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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... that is a very well thought-out reason. I'm intrigued, and will reach out to the distributor directly to inquire as to whether any content has been stripped or reduced in quality vs. the Japanese release. I kind of question the math there, though, since it seems to be assuming that the video and audio stream will be continuously at the maximum rate for a Blu-ray (48Mbit/sec). Given that anime is given to a lot of static frames with minimal changes, I kind of doubt that'd be the case... esp. considering live-action 1080p bitrates tend to be closer to 25-30Mbit/sec. That would yield a size that'd fit on one dual-layer Blu-ray (about 36GB).
  2. Seto Kaiba
    OK, I'm curious... why is that an issue/dealbreaker? Macross Zero is only five episodes long, and each episode is only about 30 minutes long. The advertised total runtime is 158 minutes. For perspective, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is 157 minutes. It should fit neatly onto a single dual-layer Blu-ray with plenty of room to spare.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The Summer '24 simulcast season is in the home stretch... and it's been pretty darn uneventful. The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human ended the other day and in a fashion as unremarkable as everything else about the series. Calling this series "dull as dishwater" might honestly be doing a disservice to dishwater... My Wife Has No Emotion also ended recently... and quite honestly it never once stopped being massively, MASSIVELY cringeworthy in every single respect. It didn't quite cross the line into being so appalling that I dropped it, but there's no entertainment value to be had here. Pseudo Harem had its penultimate episode yesterday, and if I had to describe it I'd say all 11 episodes thus far have been the TV equivalent of eating cotton candy. It's sweet and light, but ultimately insubstantial. It has a lot of cute and funny moments but its story had little-to-no feeling of direction or progression. It's not so much a story as just a string of incidents. Failure Frame has actually developed into a watchable series over the last six episodes. It's nowhere near the high bar set by its genre's major players (Overlord, KonoSuba, Re:Zero, and Yojo Senki) but it's head and shoulders above the low-effort isekai and isekai-adjacent shovelware infesting most of the broadcast schedule. No Longer Allowed in Another World was initially kind of funny and audacious, but it hasn't really gone anywhere interesting with its running joke and the seven "Fallen Angels" (isekai'd folks) who embody the seven deadly sins are pretty flat characters so far. So much so that the protagonist even lampshades how uninteresting Gluttony's one is, being just a bored rich kid looking for stimulation. Ossan Newbie Adventurer's 10th episode has more or less closed the door on the possibility of the season going anywhere interesting, since both of the competitors who'd been built up as Final Boss-type opponents for the season were knocked out of their fighting contest already. It's fun, but it's a pretty mediocre 5.5 or 6/10 sort of story. Wistoria: Wand and Sword is back to just kind of being a trashfire. It's one of the most visually distinctive titles in the season lineup but its story is so painfully by-the-numbers that the audience doesn't feel smart for spotting the thread ahead of time. Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools dropped its penultimate episode today. Honestly, I'm inclined to wonder if this is just a REALLY badly done adaptation of the light novel and not simply a bland story. There are times where it starts to remind me a lot of Ascendance of a Bookworm, particularly when the protagonist has to learn about the many euphemisms the nobility use as her business starts catering not to regular civilains but to low ranking nobility. Other times, I just have to wonder if there's actually any conflict in the story at all. Its weakest point might be how indistinct the visual designs are. The sameface is strong with this one. There's one moment in the latest episode where Dahlia's love interest is sitting in a meeting with the other knights and the person sitting to his left is an Identical Stranger with the exact same character design and uniform who can only be told apart because his hair has a slight blue tint.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    One of the details I often find myself nostalgic for from older Macross titles is the "hero" Valkyrie being the same model as the "cannon fodder" Valkyries. Giving the protagonist(s) a unique Valkyrie was central to the premises of Macross Plus and Macross 7, so it was a lot easier to excuse. What Macross Frontier and Macross Delta's writers did was pretty forced. Macross Frontier handled it a bit better, I think, since SMS was explicitly recruiting top talent away from the New UN Forces. Even then, it made them look kind of dickish when they made scornful remarks about the Frontier NUNS being unable to fight the Vajra effectively while the main difference was SMS using trial production next-gen Valkyries designed to fight the Vajra while the NUNS made do with the previous-gen mass production unit. IMO it didn't become intolerable until Macross Delta, where the Xaos PMC division talks all kinds of sh*t about the local New UN Forces despite their most elite unit being four washouts from those very same local New UN Forces and the one real advantage they had being a monopoly on Walkure (to the detriment of everyone and everything else including their own objectives) rather than their next-gen Valkyries. I'd love to see Macross get away from PMCs, and get back to the protagonists using the same models as the rank and file like in the original series and II... it says more about their skill if they're outperforming the background characters in the same model as opposed to one with twice or more the performance. (That said, I do adore the VF-31A's design...) Or the writer just never bothered to consider the size of it and went with "Rule of Cool". EIther way, it was a nice inclusion the same way it was in Macross the Ride. (As a taller chap, I have a lot of sympathy for the Zentradi in terms of the lack of ergonomics in their mecha... I've had to pretzel my 2m tall arse into a Fiat 500e for work before, and it gave me an immense feeling of empathy for those poor Regult pilots.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, I made the same point... though, as I noted, that cut-down release without the extra features and "bonus" goods usually comes out a few months to a few years later once the initial release with the extras sells out. I wouldn't say it's driven by FOMO given that the edition isn't that limited, the "bonus" goods are mostly cheap low-effort merchandise like posters or art cards, and the existence of subsequent releases without that extra content are basically a given. It's just an upsell to people who liked the series enough to buy it right away. Or in this case, to fans who have been waiting literal decades to get Macross on home video in the west. It's still within the normal price range for a western release and a 50% discount vs. buying the Japanese edition of the same box set... never mind the shipping cost. They don't suck any worse than any other distributor, so stop whining about it.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Games and novels tend to be much less restrained when it comes to incorporating a large number of different mechanical designs into their stories. IMO, there are few titles that demonstrate that principle quite as effectively as Bandai Namco's adaptation of the Mobile Suit Gundam UC light novel into an OVA. The huge number of niche, background, and MSV designs that narrative included ended up turning the OVA into an obscure gunpla free-for-all. Macross Digital Mission VF-X, Macross VF-X2, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and Macross the Ride all include practically every major model of Variable Fighter that existed in the setting at the time they were created. I guess it's easier to pull off if you don't have to draw them at all or you only have to model it once and can just reskin it thereafter. If we do get an adaptation of the Second Unification War, I imagine it'll probably have a much more limited selection of Variable Fighters in use to spare the sanity of the animation team. IMO, Absolute Live!!!!!! is probably the weakest new Macross title of the last 25 years. It's an unnecessary story that doesn't really add anything to Macross Delta as a whole or to the greater Macross setting. It's pretty telling that the limited coverage the movie got in official publications also treats the film's events as pretty unnecessary and its new VF as cobbled-together trash. The terms of the distribution agreement between Big West and Harmony Gold probably put the kibosh on future Lady M shenanigans, since the movie created the Megaroad-01 connection and using the original cast is apparently off the table. Ah, yeah... I'd expect it's pretty cramped in there for a giant. Then again, Temjin supposedly flew one in the novelization of Macross Frontier... poor bloke's on the big side, so he must've been INCREDIBLY uncomfortable. Either that or he's just used to folding up like a pretzel. Pretty much everything after the Second Unification War is affected by the war... because that's what led to the devolution of more autonomy to individual emigrant governments, the reorganization of the New UN Forces to diminish the immense authority it once wielded (and abused), and of course contributed to the trauma that the game's villain carries which is driving his desire to hit the Reset button on history. The broad authority delegated to the VF-X Special Forces to suppress anti-government forces and terrorists is what lets Colonel Todo and Havamal carry out as much of their plan as they did in secret and leverage local resources to arm the Bandits.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It's actually more like $80 because of the automatic and optional discounts. Mind you, that $80-90 is actually a pretty typical asking price for a complete season box set of a new anime series nowadays. Western distributors seem to have got the Limited Edition bug, so every new release seems to have to be a Limited Edition set with extra features from the JDM release and art cards and other "bonus" goods and they seem to all average around $75-95. It's not Anime Limited, it's everyone. They're ALL doing it. My Dress-Up Darling is $89.98 plus tax, so's Re:Zero season 2, SPY x FAMILY, Your Name, and Mieruko-chan. Overlord IV's $94.98. Weathering With You is $79.98. Jujutsu Kaisen is $99.99! Oshi No Ko is $129.99! Even if you wait for the cut-down box sets that have none of the extra features, the asking price is still easily $40-50 for newer titles. It feels like Japanese physical media prices have finally started to creep their way into the western market. Ouch. 😵‍💫
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, from the description he has a bio-fiber optic peripheral nervous system similar to what the Meltrandi in DYRL? have. Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!'s story has a lot of issues, and that's one. Lady M's supposed influence and the developments she's supposedly banned doesn't really track with the events of past shows. Macross Frontier, Macross the Ride, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and Macross Chronicle present a layered approach to the legality of cybernetics. Macross Chronicle's Technology Sheet for Macross Galaxy indicates that research into practical cybernetic implants began after the First Space War using Zentradi implants as a starting point. The New UN Government is said to have become concerned by the prospect of creating cybernetically-enhanced soldiers and enacted legislation to limit cybernetics research to the comparatively safe medical applications. Macross Frontier and its audio dramas have some dialog that suggests that, beyond the galaxy-wide ban on "Cyber Grunts", individual emigrant governments have imposed their own restrictions on implant technology and surgery. The technology was heavily restricted in the Macross Galaxy fleet until the mid-2040s, and its legalization was a hot button issue that led to civil unrest. Macross Frontier is said to generally prohibit implant technology except for medically necessary organ and limb replacements. Uroboros seems to have a more relaxed view, as we see Aisha Blanchett has a network terminal implant and Mei Leeron may be a full-body cyborg as she's got a personal VF-27. Cybernetically-enhanced soldiers are prohibited under New UN Gov't law, but there doesn't seem to be anything stopping people with medical cybernetics or even some kinds of elective cybernetics from joining the armed forces or piloting military-grade VFs as a civilian. Temjin of the NUNS 33rd Marines and Col. Todo of the NUNS VF-X Special Forces both have cybernetic eyes and network implants, and several Vanquish racers have medical cybernetics including full limb replacements (e.g. Team Shinsei's Oscar Brauhitsch). That's probably the reason the Queadluun-Rhea's cockpit is entirely within the torso, Regult-style, instead of having the pilot's legs inside the suit's legs. That way the Regult could lose all four limbs and the pilot could still be unscathed. The Neo Glaug designed for giants was not built for the New UN Forces, so it may not have had conventional escape measures. Then again, its original pilot was also quite a bit smaller than a regular Zentradi due to being a child, so there may have been room. Earth's reproduction of it is designed for miclones, so it definitely has conventional escape and survival measures. It really feels like it'd be a good idea to do the Second Unification War, considering how important that event has turned out to be to Macross Frontier, Macross 30, and Macross Delta's events... not to mention the implication that Max was a main mover behind the pro-autonomy forces and the leader of Vindirance may have been one of his daughters under a paper thin alias, and that King Grammier of Windermere's worldview was shaped heavily by his own participation in the war when he was in his prime.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    No kidding... I have to imagine that a fair amount of that difference is not having to license pre-existing dubs from the 90's and not including extravagant extras like a ~200pg art book. This appears to be basically the exact same box set as the Japanese "Premium Remastered Edition", but MUCH cheaper. That was around $151 US (¥21,478) when it came out. With the CRAFF15 discount code that @Master Dex found and the Crunchyroll "Mega Fan" discount, it's $81 shipped, so a bit more than half the Japanese retail price. Looking back at it, the Japanese edition was actually more expensive than Macross Plus's Blu-Ray Complete Edition in Japan... that sold for $119 (¥17,000) with both the movie and OVA.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    https://store.crunchyroll.com/products/macross-zero-ova-series-blu-ray-limited-edition-crunchyroll-exclusive-5037899090947.html It looks like Crunchyroll has put up preorders for a domestic release of Macross Zero now. EDIT: Crunchyroll's store has automatic discount pricing for members, and @Master Dex found a coupon code CRAFF15 that will knock 15% off the top for you at checkout.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    But for the disquieting tendency to explode, yeah. Berthier's choice of VF is said to be something like a self-imposed challenge, since he's a cyborg with an augmented nervous system that gives him superhumanly fast reflexes. Almost certainly, given that the Varauta VFs are technologically upgraded versions of the existing VA-14, VF-14, and VAB-2 that the Megaroad-13 defense forces used. Macross 7 was the only series to use the ejection of the cockpit block as an "escape pod" prominently in actual combat, but the actual capability goes back to the original series and the VF-1. You probably remember how Roy ejected the cockpit block of Hikaru's disabled VF-1D and took it with him when he evacuated from South Ataria. Masahiro Chiba and company wrote up a fairly detailed explanation of how VF ejection mechanisms work in the original Sky Angels VF-1 tech manual. It describes ejecting the entire nose as a standard ejection method for space or very high altitudes, while more traditional ejection methods are used at lower altitudes. There are some remarks made in connection with the VF-25's APS-25A/MF25 Armored Pack that suggest that ejecting the cockpit block is probably still one of the standard VF escape methods even in 2059+. It seems that we just don't get to see it because the few times we've seen a pilot have to escape an aircraft in recent titles have either been catastrophic loss of the aircraft while stationary or flying at low altitudes (e.g. Alto's first VF-25F, Michel's VF-25G, Hayate's VF-31J). I'd love to see them go back to the late 2010s or 2020s and show us the heyday of the 2nd Generation VFs before they were replaced by the VF-11. Or go back to the late 2040s and 2050 and show us the Second Unification War.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah it's really that small. The VF-9 Cutlass is a very small, light duty, low cost variable fighter meant primarily for atmospheric service on emigrant planets. Basically it's made to be small and cheap and extremely maneuverable in atmospheric flight for planetary defense purposes. Apparently this also made it quite an excellent air racer. Vanquish League racing champ Nicolas Francoise Berthier used a VF-9E as his ride in Ultimate class races and managed to remain undefeated despite many of his opponents using significantly newer aircraft.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Unless the next series is going backwards in time into the gaps between the original and Plus or 7 and Frontier, I suspect we're in for at least one more round with 5th Generation VFs derived from the YF-24. Both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta used the exact same excuse of PMCs being contracted to do the final phases of operational tests before rollout to the real military. Once they officially enter service, they've got a good 20+ years as main fighter ahead of them before their eventual replacement enters the picture. That'll get us to at least the 2080s in-universe since the VF-25 is said to enter service in the early 2060s and the VF-31 c.2069 or 2070. Without a major new threat to drive fast-paced advancement, the 5th Gen could easily hang around into the early 22nd century. Especially considering what's been said about the 6th Generation in materials for Macross Delta and especially Absolute Live!!!!!!. Unless the definition of the 6th Generation itself changes, 6th Generation development is likely to remain stalled until Humanity either discovers a MASSIVE cache of ultra-high purity fold quartz or improves the techniques used for fold carbon synthesis to the point of being able to synthesize the high purity fold quartz necessary to make a working fold wave system. Right now, the best they can do is to produce very small numbers of halfhearted 5.5th Generation units like the VF-31 Siegfried Custom or an even smaller number of 6th Generation prototypes like the YF-29.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Gah... that, I think, is the first time I've seen someone successfully riff on Escaflowne's name. Considering Kawamori almost never seems to be willing to leave a design on the cutting room floor, I'm wondering how long it'll be before we see concepts like the ones from the main mecha in Air Cavalry Chronicles... which had FAST packs to turn into things like a boat.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah. Kivas Fajo was the villain of the episode "The Most Toys". He was an eccentric collector who faked Data's death and abducted him in order to put him on display in his private collection of rare and valuable artifacts. Fajo vaporized the girl who helped Data try to escape, and threatened to kill more people if Data didn't comply so Data opted to prevent any future murders by killing Fajo only to be beamed away at the last second by the Enterprise, with Fajo being placed under arrest soon after. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kivas_Fajo The guy we see Tendi's pirate crew roughing up is a member of the same unnamed species as Kivas Fajo's friend Palor Toff, a collector who visited Fajo's ship during Data's time as part of Fajo's collection and whom Data used to publicly humiliate Fajo by pretending to be a statue. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Palor_Toff
  16. Seto Kaiba
    No, but a member of that same unnamed species was a friend of Fajo's Who visited his ship to see Data in "The Most Toys". It's possible it's meant to be that same character (Palor Toff).
  17. Seto Kaiba
    We have a reasonable idea of what it looked like, since the Sv-154 Svard is one of those Kawamori trademark reuses of a design concept he made for a prior non-Macross project. Specifically, it's the LV-7 Valorous Rapier "Excalibur" from Air Cavalry Chronicles. Air Cavalry Chronicles was a further development of the cancelled Advanced Valkyrie project which also never made it to production. Its story and design works would part company with each other as the story underwent a genre change to become The Vision of Escaflowne and the design works finding their way into Macross 7 and Macross M3. Early emigrant fleets don't seem to have been very large, all in all. The 1st, 3rd, and 5th generations of emigrant fleets seem to each be separated by an order of magnitude in population. Megaroad-01 was said to have around 80,000 people in its fleet in total, with 25,000 living aboard the emigrant ship itself. Those Zentradi ships are physically big, but they don't actually hold a huge number of people or mecha because the crew themselves are 125 times the size of a human (5x in all dimensions) and the ships have to be supplied for long-duration spaceflight. If you work backwards from the Boddole Zer main fleet's total population, the size of the average battleship's crew is something like 1,500 people tops on a ship that, to scale with its crew, is about the same size to them as a Nimitz-class carrier is to us. (So around 1/4 or less the crew of a comparably sized Human naval ship.) With a composition like that, esp. early on, you'd probably be far more likely to have Regults than Destroids. (The old Sky Angels book does assert that postwar carriers used a lot of Regults.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    No.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I believe it's an extra feature on the Macross Frontier digitally remastered edition box set.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's the one. I don't think I've checked the newer Frontier Blu-rays for subs... haven't rewatched the series since I got the last set. But yeah, with subs on the way from US distributors we'll get it one way or the other. I kind of expect we'll also see a re-release of the original series with English subs in Japan as another end-run around Harmony Gold's ongoing-but-reduced stupidity.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It's just showing the points of articulation for the transformation.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    None mentioned or shown, so presumably not. Windermere IV's War of Independence against the New UN Government was, by in large, the Great Offscreen War. We hear a great deal about it in the course of Macross Delta and related works like the gaiden manga White Knight of the Black Wing. We just never get to actually see it. The Macross Delta TV series showed us archival footage of disaster that ended the war (the Black Storm) and White Knight of the Black Wing shows us something of the lives of the Windermereans before and during the conflict, but we never really get to see the war itself. All we see for the equipment used in the war is the New UN Forces VF-22 and VF-171 and the Kingdom of the Wind's Sv-154. Considering the Aerial Knights who serve as Windermere's military were an aerial mounted cavalry force before transitioning to a modern air force, it strikes me as unlikely that they'd bother with infantry combat or armored combat in a land war. Likewise, since the Human settlers on Windermere were from Megaroad-04, it strikes me as unlikely they'd have a significant ground force or any Destroids since their emigrant ship was quite small by modern standards.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is." That one crosses the bounds of generations, but it's as bad as it sounds. That's "this is disturbing/upsetting to look at"... like how unintentionally creepy photos have been called "cursed images" for about a decade now. The sense that there's something deeply wrong with it in an almost supernatural way. I just don't find him funny at all. Like in Borderlands, he tends to play the comic relief character whose idea of humor is either self-referential meta humor or fart jokes and who drags every joke out WAY too long. He's excruciating to watch and to listen to, and he tends to make already bad movies much much worse for his presence.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Weird day, getting weirder. This is one of those movie ideas that just seems like a mass hallucination. Pretty sick of Jack Black, though... that alone is enough for me to seriously consider passing on it.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    And don't take your eyes off that monitor! NGL, I'd buy it... and I don't even smoke.
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