master File came out... and of the Sv-303, since Master File had specs for it and this doesn't seem to.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I must not have gotten to that part yet. So far, all I've really seen from the Jedi in The Clone Wars is casual danger dialogue, snark, and a lot of hypocrisy from Anakin. But yeah, the Jedi seem to have only two visible moods most of the time: "Stoic" and "Dull surprise". I foresee an awful lot of Jedi gazing into the middle distance like they're trying to remember if they left the kettle on in their apartment in The Acolyte. So the Force is passed on through one night stands? I wonder how many languages in the galaxy have "Jedi" as the word for "deadbeat dad".
  17. Seto Kaiba
    They have one... his name is Qimir, and he's played by Manny Jacinto. He's the one who, in the trailer, talks about the Jedi justifying their domination of the galaxy as "peace". Yeah, I've never been quite so glad that my local theater has a liquor license as I was for the day of the Phantom Menace theatrical re-release. 🤣 It's a much better (or less painful) movie after a few drinks. Just don't drink every time Jar-Jar does something stupid, it's not worth the liver damage. To be honest, I'm not expecting more depth than that. One thing I've noticed increasingly often in my exploration of Star Wars beyond the movie trilogies is that Force users tend to be flat characters. The Jedi Order's trademark emotional detachment tends to produce only three types of character: the Old Master, the Dutiful Apprentice, and the Paragon who Rebels. The Old Master and Dutiful Apprentice character archetypes make up the overwhelming majority of Jedi characters and tend to have little personality and less emotional range because they dutifully maintain their emotional detachment at all times. Their dogmatic adherance to the Jedi Order's rules and philosophy tends to make them into generic "noble and selfless hero" types. The Paragon who Rebels is usually the Dutiful Apprentice (rarely the Old Master) but with feelings and opinions about things. Usually it just means they're frustrated or angry about something like corruption (Dooku), complacency (Qui-Gon), not pandering to their ego (Anakin), or attempted homicide (Ben). The Sith have a very similar dynamic, but with only two types of character: Chessmaster and Angry Boi. Both types are card-carrying villains and professional sadists who feel compelled to demonstrate their sadism at every opportunity as though a moment not spent making some suffer and die is a moment wasted. Chessmasters spend all of their time on or around elaborate thrones boasting about how everything is going according to their plans and what they have foreseen and threatening the Angry Bois with vague or non-specfic punishment should they fail in their orders. The Angry Bois do all the actual villainous work, seething constantly with unfocused rage that's just waiting for a target. They have no emotional range and practically no personality because mustache-twirling villainy is pretty much all they're actually good for in the story. (Which makes it odd that so many are cleanshaven.) The Acolyte's cast has offered us all three standard Jedi archetypes and the one Sith archetype so far... we have Old Masters Sol, Indara, and Kelnacca, Dutiful Apprentice Jecki, and Rebellious Paragon-turned-Angry Boi Mae. None of that augurs well for them having more than the bare minimum amount of character development. Honestly, Rebel Moon was one typo away from being a zombie movie... Instead of "grains", "brains"... because they won't STFU about grain. You'd swear the movie was produced by the US Grains Council.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Lies and slander. The sequel trilogy was nothing if not an essay on how nobody wants Rey... not her parents, not the OT cast, not the Jedi Order, not her gramps... not even the audience. 😛 OK... kinda wondering how many were active concurrently, since a population of just 10,000 Jedi doesn't seem likely to be able to keep up a bunch of different temples across the galaxy unless they're very small ones. The only one that ever seems to be shown or mentioned in the prequel era is the one on Coruscant. It's seen in The Acolyte's trailers too, so presumably that's the one that's going to feature in the story. If you ask George Lucas, they're ALL kids movies. 🤔 (I have my doubts about Rogue One, but I can see the point for the others. Then again, I'm barely into Clone Wars season two and there is some DARK sh*t there despite it being a kids show. Was prequel-era Star Wars just on a mission to create some generational trauma or something?) Shakeups in the creative team are a pathway to many plot developments some consider to be... unnatural. He was doing a great job with the "kill your past" thing until Rise of Skywalker forcibly course-corrected him. Which is how you know he was an only child. 🤣 Is it the Emperor's Hand-book? It's great how little effort went into these. Like, really. Practically every Jedi character fits these descriptions. Every Jedi Master is wise and respected and strong in the force. You don't get to be a Jedi Master if you're not! They're all skilled combatants who don't seek combat but are ready for it if it finds them because that's literally what they're all trained for. The padawans are always studious and skilled greenhorns who look up to their masters because they're mostly child abductees who've been indoctrinated into the Jedi's belief system. Seriously, enough of these stock characters. I wanna see the Jedi Master who's a foolish and impulsive jerk that nobody respects and... oh bloody hell except for the "Master" part I'm describing Anakin aren't I? With Star Trek: Discovery ending and Star Wars: the Acolyte starting soon after, I'm once again left to wonder what it is about Hollywood that feels compelled to write every black woman in a sci-fi show's main cast as mentally unbalanced and emotionally unstable because of a tragic past and a self-destructive desire for revenge? Star Trek did it on three separate occasions in quick succession (Discovery's Michael Burnham, Picard's Raffaela Musiker, and Lower Decks's Beckett Mariner) and now Star Wars is doing it. I just hope it doesn't come of as lowkey racist like those first two did.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    So, I was poking at a few books here and there, and noticed a detail I'd never really paid any attention to before. Kazutaka Miyatake's concept and design for the QF-3000E Ghost in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV anime was based on a SF novella series that he wrote while he was in graduate school. He only ever published two of the planned three volumes in the science fiction fanzine Space Dust in 1978 and 1980, and they featured an unmanned (USAF?) ground attack aircraft. The first volume, SUPERBIRD, featured a manned but mostly AI-controlled plane while the second, COPPELIA, a truly unmanned attacker that was fully AI-controlled. The description suggests it was intended to be deployed as a parasite aircraft on a hypersonic missile, and then detach to strafe ground targets. There's a bit of commentary about how the fully unmanned attacker in COPPELIA was meant to play on the fear of a weapon that blindly follows orders without reason or question. The designs that were drawn for those novellas became the starting point for the QF-3000E when Kawamori asked Miyatake to design a drone. (He also suggests Kawamori was unhappy with not being able to use the Ghost very much in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and that that was a factor in the decision to use the unmanned Ghost X-9 as the "villain" in Macross Plus.) I kinda wanna see if I can track down those issues of Space Dust for those novellas. IMO it's also rather interesting that the fate of unmanned fighters in Macross ended up mirroring the concerns the unmanned fighter in COPPELIA was meant to invoke. Sharon Apple's hijacking of the Ghost X-9 left the New UN Forces and New UN Gov't wondering what might happen if a fully-autonomous weapon like the AIF-X-9 Ghost were to take its literal orders to illogical extremes or to start acting under its own (faulty) judgement for some reason.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Spending some time getting caught up after I got distracted by the remaster of Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door... At around 3/4 of the way through the Spring '24 season, many of the titles I had high hopes for have not lived up to their promise. An Archdemon's Dilemma is still quite a lot of fun even if it kind of has bogged down in Family Dynamics. The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio continues to be excellent week after week, for which I am heartily grateful. It's a strong contender for my "best of season". Vampire Dormitory's started to drag a bit as its main plot kicks into gear... I'm actually kind of disappointed in how quickly it seems to be abandoning its initial premise. Astro Note is unexpectedly stuck in a bit of "two lines, both waiting" involving Mira's plot and a love triangle that's more a series of one-sided infatuations with someone who's too oblivious to notice ala To Love-Ru. As a Reincarnated Aristocrat... is still doing OK, the story's turned towards the serious but it's not really clear if it'll be able to make any meaningful progress before the end of the season. Tadaima, Okaeri is practically impossible to take seriously thanks to some unfortunate narrative decisions and terminology choices, and A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics jumped the shark HARD in the last few weeks...
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I'm starting to question if the people writing HIGHSPEED Etoile have a humiliation fetish. How many episodes of a one cour series can you reasonably devote to a protagonist failing miserably at literally everything in a public setting? Something like 1/3 of the latest episode is devoted to Rin trying and failing to drive a conventional gas-engine car with a manual transmission and her friends being impressed that she gets less sh*tty at it with practice.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    They did? We've only seen the one AFAIK. Mind you, "temple" can be used in a non-religious context and the Jedi don't seem to engage in anything resembling religious practices as far as we've seen in the movies and the TV shows. Buddhism is often argued to be more a school of philosophical thought than a religion, but their congregation places are often referred to as "temples" in English. Eh... IMO, it was inevitable Star Wars would have to introduce some kind of foolproof and objective test to identify latent Force users. It made the most sense to introduce it in the prequel trilogy, when the Jedi Order was at the peak of its power. Even with ten thousand Jedi, there just aren't enough of them to go touring Republic space (never mind the whole galaxy) looking for Force sensitive kids manually. It's a pragmatic necessity given the sheer scale of the setting. Plus it was kind of necessary for The Phantom Menace's story to work at all. Qui-Gon Jinn needed hard evidence that Anakin was The Chosen One™️, and a big showy demonstration of Force power would have required teaching him before he was allowed to join the Order and broken the flow of the story up to that point. (Plus it would also raise the awkward question of what the Jedi do with the kids who they train enough to test and then DON'T let join the Order... unfortunate implications abound.) That's one of the reasons his redemption doesn't really track with his character development. All he had to do was let Palpatine and Rey fight and kill the exhausted victor, and he would claim all the spoils... how much of his redemption was him and how much was him being influenced through the Force by Leia? He definitely didn't seem put off by Palpatine's plan until very late in the game and he had zero reason to care about Rey beyond his attempts to turn her to the dark side. What even are the qualifications for being a Sith? Does his apprenticeship under Snoke count? What even was Snoke? Is Kylo Ren some kinda Sith intern? Maybe The Acolyte'll clear the Sith career path up a bit. As much as I'd like to go for the low-hanging fruit and say that a Ren is the partner of a Stimpy... well... a wren is a bird, but I find Adam Driver looks far more like a whippet than a bird. (Considering his heel-face turn at the last second, does that make Ben Solo "Whippet Good"?)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Is there a source for that? Legitimately curious here. Oh, absolutely... but lore is an additive process and people've been piling on for almost half a century. The Acolyte will shovel some more grist onto that mill, sure as sure. 's probably worth considering that both of the people who refer to it as a "religion" did so while mocking it... it may not be literal. (One of the two guys who calls it "religion" also calls Vader a sorcerer in the same statement, after all.) I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with the idea that it lessens the impact of the Force's role in the story. That said, I do think it's a logical inclusion in the story. Star Wars is science fantasy. It exists at the intersection of the science fiction and fantasy genres. Even in a pure fantasy setting, the existence of magic might get a handwave but there will still almost inevitably be people researching it (wizards) both to figure out how it works (what rules it follows) and how to apply it in new and different ways. A scientifically and technologically advanced civilization like the one in Star Wars that discovers the existence of practical "magic" like the Force would absolutely study it extensively rather than handwaving it. Not just out of scientific curiosity, but with an eye towards practical application. The powers that Jedi have through the Force could have some pretty broad applications if you think about it even a little. (Even if you're thinking strictly non-military, the Jedi's telekinesis via tapping into a limitless energy field continuously produced by all life opens the door to all kinds of nonsense like reactionless flight or even practical overunity machines. Literal free energy. The ability to convert thought into mechanical force is a scary prospect.) Ben... also kinda died before we could see if he would have to struggle against his addiction to the Dark Side. He doesn't seem to so much turn back to the light as just turn against someone more evil than himself, which is probably reflective of the original intent being for him not to be redeemed. (Both he and Vader seem to be forgiven awfully easily for all the murder too... one deathbed confessional and they're both off the hook for genocide?)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... I dunno. I feel like there's been a fair amount of evidence pointing to Force sensitivity not being entirely mystical from the start. After all, Star Wars has always maintained that Force sensitivity is something you're born with. It's innate mystical ability. It's not something you can pick up through the power of faith (like theurgic magic/miracles), through diligent study of esoteric forces (wizardy), or by making a pact with a mystical entity (invocative magic). It's not something a person can become... they either are one all along, or never will be one. Beyond that, one of the earliest details we learn about the Force in A New Hope is that talent/power in the Force can run in families... a detail later explicitly confirmed in Return of the Jedi. If Force sensitivity can be passed on to one's offspring, it has to be a biologically-linked trait. We know it can't have been nurture, because Anakin Skywalker didn't raise either of his children and neither had substantial contact with any other Force practitioner growing up. What really seems to have clinched the idea that ability in the Force was a biological trait was the 1991-1993 Thrawn trilogy - the only EU novel series I've ever read! - in which the Empire manages to successfully clone not one but two Jedi with their powers intact. If you can grown a new person from a Force user's cell sample and that new person is also Force sensitive (never mind being exactly as powerful) then that means Force ability has to be a biologically-linked trait. That's eight years before Phantom Menace. That seems to have been tried both pre- and post-Disney, with inconclusive results? A little Google-fu pointed to a story where Palpatine tried to make General Grievous force sensitive with a blood transfusion from a Jedi master... the same schtick that our boy Moff Gideon tried in The Mandalorian season three. It supposedly didn't work for Grievous, but we have no idea if it worked for Gideon's clones. IMO, it actually makes a modicum of sense for there to be a measurable/quantifiable expression of Force potential. Most science fantasy or science fiction titles where quasi-magical powers are a part of the setting at least handwave it as something that's been subjected to intense scientific scrutiny, and those where it's prominent often have some kind of in-universe system for measuring and quantifying a person's paranormal ability. It'd actually be weird as hell if there wasn't something like that used by the Jedi Order, considering they were looking for vanishingly rare latent Force users in an unfathomably huge population. ... and so on and so forth. When you consider the level of technology available in the Star Wars galaxy and that the Jedi have supposedly had 25,000 years to study the origin of their powers, it'd be weird as hell if they didn't have some system for predicting or measuring a person's potential as a Force user after all that time or some idea of how all their fancy abilities actually worked. Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. 😉 So, I did a little more digging. The bit about "grey" Jedi not being a thing comes from the franchise's executive setting coordinator Pablo Hidalgo. Disney's official position on the Grey Jedi seems to be that they can't exist because the Dark Side's nature is inherently evil and corruptive. You can't tap into it without ending up being influenced by it, so it's not something that can be used "in moderation". It's more a slippery slope/"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" sort of thing. Evil is not a toy, after all, and "evil in moderation" is still evil.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Why not both? My read of the whole "midichlorians" thing from back when it was introduced in The Phantom Menace was that it's basically another kind of mitochondria that taps into the Force to produce telekinesis and telepathy instead of tapping into oxygen to produce chemical energy. Based on that, I kind of look at the Force as a less sh*tty version of the Warp from Warhammer 40,000. It'd be there regardless of whether or not there were sentient beings who were capable of tapping into its power consciously or unconsciously, but because there is so much life in the galaxy contributing to it consciously or unconsciously even at very low levels it has taken on aspects of life and developed its own will. If mitochondria are present in all cellular life in at least minute quantities the way mitochondria are present in all eukaryotic life, that would allow for both to be true. I looked into this because it sounded like some writer's attempt to cheat the system that the movies had put into place... but the official position from TPTB is that they don't exist in the Disney canon.
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