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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, that's fairly easy to explain... because it's the same explanation that's behind everything else Robotech does. Put simply, Robotech manages to continue limping along where any sensible brand would've packed it in and gone home because they and their licensees will cut any and every corner that can be cut in order to keep development and production costs low enough to turn a profit from the couple thousand fans who still open their wallets for the franchise. They don't care if it negatively impacts quality, because the remaining Robotech fans are so desperate to validate their faith in the brand that they'll buy most anything. Titan Comics picked up Robotech because the license was dirt cheap, and kept costs down on the production of the comic by tracing everything that could be traced to avoid having to draw things themselves while half-assing the writing. This is why the comic's characters have so many unnatural-looking poses and facial expressions. The reason so many of the Titan comic's action panels look like poorly-composited Photoshop collages of Macross lineart is because that's exactly what they usually are. Even if Diamond overships to inflate their sales numbers for the comic, Titan still turns a modest profit on the comic because of all the corners they cut making it. The same aggressive corner-cutting prevails in every part of the Robotech franchise. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was made on the cheap by using the cheapest animators HG was able to find (the interns at DR Movie), the cheapest orchestra money could rent, and all the new design work was done in-house by Tommy himself on his pittance of a salary. The one and only place they couldn't cut corners was the voice actor budget, since the returning voice actors are all SAG members now they had to pay guild rates... so a huge chunk of its tiny budget went to that. Their current crop of toy and game licensees are all itty-bitty indie outfits, two of whom were literal toy bootleggers, who are producing limited edition merch in tiny production runs (in some cases as small as 200 pieces) or using the cheapest materials possible (e.g. miniatures for board games being printed cardstock instead of plastic) due to low demand while hiding behind "limited edition" to justify a premium price tag.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't they basically do that twelve years ago as part of the "special edition" Shadow Chronicles DVD?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    For added entertainment value, this is the first actual candid piece of news about the film project in its twelve year history... and it's one of the directors approached about the film very bluntly stating that a live action movie just isn't realistic because the brand's too obscure.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    No, it's dead... these clowns couldn't get their own fans to cough up $500k to resuscitate a property they allegedly love, and even Harmony Gold itself balked at the idea of spending $1 million on continuing Shadow Chronicles. Nobody's going to throw $100+ million at Robotech.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Either that or the publisher's made such a pig's ear of the layout and print quality that they keep rejecting proof prints of the book.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I got fully caught up with Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? last night, and I'm pretty unimpressed with it as a show. They did tone the fanservice down a bit for an episode or two, but it's back in full force shortly thereafter thanks to Medhi's overly competitive mom. The recurring plot device that the moms (or at least Mamako) have new powers as the plot demands every time it's convenient makes the story as a whole rather dull, since Masato never really gets a chance to grow or do anything himself. He's just slowly succumbing to being smothered by his increasingly creepy-clingy mom. King Oedipus, call your agent.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Definitely looking forward to Luigi's Mansion 3. I never played the original, but I enjoyed the hell out of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon on the 3DS.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Really, unless Season 4 is a long one a gecko ending is probably a good thing. That way we won't have to watch the people who've been the protagonists thus far start putting on the reich, and having Eren try to out-Hitler the setting's Nazi equivalent.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    GAGraphic: "Master File books are always two months late" Mikimoto: "Hold my sake."
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Quite a ways, from the sound of it... if Season 3 is set to end with them discovering the sea. Unfortunately, when they finally start to properly build on the revelations from the basement that's where the story becomes a seething morass of human ugliness and everything that might've once been heroic about the characters is lost.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    But has it... I've found much of the recent stuff in the manga objectionable, as heavily nationalistic as it's become. It's quite a turn for the protagonists to essentially suddenly become Nazis.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    As someone who's not been following the anime, how far did that season actually advance the story?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    After War Gundam X is something of an acquired taste, but I remember finding it rather enjoyable. Cyborg 009: the Cyborg Soldier was a pretty good show too. I think I watched the dub of that one many a year ago on cable in college.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Still soldiering on through Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?, and it does actually get a little better... but just a little. The whole story arc with Wise's mom kind of takes this story from being The Alleged Satire to being kind of quietly unsettling. The game already felt a little odd as a premise, since the goal seems less like improving parent-child relations and more like squashing any sign of independence or rebellion out of the kids who enter it. Masato's not wanting to be constantly smothered by his overly clingy mother (who acts more like his girlfriend) is treated like a bad thing. It crossed the line into really eyebrow-raising stuff with Wise's story arc though. It's less a story of a mother trying to repair relations with her estranged daughter and more a clear-cut case of a parent who lost custody of her child in a divorce abducting said child (very much against her will) and going on the run, then abandoning said child at earliest opportunity to troll for dick in a consequence-free environment. It's a shame that Wise never really landed a good hit on her, as it would have been fodder for an excellent BEGONE THOT meme. Mamako's incessant, girlfriend-like clinginess WRT her son is unhealthy enough, but holy cr*p are the other mothers in the game toxic as f*ck.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Seems a safe bet they're counting on Raphtalia's popularity with the kind of people who say "waifu" unironically to keep the show afloat. She was basically the breakout star of the TV anime, thanks to the show's more even focus on the supporting cast. The light novel put a lot of effort into trying to make Rishia Ivyred (the girl Itsuki kicks out of his party under false pretenses) into the Designated Best Girl via massive amounts of pity before finally giving up. Unless they tweak the story a bit, Raphtalia's kind of out of focus for the next couple story arcs because she's become Naofumi's hyper-competent sidekick and it's Rishia getting all his attention because she's depressed to the point of attempting suicide over Itsuki kicking her out (kinda glad season one toned that the f*ck down, TBH.) and then the spirit tortoise girl who steals all the attention by being vague as hell.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    They must be connected to those new Stormtroopers with the bright red armor... Oh wait... not that one... Honestly, I think there's more to fear from the Slav Trooper up there than the Sith Trooper.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    This is from Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye, about twenty-five minutes in. This was a joint offensive on the part of the Macross Frontier fleet's NUNS and SMS... a preemptive attack on a Vajra hive that was close enough to potentially threaten the Macross Frontier fleet. The advance reconnaissance suggested that the Vajra had destroyed a Boddole Zer-class mobile fortress and made their nest in the wreckage approximately 50 years before being encountered by the Frontier fleet. Much like how the first big battle in Macross Frontier (Ep.7) occurred concurrently with Sheryl's live concert and the fold songs from Sheryl reached the battlefield via her earring, Ranka's fold songs similarly reach the battlefield and disorient the Vajra during this offensive (from her live concert where she performs Rainbow Colored Bear and Love is a Dogfight). This battle was pretty much the point where Alto started to understand that the Vajra were Not So Different, witnessing the soldiers catching and trying to save their injured comrades while he was fighting inside the Bishop-class Vajra hive ship. Alto gets badly injured in the battle as well, so he and Sheryl have a moment after he's medevac'd and returned to the fleet. (Shortly after his wounds are treated, the Macross Frontier NUNS and Frontier Government move against the Galaxy fleet's conspirators with Special Forces troops using weapons designed for anti-cyborg combat and arrest Sheryl for espionage at the same time. That's... quite an assumption, to say the least. Macross: Do You Remember Love? designs were essentially supplanting the TV series ones before Harmony Gold ever became a thorn in Big West's side. Kawamori and co. just seem to like the Do You Remember Love? designs better, with Macross II: Lovers Again, Macross Plus, and Macross 7 all opting to use DYRL? designs over TV ones years before HG began to interfere with Macross licensing. (IIRC, Macross II was essentially the only time a SDF Macross Zentradi mothership ever shows up outside the original series. The design was reused for the spacedock for the Macross Cannon-class gunships.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    ... ugh, they should've quit while they were ahead. The Rising of the Shield Hero anime had exhausted all the actually-interesting parts of the light novel in its first season. What made the story interesting was that Naofumi was more or less the polar opposite of the typical Isekai protagonist: underpowered to the point of uselessness and a horrible misanthrope to boot. After having his name cleared by the queen of Melromarc and taking off for Cal Mira, Naofumi wasn't a misanthrope anymore and was rapidly becoming the standard overpowered Isekai protagonist... and the spirit tortoise arc just drags on and on and on.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Short of the possibility of saying something that crosses the line into fraud? Not a lot... Remember, Carl Macek used to tell people all the time that he created Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA and had "his" stories animated in Japan. Even then, the consequences only really came into it because Robotech fans found their attempt to surf Carl Macek's coffin to the half-million dollar pledge goal distasteful and the pitch itself unpalatable because it was another Robotech 1 7/8: Approximately the Sentinels pitch... something that's rapidly becoming the fandom's berserk button. He's batting a perfect zero so far... every single claim Harmony Gold has made about who's involved has ended up being revealed to be false, so nobody has any reason to expect this one is any different. Couldn't they look forward to something a little less unpleasant instead, like dental surgery?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah it just looks a bit odd because the art that was done for Master File is lit more realistically than the series.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Those are fold boosters. If you recall, in Macross Frontier's sixth episode we see RVF-171s sortieing for advance recon ahead of the Frontier fleet's mission to reinforce the survivors of the Macross Galaxy fleet. Because the Aegis Pack gets in the way of center-mounting the booster, all the RVF-171s that deployed mounted one fold booster on the top of each wing. (About 12:40 in the episode.) Sound boosters were normally for performers, so they needed the Sound Energy System to power them in the first place.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    All told, I think this specific brand of (MMO)RPG-themed Isekai storytelling has worn out its welcome. We got a few really good, innovative titles out of it like Overlord... but it was swiftly overwhelmed by cut-rate imitators with increasingly convoluted titles like Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku O! or The Rising of the Shield Hero that were initially interesting but quickly revealed themselves as one-trick ponies, leading to crap like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and Isekai Cheat Magician.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Really, it's a bad sign when I sit down to watch a series and after about ten minutes have to ask myself why I haven't turned it off yet. I'd like to think I've got a pretty open mind when it comes to entertainment, but this season seems to have some of the most spectacularly lazy, stupid, and shameless garbage on the air. It's to the point where I'm honestly left wondering how some of these shows got approved at all. It's like the industry just collectively stopped trying this year. Isekai Cheat Magician might as well retitle itself Form Letter Isekai Series, given that every aspect of the series from its story and setting down to its design works and animation is so incredibly generic that you can practically feel the staff's boredom leaking through the TV. I'd call it half-assed, but really that makes it sound like they might've been trying at some point... even quarter-assed is generous. It's so phoned-in the OP should've just been ninety seconds of fax machine noises. Do You Love Your Mother and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks is about the most shamelessly stupid thing I've seen this year. Its TVTropes page claims that the series is actually meant to be a parody/satire of the overused Not-Blood-Related-Familial-Love-Interest trope, but if it IS satire it's so badly done that there's no obvious difference between mocking the trope and embracing it wholeheartedly. About the only thing that prevented my eyes from rolling clean out of my head in the first episode was a "hey, it's that voice!" moment when I found that Shirase is voiced by Satomi Arai, in precisely the same style she used when she was voicing Hata-san in Seitokai Yakuindomo (a MUCH funnier show). I put on episode 2 today and found that, if anything, episode 2 is slightly worse than episode 1, including standard fanservice fantasy crap like clothes-eating slimes and a lot of accidental innuendo. Started Saiyuki Reload: Blast to wash the bad taste out of my mouth and found the first episode of THAT pretty good. After Tokuyama Hidenori's OPs for the original Gensomaden Saiyuki anime and BUZZLIP's "Wild Rock" for Saiyuki Reload, GRANRODEO feels a bit out of place among the franchise's OPs. Not a bad tune, but it just feels odd, in kind of the same way Star Trek: Enterprise did when they went with a pop ballad instead of an orchestral OP. Couldn't help noticing Sanzo's gun now uses the sound effect of an actual gun, rather than the downmixed pew pew magical sound it used in previous titles.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, no data has been revealed that would indicate whether the license is a per annum renewal option or it a fixed multi-year term. The license has never had to be aired in a court of law, which is about the only way we'd ever get details about its terms. We don't even know when Warner Bros dropped the Robotech live action movie license because the minimal "news" coverage the project got never really progressed past the occasional short piece (falsely) claiming that someone or other had been tapped to direct or write the film. My guess would be that it was a five or seven year license in both cases, with an option to renew/extend should the studio decide to move forward with production... meaning Sony has to decide to sh*t or get off the pot in either 2020 or 2022. I'm guessing, given that they didn't know if they would be able to renew their license with Tatsunoko, that Harmony Gold wrote Sony a five year license terminating in 2020 unless extended. It's probably not a case of Harmony Gold's usual chicanery, as it's fairly common practice for Hollywood studios to react to a particular title being a smash hit by buying up rights to similar titles... either to cash in on a trend if one forms, or simply to deny them to each other. Let's just say it's no accident that Warner Bros suddenly developed an interest in Robotech shortly after Paramount released the first of the Michael Bay Transformers movies to great acclaim and a box office return 50% bigger than even Paramount itself had expected. The Robotech license was picked up by Warner Bros because Robotech happened to be one of the contemporaries of the Transformers cartoon in 1985, and likewise featured giant transforming robots. It's highly probable that Sony's decision to pick up the license after it was let go by Warner Bros was motivated by the critic-defying box office success of Transformers: Age of Extinction in summer 2014. Like Warner Bros, Sony Pictures likely had no actual intention of ever making a movie... but holding onto the rights is a cheap way to have a potential competitor to Transformers should giant fighting robots become something which other studios start picking up on. Harmony Gold claims that what they secured was a renewal/extension of their existing licensing agreement with Tatsunoko, rather than any kind of reworked contract.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, IMO... the whole goal of the ISC is to shield the cockpit from high g-forces, so you'd naturally want it to be as close to the cockpit as possible to keep the pilot in the center of its effect. The longer nose on the Y/VF-25 appears to be a result of enlarging the avionics bay to accommodate optional hardware like the FCF-21b precision fire control booster unit used by the VF-25G or the AE-35 electronic warfare system booster used by the RVF-25. (Why this specialized equipment is modularized when they're still building special-purpose variants for the specific roles in question is not clear. It might be something similar to the VF-14's overlarge airframe being leveraged to make the aircraft easier to upgrade to extend its service life or add new capabilities.) Very likely yes, given that what we've seen for line art has all allegedly been the final prototype demonstrated for the NUNS in 2057 that was approved for adoption as the VF-24. Given the YF-24 is what the VF-25 and other 5th Generation VFs were derived from, it'd probably be more accurate to ask why the VF-25's shield was enlarged. I've got two separate, but potentially related, suspicions on this front: On the VF-19, we saw a reduction in anti-projectile shield size between the fighter's early mass production type (VF-19A thru E) and the more robust late mass production type (VF-19F and beyond), coupled with more visible use of the pinpoint barrier to provide a comprehensive defense. We see something similar with the YF-21/VF-22 as well as the VF-31, where they have much smaller anti-projectile shields and rely more on pinpoint barrier coverage for defense. The VF-25 seems to rely much more on its physical shield for defense, bolstering the already formidable ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor with a bolt-on plate of additional armor that nearly doubles this shield's thickness. Given the VF-24's technological superiority, it's possible it relies more on the pinpoint barrier where the VF-25 either has less generator output or needed that power in other parts of the airframe. Given the indicated technological superiority of Earth and the VF-24, it's possible the VF-25's shield was enlarged because the armor materials available for the shield and the rest of the fighter were inferior to the original YF-24 Evolution spec so they felt compelled to improve their defensive ability with a great big bolted-on slab of ASWAG.
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