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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Wouldn't that just basically be a repeat of the Prequel Trilogy that doesn't end in mass Jedi-cide? (That's a serious question. I'm not trying to be a smartarse, I just don't know much about Star Wars lore.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    ... I hate that you're probably right. He's too good for this sinful Federation. Not a clip show, just a lot of onscreen graphics in this episode are really blatant screenshots from previous shows.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    It has nothing to do with being current or trending. It's about Robotech fans being desperate to have SOMETHING to convince themselves Robotech hasn't kicked up its heels and died. Robotech's "owners" have once again given up on developing a continuation of the animated Robotech series after a string of embarrassing failures. As in the 90's, the only signs of life from the brand are a handful of fourth-rate licensees putting out a trickle of embarrassingly poor-quality merchandise that fans of any competently-run franchise would've laughed out of town. Even though the quality is insultingly low, Robotech fans will still buy it and even sing its praises to each other even if they don't actually want it or privately think it's trash just because it's SOMETHING Robotech-branded... and therefore proof that Robotech isn't dead yet. They buy things like that to validate their faith in the brand.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's that time again... Jean-Luc Picard and his intrepid band of ridiculous cliches are off to a retired Borg cube in "The Impossible Box". The Good The Bad The Ugly Next episode, Jonathan Frakes cameos as Will Riker... All in all, this episode wasn't something I could call "good" with a straight face... but it was definitely less terrible than the previous few.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    There'll be a lot more of them?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    But how will they sculpt nipples into the Jedi robes?
  7. Seto Kaiba
    He's gotten out of acting, AFAIK... he's been the director of theater arts at the California Institute of Technology since '07. Kind of a shame they didn't get him back, he doesn't seem to have changed much. Here's his staff profile from TACIT: http://tacit.caltech.edu/about/brian
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Macross 7 Docking Festival
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the easy answer is that the Zentradi don't have any control over their factory satellites... and the mass cloning of Zentradi troops is handled by factory satellites dedicated to that purpose. It is, at least the way humans were operating the cloning tech. The Protoculture only separated along gender lines in the movie version of the story (Macross: Do You Remember Love?), where the Protoculture men and women separated after the introduction of cloning tech that took the need for romance and biological reproduction out of their social equation. There was no Supervision Army in that version of the story, the war was between the men's clone army (Zentradi) and women's clone army (Meltrandi). The TV version of the story has the divide that caused the Protoculture civil war be a socio-political one of unspecified nature. The Zentradi were originally all-male, and the female Zentradi were created later along with the Queadluun series when the males proved incapable of operating the Queadluun effectively. The Protoculture decided that they'd build a better pilot instead of downgrading their top of the line battle suit. In both cases, the Zentradi and Meltrandi are based on the ancient Protoculture's DNA... modified to make them better expendable soldiers. As noted previously, totally homogenous clone armies don't really leave any opening for individual excellence because the soldiers are all the same. If there's variety, you have the chance for soldiers to develop individual talents that can be used as the basis for later improvements.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Given the title, I'm actually a little surprised at the lack of 420 jokes about the creative staff.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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).
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    At least they're consistent. Yeah, a Spartas at 1/48 would be approximately 5 inches tall (12.5cm).
  23. 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.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    That would certainly explain the smiles...
  25. 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.
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