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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    One of the giants of academia, gone. He will surely be missed, and his work will doubtless continue to shape our perception of the universe for many years to come.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Bounced this one off my girlfriend, who is my resident Potterhead, and she pointed out that Newt says the Swooping Evil venom he used to erase New York's memories removes bad memories. If nothing else, it's a safe bet the time he spent with Queenie doesn't count as bad memories. The thing with the explody-rhino aside, he seemed to be quite enjoying himself. I've never been able to buy the argument that Snape is heroic. The guy was a first-class arsehole who verbally and emotionally abused the kids in his classes for at least a decade. He had basically zero problem with letting Voldemort kill Lily's husband and son if he could have her himself, until Dumbledore called him on it. He tried to have an innocent man sent back to wizard torture-prison over a childhood rivalry, and ruined another man's life when he was thwarted in the attempt . He spent six years making Harry's life horrible and taking evident pleasure in it because he reminded him of his schoolyard bully. On more than one occasion he tried to get Harry expelled. He all but admits to Dumbledore near the end that he doesn't give a crap about Harry, he's only in it for revenge for Lily. Harry suddenly going from "golly this guy's a prick" to "I'mma name my kid after him" is one of the worst What The Hell, Hero? moments in the books. He was 100% onboard with Wizard Hitler 2.0 until his childhood crush was threatened.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Plenty. Assuming we're talking strictly about built-in engine systems rather than detachable ones like the VF-0's Ghost Booster or a Super Pack: The VF-4 Lightning III was the first to have multiple main engine systems. It had six engines in total: 2 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, 2 hybrid rocket motors inside the nacelles (shoulders), and 2 thermonuclear ramjet/scramjet systems built into the wing itself. The VF-2SS Valkyrie II was the first to have more than two thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. It had four: two main thermonuclear reaction turbine engines in the legs and two smaller sub-engines at the base of the stabilizers. It's not explicitly stated, but the VA-1SS Metal Siren appears to have an almost identical engine configuration. The VAB-2/FBz-99 has four thermonuclear reaction turbine engines mounted in pairs on its shoulders and two thermonuclear rocket motors in its legs. The VB-6 Konig Monster has four thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and four plasma rocket engines. The YF-29 Durandal has four Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. The production model VF-27 Lucifer, which was completed based on stolen YF-29 data, has four Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, albeit not as powerful. If we throw the floor open to bolt-ons and Super Packs, that's basically any VF with a Super Pack, the VF-0 with its Ghost Booster, the VF-27 Super Lucifer with its Goblin Booster, the Sv-262 Draken III with its Lilldrakens, etc. ... well, I don't suppose there's anything stopping them from having wing binders and so on like in the Gundam franchise, or an extra arm kicking around like Scirocco's The O. The most Gundam-y of Macross's offerings did have at least one mecha that used its wings as an extra set of limbs and had a fourth mode that was more like a reverse-GERWALK (battroid with a jet bottom half) called Gundroid (the Metal Siren). There is that one weird proposed Super Pack in Macross the First (1st Ed.) that had a Tomahawk destroid arm sticking off one side. Whether those are "legs" is debatable... the Octos is, according to Junya Ishigaki's line art for it in his artbook Robo no Ishi, a mecha modeled on a gorilla. We've never seen it use those as arms, but it's not out of the question. A fair number of them have already been adopted into Macross in one form or another. The AF-49's older version, VA-X-3, was adopted into the technical continuity in Macross Chronicle. The Advanced Valkyrie Alpha and Beta's combined form is the VF-11 Thunderbolt. The Sturmsoln and Messergern were incorporated into the Varuata Forces as partial inspiration for the Fz-109 and Az-109. The top one in your last picture is the VAB-2, which was the New UN Forces bomber basis for the Varauta FBz-99. There are a number of others that were adopted too, like the V-BR-2, VF-T-11, etc.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Given the overwhelming abundance of music in the series... I suspect it probably wouldn't lend itself well to dubbing anyway.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    One can't help but admire the attention to detail that went into replicating 1920's New York on the studio backlot and in the script. They even went to the trouble of making sure the characters who are natives to the city are from the correct neighborhoods for the period by heritage. I'll definitely be hoping to see more of that thoroughness in The Crimes of Grindelwald. The only worry I have is Depp as Gellert Grindelwald. I've never felt he had a lot of range, and on those occasions where he snags a role that isn't either deliberately goofy or Tim Burton-esque, he comes across as in a permanent state of dull surprise like in From Hell. Didn't Dumbledore in the books admit he sat on his hands while Grindelwald went all Wizard Hitler because he was afraid he might learn whether he, his brother, or Grindelwald was the one who'd accidentally killed his sister?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Well, this promises to be interesting. I enjoyed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them rather more than the Harry Potter movies, so this actually has my proper attention. It's half Harry Potter, half pre-WW2 period piece, which is a nice touch IMO. Not super thrilled with casting Johnny Depp as Grindelwald... or that his makeup for this looks like a graying version of Gary Oldman's Dracula from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    As far as we know, yes. Per Macross Chronicle, the YF-29 Durandal used by Alto Saotome during the final battle of the Vajra conflict was the initial prototype that Shinsei Industry and LAI had started building back in 2057 but were only able to complete in 2059 when the Vajra conflict provided the necessary fold quartz.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yup, that's one of the two... the more polished version of the design done for Variable Fighter Master File VF-25 Messiah, called the VF-25WR Wyvern-2. The one in Macross Ace was more retro-looking, with the propellers up front over the top of the wing and the nose done with a bolt-on cover that made it look like a single-engine Cessna without the propeller. An upvote for you, good sir! Smashing job finding that custom model. Any idea who made it, so that we might give props where props are due for this model's excellent props? Non-canonically, but yeah... twice. Both based on the VF-25. Your memory serves you well. The Wyvern and Wyvern-2 conversions were (non-canonically) developed to permit exploration of regions around Vajra hives on the recently-colonized Vajra homeworld. By using conventional propeller engines and keeping the FF-3001A engines off, the GIC systems at the heart of the reactors wouldn't be producing any fold waves that might prompt the Vajra to investigate the fighter or see it as a threat. Per Master File, neither seems to have made it past the design proposal phase.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The data's minimal, but there's sufficient information to answer your questions. So far, the most detailed source talking about the DAS-03k "Draken Fang" assault sword is Bandai's 1/72 scale Sv-262 Draken III model kit instruction booklet. Its specs section describes the DAS-03k assault sword as a folding sword composed of energy conversion armor material. Making the blade section from energy conversion armor was a structural concession meant to reduce its mass so that it wouldn't unbalance the fighter in flight, though as a result the blade is too fragile to use in a fight unpowered. The DAS-03k's energy conversion armor blade is normally powered by a connection to the Sv-262's main power system through the manipulator (hand) holding it. For backup power, the sword's hilt contains a high-energy capacitor with enough power for 3 minutes of continuous operation.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's actually been done once already. No, really. I'm not kidding. It was done for Macross Ace magazine. It was a biplane conversion of the VF-25 called the Wyvern, and Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah has a refined version called the Wyvern II.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Starting over.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Now THAT would be interesting, if literal. Up until Macross Frontier we weren't sure he was doing it intentionally, but the generations of VF in the Macross universe roughly parallels the traits of the most commonly-accepted definitions for real world jet fighter generations. I suspect, now that we've finally caught up to the real world with 5th generation fighter designs (touted, as in the real world, as the "Last Manned Fighter" generation) it might mean fewer new VFs for a while. There isn't an accepted real-world 6th Generation yet, so I would expect we'll probably see the 4th Gen VF-171-II and VF-171-III hang around for a while as a 5th Gen replacement is selected and adopted by all the various regions of the galaxy. It'd certainly be interesting to see what Kawamori would do for a 6th Generation, since his 5th has doubled engine power, added inertial damping, dimensional beam weapons, and other advanced tech. If he ever does, he's got a heir-apparent ready to take over in Tenjin Hidetaka. They've already collaborated on designs for at least one Macross project already (Macross the Ride).
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming they're handling announcements the same was as the last two shows, I'd expect them to confirm they're working on something sometime this month, but we won't get any actual news until September or October, and no premiere until around Christmas.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    In hindsight, maybe that laughably halfhearted effort to memorialize Messer in Ep11 was a warning we all missed. Half an episode wasted trying to pretend a guy who did nothing but badmouth, and then avoid, his coworkers was a beloved friend and mentor figure strained believability well past its breaking point and left him hovering between Jerk Sue and Sympathetic Sue status. That sudden plummet in writing quality was just a sucker punch. Up to that point the show was so good I was thoroughly invested in all three main characters and was quite eager to see where they were going to take it. Then we got to Ep17, the bottom fell out, and watching the series became a chore. If he is getting burned out on Macross, I'd hope he has someone he can pass the torch to, if even only temporarily. Maybe Tenjin. As long as they don't use the same writers from Delta, he could probably do pretty well. The next series definitely needs a plot that can keep its momentum and avoid digressing into suspension-of-disbelief-puncturing BS like the "Walkure goes undercover" episodes. Maybe he was just giving the producers what they wanted - a platform to promote Walkure - and was just kinda halfassing the rest? (He didn't halfass the mechanical designs, for sure... the VF-31A's the most beautiful 5th Gen VF in my book. I'm hoping to see it come back as a NUNS VF in the future.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    My apologies, I admit I'd quite forgotten Tochiro was one of the ones who worked on it. (Due to circumstances, I missed all but about the last six minutes of your SDCon panel.) That does raise an uncomfortable problem in that my defense of the series to a number of its vocal detractors on here is no longer valid. If Kawamori was carefully scrutinizing every aspect of Delta's development it would be fair to assign the blame for the various writing-related issues that plagued the show's second half to him after all. Oh well... Knowing he signed off on scripts full of serious plot holes and contradictions and approved dumping all the antagonist faction's character development into a gaiden manga doesn't exactly fill me with confidence about the quality of the forthcoming series either. Great music is all to the good, but it takes more than just great music to make Macross. Just as well, it's one of the best songs in the show. Hindsight makes its in-show debut a bit creepy...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's one possibility... there are a number of modern shape memory alloys and composites that will reverse any deformation they're subjected to (within limits) when subjected to electric current or heat. I was pretty disappointed with the Variable Fighter Master File explanation for the YF-21's variable camber wing. They depict it as a rigid central frame with a dozen or so finger-like actuators which connect to the edges of the wing surface and flex in different directions to adjust the camber of its flexible composite skin. Supposedly it's so expensive that it was only ever used twice: on the YF-21 and VF-19ACTIVE. Dunno! We've never seen a Zentradi child, apart from ones who are either explicitly indicated or implied to be natural born. We know Zentradi cloning and micloning systems are able to copy an individual right down to their memories (via Macross Chronicle, etc.), so it seems highly likely the standard practice would be for Zentradi to emerge from cloning in a state approximating physical maturity and combat-ready fitness, pre-loaded with at least basic knowledge like the language or basic combat training. Assuming their combat roles aren't set from inception, they might need to undergo training for whatever their assigned task is... at least based on the original series, where Boddole Zer promised the lolicon trio a promotion to a command position should their undercover operation be a success.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... while I don't doubt that Kawamori is exercising broad oversight over the Macross franchise, I just have a hard time believing he's micromanaging things to the extent you're implying here. I'm not saying I don't think he could pull it off, but the idea of him having approved and signed off on some of the stuff in Delta's second half just doesn't mesh with the commitment to originality or attention to detail that are practically his calling cards in Macross. You'd think if he were watching the development like a hawk he'd have noticed an exposition dump in episode 19 that reduces the show's core mechanic to a massive plot hole. It'd also be really out of character for him to OK the writers of Macross Delta blatantly copying Grace's endgame from Macross Frontier like that. Suspiciously convenient? Maj. Bartlow's got a nice character design and all, but what's convenient about her?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    There were rumors that he'd left Delta early to pursue the project that is, IIRC, Juushinki Pandora... nothing substantiated, AFAIK. Can't honestly say I recall seeing that one raised before. Usually when it comes down to Plus vs 7 it's all about tone... whether expectations calibrated by SDFM, DYRL?, II, and Plus made them think it was either loads of lighthearted fun or impossible to take seriously. It used to be a subject of great acrimony here, less so now. It basically came down to whether one could disengage from the expectations set by SDFM, DYRL?, II, and Plus to simply enjoy the spectacle that was Macross 7 or not. (Which became a bit of a complication for folks who couldn't or wouldn't get through it, since a LOT of later titles built on story elements first introduced and explained in Macross 7.) One thing I missed in Delta that was present in both 7 and Frontier were those little pre-episode blurbs that explained anything immediately relevant to the setting that you'd need to know that hadn't already been covered. There wasn't any required extra reading or anything like that. I really hope they bring those back.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That, or possibly that fold quartz that's being charged with fold waves glows pink in mecha or as an item of jewelry but is inexplicably glowing blue-green when part of an active V-type infection. (That or maybe that's just all the water in the human body scattering the shorter wavelengths of light from the glow?) Hypercarbon is a synthetic carbon allotrope with metallic properties which is harder than diamond, lighter than steel, has a high magnetic field saturation point, and has excellent heat resistance.1 In the very oldest sources, it's suggested to be 100x stronger than an equivalent thickness of rolled homogeneous steel armor. Basically, it's kissing cousins with carbon nanomaterials like fullerine, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and so on. A number of synthetic carbon allotropes check off multiple items on that list, though its closest real-world relative would have to be the recently-discovered Q-carbon, which ticks off most of those properties including the metallic behaviors and being 10-20% stronger than diamond. It's made by nanosecond pulse-heating carbon with high-intensity lasers and then rapidly quenching it. 1. Making it a bit more exotic than Gundam's Luna Titanium/Gundarium... which, funnily enough, is just an exotic cemented carbide composite made using (in part) titanium dioxide harvested from lunar regolith. Gundams are basically armored with the same kind of material that's used mainly for the cutting edges of power tools and mining equipment.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    There's definitely a lot of older fans who are keen on the idea of a revisit/do-over of the original TV series ala Space Battleship Yamato 2199 or Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin, esp. in light of how we had (and are now starting over with) Macross the First. It's kind of unlikely though, given Kawamori's aversion to the idea of revisiting the story of the main trio from the original series. I suspect he probably wasn't altogether happy with the way Delta tried to imply a Megaroad-01 connection for Lady M, possibly motivating that Newtype piece to say there was no identity determined for Lady M by the show's creators shortly after it ended. I don't think I'd object too loudly as long as they kept in stuff like the 4th Defensive Battle of South Ataria Island from Vol.6, which at least showed us some unambiguously NEW stuff like Roy Focker sortieing for the first time in a VF-1 while Sv-51s and VF-0+'s duel in the skies over the city and an autonomous Sv-51 is sicced on him... or the CVN-99 Asuka II's sister ship CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, almost every piece of fold quartz that has appeared on screen in Macross has been colored a faintly pink-tinged deep purple. The only noteworthy exceptions are the shot of the V-type bacterium in Macross Frontier that looks more pink than purple, though the shot of the same bacterium in Delta makes it the same color the larger samples are, and the raw stuff we very briefly see the Vajra mining from stellar debris in the final episode of Macross Frontier, which is almost a pastel pink and faintly glowing. A lot of fans mistake the polarized covers over the sensor lenses on the noses of 5th Gen VFs for a fold quartz fitting. Those are just protective covers for various infrared, laser, lidar, and other high sensitivity sensors, and have been depicted in green, a few different shades of blue, red, pink, and purple. The only models of VF with externally-mounted fold quartz fittings are the YF-29 and the Siegfried custom VF-31. The protective covers over the fold quartz on the YF-29 (all versions) are the same deep purple as the fold quartz itself, though the covers over the secondary fold quartz fittings that act as fold wave amps are blue on the YF-29 Isamu, Ozma, and Rod versions. The VF-31's covers are tinted more along the lines of a dark pink.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The mechanical stresses of making something that big walk, run, or swing a punch alone would be pretty extreme. Given their typical placement, shear stresses would be much more likely... bending, rather than twisting, of the surfaces. That's probably why most VF designs tuck the sensitive parts away when they transform, even though the hypercarbon composites they're made from are super Tonka tough stuff and energy conversion armor beefs that up further. There is the question of how, exactly, energy conversion armor works that may be a factor in this. We know it's a layered, laminated armor material but I haven't found a decent explanation of how precisely it achieves greater defensive strength when pumped with electromagnetic pulses. Is the hypercarbon composite material becoming more rigid and resistant to deformation? Are laminate layers being rendered more elastic and able to spread impact force? Is either layer gaining some ability to reversibly deform under load? It's still a topic I'd love to close.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Wing was my introduction to Gundam... and G Gundam one of the last pre-00 Gundam shows I saw in full. What the bloody hell happened between 1994 and 1995? Gundam went from a veritable buffet of well-written, hotblooded manliness to five effeminate young men who are legitimately prettier than most of the girls in the show morosely debating the politics of one naive straw pacifist who looks manlier than they do between bouts of killing more people than smallpox for no particular reason.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Turn A and Reconguista in G are considered the far end of the Universal Century timeline, yeah. At least technically, since they make explicit reference to coming after the UC era even though they're set under different calendar systems (the Correct Century and Reguild Century, respectively). Completely understandable. Gundam's Universal Century has some pretty serious issues with that, and the unrelenting war-is-hell stuff in the original, Zeta, the second half of ZZ, Victory, etc. can really drag at you. Reconguista in G is straight up WEIRD on that front, in that it actively rebels against the grimdark and instead remains bizarrely cheery.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Are you planning to go all the way to the far end of the Universal Century with Reconguista in G? I know it wasn't well-received, but I found it different enough from standard Gundam fare to be actually pretty interesting. Especially the setting, which manages to be both horrifying and also weirdly optimistic at the same time. The art style gives it kind of a Eureka Seven flavor. Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn was a beautifully animated OVA that was saddled with an excuse plot best be summed up as "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". It's one of those side stories in which the plot revolves around a macguffin that the characters all insist [could/will] turn the world on its ear, but the audience knows that's a load from the outset because there are pre-existing TV series in the franchise set after it. (Y'know, the Macross Zero problem.)
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