Seto Kaiba

Ugh... carrying on with The Price of Smiles, and I'm being forcibly reminded why I stopped watching the first time. It's a cliche storm presided over by a character who is basically a whinier, even more immature, spoiled, and arrogant version of the whiny pacifist girl archetype embodied by Relina Peacecraft and Marina Ismail. She's so impulsively useless as a leader that she's arguably the best thing to happen to Grandiga's army. She throws away her own troops in a failed bid to rescue a literally suicidal group of civilians, does everything in her power to hamper her own forces, and then tries to surrender. By episode six she's made her own court so sick of it that they revolt against her order to surrender.

... granted, though it's been modified so much it's almost a VF-11 in name only. Literally a double-custom, since the VF-11MAXL is itself a built-to-order ace custom valkyrie and Mylene's MAXL Kai is one of those that's been subjected to even more customization using a mix of custom-fabricated parts, parts copied from the VF-19 Kai, and the enigines from the VF-16. Toy collectors certainly do! Likewise. The VF-11 is a personal favorite of mine, so I'm hoping we get more high-quality coverage.

Lovely though it is, the VF-11 Thunderbolt was only ever a background mecha in its two televised appearances. In Macross Plus, it was a background mecha that Isamu flew in the first episode before getting replaced by the YF-19. In Macross 7, it was a resident cannon fodder unit that mostly existed to get blown up outside of two brief moments of awesome where ace pilots who normally used better fighters used them in a pinch (Kinryu's blaze of glory and Gamlin's one brief outing.) It's only in the video games and light novels that it got its due. Macross the Ride gave it lots of love, albeit after its service life in New UN Forces hands had basically ended, and Macross 30 finally made it a proper main character mecha for the resident idol singer no less.

Watching this week's episode... Christopher Pike just will NOT stop giving The Reason You Suck speeches about Season One, and I love him for it. EDIT: SPOCK just deconstructed Burnham's entire character in two minutes flat. Is the real theme for season two taking the piss out of season one? If so, I can't bring myself to object! EDIT 2: So... apparently the United Federation of Planets created Skynet. Congratulations, you're watching a Terminator crossover fic now.

HLJ's entire first shipment went to fill existing preorders... it literally jumped right from Waiting for Stock to Backordered. CDJapan seems to have either ordered more copies than HLJ or had fewer preorders (they were one of the last to post a preorder) so they're showing as still having seven copies in stock.

Outside of the anime industry, getting a direct-to-video release is usually concrete assurance of poor quality in and of itself. Doubly so if it's a direct-to-video horror movie, which usually entails SyFy Original Feature-grade suck. Doom: Annihilation is a direct-to-video horror movie rebooting a box office flop AND based loosely on a video game that was itself rather poorly received. Also, trailers are where you're supposed to wow your audience with the quality of your workmanship and try to convince them the film is worth seeing. This trailer makes the film look exactly like what it is... a low-budget direct-to-video horror movie hovering somewhere between Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and an episode of Red Dwarf in terms of the level of the visual effects.

Not a legitimate one... you can find it on a few of the usual suspects when it comes to fan translated manga. Most of Gundam's manga releases are like that, since manga's a limited market in the west and Gundam has so damned many of them.

Possibly... the main sticking point is going to be that, in normal operation, the pilot is not exerting manual control over any of the VF's limbs. Manual control is somewhat slow and it requires concentration on the part of the pilot, which would tend to make it unsuitable for combat conditions where the VF is going to be doing A LOT of moving. The VF can fight a lot faster and more efficiently with the airframe control AI handling limb control and balance, leaving the pilot to just set directionality, speed, and aim. VFs are, by necessity, heavily automated so the pilot can focus on the business of fighting. It took Alto something like a minute, despite being familiar with both EX-Gear and VF operations, to pick up Ranka with the right hand of Gilliam's VF-25F using manual control. Like most other weapons, the pilot designates the target and the airframe control AI handles everything else short of actually pulling the trigger. All the pilot has to do is decide whose day he wants to ruin and when. Quite possibly. It'd just be a matter of programming the airframe control AI for inputs that would trigger those inhuman maneuvers.

A lot of the minor VF designs get the short shrift like that. The VF-11, Fz-109, Az-130, VA-3, VF-5000, etc. all just have "gunpod", sometimes garnished with a caliber, number of barrels, or both. They're background designs or have such minor appearances that they didn't get detailed coverage. IIRC, the VF-11C's gunpod from Macross 7 is supposed to be a later variant of the same gunpod the VF-11B had in Macross Plus that was reworked for reduced cost (and to make it a bit easier to animate).

Well, apart from the obvious bit about it being way easier on the animators to have the robot limited to a humanlike range of motion... From an in-universe perspective, there shouldn't be anything stopping them from a strictly technical standpoint. The VF's limbs are controlled by its integrated airframe management and control AI1 in normal operation, unless the pilot opts to take direct control of a limb for a precision task like picking up something delicate. I would expect that the reason they're not leveraging that has more to do with mental blocks on the part of the pilot, who would naturally expect a humanoid robot to have similar limits to joint and limb motion to human joints and limbs. Exploiting that inhuman flexibility may require a thought process that is less than intuitive. The human-like range of motion may be more justified starting in Macross Frontier, since EX-Gear aims to make piloting more intuitive with predictive and feedback systems that produce a piloting experience similar to "wearing" the VF. The most obvious area where inhuman flexibility would come into play would be the shoulder joint... which would probably never be leveraged by a VF since windmilling one's arms in a fight is a stereotypical little kid tactic. (Not that we didn't see Glaugs do exactly that late in the original series.) A sentient artificial intelligence in a giant robot body shouldn't have similar mental blocks about using its limbs in ways that would be illogical or counter-intuitive to a flesh-and-blood person. None that leap to mind, outside of transformation-specific motions like the knees switching back-to-front or certain VFs with rear-facing guns in fighter mode having the monitor turret rotate 180 degrees during transformation. The only mecha anime titles I can think of offhand where the capability for mecha to exhibit a greater-than-human range of motion is explicitly acknowledged is Full Metal Panic! and one of the Mobile Police Patlabor shows. Full Metal Panic! chalks it up to the use of a semi-master slave motion trace control system, where with a sufficiently high bilateral factor the pilot could easily produce inhuman ranges of motion without having to do the same to their own body. Patlabor had a few cases where the Ingrams were shown to have 360-degree wrist range of motion for precision tasks, though that required a certain amount of precision control. 1. The ANGIRAS AI suite on the first three generations of Variable Fighter, later replaced by ARIEL on 4th Generation VFs and ARIEL II on 5th Generation VFs.

It's beautifully cleaned up. I bought all six volumes as they were coming out. I got introduced to it by one of the IT guys when I worked at the Henry Ford Museum, and he loaned me the first two volumes and I read them in the breaks between tour groups. Such an amazingly atmospheric series, but since it relied heavily on ontological mystery and "show don't tell" I'd despaired that it would never get an animated adaptation capable of doing it justice. Took years for me to find the rest of the volumes since they were out of print by the time I had the money for it, and didn't get copies in decent shape until Google Play dropped this Kodansha re-release in my recommendations last year. I haven't read Biomega yet, but VIZ Media has all six volumes of that series also on Google Play, at $8.99 a volume, so once I get done with the light novel for The Rising of the Shield Hero I'll probably take a whack at that when it goes on sale.

Good to hear. I first got introduced to Blame! back in high school, and it took me ages to find proper copies of the series. Kodansha recently finished re-releasing the complete series in a six volume "Master Edition" both in print and e-book form. Google Play currently has the ebook edition priced to move at $9.99 a volume.

The bayonet is definitely there, at least... the art is clearly for the Macross Plus version of the gunpod. I'm unsurprised, but somewhat less than happy, that this Master File book copied the typographical error in Macross Chronicle that gave this gunpod the designation GU-15. That's the designation of the VF-19's gunpod. It should theoretically have been GU-12 or GU-13, given that 11 is taken by the VF-1's, 14 by the VF-17/171, and 15 by the Y/VF-19.

Speaking of, has anyone seen the recent-ish animated Blame! feature?

My first time thru I stopped watching at episode six because it was honestly impossible to like 99% of the characters. I'm having another go at it since I've exhausted several of my other titles. Someone threw that one in for the anime (it's not in the light novel or manga), but damn if it didn't blindside me as well...

Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin is pretty great. They stuck surprisingly close to the vintage art style of the original Mobile Suit Gundam and did a lot to expand the backstory. It's kind of continuity porn, but it's the good kind. We get a bit more insight into the death of Zeon Zum Deikun, who in this version is less a hippy-dippy space peacenik and appears to be an unstable visionary who believes in evolutionary predestination, and more ambiguity as to whether he was assassinated by the Zabi family or simply died of natural causes. There's lots more focus on Char, like the Deikun family's escape from Side 3, his growing up in Texas colony, and a fairly detailed story of how he was able to join the Zeon armed forces under the assumed name Char Aznable. We get to see a lot more of the infighting among the Zabi family including the assassination of Sasro Zabi (how Dozle got his scars). Amuro's a bit less of a whiny squit (but not much), and a lot of iconic scenes are redone in loving detail and it doesn't drag as bad as the original TV series does in the middle. As far as recommendations go, I'd renew my suggestion of the fairly lighthearted almost-comedy Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam Before the One Year War. I've been having a bit of fun with the religious comedy Saint Oniisan, a slice of life odd couple comedy about Jesus of Nazarith and Gautama Buddha vacationing on Earth and living together in a small flat in Tachikawa. A lot of the comedy revolves around them trying to hide their identities (with Jesus friendly being mistaken for Johnny Depp) while they figure out modern life. I've also started following Silver Spoon again, which is a pretty fun read given that the author Hiromu Arakawa actually grew up on a dairy farm and brings a lot of veracity to the comedy about living at an agricultural school.

It's almost like it's being written by someone that neither likes nor gives a crap about Robotech... Really, the best part of this comic is how few f*cks the people working on it give.

It really is depressing how much promise The Price of Smiles showed early on that went unfulfilled in later episodes. The battle scene against the Empire's scouting force at the start of the second episode has some excellent fight choreography with shades of Macross and Code Geass, does some good worldbuilding, and has a few excellent character moments. The only thing to complain about animation-wise is that the theurgears never take visible damage, you just hear a "bullets-hitting-metal" sound and they fall over, with the exception of when Joshua makes his (ultimately) fatal charge to set off the explosives to seal off the Empire's route of advance. The art quality was otherwise pretty excellent, even if several characters look like they were stolen directly from Macross Frontier. On a second viewing, arguably the most interesting part of the worldbuilding. Instead of relying on standard mecha anime plot drivers like a war being fought over political ideology, social dynamics, painful naivete, or simply for conquest's sake alone, the creators of The Price of Smiles attempted to build a surprisingly dark story around the premise of a war being fought over access to arable land and food production technology on a colonized planet where the terraforming process is slowly coming undone. Escaping the planet to find a new world to live on isn't an option because their advanced technology is all based on chrarslapis, a mineral power source that stops working less than 100m above the planet's surface... which ultimately made powered flight into a lost technology.

Turns out it kinda is and kinda isn't. Looks like they redrew the pictures of the TSV-30 Mk.I and TSV-40 Mk.I from pages 72 and 73 of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur with greater levels of detail for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-11 Thunderbolt. There's a lot more fine detail on these new versions, like the ID and display screens on the chest and the visible eyeshade inside the helmet's visor. (These were the pilot suits from Macross Plus and Macross Digital Mission VF-X respectively.) It's killing me that, unless FedEx pulls another miracle out of their hat, my copy won't arrive until Monday morning (EDT). I live in exactly the right spot to occasionally get accidental next-day shipping from Tokyo. HLJ really dragged their heels when the time came to actually process those preorders. I'd have gotten it faster if I'd waited for CDJapan to post their preorder. It's always been a gorgeous plane... though sadly a badly neglected one since most of its service life fell between the events of Macross M3 and plans for its replacement in Plus. I was thrilled when Macross 30 not only gave its new idol a VF, but a custom VF-11. (Kinda steamed that we never got a DX VF-19E Aisha or DX VF-11C Mina out of it.)

Yeah, if a movie based on the Doom video game franchise is going to be made it really needs to be a big-budget action movie based on Doom (2016). Doom 3 was just terrible... they tried to turn a franchise known for fast-paced action gameplay into a survival horror game. (As far as a Doctor Doom movie, it'd almost certainly have higher production values than even a properly made Doom movie... Marvel's still a very hot ticket in Hollywood.) Doom 3 was the reboot though... even if it didn't stick. Doom (2016) subtly - and by "subtly" I mean "in the text dumps the game never gives you any incentive to read" - indicates that it's a stealth sequel to the original Doom (1993), Doom II, and Doom 64 with no connection to Doom 3 apart from a pair of easter eggs. (Among other things, the son of the betrayer who got the Doom Slayer's home reality conquered and absorbed into Hell is strongly implied to have become the Icon of Sin... the final boss of Doom II, who got a brief cameo in the 2016 game.)

Isn't that art reprinted from the VF-19 book?

That system has been in a bunch of forum software packages for ages... works more or less like a karma system. You like/upvote posts you thought were good contributions to the discussion/community, and downvote disruptive ones, etc. The karma scores weren't visible without looking at a person's profile or the forum statistics until the most recent update put it above your post count on the boards proper until the most recent update. It was felt that the downvote function in particular was being abused, so they turned off everything except the neutral-ish "Like" option.

So far it's only been done for the VF-1... and that was more just a deeper dive into stuff that'd already been covered including the controls, engines, etc.

HLJ went from Not Available Yet to Backordered instantaneously... looks like every copy they got went to a preorder customer. CDJapan's still showing like 8 copies in stock for anyone who hasn't got it yet. Showing love to the VF-11 is, on its own, enough to justify a "please sir, can I have some more?"

Once again trying to slog my way through Tatsunoko's original series The Price of Smiles. It started pretty strong, but I gotta admit I can kinda see why it's been sarcastically nicknamed The Price of Gundam and Discount Code Geass... between the protracted attempt to play "Break the Cutie" with Princess Yuki and all the politics, it does feel a bit like it's trying to be both and neither at the same time. First episode's got some pretty decent mecha combat though.