Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12866

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    The obvious problem with that idea being that "stupid" is a highly subjective value judgement. A sufficiently skilled spin doctor can make even objectively unsound ideas sound brilliant... and with enough polish, ideas that started out sounding completely imbecilic when they were first proposed can be refined into something genius. Star Wars itself started out as the latter case. George Lucas's original concept for it was a complete trashfire, and with a truly gargantuan amount of patient refinement it was turned into one of the most iconic films ever made. Considering that the usual Star Wars story format is either a simplistic "Good vs. Evil" narrative about the eternal conflict between incorruptible pure pureness and baby-eating complete monster villainy or a side story that takes the form of a string of interstellar fetch quests, I'd reckon Star Wars could do with a bit of complexity in its life like what we got in Andor. Not that I think we'll get that from The Acolyte, since the Jedi and Sith live in a world of moral absolutes and the Dark Side seems to run on motive decay and encourages jumping off the slippery slope. FWIW, it'll be damn pretty to look at and the fight choreography is going to be very solid.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the end of the promo reel was that trailer... So we got that full fight scene, and then we got the trailer that was using the footage piecemeal.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So... I just got back from the 25th Anniversary re-release of The Phantom Menace and got to see the promo reel they had for The Acolyte after the film. The promo reel was... All in all, pretty to look at but not very substantial. It's not enough to give a real impression of the series proper but it doesn't give me much hope for the show's writing.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    So... if there's a Most Improved award for an anime season, HIGHSPEED Etoile might be in the running. The director and animators seem to have finally figured out how to animate a race in an exciting and visually appealing manner. If everything else weren't still horrible, I'd almost believe it was a completely different show. It's not exactly a dignified plot twist that the protagonist Rin Rindo suddenly goes from propping up the bottom of the rankings to the middle of the pack as a result of...
  5. Seto Kaiba
    The fatigue is indeed real. Your example is a fantastically appropriate one. The Star Wars franchise is encountering exactly the same kind of audience fatigue that Star Trek did in the late 90's and early 00's, and the Disney execs overseeing it are making the same mistakes that the Paramount execs who flew Star Trek into the ground did. They have a formula that worked well and are unwilling to consider deviating from it even as it becomes increasingly stale and uninteresting. They've got an enormous and highly versatile setting but a very narrow view of the kind of stories that are appropriate to tell in that setting, Maybe the Star Wars writers feel hemmed in by the second word in the title... everything has to come back to a war. (Not that Star Trek learned its lesson either... they just waited until the fatigue wore off and went back to doing exactly what they were doing before.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Well, after seeing this new trailer, it definitely feels like The Acolyte is headed into Plot Hole: the Series territory. We'll know for sure in a month, though. Except, of course, for any characters appearing in later titles... e.g. Yoda. They're perfectly safe.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    My money's on them going for "Little Horus" Aximand instead. He too has a miniature, but unlike Garvi he stays with the Sons until his death during the Siege.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Considering his role in the story, I doubt Garvi's going to show up as part of the Joytoy Sons of Horus line. He only spends the first three books of the sixty-four book Horus Heresy series as a member of the XVI Legion. Most of his appearances in the series are as one of Malcador's Knights Errant, the Legion-less group of Astartes that carried out various special operations on the Sigilite's orders and later... ... shortly before the start of the Siege of Terra. It was only after the Knights Errant were disbanded that he started painting his armor again, and went back to using the colors of the pre-Heresy Luna Wolves during the Siege. If a Garviel Loken figure is coming, it'll probably be either in the Knights Errant marking-less gray armor or in old Luna Wolves white.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Started Mushoku Tensei today while I was dogsitting. Ended up marathon-ing about 14 episodes of it. It's not a bad series by any means, but it does lose me pretty reliably every time Rudeas starts perving on an underage girl... which is distressingly frequent. Thus far, I'm feeling like the series is a more-or-less capably written isekai story with an engaging plot and some likeable characters that's mainly brought down by its protagonist's whole family being slimeballs.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It's true. Sony's press release from after the acquisition of Crunchyroll was finalized in 2021 stated that they intended to merge the Funimation and Crunchyroll streaming libraries, and they confirmed about six months later in Q1 2022 that all of the different anime streaming services under their banner (Funimation, Wakanim, and VRV) would be consolidated into Crunchyroll. They started merging the streaming libraries shortly after that announcement and AFAIK they finished merging the libraries months ago. The last few months the news has been all about merging user accounts for people who'd had both services, but that finished for all outstanding accounts weeks ago and they've shut down the Funimation servers as of April 2. That said, Funimation stopped adding new titles to their catalog around the time the acquisition was finalized. I'm pretty sure they didn't have MOSPEADA on their service when the catalog was frozen. It may be something they've picked up recently as an addendum to having the rights to Robotech delegated to them by Harmony Gold a few years back.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Not surprised it's the same transfer from the DVD release in the 2000s. There would've been a lot more fanfare if they were going to remaster the series again. Still, it's nice to have it available. I'm surprised it took this long for it to land on Crunchyroll since Funimation's been dumping most of its back catalog there with little-to-no notice.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Starting Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master... it feels like it might be a very similar series to The Raven of the Inner Palace, which would be quite welcome. (If nothing else, there's certainly a fair bit of courtly cattiness in the first part of this medieval fantasy series...)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Proudly representing the Commorragh Chamber of "Commerce" since 3rd Edition! Picked up Necrons for a bit after they were first introduced, but never updated to the "Newcron" range when they graduated to being Space Tomb Kings because I didn't enjoy their ruleset as much.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Watching HIGHSPEED Etoile's latest episode, and while it was already easily the worst thing out this season it's actually getting worse with each episode... which is impressive in its own very strange way. Episodes 3 and 4 are almost the exact same story of Rin bumping into a top-ranked driver in public, missing absolutely every clue as to who they are even though the're making ZERO effort to disguise their identity and doing things like signing autographs for fans, and spending the entire episode with them blissfully unaware of who they are until they spell it out to her. She's also apparently so bad at racing that the series decides to stop showing the races... it skips straight to the results and when she's not disqualified she's in dead last against even the unmanned cars.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I do seem to skew heavily towards "disappointed" in a lot of the streaming originals don't I? I've thought about that a lot, and while I know my own eccentric tastes are probably a part of I also feel like a common thread in a lot of the ones I've found disappointing has been a "style over substance" approach to showrunning. A lot of these new shows sink most of their time, effort, and money into making a series visually spectacular without taking the time and care to make sure it's narratively spectacular too. As someone who's more engaged by compelling characters and a well-composed narrative than pure eye candy, that's become a deal breaker for me on several titles. As long as it makes internal sense... though it definitely feels like it's counting on shock value to carry it in quite a few places, both in the violence and the humor. The second episode is certainly atmospheric. Hasn't really done much to explain things, but there's a definite sense of direction to proceedings by the end of it.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    To be honest, yeah... I'm inclined to agree. If the setting is underdeveloped to the point that the answer to "why are things like this?" is "just don't think about it" or "it has been left as an exercise for the viewer", that often means the rest of the writing is going to be similarly lacking. Not always, but often enough to be a pretty reliable indicator of quality. After watching the first episode, I definitely feel like Fallout expects me to already be familiar with the setting from the games and I definitely feel like I'm missing some critical context and/or knowledge. Given that the whole streaming race is driven by visual quality above all else, it's a safe bet Amazon will spend big to make Cavill's Warhammer 40,000 series look every bit as nice as Fallout. What Cavill's project will end up spending that money on is anyone's guess, since we don't know if he's adapting an existing story or developing an original one, or what the focus of the story will be. It's a really big setting with a LOT of options, and quite a few of the most celebrated candidates for adaptation are devoid of things like powered armor.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    ... really? 🫤 I hope Fallout has a better explanation than that, because that's some hot nonsense. That actually sounds less believable than those old Star Trek episodes where some aliens find a book someone left behind, assume it's a description of the ideal society, and model their entire culture on it or build an entire world based on it. Cultural development just took a powder for 120 years?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is shaping up to be one of my favorite titles for this season. Yumiko and Chika's dynamic makes their interactions a lot of fun, and the premise is a fresh and interesting one. I'm very keen to see where this goes in the future.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Looking into starting this one tonight or later this week How necessary is it to have played (or at least be familiar with) the game series? (Asking because I have never played the games and have basically zero familiarity with the franchise beyond hearing some friends complain about Fallout 76.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    My assumption would be that the person who created the 3D model probably used the animation itself as reference instead of the line art from the animator's model sheets. These kinds of issues are very common in fan projects by Robotech fans, who frequently fail to even consider the existence of things like off-model animation, animation errors, or dialog errors and inconsistencies. Southern Cross unfortunately had a fair amount of off-model animation, and that's led those fans to some... interesting... incorrect conclusions about the designs of the series. Inconsistencies in how the Tactics Air Force fighter "Sylphid" is drawn led Robotech fans to conclude there were as many as three different types with different wing designs when there's actually only one, for instance. I'm betting that 3D model was put together using a combination of incorrectly-proportioned fan art and a stills from the animation, some of which are off-model. Considering the weird lengthening of the nose and widening of the body, I suspect it's Yui's fan art they referenced.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Interesting, I honestly wasn't expecting to see them roll out something from that grand tome we call Codex: Australian Wildlife... er... Codex: Tyranids. It looks like they've done a great job with the sculpts as always, though the color scheme from the cover of the Codex is definitely one of the less interesting/appealing ones. 🤔
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Seeing a decent-quality arming doublet figure really makes me wish Tatsunoko Pro would go back and revisit the Science Fiction Sengoku Saga pitch they canned back during the development of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. There's a fair bit of love for retro designs on the air right now and that could actually go over pretty well. Certainly a lot better than their attempts to get back into the mecha genre.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It is, yeah. Designing a believable transformation for something like a car, a tank, or a plane is pretty damned hard even when you're cheating and using "anime magic". It gets far harder if you have multiple alt-modes to consider and they all have to plausibly look like they belong to the same vehicle. Designing that same transformation in a way that can be applied to a transforming toy or model kit is exponentially harder. Keeping it simple while still getting the job done is a virtue, even if it sounds silly in the abstract... and the Spartas's transformation is simple enough that it CAN be replicated on toys or model kits with a minimum of "cheating". The Ammonite design team did all right job considering they were trying to keep the designs simple enough for merchandising and were not by any means specialists in designing transforming robot toys the way Kawamori is. (There are certainly transformations that could be described in less dignified terms out there... like the Gundam Arios and GN Archer from Gundam 00. Their combined flight form essentially involves the GN Archer jamming its head up the Arios's backside.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Caught both the KonoSuba movie and the The Irregular at Magic High School OVA over the course of a long and particularly tedious road trip. The KonoSuba movie God's Blessing on this Wonderful World!: Legend of Crimson is about as frustrating to watch as I remember the same story arc was to read in the light novel. It isn't actually padded, but it feels padded because of how much of the story is spent sitting around doing essentially nothing. There's a little bit of humor in how cringeworthy all the residents of the Crimson Demon village are as an entire (designer) race built on the concept of chuunibyou but it wears out its welcome relatively quickly and that leaves a lot of the humor in the hands of jokes about how Yunyun is friendless and Megumin's family is broke. It's beautifully animated, at least, and the anime adaptation skips over a lot of the light novel's worst moments of Kazuma's lack of character development. The Irregular at Magic High School: Reminiscence Arc is a lot less fun. It's basically just an exposition dump about Tatsuya and Miyuki's backstory and a lot of it is stuff that already had been established earlier in the series. It's mostly just an excuse to show off that Tatsuya has always been stupidly OP. Starting The Irregular at Magic High School S3 over lunch. Given how serious the series has been up to this point, the first episode of season three has several very out-of-place moments where the animation style changes to support physical comedy. One female character goes super deformed and sprouts a Warner Bros-style wheel of feet to charge across the classroom and a protracted bit comedy in the middle where multiple characters slide across the screen without walking. It feels especially out-of-place by the end of the episode where the Chinese representative is seen to take orders from some kind of cybernetically puppeteered corpse.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    As far as we know, it had not left its position in Macross City from the time it's restoration was completed in 2012 until Sharon Apple hijacked it in 2040. There is no mention of it leaving its position after that event.
×
×
  • Create New...