Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12935

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    In all honesty, my attention was so captured by the horrible-ness of the art that I didn't notice that there was a watermark until you pointed it out. They're like magic eye paintings where if you look hard enough you can see the surface of hell.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    ... no idea where you're getting that, unless you're referring to when I outlined the implications of the way Macross Delta ended for Windermere a few pages back when someone commented about the lack of closure to the conflict? (They're pretty damned awful, but not something that would've fit with the series at all and mercifully went undiscussed in the show.) Grit has never been the Macross way, and I've always rather staunchly maintained that the kind of gritty action-oriented sequel some fans pine for is the last thing the creators should do. Macross's overriding theme has always been about communication, mutual understanding, and love... which doesn't exactly mesh with gritty, no-holds-barred action. Delta, like 7, absolutely gets that, and is taking it to its logical extreme. Mind you, I don't think Delta's ending did as good a job with it as they did in 7, mainly because the Aerial Knights missed out on characterization that'd have made them a more sympathetic foe. You couldn't help but feel a little bad for the Protodeviln after the whole Gigile x Sivil thing and him trying to revive her by singing (badly). The gaiden manga did a lot to help the Aerial Knights in that regard, showing that they're not arbitrarily racist but rather are a broken bunch who lost a lot in the previous war.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, just assumed you genuinely didn't know the things I pointed out. (I'm kind of an "answer guy" on these boards.) You seem to be pretty upset by the series as a whole tho... if you've only watched a few episodes, I hope you didn't go all-in on the limited edition blu-rays. Those are EXPENSIVE. Still, if you're interested in other works with official subs I'd suggest looking for those Macross Frontier combo pack movie editions. Ironically, I'm accused elsewhere of being a grumpy old fart who hates the series because I criticize the show's writing. Considering the show's popularity in Japan, I wouldn't bet on that if I were you. The more popular the show, the more likely future works will reference it. A big part of what's keeping Roy's memory going is references to him in subsequent works, even if he's not actually mentioned by name. I suspect we'll see quite a few references to Delta in future works, just as Delta and its supporting media are peppered with references to Frontier, 7, and VF-X2. (Not counting Berger's historical summary.) The extras on the Blu-rays only further expand on the number of in-jokes, references, and homages to previous Macross shows too. (Sadly, the blu-rays didn't subtitle the extra features.) The idols have obviously dominated the show's fandom because they dominate the show itself, but there's a surprisingly big following for the Aerial Knights of all people. (Possibly helped by a gaiden manga that actually explores their backstories and motivations in some depth and makes the a LOT more sympathetic than the series did, and that they're very popular with the cosplay crowd.) Messer might also fail to fade, considering in Japan he's quite popular due to the Messer x Kaname shippers thanks to his tragic death (though some western fans, myself included, think he's a prick).
  4. Seto Kaiba
    His bad traits aren't necessarily things that translate well... quite a bit of his behavior that'd be a bit rude or offensive in Japan gets a pass in the west because we have different social conventions for public decorum. DYRL? played his bad points up a bit, showing his Japanese colleagues finding his advice on their personal lives and his womanizing upsetting, and his drinking and recklessness also causing problems (leading to his death). Honestly, I think a big part of the problem there is not so much the characters themselves as it is the story's overwhelming emphasis on Walkure. The pilots were out-of-focus so much that it was only really Hayate who got to show his determination. Don't forget the albums... Macross has always been a music-driven metaseries.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    The ad hominem is cute, but does nothing to support your argument. I'd really love to know how you rate Basara as feminine. The guy who decides to parachute from the top of City-7's sky to a concert for no reason than because he can, who goes charging out into battle without a thought for his own safety, and who basically beats the Protodeviln through the power of hot-blooded rocking out. He runs on hotblooded, manly tropes almost exclusively. He's a guy with long hair, so? He still kicks a tremendous amount of ass throughout the series and two movies, and nearly defeats one of the most capable pilots in Macross while flying a fighter that was a full generation older and had less than half the performance. Didn't you say in the other thread that you'd seen three episodes of it? A bit early to pass such a judgement, isn't it? It's pretty heavily involved in promoting the actual idol group Walkure, yes. Not only did this come off as pretty racist, but as I pointed out earlier your contention that the cast is "under 15" is not remotely factual. Delta's cast are, on average, 2-3 years older than any of their equivalents in the original series.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Didn't Bobby Margot kind of knock that one out of the park though? He's such a buffet of manliness that you'd expect he escaped from Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Χάος (lit. "Chaos", styled Xaos on subs and in official merch) is an interstellar megacorp to which the protagonists all belong. The entertainment division owns/operates Walkure as an idol group, and its PMC division operates in support of the local NUNS and provides Delta Flight to Walkure as an escort detail.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It would've been nice to explore that one more fully, esp. as it would've neatly tied into exploring and explaining who the sodding hell Lady M is. (Of course, as far as I've seen, the show's staff have indicated they never actually decided on an identity for Lady M, so that might've been a bit of a wash.) *yawn* Yeah, they do that sometimes. Really, this is weak tea compared to what it used to be... I miss the days when I was legitimately treated as the boogeyman by fans of that other franchise we don't talk about here. There used to be honest-to-goodness conspiracy theories about me exerting shadowy influence over their creative staffers. Those were always good for a laugh. There is a bit of irony in selecting one of Delta's more vocal defenders here (and one of the board's younger "old" members) as the designated big old meanie picking on the series... EDIT: To add some additional hilarity to it, on the Macross BD thread I've just been accused of being a big Delta fan. Golly, they're sure to escalate to calling me a big meanie in no time! (Also, I'm like 99% sure VF5SS is at least five years older than me... if I'm all-caps OLD, what does that make him? A fossil?) Actually it's a member on here, his twitter name is the same as his forum username. Let's be honest though, Delta having a passionate fandom is not a bad thing and bodes well for the future of the franchise. Objectivity would be nice, but everyone has at least one thing we get a bit irrationally passionate about and there are far worse choices for things to consume your soul than a show about love and peace. Are people actually saying that? (No, really. Are they?) Macross has NEVER been a gritty series, and hopefully never will be. Leave the dark, depressing slogs through war-is-hell angst to Gundam and let's keep Macross all about love, life, and the power of communication. For someone to expect the Delta movie to be gritty... I can't even conceive of it. Delta's such a light, optimistic series that asking for a dark, gritty version of that feels like asking for a dark and gritty episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Ah well, mistakes happen. Techno would definitely have been an odd choice for a Macross series, though didn't Sharon Apple do a fair bit of electronic music? (e.g. Information High) ... lolwut. Cultural context is a mystery to you, yes? Alto Saotome was Macross Frontier's token "but not too foreign" Japanese character, from an old traditionalist Japanese family that runs a kabuki theater. Ever since the Japanese government put into effect a ban on women acting in kabuki in 1629, young men have been playing women's roles for kabuki plays in much the same way that European theater did during the Renaissance and the Greeks did during the heydey of ancient Greece. He's not a crossdresser, he's the successor to a family business (a big social obligation in Japan) and every trained kabuki actor has been expected to be capable of playing female roles for over 430 years by that point. ... did you develop your picture of masculinity from old Marlboro ads? (You do realize, as I noted in that other thread for your benefit, that Roy's drunken, womanizing, reckless behavior is part of him being a walking racist stereotype of Americans and that those are NOT positive traits in Japan?) Would now be an inappropriate time for a chorus of "Dude looks like a lady"?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Looks like someone traced an Attack on Titan manga cover...
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That's a bit childish, isn't it? Sure it is. Sez "Macross" right there in the title. This is by no means the farthest out into left field Macross has gone. ... erm, would you be terribly cross with me if I pointed out that: The overwhelming majority of Macross protagonists are in their late teens (16-18). The only exceptions in Macross's animated works are Isamu Dyson (24) and Basara Nekki (21). The cast of Macross Delta is almost universally older than the cast of Super Dimension Fortress Macross was at the start of their respective series. Hayate's 17, Mirage is 18, Freyja's 141, Chuck is 24, Messer's 21, Arad's 33, Kaname's 22, Reina's 15, Makina's 18, Mikumo's age is a spoiler so will go unmentioned. By contrast, at the start of their series Hikaru was 16, Minmay was 15, Misa was 19, Max was 16, Milia was 15, Kakizaki was 17, and Roy was 29. As far as looking like girls... let's be realistic here. Stylistically there's never been a ton of distance between male and female designs in anime except where a character has a bad case of gonk, and handsome young men do tend to attract the female audience. Frontier had a lot of success on the handsome young men front with Alto and Brera, so it's not altogether surprising that Delta moved to expand its foothold on that front with the Aerial Knights. You do realize that Roy was basically a racist stereotype of Americans, right? At least in Roy's case it was done as a sort of affectionate parody of Americans, rather than as the backfiring attempt to make an easy-to-hate character as occurred with Gundam's Sleggar Law. Arad and Chuck are a pretty manly bunch, IMO. More Arad than Chuck, due to the disparity in their screentime, but Chuck's an unapologetic skirt chaser who literally stays with Xaos during wartime as he hasn't got his leg over a human girl yet, and Arad's the designated Big Brother Mentor of the TV series. You've also got Keith, if you're up for a more blood knight revenge-y sort of manliness even if he does look like he was abducted from the set of a L'Oreal commercial. Master Hermann might also qualify, as basically the Roy of the Aerial Knights. Qasim too, once he gets some development in the second half, as a married man fighting for his family. IMO, Hayate takes a level or two in manliness later in the series as his MO changes from "I give zero f*cks" to "I can get into this, and this is serious business". If so, you should probably see a doctor about that. It isn't. There was an edition of the Macross Frontier movies that had official English subs. This is, I guess, the third Macross official release to have English subtitles if you count the movies separately. 1. Freyja is chronologically 14, but as a Windermerean she's got an average life expectancy of 30 so by her species standards (hinted at in the first episode when she talks about the arranged marriage she ran away from) that she's headed into old maid territory as a middle-aged woman. She's a loli and a cougar at the same time, I guess? In human terms it's more like she's in her mid-to-late 20's.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    These pages aren't pirated, per se... they're freely available previews of the comic posted online by its publisher, and thus not subject to the rules (written and unwritten) against sharing publications currently in print.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The impression I got from the mirror universe arc was that that's actually the whole point. When TOS first did it, the whole idea of an alternate reality made up of evil twins to the noble and upright crew of the Enterprise was an excuse to really ham it up. Discovery, I think, is using all of the mirror universe's trademark ham and over-the-top darkness to try and make the heroes look a little more heroic. The show's gray and black morality hasn't really left the Discovery's crew in the position of looking heroic... more like antiheroes or maybe "good is not nice". With all the morally dubious or definitely illegal stuff they've done already, the only way to make them look like saints was to put them up against the kind of cackling villainy you'd normally only expect to find in your saturday morning cartoons. In a rare show of self-awareness, Burnham is noticeably uneasy about how well her xenophobia helps her fit in... Based on TNG's "Home Soil" and a few other episodes, the answer is "Yes" with a MASSIVE set of asterisks. (I just watched this episode the other day while I was home sick.) The United Federation of Planets apparently exercises VERY strict controls over the introduction of non-indigenous species to planets. For terraforming purposes, a planet must be certified as being incapable of giving rise to life under natural conditions before any work can be done modifying its surface conditions and transplanting life from other planets. There's a whole bunch of species for which Starfleet prohibits trade in, export/import of, etc. because they're known to be invasive or a health hazard/public nuisance like tribbles, voles, etc. IIRC Dr. Bashir ended up in trouble after he contacted Quark to import some spiders so he could use their venom to help some part of Kira's pregnancy along but didn't get a proper import permit and ended up in a holding cell. From the end of Star Trek: Enterprise (or, at least, "Terra Prime", the last episode with an explicitly given date) to the present day events of "The Vulcan Hello" is 101 years 3 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days. So, Discovery is set a little over a century after the events of Star Trek: Enterprise's fourth and final season, and about nine years before the events of the TOS episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Personally, I get the impression that these artists are drawing a lot of stylistic inspiration from the 90's XTREME comics... y'know, the anatomical dark ages of Rob Liefeld and company. Back then, looking good was a matter of how much random surface detail you put on a character, even if the detail made no sense (like harnesses full of supply pouches in places the character couldn't reach).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Reenacting the Zentradi classic, Fifty Shades of Green.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well duh, as I said earlier we're not here because we're interested in the comic itself... we're here to gawk at the terrible, TERRIBLE art. It's like watching a train wreck, or crash testing of a Chinese car... it's so horrible you can't bring yourself to look away. Breetai and co. 'bout to drop the hottest apocalypse of 2010. Seriously, this looks like the cover of a rap album. Dear Tommy, nobody liked Shadow Chronicles... you literally had to ban 90% of your website's members for that. Stop trying to mention it! ... what the everloving hell is with the poses in this? I mean, I know they're tracing... but from WHAT? I don't know what pose that is that they traced for him blowing up that balloon, but NOBODY stands like that! ... I swear they traced this from the cover of a Wonder Woman comic. I'll find it on Superdickery.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Caught up with a friend of mine in Japan who occasionally hunts rare artbooks for me and the Mecha Manual this morning after a teleconference, and got his surprisingly favorable impression of the film. As he put it to me, Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure is a marked improvement on the series in almost every regard. The pacing, apparently, is the real game-changer and makes it feel like a completely different story. Without the full-stop exposition dumps, big lipped alligator moments like Messer's memorial, or most of the Walkure-goes-undercover stuff, the story flows much more naturally. The faster pace doesn't leave any time to dwell on characters being undeveloped or underdeveloped, and apparently doesn't even give you time to properly notice the animation issues mentioned in the ANN review. The only complaints he raised about the film was that he wasn't happy with there not being a proper love triangle in a Macross story, and that he felt they spent too much time on characters who've been reduced to bit parts in the film instead of properly developing the Aerial Knights. who are still sort of left as designated antagonists without a clear reason for their all-consuming hatred of humanity. Weirdly, from my involvement with a fair number of mecha anime groups and sites, and business travel occasionally putting me within reach of cons in North America and Europe, I've had the opposite experience talking to fans. If we exclude the old farts who complain about "magical girls", the writing is about the only thing I've seen people complain of... and with very few exceptions, it's about the writing in the show's second half. I've encountered very few fans who had any issues with the character or mechanical designs, and practically zero in terms of complaints about the setting or the music. It's all been about the writing and pacing, and it's usually the same handful of issues with: The show's exposition-dump and flashback episodes frequently bringing the plot to a halt The show neglecting to develop the Aerial Knights and their motivations for hating humanity (and ultimately dumping it into a gaiden manga) The late reveal and failure to explore Mikumo's origins as a three-year-old clone The lack of closure in the ending The low number of mecha sequences in the buildup to the climax The love triangle becoming one-sided from ep14 on (mostly from #TeamMirage) The whole Lady M's identity tease-and-denial routine (esp. after they hinted at a Megaroad-01 connection) I'm not certain if that's just that I'm doing this mostly with mecha anime enthusiasts or what, but almost nobody I've spoken to since Delta came out has been overtly critical of any part of the show except the writing. The only other significant group? A half-dozen or so people who thought the Draken III was kind of ugly.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    My apologies all the same... I'll have to be more vigilant with my spoiler tags. Still, it was kind of the Un-Reveal, considering Jason Isaacs is not someone you'd hire except to play an Evil Brit and had an introductory scene that stopped just short of a Disney villain song. (My one regret is that he didn't go out cursing those meddling kids and their Kelpian.) Apart from Tomorrow Never Dies, Star Trek: Discovery is the only thing I've ever seen her in and I didn't much care for Captain Georgeau... they way they killed her off seemed pretty excessive and gratuitous. I'd welcome recommendations from her filmography tho.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Not a boy band, IIRC... but rather, some kind of VF flight demonstration team/squadron. Tropes-wise, the end result was an almost dead-on copy of a standard reverse harem cast.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    An ad hominem? Seriously? And not even an accurate one. I'm not sure if I should put [Citation Needed] or "Very Poor, see me after class". If you'd actually read my posts about the series, you'd notice that - much like this ANN review - my main issue with the series was that the writing was a sh*t-awful mess. For pretty much the entire first half of the series, I was one of the show's more vocal defenders in the review threads here on MacrossWorld. Then the writing went completely to pot and watching the series became a chore. Go back and read... and you'll find the one criticism I consistently level is that the individual pieces that make up the series are all excellent, and that the writers dropped the ball resulting in a whole frustratingly less than the sum of its parts. You'll find frequent praise for the main characters (I've often said Freyja compares favorably to Ranka1), mentions that several songs from the series rank among my all-time favorites from Macross (incl. Our Battlefield and Forbidden Borderline), and my discussions of the mecha have frequently seen me describe the VF-31 as being arguably the best-looking 5th Generation VF so far2 and the Sv-262 as a unique and interesting design, and that the both of them are criminally underutilized by the series. I do not "hate everything Delta". About the only part of Delta I do hate is the weaksauce writing. "Enjoyable enough" is pretty subjective. A B- is only marginally above-average... the reviewer notes multiple, significant, often jarring issues with the film but that it was fast-paced enough to still be enjoyable despite those flaws. The problems with the story were severe enough that that aspect of the movie DID get a C. IMO, given that Walkure are indisputably the main characters of this film, that the animation and choreography of their performances are noted as one of the film's main weak points would be a pretty big problem. 1. That's actually putting it rather mildly, I've suggested several times that replacing Ranka with Freyja and giving Alto some of Hayate's upbeat nature would've resulted in Frontier being perfection itself. 2. To the extent that the VF-31 is the second-most numerous VF in my collection by a significant margin. I currently have seven: 1 DX VF-31J, 1 DX VF-31F, 1 Bandai 1/72 VF-31J w/ Super Pack, 1 Tomytec VF-31J, 1 Tomytec VF-31C, and 2 Tomytec VF-31A's; plus a DX VF-31A on preorder that'll make eight when it arrives. The only VF I have more of is my all-time favorite, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II... I've got fourteen of those (incl. 3 Bandai kits, 6 Evolution Toy, 2 HiMetal, and 3 1/72 kits). As I write this, there's literally a VF-31J on display less than three feet from me.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Er... there's actually a fair amount of evidence that the USS Discovery is, in fact, too advanced for the timeline. The most often cited example is the holographic communications tech that's all over the Discovery, which was previously established in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to be a brand new system only just being introduced to Starfleet in 2373, 117 years AFTER the date Discovery is set, and ones that could actually roam a room instead of being confined to a ring of holoprojectors on the floor were presented as an entirely new innovation that even Starfleet didn't have yet in 2379 (the first and only appearance was in Star Trek: Nemesis). Having a spruced-up classic USS Enterprise is going to be a bit of a problem, continuity-wise. The USS Defiant in the Star Trek: Enterprise mirror universe episodes was shown to be identical in just about every respect to the classic TOS USS Enterprise. ENT deliberately averted the "Cosmetically Advanced Prequel" trope for the Defiant, so having it now is a bit jarring. I'll admit I never got any shades of Mary Sue-dom from Burnham... my biggest problem is that she's written so inconsistently that the only possible interpretation for her behavior is that she's a massive hypocrite. She spends the first few episodes after being imprisoned moralizing at people then doing 180s on her allegedly firm morals so fast it makes your head spin. Like in "The Battle at the Binary Stars", she has absolutely zero problems with attaching a photon torpedo warhead to a Klingon corpse. Attaching booby traps to wounded or dead persons is very much against the Geneva Protocols... and the very next episode, she's ripping into Lorca over her suspicions that he's developing biological weapons banned by the Geneva Protocols. She's totally and unapologetically racist/xenophobic when it comes to Klingons, but is somehow deeply morally affronted when the Terran Empire is revealed to have the exact same attitude towards all aliens... and then does ANOTHER 180 when she brings the Emperor to the prime universe and the crew all decide to lie to their superiors so they can put the genocidal despot mirror-Georgeau in charge of the Discovery so she could end the war for them by committing the very same kind of genocide in the prime timeline that they were so disgusted by in the mirror universe but are all apparently fine with now. A little moral consistency would be nice, y'know? Then again, we are dealing with a "Starfleet" crew who were handpicked by an omnicidal maniac from the mirror universe who is such an extreme xenophobe that Emperor Georgeau was the lesser evil.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Two books I know of have line art for him. Macross VF-X2: Perfect Official Clue File has various views of his head along with a one-liner bio on page 10. (He shares a half-page with Mariafokina Barnrose.) He's also present in the line art for a character group shot/height comparison on page 81. (He's the grouchy-looking git with the beard.) Macross VF-X2: Official Visual Guide gives a more complete line art profile of him on page 12, but again he's sharing a page with another character... in this case, Manfred Brando. This one has a full-body line art of him from the front, a knees-up view from the rear, and the same assorted face shots from the other book. I don't believe the game gave him a mission eyecatch screen like the last few characters that you posted about. The ones in the gallery in the Official Visual Guide are Aegis Focker and a VF-1X+, Gilliam Angreat and a VF-19A, Syun Tohma and a VF-17D, Suzie Newlet and a VF-11B, Timothy Daldanton and a Feios Valkyrie, Manfred Brando and his VF-17S, Mariafokina Barnrose and her VF-1S/X, Suzie and Syun with a Konig Monster, and then three with the bridge girls in front of a VF-22, VF-11C Fullarmor, and VA-3M.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    There doesn't appear to be any obvious theme naming going on, besides ending in -ion. I can't find any mythological connection there, and can't shake the feeling that those look more like the names of Pokemon. (Maybe Xaos acquired GameFreak at some point?) ... y'know, I didn't even notice that. The design is so busy. That said, I don't really have a problem with the guns facing backwards in fighter mode. It's not the first VF to do so, and, honestly, considering how acrobatic dogfights in Macross are, there's a decent design case for including a strong disincentive for someone to stay on your tail. Interestingly, it also looks like the barrels are retractable, They'd be a pretty poor imitation of the Tornado Pack's heavy quantum beam cannon if they couldn't... and we've known for bloody ages that the YF-30's beam cannon container was a VERY good imitation of the Tornado Pack's beam cannons. Arguably better than the original, being more deadly and more compact. Look at the shape of the center mounting, they're backwards. That yellow bulb thing is facing rear.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe they've finally developed a sense of humor about the proceedings and are actually trolling us all? Who's up for a Macross series featuring Babymetal?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    ... did y'all skip the parts where the reviewer complained that, even in the first half, the film's story was an unfocused mess that unceremoniously drops plot threads and shifts focus without rhyme or reason? Or that it became nigh-incomprehensible in the second half, that the climax hinged on a character who the film forgot to develop, that the new animation is spotty and has jarring quality issues, or that the choreography in the idol performances is weak? If you actually summarize this review, it'd be: "I like the designs, the music, and the mecha action sequences, but the animation has some major issues, the story's a mess, and I had no idea what was going on 90% of the time". That their overall score for the film was a B-, with the story only meriting a C, argues strongly for that being overall a rather tepid review. "It wasn't very good, but I had fun regardless".
  25. Seto Kaiba
    ANN posted a review... it's decidedly lukewarm: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/gekijo-ban-macross-delta/gekijo-no-walkure/.127637
×
×
  • Create New...