Seto Kaiba

Fortunately, the personal circumstances of the Yggdrasil players behind the 41 Supreme Beings of the Great Tomb of Nazarick and the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown get less relevant as time goes on... but they're rather important early in the story, since the personalities of the Great Tomb of Nazarick's NPCs and their relationships tend to reflect the personality or psychological damage of the player who created them. It's played for comedy with Aura and Shalltear and Aura and Mare, for drama between Demiurge and Sebas Tian, and for horrific implications with Demiurge on his own. (Momonga's own creation, Pandora's Actor, has some fridge horror implications the anime skips over entirely... his military uniform, tendency to lapse into gratuitous German, and large ham tendencies are modeled on the elite members of a Neo-Nazi movement that started a war between European arcologies c.2118. Momonga thought they were cool as a kid, but admits with the benefit of hindsight that the design choices he made for Pandora's Actor were in screamingly poor taste.) Nope. Overlord was originally a web novel series that began serialization in 2010, over a year before Ready Player One was published (in August 2011). The web novel was then adapted into a light novel and published in 2012, then a manga in 2014 and an anime in 2015. Overlord, like Goblin Slayer, makes a LOT of references to Dungeons and Dragons. Kugane Maruyama is generally more subtle about it though, with bland name versions of D&D's spells and metamagic feats (and at least one of Nazarick's Supreme Beings being a self-confessed RPG nut). Goblin Slayer had a frankly gratuitous moment where the titular Slayer's party encounters what is obviously a Beholder, that speaks in Pokemon Speak with the syllables of the word "Beholder", but which they studiously refuse to call a Beholder because damnit that word is a registered trademark. It's Universal Century Gundam... the teenage angst is literally mandatory. TBH, the anime's second season, Rosario+Vampire Capu2 is no better... and might actually be worse. It's VERY heavily dependent on fanservice and the harem angle. It really feels like you see more of the bat they use as a fanservice censor for the panty shots than most of the characters. (Weirdly, the OP has a disco dance theme...)

Well played, sir. Well played. It'd be nice.

Ah, there we go... I'd been wondering when that other shoe was going to drop. When I heard that Harmony Gold had finally found someone willing to acquire part of the Southern Cross merchandising rights after over thirty years, I was sure it had to be a tiny indie outfit. I was a bit surprised to hear that an otherwise-competent outfit like MAAS Toys were the fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. Doubly so when I saw that MAAS did most of its business through Kickstarter, considering Harmony Gold has been dead-set against crowdfunding ever since the embarrassing public failure of Robotech Academy's Kickstarter and the financing scandal that ended Robotech RPG Tactics. This latest update explains a lot. MAAS Toys is having problems with its crowdfunded business model. They must be hoping that transitioning to making licensed toys for retail would be a more stable revenue stream. I have a nasty suspicion they're about to join Netter Digital, Eternity Comics, Academy Comics, and Palladium Books as licensees done in by Robotech... which kinda sucks, because I really would like an Auroran. To be frank, the Robotech franchise is at death's door. They don't have anything new in development, and haven't for years. They've lost most of the fanbase through a mix of mistreatment and incompetence. They've treated licensees rather poorly over the years, and past licensees have largely exhausted the brand's merchandising potential. They've weathered a string of public failures and scandals recently, and it's public knowledge that their license expires soon and that the license seems unlikely to be renewed thanks to deteriorating relations with their Japanese partner Tatsunoko. That perfect storm of red flags has whittled the pool of licensees down to mostly just the small-time indie outfits. MAAS Toys likely got the Southern Cross license for a song. Previous licensees like Toynami flatly refused to make Southern Cross merchandise because the projected return on that investment was too small to justify the effort. Many Robotech fans believe that Harmony Gold is back to selling licenses to whoever is willing to pay in order to cash out before their rights expire. More like two half-men... since neither of them is really qualified to do the job they're doing.

Really? I thought it was kind of fun in a quaint, charming sort of way. I have the Delta OSTs, and they are dull as dishwater. There's no track on either that can even readily be associated with a character or a particular moment in the series... it's all bland and rather forgettable.

The Price of Smiles, which started airing last week, appears to be a mecha anime from no less than Tatsunoko Production. "The password is 1-2-3-4-5? That's the stupidest password I've ever heard! It's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!"

Overlord lost a bit of context in the anime adaptation. The main character was a salaryman in a crapsack future not dissimilar to Alien's where megacorporations basically run the Earth and have destroyed the environment, and his escape is a fully immersive cybernetic VR MMORPG called Yggdrasil. He was a guild master for one of the game's most celebrated and featured guilds, Ainz Ooal Gown, which was famous for PKing with its "pay evil unto evil" mindset because it was founded to present a united front against cyberbullying of players who played heteromorphic (monster) characters. They kind of took the monsters=evil mindset and said "then let me be evil" and architected their guildhall/dungeon around that premise, so all but one or two of the NPCs were card-carrying villains with terrible karma scores. Once their guild headquarters, which was also the game's toughest dungeon the Great Tomb of Nazarick) is inexplicably sent to an alternate world when the servers were due to shut down, the only logged-in player in the dungeon (guildmaster Satoru Suzuki AKA Momonga) is stuck in the body of his undead (Overlord class) character. Unfortunately, his undead body plays by the rules for the undead in this new world AND for the game... so not only is his state of mind influenced by his villainous karma score, his range of emotional responses is deadened or outright suppressed and it seems to get worse as time goes on to the extent that he worries that he's becoming his character. Not being able to feel horror or sadness over killing people has him slowly sliding down that slippery slope towards authentic evil... and having his de facto court and headquarters packed full of heteromorph NPCs who'd been programmed by the various guild members to detest humans and engage in a variety of horrific behavior isn't helping. (As to why they win... well, Momonga and the Nazarick NPCs are Level 100 in a world where the strongest warriors seldom top Level 20. Previous Yggdrasil players who ended up in that world were literally worshipped as gods.)

The original manga Rosario+Vampire is actually pretty good and gets surprisingly dark in the second half. The anime does not do it even a tiny bit of justice... as it mostly plays down the actual story in favor of the harem comedy and fanservice that were prevalent early in the manga but got mostly phased out as the main story got rolling. Unfortunately, the anime ends before it ever reaches the parts of the story where the manga really came into its own so it's mostly just really short skirts and cleavage. Like the series it was ripping off (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Eureka Seven really is criminally overrated. Renton's so passive and whiny that it's surprisingly easy to cheer for Holland for beating the crap out of him, or the Beams's for attempting to make him stop being a whiny b*tch. Even the mechanical designs are pretty ho-hum for the most part. I'm going to take a whack at finishing Lupin III: the Italian Adventure, Conception, The Price of Smiles, and Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches.

Frankly, I'm not surprised at all. I've suspected for a while now that, on its own, Macross Delta wasn't all that profitable for Big West. Compared to Macross Frontier, it feels like there's a LOT less merchandise coming out for the series itself. There's certainly a good deal less in terms of official publications, magazine coverage, and fan works. They went all-in on promoting Walkure's music, and the result was that the real idol group Walkure is the only part of the show to make a lasting impact on the audience. I can understand why there would be some reluctance to invest in a second Delta movie, since music production is expensive and if the film's performance hinges largely on the music then you're taking an awful risk with your investment on a property with a clear single point of failure. Viewership was good, so they probably figured they had the momentum to launch a new series off of Delta.

And many seemingly random red circles to you too. Macross FB7 is about as close as you're likely to Kawamori agreeing to revisit either. I suspect when they say "follow on" they mean "direct sequel to". Macross Delta only really followed on Macross Frontier in the sense that its plot and many underdeveloped characters were meant to be appealing precisely because they were lazy, lifeless knockoffs of the well-developed Macross Frontier story and cast. It doesn't really directly follow on from Frontier as they're set eight years and half a galaxy apart with zero actual connection between the two stories. Knowing Macross, it'll be more jpop... but I wouldn't mind seeing them branch out a bit, maybe hire Babymetal?

Oh... that site. Yeah, the Macross Wikia is pretty useless as a resource. It mostly just copies text from other, more credible resources like Egan Loo's Macross Compendium or the Macross Mecha Manual, usually introducing a few errors in the process. There's either zero editorial oversight or so little it could be mistaken for zero, leading to a number of articles becoming infested with fan theories, unfounded rumors, and hearsay.

Yeah, the inclusion of a VF-scale pinpoint barrier system was one of the defining requirements of the 4th Generation Advanced Variable Fighter program. The YF-19 and YF-21 prototypes were the first ones to have it, but the technology was adopted on all 4th Generation and later VFs. It was also fitted to several custom variants of 3rd Generation VFs like Mylene F. Jenius's VF-11MAXL Custom Thunderbolt, Anthony Clemens's VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor, Ray Lovelock's VF-17T Custom Nightmare, and Canaria Berstein's VB-6 Konig Monster, though in the case of the VF-11MAXL an engine upgrade was needed to provide adequate power, and on the Thunderbolt Interceptor the system requires additional power from a battery pack (to such an extent that some sensor systems can't run concurrently with it). Pinpoint barrier systems are a standard feature on all 4th Gen and later VFs, including the VF-19, VF-22, VF-171, VF-24, VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, VF-31, and Sv-262. We have no way to know for certain, but if the Sv-154 is 4th Gen as a contemporary of the VF-171 then it had one as well. It isn't... the pinpoint barrier system pulls more than half of the VF-19's reactor output. It's normally only active in Battroid mode. You may be thinking of the 5th Gen linear actuator technology, which improved transformation speed and durability by keeping parts aligned during transformation using electromagnetic force instead of complex and delicate actuators.

Looking at the current season's offerings, it feels like slim pickings compared to the past couple... Tatsunoko Production has a new series, The Price of Smiles, which looks mildly interesting... promotional images say mecha anime, but the description sounds more like romcom. Kinema Citrus's The Rising of the Shield Hero also looks mildly interesting, though it feels like we're in for a slew of Goblin Slayer! copycats of which this is the first. A-1 Pictures has a romcom Kaguya-sama: Love is War that also looks interesting, if only for the inherent comedic value in a plot built around a couple who flat out refuse to actually admit they like each other. Anyone know if Domestic Girlfriend has been picked up for simulcast by anyone?

I've just finished watching Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight... and this show is GARBAGE. "Train wreck" would not be a strong enough word for how badly this show ends. The last couple episodes of this series are nearly incomprehensible gibberish. The French army marches on Orleans to lift the siege, Jeanne gets another confrontation with Philip of Burgundy that ends in a draw when Montmorency tries to save Jeanne by activating the other half of his philosopher's stone to power himself up. Basically, this show ends on a three episode long Big Lipped Alligator Moment with an exponential decline in animation quality. It comes out of nowhere, it makes no sense, and it's forgotten almost immediately... it's so utterly bizarre that, if I didn't have to pay for it, I'd actually want to read the original source material just to see if there's any context that might make this gibberish make sense.

SoftBank Creative has done a number of non-Macross Master File books for various titles over the years. Naturally, Mobile Suit Gundam got its own run of tech manuals under the title Master Archive Mobile Suit. They've currently only done Universal Century stuff though. That series currently has ten or eleven books including: Master Archive Mobile Suit RX-78 Gundam (OYW models) Master Archive Mobile Suit RX-78GP01 Zephyranthes (GP series units) Master Archive Mobile Suit RGM-79 GM Vol.1 Master Archive Mobile Suit RGM-79 GM Vol.2 Master Archive Mobile Suit MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam Master Archive Mobile Suit RX-0 Unicorn Gundam Master Archive Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (incl. Victory 2) Master Archive Mobile Suit MS-06 Zaku II Master Archive Mobile Suit MSV Pilot Log (basically Zaku II Vol.2) Master Archive Mobile Suit MSN-06S Sinanju Then they've also got one-off Master File books for the ASF-X Shinden II from Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, the Layzner from SPT Layzner, the ATM-09ST Scopedog from Armored Trooper VOTOMS, the Xabungle from Combat Mecha Xabungle, the Dragonar from Metal Armor Dragonar, the FAW-RV-S1 Vifam from Galactic Drifter Vifam, and now the M9 Gernsback from Full Metal Panic!. I've been collecting the Macross Master File series and Gundam Master Archive series... the only non-series ones I've spurged on are the Shinden II and Gernsback. The quality varies a bit from book to book, though it's generally good. Gundam had a couple of disappointing ones like the Victory Gundam, Zaku II, and MSV Pilot Log book.

I'm in two minds about it... On the one hand, the Master File series did put out three books in a row that were not at all up to the high standard set by the first five books. The VF-4 and VF-22 books were critical failures of research, so they ended up being mostly BS and ridiculous original variants. The VF-31 book is slightly more forgiveable since its lazy copy-paste of stuff from the VF-25 book is actually justified by the significant amount of shared hardware. On the other hand, the Battroid Valkyrie book is IMO a return to form on their part and nearly as good as the original five. They clearly can do it right when they want to... the question is, does the VF-11 merit their A-game? I really do love the VF-11, so I'm hoping against hope that it'll be a good one. They've got one more book I want coming out around the same time for the Geotron M9 Gernsback from Full Metal Panic!, so I'm hoping the VF-4 and VF-22 books were just an unfortunate lapse and that they're back on form full time.

Tangentally relevant for the discerning collector... GA Graphic apparently has a Master File tech manual coming out for the Geotron M9 Gernsback slated for a mid-January release: https://www.amazon.co.jp/フルメタル・パニック-マスターファイル-アーム・スレイブ-M9ガーンズバック-マスターファイルシリーズ/dp/4797398574/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=4797398574&pd_rd_r=56c21e5e-0b8c-11e9-bfa3-0d237f864cec&pd_rd_w=ud002&pd_rd_wg=5HO9U&pf_rd_p=a4de75e6-d8f7-4a34-bd69-503ea4866e6c&pf_rd_r=E8EGD5RT5TQ265VWM502&psc=1&refRID=E8EGD5RT5TQ265VWM502

Speaking of... did you notice what Amazon has as a pair-with item for this? A Master File for the M9 Gernsback AS from Full Metal Panic!. The only other GA/SoftBank tech manual series I've been paying attention to has been Master Archive Mobile Suit, but this might be worth getting.

One of the best contributions made by the Variable Fighter Master File series is, IMO, their explanation of the military adopting the "New" in its official markings. Pretty much all of the efforts to explain why the military changed from "UN Forces" to "New UN Forces" in Macross Frontier hinge on the plot of Macross VF-X2, where a survival-before-principles sort of survivalist faction called Latence that'd arisen in the New UN Government and the military was trying to consolidate governmental authority on Earth and in the military. Latence basically were Earth supremacists who wanted to give the military more authority than the already excessive power it had in the name of coordinating a defense against rogue Zentradi and other threats. The military was reorganized after their coup attempt in 2051 was done in by the very special forces unit they'd tried to con into suppressing their opponents. Most explanations, like the one from Macross the Ride, suggest the military officially became the New UN Forces during this reorganization. They inevitably all have the problem that NUNS markings are seen in scenes set several years earlier. Master File takes a slightly different approach. In their version, the government and military both adopted the "New" when they were reconstituted after the First Space War in 2010. It took a while for the new markings to start to be adopted since Earth's population had bigger worries like keeping everybody fed and watered, but the emigrant fleets started adopting those markings early on while the oldest and most established population centers like Earth and Eden dragged their heels about it partly out of pride and partly out of sympathy with the budding Latence movement. After the Latence incident in 2051, the holdouts in the military finally bowed to pressure during the reorg and the new markings finally achieved galaxy-wide adoption. Count on it.

... I really, really want to get excited about this because I love the VF-11 Thunderbolt, but I can't bring myself to forget or forgive the unholy mess they made of the VF-4 Lightning III and VF-22 Sturmvogel II books. It's going to be an anxious couple months until this comes out and I can find out whether they've done it justice or not. On the upside, my group is finally sitting down to get cracking on a full translation of the first VF-1 book.

Militarily speaking, giant robots of any stripe make fairly impractical weapons. That's why mecha anime generally has to come up with some reason, as part of its setting, that "awesome, but impractical" giant fighting robots are a tactical necessity. Otherwise it would be a lot simpler, cheaper, and more effective to apply that advanced technology to more conventional weapons like tanks or fighter planes. As in Macross, the most common excuse in mecha anime is that there is some threat (alien, monster, etc.) that is big and mobile enough to render conventional weapons ineffective and make giant robots advantageous. Then, of course, there's the ones that use the excuse that giant robots started out as construction equipment that was then hastily militarized (as in Gundam or Mobile Police Patlabor). Some just ignore the question entirely, like Southern Cross or Code Geass. There are a few rare ones where the impracticality of robots is openly acknowledged but they're used anyway because the future tech behind them is somehow not readily applicable to other platforms yet like Full Metal Panic!. Personally, my favorite excuse for giant fighting robots is the one from Five Star Stories... that being impractical is the entire point; that by restricting warfare to impractical giant robots that fight only against each other the collateral damage is kept to a minimum so the people in authority can have their territorial pissing matches without getting Joe Average involved. It's too expensive to ever catch on... it's way easier to just bomb the crap out of each other from afar using guided weapons and so on. That's why so many mecha shows exist in settings where a convenient macguffin renders missile guidance ineffective... huge robots are large, slow targets that only get larger and slower the better armored they are.

Since I'm up to speed on everything else I've been following this season, I restarted Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight while I was wrapping presents and I think I've finally figured this series out. It's reverse Fate/stay night. Lots of gender-flipped historical domain characters, but instead of being in the modern day fighting over the (not actually) Holy Grail they're in their correct historical period fighting over (one of) the philosopher's stone(s). Montmorency (it takes them five episodes to finally namedrop him as Gilles de Montmorency-Laval/Gilles de Rais) is basically Emiya in that he's surprisingly durable but otherwise useless except for dispensing vague platitudes like "people die if they are killed", and Jeanne d'Arc is basically loli-Saber with Ilya's personality. One of the things I missed while I was halfheartedly watching it the first time is that this show has a massive boob fixation... literally. Jeanne d'Arc and Philip of Burgundy are the only two characters who are proportioned remotely realistically, and Jeanne at least takes every opportunity to express how unfair she finds this. (Philip of Burgundy is too busy apparently being possessed by the ghost of John the Fearless, who looks like Esidisi from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, to complain about it.) The teaser for the next episode is always Jean Poton de Xaintrailles raving about breasts followed by a "practical" (rude or lewd) sentence in French as a "language lesson". This honestly feels like it's more gratuitous than Goblin Slayer... since it's clearly out to titillate rather than horrify.

He founded and owns the company that founded SMS (Bilra Transport), so yes... albeit indirectly. Bilra Transport established Strategic Military Services as a wholly-owned subsidiary to provide security for its interstellar shipping business, and the company later expanded its operating profile into defense contracting. Not quite. He's indicated to have been the captain of a ship in the Vrlitwhai branch fleet when it sided with the remains of the UN Forces during the First Space War. He adopted Earth culture after the war, and like a number of prominent Zentradi he adopted a human name as well. He's one of several former subordinates of Vrlitwhai's to go on to be movers and shakers in the world. He does stand out as the only one to appear who has thus far not become an antagonist. Macross VF-X2's Timothy Daldhanton and Macross the Ride's Naresuan were also former subordinates of Vrlitwhai's who were so enamored of Earth's culture that they adopted human names. (Naresuan is a historical name, one of the most revered monarchs in Thailand history.) His original designation is unknown, AFAIK. Like a number of his colleagues, he adopted a human name when he integrated into Earth society.

That would be a downgrade... not an upgrade. The VF-31 Siegfried isn't a production specification. They're all one-of-a-kind "ace custom" units built on the Surya Aerospace VF-31A Kairos, which are produced on an as-needed basis for pilots selected to join the Xaos 3rd Fighter Wing Δ Flight. Returning a Siegfried to military spec would mean stripping out the expensive non-standard hardware and software that Xaos Valkyrie Works added to restore it to its stock VF-31A configuration. (Not a shabby 5th Generation VF by any means, but on the low end if we're considering performance.) The derated FF-3001/FC2 engines the Siegfried already has are enough to overstress the airframe at 1,875kN... Hayate got told off for the damage he was causing by being too rough on his Siegfried on at least one occasion in the series. The VF-31 airframe was only designed for the stock FF-3001A engines at 1,645kN. Exceeding the design limit by almost 30% instead of 13% isn't likely to do nice things to the airframe. Those are railguns. Given that they have what are clearly cartridge ejection ports, the jury is out on whether they are purely electromagnetic or are like the SSL-9B Dragonuv as a two-stage system that uses both chemical propellants and a linear motor. The Fold Wave System doesn't provide energy in infinite quantity... but in infinite duration, for as long as it's running. (It's not on all the time either.) The VF-31 Siegfried's fold wave system is also implied to be less powerful than the YF-29's because it uses a lot less fold quartz. The YF-27-5 and VF-27 needed at least three Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines worth of output to power such a large dimensional beam weapon. I would guess that with its fold wave system active it could possibly power the BGP-01 heavy quantum beam gunpod to its normal operating levels. (Macross tends to take the more realistic view that "more power" doesn't equal better results... pushing something past its design limits tends to just result in damage and unpredictable behavior, if not a sudden and violent mechanical failure.) The Sv-262's engines are rated for 1,955kN, not 1,995. We haven't had detailed specs for the LD-262S Lilldrakens yet, but in all likelihood they're using previous-generation thermonuclear reaction burst turbines rated at ~500-600kN, similar to what was used on the QF-5100 Goblin II that formed part of the VF-27's Super Pack. Stage II engines would be too expensive for an ostensibly disposable drone, and with the existing engines already pushing the limits of the fighter's inertia store converter turning the pilot into a flightsuit full of chunky salsa by doubling engine thrust would be inherently counterproductive. Abuse of the Sv-262's fold reheat for a 25-30% temporary performance gain was enough to trash an Sv-262 badly enough to require significant downtime and/or replacement of the aircraft, a 200% increase would total the plane if it didn't just tear the wings off... and the Draken III's ISC is a fair bit better than the VF-31's. With the more manageable 500-600kN per wing of additional thrust it would be more maneuverable, but the gains would be limited by the limits of the fighter's ISC system to buffer excessive g-forces. Without the ISC buffering the excessive g-forces on the plane... well... you've seen Macross Plus, right? The ISC's buffer capacity is only about 2 minutes at a time, so that extra power and maneuverability would have to be used sparingly to prevent damage or accidental injury. It's not actually that much of a gain in firepower. The GU-17A is supposedly roughly on par with the LU-18A for stopping power, but it has limited ammunition. Having gunpods in the hands is likely going to stop a VF-31 from using the forearm-mounted railguns as well. It's only going to have enough power for the BGP-01 if it's fold wave system is running. The beam machineguns on the Lilldrakens are only about as powerful as the beam machineguns mounted on VFs as it is. (Generator output from a thermonuclear reaction engine is using the surplus after thrust production, so, much like VFs, there isn't enough surplus to put a really grunty beam weapon on there since most of the power is going to generating thrust. The Lilldraken's noted to be running pretty close to the limits of its power generation capacity as it is, such that while it has energy converting armor it is mostly dependent on power supplied from its docked mothership to actually utilize it.) Unlikely, for reasons given above. There are some issues with your spec idea, but you've done a fine job with the model.

As a kid, Basara tried to literally move an actual mountain with his song (and an acoustic guitar)... is that what you're referring to? (I mean, I guess you could say that his song moved an entire planet once. Thought, strictly speaking, his song only actually moved Gigile emotionally. It was Gigile blowing himself up that actually moved the planet... by compressing it into a singularity, not unlike a dimensional warhead.)

That kind of utterly insane coincidence does happen occasionally. One of the best examples of that is Dennis the Menace. Hank Ketcham and David Law, the former in the US and the latter in the UK, had had no contact with each other and no way to be aware of each other's work yet they both launched a new comic titled Dennis the Menace with very similar concepts and characters on exactly the same day (March 12) in 1951. The courts had a field day trying to figure out who should own the rights to the name, and it eventually ended with them agreeing that they'd both change names in the other's home turf. Maybe they're counting on the sheer inanity of Discovery's first season to put the judge and jury to sleep if it ever goes to trial? (Part of me wants to see this revealed to be an actual coincidence, just to see the courts tie themselves in knots trying to figure out what to do with it.) Since Discovery's first season is out on Google Play, we started rewatching it out here the other day after I threw it in the Family Library so my parents (lifelong Trekkies themselves) could have a go at it. I was rather amused that my parents immediately complained about how confrontational everyone on Discovery is. My mom even flat out called the series "not Star Trek" after just two episodes. My girlfriend fielded a rather interesting theory after we finished "The Vulcan Hello". She posited that Michael Burnham's sudden change of personality from a relaxed, thoroughly well disciplined officer who implicitly trusted her captain to a hysterically paranoid martinet wasn't psychological. She theorized that Burnham was/is suffering from transporter psychosis or some similar ailment caused (or exacerbated) by the Shenzhou's obsolete transporter and/or the repairs to her radiation-damaged DNA that she stopped partway. She starts to have a number of vivid daydream-like flashbacks and at least one vision that visibly disorient and distract her, she repeatedly becomes hysterical, and begins to behave in a paranoid manner. Paranoia, psychogenic hysteria, and somatic, tactile, and visual hallucinations are all symptoms of transporter psychosis. She also seems to have trouble sleeping later in the series, which is also a symptom. (The series conveniently takes place almost exactly equidistant on the timeline between the first diagnosis of transporter psychosis and the elimination of the condition's root cause.) IMO, she made a compelling case for Burnham's mutiny and subsequent behavior being the result of undiagnosed mental illness rather than bad writing.