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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Frustratingly, the YF-30's exact relationship to the YF-24 lineage varies a bit from publication to publication. Some say it's primarily a derivative of the YF-24. Others say it's based more on the YF-29. A few say it's equal parts of both.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It really does grow on you. I used to love shonen stuff as a kid (I'm sure you can guess which show was hot when I was like 13), but I'd kind of cooled on it as I got older. My Hero Academia has a certain heartwarming charm and ananarchic sense of humor which I found tremendously endearing. I do enjoy the subversion that Midoriya isn't really getting more powerful in the standard shounen manga style as he is finding unexpected new utility in the power he already has... turning a one-trick pony into a swiss army superpower. (I also rather enjoyed the unusual focus on the lack of required secondary powers, like how Midoriya has his super strength but has to learn how to tune it down so as to not wreck his own body using it, or how Uraraka can turn off gravity but can't turn off the effect a lack of gravity has on her inner ear.) In a few ways, it kind of reminds me of Adam Warren's Empowered with its world-half-empty view of a world where superheroism has become a business with a naive, idealistic main character who'd be a better fit for a world of pro bono super-vigilantism like in typical superhero comics.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    ... oh hell yes.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    More or less. The only real excitement for a good while in the story is this fight with the disaster-grade demon Charybdis, which started in episode 19... and even then it's pretty dull, since the "fight" is mostly Charybdis no-selling everything thrown at it for the better part of a day. I suspect they intend to end it there this season, since the defeat of Charybdis is what sets up Rimiru taking off to another country to be a teacher. Watamote can be... tedious. It's cringe comedy distilled down to its purest form. Normally shows like that (e.g. Haganai) try to soften the blow a little by depicting the socially awkward otaku cast in a somewhat sympathetic light or throwing in a softer subplot like a little romance or some non-cringe-inducing humor, or at least make the protagonist an unapologetically horrible human being the audience won't feel bad for when their horribleness causes life to sh*t all over them (e.g. Fawlty Towers). Watamote is having precisely none of that sh*t. Tomoko Kuroki is here to SUFFER for your entertainment. That she's actually dimly aware of how screwed up her life is and wants little more than to become a socially functional person counts for exactly nothing, so naturally all the comedy comes from her desperate (and desperately misguided) attempts to gain even the tiniest iota of social acceptance. She's the girl who can do no right, so she's perpetually digging a deeper hole for herself. I stopped reading the manga after a few dozen chapters because the one-note humor stopped being funny rather quickly and that just left the cruelty. Haganai, incidentally, I would recommend if you're in the mood for that kind of thing because it's a lot less cruel even if the cast are every bit as weird as Tomoko Kuroki is.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I have really high hopes for the new Fire Emblem game, but I have to admit the CG character models bug me a bit... something to do with the lack of facial expression beyond that thousand-yard stare. Is SEGA still doing Shining games? I'd love to see a remastered version of the original Shining Force.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    They never really get into politics in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, barring that brief tiff with the dwarf kingdom early on and a lot of buildup with zero payoff WRT all of the various demon lords. The story totally changes gears and Rimiru takes off to go become a school teacher in another country for some incredibly contrived reason. ... well, that'll depend on how far this animated adaptation goes I guess. Both of those things do in fact occur in the light novel... though spiting Princess Malty is near-term enough that it's likely to get animated, though not by having his own nation.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Slime was always pretty dull, IMO. It's so enamored of its MMO-inspired setting that Rimiru, as the standard massively overleveled isekai protagonist, spends most of the story simply managing resources because he has nothing better to do and nothing can really threaten him. It's like watching someone play Civilization. Overlord is one of the few isekai stories I felt really handled the overleveled protagonist thing well. There, the plot basically revolved around the rest of the world reacting to a godlike (undead) being showing up on their doorstep. That way, even though Ainz doesn't actually do much most of the time, it doesn't get old because the focus isn't on him. The Rising of the Shield Hero got surprisingly good surprisingly fast though. Once it got past that rough, lazy, almost form letter start it went to some interesting places with Naofumi being a Knight in Sour Armor over his false accusations and not being the standard overleveled juggernaut.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The Full Metal Panic! manga are pretty good... though it has a lot of comedy spinoffs. The actual story is in Retsu Tateo's Full Metal Panic! manga, and finishes in Hiroshi Ueda's Full Metal Panic! Sigma. Comic Mission, Surplus, and Overload are all basically comedy spinoffs. Fan translations of all of them are available, though Sigma's are pretty spotty and have a fair number of inaccurate translator's notes.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It's been a slow weekend, so I've spent my time catching up in Seitokai Yakuindomo, Blue Exorcist, Silver Spoon, and the latest-released light novel volumes of Overlord, Goblin Slayer, and I started The Rising of the Shield Hero. The Yen Press light novel translations are a welcome breath of fresh air, considering how light novels were an almost universally neglected format for localization. There are a couple frustrating translation issues in their translation of Overlord, but on balance they've done a fine job. They recently released Overlord Vol.9, so the light novel's english release is now caught up to the anime. All the extra detail in the light novel version does a lot of good for the whole story arc surrounding the war with the Re-Estize Kingdom spends most of the time in black comedy territory, and might as well be titled "Emperor Jircnev is entertainingly wrong". Goblin Slayer's latest volume is also surprisingly lighthearted, though I swear the new kid is an off-brand Negi Springfield. The whole story around starting a training camp for new adventurers in the hopes of reducing the attrition rate went to interesting places, though six volumes on it's starting to get a bit samey since there are only so many ways that one insane man can kill an entire nest of goblins very, VERY quickly. Silver Spoon has been a consistently fun read. For a slice of life school drama it's surprisingly unconventional and fresh, being set at an agricultural school dedicated to teaching farm management. Doubly interesting for the fact that its author, Hiromu Arakawa (of Fullmetal Alchemist fame), grew up on a dairy farm and so lends a lot of veracity to the lessons about farming and especially livestock management. They even dropped a few Macross references early on, using Macross-class ships as a unit of measure for describing how huge the farm one student's family owns is.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, but the cover and/or title are what get your attention. The title's not going to grab anyone who's not already a Robotech fan, and that atrocious cover art isn't going to encourage many (if any) to pick it up outside of maybe morbid curiosity.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I know if I saw a book with cover art that badly drawn, there'd be no way I'd be willing to pick it up. Like the song goes, "it was acceptable in the 80's"... but today, you can find art of substantially higher quality from high schoolers on DeviantArt. Someone who doesn't know who Jason and John Waltrip are would be left to wonder if they farmed the cover out to an unpaid intern. Normally one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but in comics the cover is what's supposed to promote the book. It won't matter how good or bad the contents are if the packaging screams "this is amateur hour". I mean, they are trying to market this book to someone besides just Robotech fans right?
  12. Seto Kaiba
    OK, that is legitimately awesome. Looking at the release calendar, I'm kind of surprised how willing Nintendo seems to be to compromise their normal squeaky clean family-friendly image in this console generation by licensing so many gory survival horror games and risque stuff like Dead or Alive Xtreme and Senran Kagura. They must be serious about trying to break out from their normal "family entertainment" niche.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, if the New UN Government was gonna send somebody to call Lady M and Xaos to account for illegal cloning, helping various wanted criminals evade justice, etc. they'd probably send a unit from the federal New UN Forces since Xaos are the only ones in the Brisingr cluster besides Windermere IV's Kingdom of the Wind to have 5th Generation VFs at present. They'd probably be using the VF-24, since that design's their current main fighter and hasn't even been in service for a decade yet. If the federal NUNS sent a VF-X special forces unit we might get to see their improved versions of colony-made VFs like the YF-29B Percival (Macross 30) or the YF-30B Chronos (Variable Fighter Master File).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    MAAS Toys was, according to their last newspost, attempting to get away from using crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter to finance their projects. They tried essentially running their own crowdfunding/preorder campaign without a third party to collect funds (and take a percentage) and as of their January news update it seems to have backfired and resulted in a financial shortfall for the project when 38 backers and 5 retailers failed to honor their pledges and 3 backers had Paypal refund their money. They may have thought that that approach would be good enough to satisfy Harmony Gold, since it's basically a glorified preorder. Mind you, I've suspected for a while now that this sudden surge in Robotech licensing right before the end of their license is Harmony Gold once again just selling a license to anyone willing to pay and finding only small-time indie outfits willing to bite. (So like the 90's, but with toys and statues instead of comics.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Huh... I wonder if they've run aground on Harmony Gold's insistence that their licensees not use crowdfunding sites for their projects? Ever since Palladium Books came clean about having been lying about the state of its Robotech Kickstarter's finances for three years, resulting in the project's failure due to inadequate funds Harmony Gold has been death on anything to do with crowdfunding.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    IMO, Kawamori's closer to being like Gene Roddenberry. Kawamori's a fundamentally-optimistic idea man whose story concepts tend to be pretty good right off the bat. Some of what he comes up with can be pretty "out there", but he's never needed the producers to keep him on a short leash. Lucas was an unapologetically terrible idea man who could only function on the shortest of leashes but could innovate like a madman when other people were aggressively policing his work.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Not a peep on their official website since 16th January.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I'd all but completely forgotten Mylene HAD a B-plot in Dynamite 7... it was so far removed from anything to do with the A-plot that it kind of flies under the radar. One thing I concluded ages ago was that, with the available info about Lady M's history and activities, there was no way for Lady M to be an existing character... and definitely not one from Super Dimension Fortress Macross given that the fates of the principal and supporting cast were all reasonably well accounted-for in Macross 7 Docking Festival. Assuming Lady M is an individual person rather than an alias used by multiple people, a committee, cybernetic gestalt, or an AI, she'd have to be a Remember the New Guy? character from the First Space War era like several other characters: Col. Millard Johnson from Macross Plus (his backstory, not delved into in the OVA, identifies him as a former member of the SVF-1 Skulls. Possibly a case of showing their work, as a young black man IS seen as one of Hikaru's subordinates at one point.) Naresuan from Macross the Ride (his backstory identifies him as one of the subordinate commanders in Vrlitwhai's branch fleet when it defected to the UN Forces) Richard Bilra from Macross Frontier (his backstory also puts him as one of Vrlitwhai's subordinates during the First Space War)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Kathleen Kennedy doesn't have an account on here, does she? It is pretty nice... especially for taller chaps like me (~198cm) who constantly worry we're blocking someone's view. I've kind of cooled on the idea of going to the theater in general. The uncomfortable seating, plethora of obnoxious advertisements, overpriced concessions, etc. are enough to take me right out of the experience. Add a bunch of PO'd Star Wars fans into the equation and it starts to feel like torture rather than entertainment.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, the entire idea that Xaos's founder and CEO is an anonymous presence whose identity isn't known to anyone in the company is one of the most absurd parts of Delta. The people responsible for overseeing all of Xaos's operations in the two dozen inhabited star systems of the Brisingr globular cluster literally have no idea who they're even taking orders from. Seriously, stop and think about that. These people, who work for various divisions of a major corporate conglomerate, haven't got a clue who is actually in charge of the company despite regular contact with that person. Xaos is clearly one of those offices that runs on the Dilbert Principle.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Dynamite 7 was OK... what I was getting at vis-a-vis Macross Dynamite 7 is that its status as a sequel is largely a technicality. The OVA's only significant connection to the Macross 7 series is two series characters who make glorified cameos but are otherwise largely uninvolved in the actual plot: Basara and Gamlin.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not really. There's material for excellent visuals and music there, but excellent visuals and music are mere accompaniment to the story... not a foundation for it. They don't really have anything worth building on in Macross Delta's story. Walkure was Freyja Wion and four flat stock characters. Delta Flight was Hayate Immelmann and four flat stock characters. The Aerial Knights were Roid Brehm, Keith A. Windermere, and four flat stock characters. You can't further-develop characters who weren't developed at all to begin with... so what do they have that's worth building on? The war's over, the barely-there love triangle's resolved, there's no real appeal in Windermere's side when the only developed characters it had are dead, Delta Flight is just window-dressing for Walkure, and there's no real incentive for the anime to properly develop Walkure because they're not the Walkure fans are lining up to see. If we don't just get an excuse music video like Macross FB7 we're going to get something like Macross Dynamite 7.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    As gritty reboots go, this one was silly from the outset... it's lost the plot so completely that it's impossible to tell if they're doing this crap ironically or not.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe it's a punny title, and we'll just get a two-hour training montage of Rey balancing rocks with the force set to a Star Wars-themed Weird Al cover of Eye of the Tiger? After all the poor creative choices in Solo: a Star Wars Story and Star Wars: the Last Jedi, we should just thank our lucky stars Episode IX isn't Star Wars: Rebirth of Jar-Jar Binks or Star Wars Holiday Special II: Gungun Boogaloo. Since the goal of this trilogy seems to be to give the old cast their last hurrah and pass the torch, I'm wondering if Rey's going to make Sith sashimi out of Kylo Ren so there won't be any further ties to the cursed Skywalker bloodline in Star Wars from then on.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Catching up on a few titles after a busy week... Gyakuten Saiban seems to have come over a bit filler-heavy. They're on their second or third filler story this season and they're not even halfway done. Some pretty heavy recycling of plots going on in the filler too... one has to wonder how many seemingly unique and valuable things Harumi can break and glue back together wrong. It still seems to be going strong though, enough to make me wonder if they'll end this season where the games did or we'll get to see Naruhodo get disbarred for introducing forged evidence to set up the plot from Gyakuten Saiban 4. CAPCOM in particular is probably pretty keen to keep the series going to build awareness for the release of Gyakuten Saiban 7 in the not-too-distant future. Kaguya-sama: Love is War (I'm sorry, but the localization title is WAY punchier than the real one) continues to be just plain great. The OP, Love Dramatic, is still an incredible earworm. The whole of episode 3 was comedy gold, though honestly the best is Shirogane's mental breakdown leading to him reading the phone book instead of responding. The over-the-top narrator honestly makes this series. He could be reading a VCR manual and still make it sound like a high-stakes duel to the death. The Price of Smiles feels like it's struggling. The quality level of the animation has taken a visible, significant dive starting in episode 4. Comparable to, or possibly even worse than, the slide in animation quality in Macross Frontier's eighth episode. Even the battles have become kind of boring since it's mostly just theurgears standing still or slowly advancing line abreast and shooting at each other on full auto. There's no real weight to the violence since the theurgears never show damage on their CG models, they just sort of stumble and fall down, which lacks the weight of either exploding or seeing the brutal physical damage the way Iron-Blooded Orphans did it. It really feels like this series doesn't know what it wants to do or be. I could understand if maybe this were a light novel or manga they were adapting and were skipping bits of it, but it really feels like there's a boatload of missing context in this series that's supposed to add meaning to the war which is the focus of the plot. "Cruelty porn" would be the best way I could sum it up. Just two sides doing senselessly horrible sh*t to each other to completely destroy the sheltered and hopelessly naive 12 year old princess who is the main character. Well, just the one side really... the Imperial Army seems to win every fight no matter what. They've got some Gundam SEED-grade plot armor. Two members of Stella's unit survived a point-blank anti-armor mine blast with nothing more than a single sprained ankle to show for it. (Also trees magically gain this plot armor whenever any Imperial Army soldier shelters behind one...)
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