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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Now, if I had to theorize as to why... The Robotech and Robotech Remix comics seem to be trying to find ways to justify Rick's central role in the Robotech animated setting. Even when he wasn't present, he was still this all-important character whom the plot essentially revolved around because he was the one who deprived Earth of most of its defenses in the Masters Saga and then was dispatching soldiers to Earth to recapture it in the New Generation. He was still plot critical in Shadow Chronicles, with the whole story essentially being "whatever happened to Rick?". It felt like Titan was trying to justify him still having such a central role in their own version of the story by making him Neo from The Matrix and giving him superpowers on top of making him more like the alleged badass Robotech's sequels tried to make him out to be. Part of it, I suspect, is dictated by Titan's or HG's legal counsel. It's dangerous enough for Robotech to continue to use Rick Hunter/Hikaru Ichijo because of HG's inability to use the Haruhiko Mikimoto character design in new film works or make derivative designs based on it (which is why the Sentinels design was deemed too close and was ditched in favor of making him unrecognizable in Shadow Chronicles). Max and Milia, however, are probably the most dangerous/risky characters for Robotech to use in post-Macross Saga stories, as the Macross franchise has made extensive use of those characters in its own original sequels like Macross M3 or Macross 7. Trying to continue their TV series relationship in sequels would pose a lot of risks and require a lot more oversight from legal to make sure they weren't visually or narratively converging on their Macross counterparts in any way that Big West might consider legally actionable. Not having their relationship is the easiest way to make sure they remain legally distinct, short of just not having them present at all. That was what Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles did... it killed off or otherwise disposed of characters that were too risky to use like Breetai, Exedore, Max, Miriya, and Minmei before the OVA actually started. More like someone was desperately trying to make Rick Hunter into the elite badass that Robotech's various failed sequel efforts talk him up as... despite that always turning out to be dialog writing a check the story can't cash. That, I suspect, is why he's been made into a top ace with superhuman powers stolen from The Matrix sequels. To be fair, Robotech's Max is kind of a weenie... Cam Clarke makes him sound more like an introverted shy guy with self-confidence problems than Sho Hayami's humble badass ladies man. Robotech also basically demoted him to a background character in Sentinels and then to Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film thereafter for legal reasons. This is more or less standard practice in the Robotech franchise. Harmony Gold and its licensees knew from a very early point that Macross was the only part of Robotech 99% of Robotech's fans gave a damn about, and so almost every attempt to develop an "original" continuation of the Robotech animated series has leaned on Macross heavily despite their inability to use Macross designs in new film works. The Robotech fan base may not want to acknowledge that Macross is infinitely more successful than Robotech, but every Robotech sequel effort except Robotech 3000 was basically just a bad Macross fanfic. Titan's Robotech Remix is just more blatant about it than usual.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... I don't think you can dismiss it that easily. I'll grant you there are a lot of bad movies, TV shows, comics, etc. that are bad because they're ill-conceived, under-developed, and/or poorly executed. That doesn't preclude the existence of works that are bad because of a particular creative choice with sweeping implications for the story. Yes, there are movies and TV shows and comics and so on that are bad because they are "woke". When people complain about "woke" entertainment, they're usually not complaining about the message itself. The objectionable part is that the author has done such a terrible job of working the message into the story that it comes off as grating and preachy, wildly out of place, or otherwise significantly detrimental to the story. Not really a problem for Robotech though... that fandom is full of Comic Book Guys, and most of Robotech's "creatives" know it. Their problem is more the paradox of not liking anime and finding anime tropes offensive but liking Robotech, which is anime. Titan Comics kind of found themselves in a merciless case of Morton's Fork where they tried to take their new comic reboot of Robotech away from its anime roots and got blasted for it by the fans and reversed course only to get blasted for making it more like anime in Robotech Remix. You just can't win if you're trying to satisfy Robotech fans.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, yeah... there were a LOT of ships in that general area (Earth orbit). That'd be the SDF-1 Macross. General Higgins is the Chief of Staff for the New UN Forces in 2040, and a leading proponent of unmanned fighters. The Macross in this era is essentially the space pentagon, the headquarters of the New UN Forces.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Now, in all fairness, the vast majority of the political spectrum seems to find the entertainment industry's deeply insincere ("fake woke") attempts to convert the various key issues that social reform advocates are pushing for into cashflow terribly obnoxious. It's not JUST the basement-dwelling neckbeards rolling their eyes as Marvel and DC attempt to one-up each other with hilariously ill-advised attempts to pander like Marvel's newest superheroes: Screentime, Snowflake, and Safespace. The basement-dwelling neckbeards and all the time the comics industry spend pandering to them are part of the problem, though, since pandering to their tastes meant comic books quickly drove away almost everyone else and left major publishers with a serious problem of slipping sales as the fanbase shrunk. Very similar to Robotech's problem, really... except in Robotech's case the franchise's obscurity and lack of innovation over entire decades keeps casual audiences away and the fans are even more unpleasable that comic book guys because the Robotech they love exists exclusively in their fabricated memories. I think you're using that word wrong... Really, Titan's Robotech and Robotech Remix were never going to be hits because they slaughtered the sacred cow that was the Robotech TV series story and then tried to market their bad Macross fanfic to an audience that doesn't really care for anime tropes either... they didn't consider who their audience was.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... I think the actual Aesop here is that Robotech should stop trying to be a low-rent Macross knockoff and focus on developing its own original story. Either that or, if a job's worth doing it's worth doing well... and if it isn't worth doing, give it to a Robotech licensee because they literally have nothing better to do.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, that's absolutely and demonstrably not helping matters... but mainstream comics have been in trouble for a long time now thanks to risk-averse creative management that stagnated every brand they have. They repeat the same tired stories and plot beats over and over again, resort to crossover events when sales slip past a certain point, and when a crossover can't arrest the slide they reboot and repeat the same mistakes all over again. No character ever gets to have any lasting character development, they never see a proper end to their story that gives them and the audience closure, and never ever make any kind of lasting progress to their stories. Playing the identity politics game and resorting to trying to sell on the basis of terribly tone-deaf new representational characters is a symptom of the larger problem. The smaller publishers are less impacted by it, but it's a choice between obscure properties, terrible licensed comics, or poor quality... unless it's Robotech, which is all 3.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Really, it's not surprising... despite the popularity of comic book movies (well, the Marvel ones anyway) the comic book industry has been headed for another crash for a long time now and I've been inclined to suspect this'll be the one they don't recover from. The mainstream industry as a whole is so innovation-averse it'd astonishing they've lasted this long. Going digital-first might help them stay afloat a little longer, but they haven't really had anything fresh since the 90's. Superheroes are played out and "indie" comics really can't fill the gap.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Modern satellites, sure... satellites made with OTM though? All things considered, that seems rather appropriate given that First Contact was in this case two Zentradi picket ships being destroyed by an autonomous firing of the Macross's main gun and then the Zentradi counterattack on South Ataria island.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Not entirely... it sounds vaguely like the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. That said, I think "commemorative" probably strikes slightly the wrong context in English. Kinenhi would normally mean a stone monument bearing an inscription or a plaque with an inscription, wouldn't it? Maybe "Satellite Monument"?
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Amusingly, it was on "will resolicit" status before Diamond shut down. My money's on the comic having been the victim of a stealth cancellation.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's a bad habit a number of different franchises have picked up in recent years... they seem to believe they can boost sales of supplemental material for otherwise unpopular work if they lock essential context for the story behind an ad hoc paywall. Star Trek did it three times in a row from 2009 on... with the Star Trek '09 movie leaving much of its backstory in a limited comic nobody read, Star Trek: Discovery leaving essential backstory for a bunch of characters in tie-in novels and comics, and Star Trek: Picard only bridging the gap between Star Trek '09's backstory and its own in a novel.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    So... I think it's safe to say Robotech Remix #5 did not, in fact, come out this past week. Given that the comic book industry in general seems to be circling the drain with Diamond Comic Distributors shut down due to the pandemic and the frankly hilarious idiocy of the big two making it worse, I wonder if Titan will even bother attempting to continue their Robotech license of if the losses incurred during this period will prompt them to shed the licenses in their catalog that aren't turning significant profits.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It's just something that's bugged me ever since I noticed it was wrong in the Manga Entertainment DVD release of Macross Plus. They incorrectly translated his name as "Yang". I'm not sure what made them assume he was Chinese... maybe just the fact that he's a short guy with glasses? Blue Rhinoceros Corps was a ground combat unit, according to dialog in Macross 7 PLUS "Spiritia Dreaming". Macross Chronicle's two brief discussions of the Spiritia Dreaming VF-14 stop just short of calling it a Special Forces version, though I know there have also been some vague remarks that suggest it was either a Zentradi-use derivative model or the mentioned-but-never-seen VA-14. That's one reason I tend not to take Kawamori's views too seriously unless they're actually corroborated somewhere. That's one of the main reasons people suspect it's the VF-14 Vampire "Spiritia Dreaming type"... Macross Plus and Macross 7 were developed and produced concurrently, so designs in the background of Macross Plus are mainly things that were developed for Macross 7. The VF-14 was designed as the originating model for the Fz-109, and debuted in the Macross 7 PLUS episode "Spiritia Dreaming" in the October 1995 release of Macross 7 Vol.8. It would've been on the drawing board right around the time that Macross Plus episode was being produced.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    This is a translator pet peeve of mine... there's no グ in his name. Just ヤン. It's "Jan Neumann", pronounced "Yon" in the Germanic/Scandinavian style... fitting given he was named for Dr. von Neumann, a Hungarian who styled his name in the German fashion. There is one other Macross aircraft we've seen it on... or rather, one other Macross canon immigrant we've seen it on. The V-BR-2. True, this was actually an Advanced Valkyrie design but Macross Chronicle puts it in the Macross setting via Technology Sheet 01Q as a Second Generation VF. The shape of the nose and engine nozzle are wrong, but a third possibility is we're seeing some relative or prototype of the V-BR-2's. Personally, I'm sticking with our original hypothesis that the unknown aircraft behind Dr. Neumann is a VF-14 Spiritia Dreaming type.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Not wishing to be rude, but I suspect you may be slightly misinterpreting the point there. What some of us - myself included - were hoping for from Rey after The Last Jedi was that she was going to rise up, become a Jedi, and save the galaxy without having to be driven to do so by a preordained destiny as The Chosen One. Anakin and Luke both came from humble origins, but that's not the same as being Nobody. Anakin Skywalker was, quite literally, The Chosen One. Believed to be a virgin birth conceived by the Force itself and propelled to power and notoriety by a preordained destiny to bring balance to the Force. Likewise, in the original trilogy, Luke was another Chosen One with the Force driving him to redeem Anakin Skywalker so the Emperor could be defeated and balance restored to the Force. Their being subject to You Can't Fight Destiny takes a bit away from them as characters, since their choices aren't entirely theirs... they're just the playthings of fate. Between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, Rey had the potential to be a different kind of protagonist. She had the opportunity to be developed not as The Chosen One, but as more of an (empowered) everyman who had an actual choice and chose to take a stand for the sake of others. Given the state of social activism in this day in age, with what seems to be a never-ending source of injustices to rail against, an "anyone can be a hero" sort of message would've had better resonance with the audience. Well, maybe for Rogue One... but I'd have a hard time believing the Force isn't pulling the strings around a baby version of Yoda in The Mandalorian, and we already know Han Solo was destiny's plaything given his involvement with THREE problematic Skywalker brats in the original and sequel trilogies.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Smirnoff is practically tapwater... you'd need something a LOT stronger to get through Southern Cross, more like everclear.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Even Nemesis wasn't that dark or depressing... courtesy of the movie still largely sticking with the TNG-era Federation as an optimistic organization that jumped at the chance to further improve diplomatic relations with Romulus and at least part of the Romulan military coming to the Enterprise's aid against Shinzon.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That and it'd make a lot more sense to send unmanned fighters up against an unknown enemy first to scout them out. Gotta have reaction mass if you wanna fly in space... it's still way more efficient in terms of mass vs power than conventional rockets. Probably not... they'd have either plowed through them with superior numbers and firepower or had more to worry about from the approaching reinforcements. Nah, that section lists things that aren't necessarily in the OVA but just happened to appear in the artbook... but also doesn't list at least one design that DOES because its identity isn't confirmed. You'll only find the aforementioned VF-14 on the Macross 7 section.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Explicitly!
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Bioroids... not very strong, and a mediocre experience for all involved. Just like Smirnoff Ice.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    First I'm hearing of that, TBH
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Cut out that plot tumor called Canto Bight all you want, but they totally ought to fan-edit Rey to actually be a nobody instead of Palpatine's granddaughter... they had a much better message when she wasn't The Chosen One.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Deader than dead... maybe once Secret Hideout's contract is over, we can Search for Spock this franchise and wrestle it back from the grave. Nice of The Guardian to finally catch up to what Star Trek fans were saying from the moment the first bits of information about the series were teased... this was a series nobody asked for, full of unlikable generic "badass" characters, terrible cliches, and the arrogant self-interest of one old actor who thinks the franchise is his personal political soapbox.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Qui-Gon totally runs with the idea that he was a virgin birth, though... asserting he believes that Anakin was conceived by the whatchamacallits that make the Force go, and IIRC wasn't that what the Expanded Universe ran with as well?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Star Trek's various shows are products of the times in which they were made, and most if not all were considered great. Some of the content, understandably, did not age well... or was freaking terrible to begin with like "Code of Honor", "11:59", "Tuvix", or that one episode of TOS with the space hippies. DS9 as the high-quality outlier... that's an unpopular opinion in the Trek fanbase. One I share, mind you, but an unpopular one nevertheless. I'd put it a good deal lower, mostly on the basis of the writing. The actors are clearly doing their best with what they've been given, but as the saying goes "garbage in, garbage out", and there are a bunch of moments where the Star Trek veterans are clearly having the Ford reaction "You can write this stuff, but you can't say it". Also the most realistic cast... a bunch of eccentric weirdos on a space station in the middle of nowhere who were very humanly flawed. I won't deny it, Star Trek: the Motion Picture is an editorial disasterpiece... it's too glacially slow to be enjoyable even as high-concept sci-fi thanks to the film's obsession with its own VFX. TBH, I might actually rank TMP below Into Darkness on that front. Into Darkness was crap, but it was at least a serviceable popcorn flick.
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