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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    "The End of an Error" would have been punchier and just as true.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    To be honest, I don't have the free time to take on another fan project. I'm only barely keeping up with the development of a website for my Macross translation work, and my day job leaves me with very little free time as it is. I'm also not much of a writer when it comes to prose, I'm more of a researcher.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Well, your OC is supposed to be 15. He and Klan would both be high school age, so he could be enrolled at Mihoshi Academy with the other principal characters of Macross Frontier sans Ranka and Nanase who go to a private all-girls school instead. If he's in the space navigation major at Mihoshi Academy he'd be in a position to be around people who are around Klan a lot like Michael Blanc.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    If anything, the fact that George Lucas was able to succeed with the prequel trilogy despite f*cking it up pretty hard was probably what convinced Disney that Star Wars fans would buy any damn thing they bothered to slap the Star Wars name on regardless of quality. Killing Yuenglings instead of Younglings sounds like a good place to start? Considering that what George has revealed about his own plans for a sequel trilogy are, if anything, worse than anything Disney came up with... I think it's pretty safe to say he'd likely ignore or dismiss anyone who told him he was f*cking up. Anyone out there wanna put up their hand and say Osmosis Jones would've been better with midichlorians?
  5. Seto Kaiba
    ... what, the internet wants people to get out there and start murdering younglings?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be more complicated, I'm not sure if it'd necessarily be easier. Enforcement of more localized, transient intellectual property rights like trademarks can be a bit fraught when international trade agreements are concerned. Oh, they're still making a profit on it. Not much of one, mind you... but since all they do is re-release the same old show over and over, their production expenses were amortized ages ago and the take is practically pure profit. The reason they're so determined to hang onto the Super Dimension Fortress Macross rights is that that's the ONLY part of Robotech which is still able to turn a profit. That's why I think their planned endgame for Robotech is to transition to being an intermediary for the release of Macross in the west. They've been steadily Macross-izing Robotech in several different ways and minimizing the importance and relevance of the other two-thirds of the show while chasing Macross Saga merchandise profits. It's like they're preparing to write Robotech off as "American Macross" the way StarBlazers is just "American Yamato" in exchange for a share of the licensing royalties. I suspect Big West won't play ball, and HG'll have to fall back on trying to inflate the price of the rights to turn the maximum one-time profit divesting themselves of Super Dimension Fortress Macross (and Robotech) instead of simply letting the license expire. (Like extortion, but technically legal.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Bokura wa Minna Kawai-sou is pretty good stuff... sadly it's really short, though the ending isn't much different from how the manga ended. (Sadly, the pun in the title doesn't translate well... kind of like the lolicon trio joke in Macross.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That's definitely the impression I got... though didn't TPTB at Disney have to snap Mark Hamill back after he briefly expressed his real thoughts about The Last Jedi? Best of luck to them... but normally a starring role in Star Wars is a "marked for life" kind of thing. You never escape it. Let's just cross our fingers and hope it ends better for them than it did for poor Jake Lloyd. Let's be honest... who would want them to? Their characters suck.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    That'd work, there are plenty of older officers in SMS who could probably take a kid in. Henry Gilliam might be a good option there, since he's a mostly undeveloped character and an old friend of Ozma's who's in at least his mid-20's. He'd have regular contact with the members of Pixie Platoon given that he was part of Skull Platoon and would've been part of the VF-25's operational evaluation program. Strategic Military Services doesn't have a military base as such... just an office building and dock in Island-1, and the Macross Quarter. As seen in the series, Major Ozma Lee lives in a terraced townhouse in the replica San Francisco section of Island-1. (Ozma and Ranka's townhouse is the only time we see the living arrangements of the main cast in the series. The only other homes we see in the series are the Saotome family's sukiya-zukuri style Japanese mansion that was Alto's childhood home and the mansion of Richard Bilra, the founder and owner of SMS's parent company Bilra Transport, neither of which would be what you'd call typical living quarters.)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Not as such... but they're obligated to respect intellectual property ownership filings in each other's jurisdictions under the trade agreement. (NAFTA, and whatever's replacing it.) Basically, if Harmony Gold trademarks in Canada or Mexico were overturned in Big West's favor, it wouldn't impact the US trademarks as such but it could complicate matters if HG were to try to challenge the new registrations. Seemed like a bit of a boondoggle even before Big West started taking an active interest in reclaiming the Macross trademarks... Kevin McKeever's account of his trip to China was a bit, well, creepy. Like "anecdotes about perving on girls at the airport" creepy. Plus China already had Macross in bootleg form for ages and their own half-baked local knockoff of Gundam SEED and Macross Frontier called Astro Plan... that @areaseven infamously tricked a bunch of Robotech fans into thinking HG was going to license and localize as a new Robotech series. Never mind that Robotech's "glory days" were pretty heavily exaggerated by Harmony Gold and Robotech fans. The show was never better than a middle-of-the-pack performer in the ratings race and had an unsuccessful toy line. Not exactly glorious, IMO. Depending on who you ask, this wasn't actually their decision... but rather something Revell forced on them in exchange for the merchandising rights it'd acquired to Macross kits. Harmony Gold's apparent desire to strongarm Big West into licensing Macross in the US through them, so they can have a cut without doing any actual work, is a complete waste of time on their part. Their only realistic prospect at this point is to try to hold out long enough to transfer their rights to Big West and sell the trademarks.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I've officially finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind... and the ending was a bit of a letdown. One thing I will say is that David Production absolutely crushed it in terms of animation quality. I had to replace my old LCD TV after it decided it wanted to pursue a more fulfilling career as a smoke machine, and it's a whole different show watching it on the QLED set I got to replace it. Irresponsible levels of beautiful animation. Not sure what I'm gonna watch next. I still have Yojo Senki's movie to watch, and a bunch of other stuff. I kinda wanna throw some of the OVAs I've been neglecting at it now that I've got a proper 4K set... like Lupin III: the Woman Named Fujiko Mine and maybe a rewatch of Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    As I've said, I don't think there really IS a realistic way for Cpt. Klan to end up saddled with responsibility for a kid who's only a few years younger than she is. The Island Cluster-class Macross Frontier was a BIG emigrant ship. Island-1 was home to roughly five million people, and the fleet's total population was approximately ten million. In a fleet with so many civilian families, it's hard to conceive of a reason that a college student and career mercenary like Klan Klan would be the only person willing or able to take some kid who was discovered in cold sleep regardless of whether it's before or after the series. It's more believable for someone like Ozma, because he's much older (26 in 2058). IMO, it would probably be easier to create an OC to fill the role who was an older, more established OC to fill the role you had envisioned for Klan. Someone who's past the age where they'd still be in school. "Bitter and resentful" sounds pretty out of character for Klan... she's more resilient than that.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, with the benefit of hindsight 2019 has been a pretty good year for Macross. Tatsunoko Production deciding to renew their licensing agreement with Harmony Gold turned out to be a strategic move to make their obligations from the arbitration with HG over royalties vanish, and Big West's wins in court to reclaim the Macross trademarks around the world have made HG's "victory" taste as bitter as defeat. Anyone with a working brain knew from the outset that a Robotech live action movie was a pipe dream. Harmony Gold has tried to make a lot of noise about it over the last decade, but it inevitably means nothing. No studio is going to gamble on Robotech, because they can't adapt the Big West-owned Macross material and trying to create replacements for it that are similar will just invite a copyright infringement lawsuit. For seven years, HG told everyone who would listen that WB had huge plans for Robotech, that it was going to be a tentpole franchise for the studio, and that it was being fast-tracked to production. 7 years later, Warner Bros let the license expire without doing anything to develop the project. After Sony picked it up, we got all of the same tired lines, and the same utter lack of any indication work was being done on it. Robotech is dying. Let's be brutally honest here. Robotech has been at death's door for a VERY long time, and in the last couple of years that slow and steady decline has accelerated with a string of comparatively high-profile failures like Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, Robotech Academy, and Robotech RPG Tactics. The quality of their licensees has slipped from major toy companies all the way down to the little indie operators and actual goddamn bootleggers. It's hanging on by its fingertips AT BEST. When we talk about the death of Robotech, we're not talking about every Robotech fan finally giving up on it and moving on to other properties... we're talking about the demise of Robotech as a commercial property. The point where Robotech is no longer making enough of a profit for Harmony Gold to justify the expenditure of pretending it's a viable property. Robotech fans often want to insist this is the case... but it's not actually true. 99% of Robotech do not give a damn about any part of Robotech other than the "Macross Saga". Every attempt to continue the TV series story has been based on the "Macross Saga" except for Robotech 3000, which tested so poorly it was cancelled after a test trailer was screened ONCE. The one story Robotech fans consistently want to see completed is Sentinels, the continuing story of the Macross Saga cast. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles sold itself principally on "find out what happened to Rick Hunter". All of the merchandise is Macross Saga merchandise. When they try other merchandise, it generally doesn't sell. They are STILL trying to offload MOSPEADA goods they stocked back in 2008, and won't even consider Southern Cross stuff because it's so hopelessly unpopular no licensee wants to touch it. The Macross saga is literally the only part of Robotech that is commercially successful... and even that carries a big asterisk these days. You're forgetting this is a business... if it stops making enough money to justify renewing the license, Robotech stops being a thing. Likewise, HG's rights are not perpetual rights. The license agreement has a limited term, and the trademarks they hold expire over time and need to be continually renewed. They could do an English dub right now in the UK or Australia. Canada and Mexico won't help, because the US trademark law still prioritizes first use over ownership. Given how overwhelmingly prevalent video piracy is down there, I doubt it. It's actually pretty rare to hear HG even mention South America. If you listen to HG, they seem to be pinning the franchise's future on China... where all of Macross is coming out very soon.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I know one member on the forums who's built like macro-Klan... except, y'know, not 10m+ tall. You're gonna have a LOT of problems with your idea if that's the case. That'd put it cheek-by-jowl with the events of Macross the Ride. Klan doesn't have a lot of free time in 2058. She's still a high school student in her final year before heading off to university, and she's working as a pilot for Strategic Military Services during that period. She's involved in SMS's operational testing of the fleet's new VF-25 in simulated and actual combat as an aggressor platoon leader for simulated combat, she's involved in SMS's support of the fleet's New UN Spacy against a rogue Zentradi fleet that attacked that year, she's involved in providing security for Vanquish League events in Island Reno (Island-15), and she's also involved in SMS's assisting the NUNS against the anti-government group Fasces. She's not really in a position to take in some random kid she just met. You'd think if anyone were going to do that, it'd be one of the adult officers in the Macross Frontier fleet's Strategic Military Services branch office... like Major Ozma Lee, Captain Henry Gilliam, or Colonel Jeffrey Wilder. Gilliam would probably be the logical choice since Wilder's single and Ozma's already got a young ward of his own (Ranka). You don't really have to fudge anything WRT cryogenics, the prewar UN Forces had cold sleep tech built into some of their fighters (the SF-3A) and the next-gen VFs in Macross Frontier have cold sleep functions integrated into the EX-Gear. It's technology they've had for at least fifty years by the time of Frontier. It's not really a new culture, though... the Macross Frontier fleet went to extraordinary lengths to faithfully recreate prewar cities like San Francisco, Shibuya, and Beijing. The aesthetics of technology deliberately mimic pre-war Earth, though the actual technology's much more advanced. Consequently, people don't really live a lot differently than they do right now. People live in apartments and rowhouses torn right out of the bay area and downtown Tokyo, they go to school, they work in offices, they have the internet, cell phones, they go to trendy coffee shops, theaters, hang out in parks, etc. Very little has changed, and that's deliberate. The only thing that's really gone away is the old concepts of national identity, since Earth's nations no longer exist... though there are some fleets that recreate that thing for kitschy reasons like Macross-11 being a rather cliche expression of nostalgia for Americana. The only things that'd really stand out in the Frontier fleet are that there's a part of the cityscape devoted to accommodating Zentradi at their natural size (Island-3) and air racing with giant robots is a popular professional sport. The kid might have problems acclimatizing to the local culture in another, much more different fleet like Macross Galaxy where a lot of day to day life occurs in cybernetically-imposed augmented reality and the government's a full-blown corporate dystopia along a very similar line to Weyland-Yutani. Even in the Macross-7 fleet, about all that'd really stand out apart from the weird retro-futuristic cars is the occasional future-y extreme sport and the option to telecommute to school via VR. Why would Klan distrust him? Klan wasn't a clone soldier, she's a natural-born New UN Government citizen who was raised among humans and grew up in a human culture with human values. The only thing that sets her apart from humans is her DNA. Michael Blanc is her childhood best friend and crush. In almost every respect, she's an entirely normal 18 year old girl in 2058. All that she has to set her apart from other normal girls is her day job is as a mercenary for a private security firm instead of flipping burgers or stocking shelves. Compared to several of her coworkers like Ozma Lee and Chelsea Scarlett, she's lived a pretty normal life.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Good on them, it's about time they did something right. Really, what it's gonna come down to in the end is a waiting game. Big West is not going to be able to overturn the trademarks HG owns in the United States, so the only thing for Big West to do is rigorously police its new Macross trademarks outside the US and clamp down on Harmony Gold's ability to profit from its license to Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The merchandising rights that Harmony Gold holds as part of its license to Super Dimension Fortress Macross are all that's keeping the lights on in the part of their office that runs the Robotech franchise. Even with it, they're barely turning a profit on the brand with increasingly-cheap, low-quality merchandise and the sales of their second attempt to reboot the series has started to falter thanks to slipping sales of the comics from Titan Publishing (part of which can be attributed to the fact that they've now moved on to the material from the perennially unpopular Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross). The proposed Robotech live action movie is not a realistic prospect due to all the legal problems surrounding it, and Harmony Gold itself is unwilling to finance further attempts to develop the animated Robotech series, so all that needs to happen for the Robotech franchise to finally collapse and free up those trademarks in the United States is for pressure from Big West to finally push Robotech to the tipping point where it just isn't worth the effort for Harmony Gold to keep Robotech going. Canada or Mexico won't have a significant impact on the situation, the real last bastion of Robotech fandom (a large part of which is actually closeted Macross fandom) is South America. If Big West can cut off South America, Robotech is over.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, my mind's ear wants a twice-dead Darth Maul to sound exactly like Nathan Explosion. Even before he got chopped in half he looked like the bassist from a black metal band. Wasn't it controlled by the Hutts?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, being a minor character doesn't get Klan a lot of coverage in the show or official publications. Her exact date of birth isn't given AFAIK, but her year of birth is given as 2040 and her age as of the start of Macross Frontier's story (on 26 February 2059) is given as 19, which would suggest her date of birth is in January or early-to-mid February 2040. Her bio says she's a student at one of the universities in the fleet, and is studying biology. The movie version de-aged her a year by moving her year of birth to 2041 so she could attend the same high school as the rest of the cast. Rehabbing a recently defrosted kid suffering from PTSD is more a job for a psychologist, not a cellular biologist. As a way of working around the chronological problem with the premise, I'd propose the kid instead be a survivor from an emigrant fleet or research fleet that was attacked and wiped out by a Zentradi branch fleet that stumbled across it. There are emigrant fleets that've gone much MUCH farther than the Macross Frontier fleet (e.g. Megaroad-04, which made it all the way to the far side of the galaxy to discover Windermere IV in 2027), so a cold sleep escape capsule from a destroyed research fleet or emigrant fleet would be a way for the kid to have been traumatized by the Zentradi without the impossibility of getting 25,000 light years from Earth before fold systems were available to the military or general populace.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I'm also not entirely sure how Klan Klan would find the time to rehabilitate a kid who'd been in cold sleep for fifty years. In 2058, she was a high school senior getting ready to go on to college and working for Strategic Military Services as a Queadluun-Rhea pilot. That's a pretty full calendar right there.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I've seen memes, but I didn't know whatever they were from was actually canon. That's kind of awful in its own way.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Come again? Didn't he, y'know, die a little when Obi-wan removed the entire bottom half of him with a laser sword in The Phantom Menace? Being cut clean in half at the waist and dropped down a kilometers-deep pit are usually fatal on their own, combined it ought to be a pretty sure thing.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It's an interesting idea... but, from a timeline/continuity perspective, there are some problems with the premise. The biggest problem would be the question of how that kid managed to leave our solar system. Rudimentary cold sleep technology was available to the military before the start of the First Space War, but the SDF-1 Macross was the only ship Earth had with a working space fold system (for as long as that lasted) until after the First Space War had ended and post-war production of ships for emigrant fleets had begun. The 55th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet headed up by the titular emigrant ship Macross Frontier is something on the order of 25,000 light years from Earth in 2058, and had been underway for approximately 17 years at that point. Space fold systems weren't available when that kid's ship would've had to launch, and getting out that far without one would take hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years at sublight speeds.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that'd rather depend on what kind of assistance you require. If it's questions about the setting, timeline, etc. there are many knowledgeable fans here who would be only too happy to help. Fellow writers could probably also be found via the Fanworks section of the forums.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Now, call me a pessimist and I'll cheerfully cop to it... but the Obi-wan Kenobi series feels like Disney Star Wars trying to die on the same hill twice. Didn't they learn their lesson from the fiasco that was Solo: a Star Wars Story? Don't mess with established character backstory, it'll all end in tears.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yeah... but that's like saying "a better love story than Twilight". Anything looks good compared to that.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Disney's whole reason for buying the Star Wars franchise from LucasFilm was because they saw it as an unsinkable, downright foolproof money spinner they could use to alleviate the studio's tendency to hemorrhage cash, possibly to hedge their bets for the inevitable bursting of the superhero movie bubble. I doubt they had anything like the grandiose plans the Marvel cinematic universe team had. They don't seem to have had much more in the way of a plan beyond expecting general audiences to eat up anything they put out as long as it had "Star Wars" in the title. It doesn't feel like there was much in the way of a strategy for expanding the Star Wars story beyond flogging tie-ins to the original trilogy. The idea that there's a strategy here kind of feels shot all to hell with conflicting reports, leaks, and rumors swirling around The Rise of Skywalker debating whether it's even done or not two weeks before its box office opening. Well, that and if they hadn't done everything in their mortal power to piss the Star Wars fans off. Much like Disney's original plans for the Star Wars movies, that'll be contingent on how successful they are. The Mandalorian is successful for now, but it remains to be seen if it'll have staying power enough to keep the spinoffs coming or if it'll go full Firefly. If The Rise of Skywalker fails to meet expectations, it could hurt the prospects of future Star Wars spinoff projects too.
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