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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Cultural Exchange with a Game Center Girl's final episode was released today. It's cute and inoffensive to the bitter end. Nothing I'd call substantial, but a fun little slice of life series at least. Ruri Rocks had its finale today as well. As deep in "thirst trap" territory as the official promotional art and fan art is for this series, I remain obscurely grateful that the series proper has never felt compelled to indulge in it despite the artist's personal preference for dangerously thicc girls being on full display until this final episode. 😆 They visit an onsen to talk about the mineral content in onsen water and how it builds up in pipes, and for the most part make a heroic effort to keep it on topic and avoid anything indecent. They have to fall back on censor steam in a few spots but there's nothing exploitative. They switch topics and talk about collecting material from meteorites that burn up in the atmosphere and they wrap up with Ruri contemplating what she might want to do for a career. All in all, very satisfied with this series. It was quite a bit of fun. Thinking of looping back and trying out Clevatess and Uglymug Epicfighter... since it's going to be a bit before the Fall '25 simulcast season really gets going. That said, the first few titles of the Fall '25 simulcast season have already dropped. The first episode of A Wild Last Boss Appeared and three episodes of The Fated Magical Princess are available on Crunchyroll. Neither of them really strikes me as worth watching, though. The Fated Magical Princess's description reads like it's a copycat series to Tearmoon Empire, and the A Wild Lass Boss Appeared series is another "reincarnated as the game's final boss" series which is overdone to death in the last few years.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that begs the question... what metric (if any) is FX using to assess the show's "success"? Are they looking at total minutes watched, average viewership, the trendline for average viewership episode-to-episode, social media engagement, review aggregator score, etc. Have they set realistic and achievable targets for whatever metrics they're using? Is the budget and/or licensing going to be caught up in the rampdown of Hulu as it is slowly absorbed into the Disney+ service? If Jimmy cracks corn and nobody cares, why does he keep doing it? These questions are examples of how it's much harder to judge if a streaming original series is a success or not since it's not dependent on publicly-accessible performance records like the Nielsen ratings. FX is obviously going to accentuate the positive for the press because the show wasn't a complete disaster, but it's anyone's guess if they'll actually renew the series for a second season and Noah Hawley could very easily end up with (ironically) egg all over his face having crafted one of the worst and most obnoxious cliffhangers in television history only to not get renewed.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, they haven't. I checked. Checked again before writing this too just to see if there'd been any updates. Forbes, RottenTomatoes, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, etc. all confirm that there has been no announcement or confirmation that a second season is in the works as recently as two days ago. Moreover, Noah Hawley himself has apparently indicated in several interviews (incl. Entertainment Weekly) that he is "in talks" with FX about the possibility of a second season but that there hasn't been any commitment from FX's side.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Found a fun little in-joke in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix today... There's a one-page section sandwiched between the "Restored Phoenix" entry that talks about Shinsei Industry's efforts to restore and reverse-engineer some wrecked VF-0s that were found in storage in the ruins of Edwards AFB and the section that talks about the SV-51's development and ill-fated final engagement. It doesn't actually concern itself with the VF-0 or SV-51 directly. Rather, it's about a 2035 autobiography of Dr. Mao Nome. The first paragraph or two talk about how the New UN Government decided to keep the details of the Mayan Island incident and other related revelations from the public initially. In the immediate aftermath of the First Space War, the New UN Gov't was committed to trying to coexist with the Zentradi now living on Earth and was deeply concerned that releasing more information about the true state of the galaxy might cause a general panic among the Human population and undermine rebuilding efforts. So they decided to withhold most information about the state of the galaxy from the general public including information about the Supervision Army, the Protoculture, and the Mayan island incident. The restriction on that information is said to have been relaxed in 2040, when the New UN Gov't concluded the stability of post-war society was such that people could handle the truth without the risk of a societal breakdown. However, the 2035 autobiography of Dr. Mao Nome somehow got away with talking about her past and her direct experiences during the Unification Wars including the Bird human incident in 2008. This was apparently the general public's first exposure to the VF-0, the Asuka II, and details about what happened on Mayan in 2008. Apparently her autobiography was so well-received and so widely read that the publishers of Master File assume the in-universe reader will already be well aware of its contents, but notes that her autobiography's thought-provoking musings on the disasters of war and human love have seen it adapted into numerous books, comics, and films. ... now this is where the in-joke comes in. It's mentioned that, as of 2040, Dr. Nome is currently traveling with the 117th Large-Scale Research Fleet on a xenobiology expedition related to the Bird human. This apparently led to rumors that Hiroshi Onogi, a celebrated writer active since before the First Space War, was planning to publish a nonfiction book about the Mayan island incident. It's expected that it may take a decade or more before the work is completed, and that it is expected to be an authoritative history of those events. Hiroshi Onogi apparently didn't just write Macross Zero in the real world, he wrote the book that became the in-universe docu-drama of Macross Zero's events too! I guess that makes him the second or third Macross creator to have an in-universe cameo or equivalent. A caricature of Shoji Kawamori is among the airshow crowd in the first episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and is caricatured again as "George Yawamori" in Macross Frontier. An unseen character who designed the fanliner that was the prize in the Miss Macross contest (Ikki Takemi) has a name that's an anagram of Kazutaka Miyatake. And now Hiroshi Onogi apparently wrote Macross Zero twice.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately my crystal ball is out of order. I keep asking it for next week's winning lottery numbers but it keeps connecting me to group chats with Christopher Lee and a giant flaming eyeball. 🤔 Anyway, I would personally say "probably not". But I'm definitely not representative of the sort of person who would be seriously entertaining the question in the first place. I had found the series entertaining but not particularly compelling for much of its run, so the prospect of more adventures of Din Djarin and the highly marketable mascot is not as appealing to me as it is to others. If you get really excited about the prospect of more of The Mandalorian, then the answer is probably yes. If not, then probably not. IMO it doesn't quite feel like a project with very broad appeal. But then, TV series epilogue movies seldom do.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Eh, whether Star Wars as a whole is "for kids" is kind of an academic question at this point... since even if it WAS for kids when it was new those kids are in their fifties and sixties now and still haven't let it go. 🙃 This new movie is pretty undeniably aiming for the young kids, though. Which is fine.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The Water Magician's season finale was as uninspired as the rest of the series. It doesn't do anything wrong, per se... but it doesn't really do anything particularly right either. It's watchable, but it's so bland and insipid that it doesn't make a lasting impression. It's the plain quaker rice cake of isekai anime. It can be consumed, but literally anything else is a superior option if you want flavor with your viewing experience. It's clear the studio wants the series to get a second season as they end on an obvious sequel hook, but I have a feeling this one won't get renewed. I've finished Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra as well. My first impression was pretty much dead-on. It's not so much Diet Overlord as Great Value brand Overlord and it's clearly taking a lot of "inspiration" from Maruyama's series to such a degree that most prominent characters are obviously minimally-altered Overlord characters. Takuto is just Momonga without the loneliness motive and undead complications. Atou is Albedo in everything but name and Miss Fanservice proportions. There are even a pair of dark elf twins clearly based on Aura and Mare, but without the crossdressing. Its one and only innovation on the genre is that each of the multiple "players" who have ended up reincarnating in this fantasy world after death is working with god mode hax from a different genre of game. Takuto's powerset comes from the 4X game he was the #1 ranked player of. The unnamed "Demon Lord" draws his forces and powers from what looks to be a Famicom-era JRPG, while another villain appears to be a mercilessly min/maxed NPC villain from a TTRPG. Quite a bit of the drama in the second half seems to stem from how those different styles of game logic interact and impose on each other. It could be an interesting premise in the hands of another, better author with a less derivative story and cast.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    🤔 Yeah, it would work better as a farce or a parody wouldn't it? Literally all that's missing is the self-awareness that comes with a farce or parody and some canned laughter. Maybe the Xenomorph can end season two by whipping out a straw boater hat and cane and belting out a cover of "Hello, Ma Baby" like in Spaceballs...
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I'd put more faith in the amateur reviewers and general audiences than the professional critics, mainly because the latter group are often indirectly in the employ of the studios via the media companies that own the papers and websites and seem to be afraid to give negative reviews unless the film or series is borderline unwatchable. 40+ point disparities between critic and audience scores are pretty common now. The audience scores are trending downward, but still well on the positive side of neutral... which is fair. Alien: Earth isn't unwatchably bad like The Acolyte or Star Trek: Discovery, both of which have 50+ point disparities between their glowing critical praise and scathing audience reviews. It's a clumsy effort that feels like it needed a bit more time in the oven, but it has spirit and in the flashback episode there's some sense that the showrunners do understand the assignment... or are at least copying the homework of someone who does. With a little work, Alien: Earth as a whole could've gone from iffy to good or even great, and the flashback episode could've gone from good to amazing with a bit more polish.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    If so, that would make the decision to green-light the show's development and production a rather idiotic move. The entire premise of the series was "Boba Fett is back from his Disney Villain Death in Return of the Jedi and his new ambition is to take over Jabba the Hutt's criminal empire". Why green-light a series about an explicitly villainous bounty hunter at all if he has to be Mr. Space Rogers? If he can't be shown doing crime, why make the focus of the story his new life goal to change careers to Crime Lord and take over his old boss's criminal empire built on drug smuggling, slave trafficking, protection rackets, space piracy, and murder-for-hire? Poor Din was the one sane man poking his head into an Idiot Plot. That even a poorly written character could be written worse. Bo-Katan was always rather thinly written, and the people writing her often forget she was the right-hand man to the coup leader who framed and overthrew her sister and plunged Mandalore into the chaos that led to its takeover by Maul, the one who effectively started the civil war that led to its takeover by the Empire, etc. Considering how often poor Din tends to get overshadowed by characters from Filoni's past works... I'm a bit worried he's going to be playing second fiddle to the likes of Zeb and Rotta in his own movie.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    A couple months back, James Gunn made some rather enlightening and illustrative remarks on that point in an interview with Rolling Stone. In his view, the number one reason the film industry is struggling (or "dying", in his words) is that studios are shooting shows and movies without a finished screenplay in hand. The problem is potentially more severe than having nobody review the writing. Studios are moving projects into production with incomplete screenplays and then literally attempting to make up the rest as they go. Which would explain an awful lot of Alien: Earth's problems like wildly inconsistent pacing, a lack of meaningful character development for almost the entire cast, the underutilization of most of the monsters from the Maginot, the way characters and monsters seem to engage in offscreen teleportation, the inconsistent security of the "secure lab" that requires door codes only and is supposed to be Synths only when it's dramatic but otherwise lets any rando walk right in and out, or the hilariously forced Peter Pan motif that doesn't actually fit in the story thematically after the first episode or two.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    All right, let's stick a fork in this space turkey. Season finale: "The Real Monsters". I've heard it said that Noah Hawley confessed to using ChatGPT to write this series, as a way of explaining Boy Cavalier's incorrect attribution of Clarke's Third Law. I think he might've used it to try to understand how tides work too. And our next contestant on the galaxy's favorite show Play Stupid Games is... We get a sitrep from Eins to show how screwed they all are. That seems like a rather glaring oversight, doesn't it? More of Noah Hawley's oral fetish. This is why this series is not scary. Nobody in this series behaves like they want to survive this. There's no fear or tension built by the monster if everyone is a Maximum Idiot who seemingly craves annihilation by the monster. OK, almost nobody. Credit where credit is due, Hermit's old unit actually seem like they want to live. ... what? Surprising lack of main character deaths so far... let's see if we can't bump those numbers up. Oh ho... I guess that's one we didn't see coming. Gettin' real tired of your Mary Sue BS, Wendy... Back to the beach? First... ugh. Second... UGH! I can't even call that hot garbage. It's more like a retaining pond of room temperature untreated sewage. They are clearly banking on getting a second season, and I don't think that's going to happen. So there's this non-ending with no significant plot progress, no closure, nothing in terms of interesting scares or even impressive practical effects. Just a bunch of PG-13 stock jump scares and pretentious nonsense. They clearly want this to be a big thing, like a huge threat to the planet or something, but we know nothing comes of it because Aliens is set 59 years after this and, y'know, Carter Burke and all don't mention half of Earth being destroyed by a horde of rampaging killbeasts and murderous synths. I'd say I look forward to Alien: Earth II: the Wholly Preventable Consequences of Idiocy... but I'd be lying.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Ward's seems to like it too. There was a press release today that the Dodge Charger BEV Daytona Scat Pack is one of Ward's 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems for 2025. https://www.wardsauto.com/internal-combustion-engines/electrification-in-full-force-on-this-year-s-wards-10-best-engines-propulsion-systems-winners-list Stellantis Media - Electric Attitude: Dodge Charger Daytona Earns 2025 Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems Award The other honorees, for those who want the Cliffnotes version, are the: BMW M5 PHEV with the 4.4L turbocharged V-8 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 with the 5.5L twin-turbo V-8 Ford F-150 HEV with the 3.6L turbocharged V-6 Honda Civil HEV with the 2.0L inline 4 Hyundai Ioniq 9 BEV Lexus LX 700h HEV with the 3.4L turbocharged V-6 Lucid Gravity BEV Mercedes-AMG E53 PHEV with the 3.0L turbocharged inline 6 Nissan Leaf BEV
  14. Seto Kaiba
    You're not wrong... I'm just saying it's not the character's fault. 😜 Of course Favreau and Filoni bent over backwards to make Bo-Katan Kryze look good in The Mandalorian even at the expense of the show's own protagonist. Why? Because Bo-Katan Kryze is one of Dave Filoni's OCs from The Clone Wars. Same as season two's scene stealer Badass-By-Creator-Fiat Ahsoka Tano. Din stealing the show in The Book of Boba Fett is more a problem of Boba being incredibly badly written and boring. He's a bounty hunter who doesn't do any bounty hunting, a crime lord who does no crime, a ruler who doesn't actually rule anything, a clueless schmuck, and a Fake Mandalorian to boot.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    You misspelled "Dave Filoni" there. 😜 Don't go puttin' that evil on the character when it's the writers and creative director who can't go two minutes without forcing at least one callback to The Clone Wars into the story. Hell, they even brought back Jabba's chronically flatulent kid from The Clone Wars for an apparently significant role in the movie. (I can only describe him like that because chronic flatulence was literally his only character trait.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the end of My Dress-Up Darling S2 over lunch. This is just one of those shows where the season never feels long enough. Decided to take another whack at Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra and got quite a bit farther this time. It really is just Diet Overlord and it's not remotely shy about it either.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Wasn't the point of spending flipping great wodges of cash on the Disney+ Star Wars originals to give the Disney+ Star Wars originals movie-quality visuals? IMO, the trailer looks fine visually. It's just unmistakably a trailer for a kids movie. (Well, that and unmistakably an unnecessary coda to The Mandalorian's story full of Filoni-isms.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The HEMI is definitely not dead. https://www.media.stellantis.com/em-en/ram/press/the-legend-returns-2026-ram-1500-offers-5-7-liter-hemi-v-8-etorque-engine-with-proven-performance-and-capability https://moparinsiders.com/jeep-boss-confirms-the-hemi-v8-is-here-to-stay/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2025/08/07/jeep-will-bring-back-hemi-v-8-in-more-models-brand-ceo-says/85564696007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z118937p116450c116450e000000v118937b0056xxd005665&gca-ft=167&gca-ds=sophi That leaked back in March in Car & Driver. IIRC, it's been publicly confirmed 5.7, 6.2 and 6.4L HEMI are back in the lineup.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I made the mistake of not checking the runtime when I bought my ticket so I was at an 8:15pm showing too. 🙃 For what it's worth, Demon Slayer the Movie: Infinity Castle was engaging enough that I didn't think "Wow I've been watching this for a long time" and check my watch until the story started to drag in the second act of Akaza's extensive Tragic Backstory™️ at around the film's two hour mark. I guess it goes to show how much theater seating has improved that I wasn't uncomfortable in the slightest for the entire duration. Is it just me, or have anime films gotten longer? Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom was two hours, Overlord: the Sacred Kingdom was two and a quarter, and now Demon Slayer the Movie: Infinity Castle at two and a half. I feel like 90 minutes used to be the standard, or maybe that's just because most of the ones in my collection are compilation movies.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Just got back from seeing Demon Slayer the Movie: Infinity Castle. For better AND for worse, Demon Slayer the Movie: Infinity Castle is a two hour and thirty-five minute long episode of the Demon Slayer TV series. What I mean to say is that it shares the TV anime's tendency to punctuate its fights with extended flashbacks revealing the backstory of the villain(s) rather than work their history into the story in a more organic way. It wasn't so bad in the TV anime where those flashbacks were infrequent and maybe 5 minutes or so on average. Infinity Castle breaks up every fight with at least 2-3 flashbacks and the largest of them (Akaza's) is close on THIRTY MINUTES LONG. It dragged on so long that I had honestly forgotten the fight wasn't actually over and the immediate resumption of the fight on its conclusion was a bit of a shock. UFOTABLE did a fantastic job with the animation as usual. Its only real flaw is how the massive titular Infinity Castle backgrounds are an endless parade of tan and brown tatami mats, shoji doors, and wooden rails so every room feels identical and the color palette of the film as a whole is a flat brown except for the haori worn by the slayers. It does kind of show that it's only the first part of a series of films in that most of the characters have nothing to actually do in this portion of the story and get an obligatory line or two at most. It's really only Tanjiro, Zenitsu, Giyu, Shinobu, Akaza, and Doma who are engaged with the story. Nezuko's not even in the castle, Inosuke's... Inosuke-ing somewhere, and the rest of the slayers spend the entire film running around aimlessly. Shinobu's almost an advertised extra herself... The series big bad, Muzan, is also barely in the film despite the fact that this is his castle they're fighting in. Almost the entire thing revolves around Tanjiro and Giyu fighting Akaza (Upper Moon Rank 3), with a minor digression for Zenitsu of all people to have a moment of out-of-character Total Badassery...
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Now that's some disappointing news.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    DanDaDan episode 24 has a bunch of different mecha anime references all crammed together thanks to the focus character being a sci-fi fan who uses nanomachines to create his own giant robot to fight the supernatural monster of the week. The visual design references a lot of Ultraman, GoLion, and Gundam with the giant robot Buddha having five cockpits and what are very obviously fin funnels. Some of his Called Attacks reference other mecha anime including Macross, like his Daedalus Attack at about 8 minutes in. (He even does Dai-Guard's infamously awful rocket punch.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Summer '25 is wrapping up... Betrothed to My Sister's Ex had a reasonably satisfying conclusion. Some good closure for the story after oh-so-much waffling with the evil parents getting their comeuppance for their various crimes. Secrets of the Silent Witch's penultimate episode is another good one. I decided to bite the bullet and buy the light novel to get more. Solo Camping for Two decided to try some actual character development for its penultimate episode, and it honestly fell pretty flat for me. Mainly because the protagonist has never really had any character traits beyond being an antisocial jerk whose only real interest seems to be driving into the wilderness to drink large amounts of cheap beer and eat canned food like a hobo. Dan da dan... y'know I've never figured out of it's meant to be DanDaDan or Dan Da Dan... are we really watching an Ultraman monster fight a giant robot Buddha with the Nu Gundam's fin funnels? You have to admire the audacity, if nothing else, even if it feels increasingly like the series is just throwing random sh*t at the wall to see what sticks. Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant had a predictably unremarkable ending. Not bad, but shockingly bland for a protagonist whose whole schtick is cooking. The Fall '25 simulcast lineup is being announced now too. https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/seasonal-lineup/2025/9/17/fall-2025-anime-crunchyroll Still a LOT of generic-sounding isekai titles in the Fall '25 simulcast season lineup. A Gatherer's Adventure in Another World, A Wild Last Boss Appeared, Campfire Cooking in Another World S2, Dad is a Hero Mom is a Spirit I'm a Reincarnator, My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's, Tales of Wedding Rings S2, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, and The Fated Magical Princess. Color me surprised that that hot mess Tales of Wedding Rings got a second season. That was an open air tire fire of a story. There are some titles of considerable merit and interest though. A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace seems to be another case of the manga industry documentarizing itself, albeit with a lot less ecchi than last time. Let's Play, a series about a video game developer whose first-ever game release is derailed by a terrible review from a famous streamer. I really want to see where they go with that one. One Punch Man season 3 promises to be amusing, if nothing else. Spy x Family season 3... what can I say except "Yes, please and thank you" and doubtless "Please sir, may I have some more?" at the end of the season. Tojima Wants to be a Kamen Rider promises to be interesting too. It's the story of a lifelong Kamen Rider fanboy who, armed with a fairbooth Kamen Rider mask, sets out to fight crime. Phrasing is dead. I stopped cold seeing titles like L'il Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right, Pass the Monster Meat, and This Monster Wants to Eat Me. Maybe I just have a filthy mind. Actually, no... I definitely do... but still. Phrasing. That first one's description sounds like the center of a Venn diagram of Rosario+Vampire and Actually, I am... and the second sounds like a series about some relatives of Laios from Dungeon Meals with a couple who are connoisseurs of consuming fantasy monsters.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    You did indeed call it... three weeks ago on August 27th, to be precise. 👍 That, IMO, is the sucker bet. Practically guaranteed to happen to prevent an outbreak.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Since Tesla's abominable safety record came up recently, this feels a bit relevant: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/tesla-model-y-door-handles-now-under-federal-safety-scrutiny/ The Office of Defects Investigation in the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the latest national regulatory body to take up the question of whether the flush/retractable door handles used on Tesla vehicles (and on select models of other brands) meet vehicle safety standards in the event of a crash or a 12V bus failure. Similar regulatory probes are already underway in Europe and China, with the latter already floating discussion of a ban.
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