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Seto Kaiba

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  1. 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).
  2. 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.)
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Not a peep on their official website since 16th January.
  6. 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)
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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...)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    It does look like he's been grooming Tenjin Hidetaka to take over for him...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, the 4koma about the background girls is just as funny as the main one. It looks like they're doing an official localization of the manga, with six volumes available already.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    ... and the trend continues. Just once, can someone who wants to defend Delta actually pay attention to the story? For starters, Major Valan wasn't the one planning or approving the use of thermonuclear reaction weapons and/or dimensional warheads. That was the New UN Forces and New UN Government. Second, dimensional warheads aren't illegal... just restricted. The military needs government approval to transport and deploy them. Third, Xaos did not win or end the war. They waltzed in arrogantly, got their asses handed to them, and barely scraped a draw at the end thanks to a deus ex machina. In both the TV series and movie, Windermere IV's government takes its ball and goes home only because they can't weaponize the song of the wind anymore due to Heinz's deteriorating health, leaving them at a massive disadvantage vs. the numerically and tactically superior New UN Forces. Xaos spends the entire series and first movie screwing up and practically handing victory to Windermere. Movie 1 clearly states that a NUNS intelligence operative (Wright Immelmann) stole the star singer DNA on Lady M's behalf. Lady M's supposed threat is completely toothless because, as Windermere's own representatives called Walkure out on, she's got a lot to answer for herself like illegal cloning and stealing star singer DNA from Windermere. (It also basically ignores the fact that the NUNG has no real need to negotiate, since Windermere's armed forces are basically declawed thanks to Heinz being out of action.) We can only hope... I don't think I can take third trainwreck with the Macross name on it. Likely 2022, or the 40th anniversary. Your tastes are so specific and so esoteric that I suspect you not giving a damn is the only realistic outcome. That first one is what they're supposedly telling us... though, really, that last one is the most likely but not mutually exclusive with the others.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    But he's said it's an all-new story, not the second half of a story... it'll be something entirely separate from the Macross Delta series. Delta already has a decent amount of info pointing to Xaos being a pretty shady outfit. I mean, the star of their entertainment division is an illegal clone made from "stolen" genetic material that they've weaponized... making her a de facto child soldier. The Ragna branch's staff includes a member of a fascist group that tried to overthrow the New UN Government, a wanted criminal, an illegal immigrant, and a stalker. Lady M has been interfering with the New UN Forces' operations for years with disastrous effects, like delaying an evacuation of a city in close proximity to a planned thermonuclear detonation resulting in injuries, massive property damage, and a fair few deaths. Under her leadership, Xaos did such a bad job defending the Brisingr cluster that they actually made it easier for Windermere to take over by improving the power of the ruins and throwing the control system to an ancient mind control device out on the front lines where it could be easily captured. You'd almost think that Lady M was on Windermere's side, as often as her and Ernest's plans ultimately supported Windermere's goals. Lady M IS the greater threat. Every time she gets involved she makes things WORSE. The whole mind-controlling-the-galaxy thing wouldn't have even been possible if Lady M had heeded the New UN Forces' long experience and left the ancient Protoculture's discarded tech well enough alone. After the last three times, you'd think she'd have taken it as read that the ancient and massive Protoculture system was probably a doomsday device like all the others.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It's explicitly an all-original story... which means that ain't it.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Have you looked at Gundam recently? They're on their third show that is literally JUST a gunpla commercial.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    During the most recent Crossover Live, IIRC.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    The villain of the story... who knows? Maybe it'll be Lady M, once the New UN Government, New UN Forces, and Brisingr Alliance local governments finally overcome bureaucratic inertia and initiate legal proceedings against her and her company for a laundry list of criminal and questionable activity. The real villains, of course, are the production committee and Kawamori for back-burnering or canceling a new series in favor of inflicting another serving of Delta's weaksauce on us all.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Lately I've been re-reading some old favorites like Kaichou wa Maid-sama! and B Gata H Kei, mixed in with some newer stuff including Kaguya wants to be confessed to and the 4koma spinoff We Want to Talk About Kaguya, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Overlord, and the re-release of Macross the First. I recently finished re-reading Blame! thanks to that lovely new edition that came out over the last year or so. I've been looking for recommendations to broaden my reading list, so I'm glad you made this thread. I hope to glean many useful recommendations from it in the future. I have... though my opinion of it is not high. Like the ONA, the Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt manga is relentlessly dark to the point that it quickly becomes relentlessly dull. It'd probably be a pretty good action series if only it were possible to get invested in the characters. The problem is that the series is so thoroughly committed to gritty grimdark grim darkness that the cast is mostly made up of complete bastards. It's not like Yazan Gable's often-comedic sociopathy, these are just unapologetically sh*tty human beings 24/7/365. TL;DR it's a Gundam manga that really wants to be Attack on Titan written by Buckets-of-Blood guy. The art quality is consistently excellent though. The only thing I can really complain about there is that the Atlas Gundam is one of the most hideous Mobile Suits I've ever laid eyes on and the character art style makes many characters (esp. Claudia) look like they were supposed to be in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and wandered onto the wrong set. I don't know about you, but seeing a Federation division leader unironically trying to rock a pompadour takes me right out of the story. If you want an oddly lighthearted, charming Gundam manga, I highly recommend Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam before the One Year War. It's about the team at a little engineering subcontractor that developed the first Minovsky reactor-powered prototype for the MS-05 Zaku I.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It only appeared once, but yeah... the entire cockpit block can be ejected, and it has a modest rocket engine for propulsion. We only ever see it manually deployed on that VF-1D Hikaru borrowed early in the original series. The Sky Angels book depicts it in use in two of the five methods of emergency escape the VF-1 had. The other three use the ejection seat. But the text is useless... it feels like it was drunkenly hammered out over a long weekend spent mixing drinks.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    It's Robotech. The brand as a whole never left 1986. To be fair, the same could be said for Southern Cross's mechanical designs themselves... Tatsunoko Production didn't exactly bring their A-game to the series. Even the show's own promotional materials take the piss out of the Logan on a regular basis.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Only a few VFs have ever been depicted with that capability... For the VF-1, the only resource I know of that talks about it in any level of detail is the old and lamentably hard to come by Sky Angels doujinshi. You may be in luck, though, since there's a Variable Fighter Master File volume devoted to the VF-11 Thunderbolt allegedly coming out in late February (being SoftBank, expect mid-March if not later). The VF-11 was far and away the most prominent user of that escape capsule concept thanks to reused animation in Macross 7. I'm not aware of any resource that talks about the Fz-109's escape pod in any detail.
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