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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Beats me, Macross Delta didn't really leave any plausible way to continue the plot that I can see. We saw, late in the series, that Windermere's forces didn't even have the numbers or the skill to defeat the underfunded local New UN Forces of the Brisingr Alliance without King Ketchup's fold song mind-controlling the enemy and enhancing their abilities... and that was BEFORE they got creamed by Xaos and those New UN Forces. King Ketchup's out of action, apparently permanently, and the only other wind singer in play is on the New UN Government's side. The Star Shrine is disabled. Half of the Aerial Knights top aces are dead, and of the remaining four three are closet Walkure fanboys (Theo, Xao, Bogue) and one (Hermann) opposed the war to begin with. Epsilon Foundation can no longer support the Windermerean cause thanks to Berger's defection, so since Windermere IV is an underdeveloped, economically-hobbled agri-world they have no way to obtain fresh ships and fighters to replace their losses. Since the cat's out of the bag WRT Windermere's food exports being tainted by the compounds that cause Var syndrome, they're about to have one hell of an economic recession since agriculture was pretty much their entire economy. I don't think a Macross antagonist has ever been neutered quite so comprehensively before. What manner of ongoing threat are they supposed to pose when there's a handful of ships and a maybe a few hundred Drakens at most between them and having to resort to harsh language and thrown apple pies?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They really haven't established that the New UN Forces are corrupt... in fact, we've barely seen the REAL New UN Forces. Most of what we've gotten has been the local boys... the forces maintained by the individual emigrant worlds or fleets, who are organizationally kind of like either national guard reservists or a state militia. They're subordinate to the real New UN Forces, the federal troops who we've only had a couple of brief glimpses of because they don't intervene in inter-colony fighting, etc. The closest we've seen to corruption in the Federal New UN Forces is Latence, an Earth supremacist splinter faction that was defeated by a special forces unit back in 2051. The local troops have it worse, but the only legitimately corrupt one we've seen has been Leon Mishima... Macross Galaxy's troops are off the hook because they were being mind-controlled by the Galaxy executives rather than being corrupt, and Brisingr's 2nd staff office gets a pass because not only were they not up to no good, they tried to nip the problem in the bud before it could even start to pose a threat and ultimately failed because of Wright Immelmann's stupidity. The secret meetings Delta tries and fails to play off as ominous are, on the face of it, mostly the brass griping to themselves that they saw this crap coming, failed to prevent it, and are wishing they had their shiny new countermeasures back in the day. Not a lot of need to imagine that one, it's basically confirmed outright via Macross R... though their sooper sekret tactical espionage action actually involves modded-beyond-belief VF-1s because those things are practically invisible in plain sight now that they're a commercially-available VF. (Hakuna Aoba's VF-1X++ is an example, albeit one modded for racing.) The VF-24, I would assume, is there for situations that require the BIGGEST STICK like Zentradi rogue fleets, intervening when intercolony hostility gets out of hand, and other threats that the proles in the emigrant fleets don't get told about. The YF-19 and YF-21 were designed for a similar operation profile... going into wars with colonists and executing decapitation strikes to stop conflicts quickly, as Millard explains to Isamu when introducing him to the program in Plus. The decentralization was more a "coping with the reality of fold physics" thing... hard to micromanage a force half a galaxy away when it'd take ten years to trave there, and days or weeks to get even the simplest message there. 11.7 light years. Eden is the closest emigrant world to the Sol system, and was discovered by a short-range expedition in the time between the Megaroad-01 and Megaroad-02 launches. It's not even enough range to push the fold booster to its limits, those were rated for a one-way trip of up to 20 light years. The oldest craft we have a mention of a fold booster being used with is a VF-11, so presumably you don't even need reactors that are all that powerful for a short-range jump, just avionics capable of supporting the fold booster.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Well, if that trailer is indicative of the direction they intend to take with the series then I think my choice is clear... PASS. This barely even looks like a Star Trek series at all, let alone one that is supposed to be set just ten years before Star Trek season one. I hope they're not serious about making this a Star Trek war story, because that only ever worked once in Deep Space Nine and the only reason it did work there was because the war-centric plots were heavily broken up by more traditional plots used as breather episodes. By now, you really ought to be able to expect that Star Trek's writers knew better than to grab the conflict ball... every time they try, it turns into garbage as it did many times in the relaunch novels and anything penned by Shatner. Enterprise grabbed the conflict ball for a season and it nearly got them canceled it was so badly written. The part that really has me raising an eyebrow though is the rumor going 'round the net that this new lead is attempting to borrow appeal by way of "Remember the new guy?" as yet another undisclosed half-sibling of Spock's. If true, that punts this from fanfic territory down to bad fanfic territory. They used it when circumstances permitted, and even just mentioning it as a possibility counts... but it was almost never brought up. The phasers and transporter effect look like they're from the right time period at least... but the all-forcefield holding cell thing? That's way too advanced even for Voyager or the TNG movies. They didn't even have holding cells with forcefield doors until after Kirk's era, the cells aboard the refit Enterprise and Enterprise A still had physical obstructions in the doorway. I kind of like the dropping-out-of-warp effect, it looks like it came right from one of the old Probert sketches (and probably did). If they told me this belonged to the Abrams timeline I'd believe it. Problem is, no less than three previous Star Trek shows in that timeline affirmed that the TOS visual aesthetic does in fact come to pass totally unaltered from its 60's appearance. Star Trek: the Next Generation had Scotty call up a hologram of the TOS bridge on the holodeck, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had an episode that was a side story to "The Trouble with Tribbles" set aboard the Enterprise and space station, and the Star Trek: Enterprise series had a two-parter devoted to showing the Terran Empire's rise was down mostly to a prime continuity Constitution-class ship looking exactly as it did in TOS fall into the mirror universe in Mirror Archer's time and being captured by the NX-class Enterprise. They're going to have to do some serious mental calisthenics to explain why the Discovery and the Shenzou look more in line with the design aesthetic of the 25th thru 31st centuries than the early 23rd. Most of the displays and other hardware look right out of Daniels' 31st century temporal observatory. The Axanar fan-film did a much better job of looking appropriate to this period of time than Discovery is.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Shin's pretty straightforward as Macross characters go. Like Nora, the Unification Wars wrecked his life to the point that he defines himself by the conflict. The series is mostly him finding something else for his life to be about besides fighting. Macross Zero's plot isn't a self-contained, stand-alone story the way most Macross titles are. Its story depends on the audience being familiar with the revelations Macross 7 made about the Protoculture's civil war and collapse, and some of the related supplemental materials. All the same it doesn't really come full circle and actually mean something until Macross Frontier. The VF-0 and Sv-51 are completely different animals from the YF-19... we're talking four full generations worth of technological advancement there. They move much more like a modern fighter aircraft because they ARE much more like modern fighters. They're both using overtuned conventional jet engines, and the VF-0 is literally a derivative of the F-14. The distance between them and the YF-19, developmentally, is just about the same as the difference between the first jet prototypes in World War II and an F/A-18. No it doesn't. This is not new... this is right out of the opening narration from the very first episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The alien starship crashes on South Ataria island, the formation of the Unification Government is proposed, and in response wars started breaking out as various groups opposed to a one-world government emerged and it took the better part of the next decade to restore order. Several of the characters in the original series elaborate on their exploits during the conflict during the series. Some of the details given in the official chronology make it pretty clear the Mayan Island incident in Zero was pretty tame compared to some of the other conflicts in the Unification Wars. (No major population centers get nuked, for instance.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    The mental image I'm getting is hovering somewhere between the utter incompetence of the 21st Century Defense Security contractors in Chikyū Bōei Kigyō Dai-Guard and Shizuru instantly giving Kouji up for dead anytime his robot is shot down in Shinkon Gattai Godannar... and it is WONDERFUL. Does anyone have a mailing address for Kawamori? We need to recommend this bit of madness immediately. Maybe in Delta... but that's only to be expected when singing has been weaponized in the most stringently literal sense like it was in 7. Frontier was much more reserved about it. It has been way too long since there's been a decent fleet battle though. We know they happen, because the Federal New UN Forces are the metaphorical bigger stick for precisely that kind of a thing, but Frontier only really had the last one since the Vajra don't really do ships much outside the movies and in 7 the only real battle where two fleets squared off was the setup for an incredibly lame joke in "Fleet of the Strongest Women". Delta itself kind of makes you wonder where all the Battle-class ships went. The Brisingr Alliance can't have been founded by just one emigrant fleet, since there are over 20 inhabited worlds, and there weren't THAT many Megaroad-class ships built. They should've had a few supercarriers out and about to beat Windermere's head in.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    That's half the fun of speculating! (I've often thought it'd be really interesting and fun if they got away from having the main cast be soldiers in an elite unit and instead gave us the story of the military's incorrigible screwups. Like a version of Red Dwarf for the Macross setting, or a Tag and Bink are Dead-style self-parody. A series focused on the Kakizakis and Dockers of the world...)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Personally, after Delta's overwhelming emphasis on music I'd prefer to see some fanservice for us mechaheads... an animated version of Macross R would do nicely, and maybe result in something nice like a DX VF-19ACTIVE, a v3 YF-25 Prophecy with Paladin Pack, or a Sv-52 Oryol.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Hey now... I might be evil, even if it's more Guild of Calamitous Intent-evil than actual villain-evil (I'm trying dammit!), but the site's Chaotic Neutral at worst. I dunno... from my view, Frontier and Delta are actually pretty darn reserved about fanservice even compared to previous Macross works. They certainly cross fewer lines than previous shows. 7 has, for my money, refused to stop at taking the cake and absconded with the whole damned bakery. The "Dakedo Baby" ED's stills of a naked Mylene in the shower, Sivil's possessing women to get her leg over Basara, and the skirt-flipping kid aside, they had an entire OVA's B-plot devoted to Mylene being pursued by a bisexual producer and no less than three stories devoted to the idea that Max and Milia were cheating on each other (one of which took pains to make it sound like the audience was about to see her in the act). Played for laughs, with the exception of the Dynamite 7 B-plot being a very traumatic experience for Mylene, but still... (I haven't quite forgotten that The Lost Two Years indicates Zentradi found their way into the porn industry not long after the First Space War ended, or the novelizations removing the question mark from several different "They did?" moments in their respective TV shows. I fully expect the Delta novelization to follow suit... or should that be "follow birthday suit"?) It's possible they may have obtained someone through a recording agency while Delta was going on and simply didn't publicize it. They didn't exactly hold public auditions for Minmay or Basara, for instance. Or it's also possible they decided to go with something like Macross R where there isn't a prominently-featured singer. (Kawamori had hinted he wanted to do something like that before the Delta series was revealed.) EDIT: R did technically have a singer, but she was a retired singer who'd opted to change careers and become a pilot. The Delta continuation is, IMO, the least probable theory given Kawamori's avowed dislike of doing direct sequels.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Think I'd rather the people posting news about the proposed film used that than the seemingly ubiquitous Macross Pachinko Fever screenshots.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Your previous replies suggest your understanding is less complete than you believe it to be... but nobody's going to judge you for not liking these things. They will, however, be inclined to look at you funny if you make a fuss about them like they were something new or unusual. As I noted previously, these things are nothing unusual for a Macross series and many other titles both in the franchise and elsewhere contain much more overt sexuality than this.... something the people with complaints about Frontier and Delta gloss over or ignore with alarming consistency. Really now? Ironic indeed, given that many Facebook groups will tell you the exact polar opposite of that... that this site is a den of evil, grumpy oldtaku who hate Frontier and Delta with a passion. I guess that just shows that everyone's views are a little different.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Did anyone take the time to ask them awkward questions about the Robotech RPG Tactics KS? I'd imagine that should still be a fairly hot topic, considering.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    You're definitely not lending your criticism much validity with a list like this, though... but it does highlight a case of not understanding attitudes other cultures have on certain things. There is nothing sexual about communal bathing in Japan, for instance. In general, Japan isn't quite so prudish as America is though, which is something that often doesn't translate well for viewers in other countries. There's only one item on this list that's even remotely sexual that isn't played directly for comedy purposes... and that's the scene that establishes that Leon and Cathy are lovers. Most of the list would be considered fairly standard comedy tropes even in America, particularly the suggestively shaped food. Everything is someone's fetish, mate... there are over seven billion people on this planet and most anything you could think of turns someone's crank. It's usually better not to think about it. It's up to the otaku to make something else of it, that's why there's such a brisk market for things like doujinshi. ;-)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Serious(ly in need of some quality time with a small army of clinical psychiatrists). So, odds on how fast the site gets hacked? I doubt Harmony Gold management was willing to pay for a setup with better security.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... you sure you didn't watch a different show that someone had retitled? Macross Frontier did very little with fanservice of that type. The vast majority of what little there was was only played purely for comedy. Hell, there's more overt sexualization going on in DYRL?. There are dirtier shorts in 7. Klan Klan is the exception to the above, in that her fanservice was played not for laughs (most of the time) but put in place as a legitimate hinderance to her relationship with Michael Blanc. Now, I'm sure the fetish fuel aspect is also intentional, but it's generally not overt (the kind of thing the dojinshi writers exploit because the show doesn't). Ranka and Nanase though? Nanase's barely in the bloody show to begin with, and the few times any reference is made to her before she's injured it's for comedy. The series spends most of the run treating Ranka like a sheltered little kid, barring one hospital gown-related gag that was also played solely for comedy. The panty episode was ridiculous, but it was played purely for comedy... almost all of the fanservice was, even in Sheryl's case, and she was the show's Ms. Fanservice. It's weird how some people are reacting like this was Stratos4, where the fighters and sci-fi plot were a tissue-paper thin veneer over what was basically softcore lesbian porn, or Strike Witches, which I managed to get through precisely one episode of before becoming convinced that it was operating on a level of creepy that normally merits a visit from Chris Hansen and the FBI. Be careful with Zone of the Enders... a mecha crotch-shot there could put your eye out.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Weirdly, I heard about this from a coworker... which was a bit of a shock, as I hadn't been aware any of them actually watched anime. I've seen some teasers for it and it looks interesting, mostly one with characters I'm assuming are Trevor and Alucard training together. What I've heard of its actual content makes it sound like a spiritual sibling to Kouta Hirano's Hellsing manga and OVA series... lots of profanity, lots of blood and gore, and vampires as something to be properly afraid of instead of socially maladjusted prats with a body glitter addiction. Sounds like a good time, albeit not one with an especially complex or deep story. (I remember the game not-so-fondly from when I was a kid... old school Nintendo Hard.) IIRC this Castlevania series is written by Warren Ellis, so it's not surprising in the least that it would villify the church to an extent that some would consider... unnatural. This is, after all, the man who wrote Transmetropoltian and devoted multiple character arcs and several entire issues to having its main character deconstruct the various evils and abuses of organized religion in general (and a few fictional bland name equivalents of real-world denominations in particular) while periodically losing his cool and beating the stupid out of religious officials. He probably jumped at the chance to write a church militant getting its arse handed to it. ... and now my sinuses are full of Diet Coke. Do I even want to know the context of that? Does it even make sense in context?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    "Not directly" would be the most honest answer, I think. Cpt. Klan Klan's key character traits got redistributed to a couple different characters. To put it in trope terms, her status as Proud Warrior Race Guy, Token Girl Teammate, and the Meltran in the Painted-On-Pilot-Suit went to Mirage Jenius. Same as her (ultimately unsuccessful) red-and-blue romance with another soldier. Her status as a supporting Ms. Fanservice was inherited by Makina, though Makina's more like the show's equivalent of Nanase... the terminally underdeveloped character who exists only to tick off the last few boxes on the generic fetish checklist via gag boobs and a lesbian love interest, who is only relevant to the plot near the end when she's seriously injured by the enemy.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Harmony Gold, mostly. They made quite a bit of fuss on the official forums when that first came to light, with a few Hollywood gossip sites treating it like it was a done deal. Back then, the Harmony Gold brain trust were also (falsely) claiming that Warner Bros intended to make Robotech one of its tentpole franchises and were fast-tracking the movie into production. The site was abuzz with fake news about it for a very long time. There was one other director who was never approached about doing Robotech who the HG volunteers made a big to-do about having turned the movie down... it took weeks to set the record straight that he'd never even mentioned Robotech, he'd only derisively referred to robot movies like Transformers as "Robo-tech" and said he wasn't interested in making one. You seem to have answered your other question yourself before I woke up, so I'll let that be. Ask anyone who's been to one of their convention panels in the last eight or so years... they aren't exactly honest about the live-action movie's state of affairs. For years they were claiming (in their famously lame Powerpoint) that Kasdan, Millar, Gough, and Smith were ALL still attached to write, years after they'd submitted their story treatments and buggered off to do more productive things. Considering the franchise and likely source of the claims, it's amazing anyone is taking it seriously at all, let alone here. You'd think people would've learned by now that they're best described in terms from Shakespeare: "[...] they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondly, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." - Dogberry, Much Ado About Nothing It's totally relevant. Sony no doubt saw that and concluded, as if further evidence were necessary, that a franchise that couldn't even successfully beg a pittance of $50,000 from its devoted fandom to develop a pilot was only likely to end up as award bait at the Razzies. (The fact that Harmony Gold's own management wouldn't put up $50,000 themselves to have done with it probably raised more than a few eyebrows at Sony too...)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It's not a myth that the show was planned as 1 cour and a movie. It changed in preproduction, not production. (During the scripting and storyboarding of the first few episodes, IIRC.) By the time they went to actual production, it was 2 cour. You're right that it isn't really a viable defense of the appallingly poor writing in the show's second half... Delta's plot was appallingly thin and unoriginal even before that point anyway. Roid is Grace 2.0, Keith is Brera, Freyja is a better Ranka than Ranka is...
  19. Seto Kaiba
    That's exactly my point... they made a great big fuss claiming he'd been tapped to direct it, but in truth all he had done was talk to them about it informally. He had never actually agreed to direct the film, let alone signed a contract. Nic Mathieu and James Wan were never hired to direct it at any point either, it was the same fake news stunt they pulled with Sylvain White. The same fake news stunt they're now pulling with Alex Muschietti, who credible reports suggest will be working instead on the second half of the planned duology adaptation of Steven King's It. They were pushing similar fake news with writers, claiming people who'd handed in their story treatments and left were still attached to the project.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    So, for legal reasons, "Failure is the only option". They can neither use the original designs nor develop derivatives of same for animated or live action works.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, Sylvain White was the first director to have the misfortune to allegedly be tapped to direct the proposed live-action Robotech movie. Like Nic Mathieu and James Wan, it was evident pretty soon after that he'd only been approached about it on a strictly informal basis and listened politely to the pitch without committing to anything. Smart money says Andy Muschietti is just the latest member of the club of directors who read the pitch, thanked them politely for coming to him, and filed it in the nearest bin as soon as they were out of eyeshot and is now wondering why they're telling the world he's directing it. Pretty much every piece of news about the proposed film has been fake news... like how they were telling everyone that Lawrence Kasdan, Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Tom Rob Smith were had all been attached to write for the film when in reality they'd only submitted story treatments they were paid for and then gone off to do other things.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    No, I hadn't forgotten... in fact, it's a nice illustration of my point about it being a largely forgotten gimmick. Star Trek: the Next Generation had 176 episodes and 4 movies. In that span, there were just four actual saucer separation events and the possibility was only brought up a handful of times when it wasn't actually used. Half of the uses are in Season 1, and all but three mentions are before The Best of Both Worlds Part II. (One in Season 4, one in Season 5, and one in First Contact.) Outside of the Enterprise D, only one ship has ever been shown executing a separation... the USS Prometheus, a one-episode wonder from Voyager's 4th season. EDIT: If the Discovery turns out to have the capability, hopefully they'll make more use of it than the Enterprise D did... there should be less obstacle to its tactical utility in the period STD is set in, since that was before Starfleet went back to using the warp core as the power source for the phasers. (They had switched over to using the impulse reactors starting on the NX-class.) EDIT 2: ... I just now realized that bit of dialog in ENT's "Silent Enemy" is a stealth callback all the way to TMP, explaining why phasers weren't using the warp core until the Constitution-class retrofit.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, we'll find out of the Discovery and/or Shenzhou are made from Chinese fireworks like the Enterprise D or the sterner stuff of the TOS era sooner or later. Given the focus on special effects, I'm sure we won't have to wait more than one episode to see someone beat the hell out of either.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Nacelle ejection is mentioned twice in TOS, once in "The Apple" and once in "The Savage Curtain" (thank you Memory Alpha). Would've been something useful to have on later ships, considering how often TNG-era ships seem to explode once a nacelle is compromised... which is weird, given that Reliant had an entire nacelle blown clean off in Wrath of Khan and seemed barely inconvenienced by it. I recently rewatched Star Trek: the Motion Picture when I got the whole batch on Play, and there was nothing in the original theatrical cut or director's cut about a saucer separation. There was a scene planned near the end where the refit Enterprise would separate, but it was scrapped in the storyboard phase and the only artifacts remaining from it are Andrew Probert's sketches. The Discovery really does look like it ought to have the capability, from the shape of the hull... I don't think I'd be too put out if it did, as long as it was used intelligently instead of becoming the forgotten gimmick the Enterprise D's was until Generations.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Mikumo Guynemer, the purple-haired leader of Walkure in Macross Delta. It's not an exact classification, but she's something like a bio-android. She's flesh-and-blood, but she's designed from the genetic level to be a bio-technological user interface for the Star Shrine.
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