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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    That's definitely a bit morbid... but to each their own.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It would be nice if she remembered that a good portion of her audience isn't, and took the time to explain these things within the context of the story when they become important. Not that I mind looking things up, but some folks don't want to go to the trouble and I can't blame them. Having just finished The Clone Wars and recently rewatched the prequels, this seems to be a relatively common problem with the writing in Star Wars. The Jedi seem to hold the idiot ball rather a lot, and frequently forget that they have various powers in order to preserve the drama in the story.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... so it's basically anti-beam asbestos. I guess that explains why Smilo Ren's helmet broke so easily too, if the material itself is inherently prone to brittle fracture.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    That part definitely feels like a callback (or call forward?) to stories like The Clone Wars, which I'm still watching in parallel. The Acolyte seems to be an outgrowth of the worldview of The Clone Wars, where the Jedi were depicted as a stodgy and dogmatic group who you could call Lawful Good but who were often more preoccupied with being Lawful than Good. We never get to hear much about their many rules and traditions, but it's implied there are a LOT of them and that Jedi who rebel against those rules without crossing too many lines tend to be sidelined and passed over for promotion like Qui-Gon Jinn. Dark side users like the Witches and the few Sith apprentices were very much in Chaotic Evil territory with heavy emphasis on Chaotic and a villainous "Rules for thee but nor for me" mindset. (I just got to an episode last night that seems to indicate the Sith were so bad at rules that they basically wiped themselves out and saved the Jedi the trouble, except for one guy who instituted the "one teacher one student" policy.) Seems that way. It's apparently the central mystery to the story... what drove Mae so absolutely mad that she decided to devote her life to revenge-by-murder. Would've been nice if they'd explained that in the series... just having Smilo Ren randomly no-selling lightsabers and blasters like that came out of nowhere for the characters and audience alike. I'm definitely a bit curious why such an obviously useful thing isn't more prevalent.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Are they not supposed to be that way? Nothing about it seemed particularly off to me, I was more concerned by how plain most of them look... but I am surely no connoisseur.
  6. Seto Kaiba
  7. Seto Kaiba
    All right, it is 9pm on Tuesday and I am ready to be underwhelmed by a whole new episode of The Acolyte. They really think they're clever doing this opposites thing... Lost/Found, Revenge/Justice, Day, and now Night. ... aaaaaaaand there it is. He said the thing. All in all, significantly better than the previous episodes... low bar to clear that that is. Most of the improvement is that most of the episode is spent on something other than Mae's quest and the Jedi. The lightsaber fight feels oddly jumbled and doesn't feel like it has a consistent style, but it's still a huge improvement over the actual story. I hope the health plan is good, because Manny Jacinto's going to put his back out carrying the episode and likely the rest of the series.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, that's a draft cover for the fifth book. Notice the year on the cover says "20xx". Granted, there is kind of a sixth book... really a "0th" book... which is the original "Sky Angels" VF-1 tech manual doujinshi that Masahiro Chiba published back in 1984 and which Variable Fighter Master File is a spiritual successor to.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Only a few titles left in this season before Summer 2024's simulcast schedule starts... Tadaima, Okaeri... ugh. Just... ugh. I wanna strangle whoever wrote the ad copy for this, because they advertised it like a slice of life series about a gay couple struggling to find acceptance in modern Japan, which would have been both thought-provoking and interesting, but it's actually a very bland slice of life series wrapped around the author's mpreg fetish and unfortunate dialog choices make it accidentally extra-cringeworthy in English because it ends up borrowing terms that are normally in the realm of incel podcasters. Editors exist to keep ideas like Tadaima, Okaeri from seeing print. Clearly someone was asleep at the switch. Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers remained light and insubstantial to the very end. It's cute, it's occasionally funny, but it doesn't do anything unique or take its story anywhere interesting. It's clearly leaning VERY hard on the "Waifu" angle for Rys. It's a solid 6/10 series that's the very picture of that eminently watchable series that gets viewers because it airs between two popular shows and not on its own merits. As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World also ended. The season finale was a joke-heavy episode that was very clearly done to set up a season two... which makes it fortunate that it's actually getting one. I enjoyed this one for its unconventional take on the painfully overdone isekai genre, though this title is definitely not for everyone and definitely won't satisfy viewers who expect isekai to be more action-focused. I'm looking forward to season two. It made me wish they'd get off the dime and produce another season of Ascendance of a Bookworm.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Watching a few more shows limp across the finish line... but also some new offerings entering the field. Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture has started streaming on Hulu. I gave that one a watch earlier today, and while it is animated exactly as well as you'd expect from true veteran studios Sunrise and CLAMP, it suffers from a punishing lack of originality throughout every aspect of its execution. HIGHSPEED Etoile is limping into its final episode, and the writers are going all-in on letting Rin have that unearned win. She's just magically racing like a top-tier pro after being complete dogsh*t all series, and everyone's acting like this is completely expected. A lightning strike conveniently knocks out all of the cars and shuts down the course so that Rin's able to get a free head start because the pit crews have to change tires manually. Her support AI comes back on line just in time to help her win the race against a driver who's actually racing on skill. It's been a while since this series has properly disgusted me, but as endings go this one is thoroughly disgusting. I can usually find something praiseworthy in almost any series, but this... this is just all bad all the way through to the extent that it's actually a little worrying. They even try to end on a title drop for maximum cringe. Astro Note's final episode leans heavily back into the first episode's retro late 70's/early 80's sci-fi anime aesthetic with an alien king threatening to destroy Earth and the main characters facing off against them in a giant robot that looks like the lovechild of a Gundam and Ideon. As a parody goes, it's not bad, but it comes out of nowhere and it doesn't really add anything to the story except explaining maybe the first two minutes of the first episode. So Mira et. al. kill the alien king and the series jumps right back to business as usual like they didn't just turn the boarding house into a giant robot and kill thousands of people. I had fairly high hopes for this one at the outset, but it turned out to be a pretty mediocre series. Vampire Dormitory rushes to its end with a continued escalation of its plot's Unfortunate Implications. We've gone from abusive relationship territory all the way to the border of rape-by-deception. That's pretty creepy in any context, but in what's ostensibly a romance story that's just off-putting. An amnesiac, gender-swapped Mito is going to marry that dhampir guy who forcibly changed her gender and seemingly wiped her memory and Ruka's just going to let it happen... so we get to see the start of a vampire gay wedding (in a church no less!) until Mito finds (s)he is unable to go through with the vows because their memory is returning. Then Ruka crashes the ceremony, taking this well into daytime soap opera territory and thankfully negating the Unfortunate Implications... at least until he realizes Mito's a chick, which he takes surprisingly well all things considered. She's going to keep up the sweet polly oliver routine in order ot keep living in the boys dorm at school... and then the bloom filter's turned up to 11. All in all, better than I thought it'd be... but it does suffer from multiple bouts of Unfortunate Implications that take the romance story in fridge horror directions.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Earnings reports are required by law to be accurate because those are statements of financial condition provided to shareholders. Layoffs, unfortunately, are often unconnected to a company's profitability. It's become a very popular practice for companies to lay off staff as a way of reducing short-term costs in order to pump up the share price of the company's stock after a stock buyback or just a particularly good year. (Since many executives are paid in stock and stock options, well... you can guess why.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Looking at Hasbro's published earnings reports, I'm not sure that's necessarily accurate. In absolute terms, it does appear to be the case that Disney-era Star Wars merchandise does not sell in the same volumes that pre-Disney merchandise did. Hasbro has credited their Star Wars lines with buoying the company in otherwise lean sales periods at least twice to date. Diamond Select Toys has publicly commented that demand for merch from the sequel trilogy is noticeably lower than that of the prequel and original trilogies but that sales are otherwise satisfyingly strong. Independent and chain retailers who've weighed in on the issue have pointed to a few different causes. The main one being simple oversaturation of the market. The release of a new Star Wars title used to be an occasion. It was an infrequent but major event that would drive a huge spike in demand for Star Wars merch of all kinds before tapering off to a respectable but low level of demand between releases. Several retailers made the point that Disney is not giving Star Wars audiences that break between releases to create that sense of occasion for a new release. IMO, they have a point there... Disney had a new movie every year from 2015 to 2019, and a new TV series every year from 2019 to present. They've also credited overzealous ordering with a lot of merch ending up clearanced. Ordering like those demand spikes they were accustomed to are still happening has led to substantial overstock situations from around the time of The Last Jedi onwards. (There was also one strange account from a Kalamazoo toy store owner who asserted that there was diminished interest in Grogu merch around the time of The Mandalorian S2 when it became harder to overlook that the cute baby was actually 50+ years old.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It looks like Nintendo added another Nintendo Switch Online virtual console to the Expansion Pack today. It's a second Nintendo 64 virtual console app specifically for M-rated games. Right now, it has only two games: Perfect Dark and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Watched a pair of episodes of The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio. It remains my standout for the season. There's some truly fine character drama there, and the depiction of the stress and toxic work conditions involved in the voice actor and idol industries is unflinching. Also enjoying the new season of Demon Slayer. I'm not sure what it is about this series, but it's really grown on me... possibly how it depends far more on the strength of its story and character development than on fanservice.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    To paraphrase Rossini, "Disney's Star Wars has some good moments, but awful quarters of an hour." Disney does seem to have a gift for deciding to tell stories that really didn't need to be told. They're capable of good writing (see Rogue One, Andor) but those good moments are all but lost amid a sea of visually impressive but ill-conceived twaddle. (Not that I think pre-Disney Star Wars was necessarily better in that regard... just different, like Coke and Pepsi.) Thinking about it, I don't think #1 is likely. Mae's Mysterious Master (with Added Alliterative Appeal) is definintely playing audience expectations for a Sith character to the hilt what with the black wardrobe, red lightsaber, off-brand Vader mask, and followers who reference the Sith code. Non-Sith red lightsaber users in The Clone Wars may not be true Sith... but they're trained by and employed by Sith Lords arguably as prospective apprentices in the Sith's perpetual game of Klingon Promotion. #2 is tricky... as of Ep4, the Jedi are assuming that they're dealing with a rogue Jedi sect. That illusion is surely shattered now that they've run into Smilo Ren there, since he's clearly telegraphing his dark side affiliation and probable Sith origin. With half the series left to run, it seems unlikely that Smilo Ren can pull off #2 since it would necessarily invalidate the quest he gave Mae as Sol is leading the expedition and Mae's quest is what's driving the story. If anyone survives to report back, then they'll have to tie the story in knots to justify a coverup of the return of the Jedi's worst enemy AND why nobody who was there raised the connection a century later when another sith was encountered. It doesn't bode well for the story, I guess...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    This. So much. A nontrivial part of why I'm looking forward to Andor S2 as much as I am is that it's refreshingly free of the destiny-obsessed glowstick society for stoics. We can have characters with actual emotions and thoughts and agency!
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I am officially perplexed. I was, in all innocence, looking to watch a Let's Play over lunch and when I loaded up YouTube I got a page of recommended videos of Star Wars fans shrieking their inchoate fury over The Acolyte supposedly breaking canon... because the conehead guy who has like one line of dialog is the same conehead guy from the prequel trilogy? Of all the substandard things in this series and this most recent episode to get upset about, that's what got their goat?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Apparently this new Dark Lord has been informally dubbed "Smilo Ren" on account of his helmet's toothy grin. NGL, I like it. That's a quality pun.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Gimmicky was expected, IMO... the whole premise borders on minigame collection territory. I think they struck a pretty good balance between the mechanics of the different plays and delivered a pretty polished experience. It's more of a casual game for sure, but the presentation is great and it has a certain charm to it. It's why I wish it was longer. With just three levels for each of Peach's different transformations and five boss fights, what they had was presented extremely well but there definitely could've been quite a bit more. The only time I ever really felt annoyed with the controls was that I was never quite sure if it wanted me to match the on-screen prompts for button-mashing sequences or just go ham on that button... and there didn't really seem to be a difference. For what it's worth, I had fun with it. and the only thing that dragged me away from it was the release of the Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remake. I had a lot of fun with that one... it was nice to see they added some quality-of-life improvements and additional refinements without messing with the game's formula. (I kind of expected they'd remove the more game-breaking exploits like the "Danger Mario" build out of the game or at least nerf them heavily... but no, they left it as-is and even left is so that if you reduce Mario's max health to 5 he doesn't do his low health animation if his health is full.) The two new post-endgame bosses were a nice touch too... The remake of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is coming out in a few days too, IINM. Kinda wish they'd remake the original or at least release an emulated version in the N64.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted, thanks for the information. 😀 Hrm... I thought Princess Peach: Showtime! was a pretty solid title for what it was. Enough so that I was kind of surprised by how short it ended up being. If the previous one was better, I might have to look that one up.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I've got a good feeling about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It looks like it's built on the same engine that was used for the remake of Link's Awakening. IMO, that did an excellent job of recreating the feel of classic Zelda from the 16-bit era in a modern context. I'd figured it wouldn't be long before we saw a Legend of Zelda game where you play as Princess Zelda, given the recent success of Princess Peach's first solo outing in Princess Peach: Showtime!.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    What an imaginative title this latest episode has. "Day". I guess this is how they work around the point that everyone was saying was a retcon or continuity-breaking... Hmmm... Well, "Day" is definitely the strongest episode of The Acolyte thus far... but in all fairness, that is an embarrassingly low bar to clear at this point. Practically nothing of any real importance happens in this episode outside of the last four or so minutes. It's mostly just watching Jedi committee meetings and then watching two groups take a long dull hike in a forest until you get to the very end, where... Next episode might actually have some excitement in it. That said, the story is still really threadbare and halfhearted feeling.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Barring one or two points like the Barash Vow, I agree... My point was not that it required deep knowledge of that secondary material to understand the story, but rather than the story was so threadbare that much of the entertainment value in the series seems to be around spotting the various references and in-jokes rather than anything to do with the narrative. Never have done, lol. Bottomless pits everywhere and nary a safety railing in sight.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Hypothesis: On its own, it is neither good nor bad. Disney+'s The Acolyte is very much a "by fans, for fans" Star Wars series. As such, the series is no ambassador to casual viewers because it's heavily invested in references to not only previous movies and TV shows, but comic books and novels too. The sheer density of references and continuity nods and background gimmicks seems calculated to create that kind of analysis-focused conversation about the series. So too does the show's obsession with keeping its dialog as vague as possible. In context, it's a very bad thing. Why? Because The Acolyte's writers seem to have focused on achieving the maximum possible density of in-jokes and references to provoke that discussion and analysis instead of developing a compelling story, engaging characters, or interesting settings and set pieces. They succeeded in provoking analytical discussion of the series, but because the story is so threadbare and the characters so flat and uninteresting a lot of that discussion is focused on the show's flaws, its questionable creative decisions, and the many holes in its style-over-substance storytelling. That intense scrutiny seems to be fueling the negative opinion many viewers have of the series, since they are paying far more attention to the details than they normally would.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Re:Monster ended today... and on a predictable cliffhanger. This episode is almost a clipshow in terms of how often it changes focus to tidy up dangling plot threads. As a series, it's not bad... but everything it did was done better by So I'm a Spider, So What? and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. It focuses way too much on the protagonist having an enormous harem to the extent that the rest of the plot feels a bit neglected. I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability also ended today. Its final trudge to a predictable conclusion felt halfhearted at best, as it never really bothered to provide any stakes for its protagonist to inject a little drama into the conflict. Even the demon that was the final enemy of the series seemed to think that the way it ended was pretty much BS, and I'm inclined to agree.
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