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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I know, I asked if she was a cyborg back when we got the first trailer. 🤣 This, at least, settles one point for me. The only characters I can recall seeing in Star Wars who had cybernetics in their brains were adults who'd undergone elective surgery to be more effective clerical workers. The implants were shown to be pretty detrimental to their lives too. It seemed pretty dark to have a kid receiving the same kind of implants, which made me wonder if she was a clone or a droid mocked up to look human or something. Her implants are the result of life-saving surgery not something intended to make her a better worker. "Throw everything at the wall to see what sticks."
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well, new episode dropped... "Zero Friends Again". This episode officially confirms that KB is a cyborg. That thing on her head is part of her brain. All in all, not bad... but it feels a bit lean and antlclimactic after the last episode. The whole episode is just the kids getting back to the ship.
  3. Seto Kaiba
  4. Seto Kaiba
  5. Seto Kaiba
    "All over the place" would be the simplest answer. The YF-21/VF-22 has composite optical sensors scattered across its airframe to provide 360 degree all-around awareness and enemy search functions. Exactly how many and where they are are not stated, though the primary ones are located under the red-colored transparent panels in the aircraft's nose (one on top, one on bottom, and two on each side) with a rear-facing unit on the back of the head. Given the angle, I'd assume the sensor Guld switched to to get the view he did was probably one of the sensors used for assisting in aiming the aircraft's built-in laser cannons, which are located at the base of the tail. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II asserts that there are thirteen separate sets of LAPR-37 composite LADAR camera systems including the seven mentioned in the above paragraph, as well as ones on the sides of the engine nacelles, ones in the forearms for aiming asisstance for the laser cannons, and on the underside of the aircraft near its gunpod ports. "Official setting" publications like Macross Chronicle or the old This is Animation books don't really offer any kind of detailed explanation for the limitations of the initial-type fold booster (FBF-1000A). This is Animation Special: Macross Plus mentions it in passing in its article "Variable Fighter's Aero Report", but goes no deeper than attributing the unit's limitations to difficulties miniaturizing the technology. Macross Chronicle also skirts the topic, sticking to just a general statement that the technology improved over time to the point that fold boosters had become capable of longer distances and multiple uses by the end of the 2050s. IMO, the most likely explanations for the limitations of fold boosters would be tied to energy storage or the quality of their fold carbon. The explanations of fold navigation going back to the original series usually identify energy storage as the main limiting factor for how far a ship can fold. Macross Frontier and later titles have had a lot to say about how the purity, quality, and size of the fold carbon or fold quartz crystals used to produce fold waves or heavy quantum impacts the performance of those devices. It's possible that part of the improvement is simply better-quality synthetic fold carbon in later fold boosters. Variable Fighter Master File does briefly touch on the topic in several volumes. Both the VF-19 and VF-22 volumes lean into the fold carbon angle. They describe the FBF-1000A fold booster as being a very rough, very bare-bones fold system that uses a large quantity of relatively low quality fold carbon in the fold system core. The description suggests that the fold booster's operation consumes/destroys the fold carbon in the core during operation and that that's the reason it's limited to a single fold jump of not more than 20 light years. That distance is all the low-quality fold carbon in the core can provide. The VF-22 book repeats the same information, and implies that later models of fold booster achieved reusability by turning the system core into a removable cartridge and equipping the booster with a magazine of multiple cores.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure I'd agree that they were treated as Serious Business in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. Vrlitwhai and Exsedol were caught off-guard by Earth's use of reaction weaponry, but that owes far more to it being a technology the Zentradi had believed lost for hundreds of thousands of years. Earth spammed them pretty heavily without much comment in the actual fighting via the ship-mounted ones carried by the Oberth and ARMD classes, and the SF-3A space fighters and VF-1s as well. Macross 7 treated them quite seriously, though they ended up being ineffective because the Protodeviln used their innate space fold ability to teleport the high-yield reaction missile Max intended to kill them with back to the Stargazer in orbit. Macross Zero treats them with a lot more gravitas, though the stated reason for doing so doesn't actually make sense as noted previously. (Everyone involved probably should've been a lot more concerned about four reaction bombs with a maximum combined yield of 200 kilotons going off just a couple kilometers away. The shockwave would probably not have done great things to the Asuka II, which was a largely conventional aircraft carrier.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I think using it that way was the point... to make the connection explicit (and also to highlight the connection to the real world term). I don't think it poses any problem for the story itself, esp. since Macross Chronicle et. al. indicate that Hasford and Turner's theories were neither widely known nor taken seriously in the academic community at the time. Their reactions are pretty understandable. Misa telling them that the Zentradi have millions of ships is the very picture of hyperbole or even hysterical fear. The UN Forces brass were thinking of things on a planetary scale, which would make the logistics of operating a fleet of that size completely ridiculous if you haven't actually seen it. The US Navy is Power Overwhelming at 470 ships... and the Zentradi are supposed to have a fleet ten thousand times the size? No wonder they balked. General Global believing the report wasn't likely to lend it any credibility, since he has a well-known personal connection to the officer making the report. Nutuk and Dr. Hasford believing that is only to be expected. After all, neither man was a soldier and both were referencing the Mayan mytho-historical account of what the ancient Protoculture told them would happen if the Birdhuman was activated. Even the Birdhuman mentions its mission is to exterminate Humanity if they failed its Test of Character. It probably would've been an apocalyptic scenario if Humanity hadn't acquired alien overtechnology from a crashed Supervision Army gunship nine years earlier. The Protoculture who left the Birdhuman on Earth to Kill All Humans™️ almost certainly did not expect Humanity to have advanced far enough to be able to actually fight the Birdhuman never mind severely damage it. They definitely handled the use of thermonuclear reaction weapons with more gravitas than usual. Of course, they're new technology there. Macross 7 was, IMO, pretty serious about them too. They were only shown being used in Operation Stargazer as part of the mission to destroy the Protodeviln and their usage was a serious godzilla threshold for the series which had up to that point avoided large-scale destruction. The only Macross title to be really cavalier about them is DYRL?, where they're spammed against the Zentradi from the very start. Macross Zero did one strange thing with them though, and that was treating them like conventional nuclear bombs. Shin's statement about fallout is actually pretty weird in context because of the key attributes of thermonuclear reaction weapons is that they don't produce lingering radiological hazards like fallout. Reaction weapons are "pure fusion" bombs that use the intense gravity produced by heavy quantum as a trigger instead of a small fission bomb. The lack of any radioisotopes in the warhead means the detonation doesn't scatter radioactive material and the aneutronic nature of the reaction means that debris exposed to the blast isn't being made radioactive by neutron activation. His statement is so weird and inconsistent that Macross Chronicle had to explicitly hedge around it.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    There is nothing continuity-shredding about it. If anything, it's a reasonable usage of a real world term AND an in-joke to how Macross's creators came up with the name. "Protoculture" is not a made-up sci-fi buzzword. It's a real scientific term used in anthropology that was coined decades before the original Macross series was made. Its meaning is "the origins or rudiments of culture", and is normally used to refer to passing down learned behaviors from one generation to the next. Macross's creators deliberately used that real-world term to refer to the extinct ancient alien species who created the Zentradi and Humanity for its literal meaning: the origin of culture. The ancient Protoculture created the Zentradi and their wholly military culture, and also uplifted pre-modern Humans and guided their development. Macross Zero is set on a remote island populated by an isolated tribe whose entire culture is built around things the Protoculture taught them to do and mythologized history of their encounters with the Protoculture. They are evidence of the Protoculture species literally acting as the origin of a culture (protoculture the scientific term). Dr. Hasford and Dr. Turner are researchers - probably anthropologists - employing techniques from cultural and molecular anthropology in an attempt to prove a hypothesis about advanced aliens visiting Earth in prehistory and guided/accelerated Humanity's development. It's perfectly reasonable that they would use a well-precedented existing term from anthropology to refer to the ancient aliens they theorized were the origins of modern Humanity. (They dubbed the ancient aliens "Protoculture" for exactly the same reasons that the show's creators did.) The Earth UN Forces skepticism over Misa's claims about the Boddole Zer main fleet's size are perfectly understandable, given that they'd only seen fleets of at most a thousand or so ships and Misa had no actual evidence (due to having dropped the camera she'd been using). They had expected, and prepared for, a classic "alien invasion" scenario and were completely unaware that EVERYONE had massively underestimated the scale on which the Zentradi and their creators operated. Given the state of Earth's infrastructure, it wasn't unreasonable to assume a planet could support a few hundred to a few thousand ships, but millions would require infrastructure on a scale Humanity hadn't even begun to think about. As for the Birdhuman, well... it wasn't that impressive. It would've been an apocalyptic and potentially unstoppable threat to a less developed civilization, but Humanity had already obtained the overtechnology of Alien Starship 1 and begun to reproduce it nearly a decade earlier. A lot of its technology was cause for scientific curiosity, since it was clearly a lot more advanced than Alien Starship 1, but at the same time its systems were still recognizable and many were just different or more advanced versions of systems Humanity were already reproducing. The one weapon it demonstrated that would've been cause for significant concern was the heavy quantum reaction beam gun it used to destroy the Alliance fleet, but even that appeared to be significantly less powerful than the ones Humanity had in its possession. That the Birdhuman was ultimately "defeated" by the detonation of a handful of low-yield reaction weapons wouldn't have made it out to be an especially powerful foe either.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Need one of those Spongebob title cards "6 YEARS LATER"... Yeah, Zero's not much of a prequel if you think about it. It doesn't do anything to set up the events of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. It's really more of a side story. Its dependence on the audience being familiar with Macross 7 really makes it a terrible choice to start new fans on. Chronological order isn't always the best order, esp. since Macross installments are not always in chronological order themselves. In fairness to Macross Zero's writers, the idea that aliens visited Earth in the distant past and interfered with humanity's development has been a thing in popular fiction since at least 1898 and a (profoundly racist) pseudoscientific theory in its own right since 1954. In Macross, having hard evidence of alien life literally fall out of the sky in 1999 seems to have allowed the "ancient astronaut" theory to graduate from pseudoscience to actual science. Thankfully, apparently without the incredible racism that the pseudoscientific theory was largely built on if Dr. Hasford and Dr. Turner's work is any indication. "Protoculture" is also a real anthropological term that is not entirely inappropriate for Hasford's hypothesis that Earth's civilization was originated by alien interference. It is a very odd coincidence that it happens to coincide with what the Zentradi call their creators. The incident on Mayan was classified top secret, so the entire military brass wouldn't necessarily know. Records weren't unsealed until 50 years later. That said, the main thing they were incredulous about was the sheer size of the Boddole Zer main fleet. Up to that point, they had only seen the ship that became the Macross, the one Birdhuman, and a few branch fleets of a few hundred to ~1,200 ships. The biggest fleet they'd seen was only 10 times the size of the Spacy's fleet. It's onyl natural that they'd find "the enemy really has millions of ships" hard to swallow. What they understood of the Birdhuman's abilities was not that far outside what they were already reproducing from OTM, sometimes on a far bigger scale. That's one reason that Zero really has to be watched after Macross 7. Macross 7 was the point where the ancient Protoculture crossed the boundary of Clarke's Third Law into the realm of "Sufficiently Advanced" aliens whose technology was indistinguishable from magic. They've stayed camped out in "Sufficiently Advanced" territory ever since.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, I haven't seen any detailed commentary about engine maintenance procedures in the master file books, and there isn't any an official sources as far as I know. If I had to guess... and I would stress that this is only an educated guess based on what master file, as a non-official setting source, has to say about how the engines work... my guess would be "No". Fusion products produced by the reactor's operation would almost certainly be expelled from the aircraft as part of the exhaust flow. This is because the main mechanism by which the engine creates thrust is by introducing plasma from the reactor into the propellant flowing through the engine body. Contact between the superheated plasma and the propellant (whether that's air or liquid from the internal tanks) flash heats the propellant stream causing it to expand very rapidly. So whatever is being produced in the reactor in terms of elemental products of the fusion reaction is probably being thrown out the back of the engine as a part of the exhaust flow when it's used to superheat propellant.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's a kid-friendly series... a burned-out battlefield is no place for lightly comedic hijinks, but a day spa full of mud baths definitely has opportunities for pratfalls and such. Totally on brand for the series to put the action there. Oh yeah, that started a good while back in the Star Wars animated shows like The Clone Wars and Rebels. They didn't have to worry about budgeting for prosthetics or digital VFX, so they were able to make much freer use of alien characters in their stories. Greedo's people were very common The Clone Wars, with one arc focusing on their homeworld and their senator being one of Padme's close friends and allies in the Senate. The hammerheads were quite popular for crowd shots in The Clone Wars for some reason, but they also had a few minor focus characters like a padawan in The Clone Wars and the bartender and rebel organizer Old Jho in Rebels.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The fusion processes are heavily dependent on the size of the star. Smaller stars will go through the proton-proton chain which fuses hydrogen into helium, while larger stars with more mass will continue that reaction into the CNO cycle which produces carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and larger stars will continue into other chains that produce even heavier elements. They all start with hydrogen, but how far they go with it depends on the mass of the star. Macross's thermonuclear reactors use intense artificial gravity to sustain a fusion reaction, suggesting their processes probably resemble stellar fusion reactions, though the type of reactions they pursue are based on other requirements since they can create gravitational fields of arbitrary intensity and size. As noted previously, Master File asserts that the earlier engine types preferred fusion reactions that produced a large amount of charged particles while later models preferred reactions that ran hotter.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, but those aren't associated with any specific character. Nor are they particularly prominent in the OVA itself. The green stripe model is the generic cannon fodder sometimes identified as the men's color scheme while the yellow stripe is identified as the women's color scheme and only really seen on the three lesser members of fairy platoon.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Probably because there were only two pilots with unique color schemes. Sylvie and Nex. All of the other named pilots had exactly the same color scheme.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well... Skeleton Crew would like us to know that we have a lot to learn about pirates. Why? Because that's the title of the new episode: "You Have a Lot to Learn About Pirates". Y'know... I was expecting that the treasure that merited hiding At Attin from the greater galaxy was going to be a bit of an anticlimax, but this is a lot more banal than I expected. All in all, a much better episode than the previous one. Very fun, very exciting, a strong Goonies vibe with a little bit of Aladdin when they finally get where they're going and discover the captain's hidden treasure chamber. The big reveal of At Attin's hidden treasure was flatter than flat, though. I don't know what I was expecting, but this is just so mundane that it makes the idea of the Republic having hidden multiple planets from the entire galaxy for the sake of this feel downright silly. They are also going really hard on the "is Jod a Jedi or not" angle in this one...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, yeah... in End of Evangelion. They did eventually solve that problem for the mass production type, though, with something nearly as broken as the fold dimensional energy converter. Yeah, and it makes sense to look to that for guidance since Macross's thermonuclear reactors work very much like stars given that the force compressing the fuel and maintaining plasma confinement is gravitational rather than magnetic. Official setting publications generally avoid mentioning what fuel is used in Macross's thermonuclear reactors. Instead, they often mention that those reactors can use a variety of potential fuels including ones that would not be considered usable in conventional reactors due to their use of GIC systems to start and control the reaction. Master File names several suitable fuel materials in its various volumes, though they're all the Usual Suspects like hydrogen, deuterium, helium-3, and lithium. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur's discussion of the FF-2500 and FF-2550 series thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engine suggests that the preferred fuel early on was a mixture of deuterium and helium-3 (the same combo used in Gundam's UC) for the abundance of charged particles (free protons) the reaction produced that could be used by the engine's MHD generator. It then goes on to suggest that the New UN Forces later switched to a single-fuel deuterium process due to a combination of supply chain issues and advances in thermoelectric conversion technology that reduced dependency on reactions rich in charged particles. Given the use of intense gravitational pressure and the very low fuel consumption rate, it's very unlikely that any of these reactions were single-stage. (Deuterium fusion produces helium-3, for instance.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    It does, though it takes considerable pressure to get hydrogen to a liquid state never mind the slush state that's reportedly used for fuel storage. It'd probably also require some unusual fuel transfer lines, since the SLACS in the wing glove area can dump propellant directly into the wing tanks while the fuel for the compact thermonuclear reactor is stored in the engine nacelles (legs). Actually, that's one detail I should elaborate upon because it's something I missed (or if you prefer, an error I made) when I was doing a piecemeal translation of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 and Vol.2. The tank capacities given in Vol.2 are strictly for the propellant used in space flight and in the vernier thrusters. Vol.1 mentions in one small section that it has a separate set of (much smaller) tanks in the engine nacelles (legs) specifically for the reactants used in the compact thermonuclear reactor. So there's quite a bit of complexity with reactant tanks vs. propellant tanks, with most of the onboard tank space being for dedicated propellant according to Master File. There's even a bit that talks about using the stabilizers as supplemental propellant tanks and the complexities of transferring propellant around the airframe. Probably worth noting that, as far as we know, you need ultra-high purity fold quartz to pull that off. No word on if the Master File-exclusive YF-29C with its ultra-high purity fold carbon can do it. I'm not even sure what that implies... I haven't seen Rebuild of Evangelion, do they go to space?
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Now that much would probably be unnecessary. Even the humble VF-1 Valkyrie carries enough fuel to keep its compact thermonuclear reactors running for weeks. The number most consistently cited is 700 hours, which is a bit over 29 days. Far in excess of the physical endurance of any pilot and probably exceeding the recommended maintenance intervals for several key systems. If the likes of the YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31 Custom Siegfried/Kairos Plus are any indication, a more likely progression would be to do away with the thermonuclear reactor entirely and adopt a fold dimensional energy converter to provide the fighter with an unlimited supply of energy from higher dimensions. Humanity first saw this technology in use in the Birdhuman in 2008, and saw it again in 2045-2046 in the Protodeviln. As of 2059, they've managed to construct a rudimentary version of the same technology as part of the fold wave system used in the YF-29. Given enough time, systems like thermonuclear reaction turbine engines would likely give way to fold dimensional energy converters and gravitic propulsion similar to what was used on the Birdhuman or on various Vajra forms. Yeah, fortunately the VF-1s from the Macross's airwing didn't have to go very far from the ship most of the time. They had some stopgap solutions like optional fuel bladders that could be inserted into the intakes, but the problem wasn't really solved until they started to field the Super Pack en masse.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I don't think her intentions were anything that malicious... like everyone else in the story, she seems to have massively underestimated just how emotionally damaged and volatile Osha was. Ah, yeah that was a bit odd... The Acolyte writing team apparently missed Filoni's patch notes about NERFing lightsaber damage. None of that Sabine Wren "oh just walk off the lightsaber impalement" nonsense here.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That's not what he's referring to. He's referring to the Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS) described in the VF-19 and VF-25 Master File books. It's a system connected to the VF's sub-intakes that allows it replenish its internal propellant tanks (literally) on the fly by condensing, compressing, and cooling atmospheric gases passing through the sub-intake. The SLACS can only replenish propellant, not reactants for the compact thermonuclear reactor, so it's mainly useful for VFs operating in a planetary defense role since they can be launched from the ground and collect propellant on the way up or for VFs carrying out operations planetside and then returning to space, relieving some of the pressure on fuel conservation. (Since the same tanks feed the verniers, this also allows more liberal use of the verniers in atmospheric flight as a supplement to control surfaces. It's also noted to be useful for the not-actually-an afterburner, which injects propellant slush into the engine's exhaust stream where it is flash-heated back to gas and expands violently.) Apparently so, though it's presented as one of the new technologies first incorporated into the 4th Generation VFs like the VF-19 rather than something that's been present all along.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Just realized I never answered this... sorry! The main atmospheric use-case for a VF's verniers described in official materials is using the verniers mounted in the wingtips to supplement the ailerons in the wing to allow the craft to roll faster and with greater precision than it could with control surfaces alone. (It's not normally animated, but we see these thrusted used prominently during DYRL? and especially in Macross Delta's third episode when Hayate is training in the VF-1EX.) The main design feature that replaces horizontal stabilizers on VFs is the use of thrust-vectoring nozzles to control the aircraft's pitch, supplemented by outward- or inward-canted vertical stabilizers that function like a V-tail with "ruddervators". Master File also asserts that the rear of the tail block (nicknamed the "beaver tail" on the F-14) is also configured as a movable panel to assist in pitch control, though its mobility is very limited.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    At the very least, she went out with far more dignity than the entire rest of the Jedi task force that got absolutely curb stomped by Qimir.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Caught the last episodes of the latest season of Blue Exorcist and The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party last night. The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party was definitely a disappointment start to finish. The animation is never better than "meh" quality, but the story is so disjointed and so full of random twists that I honestly found myself tuning out repeatedly during the final episode. Blue Exorcist's season finale was actually pretty good, capitalizing on the tension that's been building all season long during the tedious exposition dumps and culminating in Samael sending Rin off into the past for another major exposition dump with an absolute nightmare face of a smile and the gleeful acknowledgement that he is a demon after all. The only part that really doesn't land well is the incredibly derivative twist where...
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The one good call that Leslye Headland made in The Acolyte was increasing Manny Jacinto's screentime. Qimir was the only character written with anything resembling a personality, and as a result ended up being the only likeable or interesting character in the show. Casting a different actress as Osha/Mae would not have improved The Acolyte any. The Acolyte's (main) problem was nothing to do with its cast. Its screenplay was a full-fledged Idiot Plot full of "that sounded cooler in my head" fan fiction-y set pieces with a cast consisting largely of typically stoic Jedi, a Sith Lord, and the twin protagonists in questionable-at-best mental health due to severe childhood trauma. Even a great actress would not have been able to rescue The Acolyte from its writers and directors. Amandla Stenberg delivered the performance that the director and the script she was given called for, which was wooden and unlikeable and frequently idiotic. If her performance wasn't what as the director and producers wanted it, it wouldn't have made it into the final cut. So if you want someone to blame... well... start with Leslye Headland (showrunner/director/writer), and go down the chain of command to Kogonada, Alex Garcia Lopez, Hanelle Culpepper (the other directors), Jason Micallef, Charmaine DeGrate, Jasmyne Flournoy, Eileen Shim, Claire Kiechel, Kor Adana, Cameron Squires, Jocelyn Bioh, and Jen Richards (the other writers). ... ... ... This show had way the hell too many writers, and no one writer worked on more than two episodes and six of the eight episodes had two or more writers. Every single episode effectively had a completely different writing team. What's that old saying? "Too many cooks spoil the broth"? Compare to The Mandalorian, which had only five writers for the entire twenty-four episode run and only four episodes with more than one writer. Simple. Because her performance goals as LucasFilm President and CEO are tied to LucasFilm's overall financial performance.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    What I recall from the one film studies class I took in college, film enthusiasts generally recommended to watch a film two or more times to fully appreciate it. Most people wouldn't, if they really hated it, but there are some sticklers out there. (Not to mention Star Wars fans determined to catch every little easter egg and bit of lore.) FWIW, I only watched The Acolyte once. If it hadn't been so offensively awful I might've done it twice just to make sure I was taking it all in. But nope, no thank you, once was once too many for this hot mess.
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