Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12864

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be honest, there was no right choice there because either choice had terrible implications for the story as a whole. HIGHSPEED Etoile's writers had to choose between: Revealing that V-ZEN's AI "Ami" no longer needed Rin Rindo and that AI drivers could be developed to the point of being competitive against top-tier living drivers, making the show's protagonist completely unnecessary. Revealing that V-ZEN's AI "Ami" was inherently limited in ways that mean it can never be a truly competitive driver outside of solo time trials, keeping Rin Rindo in the car and in the story by shooting several huge holes in other parts of the story. They went with the latter because it's transparently obvious they're hoping to sell racy figures of the predominantly female cast. By revealing that AIs are limited in ways that mean they can never truly be competitive against living drivers, it raises some awkward questions as to why several teams are relying on AI drivers that have no chance of winning. That also kind of kills the idea that Rin isn't blindingly incompetent, since she has consistently placed below AI-driven cars throughout the series and an AI almost certainly wouldn't be racking up disqualifications for rules violations and failing to start/finish races (never mind totaling a car). Basically, they established that AI drivers are incompetent... but that they still would've been a better choice than Rin Rindo.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They went with a "Yes, except no." answer... Team V-ZEN's AI system "Ami" is using both her driving and the driving of her competitors as training data. The story then comes up with an excuse for why it can't simply take her job, which basically boils down to the AI system being limited by its programming to avoid taking actions that would put human safety at risk. So they can absolutely crush it at time trials, but their safety first attitude towards strategic driving means they will lose the race every time.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That topic has come up a few times, usually in connection with Circle FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy doujinshi and its questionable assessment of the ship's interior layout as a fanmade work. I'm afraid I don't remember offhand who it was who posted it... but it was at least a year ago.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    As a casual Star Wars enjoyer, breaking points like this are a bit beyond what I can properly understand. I've never been invested in the deep lore of the Expanded Universe so most of what gets the fandom upset goes right over my head. I'm rather happy to just take these stories as they come and weigh them on their individual merits. (I'll spare everyone the engineer's rant about diverging vs. collimating beams.) Most of what I see when I look at the flaws in Disney-era Star Wars is the new heads at LucasFilm struggling to get to grips with what their audience wants from Star Wars. They're still at the point of building stories around existing characters and set pieces they know (or think) the fans already like instead of considering what makes a Star Wars story fun and engaging. The Acolyte is hardcore pandering to fans of the Jedi, but it's kind of dull because the Jedi themselves aren't relatable or interesting characters. As long as everyone's doing what's right for them as an individual, it's all good. 👍
  5. Seto Kaiba
    True, Uwe Boll's gleeful incompetence in the director's seat made him the undisputed king of awful adaptations. His schlock's usually unwatchable because it's bad on every level. Andzrej Bartkowiak's Doom was undeniably a bad movie, but it was a fun bad movie because it was still competently produced despite every single creative decision that went into it being wrong. Borderlands looks like it's shaping up to be another one of those competently produced, but creatively tone-deaf, adaptations that could best be described as "entertainingly wrong".
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Man, they weren't kidding... the prequels really DO have a meme for everything! Seriously though, there seem to be plenty of Star Wars fans willing to find and acknowledge both the good and the bad in pre- and post-Disney material.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    No, I'm more of a sadist. 😅 As to why I haven't dropped HIGHSPEED Etoile... well, I'm something of a completionist by nature and dropping a series partway through has never really felt right to me. Those rare occasions where I have dropped a title partway were because the story did something so heinous, offensive, or stupid that I couldn't bear to look at it anymore. Some of my favorite titles are shows that had a rough start but later hit their stride and became something amazing, the most recent example being Star Wars's Andor, so there's also an element of me hoping one of these scrubs will surprise me. Even a badly written title can sometimes be so gloriously insane that it becomes entertaining in an entirely inappropriate way, like what happened to Birdie Wing. The few anime titles I've dropped partway were mostly because they took their fanservice to genuinely creepy and questionable places (e.g. Strike Witches, Stratos4) or because the story became such a dumpster fire I simply couldn't pick it up without cringing. The only title I've dropped this year so far is Tadaima, Okaeri... which I dropped mainly because the show's story comes off as an excuse plot wrapped around the author's fetish and because the series fumbles its own premise so hard chasing that fetish that it's actually kind of offensive and laughable at the same time. I'm on the fence about Mushoku Tensei, since its otherwise capably-written isekai fantasy story has several truly revolting moments of sex offender behavior by its protagonist that've left me seriously thinking someone ought to call the cops on the light novel's author. HIGHSPEED Etoile is unmistakably bad, for sure. It's not So Bad It's Good or So Bad It's Awful... it's just kind of there doing a bad enough job to be bland and insipid and boring while not actually being offensive. If I had to pick a word for it, it's misguided. It could've been an interesting racing anime if the writers had any idea how to make racing interesting, but instead it's a story where racing happens and the protagonist isn't really engaged with it. I'm watching a disaster unfold in slow motion, and the suspense is killing me... especially since the studio animating it is the same one that did the 3D animation for Initial D and Initial D Second Stage. It's Studio A-CAT's first ever original work, and probably their last if this keeps up.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Each version of the story has its virtues and its flaws... I'm just glad that we're finally going to start seeing global releases that are on par with what the Japanese domestic market gets in terms of feature content. Hopefully this and the Macross II Kickstarter run by Animeigo set the tone, and we see a similar effort made for the releases of Macross 7, Macross Zero, Macross Frontier, and Macross Delta. 😀
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Spring '24 is limping into the home stretch... I have to admit, I'm kind of upset with Bartender: Glass of God. Its final story arc predictably decided to delve into the faux-philosophical advice-giving bartender's own trauma, and it decided to do so by trivializing depression and suicide. Kinda wondering how many of the characters in this show are alcoholics... most people don't have a list of dozens of cocktails they want to try, or go bar-hopping multiple nights a week. Oddly, The Irregular at Magic High School seems to have become one of the more interesting titles this season thanks to the latest story arc having a very different focus from the previous two. Instead of focusing on Tatsuya being the most broken MFer around and curbstomping literally everyone who looks at him funny, they're focusing on worldbuilding and the larger setting. There's some actually pretty good stuff coming out of it now related to the international balance of power based on strategic magic, the implications that magic's importance to the military has for education, the pitfalls of relying on conventional/standardized measures of academic/athletic ability to measure a person's worth and how those can miss exceptional talents, and even the ethical and practical concerns of autonomous unmanned weapons as a substitute for living soldiers. Seasons one and two did not thrill me, but this has me about ready to start looking up the light novel. At the very least, HIGHSPEED Etoile remains a completely irredeemable turd... there's something to be said for its consistency, if nothing else. This latest episode confirms explicitly that Rin's useless and that they would actually do better to take her out of the car and let the car's AI drive. After she gets in an accident and passes out during a qualifying round, the car's AI driving autonomously without her sets new lap records. 🤣
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Called it... this is going to be Doom movie levels of bad. 🤣 That kind of makes me want to see it, just to be behold a beautiful disaster unfolding.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Plus is the fifth title overall, but the second title chronologically in the main Macross timeline... the other three are a movie of the original series, an epilogue OVA, and an alternate universe story. There are quite a lot of titles set after Macross Plus though. There's not, AFAIK, a mdoern box set for the original series available outside Japan due to it having a different licensee.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    In your haste to post more of your performative outrage, you misread my post at several different points, but rather than getting into that let's just dig into the meat of this. AllTheAnime's UK storefront does appear to have updated the list price to be inclusive of VAT earlier today. It previously showed a price of 99.99 GBP which was not inclusive of VAT, and others here based complaints about "unfair" pricing based on that. If you'd read the thread, you'd know I did exactly the same check you did just yesterday and got that different result. 🙄 Even if the 149.99 GBP price listed as MSRP on the corrected page is now inclusive of VAT, the price point difference between US and UK sales is still negligible at a mere $10.59 US. 149.99 GBP is equivalent to $190.80 at current exchange rates, and the US full retail price would be $201.39 with average sales tax. With the Crunchyroll store discount, that trivial advantage reverses itself into the US edition being about $9.55 cheaper at $181.25 excl. any other discounts or coupons. Effectively, we're still at price parity here across regions, so your outrage still rings false. Have you considered that it might be that your argument has some gaping, Zentradi mothership-sized holes in it instead?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Sorry, but no. This "anger" is motsly just disingenuous performative outrage from people who were too lazy to read or stubbornly determined to ignore reality. Yes, MSRP is high. It's a Limited Edition set. That's normal... you might not like it, but it's normal for that kind of product. Yes, MSRP is more than the special limited-time discounted "early bird" price... but that's true in all of the regions. The pricing is effectively the same in all regions both at MSRP and after the limited time "early bird" discounts. The UK MSRP listed on AllTheAnime's site is 149.99 GBP, or approximately $191 US... but that doesn't include VAT, which bumps that price to $228.95 compared to the US average price with tax being approximately $201.39. The discounted pricing is effectively at parity too, with US consumers paying just about $160 in that limited time pricing while UK and French customers are paying about $154. The US customers actually have a slight advantage in that discounted pricing for members at Crunchyroll's store is an all-the-time discount rather than a temporary one. It's true that there won't be an independent release of the OVA version immediately, but the distributor's going to want to milk this license for all they can so it's a fairly safe bet we will indeed see a separate Blu-ray set with the OVAs later at a more agreeable price point. It's Limited Edition merch... it is inherently predatory bullshit driven by FOMO. That said, there are a lot of complaints like yours that are seemingly based on false or incomplete information or seem designed to be disingenuous... like complaining that the US discounts are "limited time" when the same is true for the other regions too and transparently stated directly on AllTheAnime's website. 🙄
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Because it's functionally equivalent to the sales tax that would factor into the price of the goods if you purchased them in the US. It's a non-negotiable part of the final cost of the item paid by the consumer. French law requires that applicable taxes be included in the advertised price of goods and services, so AllTheAnime's French online store includes the VAT in the advertised price. UK law does not require that, which is why the UK price looks lower than it actually is on checkout similar to how US prices don't include tax. No, they didn't. 🤣 Crunchyroll's store has the Macross Plus box set listed at MSRP, but then has discounts that are applied automatically at checkout AND coupon codes advertised directly on their own website to further reduce the price to approximate parity with what European consumers are paying. If they're trying to fleece us by doing that, they're not doing a very good job of it. Seriously, this accusation is just silly on the face of it and people need to stop making it. It's OK if you got sticker shock over the bullsh*t prices of Limited Edition merch. Limited Edition pricing is inherently exploitative because it's amortizing production costs across smaller production runs and trying to cash in on FOMO. Nobody is forcing you to buy it, and it'll be available later (or at the same time in select markets) without the extras at a much more agreedable price. There's nothing about this price is that is at all unusual for a limited-edition anime box set with these kind of extra features. Those prices have ALWAYS been steep, especially in the Japanese domestic market.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    As a casual Star Wars viewer, I definitely don't feel like the trailers for The Acolyte warned me to lower my expectations for the series. IMO, both the trailers and the extended preview for The Acolyte made the series look far more action-focused and exciting than what we actually got. They also made it look a LOT more professional-feeling and polished than the finished product by showcasing the action rather than the writing and omitting the truly cringeworthy aspects of the scenes they'd used for the promotional materials like Mae's unintentionally hilarious tendency to pose dramatically and challenge Jedi to "attack [her] with all [their] strength". I had the same thought. Specifically, the Jedi in The Acolyte remind me a lot of the Vulcans from Star Trek: Enterprise. They exhude that same arrogant belief in their own superiority, they show the same unwillingness to consider evidence that contradicts their own conclusions until hard evidence leaves their view in tatters, and they show similar cracks in their emotional reserve where irritation leaks out into snide and snippy responses when one of their perceived inferiors isn't toeing the line. Master Sol is no exception to most of this too. Look at how readily he dismisses Yord's views out of hand except when they align to his own desires. Lee Jung-jae's delivery as Master Sol reminds me a lot of Gary Graham's performance as Minister Soval later in Enterprise's run after his character's racist views toward Humans had softened.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    If you use the coupon codes previously mentioned, the price difference is only about $19, not $50. Way too many people here are blowing this out of proportion. Limited Edition releases are ALWAYS stupidly expensive, especially for anime, and most of the price difference people are seeing is because the US release is being sold at MSRP if you don't use the discount codes and because the UK price posted doesn't include VAT until you actually put it in your cart.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    You clearly did, considering you forgot to account for it in the final price you converted to US dollars. As for why it's so expensive, I think the obvious answer is this is a low volume product by dint of being limited edition. They have to amortize the costs for licensing all of that additional material in the purchase price If they want to make a profit.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... not s'much. You're forgetting that those European prices aren't all-inclusive either. You've forgotten the Value Added Tax. The base price might say 99.99 GBP, but that's 119.99 GBP with VAT factored in, or about $153.47 at the current exchange rate. The French are paying 139.99 euro for the same, which is $152.52. (VAT's 20% in the UK and France, if you were wondering... while US sales tax averages 5-7%.) And that's only considering the "early bird special" pricing with limited unit numbers in smaller markets... the suggested retail price that they list is actually almost exactly we'd be paying without discounts (~$190). Crunchyroll is basically charging non-subscribers a premium to order it through their store... but if you actually use the discount codes the price delta between what we're paying and what our friends in Europe are paying is only about $19 US. That's hardly extortionate. (Esp. when you consider how much more they likely had to pay for the legacy English audio tracks.) (For anyone wondering, I did go in and set up dummy orders to check the actual prices... I used 10 Downing Street and 57 Rue de Varenne as addresses to check if there'd be shipping costs, it seems we all get free shipping out of this extravagant price tag.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how many folks here cheerfully plonk down comparable (and larger) sums for the latest DX Chogokin and Arcadia offerings, I'm not sure this could be called "$100 too expensive" for most. And there's going to be a regular edition coming out a bit after the "Ultimate" one at a far more reasonable price point anyway.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Even if she does, there's no payoff. Master Indara's less a character than she is a plot device, and it's pretty clear they only cast Carrie-Anne Moss to play her for the sake of the trailers to convince prospective xennial viewers this'd be a spectacular martial arts feature like The Matrix. (Which is a REALLY dated reference if you think about it. They were leaning on borrowed gloss from a TWENTY-FIVE YEAR OLD movie to sell this series to us.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    ... so it is. $179.66 at the current rate of 1:155.85, so if you get all the discounts the US release is slightly cheaper than the Japanese one... and you won't have to pay another $40 or so on top in shipping.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It's 15 off the discounted price if you stack it with the Crunchyroll member discount, as far as I can tell. Crunchyroll's member discount shaves $19 off the top, bringing it to $170.99 plus tax and with free shipping.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I placed my order... the Crunchyroll member discount and coupon code took a neat little chunk off the top and the shipping's free. The asking price didn't seem that outrageous to me. Then again, my standards have probably been skewed pretty badly by years and years of paying the already hefty prices fans in Japan are shelling out for "limited edition" media PLUS international shipping. 😅
  24. Seto Kaiba
    By sheer coincidence, I noticed a minor call forward in The Acolyte's first episode. The planet that... ... first appeared in Star Wars: the Clone Wars as the setting for a brief story arc where the son of an assassinated Separatist senator derailed peace talks on Mandalore and tried to hire the Death Watch to assassinate Count Dooku as revenge. That episode just happened to be next on my watch-through of Clone Wars after watching The Acolyte.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Goin' in for number two... For all Disney+'s usual polish, I really cannot get past how there's this weird imbalance of production values where set design, wardrobe design, and the writing make this feel a lot lower budget than it is. Even though I didn't care for Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Book of Boba Fett, both were still very polished-looking, professional-feeling undertakings that felt like their main flaw was just an unnecessary or underdeveloped premise. The Acolyte weirdly feels like it lacks that polish and professional tone... like it's a high-budget fan film. Believing whatever you're told without evidence seems to be a bit of a theme with this series. OK, I'll admit it... I asked for non-heroic Jedi and the The Acolyte delivered exactly what I literally asked for. I was just expecting something more... fun? Personable? Capable of displaying more emotions than "deadpan" and "dull surprise"? These Jedi are non-heroic, but it's mostly just because they're awful judges of character and kind of sh*tty people. Which is realistic, I guess, it's just not very fun or interesting. This really is just a full-on f***ing idiot plot. This story can ONLY occur because everyone in it is behaving like the biggest idiot possible at all times. Seriously. What the hell. If this is how the Jedi protected the peace in the Republic for thousands of years, it's amazing it took another 113 years for them to get Order 66'd. There it is... the obligatory "I have a bad feeling about this". On the whole, The Acolyte's second episode was definitely better than the first. It has all the same problems, but the plot feels at least a little more together and flows better from set piece to set piece. It's still an idiot plot, but it's no longer an incoherent one. If it were handled differently - like having civilian law enforcement trying to solve these murders instead of the Jedi - The Acolyte could be an interesting story about hunting a killer out for revenge across the stars. Its main narrative flaw is that most of its cast are Jedi. They've got some good actors here but their performances come across as wooden and boring because they're playing characters for whom displays of emotion are fundamentally out of character. By the same token, the antagonist's performance comes across just as bland and insipid despite a capable actress the character is limited to the extremes of just a few emotions like anger and sorrow. So it leaves just two people in the story thus far who actually behave like relatable people, so the performances don't really shine because they're sharing every scene with flat characters. The Jedi just aren't relatable as characters. Audiences can relate to Din Djarin's desire to protect the Child, to Boba Fett's desire for a better life, to Obi-Wan's lingering guilt over Anakin, or to Cassian Andor's smoldering discontent with the injustices he suffers. There's nothing to relate to in Sol, Indara, Yord, etc. thus far. Even Osha's participation in the story seems little more than incidental.
×
×
  • Create New...