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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that kinda settles it rather definitively... and means I'm going to have to bite my tongue and buy a copy of this book.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The Neo Glaug, which first appeared in the Sony PlayStation game Macross Plus Game Edition (2000). It was an unmanned two-mode (Fighter and GERWALK) variable fighter that was developed from the manned Variable Glaug as a competitor to the AIF-X-9 Ghost, incorporating the same Sharon Apple-derived AI technology. In Macross Plus Game Edition, the Neo Glaug intercepts Isamu while he's en route to Macross City and is defeated by him. The design the Neo Glaug is developed from in-universe, the Variable Glaug, appeared a year later in the 2001 Sega Dreamcast game Macross M3 as the signature mecha of Dancing Skulls ace Moaramia Jifon Jenius... being a Zentradi-developed 3rd Generation-equivalent variable fighter created by anti-government forces using a stolen VF-4 Lightning III and Zentradi overtechnology. The design later fell into New UN Government hands and a miclone-compatible version was produced. A manned version of the Neo Glaug, dubbed the Neo Glaug bis, appears in Macross the Ride as an Advanced Variable Fighter (4th Generation VF) equivalent produced by the New Nile Arsenal and General Galaxy and operated by the anti-government group Fasces, who are leftovers of the Latence faction from Macross VF-X2. Those aren't really unmanned fighters, per se... they're remotely operated target drones. Much like the real world militaries, the New UN Forces sometimes dispose of older model fighters that've been retired by converting them into remotely operated drones so pilots operating newer aircraft can train with live weapons against moving targets. (Those were, AFAIK, VF-11A units that had not been updated to the VF-11B standard when production began in earnest.) (Various books, including Master File volumes, have indicated that this was a fate met by many older model VFs and redundant variants that weren't sold off to civilians. The VF-1Ls apparently all met their end as remotely operated QVF-1 target aircraft for live weapons training.) It looks like it only has the two engines, but having extra engines comes with a significant increase in weight that degrades the improvement in performance from all that thrust. The VF-27's four engines make it quite a bit heavier than the typical VF of its generation, so a twin-engine VF with more power behind the individual engines like the Sv-262 Draken III can achieve very similar performance because it's also significantly lighter. The VF-27 and YF-29 appear to have had four engines not necessarily because they needed the massive thrust they provided, but because they needed the energy output of four thermonuclear reactors to power all their odds and ends. (The twin-engine YF-27-5 needed to carry an additional generator on one of its wings to power its beam gunpod.) Since Delta Flight's VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds are already well above production spec, my guess would be that this new foe will not be significantly more advanced or powerful than Windermere IV's Aerial Knights.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Finished To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts today, and it was probably one of the most lame, half-hearted endings I've ever seen. Hank gets beat up by Cain during a raid on a fortress occupied by Cain's newly declared nation of New Patria, then inexplicably goes Super Saiyan - yes, you read that right - punches Cain once, and the fight is just over for no reason. Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks may well be one of the very worst, most asinine things I have ever watched. This steaming turd makes me so disgusted with the light novel's author, the studio, and everyone involved with it, I would have believed you if you'd told me that famously inaccurate Miyazaki quote about anime being a mistake was legit if you told me he was talking about this TV series. It manages to combine all of my disgust with wildly inappropriate fanservice from Strike Witches with all of my disgust with terrible writing from Angel Links into some kind of loathing singularity. Kill this with white phosphorus because fire ain't cutting it. One Punch Man's second season proved to be pretty disappointing too. It built up a lot, but the animation quality was subpar compared to the previous season and the buildup isn't rewarded with any payoff... Saitama oneshots Centchoro, Garou gets rescued by the Monster Association, and it just sort of stops before anything could be depicted regarding the Hero Association's raid on the Monster Association.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The last unmanned VF we got didn't have a Battroid mode at all... Since we were promised a different antagonist for this new movie, my thoughts went from the strong VF-14 resemblance to the Elgersoln Gustav that Fasces was using as their answer to the VF-171 c.2058 in Macross the Ride.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    We'll probably be chewing over that one in the Mecha Discussion thread for a while... at least until we something more final for the design.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, no kidding.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Perhaps... then again, perhaps not. Macross Delta did kind of mark another of the franchise's swings back towards the passively stealthy aircraft designs. General Galaxy was very big on fully internalizing armaments on their 3rd and 4th Generation concepts like the VF-14 Vampire and VF-22 Sturmvogel II. The VF-14 had built-in beam machineguns, internal missile bays, and an internal gunpod storage bay, and the VF-22 went one further with an internal bomb bay, dual internal gunpod mounts, and internal micro-missile launchers. Shinsei Industry's school of design is substantially more conventional and conservative, relying more on external and conformal mounting points than internal ones. Just because the armaments aren't immediately obvious doesn't mean they aren't there... e.g. the VF-14, VF-22, Sv-262, etc. Or just a really good wraparound holographic monitor system and armored canopy, like the Draken III had. ... Berger Stone does have that slightly untrustworthy air of the used Valkyrie salesman... Considering Keith's wind-riding was enough to incur some serious shop time (enough to have him switch to another aircraft), they probably aren't stressed for too much more than the 1,955kNx2 they've got as stock. Yeah, Windermere IV likely isn't their only customer... given how limited Windermere's finances are. Then again, our best possible candidate for a SV Works mass production aircraft based on requirements was the VF-22... which was explicitly an anti-VF VF, the SV Works's turf. Part of the peace process mentioned in the movie will probably include Windermere IV having to surrender part of its war materiel, including the Sigur Berrentzs.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So we've got this thing as a teaser for a new VF to be introduced in Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. First blush reaction, this looks like a minimally-tweaked version of one of the early VF-27 drafts I remember seeing in Shoji Kawamori: the View Point of Visionary Creator years ago. The lack of an obvious canopy, the large sensor blisters, its delta wing with through-wing engine nacelles, small inward-canted stabilizers, etc. all positively scream General Galaxy's handiwork. This looks like nothing quite so much as a direct descendant of the VF-14. Five'll get you twenty this is either a new Dian Cecht SV Works unit or another General Galaxy 5th Generation main VF (perhaps an economized VF-27 derivative). Oh, almost certainly. Really, it's more a matter of whether or not a government in Windermere IV's position could afford them. Hard to say, since the Sv-262 Draken III is such a painfully unbalanced design... crippling overspecialization is a real thing, and the Draken III is its poster child. None of which we are presently aware. This could, of course, change at any time in a side story manga, light novel, etc. Do they have that infrastructure, though? They were explicitly leaning on the Epsilon Foundation and its subsidiaries for all of their equipment needs. They have the technical training to repair and maintain the Sv-262s they had, but do they have the factories and raw materials they need to actually make replacement parts? My guess would be "no". General Galaxy doesn't own the SV Works in the 2060s, they sold them off to an Epsilon Foundation subsidiary named Dian Cecht. The Dian Cecht SV Works were the ones who developed the Draken III. They have half a Protoculture ship at this point, they left a pretty big chunk of it behind on Ragna... and since its abilities largely depended on fold song, they're SOL now that their fold singer is out of commission after burning out his runes to power it during their conflict with the New UN Government.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Robotech 3000 was such a complete non-starter that it was more like it failed to pass POST. Can't reboot what never booted. Or a "take that", if they're deliberately taking the piss out of it... this godawful Robotech comic honestly felt like a bass-ackwards attempt at self-parody for a while. Doubly so when you consider that all of the references to the various past failures of the Robotech franchise like Robotech II: the Sentinels, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, Robotech: the Movie, and Robotech 3000 (but surprisingly not Robotech Academy) were done specifically so that the comic could write them AND the Masters Saga and New Generation out of existence entirely in favor of a new Macross-focused story. It was a piss-take, and a setup to write that garbage out of their canon the way HG was progressively writing it out of the official one.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    In what sense is it a reboot? They never made the series beyond a single trailer, and what we see is just a handful of characters from that embarrassingly awful trailer...
  11. Seto Kaiba
    There are a few publications that have glossaries of key terms but not much more than that.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Really, the only artist's error here is working on this comic... this will definitely not be going on their resumes when they're done. Mind you, the worse sin here is definitely the writer's. It's transparently obvious they're back to the old school ripoff behavior of Antarctic Press, throwing any and every piece of sh*t at the wall in the hopes that one will stick. It's the usual Robotech comic book affair... a disgraceful mess without the slightest trace of artistic integrity or dignity. Robotech 3000 was not a reboot... it was developed as a far-future sequel/spinoff to the Robotech television series. Robotech was rebooted for the first - and thus far, only - time in 2001 after Harmony Gold cancelled all development of Robotech 3000 for the second time and brought in Tommy Yune to replace Carl Macek as franchise creative director.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, kinda... it's not like they're going to starve thanks to their economy being built almost exclusively on agriculture, but they've lost the offworld market for their produce thanks to it having been used to spread Var syndrome. The Epsilon Foundation was almost certainly the secret buyer for their black market fold quartz, and now that Berger Stone's outed Epsilon's involvement (and himself with it), they've probably lost their only buyer as well as their source of advanced tech and weaponry. It'll be interesting to see if Epsilon's low-rent version of the fold wave system - the Fold Reheat - ever makes its way into VF designs by major aerospace defense firms like Shinsei and General Galaxy.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Slang that's even used directly in Macross publications like the Macross Frontier Pash! Animation File mook, which uses it as a synonym for "amazing" on several occasions.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, @Gubaba isn't on these boards anymore. Here's the link to his site: https://gubabablog.wordpress.com/
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well, for most things anyway... an automatic's chief virtue is that there really isn't a learning curve to using it. You put the shifter in D and you go. I've seen some pretty appalling things on test tracks over the years, including an awful lot of people who claim to have grown up with manual transmissions doing a pretty rubbish job with them. The big test drive events are kind of like torture. Oh, it absolutely is extra work. You just don't feel like it is once you're used to it to the point that it feels natural. The fact that it IS extra work is literally the historical reason semi-automatic and automatic transmissions were invented in the first place. It's not my intention to "deflate" the manual driving experience... you enjoy what you enjoy, and I have zero interest or stake in trying to change your mind. I was simply noting, in response to derisive remarks about people who prefer automatics, that the reason the automatic transmission was invented and became the industry standard is because it's a convenience feature. A lot of people just don't care to put in that small extra effort if they don't absolutely have to, especially when it comes coupled with the possibiliy of an error incurring a significant non-warranty repair bill. They don't want to have to think about how their car works, they just want it to work, and the automatic transmission helps fill that need. Convenience sells. That said, I do feel the age of the manual transmission is nearing its end as the push for better fuel-efficiency and lower emissions forces increasing amounts of powertrain computerization and automation. Hybrids, and then BEVs, are going to become the norm in the not too distant future and manual doesn't really fit into the picture of powertrain electrification.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Some people - a pretty significant percentage of 'em, anyways - want their car to "just work". They don't want to have to think about the nuts and bolts of what makes their car tick, they just want to enjoy the drive, listen to their music, or focus on the satnav system to get where they're going. Also, from my experience, proper shift timing is something that too many drivers simply don't have the patience to learn. "If you can't find it, grind it" is a very real, very disappointing phenomenon. Mind you, from my professional role in powertrain development and my interactions with ZF and Aisin, I'd question if there's even a future for the manual transmission now that the focus for improving performance, fuel efficiency, and emissions control has increasingly turned to electrification. You can still have a manual on a car equipped with a BSG, ISG, or a vehicle equipped with eAWD, but once you start getting into the realm of hybrid transmissions with mild- and plug-in hybrids it starts getting increasingly complicated and the best that's often possible is the faux-manual behavior of sport mode thanks to multiple torque sources in parallel and powersplit system designs, some of which are effectively outside of direct human control. In a few years, BSGs, ISGs, and powersplit MHEVs are going to be the new normal in order to meet the tightening CAFE and CARB requirements for emissions controls, never mind the more stringent emissions controls in Europe and China. With key European markets already moving to outlaw the sales of non-BEV cars within the next 30 years, odds are the push for electrification is going to make high voltage parallel and powersplit PHEVs the norm before long even in the US. There's just too much potential for the meatbag to destroy the transmission if there're emotors spinning parts of it rather than just the engine. Well, in America, that's because public transit is a poor people thing outside of city centers... and in true American fashion even lower-middle-class folks tend to see themselves more as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. That, and the fact that convenience always sells. People might grumble about the idea of autonomous cars, but people take to the idea of SAE Level 4 and 5 autonomy VERY quickly... just look at how many idiots nap behind the wheel of their Teslas, which are technically only Level 3 capable (and only just, at that, given how often they autonomously run into sh*t). Just wait 'til we hit Level 5 capability, and we'll start seeing autonomous vehicles delivering people who've shuffled off their mortal coil en route without the car even noticing. It's not delivery, it's dead people!
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It did get a bit better, but not by all that much. So far, it seems a pretty straight adaptation of the One Punch Man manga, which is fine. I don't care for the new OP though. Topping "The Hero ~ Set Fire to the Furious Fist" by JAM Project would've been a TALL order, and the new one doesn't even come close.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, she's not old enough... Lady M is said to have been researching the military potential of song in the immediate aftermath of the First Space War, meaning she'd be at least as old as Max (who was 52 at the start of Macross 7).
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well, technically both... it's kind of contextual, and in later Macross stories it may actually have become a matter of slang. Originally, in Macross: Do You Remember Love?, "deculture" was a Zentradi/Meltrandi expression of shock, amazement, outrage, and potentially disgust that could be translated as "shocking", "amazing", "bizarre", "unbelievable", or potentially even "gross". Tacking "Yak" onto the front makes it more emphatic, like saying "how revolting!" or "how strange!". It would depend on usage whether it were truly positive or negative. (The Japanese Wikipedia article actually compares the term's usage to the English interjection "Oh my god!" for multipurposefulness.) Based on a conversation Alto and Ranka have in the first Macross Frontier TV novel, the usage of "deculture" that crops up in later shows appears to be human slang not dissimilar to the American English slang usage of the word "sick"... heavily dated human slang, given that Alto teases her about that being old-fashioned. Tone and context are about all that stands between "Yak deculture" meaning "That's incredible!" and "That's pretty f*cked up". The way it's used in Macross: Do You Remember Love? is predominantly negative, since the Zentradi and Meltrandi find humanity's mixed-gender society confusing and more than a little disturbing. Later Macross titles, especially the Macross Frontier series, use it as a more positive expression.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Nobody in particular. No, really... she's a nameless background character who spends the entire Macross 7 TV series trying (and failing) to give Basara a bouquet of flowers because she's a fan of his. That's all. She has no bearing on or relevance to the plot.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Hack out the oft-repeated scenes of the same VF-11 getting blown up and its pilot spiritia-drained and Basara's VF-19 transforming, and you could probably take another hour or two off it. Sadly, that's what happens when you develop anime and spend most of your budget on music. Anime was on a razor-thin margin and tiny budget already...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    There's always the Macross novelizations, esp. the Macross the Ride light novel. @Gubaba is working on at least one Macross novelization, AFAIK. I've got another that's a WIP.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    No clue... it's supposed to be coming out next year sometime, so I'd assume we'll start seeing news about it as the year draws to a close. Macross seems to really like dropping trailers and teasers around the year-end holidays, so maybe we'll get something then. Nah. Big West made a mint on Walkure when they first debuted and everything I've heard suggests they're still making quite the profit from performances, media sales, and various otaku waifu BS. They're not going to turn down a chance to keep Walkure in the limelight as long as possible by voluntarily abandoning another two hour long commercial for their CDs thinly disguised as a movie. 20% feels exceedingly generous. Even Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure's additional and original battle scenes were pretty tame stuff and generally failed to satisfy, with the only new mechanical design being that truly hideous spare parts kludge Armored Pack for the VF-31. My guess would be that there will be the bare minimum of mecha action, just enough to justify putting the Macross title on the movie, and that otherwise the film will focus on the painfully underdeveloped Walkure characters. If they're adding a new one, I doubt they'll improve characterization much either since an entirely new member will have to be introduced. I often suspect Kawamori is over-credited and over-blamed for things in Macross. Like when Macross Delta came out and people on these very forums were tearing into him for the writing... which he had no hand in. He's a supervisor, sometimes a director, and he does mechanical designs. I doubt he's micromanaging every aspect of development and production. What's more, I doubt we'd want him to. We've seen what happens when you let famously auteur creators like Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas slip the leash, and the results are seldom pretty. Star Trek: the Next Generation season one and the Star Wars prequel trilogy, anyone?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    I can perhaps assist you there? I'll be attending.
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