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Seto Kaiba

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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, @Gubaba isn't on these boards anymore. Here's the link to his site: https://gubabablog.wordpress.com/
  4. 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.
  5. 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!
  6. 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.
  7. 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).
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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...
  11. 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.
  12. 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?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I can perhaps assist you there? I'll be attending.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    We're reasonably sure it isn't Basara, at least... given that the liner notes for the Fire Bomber album Re:Fire, which debuted in-universe in 2060, Basara still hasn't returned to the 37th large-scale long-distance emigrant fleet "Macross 7" after 13 years of wandering the galaxy. He didn't even turn up to record that 15th anniversary album with the band, he sent the guitar tracks to the label over the galaxy network.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Jeez... what the hell happened to the animation quality for One Punch Man season two? It looks like complete arse compared to season one.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    ? Basara leaves the 37th large-scale long-distance emigrant fleet in 2047 and never comes back... so no.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    It's not really a minority, I think... most of us here appreciate Macross 7, we're just not blind to its faults either. Basically, Macross 7 was a series with a great story and great music that suffers a lot from having been made twice as long as it needed to be. The main plot doesn't even kick off until episode 23, and a lot of the stuff in the episodes leading up to that point feels like filler. If you cut it down to 36 or even 26 episodes, people'd be a lot kinder to it. That glacially slow start is a big part of what turns western fans off the series, since there's very little musical variety in it and it's mostly just Basara being a self-absorbed jerk to everyone around him.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It's like G Gundam that way... the ridiculousness is part of the entertainment value. Admittedly, the first 20 episodes were the ones you probably should've watched at 2x speed, since those are the boring, glacially slow build-up to the actual plot.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    *looks at the Sv-262 Draken III's fold reheat system and all the war materiel they probably bought with fold quartz they mined* Yes. Absolutely. Too bad.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Because the New UN Government has to abide by its own laws, which strictly regulate the mining and trade in fold quartz to limit the proliferation of dimensional warheads and other particularly nasty weapons. Also, the New UN Government essentially monopolizing-via-regulation Windermere IV's fold quartz industry was a big part of what started the first war between the two powers. Seizing a native population's resources like that, especially those of a species who are no longer New UN Government members, would be a clear violation of galaxy law that prohibits things like invading the planets of sentient species.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    That's the most recent Variable Fighter Master File book, yeah. Kind of a so-so book, but it answered a few questions I had so I'm prepared to call it a success.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    @Master Dex is quite correct... the YF-30 had a VERY specific mission profile. It was to evaluate the Fold Dimensional Resonance system's ability to penetrate fold faults. It was part of Richard Bilra's pet project-slash-personal ambition to overcome the fold faults that made long-distance interstellar travel fraught with difficulty. That it was also evaluating other advances like the Ordnance Container system was incidental, a product of its lead designer Maj. Aisha Blanchett's personal obsessions, but something that ultimately ended up as a rather useful addition given the circumstances. I'm not sure it's necessarily a lie... so much as a deliberate gaming of the system to avoid having to disclose the specs of the YF-30 and, more importantly, its experimental proprietary hardware. If they'd lied, it would be a crime. What they did was legal, but questionable. That so many talented pilots found the Y/VF-19 difficult, if not impossible, to handle was a big part of why the "tame and stable" VF-171 ended up ousting it as the New UN Spacy's 4th Generation main VF. What good is having the latest bleeding-edge specs and the highest performance if the monstrously pricey aircraft in question is so far beyond the abilities of the average pilot that none but the most exceptional pilots can actually fly it safely? I mean, that Shinsei had to write off one of its two prototypes completely and had six of their seven test pilots suffer severe injuries as a result of loss of control-related test flight accidents - two fatally so - would have been a bit of a red flag for the New UN Forces. General Galaxy's more advanced YF-21 had its own control issues, but they never wrecked a prototype or had a pilot die or suffer severe injuries in an accident (as far as we know). Guld did die, but that was a death of his own making/choosing in a live combat situation. At the end of it, even the Earth NUNS was so frustrated with the problems in trying to adopt the VF-19 as its next main fighter that they ultimately bailed on it and the few VF-19s in service ended up in the hands of elite special forces units like the VF-X Ravens. The VF-22 was adopted as a Special Forces VF after losing out to the YF-19 in Project Super Nova, so its low adoption numbers were somewhat less than surprising. I don't think we will ever see a full spec VF-24. It'd be a story-breaking addition... like adding Kira "Jesus" Yamato to one of the other Gundam AUs. Variable Fighter Master File did, at one point, include a New UN Forces YF-30B Chronos specification (in an eye-searing Barbie pink) along similar lines to the YF-29B Percival that was depicted in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy as an informal limited production military specification. Probably not, given that the Fold Dimensional Resonance system was a proprietary SMS development based on the Fold Wave system. Earth has never been one to not lead the pack technologically, though, so they may well have a technology that's better than either... and it's implied they're actively working on a way to get around the main limitation on systems like that by finding a way to synthesize fold quartz. Right now, VFs with the Fold Wave system, Fold Dimensional Resonance system, etc. are too expensive for almost any government to deploy in numbers due to the scarcity of fold quartz of sufficient size and purity.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Macross 7 is actually a pretty fine Macross series, but it's best taken in small doses due to the slow pace and lack of musical variety in the first half. When I watched it the first time I absolutely loathed it, because I tried to marathon it and the show was just irritating. It's a lot more enjoyable in small doses, not more than one or two episodes a day so the slow development of the story doesn't get infuriatingly samey.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe they'll follow it up with an Empok Nor, which'll look exactly the same as the other two but with a stand that's canted at a 70 degree angle.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'm finding very little to enjoy in the current season's offerings... even To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts ended with a whimper and there seems to be precious little coming save for more of the usual Fate/waifu bullsh*t. There is an upcoming 4th season of Shokugeki no Soma though, so at least foodgasm fans will have their fill.
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