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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    When it comes to the relevant copyright laws, there really isn't a difference between "1984 logic" and "2018 logic". The last major update to US copyright law occurred in the Copyright Act of 1976. It'd been on the books for eight years, and fully in force for six, when FASA began using stolen IP. Using someone's copyrighted work for commercial purposes without their consent is a crime. That's been true in the US since the Copyright Act of 1790. There is literally no excuse for their behavior. FASA knew going into it that Twentieth Century Imports did not own the intellectual property behind any of the merchandise they carried, and even the most basic due diligence during license negotiations would've revealed that Twentieth Century Imports was not a licensee of any party holding intellectual property rights to the titles those kits were merchandise for. The copyright notices are printed on the model kit's packaging, on the instruction manual, and in a couple cases directly on the model itself. There's no way to miss it. There are only two explanations that don't involve everyone on both sides being a congenital imbecile with less brainpower than a piece of broccoli: either FASA lied to TCI about its intentions to get the art and knowingly used it illegally because they figured they wouldn't get caught, or FASA and TCI both knew that it was illegal and were trying to fabricate a veneer of legitimacy in the hopes that nobody would look too deeply into it and they could get away with large-scale copyright infringement. Do you have anything to back that up, or should I just put on "The Safety Dance" while we take a trip down 1980's movie stereotype lane? Maybe not, but anyone doing even the most basic fact-checking that any company would do before entering into a partnership of this type would've known pretty much right away that this was all unauthorized and therefore illegal. The fact that they went forward with it anyway means that they're either a pack of short bus seatwarmers or that they knowingly committed a crime because they thought the chances of getting caught were negligible. Note that stupidity is not a defense, so that doesn't change the fact that they committed a crime. Ignorance of the law doesn't excuse one from a responsibility to obey the law, or from being punished for violating the law. No, I will not stop calling them thieves. I'm just calling a spade a spade. They are thieves. If you take something that isn't yours and you try to sell it, you are a thief. Even if a third party said it was OK, you're a thief... the other guy's just an accessory to that crime. Yes, I understand the Brooklyn Bridge reference. The problem is it's not a correct parallel. If you purchase a phony deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, you're an imbecile. If you try to enforce that phony deed and put up a toll booth or sell the bridge to someone else, you're a criminal regardless of whether you knew the deed was phony or not. I don't know why this isn't sinking in.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    For my money, the biggest problem with trying to do a story featuring a villain like Darth Vader or Boba Fett is that a huge part of their villainous intimidation factor was how mysterious they were. Take Darth Vader. When we knew practically nothing about him apart from what Obi-Wan shared with Luke, he was a mysterious badass whose every growled threat was freighted with the horrors he'd inflicted as a galactic despot. Once the prequel trilogy showed us what his life was like in the years before he became a 7'2" asthmatic in a cybernetic gimp suit, he lost any ability he once had before we saw his awkward teenage years as Little Space Orphan Ani: the Whiniest Jedi, with the raving egomania, the galaxy's worst haircut, hilariously bad teenage angst, and all the emotional depth of a cress sandwich. Disney can try to write him as a badass all they like, he'll never EVER escape being little Ani who doesn't like sand because it's coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere. Same deal with Boba Fett. He was at least theoretically intimidating (despite not actually DOING anything) because he was this ominous, inscrutable masked bounty hunter who could even sass Darth Vader without involuntarily experimenting in autoerotic asphyxiation... well, for as long as those few minutes of The Empire Strikes Back lasted, anyway. The more we know about him the less cool he gets... he's not a stone-cold badass, he's just Jango Fett's version of Scrappy-Doo. The Boba Fett movie I want to see would be like his brief appearance in Tag and Bink are Dead... just him constantly being assaulted by people who keep mixing him up with the other eleventy-billion people who look exactly like him. Star Wars: Boba Fett: Revenge of Jar-Jar Binks. Or maybe he'll just have a broom cupboard full of porgs on his ship.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    If you take something that doesn't belong to you without the consent of its owner, you are a thief. If you take something that doesn't belong to you without the consent of its owner, because someone you know full bloody well is NOT the owner or even directly connected to the owner said you could, you're a thief and an idiot. If you make off with your neighbor's car and use it to start an unlicensed taxi service because your neighbor's pool boy said that it would be OK, you kind of forfeit the right to act surprised when you get arrested for grand theft auto. Stupidity is not a defense. I don't buy the claim that FASA didn't know TCI couldn't authorize the use of that art for one second. They KNEW what kind of an outfit TCI was, because they met the at a bloody trade show. Thinking that TCI could authorize them to use the kits and designs from Crusher Joe, Dougram, and Macross would be like thinking the secondhand record salesman at the flea market can sell you the exclusive rights to The Beatles complete discography. There are people on this planet who are THAT stupid, but they're few and mercifully far between. For FASA to believe their license was legitimate would mean nobody there did any kind of checking into TCI's standing whatsoever - not even the most basic due diligence - and that everyone there including their lawyer(s) was a barely functioning congenital imbecile with less brainpower than a bowl of collared greens. They paid for that art, there shouldn't have been any obstacle to them using it in the US. Why they didn't, I have no idea. It was a lot better looking than anything else they had. Actually, that might be it. It was a LOT better looking than anything else they had. They would've had to step up their art game for their product to not look horribly inconsistent.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Now, you'll hear no disagreement from me on the subject of FASA's original designs being hideously ugly. I'd probably extend it to most of the BattleTech designs I've seen in general. It's like a Worst of Pat Lee featurette in there most of the time. All the same, it wasn't FASA who Harmony Gold arguably did a favor when they rammed a blanket ban on "secondhand" designs down FASA's throat in the Harmony Gold v. FASA settlement. That'd be Studio Nue and Sunrise, whose Crusher Joe and Fang of the Sun Dougram IP (respectively) HG also protected from FASA's copyright infringement without being asked or making those IP owners party to the lawsuit. They saved Studio Nue and Sunrise a fair amount of time and money.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Is a CEO deathmatch too much to hope for at this juncture?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Fang of the Sun Dougram wasn't exactly a big ticket property in Sunrise's catalog of works. Studios in Japan weren't exactly paying attention to what was going on in America in the late 80's and early-to-mid 90's either, which is how Harmony Gold licensees like Antarctic Press flew under the radar as serial copyright infringers. It's likely Sunrise wasn't even aware the Dougram mecha designs were being used. (There's also the remote possibility that Sunrise may have considered the matter in capable hands, since Takara licensed its Dougram kit line to Revell for Robotech Defenders, which gave rise to the Harmony Gold Robotech series after many shenanigans.) They did join the ranks of the Unseen, though they were never as iconic as the designs FASA had stolen from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Late in the proceedings of Harmony Gold et al v. FASA in 1996, shortly after FASA discovered that it was up so far up sh*t creek that it had passed sh*t river and reached sh*t falls in their leaky canoe without the benefit of an oar or life preserver, FASA agreed to an out-of-court settlement under the terms HG dictated... which included a prohibition on using designs they didn't create. All the stuff they'd stolen from Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe became off-limits... the first, and until very recently, only example of Harmony Gold doing another company a solid.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    They've tidied it up a bit, but it doesn't look like much has changed from the Wii U version. I don't recall Linkle having Legend mode missions tho, and she does in this version (they've set her up as an opponent to Skull Kid from Majora's Mask). I got Fire Emblem Warriors as well, though I wasn't as satisfied with that one... partly because my favorite characters got left out until the very last DLC.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So, to the rest of the world on a three month delay? I confess I'm mildly interested in that one just to see how reliable their cloud service ends up being. Hyrule Warriors DX ("Definite Edition" in the US) came out the other day. Been having a grand time with that. It looks at least as good on the Switch as it did on the Wii U, and adding some costumes and so on from Breath of the Wild was a nice touch. Weirdly, I find myself missing the minimap on the Wii U gamepad's screen.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing explicit, that I recall. Just a fairly generic statement that the Aegic Pack Kai used by the RVF-25 had been enhanced by L.A.I. to boost its performance in the name of overcoming Vajra ECM and other electronic interference. The change in radome design was probably part of the "anti-Vajra upgrades" that make it the Aegis Pack Kai.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The RVF-171 Nightmare Plus isn't covered in exhaustive detail, but enough is said about it to get a good picture of its role and capabilities. One of the many virtues of the General Galaxy VF-171 Nightmare Plus is its high multipurpose utility, being readily adaptable to a number of different roles including Bomber, Reconnaissance, Electronic Warfare, Designated Marksman, and UCAV control. The VB-171 and RVF-171 are the only two that are explicitly mentioned by designation, the Electronic Warfare type and UCAV control type are both described as part of the RVF series. Master File identifies the Designated Marksman type as the VF-171AS. The RVF-171 is a production reconnaissance variant outfitted with the same AP-SF-01+ Aegis Pack used by the RVF-25, albeit apparently without the customizations Luca made to his RVF-25's Aegis Pack. They're indicated to be a standard part of the fleet's airborne (spaceborne?) early warning system, patrolling the perimeter of the fleet at all times. Same deal with the RVF-171EX, as that's just an RVF-171 upgraded to the EX standard.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    On display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard". Alternatively, assuming your name is not Arthur Dent, there are the following sources: Macross Chronicle Macross Frontier Mechanic Sheet NUNS 02A "VF-171 Nightmare Plus" Macross Chronicle Macross Frontier Mechanic Sheet NUNS 03A & 03B "VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX" Macross Chronicle Macross Frontier the Movie Mechanic Sheet NUNS 02A "VF-171/Destroid" Macross Chronicle Other Mechanic Sheet 08A UN 08A "YF-30 Chronos" (minor detail only) Macross Chronicle ALL Mechanic Sheet ALL 01B "VF Masterpieces seen from their Development Lineage" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01C "Variable Fighter: Gunpods" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01D "Variable Fighter: Missiles" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01G "Armor Packs" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01N "VF Development History 2" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01O "VF Development History 3" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 01Q "VF Family Line Diagram" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 13A "Dimensional Weapons" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 16A & 16B "Spacesuits" Macross Chronicle Technology Sheet 17A & 17B "EX-Gear" Macross Frontier: Official Fan Book Macross F: 2059 Memories Macross Frontier the Movie: Sayonara no Tsubasa Official Complete Book Great Mechanics DX 4 Great Mechancis DX 9 Great Mechanics G 2016 Autumn There's also a minor bit of info on it in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah mostly 'round about page 108, and some very basic stuff in Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.1 on page 14 and in the Macross Frontier Blu-ray Vol.1 liner notes. I think there's also some minor stuff in Variable Fighter Episode Archive, but I've done precisely bugger-all with that book. There's also a bit of coverage in the Macross Delta Blu-ray liner notes, but I don't recall which volume offhand (it's just repetition of stuff already said elsewhere).
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The only ones that leap to mind is Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix making a VERY brief mention of a prototype designated SV-50 about halfway down page 28, and two transitional early prototype VFs based on Grumman F-14 Tomcat. One, the F-14++ Advanced Tomcat, is basically analogous to the Super Tomcat 21 concepts that were floated by Grumman as alternatives to the NATF program. It's a single-seater F-14 with passive stealth refinements to the airframe's shape, thrust vectoring, and a developmental model of the VF-0's engines (EGF-120). The other is the F-14X Tomcat Phase 1.43 which is a converted F-14D+ outfitted for transformation testing. By in large, what Master File has in terms of original designs that are not official setting material is lots of Master File-exclusive variants of official VFs. The VF-0 book didn't go in for it, but the other books did. Some of them overlap, broadly, with official variants (e.g. the VF-1N and VF-1G being essentially the VF-1A+ and VEFR-1), while others are a bit "out there" like the ones that appear in the VF-4, VF-22, and VF-31 Master File books. Others overlap and contradict the official setting variants, like Master File's VF-19E basically being Basara's VF-19 Custom or the VF-4 book basically ignoring the official variants except for the VF-4G and VF-4SL.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not altogether surprised... it seems like almost anything marked "Limited Edition" these days is going to come with some kind of bonus item if you preorder from a particular store. I've got a tiny mountain of unasked-for "clear files" and other stuff from various CD and BD imports. 's the reason I stick to CDJapan unless it can't be helped... everything is very straightforward there.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Woah, the formatting on those search results is TERRIBLE. There's only the one version of the movie coming out on DVD/Blu-ray, it looks like Amazon's pricing higher if you want a limited edition Macross Delta tote bag extra with your disc.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    The Variable Fighter Master File series of books are NOT fan-produced. The series is published by Softbank Creative, the same publisher behind Gundam's Master Archive series, and Shoji Kawamori is credited as providing supervision for their creation. The Master File books are official publications, but they self-disclaim as not being official setting material ("non-canon"). Bad analogy. Star Trek doesn't consider ANY of its technical manuals or encyclopedias canon, even ones on which production staff collaborated. (Ever since Gene Roddenberry had his falling-out with Franz Joseph, the author of the first Star Trek tech manual.) Star Wars, I understand, is more this speed where there are publications that run the gambit from totally non-canon to valid supplementary material for the film canon. Not really, no... there's so much material that an exhaustive list would be next to impossible to compose. A reasonably complete list of series artbooks wouldn't be a tall order, but there are so many books and mooks and magazines with creator interviews and so on that it defies exhaustive listing.) The main MacrossWorld.com page has an out-of-date listing with a bunch of the older (pre-Frontier) artbooks though. The big ones to get are books like Macross Perfect Memory, the Macross: Do You Remember Love? Data Bank (AKA "Gold Book"), This is Animation 3, 5, 7, 11, Special #5, and the volumes for Macross Plus and Macross 7, the Macross Frontier movie artbooks, Macross Chronicle (81 volumes), Variable Fighter Master File (VF-0, VF-1, VF-1 Vol.2, Squadrons, VF-4, VF-19, VF-22, VF-25, VF-31), the Design Works books for Kawamori and Miyatake, etc.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    No idea, but enough that it even had to include his wages from SMS.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Whether the story is actually set in Vancouver is another matter entirely... as in the case of AVP:R, which was filmed in Vancouver, but set in Gunnison, Colorado. Filmmakers'll go film wherever the production can get the best tax breaks, and to hell with accuracy. (Whether those gits had ever been to Gunnison is another matter... it seems like they were working under the misapprehension that it's spitting distance from Colorado Springs, instead of the 3+ hour drive it actually is.) "The role of Dallas in tonight's production will be played by Vancouver, British Columbia." Either that or they're taking the threat level WAY down for this one. Perhaps they're reluctant to set a Predator movie in a modern warzone because the Predators aren't bulletproof against conventional small arms the way the Xenomorphs of the Alien franchise are, and don't wear body armor. It'd be kind of anticlimactic if the Predator picked off a soldier and the rest of his platoon decided to call in reinforcements or opt to blanket the area with machinegun fire and fragmentation grenades. The Predators have done as well as they have in the past by choosing an environment where their prey are isolated figuratively or literally. Aliens was a mistake, to be sure, but that's kind of overstating it. Hicks's shotgun only worked on that one xenomorph because he jammed the barrel into its mouth and fired, bypassing its armor. That ruined the shotgun and nearly killed Hicks too. Alien's at least succeeded with it on one front... Alien: Isolation managed to make the xenomorph pants-crappingly terrifying again alone AND in numbers.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing directly connected to the movie... just that, after Isamu decided to retire from the New UN Spacy because he wasn't happy with being gradually steered towards a desk job c.2058, he joined Strategic Military Services. He wanted to fly a VF-19A, but since SMS was only able to field a small number of "monkey model" VF-19s due to arms export restrictions the New UN Government put on the fighter (as a result of his own actions with the prototype in 2040), there was no way for him to get one. Not being one to let things go, he contacted his old "friend" Dr. Jan Neumann of Shinsei Industry and tried to persuade him into selling him the parts to build a VF-19 under the table. As owner of a functioning brain, Jan realized this was a spectacularly bad idea and said no. To stop Isamu from doing something even more reckless, he talked Shinsei into letting him do an experimental VF-19 as a test for ways to extend the fighter's service life, modified a VF-19EF Caliburn back to specs approximating the YF-19-3's, and stuck Isamu with the bill for the whole affair. Yup. It's a VF-19EF that's been modified to return its aerodynamics and control systems back to the levels of the YF-19-3/VF-19A.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It'd probably be less of an issue if four of the five previous Star Trek series1 hadn't already done that very thing in stories involving the holodeck or time travel. (See TAS in general, TNG: "Relics", DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" parts 1 and 2)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the UFP Starfleet does change its uniform A LOT. The maroon uniforms from TOS movies 2-6 were the longest-lived ones to date, lasting about eighty years from ~2270-2350. If they'd take that view, it'd help matters immensely. But they continue to insist that Discovery is a prime universe series, and the end of season one and lead-in for season two seem intended to keep pushing that agenda.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe this is just a really awful trailer, but I've come away from it with the impression that this is going to be an Excuse Plot sequel like Alien: Covenant1. One clicky boi leaves his key fob on Earth, so some idyllic suburban neighborhood's gonna get it. Unless this suburb's in Texas, the maximum threat level's probably one of those small ratty dogs whose breed I can't spell. Kind of a big step down from a dystopian Los Angeles in the midst of a war between drug cartels, or ambushing a military op in a banana republic. At first I was gonna object, but no... that's actually totally correct. They ARE the iconic (inhuman) modern horror movie monsters. More than that, what they need are writers who understand the fundamental principle of monster horror movies... the more you see the monster, the less scary the monster is.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much. It's a source of some considerable frustration among the few Masters Saga fans out there that Toynami is unwilling to develop Southern Cross toys for Robotech, as its management doesn't consider the projected return on investment sufficient to justify the effort. It's a fairly common conclusion that most Robotech licensees end up reaching. Roy's slightly haunted, done-with-this-crap expression perfectly mirrors my feelings on this dreadful tome. I do like how everyone on this cover looks profoundly bored. It looks like she has a tomboy haircut... Is everyone there standing with bent knees because Laplamiz is apparently super thicc in this version? I knew the comic was bad, but I have to admit being SO bad that even the characters a struck blind is a new one on me... I'm increasingly inclined to suspect that every woman in this comic is traced from either porn or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It's on my list. Admittedly, I haven't played a Legend of Zelda game since they remastered Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 3DS. (I think the last one I actually played was the 3DS Virtual Console port of A Link to the Past.) Cloud save data backup is a nice touch, but it comes packaged with two unpleasant downsides. The first being the death of Nintendo's Virtual Console series. Now you'll have to get a subscription if you want to play older games in emulation on the Switch, with only a very limited library available at launch. Games-as-a-service instead of buying and owning a piece of software. Kind of a downer for me, since I got a lot of mileage out of the Virtual Console games on the 3DS and Wii U. It's also bringing an end to free online play. Starting with the launch of this service, you'll have to purchase the subscription in order to play online... including games that are currently free to play online like Splatoon 2 and ARMS. It's not even one-subscription-per-console, if you have multiple player profiles on your Switch you have to spring for the Family plan at about twice the price. But at the expense of Virtual Console... and free online gameplay.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    True, true... but Toynami would hardly be the first company to look at Southern Cross and think to themselves "wow, I want NONE of that hot mess". Bandai Popy1, Vicious Cycle, TDK, Take-Two, Ninja Division, Kitz Concept, DC/Wildstorm, Strange Machine Games, and Harmony Gold USA2 all opted not to pursue merchandising for that series. Titan Comics probably belongs on that list as well, given that they've rewritten the Macross Saga's story in such a way that it eliminates any need to progress into the other sagas. Kinda leaves an awkward open-ended boostrap paradox WRT the ship's origins, but hey... 1. Originally Popy Co. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary spun off of Bandai toy division in '71 and reintegrated as an operating division of Bandai in '83. Known as the originator of Bandai's Chogokin and HI-METAL lines. Now known as Bandai boys toy division. 2. The merchandising they do themselves has studiously avoided Southern Cross for about the last fifteen years.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly? Yeah, I do. Harmony Gold is gonna do everything in its power to milk the Macross license in the time left to them, since nobody gives a toss about the other two. They've probably been shopping for a new comic licensee since DC/Wildstorm dropped it last decade.
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