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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    He's not really meant to be likeable. He's meant to be relatable, because his story is all about how the Empire's senseless acts of oppression and petty cruelty gradually radicalized its own ordinary apolitical workaday people into open revolt and forming the seeds of the organized rebellion that would one day bring it crashing down. Din was likeable but I wouldn't call him well-written, in large part because his story is driven by his shockingly firm and consistent grip on the idiot ball and the moon logic of the warrior cult he belongs to. When it comes to writing, as I've often opined, I think Star Wars's biggest weakness is its obsession with Force users. There's nothing particularly relatable about a space magic-using warrior monks living a life of self-denial and their axe crazy edgelord counterparts who dress all in black and do everything "4 teh evulz". The Acolyte suffers from that especially badly, with most of the cast being thinly written stock characters based on all the usual Force user tropes. It says a lot that the only likeable character is the villain who starts opining about wanting to be true to himself... after murdering like eight people. He's only well-written in a relative sense, standing out by virtue of how utterly bland and boring everyone else in the story is. (It is funny that his attitude is basically "What's a couple laser sword murders between friends?")
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Cassian Andor, in 2016 and 2022.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Hollywood as a whole has always struggled to write female protagonists. Disney's unwillingness to accept that trying to please everyone means you'll ultimately please nobody has just trapped them in a worse version of what other properties go through when trying to write a female protagonist. They can't look past the character's gender, so they inevitably veer into "strong female protagonist" cliches built on the sexist tropes that they're trying to subvert and end up writing an uninteresting middle-of-the-road character that can't be too much or too little of any one trait without risking accusations of sexism or Mary Sue-dom. They invest so much effort into making the character inoffensive that there's little to work with in terms of personality when the time comes to write a story for that character. Star Trek's Kate Mulgrew has been pretty open about this problem since the 90's. She opined that her character was so unevenly written because of the flip-flopping between the different female protagonist cliches that it felt like her character was undiagnosed bipolar. The series was saved by breaking the rules and introducing a character who was too much or too little in basically every category (Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine). Unrelated:
  4. Seto Kaiba
    To be honest, I don't think I have seen any source for this series attempt to explain the minor variations in uniform colors or trims in any functional or organizational context. The only differentiation noted in Genesis Breaker is between infantry and pilots, but even that is strictly textual when talking about the Mars Base plan for retaking Earth. Not sure why you would, the protagonists arguably aren't real soldiers so much as they are borderline secret agents. One of the previous art books even described them as the government's hit men for suppressing dissent.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    They've been trying to turn a boy brand into a everyone brand. Disney bought Lucasfilm because the Star Wars brand prints money. They want to make as much money off of their new acquisition as possible, because they are a corporation. So they are trying to make it appeal to the broadest possible audience to maximize their profit. They're just having an absolutely miserable time trying to pull it off since they massively underestimated how invested the fandom was in the status quo. No matter what they do with it, large portions of the fandom simply will not accept it. If they try to go their own way with it, they get chewed out for not respecting the lore. If they try to color within the lines, they get chewed out for being unoriginal. So Disney is stuck swinging for the fences in the hopes that they will land a hit by sheer dumb luck because nothing else they've tried is working. They've tried copycating the originals, they've tried going their own way, they've tried writing by committee, they've tried EU style backstories and background character spin-offs...🤪 They hired a fan who treated the project like an astonishingly high budget fan film. The writer's room was full of fans too. So the script ended up being something like a bad fanfic, full of little continuity nods and love for the source material and all those little ideas that sound super cool in a fan's imagination but don't necessarily translate well into an actual narrative. How they got as far as actual filming with the script in that state is a mystery for the ages. I can only imagine any executive who was shown the "power of many" scene would have been left waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out of the woodwork and announce that they had been Punkd.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. The book is pretty light on art overall. Barring, I think, one chapter illustration all of the book's art of soldiers is of the titular "Breakers". The rest of the book's art is principally their equipment (Riding Suits, Ride Armors, incidental stuff like sidearms and rations), with a little bit on the new Invit designs and a bit on the Genesis Breaker versions of a few key designs from the original series like the Ikazuchi, Izumo, and Anubis-1 missile. There is a picture of Mars Base that's used in the book twice, but nothing related to things like ship crews, other bases that existed in the original's backstory, etc. Like the original series, which focused on the survivors from several different Mars Base units banding together on Earth, Genesis Breaker focuses on a unit of elite intelligence agents from Mars running a mission behind enemy lines to study the Invit.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    No problem. 👍 Except for certain proper nouns that are consistently written in English and often in all caps (e.g. "GENESIS BREAKER") and the names of various mecha, characters, and chapters which are written both ways, it's pretty much all Japanese yes.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Several toy makers/lines are mentioned in the interview section, but only in a historical context. Keiichiro Maeno, the toy designer working on the project on behalf of "Lil' Golem", reminisces a bit about having worked on the Beagle MOSPEADA toy line before it went under and moving on to Sentinel's RIOBOT line near the start of the interview section. I do not see any mentions of new/forthcoming toys, just past releases like the Sentinel/RIOBOT 1/48 Legioss (in passing) and the dedicated spread for the 1/12 scale Intruder Gate ride armor.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    My copy of the new Genesis Breaker MOSPEADA book rolled in today during lunch, so I'll break it down real quick. The book is 114 pages including: 4 pages devoted to the roundtable interview with the creators 2 pages summarizing the timeline 5 pages of character bios (one each for Gate, Every, Eagle, Simmons, and Necessary) 1 page of equipment line art 5 pages of mecha line art broken up into half-page segments for the Bulldog TLEAD, Dropship, Spiteful Legioss, the modernized ship designs, and two pages for the Invit's "Star Ovary" and the twenty or so types of Invit (lettered A-R plus Invit Gate). 5 pages of the 1/12 scale Intruder ride armor model 74 pages devoted to the actual story in twelve chapters 12 pages of new story broken up into 3 new-for-this-book "Special Edition" chapters (X-1 thru X-3) devoted to the fates of the other main characters. 2 pages of glossary/keywords It looks like the new content to the book is principally the three new Special Edition chapters of the story which comprise pages 100-111. I admit I haven't been keeping up with this title, so some of what's in there story-wise is definitely a surprise to me. It looks like the Invit's backstory was completely rewritten to go for more of a darker and edgier cosmic horror angle. The Izumo's been redesigned to have thirteen synchrotron cannons now... it had just the one in the anime.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That's certainly how Sloane presented the organization when it made its debut in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6's "Inquisition". Of course, that didn't really last much past their first appearance as by Season 7's "Inter Enim Arma Silent Leges" they had effectively grabbed the villain ball with both hands and transitioned from "so secret even the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order don't know about them" to being an open secret protected only by the most ridiculous arbitrary skepticism. Discovery just made it a million times worse by having them walking around openly on starships with special Starfleet badges indicating their affiliation openly. That series also screwed them up worse by making them more or less indistinguishable from Starfleet Intelligence, borrowing large chunks of plot from the much (and deservedly) maligned DS9 relaunch novel series's Control mini-arc, and turning them into little more than Starfleet's Murder Inc. Yup. Even the novels, awful as the are, did a better job of depicting Section 31 as a covert organization. This is like off-brand James Bond, but with a really kitschy sci-fi aesthetic slapped on that manages to look hilariously cheap despite the no doubt ridiculously huge budget.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    *sigh* In a way, it's kind of impressive how committed Paramount is to ignoring audience feedback. Star Trek fans said loud and clear (and repeatedly) that they don't want this vaguely racist dystopian misery porn. That's a big part of why Star Trek: Discovery flopped domestically and internationally and was cancelled two seasons early to finish as the franchise's worst-rated series. The whole Section 31 concept was already pretty goofy in Deep Space Nine, but Discovery's version was so incredibly stupid that it was one of the most-mocked parts of the series up to that point. Even Lower Decks called out how stupid it was. That's why they put Michelle Yeoh's character on a bus. I'm amazed she didn't demand to exit sooner, given that she was stuck playing a cringeworthy and deeply racist "yellow peril" villain. I guess, at the very least, she might be able to use this to add a Razzie to her list of awards, because this looks absolutle dogsh*t.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    It does a bit... though I'd assume it's entirely coincidental. I doubt anyone working on Robotech was even aware that the Sky Angels doujinshi existed, never mind actually having a copy.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    We never get an objective frame of reference for speed, so that's really more perception than anything. That said, the configurations using drones almost certainly do go faster because the drones are lighter than the heavy booster rockets. The tradeoffs there being that the drones cost substantially more, carry much less weaponry, and don't improve the fighter's armor. I'd question whether any fighter except perhaps the VF-31AX Kairos Plus really gets that benefit though. The Sv-303's mini-ghosts don't contribute to its output because they're run off capacitors rather than having dedicated engines, and the Sv-262's Lilldrakens are a range extender rather than something meant to boost performance. The "Super Ghost" from Absolute Live!!!!!! seems to be the only one big enough for its engines to offer a large increase in output, as it seems to be pretty much a full-sized Ghost.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Everyone has their own preferences, naturally. I know that I've found a number of dubs frustrating because characters have been recast mid-series, which ultimately put me off the dub entirely because the new voice actor was way less suitable to the character. Like when Saiyuki replaced David Matranga with Lex Lang as the voice actor for Sanzo. Lex Lang's a really good voice actor, but he was just the wrong guy for the role and it took me right the hell out of the series. Most, yeah... at least initially. Simulcasts are a big part of anime streaming these days, so most new shows that are streaming on services like Crunchyroll, HiDive, etc. come out subs-only at first because that's faster. Cheaper too, but speed is what matters. They loop back later and add dubs for the shows that performed well enough to merit the extra investment. The older shows dumped onto those services from back catalogs tend to come with dubs already because they were previously released with dubs on DVD back before streaming was even a thing. Cowboy Bebop had a phenomenal dub... unfortunately that kind of led to Steve Blum being absolutely bloody everywhere in the 2000s. The voice actor pool just isn't big enough to have decent variety outside Japan. (Steve Blum got especially bad in games. I remember Quake IV being a really awful case where 90% of the characters were voiced by Steve... such that the majority of the in-game dialog was him talking to other characters also voiced by him. Truly, that was a case of "Me's a crowd".) Unfortunately those good dubs are more the exception than the rule... Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Saiyuki, Full Metal Panic!... for every one of those there were fifty awful screech-a-thons with bored voice actors sleepwalking through the script.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    They're actually quite heavy... though that weight is mainly the fuel and additional weaponry. The VF-31's Super Pack effectively more than quadruples its weight and almost 2/3 of that additional mass is fuel. The additional thrust of the booster rockets offsets a good portion of that additional weight and the acceleration performance gradually improves as the rockets are used because that heavy fuel is being incrementally burned off making the aircraft lighter. Boosters also have one other advantage over drones... they're cheap. FAST Packs like the Super Pack often have energy conversion armor material built into them but they're not very complex to manufacture. They're actually designed to be disposable should the situation call for it. Unmanned fighters, on the other hand, are quite expensive because they have to have sophisticated computers for flight control and autonomous combat, communications systems to allow for remote command and control, their own engines, sensor systems, etc. It's said that the QF-4000 Ghost that was the main unmanned fighter in the 2050s and beyond cost about 1/3 what a VF-171 Nightmare Plus did. The Lilldrakens used by Windermere are smaller and less sophisticated so they're probably cheaper, but the Super Ghost may be quite expensive indeed as it seems to be based on the AIF-9V series Ghost.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Robotech has a lot of weird stuff in its very limited technical material because the main source Harmony Gold tapped for the info was quite literally someone's fan fiction. In this specific case, the fan group in question was trying to rationalize what they felt was an issue in the depiction of the Legioss's gunpod. The issue in question being that in one scene in the animation, and several pieces of art like the below cutaway from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA Color Graffiti, the Legioss's 80mm beam gunpod is depicted as having 3 smaller barrels inside its cowling. That detail, plus a different set of sound effects used for Robotech II: the Sentinels, let them to conclude that there were actually two different but identical-looking gunpods: the beam gunpod and a conventional rotary cannon. Even though that detail was a complete fabrication by fans with no official basis whatsoever, it stuck around.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    "Subs vs. dubs" is an argument for the ages, but the reality of the situation is that subs-only is the norm for new anime releases on streaming. The profit margin on anime is razor thin. Dubbing is expensive, and as often as not dubs are poorly received and harshly criticized for quality issues particularly related to casting. Music-heavy anime gets hit with the latter twice as hard, since the choice is between getting reamed over casting decisions thanks to the switching of languages highlighting any sub-optimal casting choices or paying a princely sum to re-record the music. Since the enthusiast community leans heavy subs anyway, a lot of distributors seem to prefer doing subs first to get the series on streaming ASAP and coming back to get the dub on a second pass if and only if the series is well-received. ... you mean you don't? 😵‍💫 I know I do.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I don't think there's one answer that covers all conditions there. Booster rockets do technically increase the maximum thrust a Valkyrie can produce, but that's not really the point of them. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation Variable Fighters used booster rockets not to increase their maximum thrust but to extend their operating time in space. Earth's initial thermonuclear reaction turbine engine design was incredibly efficient in atmosphere but had very poor propellant efficiency in space. Many of those early designs were also quite small, so their internal fuel tanks did not hold much. This shortcoming was addressed via the introduction of the FAST Pack (known by various configuration-specific nicknames like the "Super Pack", "Strike Pack", etc.). By adding external tanks that greatly increased the amount of fuel the Valkyrie could carry and adding booster rockets to reduce the need to use main engine thrust in maneuvering, the maximum operating time these Valkyries had in space flight was greatly extended. Weapons were added to the boosters and fuel tanks as well, to improve their tactical utility. The 4th and 5th Generations of Variable Fighter introduced new engine technologies that were far more fuel efficient and powerful. Initially, this meant that booster rockets and large external fuel tanks were no longer necessary to achieve satisfactory operating times in space flight and Valkyries could be stealthier without that extra equipment. Then a new possibility presented itself: the now-unnecessary booster rockets could be used to offset the mass of large amounts of additional armor and weaponry. The concept of the FAST Pack changed from extending operating time in space to maximizing armor and armament with the least possible degradation to acceleration and maneuverability. The original case of adding a drone to a Valkyrie to enhance its performance was the VF-0's improvised Special Attack specification from Macross Zero. A stripped-down QF-2200 Ghost was used as a booster and the significant increase in thrust was enough to improve the VF-0's maneuverability in a dogfight while also extending its very limited range. The idea of attaching a drone to a Valkyrie as a performance enhancement made a bit of a comeback in the late 2050s and 2060s, but its usefulness is debatable. The VF-27 had a modified QF-5100D that it used as a booster system and potentially operate remotely as a "loyal wingman" type drone. It didn't improve the VF-27's acceleration, but it did help both its armament and its maneuverability. The Sv-262 also used drones that way, though the improvement in maneuverability that comes from using them as thrust vectoring nozzles and the modest improvement in armament that comes from their built-in weapons and ability to operate in support of their mothership takes a back seat to their main purpose: being glorified drop tanks supplementing the Sv-262's woefully inadequate internal fuel tanks. The Super Ghost used with the VF-31AX can be used the same way, though since its performance is unknown it's not clear how much benefit it actually offers.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I'm pretty tired of the UC being the One Year War and not much else. Trying to make the Principality sympathetic is, as I've said before, a massive uphill battle in its own right considering the war crimes they're guilty of.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that's definitely looking more like the kind of mook horror show you'd expect for a Zeon-centric story set during Operation Odessa. Looks like they're drawing more than a bit on [i]08th MS Team[/i]... I'm pretty sure there was a copy of Norris Packard's MS-07B-3 Gouf in there, and I guess that explains why the Gundam looks like a variation on the Ez8.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I think you may be conflating two different topics there, TBH. As noted a few posts back, the industry is collectively still trying to figure out what metrics to use to define "success" in the direct-to-streaming market. Increases in subscribers was a metric tossed around early on, but that proved to be a bit useless since it assumed the potential for infinite growth and that people would buy into a service for one series only. Total hours viewed is one popular metric, but most services keep those numbers to themselves and third-party analysis is dependent on self-reporting or data reported to those third-party services. "Engagement", which ScreenRant talked about in several of their articles about The Acolyte's performance relative to other Star Wars shows, tries to measure success via social media interaction. Its usefulness is debatable at best because filtering out bot activity (both malicious and otherwise) is not an exact science and because it treats negative attention engagement (people getting online to talk about how a series sucks) as being the same as positive engagement. Financial performance... well... that's objectively trackable because the companies that produce and release these shows and the merchandise for them are publicly traded and therefore issue regular (quarterly) earnings reports to shareholders disclosing the financial condition of the company and its various operating divisions. Disney's chalked up a billion dollars in profit from the Star Wars movies they've made and that's just the ticket sales, that number doesn't home video, merchandise, attractions, etc. As of March last, they were reporting total Star Wars revenues of about $12 billion since acquiring the franchise, excl. certain separated income streams like attractions. Hasbro has similarly indicated that Disney Star Wars has been doing quite well, and even credited it with getting them through several years of otherwise slow business. Star Wars demonstrably continues to be quite profitable despite the discontent of some long-time fans. A 290% ROI on an acquisition like that is nothing to sneeze at. If they had not bungled the sequel trilogy it probably could've been a lot more, but it's still making huge amounts of money. If they're still posting a profit on what they do make and sell, it's still making money. And as discussed some weeks back, quite a bit of this has more mundane explanations like overzealous ordering and market saturation. (And of course, a number of these titles are being marketed to the more mature audience anyway which isn't going to drive toy sales to kids.) Doesn't seem to have stopped them from developing merchandise... I can see preorders for "Retro Collection" and "Black Series" figures of the characters, a replica of Smilo Ren's helmet, character lightsabers, funko pops, spinoff comics, posters, apparel, etc.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be nice, for sure. It'd save me a lot of effort too. For a pro translator, each of those Master File books would be a $26,000 full-time-for-a-calendar-quarter undertaking. My one saving grace is that my workload is finally starting to return to pre-pandemic levels, so I can do more with them now.) That said, I'm not holding my breath for it. Bandai Namco's Gundam franchise is already well-established internationally and I don't believe they've released any of their equivalent technical books (e.g. Master Archive Mobile Suit) outside of Japan and maybe China.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    While that certainly is no hot take, things like "well written", "well thought out", "well acted", and "well produced" are all qualitative judgments and therefore subjective. This is the problem I see with almost every argument against Disney Star Wars. People say that they need to objectively do better in an aspect of the creative process which is judged almost entirely in subjective terms. It's a nonsense argument on the face of it. There are some low level objective criteria for things like "well written", but they are very basic and only really serve to separate the completely incoherent from everything else. The kind of basic rules of storytelling that you would learn in an introduction to creative writing class... and those rules are not even the same for every genre, or every period of history. Fans are going to do that anyway. Analyzing all of the little details is just something fans do. "Good" is subjective. I'm sure Disney understands very well that the foundation of their project needs to be something that audiences will enjoy. They've been in this industry far too long to not have a very good grasp of that very simple reality of the arts. The very basic reality that this argument trips over is that "Good" is wholly subjective. It's entirely possible for two people to look at exactly the same thing and have two different qualitative opinions of how good it is. Disney surely thought that the story they had come up with for the sequel trilogy was going to be something that the vast majority of their audience would say was good. They misjudged what the audience wanted. I'm sure that the creators of The Acolyte believed they were bringing a good show to TV. The majority of the audience didn't agree, but there is a dissenting minority who think the show is good and because that qualitative assessment is inherently subjective neither side is wrong. What Disney has failed to do with Star Wars is to understand its audience well enough to properly judge what the audience will consider "good". It does not help that the audience they are trying to understand is so huge that there is no general consensus to be had. I'm not going to get into anything that wanders into Godwin's second law territory, but the property continues to make stupendous amounts of dosh despite the drama... so in purely business terms I'm not sure they have to do anything except keep the Star Wars assembly line going. It would help them creatively if they could develop stories that are more in tune with what their audience wants, but this is a property that's too big to fail so it's just going to continue to make money regardless because fans will still hate watch what they don't like and some will surely buy the merchandise just because of FOMO. Not to mention they will continue to reach new audiences, some of whom will surely enjoy the stories they are telling.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    A fun literary side note... this ship, the Corbelan IV, appears to be named for a character in Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo (from which the original movie's ship drew its name). In this case, from the priest Fr. Corbelan. The Marine ship Sulaco from the movie Aliens is named for the fictional port city in which Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo is set.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Why would they have thought they needed to? Remember, Disney bought Star Wars lock, stock, and barrel. Even when they encountered pushback from Star Wars fans after announcing their plans to dismiss the old Expanded Universe they didn't have any reason to think fans would reject their plans for the sequel trilogy, in no small part because those plans closely mirrored things which had been done in the Expanded Universe the fans were so ardently defending. The New Republic was beset by the resurgent remnants of the Galactic Empire and their seemingly endless supply of planet-killing superweapons, Han Solo's son falls to the Dark Side and as a result Luke ends up living in exile, and so on. Disney probably thought they were serving up a virtual "Best Hits" collection of Star Wars EU tropes as a very safe sort of sequel. When that didn't work, they tried to branch out and do something new and unexpected. When that didn't work, they resorted to writing by committee out of desperation in order to try to please everyone or at least make the largest possible number of people minimally unhappy. The Acolyte is more of that same thought process. The slightly tone-deaf "Let's give the people more of what they've already told us they love" followed by the realization that rote repetition of tropes doth not a story make. It was another well-intentioned but ill-considered attempt to "give the people what they want". They knew their audience liked the prequel-era Jedi because the viewership numbers for The Clone Wars were so good. So they did a story set before the prequel era that could feature more of the prequel-style Jedi... warts and all. Of course, that meant having someone to tie The Acolyte to the prequel era and thus the handful of famously old Jedi who could plausibly have been around at that point to establish direct continuity. It's just painfully unfortunate it was the two worst possible characters for the job: Mr. "The Sith have been extinct for a millennium" who created all the fuss in the first place and the living embodiment of the Jedi order's decay into a Lawful Stupid alignment. The tangible connection to the prequel era was a good idea from a narrative standpoint. The selection of prominent alien Jedi masters who general audiences could be counted on to recognize from previous works is just so narrow (basically just Yoda, Ki-Adi Mundi, and Plo Koon) that the self-destructive choice was practically made for them. (Gotta hand it to Master Mundi tho... even a hundred years before the Clone Wars he was still concerned about attacks on wookiees. The man is nothing if not consistent.) Does that make Kylo Ren a Disney princess... or does it make Elsa a Sith Lord? Since she has ice powers, should we be calling her "Cryo Ren"? These are the real question that keep the philosophers up at night. 😵‍💫
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