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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, that does sound like a pretty plausible problem... if someone pierces the energy conversion armor with an explosive armor-piercing rounds, you could end up with Galom leaking out (however slowly) until the wing surface was completely gone. (As far as jokes go, I made and then deleted a Terminator 2 reference when I started calling it "liquid metal alloy"... alas, no mention of the YF-21/VF-22 being able to form knives and stabbing weapons.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Kind of an occupational hazard of main VFs, it seems... the VF-4, VF-11, and VF-171 spent almost their entire service lives offscreen and the latter two's main appearances were at the end of their generation's service life jobbing against superior foes. It's only ever in comics, games, or novels that they get to shine. I think the only protagonist who has a VF-11 as their main/signature ride is Macross 30's Mina Forte. (Still salty Bandai only gave us a DX YF-30 and not a VF-19E and VF-11C to go with it.) Hm... to be honest, I'd call it Macross's version of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom. Both the F-4 Phantom and VF-11 Thunderbolt are 3rd Generation fighter designs in their respective lineages. Both are the most-produced fighter of their type. Both are used by multiple branches of the service. Both are noteworthy for their main flaw being lack of a built-in gun. Both were converted into target drones for testing newer model aircraft at end-of-life. One particularly backhanded connection I found is the first VF-11 paintjob in This is Animation Special: Macross Plus is a reference to the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing, a decorated USAF unit that operated out of Japan at several points after the Second World War and was responsible for training foreign pilots on the F-4. The exemplar aircraft has the same camo paint style as the 35th's F-4s, has the same iconic WW tail code, and is even noted to be assigned to the same airbase (the now-defunct George AFB) where the 35th did all its F-4 training ops. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 35th Fighter Wing was transferred back to Japan about two months after Macross Plus's first episode came out. Yeah, with ~30,000 of the bloody things kicking around... that's enough to fully outfit almost 17 Macross 7-sized emigrant fleets worth of the things. If we take Master File's remarks on scrapping VFs as guidance, it probably also helped that the structural strength of materials used in VF construction makes them difficult and time consuming to scrap and recycle by conventional boneyard methods. IIRC, Shinsei Industry also has a branch that specializes in starship design... and as a parent of Shinnakasu Heavy Industry it's also involved in making things like reactors, reaction engines, armor, VF option packs, and missiles. Not really. We know that they exist, since obviously some kind of interstellar shipping has to be happening for commerce to go on and we know that Richard Bilra built his HUGE fortune on an interstellar shipping empire that had SMS as its private security force. We didn't actually clap eyes on one until Macross Delta, which showed us cargo ships of the 2060s are something like the lovechild of a container ship and 18 wheeler. A massive flatbed hull that was loaded with spacefuture versions of standard shipping containers. There are several other ships of questionable purpose in the refugee fleet that flees the Brisingr cluster halfway through the series that may be logistics/cargo ships from the Epsilon Foundation. That's a bit of Macross II creeping in, I think. In Macross II, the Mardook are noted to use songs to trigger emotional responses in their brainwashed Zentradi like a combat drug. I think Mikimoto and co. slipped a fair few Macross II references in there. The pilot suit Mahara Fabrio wears is a modified version of the one Mikimoto designed for Macross 2036, one of the Macross II tie-in/prequel games. In DYRL? and the TV series, the Zentradi definitely have emotions... but some are stunted by indoctrination steering them away from creative and constructive pursuits. It was music that let them start to explore their sense of wonder and emotions outside those closely associated with their military duties. It wouldn't surprise me. After all, Earth had a hundred or so working Zentradi ships after the war and thousands upon thousands of wrecks to pick over for materials. I'd imagine cargo ships probably aren't anything fancy to look at. Probably just a box with some engines on. Maybe Galaxy Starliners are used to carry light cargo and mail and such like modern airliners are? The Stellar Whale-type we see in Macross Plus was NOT small. It could likely carry quite a bit.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Based on Master File's description, the layered stretchable skin applied over the Galom-α and hypercarbon fiber mesh frame that forms the exterior of the wing surface contains the energy conversion armor and other protective measures against heat and energy weapons.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    "Galom-α" seems to be even weirder than that, really... it's described as something akin to a non-newtonian fluid (like cornstarch and water). It's a liquid metal alloy of gallium and an unspecified OTMetal that has a superhigh viscosity. On its own, it's said that if you were to fill a pool with Galom-α you could sink in it if you stood still... or you could run across the surface like a solid. It's noted that this makes the material extremely resistant to impacts of short duration (e.g. explosions), but paradoxically soft to sustained pressures like simply leaning on it. You could reversibly dent it just by pushing hard, but an explosion won't even move it. The actuators for deforming the wing are embedded in it as part of a hypercarbon fiber structural sheet and the whole thing is wrapped in an outer skin to keep the Galom-α from falling off the surface... but combined like that, it apparently makes for a highly durable reversibly deformable airfoil that isn't subject to normal strain-point weaknesses. For reference, the Mythbusters Walking on Water episode's demonstration of cornstarch and water's properties...
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Andor is, at least IMO, the finest writing Star Wars has ever had. Star Wars has always had an element of sociopolitical commentary to it, but usually it's either too subtle and easy for the audience to miss entirely (as in the OT) or so hamfisted that it's impossible to take seriously (as in the prequels). Andor, though... Andor does it at a level that rivals the very best other, more overtly politial, titles like Star Trek have done and it's amazing. Not only is it a proper exploration of what drives people to join the galactic civil war, it spans multiple levels of society and both sides of the conflict. It shows how people on the fringes of Imperial society like Cassian struggle to live and are forced into increasingly desperate situations by the Empire's repressive policies, but it also explores how regular workaday folks like Brasso and Bix cope with the slow loss of liberties as the Empire's policies get more restrictive until society as a whole becomes a powder keg. The show's villains are not cackling dark sorcerers, they're just committed civil servants who are just trying to do their jobs. Syril Karn and Dedra Meero's obsessive belief in justice ends up driving them to commit all kinds of personal and societal harms and make a bad situation worse. Then, we have social elites like Mon Mothma or Luthen Rael, both of whom benefit from the Empire, but where Mon Mothma is a coward unwilling to risk upsetting the status quo by doing anything more than performative opposition to the Empire Luthen is perhaps TOO willing to burn it all down to show his contempt for the system. The critique of several current political and cultural instutions is downright blistering and very effective as a result. On the other hand, what if Cassian talked for a while about how much he doesn't like sand? 🤣
  6. Seto Kaiba
    She's barely in Return of the Jedi, but even in Rogue One she's stuck in the role of the naively idealistic rebel figurehead whose role in the story is to propose a course of action that obviously won't work and then be ignored by the other rebel leaders. If they're gonna go to the expense of having the actress show up, at least do something interesting with the character right? She's worth more than just being a narrative speed bump.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Padme Amidala did a pretty fine job of it throughout The Clone Wars series. There were a few others in that series as one-shot or minor recurring characters. Not a lot of politics after the prequel era tho, so that is kind of a narrow category. In all seriousness, Mon Mothma's not written as a strong leader in any of the shows. She's written to be a narrative speedbump. In both Andor and Rebels, she's written to be the authority figure who's bitterly opposed to whatever action the protagonists need to take to win the day. She's a plot device to jack up the tension by having the protagonists either go anyway against orders with the threat of having to face the music later or lose time trying to convince her so they make a last-second dramatic entry to save the day. Ahsoka makes her explicitly a very weak political leader, who both spearheaded the disarmament that let the First Order rise to power in the first place and failed to address the issues in the Republic's system of governance that caused the Old Republic to fall apart years earlier.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Considering what we see of her in shows set during the Rebellion, that sounds incredibly boring. Who's going to tune in to a series about a sheltered 1%-er politician clutching her pearls every five minutes because the rest of the Rebellion actually wants to fight the Empire not bury it in sternly worded letters of protest? Absolutely they can. Absolutely they do. Princess Leia Organa, Hera Syndulla, Ahsoka Tano, Ursa Wren, and many others in Star Wars attest to that fact. Mon Mothma's just, y'know, not one. Like Duchess Satine from The Clone Wars, she's presented as a painfully naive and sheltered idealist so out of touch with reality that her own faction regards her as a liability and an obstacle to be worked around not as someone to take guidance from. The actual rebel leaders don't respect her. We see that many times, in Andor, in Rebels, and even after the war in Ahsoka. She's a figurehead who doesn't realize she's just a figurehead. The token politician from the deposed government the rebels keep around so they can claim to be a continuation of the previous government in exile. Even then, she wasn't their first choice... they had the vastly more effective Bail Organa in their corner before A New Hope.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    After a chaotic period at work forced me to step back from translating, I'm back on the Master File train. Past a certain point, it starts to feel a bit weird seeing so many publications rave about how amazing and successful the VF-11 Thunderbolt was when its one major appearance in the anime (Macross 7) treated it like it was ineffectual and undercapable. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II blows more smoke up the VF-11's arse, talking about it being essentially The Perfect Valkyrie of the 2030s and the most-produced Valkyrie of all time. I guess the QF-4000 Ghost is what's standing between the VF-171 and that title. It feels a bit funny to look at the VF-11 and then see a book say it has no obvious flaws. Master File's take is that the VF-11 was apparently SO perfect that more than 30,000 of the bloody things were made and that the military apparently considered themselves to be set until ~2060. The idea of using Gallium in a structural material is a bit insane too. The VF-22's flexible skin is said to be a Gallium-based compose called "Galom-Alpha" (feeling a bit Gundam?) made from woven hypercarbon fiber sheeting soaked in this Galom-Alpha non-newtonian metallic composite fluid and then wrapped in a bunch of different film layers that keep it warm (and pliable) and provide protection from various hazards. There's also a mention in the VF-22 book of a similar technology to the energy cartridge system that shows up in the VF-31AX book. They describe an emergency power system that uses burning hydrogen-doped metal cartridges to feed a small capacitor bank and provide electrical power in the case of a loss of generator access. The VF-31AX book had described something similar for powering the beam gunpod. The FAST pack section has what I think may be the only mention Macross has of a macron gun AKA a "dust gun". Basically, particle accelerator that fires a stream of elemental or larger particles instead of elementary particles. It's described as being kind of a side effect of an attempt to create a fusion-pumped laser cannon with a power output of several hundred megawatts but the laser beam ends up pushing the heavy metal particles used as a gain medium out at near lightspeed thanks to the GIC confinement used to focus the beam. Nasty nasty weapon.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Sounds like they've gone to quite extraordinary lengths to make the second season a suitable lead in to Rogue One. That said, I'm hoping we see a LOT less of Mon Mothma unless the writers have finally resigned themselves to making her matter to the story. The story's past the point where it needs the Rebellion's obstructive bureaucrat to complain about the heroes getting results.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Ameku M.D. has served up another glorious trainwreck this week. On the one hand, it's surprising that any studio or production committee looked at this amateur hour screenplay and said "Yeah, that's good enough for a TV anime". On the other, it's weirdly impressive how consistent its awfulness is. Its author is supposedly a doctor, but crafted a "medical mystery" story so wildly unbelievable and unscientific that it feels more like a Japanese House MD fanfic than anything.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yeah... that's the expected result. Harmony Gold officially pulled the plug on new Robotech development 18 years ago in the wake of the Shadow Chronicles debacle. Their last gasp attempt to get their fans to put up the cash for new development on Kickstarter ended 10 1/2 years ago. They even struck out re-attempting their 90's strategy of blindly farming the license out to anyone who'd cut them a check because the one publisher willing to touch it mainly just reprinted old comics and ran one new comic that was mostly a piss-take... and even that was cancelled without notice under mysterious and unspecified circumstances. There's a page quote from Warhammer 40,000's rulebook... "Success is commemorated; failure is merely remembered." Probably, yeah. The franchise's main value is squatting on the Macross license and associated trademarks, which let them collect royalties from Big West in select markets. They could almost certainly get good money for it, but they seem to be content with whatever small amount of royalties they get from Macross licensing instead.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    As worried as I am about Sunrise doing this one, the one part I have absolutely complete confidence in is that they'll once again pick an amazing performer to be the lead singer. 😀
  14. Seto Kaiba
    This has been really polarizing simulcast season for me... I've found a few really good shows that I'm absolutely loving, but the rest of the shows I've picked up have steadily been trending towards "garbage". Blue Exorcist... eech... either I somehow forgot how bad the writing got in the original manga or the adaptation to anime really allowed the suck to flourish and bloom. They've now spent nine entire episodes on a flashback to the Blue Night, which have varied from painfully dull to unintentionally hilarious when they're all meant to be tense and dramatic. Evil flying babies, anyone? Honestly, the worst is any scene involving the twins mother Yuri Egin... she's the most frustrating character in the show by far, with her imbecilic naivete leading her to unwittingly shape the story's main villain (Satan) from nonsentience into a supremely malevolent monster. Still having a LOT of fun with I'm Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class, OKITSURA, and I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons. My watch group started Ascendance of a Bookworm recently too... a nice touch since I recently finished the light novel. It's weird watching it and being able to pick out all of the foreshadowing going on now. That one's getting a new season next year that'll go into Part III (of V) of the light novel too, which should be wild.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Not quite? Many models of Variable Fighter including the VF-1 Valkyrie inherited their names from older models of fighter, bomber, etc. used by real world militaries. The VF-1 is named for the North American XB-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber. (Hikaru even has a model of one in his quarters in DYRL?.) Other examples include: There are a few cases of VFs with explicitly mythological names, but those are all much rarer and most are fairly recent. Some were chosen by fans as part of a contest, while others were riffing on the names of previous models with inherited military names.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Considering she's 71 and has a whopping 44 years as a producer and 12 as President and CEO of Disney LucasFilm to her name... nobody'd blame her if she actually took a full retirement. It's a hell of a career. If she were being forced out, it'd be something like what happened to Carlos Tavares last December. No advance notice, no talk of choosing a successor, just "We've decided to part ways" and an immediate and unfilled vacancy. (Not that anyone will miss Carlos.) Yeah, the brainrotted culture warriors aren't exactly ones for little things like perspective.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Not that I can see. The series is supposed to start its broadcast run on April 8th (about 40 days hence at time of writing), but nothing on ANN or their official website about who's going to be carrying the series in western markets. I'd assume it's going to be Crunchyroll. They've had a lock on the simulcast streaming rights to new Gundam shows for over a decade now. The one exception being Requiem for Vengeance, which went to Netflix because Netflix bankrolled its production in exchange for the worldwide streaming rights. They'll probably announce it when they start to roll out the Spring 2025 simulcast schedule.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That is a huge improvement. I get what they were going for with their original choice of music, in terms of its thematic and symbolic meaning, but in terms of selling the show they should've just stuck with the score from the first season.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not planning to... I can't get past how fugly the designs are, and what's been revealed about the scenario doesn't really thrill me either. It's not without potential, but it feels too much like the center of a venn diagram of Gihren's Greed and G-Witch for me to care. I'll give it a fair shake when it comes out on streaming but I'm not going to pay actual money to see it in a theater.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That is, if anything, the most perfect and hilarious outcome to this discussion we could have asked for. 🤣 👍
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Seemed like a safe bet to me, TBH. After all, Andor was/is the one Star Wars title on Disney+ that avoided the two main stumbling blocks of Disney+ Star Wars: Fan Writers and Force Users.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's evidence that they learned from last season's rough start. Instead of a two-episode opener where all the action is in episode three, they're just going to drop an entire story arc at a time.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I'm an engineer, mate... don't threaten me with a good time. 😜 Put simply, the people in charge of developing and producing these shows and movies are the ones responsible when those shows and movies are received poorly. That seems pretty straightforward, IMO. Blaming Kathleen Kennedy for all of Star Wars's issues is like blaming the CEO of McDonalds when your local McD's gets your order wrong. Yeah, the person responsible and the person you're blaming are in the same general organization... but they're almost completely uninvolved with each other on a day-to-day basis. I'm not saying you can't be happy about it, I'm just saying it doesn't make logical sense and won't actually change anything because Kennedy was never the one making those "bad" creative decisions to begin with.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Like I've said previously, LucasFilm's problem is that the studio is bringing in talented people with thoroughly respectable creative credentials as producers, directors, and writers to helm these new Star Wars projects... and a fair few of these people are turning in crap work. The "why", I assume, varies widely. Whether it's because they're promoted fans who're too in love with Star Wars to write anything but bad fan fiction, too afraid of being tarred and feathered for "failing" Star Wars to take creative risks, or cynically chasing a proposal that sounded like something fans already like... the work these showrunners and writers and directors with excellent credentials are doing just isn't striking a chord with the target audience. Kathleen Kennedy is just the LucasFilm CEO and President. She has probably half a dozen layers of management between her and anyone who's actually making anything like a creative decision. It's not like she's micromanaging every single thing the company does. There aren't that many hours in the day. Let go of the culture war brainrot.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    See? This is a perfect example of Star Wars fans irrational desire to blame Kathleen Kennedy for anything and everything even when it makes no sense at all. Now Kathleen Kennedy's supposedly to blame for the failure of the Star Trek soft reboot movies... even though Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness were both completed before Abrams left to work on Star Wars. Both films were financial failures that underperformed at the box office and brought in little in the way of merchandising revenue. Paramount's attempt to reboot Star Trek was already a commercial failure well before Abrams departed and Star Trek: Beyond simply continued that downward trend by continuing to do all of the same things that already hadn't been working with Abrams in the director's seat. Kathleen Kennedy owns no part of that failure. That is ALL Paramount and Bad Robot, and arguably mostly Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci's belief that they needed to make Star Trek "less Star Trek-y" for the movie to be marketable.
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