Seto Kaiba

Finished The Book of Boba Fett last night... and it's as much a mess as I remember it being. I can definitely see why Star Wars fans consider it The Mandalorian Season 2.5 instead of a separate series in its own right. It's pretty weak stuff. Boba Fett's a pretty boring main character and his story would have been even shorter than it ended up being if he weren't a complete idiot. Pivoting to Din Djarin and later Luke, Ahsoka, and Grogu was a blatant authorial saving throw that really didn't work nearly as well as they were hoping it would. Having Grogu decide to ditch his Jedi training and rejoin Din feels like The Mandalorian's marketing and merchandising teams kind of hijacked The Book of Boba Fett to keep the "Baby Yoda" money coming in. Nah, Din was carrying Boba so damn hard... so hard that he had to carry Boba for the second half of Boba's own show.

Maybe if they had been developed that way just for kicks... but they weren't. Remember, the reason 5th Generation development kicked off when it did was because the New UN Government had made its first confirmed contact with the Vajra. The 5th Gen performance targets were set as high as they were because the New UN Government's goal was a Variable Fighter that could fight the Vajra on an even footing. Master File has a few remarks suggesting that previously unknown forces that wiped out New UN Spacy warships and fighter patrols were later believed to be run-ins with Vajra forces. That excessive performance did also have quite a lot of benefits in use against the Zentradi, as described in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah. It's hard to argue with a unit able to hold off an enemy force ten times their size with no losses and only minor damage while guarding a defenseless target in an hours-long rescue mission.

Based on what's said both in-story and in creator interviews... not all that differently from how it works in the real world. Shoji Kawamori has described the current state of affairs in the Macross setting as being like the age of sail, but with the internet. Emigrant fleets and planets can be months or even years away from Earth by space fold, but advancements in fold communications technology and the ever-growing number of emigrant fleets and planets have turned what was once just point-to-point communications links into a massive decentralized FTL internet called the Galaxy Network. Commerce involving the transmission of digital assets (e.g. software and cultural exports like music, movies, television shows, ebooks, etc.) can be done directly over the Galaxy Network, but when it comes to transactions involving physical goods the logistics of fold travel present serious obstacles. Improvements in fold technology have reduced the disparity between subjective and objective time during a fold jump over the years, but the incredible energy demands of fold navigation mean that there are still practical limits to how far you reasonably travel in a single fold. Frontier and Delta suggest that by 2060 that practical limit on distance for a single fold jump is somewhere in the vicinity of 800-1,000 light years with adequate prep time. We see the space equivalent of container ships for the first time in the Macross Delta TV series as they transport things like perishable foods over interstellar distances, and we know from Macross Frontier that major instellar shipping firms make colossal amounts of money shipping goods across massive interstellar distances but spend enough time doing so that they have to have their own private security forces to safeguard shipments. When the cost of shipping goods in from elsewhere is too high - be it in time, money, or both - the option exists for emigrant governments or private companies to license whatever the product is from its original creator and manufacture it locally. When it comes to Variable Fighters and other military hardware, what we see is a mixture of the approaches that've been taken on this topic in the real world: Export variants built in one locale and shipped to another for service, often stripped of proprietary systems that the developing government doesn't want the purchasing government to have. The F-4 Phantom did a roaring trade in export variants in the 60's and 70's. The Macross universe's main example is the VF-19P Zola Patrol model and presumably the VF-5000G and T-G versions also used by the Zola Patrol. Build-under-license variants where the purchasing government has the manufacturing capability but for whatever reason doesn't want to go to the trouble of designing its own aircraft. The purchasing government buys a license to locally produce an existing design developed by another government. Some aspects of the design might be omitted if they involve proprietary technologies subject to security restrictions. Japan's Mitsubishi F-2 is a build-under-license version of the US's General Dynamics F-16. The Macross universe's main examples here would be the VF-171 Nightmare Plus and the VF-19EF Caliburn. Use an existing concept design and previously developed technology in an original development. The purchasing government doesn't want to do all the legwork on their own and want to sell the finished product in export themselves, so they use a mixture of original and "off the shelf" parts in an original design loosely based on a previously shared concept. Japan's Mitsubishi F-X/F-3 is the real world example. The Macross universe's examples would be the VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31, with the VF-31 being a direct reference to the F-3. It helps a bit in this regard that many of the major corporations involved have branch offices in different New UN Government member nations, in much the same way that various parts suppliers in the auto and aircraft industries have branch offices in different countries where they sell to local OEMs. (For instance, how Japan's Sumitomo Electric Networks and Aisin, as well as Germany's ZF, have US branches in the Detroit area to serve the needs of the "Big 3".) As far as intellectual property rights go, Shoji Kawamori has in the past compared the current shape of the New UN Government to the European Union. Presumably this means that there are both national and central registries for things like copyrights and trademarks, and that those marks are respected and enforceable internationally under treaty and supranational law the way they are today. Emigrant fleets are, by nature, mobile and this can pose problems for shipping to/from one... so there is a certain incentive to manufacture locally under license. The New UN Government gives emigrant governments quite a lot of latitude in deciding how to arm their local defense forces. Each emigrant fleet or planet's economic situation plays a big role in how they decide to go about arming their forces. Developing a new fighter is extraordinarily expensive and it requires quite a lot of technical expertise. Consequently, very few emigrant governments have the resources to do so. Typically only the ones that have the backing of one of the megacorporations and a major defense contractor like Macross Frontier (Bilra Transport, Shinsei, and LAI), Macross Galaxy (its parent company General Galaxy), Uroboros (Bilra Transport again), and the Brisingr Alliance (twenty planetary governments and regional branches of four defense contractors including Shinsei and LAI). Even then, that's a huge capital investment those governments can't make casually or on a regular basis so they're dependent on the expectation of selling those models in export sales to recoup costs and can't develop new models at will... so export model sales and buying licenses to build existing models locally are the norm. The lifespan of a VF, like that of a normal fighter, is finite... and older generations of VF can only be upgraded so much to keep them viable. As we've seen a few times, upgrading VFs to/past their design's limits can adversely impact their usability and cause them to damage or even destroy themselves. Macross the Ride's VF-1X++ Hakuna Aoba Special was the first really blunt example of this, being a Special Forces VF-1X++ that its (retired) pilot had subsequently upgraded with engines and rocket boosters that far exceeded its aerodynamic design limits... turning it into an unreliable mess that frequently cost its pilot victory in races because it could barely be controlled at all. Macross the Ride's VF-9E was another, which had engine issues that would cause the airframe to effectively self-destruct. There's a more subdued example in Macross Frontier with the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX, a VF-171 upgraded with EX-Gear and detuned VF-19 engines that suffered handling issues as a result of the rest of the aircraft struggling to keep up with its more powerful engines. Macross Delta offers us two separate examples... the VF-31 Siegfried and VF-31AX Kairos Plus. The Siegfried was a customized VF-31A with its more powerful engines and fold wave system pushing its airframe past its structural limit to the point that it could damage itself with its post-upgrade performance as was often the case with Hayate's VF-31J. The VF-31AX was a further hacked-together upgrade of the Siegfried that was so ill-equipped to handle its own performance that all five VF-31AX Kairos Plus units were beyond repair after only a single engagement and had to be scrapped (per Master File). With issues like that from upgrades, most emigrant governments can generally be counted upon to adopt new generations of fighter as the resources to do so become available and the need presents itself.

Not that weird, IMO. The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett have done a lot to let Boba Fett escape his Original Trilogy standing as a glorified extra and a flat character, but that doesn't mean they made him a likeable or interesting character. He spends his time in The Mandalorian mainly being a gruff, taciturn mook in a mask who helps Mando bust heads and that's all. In his own series, Boba Fett borders on Idiot Hero territory with his near-continuous displays of breathtaking idiocy and naivete. The overwhelming majority of his problems in The Book of Boba Fett are self-created... a product of his inexplicable ignorance of how being a crime lord works, his stubborn refusal to act as a crime lord should, and a determined and consistent rejection of the advice of his own subordinates and advisors. It's nearly impossible to get invested in his struggle because he wouldn't be struggling if he would just listen to others. Din Djarin, on the other hand, is a much more interesting character because his problems are chiefly external and a catalyst for his own growth. He listens, thinks constructively, and finds ways to work around or through his problems.

Just got to the part of my The Book of Boba Fett viewing where the series completely forgets it's not The Mandalorian for an entire episode. I think that kind of says all that needs to be said about that series... They had to bring in Mando to save it from itself.

Back in the early 2000s, several Macross featurettes in various model hobby magazines toyed with the idea of a fighter-bomber variant of the VF-22 inspired by Lockheed Martin's then-recently revealed "FB-22" fighter-bomber concept based on their F-22 Raptor fighter. The idea might've gained official traction had the FB-22 proposal in the real world not been quickly rejected as basically unnecessary... anything it could do, a dedicated bomber could do better.

Only if you're concerned with carrying the absolute maximum amount of ordnance they can carry and still fly. Both the YF-19 and YF-21 were designed to be able to carry enough weaponry for normal operations internally in order to preserve their stealthiness. Hanging bombs, missiles, or fuel tanks on the outside of the aircraft greatly degrades passive stealth performance. Keeping the missiles and bombs in internal bays prevents that degradation and minimizes the burden on the Valkyrie's extremely energy-hungry active stealth system as a result. The YF-21 has even less margin than the YF-19 does, since it's larger and therefore puts a greater burden on the active stealth system already and Master File suggests the BCS's subsystems draw an enormous amount of power too.

From this, I can only assume that the infamous Bothan Spies(TM) are named things like "Suun TuDiye" and "Iym DuMed".

Twice over... wasn't it Luke's surname in the early drafts of A New Hope?

Having a biology-inspired design aesthetic is not the same thing as having actual organic technology. The TV version Zentradi just have a biology-inspired design aesthetic, their technology's inorganic. The movie version Zentradi do incorporate biotechnology into their ships and mecha (esp. in control systems), but they're still constructed in factories rather than grown. Exactly how that biotechnology is mass produced is not established, but given that those automated factories are in space and the equipment they're building is intended to operate in space without maintenance effectively indefinitely... odds are that it's pretty well hardened against radiation through the Protoculture's mastery of the material and genetic sciences.

... looking at Dave Filoni's filmography, it really is surprising if people didn't foresee that an avid pre-Disney Star Wars fan and creator being involved wouldn't result in him trying to tie his work under Disney back to his pre-Disney work. Though I guess this did predate Disney's authorial saving throw attempt to start "rescuing" material from the old Expanded Universe after they failed to stick the landing with the sequel trilogy and Solo: a Star Wars Story. As someone who hasn't seen ANY of the cartoons, up to at least the middle of The Book of Boba Fett nothing has really given me the feeling that the cartoons are required... more like an easter egg than a course prerequisite. The few references that I assume are to the events of those cartoons are so minor that I could get the gist of what happened just from what's said in The Mandalorian. I haven't gotten to... is his name really "Cad Bane"? That's the best kind of awful naming sense. 🤣 That's like naming a pair of knife fetishists "Shanklin" and "Slashley".

It hasn't been described as an issue that I'm aware... The YF-21's airframe is somewhat larger than that of the YF-19 because of its unconventional transformation but it was engineered to prioritize passive stealth performance above almost all other considerations. It can take the same standard weapons pallets the YF-19 can, and its internal bays are roomy enough to accommodate even larger weaponry like the latest model thermonuclear reaction missile as seen in Macross 7. Variable Fighter Master File does depict provisions for conformal and pylon mountings of additional weaponry on the YF-21/VF-22, but it's primarily body mountings instead of using underwing pylons. EDIT: The chart does show the option to attach pylons, though because the wings fold there are relatively few options for those stations.

IMO, a more likely explanation is that the idea propigated while Han was on display in Jabba's palace. By nature of his chosen vocation, Jabba the Hutt was naturally inclined to do a fair amount of business with bounty hunters and kept at least one (and more likely several) of them on retainer as hired muscle. Every one of them would have known that Fett collected the bounty on Han Solo and had an opportunity to see the carbonite slab because Jabba had it mounted on the wall of his audience chamber. That would probably have been enough for most bounty hunters to put two and two together and end up spreading the idea when they talked shop with other bounty hunters. (Though I do find the idea of some PR flack trying to convince Lord-freaking-Vader to do PV spots for a portable carbon freeze system marketed to bounty hunters absolutely hilarious. Doubly so since Rogue One revealed he's not above a villainous pun, and Vader being Anakin and therefore a massive drama queen he'd be as hammy as possible in something like that.)

Removing the conventional horizontal stabilizers from the design reduces drag on the airframe. The loss of the accompanying control surfaces (the elevators) is compensated for by angling the vertical stabilizers into so their control surfaces can serve as both the rudders and elevators ("ruddervators") and the use of thrust vectoring nozzles for pitch and roll control. It is drawn with a conventional muzzle flash... see episode two c.14:40.

To be honest, I didn't find anything wrong with Mando having a carbon freeze system on his ship. Keeping a live prisoner is a nontrivial risk for a bounty hunter. They have to be fed, watered, have access to sanitary facilities, etc., which all costs money. Many prisoners facing the no doubt harsh punishments from those who posted the bounty on them would be inclined to attempt to escape from confinement and attack the bounty hunter, hijack the ship, or sabotage the ship if they have accomplices who might rescue them. Carbon freezing prisoners neatly evades most of those issues, since the prisoners in cryogenic hibernation are incapable of escaping on their own or engaging in self-harm, don't consume food or water, and don't produce waste. That way the prisoner can be delivered alive and shenanigans-free even if the process is acutely unpleasant for the prisoner. They also keep for a long time, so a bounty hunter freezing their quarrey wouldn't necessarily have to take one job at a time. It's a bit of accidental genius, IMO... since it really makes for an effective way to demonstrate why it's so insane that people treat Din and Boba with such a cavalier attitude. There's nobody policing the bounty hunters and no legal safety net preventing them from employing the most incredible violence to secure the bounty head. They aren't some dumb hick bail bondsman cosplaying a member of the Village People who'll go to jail himself if he gets rough... these are heavily armed career killers whose only incentive to keep you alive is that you're worth more money that way, and for their purposes "alive" doesn't necessarily mean unharmed. Never mind that they have zero incentive to keep alive anyone who's dumb enough to get between them and their prize.

To be fair, the site did and still does have the general rule "No Robotech"... and it wasn't exactly unjustified for Macross fans to take a dim view of supporting a company that was, at the time, actively working to keep legitimate Macross releases out of western hands. 🙄 With the legal dispute having effectively ended in a way that makes the distinction between the Japanese and western-licensed Macross toys academic, I don't see any reason to object to having those in the same area. I think it would be better to keep content from unrelated properties like MOSPEADA separate however.

I'm not much of a toy collector, but isn't the reason for the seemingly incongruous approach is that it predates the settling of Big West and Harmony Gold's rights dispute by like 20 years? Y'know, back when there was an abundant wellspring of ill will towards Harmony Gold over their Macross licensing embargo? Standards have just gradually relaxed over the years as various methods to circumvent the problem emerged and Robotech's toy line began producing products other than copies of official Macross goods. Now that both parties have buried the hatchet and Big West has partial control over Robotech, the reasons to make a firm distinction are fewer and farther between.

Hrm... ordered my copy of the Artistry of the First Macross book (Deculture Ed.) from CD Japan and it arrived today in pristine condition via FedEx. CD Japan seems to be pretty paranoid about shippers, since they packed it in a plastic sleeve inside of a bubble pack bag inside of a cardboard box padded with packing paper.

I could buy that, given how Fett is treated in The Book of Boba Fett. That's not even close to what was being talked about, though. "Getting into trouble" is expected, Mando's a bounty hunter. The problem is that The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett both write expositional checks the story can't cash. Everywhere Din goes in The Mandalorian, he's preceded by the Mandalorian reputation for stone cold badassery. He's actively trading on it anytime he goes somewhere new and every time one of his former employers appears they act as though he has absolutely lived up to that reputation in their past and present dealings. Yet this amazing reputation that allegedly inspires fear and awe gives absolutely nobody pause for thought in the story. It'd be one thing for experienced bounty hunters to think they could take him despite the reputation with planning, teamwork, and numbers like in the third episode... but most of the time he's assailed by people who explicitly know that reputation and still act like he's just some idiot tourist and not supposedly a member of a feared warrior race wearing a fortune in exotic armor and weaponry. There's precious little reality in "Reality TV"... but there are also very practical reasons that "Dog the Bounty Hunter" isn't taken seriously. Namely, that "bounty hunting" is not legal everywhere, that "bounty hunters" have no legal authority or standing to speak of in some jurasdictions, they generally can't legally detain or question anyone, their use of force is heavily restricted or outright prohibited depending on location, they're required to carry various insurances to cover damages they may cause, and they can quite easily end up in jail themselves on charges of kidnapping, assault, etc.. "Dog" himself was arrested and charged with felony kidnapping in 2003 while apprehending a bounty head in Mexico. He skipped bail himself and fled back to the US, where he was arrested for extradition in 2006. He only avoided extradition because the statute of limitations of the charges expired. That seems to be very different to bounty hunting in Star Wars, where the distinction between "bounty hunter" and "assassin" seems to be either purely academic or whether one belongs to the trade association. If Mando is any indication, there don't seem to be any real restrictions on how much force they can use or against whom... up to and including lethal force against unrelated persons. There also don't appear to be any restrictions on how a bounty head may be restrained, given that Mando uses methods that can cause lasting physical harm like carbon freezing. Local governments seem to be either disinterested in, or unable to, regulate or restrain bounty hunter activity. Even if we were to assume that the galaxy looks at the Mandalorians as gung-ho yeehaw lunatics despite the series waxing lyrical about how they're seen as the deadliest warriors around, a Mando bounty hunter is still a gung-ho yeehaw lunatic whose only disincentive to murder people at will with his extensive collection of personal weaponry is that, outside of the occasional "alive only" warrant, proof of decease doesn't pay out as much as delivering a living prisoner. That's still something most people would be supremely cautious about, IMO. It's the same with Boba Fett in The Book of Boba Fett. Just five years ago, he was the most feared enforcer for the most feared crime boss on Tatooine. He was good enough at bounty hunting (murder) that he was on Darth Vader's short list of The Best of the Best in his field. Days or at most a few weeks earlier, he waltzed into the palace of Tatooine's leading crime lord, murdered him and his retainers with impunity, and announced he was now In Charge. Everyone knows who he is, but the only one who seems to be even the slightest bit afraid of this legendary contract killer turned crime lord is the Mos Espa mayor's secretary... and only then when there is the imminent threat of violence. The writers clearly want these characters to be carried by their reputations for supreme badassery, but the story has absolutely eveyone treat them like jobbers of the lowest order. That's a possibility... though one could also look at the same situation and easily conclude that the Mandalorians are as dangerous as advertised because the Empire felt that even Mandalorian civilians were enough of a threat to justify destroying their planet, and that cornered with nothing left to lose the Mandalorians would be even more dangerous than they were when they were just elite mercenaries.

OK, help me out here... Based on the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, the Mandalorian people are supposedly widely reputed to be elite warriors of the highest caliber, right? And despite his profoundly uninspiring performance in the original trilogy, Boba Fett is supposed to have been one of the most elite and feared bounty hunters that the galaxy had, right? He had enough street cred to be on Darth Vader's short list of bounty hunters in Empire Strikes Back and to be Jabba's favorite bounty hunter in Return of the Jedi. If they have these reputations for elite badassery, why does seemingly nobody in The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett take either Din Djarin or Boba Fett seriously? It was odd enough in The Mandalorian that everyone from other bounty hunters to information brokers and random fishermen was willing to take a whack at Din Djarin despite the exposition's assertion that Mandalorians are feared and respected, but now that I know a bit more about the mythos The Book of Boba Fett might as well be be titled The Disrespect is Real. It's weird that Boba Fett would suddenly pivot to wanting to be a crime boss and he sure as heck doesn't seem to know HOW to do crime boss things despite having been a member of Jabba's retinue as far back as A New Hope, but everyone from rival crime bosses to juvenile delinquents and random shop owners seems quite comfortable sassing, ignoring, and even actively provoking a guy who was a top bounty hunter known for his viciousness just a few years ago and his bloodthirsty assassin Girl Friday. I'm struggling to reconcile the reputational claims the shows make vs. how the characters are actually treated. Surely everyone in the galaxy can't have THAT much of a death wish, right?

Not s'much, no... the reason I find the Jedi so boring is present in the original, prequel, and sequel trilogies. Namely, their preoccupation with destiny. The adventures of regular joes like Din Djarin and Cassian Andor and even Han Solo as they make their own way in the galaxy are a lot more fun and interesting to me than any of what the Jedi get up to. The stakes are generally lower, which means the characters can screw up and learn without it being The End of The World as We Know It, but also there's none of that noise about how such-and-such an outcome is their Destiny. It's no fun to watch a character march in lockstep towards a fate that's preordained in-story because it robs the character of all their agency. They might have a little leeway in how they get from Point A to Point B, but going off the rails is Not An Option for them. The Jedi also all suffer from a real bad case of Main Character Syndrome, but that's a correctable writing issue whereas the Force steering its users towards an ultimate confrontation is more a thematic one. It doesn't help that the force-wielding side of Star Wars exists as moral absolutes... you can either be a Saint or Eat Babies, no middle ground. The normal people of the galaxy who aren't being railroaded by the Force get to have shades of gray, and that makes the much more believable and interesting characters who can go on much more complex and compelling stories with themes beyond simply "Good vs Evil". The Mandalorian's not the best example, but a pretty damned good one, of a story that can go to places the Jedi-centric stories can't.

Messily and violently dismembering a bunch of battle droids in a Darth Vader-esque rampage might make for an impressive action scene, but is that really "growth" for a Jedi? I mean, aren't they supposed to be calm and in control? Really, I think I hit on it earlier... this scene is never gonna work for me because, as a casual, I'm not that invested in Luke Skywalker. (Well, that and I stand by what I said over on the Andor topic about how IMO the Jedi are the least interesting part of Star Wars because they're just puppets of fate marching toward a preordained destiny.) Even with my very limited experience with the Star Wars expanded universe, that sounds like a very bad idea to me. The sequel trilogy isn't great cinema, but then neither was the prequel trilogy, and I'd take either over the EU-style bad fanfic nonsense of Solo: a Star Wars Story. And Solo: a Star Wars Story, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Last Jedi are the best argument anyone could hope for in terms of reasons to leave the original trilogy characters well enough alone. Boba Fett's involvement in The Mandalorian works mainly because he's a flat character in the movies and had no prior character development to derail. The respected (acting) Senator for Naboo, Jar-Jar Binks? I wonder how long it'll be before they're digging deep enough in the nostalgia mines to unearth him again.

I'm not sure we really needed to see Luke tear through a collection of battle droids to establish his Jedi street cred. Vader, on the other hand... after the prequel trilogy, that poor guy needed a moment of being genuinely scary to remind audiences WHY he was feared. Given that Disney is following the old EU down the "Luke wasn't really the last of the Jedi c.Return of the Jedi" slippery slope... it almost feels like a trick question. Jar-Jar Binks isn't in this one, though! (Kidding!)

It's a completely separate craft from the Quel Quallie theater scout, but yeah that's what I was referring to as a purpose-built attack unit. It's called just "Heavy Attack Craft". It's actually a bit smaller than the Quel Quallie and has a two-man crew instead of three, but it also punches WAY above its weight class since its primary armament is a guided focusing beam cannon. In short, this is an aircraft built around the kind of long-range particle beam cannon that would ordinarily be mounted on the gun turrets of a Zentradi capital ship. Yes, this is a naval cannon with wings and an AA gun for self-defense.

The Legendary Hero is Dead isn't bad... could be better. The story's premise would be more interesting if handled differently. Namely, that a standard fantasy anime Idiot Hero is accidentally slain when he blunders into an anti-monster pitfall trap on a random farmer's property and his body is reanimated by a necromancer using the soul of the farmer in question, who has to impersonate the hero on his mission to save the world. The series is pretty fanservice-heavy, but once it gets about halfway into the season it finally starts dropping the hero's extremely specific obsession with stockings it becomes a lot more tolerable. If it weren't so devoted to its fanservice, it'd probably be a lot more interesting than it is since the protagonist has to think his way around problems instead of relying on the brute force of the Chosen One's overwhelming power and hide the fact that he doesn't even have enough magic to properly maintain his undead body.