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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... if it were anyone other than you, I'd assume they were missing the point with comedic intent. The maturity on display here is simply breathtaking. There's some quality irony there... the Windermereans are potentially one of the most complex and interesting antagonists Macross has had. Their main problem is that the writers of the Macross Delta series and movie left developing their backstory up to the Macross Delta Gaiden: the White Knight of the Black Wing manga. Instead of just being "hostile aliens of unknown origin", they're a former New UN Government member world who were motivated to war by economic, political, and religious reasons. Wasn't that how they set up the original Super Robot Wars? The dimensional bomb from the start of Orguss merged all their realities? We've done that once already... Mikimoto-sensei just don't seem to have the time to do a proper job with Macross the First in the face of everything else he's working on.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That'd be another way to look at it... though admittedly a pretty sad take on the series as a whole. You'd think Jean-Luc Picard had a better imagination. I think I see the "out" here for Patrick Stewart. Picard's going to "die" but they're going to transfer/copy his mind into that "golem" that Soong built, so Jean-Luc Picard the human will die and Patrick Stewart will bow out of the series and they'll continue forward with a new actor as Android!Picard.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Those are fun... they run counter to a lot of official specs for those ships, but they're still a good source of information for something like an RPG campaign.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, I'm not attached enough to any of these characters to do that... I doubt I could name more than two or three of them, and I literally just finished rewatching these movies less than twelve hours ago. Must be because the Force was awake this time... as much as the Force seems to be hurrying destiny along, it must have the caffeine sh*ts from one too many cups of coffee after its awakening two episodes ago.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    So, we finished rewatching all of the Star Wars movies today... finishing with The Rise of Skywalker this morning. Quite honestly, this hardly feels like a movie at all. The viewing experience is perfectly described by a line from Rick and Morty: "more like a clip show made of clips you never saw". It was, to be frank, one of the most bewildering viewing experiences I've had in a long time. The story changes direction so many times that it feels like someone was trying to cram an entire trilogy's worth of plot twists into a single film. Characters skip all that "exposition" business and jump right from plot thread to plot thread at lightning speed without explaining anything to the audience. So many plot twists are driven by simple convenience that it feels like it all comes together too easily. Rey goes off to finish a quest that consumed years of Luke's life and finishes it literally in the space of a single afternoon with like half a day left over. Everything anyone needs is in literally the first place they look, and every obstacle ends up coincidentally putting them right next to the thing they need next. The dominoes line up so neatly that it doesn't feel like there's any work involved for the characters. It's like they had cheats enabled or something.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be honest... if it hasn't sunk in by now, it's not likely to do so at any point in the foreseeable future. But, because Robotech's development costs have long ago been repaid and they can continue to eke out some tiny quantity of money from licensing they're not likely to give up until demand declines to the point that there's no point in even making the token effort.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Read a WEIRD fan theory online today about this latest identical descendant of Arik Soong... some fans are theorizing that Alton Soong is actually a "skinjob" version of Lore who may have been reactivated by Maddox at the Daystrom Institute. IMO, it's not a particularly credible fan theory except for the fact that Soong is INCREDIBLY blase about the ancient androids commiting mass murder to protect his double handful of "children" and that he's named all of his androids after less-than-factual forms of written records. Personally, I suspect he's just another mentally ill and incredibly naive Soong who's inherited the family thesaurus.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I don't think Titan Comics' Robotech Remix has anywhere near the level of average readership it'd take to survive a hiatus and relaunch. It's barely hanging on as it is with Diamond's overshipments and Robotech fans buying multiples for the variant covers to pad its sales numbers. If they're in actual trouble with HG or a third party over the actual content in the comic, it'll almost certainly mean the permanent end of the series and possibly HG revoking Titan's license.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    As seen in Star Trek: Voyager, the Q Continuum are surprisingly reluctant to use their powers to (permanently) kill... but see little-to-nothing wrong with the idea of depowering repeat offenders for the purpose of teaching them a (non-fatal) lesson as they did and often threatened to do to Q or simply imprisoning them indefinitely to ensure they'd no longer pose a threat to themselves or others like they did to the suicidal Quinn. "God" - AKA "The One" - lost most of his powers and was imprisoned for eternity in the great barrier at the galactic core until he either repented for his crimes or the universe ended, whichever came first. Being shot in the face (though at that point he was literally a disembodied head) by a Bird of Prey didn't kill him, it just pissed him off. The Q set him up with a near-ideal prison where he was deprived of both the means to cause mischief and anyone to actually hurt via that mischief.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well, you're technically not wrong... the Robotech live action movie isn't cancelled, and it technically can't be cancelled because neither of the studios that've held the license approved the proposal for a live action movie. You can't cancel a project that was never even officially planned, let alone started. It's rather odd that Titan Comics committed to a new Robotech comic after their short-lived Robotech reimagining ended and then suddenly went silent about it just four issues in. The plans for a trade paperback and re-releases of old Comico and Eternity/Malibu Robotech comics suggest that they haven't lost the Robotech license to a sudden revocation the way the last two pre-reboot licensees (Academy and Antarctic) did, but the total silence about the status of the publication after unexplained multi-month delays is an odd move for a normally professional publisher. I'd expect an announcement of a delay even if someone connected to the publication had died abruptly. The only thing I can think of that'd cause TItan to just clam up like this about the status of the series as a whole and the next issue is if they were facing the prospect of legal action and their attorney advised them not to discuss it publicly. That, of course, would raise further questions like whether this apparent delay/cancellation is because Harmony Gold found some content in issue 5 and/or plans for future issues that would've caused a lawsuit and they're frantically reworking the comic or they've already received a cease and desist or a summons over something in a previous issue (e.g. the copyright infringement1 in the previous Robotech comic) and put future development on hold while the lawyers sort things out. 1. For instance, having used the design of the factory satellite from Macross VF-X2 as Dolza's mothership in the Robotech comic series. Neither HG nor Tatsunoko have any rights to Macross VF-X2, so the use of the design constitutes copyright infringement.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Oh god, I've fallen victim to a prequel meme!
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy has several other interesting technological attractions too. Such as: The Gefion, a light aircraft carrier based on the Macross Frontier version of the Northampton-class stealth frigate that serves as the mobile headquarters for the SMS branch that's operating on Uroboros. VF-0s and SV-51s with thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. The novelization and some of the writeups indicate these are replica aircraft that were built using later tech from the VF-1 and VF-5000. The Double Strike Pack. We always knew it was theoretically possible, but it's actually a playable option once you unlock it. A VF-1 Strike Valkyrie with two Mauler RO-X2A beam cannons instead of one, and with a SP attack that is straight out of Dragon Ball Z. A version of the Zentradi armored spacesuit from Super Dimension Fortress Macross that is a flight-capable powered suit. The first main character VF-11 since Macross Plus. The first non-Macross Frontier YF-25 (from the Sephira SMS). The first official-setting depiction of an actual VF-19E (Aisha's). The first depiction of a non-Macross Galaxy VF-27 Lucifer. A military spec YF-29, Rod Baltemar's YF-29B Perceval. The YF-30 Chronos.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    ?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... eh, I wouldn't put it past Star Trek: Picard. Its writers seem absolutely determined to turn Star Trek into another maximally dystopian sci-fi setting like Star Wars, Alien, or Warhammer 40,000 where there is nothing but hate and war and hope is a weakness for those who don't know better.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    As I noted on the previous page, Titan Comics hasn't been answering reader questions about the status of the series on their social media. That's one of the things that makes this "delay" so odd... Titan Comics is normally fairly willing to communicate with its customers via its official website and social media, but there has been no news about the now-substantial delay in the fifth issue's release and questions posed about the status of the series on social media go unanswered. If this was just some kind of delay caused by mundane business reasons like a key staffer's illness or a problem at the printer's it'd be a simple thing to announce that wouldn't reflect badly on them. Even if the series were cancelled, saying something about it being cancelled would be the norm. This total silence on the subject is what makes it look suspicious.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Perfect Memory suggests that the Supervision Army warship that became the SDF-1 Macross was built with a modular design to improve its overall survivability. The goal was presumably to decentralize certain key systems to prevent battle damage to one area from disabling the entire ship, enable a limited form of repair by replacing modules instead of whole ships, and facilitate working around battle damage to systems that couldn't be decentralized. Variable Fighter Master File does occasionally include segments that talk about certain important classes of ship like the Asuka II-class, Prometheus-class, ARMD-class, and so on. It's not significant coverage (just a few pages, usually), but it's something. The Squadrons of the SDF-1 Macross book offers more detail about the Macross herself, but it's mostly in terms of its carrier operations and defense strategies. Gundam's Master Archive Mobile Suit series did something similar for the Pegasus-class assault carrier White Base.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Are we sure about that? Titan Comics' own website lists only two more releases planned for the month of March: Well, kind of... the above is a screenshot from Diamond Comic Distributors' cancellation list for the month of April 2020. You'll notice the cancellation reason is 2, meaning that this issue was delayed or otherwise on hiatus for long enough that the distributor cancelled all open orders for it but the publisher at least theoretically intends to release this issue at a later date (or simply hasn't announced the series is cancelled yet). However, it should be noted that this cancellation is for next month, which suggests that Titan will not deliver the issue this month or next month. If the issue were just straight-up cancelled we'd expect to see cancellation reason 4... and if Titan Comics announced that the series itself was being terminated we'd see a 9. Does anyone care? ... so, the home universe of DC's Bizarro, where bad is good and vice versa? It sounds unpleasant. At least Titan Comics hasn't been so crass as to attempt a Superboy Prime with one such universe being the universe where Robotech is a popular comic/TV/movie series.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It's definitely that one. There've been a fair few occasions in interviews where he clearly did not remember plot points from previous Macross titles when the interviewer asked about them. It's one reason I don't take his stance on things completely seriously. He changes his stance on things A LOT depending on how much he remembers about a subject on any given day. Yeah, I think pretty much anyone who was watching Macross Delta expecting some kickass mecha action was pretty disappointed after the first two or so episodes. We got promised some sweet mecha dance-battling and what we got was an "elite" unit of mercenary fighter pilots who know exactly one maneuver. At least Delta Flight is more reliable than most color printers... they didn't crap out and refuse to fly because they ran out of Cyan in episode 13. Play Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and behold the splendor that is PLAID VFs! (That is not a joke, BTW... it's an actual option for several VFs including the YF-29.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    The Star Trek relaunch novelverse and the non-canon novels both attributed those barriers to the Q Continuum. The barrier around the outer edge of the galaxy was set up to keep a malevolent entity called 0 out, and the one in the core was a prison meant to hold the being who presented itself as God in Star Trek V after both were tried and convicted of various crimes by the Q. (That particular storyline connected the sudden supernova that destroyed the T'Kon empire with Q and four extradimensional ne'er do wells... 0, * AKA the Beta XII-A entity, Gorgan, and The One AKA "God". A bored Q let them into the universe via the Guardian of Forever, and 0 was the one who first put Q up to the idea of "testing" lesser races for entertainment. The Q Continuum took a dim view of them blowing up the T'Kon Empire's homeworld with a supernova and arrested Q, 0, and The One. * and Gorgan escaped but lost most of their powers, to be encountered later by the USS Enterprise, while The One was depowered and locked away on a remote planet behind a barrier in the galactic core and 0 was depowered and punted into intergalactic space with a barrier put up around the galaxy to prevent him from returning.) That said, I have to wonder if this incredibly lazy and apparently incredibly unoriginal Star Trek plot will culminate in these machine people from outside time and space being the machine race that created V'Ger after Voyager VI fell into a black hole. Since Star Trek: Discovery was stealing ideas from the novelverse it seems likely Star Trek: Picard will too... Control was straight out of the DS9 Relaunch, and the machine race (The Body Electric) were encountered while pursuing a project that would've caused the extinction of all life in the galaxy.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Wouldn't that keep them out, though, given that the barrier is so incredibly destructive to ships? Yeah, but it's usually on-message. This reference to Coppélia is basically the polar opposite of where Picard is trying to go with its aesop about synthetic life. Doctor Coppelius wanted very much to bring his mechanical doll Coppélia to life using black magic and human sacrifices, but ultimately failed and his creations were doomed to remain lifeless automata. To call the planet Coppelius, a name presumably chosen by Soong, implies that contrary to his stated beliefs he doesn't actually see androids as people.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Kawamori's answer to why unmanned fighters haven't displaced manned aircraft is a pretty simple one... it basically amounts to "Seen Macross Plus? People know that sh*t happened in-universe. Nobody wants to trust fully autonomous AI fighters after a first public demonstration like that." I mean, do WE use giant fighting robots? Nope. They probably assumed that since the interior of the ship indicated its crew were at least humanoid, that they probably fought wars a lot like humans do... feet on the ground, the occasional fighter or armored fighting vehicle, y'know. The 1st Generation Variable Fighter concepts were intended for use in planetary defense rather than long-duration operations in deep space. Variable Fighter Master File is the only source that offers us a detailed view of the Earth Unification Government's defense plans to resist an alien invasion, and the picture it paints is one of engaging the alien fleet in orbit with reaction weaponry and the Grand Canons while alien landing forces are contained and mopped up by troops from local military bases in the attacked region and five rapid reaction forces operating out of paired Daedalus-class and Prometheus-class ships. The ARMD-class space carriers weren't conceived as ships, the original concept (in-universe) was that they would operate as orbital air bases. It wasn't until they started properly formulating how they were going to convert the alien starship for use as a defense warship that some bright soul concluded that all that really needed to be done to convert this orbiting air base into an aircraft carrier was attach some engines and install a navigational bridge. So the initial generation of VFs that were designed around the requirements from this era didn't need a ton of onboard fuel capacity. They were expected to operate in the Earth's atmosphere or at most up in a high orbit as part of the planet's space defenses. Even operating in deep space wasn't really much of a consideration, since they were expected to be within close range of their home carrier as part of its air defense. Not reactants, but they use intake air to produce thrust the same way as a conventional jet engine would. Yup... though it's UN, not US. A lot of the Earth UN Government's assumptions about space warfare proved to be... disastrously wrong. Of course, it's not like they had any way to know that space warfare in their universe firmly believed that "a million is a statistic" and was fought between two clone armies with nigh-inexhaustible resources. They were clearly hoping for something more like Star Wars, Starship Troopers, or even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where fleets of a few hundred ships at most batter each other to bits while ground forces struggle to capture and hold terrain. Instead, they found themselves dealing with an enemy that didn't really care about holding terrain and wasn't shy about destroying planets.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    As far as I can tell, the VF-31D Skuld is something that Aoshima invented for their VFG model kit. There are only actually two variants of the Surya Aerospace VF-31: the VF-31A and VF-31B. The VF-31A is the Brisingr Alliance New UN Forces' 5th Generation main variable fighter still in operational evaluation with the expendable civilian mooks of Xaos, similar to how SMS's services were contracted to test the VF-25 in live combat. The VF-31B is indicated to also be a production version intended for military use, with a few hints being dropped that it may be a model conversion trainer. Xaos's Siegfried customs are unique aircraft that were modified from trial production VF-31s. It's implied in the series that they started out as VF-31As, as seen in the flashback episode where Arad is shown using a VF-31A with his distinctive livery. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried asserts instead that they were customized from YF-31s. The VF-1D and VT-1 are the only ones that leap to mind that are that specific orange and tan color scheme. The VF-17T is orange and gloss white. YF-19-3 "Bird of Prey" was also white with orange trim. Master File's YF-19-4 had a reversed orange with white trim scheme. Master File also has a YF-21-1 prototype that had an orange and white paintjob. The YF-25 Prophecy1 has a white, orange, and blue paintjob as well. Master File also has a squadron paintjob for the SVX-12 "Moon Shooters" squadron where one of their VF-0-NF2 units has an white and orange paintjob similar to the trainer scheme. 1. Well, at least the three YF-25 units built in the Macross Frontier fleet... the one from Sephira that Reon Sakaki flies in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is seafoam green and white instead. 2. The aforementioned VF-0 outfitted with the QF-3000's FF-1999 engines for space testing.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    This is basically the in-universe justification for the VF-5000. The VF-4 was built to emphasize space performance, and ended up being a better space fighter than the VF-1 Super Valkyrie was by a pretty significant margin. The space focus in its design meant that its aerodynamics suffered somewhat and it wasn't nearly as agile in atmosphere... making it a poor choice for an all-regime main VF. That led to it being supplemented by the atmosphere focused VF-5000.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    It seems that it never occurred to them that the Zentradi wouldn't fight a conventional infantry war... rather than being a 100% mechanized force. Not any of the ones that were introduced during its mass production run and service with the UN Forces and New UN Forces as a main variable fighter. Hakuna Aoba's VF-1X++ custom may have gone a ways towards solving it by adopting the same, more efficient engine technology developed for 4th Generation VFs, but the VF-1 is really just too small to have significant endurance in space.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It's been a long and depressing week full of news of rampant disease, death, corruption, and congenital idiocy... and to put the cherry on that sundae of suck, there's the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard, a series that has boldly gone where no Star Trek has gone before. Straight to the bottom. "Et in Arcadia, Ego" Part 1. The Good... it's such a relative term, isn't it? The Bad... there's just so much of it. The Ugly... it's omnipresent. Long story short, it turns out the Romulans were right all along... sentient artificial intelligence is evil and prone to hold organic life in contempt. If Picard had stayed on Earth and left well enough alone, he'd have prevented the means for galactic genocide from falling into the hands of deranged killer robots.
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