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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't Star Wars officially jettison all that stuff to the non-canon "round recepticle"? They'd be flying blind, not adapting an existing story from the old EU.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the only writers up to now who dared connect him to anything Section 31-related were the writers who did the Tezwa arc of the Star Trek: the Next Generation relaunch. The closest he ever got to being involved in Section 31 was unwittingly assisting in a Section 31 operation to cover up President Min Zife's breach of the Khitomer Accords during the Dominion War by forcing him to resign (and then assassinating him). He was so appalled to learn what he'd unknowingly assisted that he thought he'd gotten off too easy being told his career prospects were now nil. Jean-Luc Picard was hands-down the most morally upright and least willing to bend the rules... his first instinct if he knew about Section 31 would be to burn it down and salt the land.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    If the word through the grapevine is accurate, it might actually be worse... Word is, Kurtzman's story concept for Star Trek: Picard is that Jean-Luc Picard moved on from the USS Enterprise to become head of Section 31.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Hard pass. The crap Kurtzman is churning out isn't Star Trek and CBS All Access is a garbage service not worth the subscription fee.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, yes... that was an unfortunate consequence of Star Trek: Discovery coming under fire from the genuine bigots and incels back when CBS first started promoting it heavily. Fans who actually like Discovery got so accustomed to dealing with criticism from racists, misogynists, etc. that assuming anyone criticizing the show is one seems to have become a conditioned response. On many Star Trek Facebook groups, it's basically impossible to have a mature discussion about the series because of it. In some groups it's so bad that it's become a bit nonsensical. I've seen fans attack other fans who belong to the minorities the characters on Discovery are meant to provide proper representation for for saying those characters are kinda sh*t.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Hm. I guess whoever put that note on the Japanese Wikipedia page must've copied it straight out of the book. EDIT: It just occurred to me that my question about Wikipedia may have sounded like a snarky remark. It wasn't intended as such. Rather, your quotation was formatted pretty much exactly like what I'd read on the subject on Wikipedia when it occurred to me to check where the "bis" was first used, so I was wondering if you'd grabbed it from there.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    ... did you grab that from Wikipedia? From the sound of it, he never actually completed a Battroid mode design for the Neo Glaug... and only finished the design for the earlier (chronologically) Variable Glaug that made its debut in the later (real-world chronologically) game Macross M3. I'll check the contents against the light novel's collected edition later today. Yeah, I've got the first few chapters in the original magazine form but I'd like to get a complete set put together since the light novel itself is on my group's to-do list.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Go home, Titan Comics... you're drunk.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    No word at this time. If the timing is similar to season one, I would expect it in late November or early December.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'd never really imagined it as a big armed raid on an Imperial data storage facility. I'd always imagined it was some kind of Mission Impossible sort of affair where the Empire only noticed the data'd been stolen when it was transmitted to the Rebels the first time, and Vader spent an arbitrarily long time chasing a daisy chain of retransmitted plans to Leia's ship in the hopes of stopping the leak. Many Bothans died to bring us this correction.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Odds are they have a fair-sized chunk of additional story written but between redoing pages for the Cycomi re-release and other obligations they need to actually sit down and draw the stuff out. If they'd foregone the do-overs on a bunch of pages, they'd probably have fresh material ready now.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    CBS seems to be a little gunshy about HD remasters after Star Trek: the Next Generation's didn't do so hot. Mind you, Kurtzman also seems to want to sweep Deep Space Nine and Voyager under the rug so he can pretend Star Trek: Discovery was more progressive than it actually was. When they were first trying to promote Discovery, they kept trying to pass Sonequa Martin-Green's casting off as an unheard-of representational coup for women and black actors. It isn't as impressive once you realize Star Trek already logged a whopping 14 seasons and 341 episodes under black and female captains already. Appropriately, given Star Trek's fixation with the number, that accounts for over 47% of all Star Trek episodes produced up to that point (47.7%). Across the other four Star Trek shows, Kirk, Picard, and Archer combined managed only 33 more episodes... 22 of those being TAS. The only new ground Discovery broke (besides being a commercial failure) was to have an openly gay couple, which Star Trek's producers had previously backed down from on at least three prior occasions: DS9's Elim Garak, First Contact's Lt. Hawk, and Enterprise's Malcolm Reed.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be interesting, but since Battroids are basically the de facto main infantry force of the New UN Government's various member nations the footsloggers aren't likely to get much focus. Those linear rifles were pretty effective against the Vajra larva in Macross Frontier, but it was the Special Forces models with those special anti-cyborg harpoons that took down the Macross Galaxy fleet's cyborg soldiers. Oh, I agree it's highly probable the Macross Concern submitted responses to both of the New UN Forces' Requests for Proposals for nextgen fighters. What makes less sense is that they would submit two responses to General Gomez's unmanned fighter program and end up competing against themselves for the next generation unmanned fighter contract. Both the AIF-X-9 Ghostbird and Neo Glaug are Macross Concern unmanned fighter prototypes built on their Sharon-type AI. I can't honestly recall a time when a company ended up competing against itself in a military design competition... The drone version only had two modes, though... it's only the manned version that was depicted with a Battroid mode. Eliminating Battroid mode likely cut the cost a fair bit. As far as we know, the only version of the Neo Glaug that was actually built was the unmanned version... at least, prior to when we see manned versions in the late 2050s in Macross the Ride (2058) and one of the Macross Frontier manga titles (2059). ... wait, what? You've got the actual issues of Dengeki Hobby, right? Could you check the title pages for chapter 8 "Combat Open"? If you haven't seen it before, I'm wondering if they changed the unit's name between the light novel's run in Dengeki Hobby and the release of the collected edition and those visual books that collected all the art and modeling pages. Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.2's version of the chapter 8 title page has a model-builder credit right under the chapter title that reads: 模型製作:佐藤匠真（NEO GLAUG bis）. Curiously, in the text of the novel itself, the "bis" part is always written in English while the rest of the mecha's name is always in katakana (save for that title page where it's written in full in English). The text on the title pages themselves have a few mentions of "bis" in the paragraphs running along the bottom of the next page. (For those with the Visual Book, I'm referring to pages 18 and 19 of Volume 2.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Gotta run up those Bothan body counts somehow...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, a lot of the improvements in conventional firearms technology that've come from overtechnology have been increases in the power of chemical propellants, the strength of armor-piercing ammunition, special classes of AP rounds, etc. A lot of that simply wouldn't be applicable to conventional small arms, and the improved propellants would increase power but at the expense of the guns being harder to use safely and accurately. So most of what we've seen is pretty clearly lightly improved versions of typical modern firearms that may benefit from things like improvements in materials but haven't really changed much because a human being can't safely leverage the kind of improvements OTM could bring. A lot of them seem to be modeled on Heckler & Koch's stuff... the bland name P8 in Plus and unnamed one in 7, the not-a-MP5 in Plus, and the not-a-G36s used by the New UN Forces infantry and Windermere infantry in Frontier and Delta respectively. The only thing we've seen that's really "out there" is the laser small arms the Varauta forces and various people in the Zola system used. The Zolan lasers were apparently non-lethal stunners that could only kill at point-blank range (a nod to Star Trek VI?), where the Varauta ones seemed to be pretty inefficient weapons that routinely shot clean through targets in a massive waste of energy. (Realistically, you don't want a through-and-through because most of the energy of the shot is being wasted on whatever's behind your target.) The only really effective energy small arms we see seems to be Feff's pistol in Macross II, which blows an enormous hole in his records officer without any apparent collateral damage. Even in Macross II, the unused designs for UN Forces small arms (like Sylvie's pistol) were largely conventional weapons. Sylvie's unused pistol design is a big, chunky revolver. EX-Gear suits had linear rifles, so apparently the problem of more advanced weapons not being safely usable for humans is not as big an issue if they're wearing a big chunky powered exoskeleton to help them cope with the recoil.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Despite CBS's protestations that Star Trek: Discovery is wildly popular, Netflix's dissatisfaction with the show's performance on their service internationally and Alex Kurtzman's apparent inability to keep the production on budget would've made another Kurtzman-led Star Trek show a VERY tough sell for Netflix's management. That Star Trek: Discovery's merchandising partners are reportedly quite upset that the series turned out to be a merchandising dud probably didn't help either, since Netflix is likely contractually entitled to a non-trivial share of the show's licensing revenue. CBS and Kurtzman wouldn't have had a lot of options for getting the Picard series funded. For whatever reason, CBS is stupidly determined to keep Star Trek streaming-exclusive and their enticement to finance the series is the international streaming rights. Netflix isn't interested, and they're the metaphorical 500lb gorilla of the streaming world. They can't go to Netflix's chief rival Hulu because 90% of Hulu is jointly owned by two of CBS's own rivals: NBC Universal (30%) and Disney DTCI (60%). That basically left Amazon Prime and YouTube, both of whom already carry Star Trek properties on their digital library services. I suspect YouTube was probably the less attractive option to CBS and Kurtzman because it'd link their videos directly to the overwhelmingly negative reviews for Kurtzman-led Star Trek already dominating discussion of the franchise on the platform. Amazon expressed a desire to get more into content creation the way Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube already have, so they may see this as their foot in the door. All told, with the licensees, the Star Trek fandom, and the franchise's #1 financial backer all convinced that Kurtzman's vision for Star Trek is a steaming turd... I can only wonder why it hasn't occurred to CBS to remove Kurtzman and start fresh with something people might actually want to watch. They keep doubling down on bad decisions and wondering why the things they create aren't popular. I mean, it's generally a pretty bad sign when actors who've only just finished shooting for your flagship property go on talk shows and to cons with the intention of talking about what a crappy job you're doing and how awful you are to work for... and when the only positive press you can drum up is the stuff coming from "news" sites that you own. EDIT: Word on the street is that the claims that the Picard series started filming are only technically true. They're apparently just shooting B-roll in an attempt to say work has commenced while they sort out licensee grievances.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Meant to reply to this much earlier, but Thursday and Friday were a mechanical nightmare. The problem is the Macross the Ride light novel seems to have forgotten that the Variable Glaug was developed in the 2010s, so it acts like the Neo Glaug was the original model. The explanation also has some issues as to why the Macross Concern was marketing a competitor to their own X-9 Ghost prototype... My hypothesis/interpretation would be that the Neo Glaug was probably a parallel development of manned and unmanned modernized versions of the New UN Forces reproduction Variable Glaug. Having manned and unmanned fighters that shared a considerable number of parts would probably have been a strong selling point form a logistics standpoint, but the manned version apparently wasn't able to adequately rival Shinsei's YF-19 and General Galaxy's YF-21, so it got dropped before the final competition. They completed the Neo Glaug's unmanned specification only for Isamu to blast it to scrap near Macross City in 2040. I'd guess the Neo Glaug bis is a manned conversion of the drone specification of the Neo Glaug, essentially re-converting it into a modernized Variable Glaug. Well, that is why the Strike pack is called the Strike pack... having a big damn beam gun for knocking holes for engaging ships or ground targets counts as being an attacker. "Artillery" is a matter of perspective in space where microgravity isn't going to substantially affect the trajectories of shells. Considering the Meltrans in the main Macross timeline were basically an attempt to solve the Queadluun-series battle suit's problems with Zentradi not being able to pilot it by just designing a better grade of pilot, it makes sense. They naturally have better g-force resistance and reflexes because they were designed that way. Possibly. The Intellectual Passive Interface in the EX-Gear with those electromyographic sensors would probably go a ways towards making up the gap in terms of reflexes, but the Meltrandi still have better g-force endurance than Zentradi or Humans. They might get all the way there if they had something like an inertia vector control system or inertia store converter.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Literally anything else. Trying to convince Darth Vader that the ship he just forcibly boarded is an ambassadorial transport on a diplomatic mission after he'd literally watched the ship narrowly escape from him at Scarif is like a kid caught sneaking cookies mumbling they they didn't take any cookies through a mouthful of cookie. It's convincing nobody. That's the part Rogue One screws up in A New Hope. They were caught, yeah... but trying to feign innocence is like the least effective thing they could do. Spouting defiance, giving an array of sarcastic answers to interrogation, name-calling, pretending they don't speak English, anything to keep Vader's attention on the crew and not Leia. The guy's gonna kill you himself or hand you over to be shot by a firing squad, so why not spend your final moments tweaking him for a petty thrill? Prior to Rogue One there was implicit plausible deniability there. Vader hadn't personally witnessed that very ship blasting off after personally witnessing the plans being transferred to the ship. Feigning innocence was a valid strategy there given Alderaan's very well-known neutrality policy. It doesn't make sense anymore in the wake of Rogue One where Leia's ship practically fled with Darth Vader's fingernail marks going down the side.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It was the first time we really got to see a scene that justified Darth Vader's reputation as The Dreaded. Costume and technical limitations in filming the original Star Wars trilogy meant that Vader had to have an aggressively minimalist fighting style and couldn't really abuse force powers in showy ways. Rogue One's Darth Vader has the same minimalist style, but in light of advances in effects technology we get to see why he doesn't need prequel trilogy acrobatic nonsense to tear through whole platoons of enemy troops like a tornado of knives. The casual brutality of it makes for an incredibly tense visceral action sequence and leaves no doubt as to why this guy showing up makes the rebel troopers wish they'd been issued brown pants. This quadruple amputee burn ward patient is nowhere near the top of his game, but he's still a one man army.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    You say that like it's a bad thing... that scene in Rogue One was the first time Darth Vader had been intimidating in any way, shape, or form since the prequel trilogy ruined him. For once, he wasn't just Little Orphan Ani whining about how he doesn't like sand. Well, for one, it kind of reduces the opening of A New Hope to absurdity... the lie about the ship being on a diplomatic mission goes from "cover story" to "incredibly blatant and obvious lie nobody was going to believe" by establishing that Vader'd been chasing them since the theft of the plans at Scarif and had almost boarded the ship once already.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I had a feeling Games Workshop would eventually cross the line into prepainted collectibles like this... though I never expected it'd be Bandai they'd partner with to do it. Overall, it looks pretty damn good in terms of the fidelity to the original art and build quality. I wish they'd picked a more interesting start to such an unexpected line though. A generic Primaris marine in generic Mk.X Tacticus pattern power armor belonging to the Ultramarines - the Space Marine chapter embodying genericness - isn't a particularly exciting offering. It's more or less the default settings for space marines in the present edition. I mean, if you're gonna do a posable character model shouldn't you do an actual character with a little personality? Like Marneus Calgar, Cato Sicarus, Uriel Ventris, Azrael, Asmodai, Dante, Kayvaan Shrike, Vulkan He'stan, Vorn Hagen, etc. I know I'd spring for an old school Beakie (Mk.VI Corvus pattern) in a heartbeat, since that was the iconic space marine design when I first started out.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Master File kinda ran with the idea of doing something with the unused hull frame space on the underside in the VF-4 book, so the idea at least has a certain amount of currency. It's basically the three-hull type described in Master File with a less-busy design. I did find it rather amusing that Master File included a freaking water landing conversion. Yeah, it's a modified T-Crash suit equipped with weapons derived from Midou's mom's research. Fun stuff tho, it was nice to see a tiny implicit nod towards that kind of tech in Frontier was the hover skateboards. That thing is a write-up nightmare... a custom manned conversion of an unmanned variable fighter prototype that was converted from a manned variable fighter that was developed by rogue Zentradi based on a stolen VF-4. The way it's written up, I'm half-convinced VBP-1 and VA-110 are actually the designations for the original Variable Glaug. It would fit with Kawamori and Chiba's love of nicking US conventions. 110 would be a design number from Project Constant Peg, the once top-secret test program evaluating captured enemy fighters... and the Variable Glaug was that. The funny part is that, despite all the fuss and noise about the Zentran version only being suitable for a petite Meltran, two of the three known pilots are bigger-than-average Zentradi men: the commander-class Temjin and Naresuan. That can not have been a comfortable ride for them. No kidding. After the last couple Master File books, I am once again out of shelf space and having to buy more bookshelves.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it was odd. Mahara Fabrio's subordinate, Hoyer, needs a word in private with Macross 7 Trash's protagonist Shiba Midou and totally unheralded we get this QF-3000 that's been converted into a manned spacecraft with a suspiciously roomy side-by-side cockpit so they can talk in private. Nobody bats an eye at this or remarks on it at all. That same sequence depicted a hereforeto unseen and unmentioned variant of the ARMD-class space carrier as part of the 37th large scale long distance emigrant fleet, which is also not remarked upon despite this class of ship being close on fifty years old when the manga is set.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    My mental image was more us translators sitting around loudly agreeing with each other about the things that frustrate us, like a bunch of old duffers at the nursing home. That approach runs an even greater risk of confusion, IMO. Pre-war, you've got publications like Macross Chronicle that insist upon prefacing the pre-war government and military with the word "Earth". Post-war, you've got the problem that a couple of descriptions imply Earth has a local New UN Forces specifically for its own defense AND is the de facto headquarters of the supranational armed forced. That leaves the awkward question of which Earth New UN Forces are we talking about... the ones that answer to the Earth head of state (whatever he/she/fill-in-the-blank is called) and then the ones that answer to the New UN Government itself and its head of state (who I've seen variously referred to as a Prime Minister or Chairman). Well, all the military organization and designation systems that Macross copied almost whole cloth from the US would appear to be the doing of Shoji Kawamori and Masahiro Chiba... as that goes all the way back to Sky Angels if not further. For instance, if you look at the VF-1 units mentioned as being assigned to ARMD-class carriers in the wake of the First Space War in Sky Angels, they're all famous US Navy F-14 squadrons: the Tophatters, Swordsmen, Black Aces, Jolly Rogers, Checkertails, Checkmates, the Wolfpack, Bounty Hunters, Freelancers, Black Knights, Challengers, and Stallions. Likewise, the ARMD-class ships are a who's who of famous aircraft carriers, with almost half of them being US Navy (Enterprise, Constellation, Ranger, Midway, Independence, and Forrestal). Neither are the sort of thing the typical Japanese English-speaker is likely to know. That's every language though... I remember sitting down to my first Latin lesson in high school and being informed that we were going to have to learn both classical Latin (the formal dialect used by the Roman Republic and Empire) and the informal "vulgar" everyday Latin spoken by the plebs, while other classes used the bastardized Latin used by the church and later generations of western scholars. (I took Latin to annoy my parents and keep them from trying to mess with my homework, since they'd taken Spanish and French.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's WAY too roomy for its size. The cockpit would look more at home on a commercial airliner in terms of size.
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