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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Divide's been like that for so long it's practically Space Ireland. That's basically just Latence vs. the New UN Forces...
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They updated his uniform, but that's about all... they kept his goofy-ass bucket helmet.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Basically, yeah... but Flash Back 2012 wasn't trying to tell a story. Flash Back 2012 was, for all practical intents and purposes, just a longer version of the epilogue for the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that ended up cut in the storyboarding phase due to a runtime issue. It doesn't really tell a story, it's a music video that recaps a few iconic scenes out of the differing versions of the First Space War narrative. Macross Delta: Gekijo no Walkure is more like DYRL?, an alternate retelling of the TV series story... which is gonna be REALLY jarring if it ends up a two hour Walkure concert.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    They may be able to take a miss on large parts of it, since they've already strongly hinted that the whole thing is a stable time loop that omits all of the later Robotech material derived from the original Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. My money's on the destruction of [Boddole Zer/Dolza]'s flagship catapulting the ship back in time to crash on Earth in 1999. No Two Years After arc or anything like that.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately I'm going to miss it... thanks to some irresponsible gits at work there's a spending crackdown, so I can't finagle a business trip that'd let me see it in theaters this time. The delay to see it on home video shouldn't be more than six months or so though.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Daily practice is the key, especially when it comes to memorizing hiragana and katakana characters. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r3Sy1LnkpxSGJxOUR4VFVac0k/view?ths=true This is the really good one that my friend used. It's not the most intuitive guide in the world, but it's hands-down better than any other I've seen. For most, the biggest issue I've seen complaints about is the way the game uses a Japanese button layout, making X cancel and O accept, where the opposite is true for western games. Once you get used to the menus, you'll hardly need the guide except for the "10 bear asses" type fetch quests. Yeah, you didn't get very far then... that's like, the end of chapter 2. 'course for the longest time it feels like the only VFs available are the Sv-51, VF-0, and VF-1. It's not till much later that you finally get a VF-11B. The character model VFs you can unlock have slightly better stats than the regular ones, but nowhere near as good as the stats of the ones the NPC allies get that you can't fly until New Game+. (Probably for the best, since in New Game+ you can field multiples of any craft you have, and Alto Saotome's VF-25F was kinda the Disc One Nuke if not for the fact that the ally AI isn't the sharpest.) It was pointed out a while back that "Reon" is how it's spelled, in English, in the official guidebook to the game. Many of us are nothing if not sticklers for the official line. Personally, I'd recommend giving a try to a Windows Store app called MangaBlaze. Search a couple of the usual suspects through that app and you should be able to read several fan translations of Macross manga titles. Macross 7 Trash is a sidestory to the Macross 7 series, concerned mainly with an extreme sport called Tornado Crush, which I can only describe as being to speed skating what the Australian rugby league is to American football... a version that's more mixed martial arts competition than the actual game. The main plot concerns a leading athlete in the game being manipulated by a retired ace pilot to help put a stop to a rogue Colonel's plan to weaponize Zentradi civilians as supersoldiers using a technology his mother developed. Macross R is the shortform title of Macross the Ride, same as Macross Frontier gets abbreviated Macross F. That's a relatively short one (just two volumes), but I don't think anyone is tackling it at the moment. The most prolific translator of novels is @Gubaba, the translations of which he posts on his blog. My proficiency level is only recently developed to the point where I'm willing to tackle whole books, but I'm starting with the old Sky Angels book instead, as that's been out of print for so bloody long that NOBODY is going to piss and moan if I make a full translation available. Still, I expect that'll take months to finish.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Wouldn't be Macross's first gattai... the Zentradi had a triple combiner in Macross M3.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That's basically what I'm expecting... a two hour Walkure anime music video with a barely-there version of Macross Delta's already painfully flimsy and insubstantial plot that serves only to set up each new song. EDIT: I have to say, after all the fuss and noise about how popular Walkure supposedly is, there's very little in terms of official publications, doujinshi, and fan art for the Macross Delta series. I'm honestly surprised that the disparity is so huge compared to Macross Frontier. Almost a literal order of magnitude difference at the least.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Well, when your cup runneth over with popular legacy characters who are all owned by a potentially litigious, far more successful rival business you don't have a lot of options. You either have to make them all totally unrecognizable so they can be used freely, keep them confined to works where they can be used safely, or get rid of them. They redesigned the few they couldn't live without ("Rick" and "Lisa"), and everyone else got either killed or put on a bus for legal reasons and to make way for the new cast who fell hilariously flat. Yes, please... don't make us witness self-harm like that.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    No, that is a perfectly sensible question that anyone would ask when confronted with an advance in technology. "Can this only be applied to new developments, or can we apply this to improve things that we already have?" Also (see below) a question that was examined in-universe in some depth during the development of the YF-24. As far as I am aware, no official comment has been offered on the subject of the VF-22 being either compatible or incompatible with an Inertia Store Converter. I'd be shocked if it wasn't compatible... given that it was designed from the prototype phase on up to accept the less capable fold carbon-based version of the same tech all along (the Inertia Vector Control System). Great Mechanics DX 9 explicitly notes that the feasibility of upgrading the VF-19 with Inertia Store Converter technology was examined as a potential alternative path to the then-problematic YF-24 program and the conclusion was that it was possible. The New UN Government opted to keep its YF-24 program going instead of retrofitting VF-19s with ISC systems, for economic reasons. (This was a terribly unsubtle nod to US 5th Gen fighter development, which proceeded in defiance of all common sense and military advice because damnit, they created JOBS.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    After Delta, I'm setting the bar somewhat lower. I just want decent writing. Beyond that, I'm up for whatever.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, proficiency in Japanese is a bit of a bear... I've seen estimates that it takes something along the lines of 2,500 hours of practice to achieve basic proficiency. Have you tried the guide posted here on MacrossWorld? My buddy @Jack Verse got through all of the Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy game using that and he doesn't speak a lick of Japanese. Most of the missions amount to "fly to the location marked on your HUD/map" followed by either "and explore the location" or "defeat all enemies there", though there usually isn't any difference between those two options. The Hunters Guild quests are somewhat more frustrating since they usually fall into one of three basic categories: Fly to location X and trigger an event by getting close to a big floating icon and hitting O, then kill all the things. Obtain X many Y goods and deliver them to any Guild location (usually just spawned pickups on the worldmap, sometimes special items that show up as different-colored item pickups on the worldmap). Deliver X goods to Y location (same as the above, except the item is basically handed to you and you have to fly it to a specific guild location.) The Vanquish Races are the ones I found most frustrating, but that was just because I don't seem to be very good at them. To this day, I've never managed to beat the ones that provide the FAST pack sets for the YF-19 and YF-21. There are fan translations of some of them. I know Macross 7 Trash got a full fan translation, even if the scan quality is iffy and the romanizations inconsistent. @Talos wanted to work with me on a full translation of Macross the First, but that project never got off the ground because of our mutual work obligations. I know partial translations have been done for Macross Delta: the White Knight of the Black Wing. Yes, Maj. Gilliam Angreat (NUNS) is the CO of the 727th Independent Squadron VF-X Ravens. The VF-X Ravens were founded in 2036, and he assumed command of the unit after being promoted to Major in 2043. He was offered a promotion to the staff office directing the VF-X units in 2045, but turned it down to remain in the field. His immediate superior is Col. Wilbur Garland (NUNS), the staff officer who is responsible for all of the VF-X units operating in that region of the galaxy. He and Gilliam graduated the NUNS VF pilot training school together in 2031, served together in the 28th Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet escort detail, and were both selected for the new special forces pilot training program Scarecrow in 2034. Col. Garland is also THE BAD GUY, being the front man for Latence in its hijacking of the New UN Spacy Earth defense fleet's Macross-13 flagship and also dumb enough to have a villainous BSoD and get back in the cockpit of a Jamming Sound-equipped VF-22 after years behind a desk so Aegis could shoot him down and kill him. Cpt. Aegis Focker joined the VF-X Ravens in 2050 after being transferred out of the Beneb system New UN Spacy defense force's Angel Wings squadron. He briefly becomes commanding officer of the VF-X Ravens after Gilliam goes missing in the field in 2050, before being reunited with him in January 2051. Depending on whether you get the bad or good end, Gilliam is either defeated by Aegis or Aegis and the rest of the Ravens defect to Vindirance and operate under his leadership again. Yep, it's noted in the novels that an AI personality named Manfred is present and involved in the conspiracy by the Galaxy Executives. "Survived" might be a strong word for it, though, as Manfred most definitely died in the biological sense. Whether the Manfred data entity in the Macross Galaxy fleet is the living mind of Manfred Brando or just a digital copy of his mind isn't clear. Either way, something of Manfred Brando did not die with his body when his VF-17S was shot down. Vindirance is only technically an anti-government organization in Macross VF-X2. They're not really opposed to the New UN Government or New UN Forces in and of themselves, they oppose the literally militant Earth-supremacist faction Latence which was increasingly influencing the policies of the New UN Government and New UN Forces. Latence was pushing the New UN Gov't on Earth to expand its authority over the emigrant fleets and colony worlds, to exert more military force to suppress pro-autonomy movements in the colonies, and to grant more power and authority to the military with an endgame of the military controlling the government rather than vice versa. As the commanding officer of an emigrant fleet escort group, and the husband of the emigrant fleet government's chief executive, it makes sense that Max would be among Vindirance's backers in the New UN Forces. He's a soldier acting to oppose a nationalist faction inside the military that's trying to seize control of the legitimate democratic government from within and corrupt it into a militant nationalist state that rules with an iron fist in the name of "defense". Ultimately, he did the right thing, Latence was foiled, and the resulting greater autonomy granted to the emigrant fleets took the wind out of the sails of a lot of serious anti-government movements, resulting in more peaceful times for the New UN Government. Really, you could sum it up by saying that Macross VF-X2 is more or less Macross's own riff on Zeta Gundam... Latence are the Titans, the anti-colonist suppression group who become increasingly evil and brutal as time goes on, while Vindirance is the AEUG, the secret paramilitary group created and supported by the military to semi-clandestinely oppose the brutal actions of the suppression unit.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    As big a mess as the TV series was, that'd be perfectly understandable. The official website is surprisingly low-key in its coverage of the movie. They have Movie sections added, but they're the exact same pages that were created for the series with zero new art. The Movie page itself is mostly Macross Modelers spots and PVs for Walkure CDs. All they've got for the movie art-wise appears to be a few promotional posters on the main page. Even the mecha page is IDENTICAL to the one for the TV series section from a year ago. This is, like was noted earlier, very much "Walkure World"... the Macross content is incidental at best. What's the over-under on a public apology from Kawamori for the disaster that is Delta?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Given how consistently terrible the writing in Robotech is... coming down with Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and vanishing into the aether is probably the best possible fate that any holdover character from the original three shows could hope for. Having the writers just kind of forget they exist is a lot more dignified than, say, being killed offscreen and having it never even get mentioned1, stalking their ex and having affairs with married people2, being tortured into an invalid offscreen3, quitting the military because they had a miscarriage4, devolving into a kaiju that spouts one-liners5, getting killed by friendly fire and instantly forgotten6, or reduced to a "wow they suck" cameo7. 'course in the case of Max and Milia/Miriya in Robotech, there's like a 50/50 chance they're straight-up f*cking DEAD and the writers just never explicitly mentioned it, given that the two of them were on the SDF-3 when it got shot in half and were never likely to reappear anyway since they're Macross's most prolific characters and HG is terrified of lawsuits.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    The 9th, I think. EDIT: This coming Friday?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Macross's creators seem pretty determined to avoid having Macross end up with the same kind of continuity lockout problem that Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century continuity has developed over the years. The main installments of the Macross metaseries after the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross - Macross 7, Frontier, and Delta - are all shows that were written as largely standalone stories to keep them accessible to viewers who were new to the franchise. With the stories having relatively few direct connections to other, older shows, any essential details from previous shows that couldn't be gracefully covered in the course of the story proper could easily be covered in that brief blurb before the OP, ensuring the new viewers had enough context to understand everything without requiring them to go back and see every other show first. It was the OVAs, the novels, the manga, and the video games that are more "for fans" in that they spend orders of magnitude more effort drawing connections between the various titles in the metaseries. They can get really deep into that at times, like Macross R tying the liberation of the Varauta colony in Macross 7 to the Vindirance campaign in the Macross VF-X2 game, Macross Dynamite 7, Macross Frontier, and the original series. Let's not speak of Metal Gear though. Even at its worst and most obtuse *coughDeltacough*, the Macross metaseries has never come anywhere close to the sort of deranged, tinfoil hat-wearing, caps lock-abusing, run-on sentence conspiracy theorist cr*p that Hideo Kojima thinks constitutes writing. Like one of Wile E. Coyote's tunnel paintings, all of the depth in the Metal Gear series is completely illusory because what passes for storytelling there is exposition dumps that read like a "Best of" of old Babelfish-translated Usenet forum posts on the New World Order and uses the word "nanomachines" like an effing comma. A refusal to explain anything in an intelligible fashion doesn't constitute complexity1. 1. Thank goodness for Metal Gear Rising: Revengence eh? The only installment in the franchise that was actually any fun, because it was fully cognizant of the fact that the writing in Metal Gear is the unfunniest joke and resolved to address it the only way it knew how... by abandoning any pretense of taking it seriously in favor of being a comically over-the-top spectacle and the spiritual lovechild of Sengoku Basara and Broforce.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, it's not a fair comparison from a hardware standpoint since the Wii U gamepad was little more than an elaborate remote display that could be used like an overpowered portable device provided you didn't stray too far from the console itself, where the Switch simply IS an overpowered portable device with a dock that turns it into a more traditional console and thus is placing a lot more burden on its Li+ battery. On the other hand, from a usability standpoint three hours is three hours unless you've got an external power source.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    There's not much of one, honestly. Mariafokina Barnrose was the de facto leader of the anti-government organization Vindirance in Macross VF-X2, but her entire schtick in the game was that she was a mysterious ace pilot so almost no personal details come out in the course of interactions with her. Under her leadership Vindirance is basically an anti-government group only in that they're opposed to Latence, the Earth-supremacist group inside the New UN Forces that strongly supported Earth's interference in the domestic affairs of colony worlds. The Ravens CO, Major Gilliam Angreat, is implied to have some previous history with her but no specifics are ever discussed. She's crazy well-informed, having access to classified intel at a level that even Gilliam (a federal NUNS Special Forces commander) didn't, and she's implied to have a network of allies and sympathizers inside the New UN Forces as well. She's such a capable ace pilot that she's able to beat Aegis Focker in his VF-19A with a VF-1S+ Valkyrie Plus, and once the Ravens become aware of Latence's planned coup d'etat against the New UN Government, she's the one who orchestrates the offensive against the hijacked Macross-13. Macross Chronicle offers a mention of in-universe rumors that "Mariafokina Barnrose" is an alias of Therese Mariafokina Formula Jenius, and that the reason Vindirance was such a successful organization was that it was being clandestinely supported by New UN Forces flag officers including her father Maximilian Jenius. The novelization of Macross Frontier indicates that, in the aftermath of Latence's defeat, the New UN Government created a regulatory bureau overseeing the VF-X Special Forces units called the Barnrose Organization. A man who tried to live his life according to Voltaire's "When You're Evil"... that's barely an exaggeration. This guy's a prick. He's the President and CEO of the Critical Path Corporation, an interstellar corporation that has close ties to both the New UN Forces and General Galaxy corporation and indulges heavily in black market arms sales and illegal weapons testing. Critical Path is known to have pioneered research into the applications of fold quartz, including bankrolling Dr. Mao Nome's 117th Research Fleet expedition to study the Vajra, and developed and sold weapons to anti-government groups including opposing forces like Latence and Vindirance. His official bio notes him to be an extremely intelligent fellow who was given special education from a very young age to enable him to take over his father's company and run its legitimate and black market interests. A top-notch pilot, artist, musician, and businessman who is rather amoral and doesn't regard human life as any obstacle to making a profit. At just nine years old, he placed first in the classical conductor division in the Earth Culture Preservation Festival in 2038, and was granted special admission to college, where he graduated in two years then did three years of flight school. He took over Critical Path at age 16 following his father's death in 2045, and has been evilly supporting Latence and Critical Path's black market arms deals ever since. He's responsible for the Jamming Sound system that Latence uses to paralyze Earth's defenses in the final stages of the game, and has a personal VF-17S. He's shot down and killed by the VF-X Ravens, though the Macross Frontier novelization implies that he was experimenting with cybernetics and the rather Ghost in the Shell-y idea of divorcing the consciousness from the physical body and survived his own death by uploading his mind into the network and exists as a disembodied data entity in the Macross Galaxy fleet. The same novels also indicate that the reason Ozma Lee got a dishonorable discharge from the New UN Spacy was because he took issue with Brando's interrogation of Ranka in the Board of Inquiry hearing about the loss of the 117th Research Fleet and beat the stuffing out of him.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    What @Lorindor said. I've always been mainly interested in RPGs and strategy games, or really anything that's heavily narrative-driven (e.g. stealth games like Dishonored or even the so-called "walking simulators" if the story's good). Nintendo's last few generations of console have all had fairly lousy third party developer support so they've been painfully platformer-heavy. That kinda left games like Pokemon, Fire Emblem, and Project X Zone as the main draw to their consoles for me. My friends and girlfriend get more use out of my Wii U than I ever did, since I mostly use Virtual Console and visual novels on my 3DS to get my kicks... how stuff like the Zero Escape trilogy1 slipped Nintendo's kid-friendly net I'll never know. I'm kind of hoping the lack of a really obviously terrible gimmick on the Nintendo Switch will provoke more support from third party devs and result in a more varied catalog, but I'm waiting for at least two or three titles up my alley before I actually jump. Right now, the only big draw for me is Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition and the vague promise of a 2018 Switch-exclusive Fire Emblem. (Be nice if we could get the remastered port of 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors and Virtue's Last Reward that the PS4 recently got.) For anyone who's got one, what's the battery life in actual usage like on the Switch? Once bitten, twice shy after the Wii U's gamepad battery. 1. 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the DS was a real slap in the face... was NOT expecting something with that much gory death and sexual innuendo on a Nintendo console. That the 3DS picked up both sequels, Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma was incredibly gratifying.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Probably, yeah... the Macross Delta animation staff reused a lot of CG assets from Macross Frontier and its movies for the series. That said, there was only really one case where the decision to reuse old assets was the island ship on Ragna where the Island Cluster-class 3D model was rescaled to be barely larger than the Macross Elysion, which looked incredibly awkward with the dome's ceiling being so low to the ground. We've seen via many Macross stories that a variable fighter design can expect a service lifespan of ~20 years before the New UN Forces (local or otherwise) get to seriously thinking about its replacement. The actual replacement process can take close to a decade as new fighters are gradually phased in though. Local New UN Forces in remote or under-funded regions of the galaxy are still going to be using the VF-171-II and VF-171-III Nightmare Plus as their main fighter into the 2070s while they wait for their own 5th Generation fighter design to enter mass production and reach a deployment level where it has effectively supplanted the VF-171. If you look to sources like Master File, the VF-25 was gradually being phased in to replace the VF-171 in the fleets that adopted it in 2065, and we know the VF-31 won't even be ready to be officially adopted by the Brisingr Alliance NUNS until 2069 or 2070 according to Kawamori. If he's going to introduce a 6th Generation Variable Fighter, Kawamori's going to have to jump the timeline forward to the mid-2090s or 2100s for the standard development cycle to have rendered the 5th Generation properly obsolete. My suspicion is the 5th Generation will actually end up lasting longer than average considering that it took twice as long to develop and represented a HUGE advance over the 4th Generation. My guess is it'll be 40-50 years before there's a 6th Generation. Without either starting over or jumping forward massively, the options for new fighters basically boil down to yet another regional 5th Generation VF or actually using the ones that they've already made. I'd really like to see the New UN Spacy using the VF-24, VF-25, and VF-31 as mass production fighters.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I can see it now... The phone rings in Dr. Jan Neumann's office near the end of the workday. The caller ID says DYSON, ISAMU A. Fully ten minutes are spent on overdramatic pan shots across Jan's desk, capturing his increasing panic, with bombastic music and the sound of panicked heavy breathing in the background reaching a crescendo as he picks up the phone (a la Death Note's infamous potato chip scene). The call lasts less than five minutes, with Jan politely asking if he can put Isamu on hold for a moment. Cut to outside, a muffled but clearly terrified scream is heard clearly even through the closed windows, startling birds off of the windowsill and nearby trees. Fade out to later that night, as a clearly distressed Jan is breathing into a paper bag in the back of a company car driven by Shinsei security, having been foiled in his attempt to burn the office down to prevent Isamu from ever getting his hands on another VF-19. Roll credits.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    As a fun side note, Timothy Daldanton was the first of several "remember the new guy" characters established to be First Space War veterans who served under Vrlitwhai and adopted human names after integrating into Earth's culture under the New UN Government. Other entrants in that category include Macross Frontier's Richard Bilra and Naresuan from Macross the Ride. Timothy Daldanton had a long and highly successful career in the New UN Forces before quitting to become leader of the anti-government group Black Rainbow. He was a part of the military escort for the short-range emigrant fleet that settled Eden, he fought for the New UN Forces during the 2nd Defensive Battle of Macross City in 2030 against Zentradi terrorists, and commanded a much-celebrated New UN Spacy Special Forces unit attached to the Macross-3 fleet known as the Black Rays. He's also the one responsible for clueing the VF-X Ravens in to Latence's existence.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Sometime right about now, we're still actively pretending Gundam Build isn't just a commercial for ugly MSV gunpla kits thinly disguised as a boy-friendly version of Angelic Layer. And to think Yoshiyuki Tomino fought bitterly to prevent Mobile Suit Gundam from becoming one of those toy commercial robot anime... kind of puts me in the mind of this quote from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Hysterium: "My father would turn over in his grave if he saw me like this." Pseudolus: "Your father is alive." Hysterium: "Well... this will kill him."
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Mildly curious... is there anything announced for the Switch in the TRPG category yet? It was Fire Emblem: Awakening that really got me to use my 3DS, so I'm kind of waiting for something in the strategy category before I take the plunge on buying a Switch.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Just finished episode 31 of New Mobile Report Gundam Wing over lunch. I've been forcibly reminded of my original reaction to the series when I watched it for the first time... the unshakeable feeling that the writers had a complexity addiction. I'm barely halfway into it, and I have completely lost track of which side I'm supposed to be rooting for. Who were the bad guys? Is it the Alliance? OZ? Other OZ? The do-nothing stuffed shirts in the Romefeller Foundation? All five Gundam pilots? The five scientists who created the Gundams and trained them? It's like watching a slow-motion game of pass the parcel where the parcel is a villain ball. And I KNOW that isn't all the factions who'll poke their oar into this one by the end... there's still White Fang, the Bartons and the Marimaia faction, the Preventers... I really, REALLY want to see an Abridged version of this where Heero is voiced by the guy who does Alucard for TFS's Hellsing Ultimate Abridged. "HEERO! COME AND KILL MEEEEE!" "B*TCH I MIGHT!".
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