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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, Maul was confirmed (and then shown) to be alive way back in the fourth season of The Clone Wars... about six years before Solo: a Star Wars Story, in an episode that aired ~6 months before Disney acquired LucasFilm. The reason he's a crime lord in the movie also goes back to pre-Disney Filoni material from the show's fifth season. Creator's pets in Star Wars seem to be pretty death-proof. It's why I'm so surprised the crew working on Skeleton Crew have been able to restrain themselves from including f*cking Hondo, who often seemed to be the only space pirate in the galaxy in Filoni's work. (I kinda see why they didn't, though. Hondo's really not an intimidating man, he couldn't pull off what Jod is pulling off.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Now, in all fairness, the Star Wars franchise had already developed a profound love of the Disney Villain Death trope long before George sold it to the House of Mouse. The old Expanded Universe had Boba Fett survive his trip down the sarlacc pit and Palpatine treating death like a revolving door. It was already a tired trope when Filoni used it to bring Darth Maul back as half a robot spider in The Clone Wars a year or two before the Disney acquisition. Disney's twist was reducing lightsaber stab wounds from "instantly fatal" to "a booboo requiring a really big band-aid".🤣
  3. Seto Kaiba
    OK, that's a fair point... though, in his case, redemption equalled death (after an amputation, humiliation, and being barbeque'd alive in his black leather gimp suit) so it's not like he got off lightly or got to stick around. He didn't get a free heel-face turn or any forgiveness for what he did. 🤔 I'll give the most facual weight to what shows up on Disney's quarterly and annual earnings reports WRT LucasFilm and Disney+. It's a bit of a wait, but the best data is first party data. Let's just agree that he died... it's preferable to acknowledging that The Book of Boba Fett exists.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Tried Even Given the Worthless 'Appraiser' Class, I'm Actually the Strongest and whooboy is it a stinker. It's yet another one of those isekai-adjacent j-fantasy stories where the world runs in MMORPG logic for no adequately explained reason and the world is full of fantastic bigotry as people discriminate against each other based on character class. The whole first episode is mostly just devoted to showing how horrid the setting is, in all the usual ways like the protagonist being left to die by the rest of his party, getting maimed by overpowered mobs, etc.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Nobody in this show is memorable, that's a big part of the problem. It's an unnecessary sequel to Rebels, where the few returning characters have that problem where their story is picking up after The End and any character development is in "Well, sh*t, what do we do with them now?" territory.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It's mentioned in the show's Wikipedia... aggregators TVision, JustWatch, and Whip Media have variously had the series as the top-streaming show in the US, in the top five in the US, or in the top ten in Canada. IMO, it'd be pretty weird if Jod were "redeemed" in the final episode. The last few episodes have made a point of having him Kick The Dog to remind the audience he's a cruel, evil, bloodthirsty space pirate who has no real qualms about killing.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    We'll see. As has been noted in other threads for Star Wars shows, measuring the actual performance of direct-to-streaming titles is difficult to do accurately since the only ones in possession of the complete viewership data are the first-party content creators themselves. Nielsen says it didn't chart in the top 10 on the basis of total minutes watched, though other streaming data agregators assert the series was pretty consistently in the top 10 in terms of the number of households watching in the US and Canada. 🤔 Disney, of course, are going to have their own criteria for judging if the series is a success or not. The bar may be a bit lower than The Acolyte's was, since Skeleton Crew's reviews have been broadly positive rather than overwhelmingly negative like its predecessor's and it cost $100 million less to make. Either way, Skeleton Crew seems set to be remembered as one of The Few Good Ones from the Disney+ Star Wars lineup.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    An especially aggressive one at that. Nobody tell Boimler. No kidding! 🤣 When I started watching Lower Decks I HATED Mariner. She reminded me a lot of Michael Burnham in all the worst ways. She was a mean-spirited, toxic, manipulative person in Starfleet and she seemed to enjoy preying on anyone who wasn't as bitter and hateful as herself. UNLIKE Michael Burnham, it quickly became apparent that she knew the kind of person she was and was still capable of being better. Lower Decks was a lot of fun not just because of the comedy, but because the characters still grow and develop in a fairly believable way for Star Trek.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. I am 100% looking forward to the ending of Skeleton Crew's first season, and I wholeheartedly hope it gets the second season the showrunners have been hoping for.👍
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, a lot of people seem to be satisfied with Skeleton Crew. It's a light, fun, engaging little story that has a great deal of charm and is doing something new and different with the Star Wars IP. It doesn't have to be the best thing since sliced bread. It just has to be something people enjoy watching... and it definitely seems to be that. If anything, it's a solid argument that Star Wars can and should put more distance between itself and the "Skywalker Saga" since so many Skywalker-adjacent stories are trash.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    One detail I should probably check with toy collectors on... the name of the company that was responsible for "space metal" development and production in the oldest lore is, I think, a nod to a toy manufacturer or toy line from the 80's: Dyna-Metal.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Probably what we, the audience, already know. At Attin was hidden away from the rest of the galaxy A Long Time Ago (in a Galaxy Far Far Away!) because of its critical importance to the Republic's monetary system. The kids don't seem to know what the Great Work is, just that it involves a lot of analytics. Everyone wants a guaranteed paycheck... so yeah, I expect any showrunner working on a big-name property like Star Wars is hoping their series won't be a one-and-done. Not that I would be complaining if I got to see a murderous Jod take a paintcan to the bonce, wipe out on a pile of space Hot Wheels, and fall down an iced-over staircase. Because roughly 90% of Star Wars plots work like a JRPG fetch quest. "You must go to <location> and find <plot critical person who lives like a three-minute walk from wherever they happen to land>."
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe! 😁 Having an established character pop out of the woodwork completely unforeshadowed to smack Jod down wouldn't be nearly as satisfying or offer nearly as much closure to the story as having the kids Jod's been looking down on outsmart him.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Nah... Jod's been so dismissive of the kids that he needs his arse handed to him by the kids. He needs to arrogantly keep assuming the kids can't do anything themselves, and get absolutely WRECKED by a trap the kids set up for him.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Mind you, I should note that even "hypercarbon" has since come to be an umbrella term for a whole family of specific carbon nanomaterial-based super-composites in material like Master File.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It wasn't replaced so much as renamed. The name is a nod to Gundam's Luna Titanium, but from the outset the term "space metal" never referred to one specific substance. The original explanation of the term from the 80's is that "space metal" is an umbrella term for a broad assortment of OTM-based alloys and composites that were manufactured in space. It's called "space metal" because it's metal that's made in space. 🤔 Cunning wordplay, no? Macross's creators hadn't coined any names for specific super-materials yet, and wouldn't until DYRL? where Hikaru name-dropped "hypercarbon" for the first time. Official setting materials tend to stick to vague and generic terms like "super alloy", "structural materials incorporating OTM", and so on. Those generic explanations have gotten gradually more specific as time has gone on, with Macross Zero mentioning "carbon composite based on nanotechnology". They occasionally namedrop specific materials like hypercarbon and herculite, but not very often. Dedicated technical material like Master File, of course, wants to be more detailed and will name specific materials and such and it's those materials that have described VFs as specifically using hypercarbon composites for their structural frames. Master File also offers a meta sort of explanation for why the term "space metal" fell out of use after the original series era. Usage of the term in-universe fell off because "space metal" stopped being exotic after the First Space War. Most manufacturing was being done in space, and those advanced composites and alloys were being used in many basic everyday objects, so it was no longer exotic enough to warrant being treated as a separate category of materials. The same reasoning is applied to the diminished usage of the term "overtechnology". After enough time, the advanced technology reverse-engineered from alien technology was no longer special or exotic or beyond comprehension the way the term implies. It was simply "technology".
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... and many such areas are also subject to enormous stresses during transformation and high-g maneuvering as well. Even relatively simple acts like walking or running can put joints and panels under a considerable amount of stress. Like the rest of the Valkyrie, parts that you would think of as thin and potentially fragile are made from ultra-durable overtechnology materials (OTMat) far stronger than armor-grade steel. The structural frame is the super-durable spacemetal/hypercarbon and the composite armor skin covering the airframe is made of the same/similar materials and further reinforced with energy conversion armor. It takes an extraordinary amount of force to bend or shear that material, but subjected to enough force it will bend or break. Variable Fighter Master File, of course, goes into more detail. It naturally confirms the hypercarbon frame material is extraordinarily strong and that the composite armor skin of Valkyries contains hypercarbon itself and is reinforced with energy conversion armor that greatly increases its structural strength. One detail that Master File offers which is not explicitly repeated in official setting materials is a statement in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1's general discussion of energy conversion armor. Therein, it says that one area where Humanity adapted the alien overtechnology beyond mere imitation of the technology they found was by applying energy conversion armor as both an armor enhancement and a momentary structural reinforcement system. Essentially, what it describes is the Valkyrie's control AI dumping additional energy into the energy conversion armor in moments of anticipated mechanical stress like transformation or high-g maneuvers to make the fragile parts under the most stress momentarily more durable. This is also mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix as something that can be done in response to events like a collision or a fall. Master File also describes the incredible durability of the "space metal" frame and composite armor as a bit of a double-edged sword. The incredible rigidity of the hypercarbon frame and functionally graded composite armor means that, if warping of structural members does occur, the material's incredible strength can actually prevent repair and make complete replacement of parts the only option. (How much of a problem this is varies from aircraft to aircraft, but is noted to be especally severe on the VF-25.) The VF-1 book also notes that this makes Valkyries hard to dispose of when they're retired from service. The structural materials are so durable that physical destruction of the aircraft is very difficult, and recycling the multilayer functionally graded composite of the armor is extremely expensive. In a way, the VF-1 Vol.1 book turns the explanation of armor strength into a backhanded explanation for why so many old-model VFs stick around and end up in civilian hands in the franchise. They're built so tough that normal boneyard methods aren't viable, so the military is stuck keeping them in mothballs until they can be properly diassembled and recycled... making selling disarmed old models off to civilians an attractive alternative disposal option.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective's third episode is out, and yeah... it's not good. I had a feeling after the first two episodes, but this is definitely confirmation. Ameku M.D. is that kind of lazy, badly written investigative "drama" where there's no real narrative flow and the story is just a string of random bullsh*t that ends in a vaguely plausible-sounding arse pull. The most recent episode has a case of a "cursed video" that causes people to commit suicide after they watch it. There's no buildup to a resolution of the mystery here. They meet with the surviving victims and act like this is either supernatural or total BS, and at the very end they the doctor announces "oh yeah they start spontaneously walking because epilepsy" and that's treated like a conclusion. The doctor also has to cosplay as a schoolgirl for some reason.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    For me, pondering these kind of things is part of the fun... so y'know I'm having a grand time regardless. 👍 When I looked into capital-O Old Republic and found that referred to a period like 1,000+ years before TPM, I had the same thought. But what I found was a reference to credits in that period being backed by precious metals, not made from them. Like how paper money in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was backed by the value of a set quantity of gold or silver.🤷‍♂️ It's possible At Attin is even older than that (I mean, paper starmap anyone?) and comes from an era when they really were minting credits like gold dubloons.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... that's one of the key differences between Macross and Gundam. Macross is "it costs nothing to be kind". Gundam is "... like being a hater ain't free too".🤣
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Indeed... when I went looking into this out of my usual analytical curiosity, is that a bunch of prior titles (TPM, TLJ, Bad Batch) had said they aren't. Hence the confusion.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The thing about Macross's writing, as noted previously, is that it generally depicts both sides of a conflict as being decent, reasonable people who are just trying to do what they believe is right. The conflict springs from a failure to communicate, and is ultimately resolved when that failure to communicate is resolved. The one case where that doesn't hold up is the Anti-Unification Alliance seen in Macross Zero and Macross the First. Probably because they're not one single cause, but a sort of catch-all for smaller causes opposed to the Earth UN Government and its peacekeeping efforts. A mixture of people who couldn't let go of paranoia, ethnic and sectarian bigotry, xenophobia, etc. and folks who depended on perpetuating conflict for their livelihood like career mercenaries. Not exactly folks acting in the best interests of others. (Even then, there are some side story type setups where focus characters ARE depicted as basically decent people in punch-clock villain territory, who even end up switching sides after the story proper ends.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I'm ready to call it for one of the Winter '25 simulcast titles already. Bogus Skill <Fruitmaster> is genuinely a tedious, unimaginative exercise in blindly reusing the most common isekai tropes imaginable. It really is something awful. It's not quite Isekai Cheat Magician levels of bad, but it's GETTING THERE.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    You sure about that? Because The Bad Batch seems to directly contradict it, with the Republic credit being made worthless by nothing more than a decree.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    We know, via the scene we get with Maj. Malan and the commanders from the local NUNS general staff office that the New UN Forces were aware of the danger the ruins posed. Whether the Windermereans themselves knew at the time is unclear, but they absolutely figured it out in short order thereafter (if they hadn't already) and did attempt to weaponize the ruins exactly the way the NUNS predicted. Considering what happened the last several times someone went messing around in sealed Protoculture ruins, the NUNS's choice to destroy the ruins with the greatest possible prejudice rather than risk some idiot activating whatever lethally ill-considered gizmo the Protoculture left behind is less villainous and more dangerously genre savvy. Considering they seem to have believed he was trying to run off with the bomb and were likely contending with his attempts to disengage the remote override, there's plenty of blame to go around. Lady M wanted a weapon against Var syndrome, which had already been codified some years earlier and the normal people recruited for the Tactical Sound Units were just not cutting it. They basically built her to be a song supersoldier. It happens offscreen, but Lady M is said to have reached out to the general staff and challenged the New UN Forces plan already in progress to destroy the Protoculture ruins and Sigur Berrentzs with a tactical reaction weapon. The whole city was supposed to be evacuated to ensure that nobody was hurt, but because Xaos was interfering the work slowed down and people were still in the area when Windermere attacked and the trap was sprung. Yeah, they could definitely stand to do with the Prime Directive. Doing a more extreme verison of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is probably not something that's great for society as a whole, since quite a few mentioned worlds in the New UN Government's sphere of influence are described to basically have gone right from their feudal period or renaissance right to casual interstellar travel without all of the societal development inbetween. Variable Fighter Master File has a nasty incident in one of its story sections where a peaceful kingdom is invaded by a neighboring star system's not-so-peaceful kingdom because they were still mired in the era of altar diplomacy. Maybe... but it seems unlikely given that the lead researcher responsible for many of the discoveries was the son of a priest applying modern science to the relics of the gods his family had been charged with keeping safe for millennia.
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