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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, that's a draft cover for the fifth book. Notice the year on the cover says "20xx". Granted, there is kind of a sixth book... really a "0th" book... which is the original "Sky Angels" VF-1 tech manual doujinshi that Masahiro Chiba published back in 1984 and which Variable Fighter Master File is a spiritual successor to.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Only a few titles left in this season before Summer 2024's simulcast schedule starts... Tadaima, Okaeri... ugh. Just... ugh. I wanna strangle whoever wrote the ad copy for this, because they advertised it like a slice of life series about a gay couple struggling to find acceptance in modern Japan, which would have been both thought-provoking and interesting, but it's actually a very bland slice of life series wrapped around the author's mpreg fetish and unfortunate dialog choices make it accidentally extra-cringeworthy in English because it ends up borrowing terms that are normally in the realm of incel podcasters. Editors exist to keep ideas like Tadaima, Okaeri from seeing print. Clearly someone was asleep at the switch. Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers remained light and insubstantial to the very end. It's cute, it's occasionally funny, but it doesn't do anything unique or take its story anywhere interesting. It's clearly leaning VERY hard on the "Waifu" angle for Rys. It's a solid 6/10 series that's the very picture of that eminently watchable series that gets viewers because it airs between two popular shows and not on its own merits. As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World also ended. The season finale was a joke-heavy episode that was very clearly done to set up a season two... which makes it fortunate that it's actually getting one. I enjoyed this one for its unconventional take on the painfully overdone isekai genre, though this title is definitely not for everyone and definitely won't satisfy viewers who expect isekai to be more action-focused. I'm looking forward to season two. It made me wish they'd get off the dime and produce another season of Ascendance of a Bookworm.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Watching a few more shows limp across the finish line... but also some new offerings entering the field. Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture has started streaming on Hulu. I gave that one a watch earlier today, and while it is animated exactly as well as you'd expect from true veteran studios Sunrise and CLAMP, it suffers from a punishing lack of originality throughout every aspect of its execution. HIGHSPEED Etoile is limping into its final episode, and the writers are going all-in on letting Rin have that unearned win. She's just magically racing like a top-tier pro after being complete dogsh*t all series, and everyone's acting like this is completely expected. A lightning strike conveniently knocks out all of the cars and shuts down the course so that Rin's able to get a free head start because the pit crews have to change tires manually. Her support AI comes back on line just in time to help her win the race against a driver who's actually racing on skill. It's been a while since this series has properly disgusted me, but as endings go this one is thoroughly disgusting. I can usually find something praiseworthy in almost any series, but this... this is just all bad all the way through to the extent that it's actually a little worrying. They even try to end on a title drop for maximum cringe. Astro Note's final episode leans heavily back into the first episode's retro late 70's/early 80's sci-fi anime aesthetic with an alien king threatening to destroy Earth and the main characters facing off against them in a giant robot that looks like the lovechild of a Gundam and Ideon. As a parody goes, it's not bad, but it comes out of nowhere and it doesn't really add anything to the story except explaining maybe the first two minutes of the first episode. So Mira et. al. kill the alien king and the series jumps right back to business as usual like they didn't just turn the boarding house into a giant robot and kill thousands of people. I had fairly high hopes for this one at the outset, but it turned out to be a pretty mediocre series. Vampire Dormitory rushes to its end with a continued escalation of its plot's Unfortunate Implications. We've gone from abusive relationship territory all the way to the border of rape-by-deception. That's pretty creepy in any context, but in what's ostensibly a romance story that's just off-putting. An amnesiac, gender-swapped Mito is going to marry that dhampir guy who forcibly changed her gender and seemingly wiped her memory and Ruka's just going to let it happen... so we get to see the start of a vampire gay wedding (in a church no less!) until Mito finds (s)he is unable to go through with the vows because their memory is returning. Then Ruka crashes the ceremony, taking this well into daytime soap opera territory and thankfully negating the Unfortunate Implications... at least until he realizes Mito's a chick, which he takes surprisingly well all things considered. She's going to keep up the sweet polly oliver routine in order ot keep living in the boys dorm at school... and then the bloom filter's turned up to 11. All in all, better than I thought it'd be... but it does suffer from multiple bouts of Unfortunate Implications that take the romance story in fridge horror directions.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Earnings reports are required by law to be accurate because those are statements of financial condition provided to shareholders. Layoffs, unfortunately, are often unconnected to a company's profitability. It's become a very popular practice for companies to lay off staff as a way of reducing short-term costs in order to pump up the share price of the company's stock after a stock buyback or just a particularly good year. (Since many executives are paid in stock and stock options, well... you can guess why.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Looking at Hasbro's published earnings reports, I'm not sure that's necessarily accurate. In absolute terms, it does appear to be the case that Disney-era Star Wars merchandise does not sell in the same volumes that pre-Disney merchandise did. Hasbro has credited their Star Wars lines with buoying the company in otherwise lean sales periods at least twice to date. Diamond Select Toys has publicly commented that demand for merch from the sequel trilogy is noticeably lower than that of the prequel and original trilogies but that sales are otherwise satisfyingly strong. Independent and chain retailers who've weighed in on the issue have pointed to a few different causes. The main one being simple oversaturation of the market. The release of a new Star Wars title used to be an occasion. It was an infrequent but major event that would drive a huge spike in demand for Star Wars merch of all kinds before tapering off to a respectable but low level of demand between releases. Several retailers made the point that Disney is not giving Star Wars audiences that break between releases to create that sense of occasion for a new release. IMO, they have a point there... Disney had a new movie every year from 2015 to 2019, and a new TV series every year from 2019 to present. They've also credited overzealous ordering with a lot of merch ending up clearanced. Ordering like those demand spikes they were accustomed to are still happening has led to substantial overstock situations from around the time of The Last Jedi onwards. (There was also one strange account from a Kalamazoo toy store owner who asserted that there was diminished interest in Grogu merch around the time of The Mandalorian S2 when it became harder to overlook that the cute baby was actually 50+ years old.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    It looks like Nintendo added another Nintendo Switch Online virtual console to the Expansion Pack today. It's a second Nintendo 64 virtual console app specifically for M-rated games. Right now, it has only two games: Perfect Dark and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Watched a pair of episodes of The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio. It remains my standout for the season. There's some truly fine character drama there, and the depiction of the stress and toxic work conditions involved in the voice actor and idol industries is unflinching. Also enjoying the new season of Demon Slayer. I'm not sure what it is about this series, but it's really grown on me... possibly how it depends far more on the strength of its story and character development than on fanservice.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    To paraphrase Rossini, "Disney's Star Wars has some good moments, but awful quarters of an hour." Disney does seem to have a gift for deciding to tell stories that really didn't need to be told. They're capable of good writing (see Rogue One, Andor) but those good moments are all but lost amid a sea of visually impressive but ill-conceived twaddle. (Not that I think pre-Disney Star Wars was necessarily better in that regard... just different, like Coke and Pepsi.) Thinking about it, I don't think #1 is likely. Mae's Mysterious Master (with Added Alliterative Appeal) is definintely playing audience expectations for a Sith character to the hilt what with the black wardrobe, red lightsaber, off-brand Vader mask, and followers who reference the Sith code. Non-Sith red lightsaber users in The Clone Wars may not be true Sith... but they're trained by and employed by Sith Lords arguably as prospective apprentices in the Sith's perpetual game of Klingon Promotion. #2 is tricky... as of Ep4, the Jedi are assuming that they're dealing with a rogue Jedi sect. That illusion is surely shattered now that they've run into Smilo Ren there, since he's clearly telegraphing his dark side affiliation and probable Sith origin. With half the series left to run, it seems unlikely that Smilo Ren can pull off #2 since it would necessarily invalidate the quest he gave Mae as Sol is leading the expedition and Mae's quest is what's driving the story. If anyone survives to report back, then they'll have to tie the story in knots to justify a coverup of the return of the Jedi's worst enemy AND why nobody who was there raised the connection a century later when another sith was encountered. It doesn't bode well for the story, I guess...
  9. Seto Kaiba
    This. So much. A nontrivial part of why I'm looking forward to Andor S2 as much as I am is that it's refreshingly free of the destiny-obsessed glowstick society for stoics. We can have characters with actual emotions and thoughts and agency!
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I am officially perplexed. I was, in all innocence, looking to watch a Let's Play over lunch and when I loaded up YouTube I got a page of recommended videos of Star Wars fans shrieking their inchoate fury over The Acolyte supposedly breaking canon... because the conehead guy who has like one line of dialog is the same conehead guy from the prequel trilogy? Of all the substandard things in this series and this most recent episode to get upset about, that's what got their goat?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Apparently this new Dark Lord has been informally dubbed "Smilo Ren" on account of his helmet's toothy grin. NGL, I like it. That's a quality pun.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Gimmicky was expected, IMO... the whole premise borders on minigame collection territory. I think they struck a pretty good balance between the mechanics of the different plays and delivered a pretty polished experience. It's more of a casual game for sure, but the presentation is great and it has a certain charm to it. It's why I wish it was longer. With just three levels for each of Peach's different transformations and five boss fights, what they had was presented extremely well but there definitely could've been quite a bit more. The only time I ever really felt annoyed with the controls was that I was never quite sure if it wanted me to match the on-screen prompts for button-mashing sequences or just go ham on that button... and there didn't really seem to be a difference. For what it's worth, I had fun with it. and the only thing that dragged me away from it was the release of the Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remake. I had a lot of fun with that one... it was nice to see they added some quality-of-life improvements and additional refinements without messing with the game's formula. (I kind of expected they'd remove the more game-breaking exploits like the "Danger Mario" build out of the game or at least nerf them heavily... but no, they left it as-is and even left is so that if you reduce Mario's max health to 5 he doesn't do his low health animation if his health is full.) The two new post-endgame bosses were a nice touch too... The remake of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is coming out in a few days too, IINM. Kinda wish they'd remake the original or at least release an emulated version in the N64.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted, thanks for the information. 😀 Hrm... I thought Princess Peach: Showtime! was a pretty solid title for what it was. Enough so that I was kind of surprised by how short it ended up being. If the previous one was better, I might have to look that one up.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I've got a good feeling about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It looks like it's built on the same engine that was used for the remake of Link's Awakening. IMO, that did an excellent job of recreating the feel of classic Zelda from the 16-bit era in a modern context. I'd figured it wouldn't be long before we saw a Legend of Zelda game where you play as Princess Zelda, given the recent success of Princess Peach's first solo outing in Princess Peach: Showtime!.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    What an imaginative title this latest episode has. "Day". I guess this is how they work around the point that everyone was saying was a retcon or continuity-breaking... Hmmm... Well, "Day" is definitely the strongest episode of The Acolyte thus far... but in all fairness, that is an embarrassingly low bar to clear at this point. Practically nothing of any real importance happens in this episode outside of the last four or so minutes. It's mostly just watching Jedi committee meetings and then watching two groups take a long dull hike in a forest until you get to the very end, where... Next episode might actually have some excitement in it. That said, the story is still really threadbare and halfhearted feeling.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Barring one or two points like the Barash Vow, I agree... My point was not that it required deep knowledge of that secondary material to understand the story, but rather than the story was so threadbare that much of the entertainment value in the series seems to be around spotting the various references and in-jokes rather than anything to do with the narrative. Never have done, lol. Bottomless pits everywhere and nary a safety railing in sight.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Hypothesis: On its own, it is neither good nor bad. Disney+'s The Acolyte is very much a "by fans, for fans" Star Wars series. As such, the series is no ambassador to casual viewers because it's heavily invested in references to not only previous movies and TV shows, but comic books and novels too. The sheer density of references and continuity nods and background gimmicks seems calculated to create that kind of analysis-focused conversation about the series. So too does the show's obsession with keeping its dialog as vague as possible. In context, it's a very bad thing. Why? Because The Acolyte's writers seem to have focused on achieving the maximum possible density of in-jokes and references to provoke that discussion and analysis instead of developing a compelling story, engaging characters, or interesting settings and set pieces. They succeeded in provoking analytical discussion of the series, but because the story is so threadbare and the characters so flat and uninteresting a lot of that discussion is focused on the show's flaws, its questionable creative decisions, and the many holes in its style-over-substance storytelling. That intense scrutiny seems to be fueling the negative opinion many viewers have of the series, since they are paying far more attention to the details than they normally would.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Re:Monster ended today... and on a predictable cliffhanger. This episode is almost a clipshow in terms of how often it changes focus to tidy up dangling plot threads. As a series, it's not bad... but everything it did was done better by So I'm a Spider, So What? and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. It focuses way too much on the protagonist having an enormous harem to the extent that the rest of the plot feels a bit neglected. I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability also ended today. Its final trudge to a predictable conclusion felt halfhearted at best, as it never really bothered to provide any stakes for its protagonist to inject a little drama into the conflict. Even the demon that was the final enemy of the series seemed to think that the way it ended was pretty much BS, and I'm inclined to agree.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It stood out, but not by quite as much as some are giving it credit for doing. To an extent, I think they were just playing to audience expectations... even the first movie had that slightly suspect flesh-colored bodysuit. An awfully Victorian outlook, isn't it? There are examples of figures that legitimately border on or cross that line on this very forum. Motoko's outfit there is no more revealing or explicit than a one-piece bathing suit you might see at a public or hotel pool. Not exactly office attire, but a considerable distance short of anything that'd prompt a content advisory. I have a wallscroll of season one Motoko hanging in my home office and nobody's ever suggested they felt it was inappropriate. (Of course, it also doesn't show that outfit from the back, so...)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Eech... well, after about fifteen episodes I've decided I have to drop Mushoku Tensei. It might be a capably-written isekai series, but no amount of worldbuilding can compensate for the series having a pedophile for a protagonist. It'd be a dealbreaker even if were a one-time thing, but the story feels compelled to remind us fairly often that Rudeus is a mentally a 40+ year old man and that he doesn't see anything wrong with trying to coerce underage girls into having sex with him. With that not-so-little detail hanging over everything, the series is just plain unwatchable if not downright repulsive. A good protagonist should have flaws... but "sex offender" is a villains-only trait and an extreme one at that. The kind of thing you only give to a villain who's meant to be so totally and irredeemably evil that the protagonist can slay them brutally (and cathartically) while still unassailably holding the moral high ground. Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is ending on a two-part hot springs episode. Unfortunately, they've decided to tar the finale to an enjoyable but formulaic series with a rape joke. Thankfully the writer had the good sense to put the brakes on that one before it went anywhere, but it was still weird and out of place for what's otherwise been an almost squeaky-clean romcom.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Based on what you've shared from it, that doesn't appear to be a script from the series. Are you quite certain? The text on the pages you've shared with us here appear to be a bare-bones outline of the show's premise and its setting, very basic descriptions of the main cast, and minimally-detailed summaries of the key points for the stories of the first seven episodes. It honestly reads like a writer's guide, the kind of outline document provided to a show's writers to give them the details of the setting and characters that they need to start work on screenplays... and an early one at that. The description of the Invit in there is very different from what's in the actual series. They're described in that document as a lot more malicious than they actually were in the final version of the story. This booklet describes them as actively hunting down and destroying human population centers and refugee caravans as they expanded outward from Reflex Point and doing more blatantly evil things like herding people who opposed them into concentration camps. The Invit in the series that aired were pretty hands-off when it came to Humanity and for the most part left Earth's population to its own devices once they had control of the place.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Astro Note's penultimate episode finally resolved the search for the macguffin at the heart of the going-nowhere romcom between the oblivious female lead and the hopeless guy who can't tell the difference between flirting and just being polite. I knew it was going to be hidden somewhere obvious, but I have to admit the show's art team did an absolutely fantastic job of hiding it in plain sight. It's been onscreen in every episode at least two or three times and I doubt anyone noticed. The final episode seems set to change genres entirely as that macguffin has brought a massive Ideon-esque giant robot into the picture to fight the other species of aliens who've been chasing the macguffin all series. I'm not sure I'd say that its quirky and retro aesthetic has entirely offset how irritating several of the characters are. Feels like a solid 6/10 series at the end of the day. Vampire Dormitory's 11th episode has that very odd gender bender plot twist - something that feels bizarre and out of place in a series where the main premise was already that the protagonist was pulling a bent-gender disguise routine - dragging on in a way that makes its polygon of one-sided infatuations start to feel uncomfortably like watching an abusive relationship. (Ironically, this still makes it a more compelling LGBT+ storyline than Tadaima Okaeri.) Possibly multiple abusive relationships, considering how things have turned out with one of the male leads having forced a gender change on the protagonist and the other being deceived into a relationship with an imposter. (Also, does nobody notice this giant carriage in the sky? Or the horses pulling it? Someone is going to look up and catch a steaming pile of horsesh*t in the face at some point.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Beautiful work... the care and attention to detail you've put into this is truly impressive. 👍
  24. Seto Kaiba
    This week's The Irregular at Magic High School is not quite as interesting as the previous episodes. There's definitely more tension since Tatsuya isn't around for the fight in this one, so the former Course 2 students have to deal with professional assassins on their own. (Though it begs the question why so many people seem to want to murder a group of high school students.) HIGHSPEED Etoile's penultimate episode seems to have gotten a bit of an animation bump. The crowd actually have faces now instead of being literally faceless masses. Sadly, the quality of the writing has not improved. Rin Rindo is still an unlikeable little stain on the upholstery with no personality beyond being an airhead. I have to wonder if the writers understand that an underdog character has to be talented but underestimated... there's nothing satisfying about a loser getting an unearned win. They're even changing the rules just to try and inject some unearned drama into this story which is already freighted with the prospect of the protagonist being fired for failing to win any races.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It is conveyed. In the meeting of the witches inner circle after the Jedi crashed the ascension ceremony, one of the witches replying to Mother Koril's proposal rules out violence by stating that if they were to spill even one drop of Jedi blood the Republic would destroy them. Another member of the inner circle does question whether the lives of four Jedi would really earn such a disproportionate response from the Republic, but the point stands and violence is ruled out. None of them seem to question that the possibility of military retaliation from the Republic is on the table, only how much it would take to provoke it. Even if they're incorrect, that enough of them believe that the Jedi have enough backing from the Republic that going against the Jedi could result in their destruction effectively means the Jedi can strongarm the witches with near impunity with the implicit threat of force. There would be practical reasons for that. After all, we've seen that it's possible to exercise force powers unconsciously and that could make an untrained user actually kind of dangerous in the wrong circumstances. Mild future sight like Anakin had is one thing, but imagine the kind of harm that could be caused if a panicky kid accidentally starts to use telekinesis. This is a galaxy full of architects who love sheer drops with little to nothing in the way of handrails after all. Mind you, the impression I got was that it was more of a "ok officer, we're cooperating so don't shoot" sort of situation. Especially considering the discussion they have afterwards about the retaliation they might face if they took up arms against the Jedi. True, but then George Lucas ran with it literally and now we're stuck with it because that's what he built the prequels and their various spin-off media around and Disney is a little bit gunshy after having the fans rip them several new orifices of indeterminate purpose over the last couple years. That's my job. 😅😝
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