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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Sitting down to a title from a couple years back... Ghost in the Shell: Arise: the New Movie. It's really irritating how Arise was done. A four part OVA, then the recut as a TV series with two extra episodes, then the movie. It's like the studio was doing everything it could to NOT tell a complete story.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Palladium's management is super old fashioned... I'd recommend reaching out to them by phone not email or a website contact page. The only way I was ever able to get ahold of them when I was looking for permission to use some of their art for review purposes years back was by phone.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Putting aside what feels like an ad hominem, Robotech's own history is the best argument that it had very little impact at all. By ratings, the Robotech TV series was an unremarkable middle-of-the-pack performer in the middle of a glut of merchandise-driven cartoons. Their competition is a who's who of the most memorable kid's shows of the mid-80's: Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Jem, Ghostbusters, G-Force, Johnny Quest, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so on. Its accompanying toy line from Matchbox was such an embarrassing failure that Matchbox abandoned the license after just two years. Its animated feature film ended up pulled from the release schedule in its primary market and quietly abandoned. Its attempt at an original TV series died in early production. The first few attempts at home video were a mess, and by the time it landed at Macek's own Streamline Pictures in the 90's the very limited praise from the hobby press was mainly for including the non-Robotech versions of the three original shows. You have to be remembered to have an impact, and Robotech was only really remembered by its small fanbase and the even-more-niche-at-the-time anime hobbyist community, with the latter group having little nice to say about it. Pop culture references to it are vanishingly rare across nearly forty years, its merchandise is nonexistent on store shelves, and three separate attempts at a revival have failed due to lack of interest: Robotech 3000, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, and Robotech Academy. Since this is a comics thread, consider that the actually-popular and impactful titles from the same period that landed comics were picked up by the major publishers like Marvel and DC. Who picked up the Robotech license? Only the struggling, small-time independent publishers who were looking for a licensed property with a built-in audience to boost their flagging circulation were interested in Robotech. If Robotech were really so impactful, its first-ever comic book licensee at the apex of the show's popularity would not have been an indie publisher plagued by disputes over the ownership of its flagship original properties and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to mismanagement. Nor would a second licensee have been an independent publisher so small it was consolidated out of existence along with half a dozen others by the same financial backer, nor a third and fourth so inept they would have their licenses revoked for incompetence. This site's existence doesn't mean much in terms of Robotech's impact. Sure, the oldest members here saw Robotech in '85 and that was their introduction to Macross... but you forget that there were plenty of other, later opportunities for people to be introduced to it as well like that Hong Kong dub of DYRL?, Macross II and Macross Plus in the early 90's, and the growth of the internet fansub community in the late 90's and early 2000s. This site, or a site very much like it, would still exist without Robotech. Most of us would be there. Robotech's supposed influence is massively oversold by Harmony Gold for marketing reasons. You garner a lot more interest in their position by saying your show was things like "genre-defining", "foundational", or "a breakthrough" than you do with a more honest appraisal like "commercially unsuccessful", "largely forgotten", and "often confused with a top brand of pool-cleaning apparatus, a Japanese brand of sex toy, and/or a derisive term for giant robot action movies". (And for the record, I've got a good while yet before I have to worry about 40... never mind 50. 😉)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It didn't make much of an impact in the US either. Even though the US was its home market, Robotech was just another kid's show with mediocre ratings and an unsuccessful toy line that was forgotten by almost everyone within a year or so of going off the air. It probably would have been forgotten almost entirely outside of its tiny cult following if not for the impact Harmony Gold's threats of litigation (some justified, some not) had on other properties like BattleTech/MechWarrior, Transformers, and Macross. That's why the Robotech comic license skipped the industry leaders and went directly to the smaller independent publishers. It just didn't have the brand recognition to be picked up by a major publisher. The RPG license landed at Palladium Books for similar reasons. The one market where Robotech somehow made a lasting impact was South America, which is odd given how much of its media was developed for a North American audience.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That's a fair description of any of the Gundam Build shows. I guess Meta just makes it slightly more obvious that you're watching a 24 minute commercial for MSV Gunpla.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    As an engineer, I can honestly say that exploding violently has always been an unintended and undesirable operating mode for any of the propulsion and power systems I have worked on. This doesn't stop the explosions from happening, it just means we get upset and have to add notes to the FMEA when they do.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Ironically, thanks to TAS Star Trek kind of already has its own equivalent of the Protoculture in the Slavers from Niven's Known Space. Or the Precursors from TNG. Though the Precursors didn't really do anything overtly stupid, they just died out before the species they created evolved to sentience. Humans in Macross basically did exactly the same thing the aliens in the pilot episode of Strange New Worlds did... "Hmmm... FTL power system. What if we made this into a huge bomb?" Humanity discovered an alien technology for limitless clean power and the first thing they did was make it into an unreasonably powerful bomb.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    While that's a reasonably sound point, it's not the one I was making. The Robotech setting and story only works because it can lean on the much stronger writing in Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA. Take it outside the confines of that firm Japanese OSM foundation and try to build on the parts of the story that are uniquely Robotech and the whole thing goes to sh*t basically immediately. Why? Because those are the weakest parts of the story. The parts that are positively riddled with inconsistencies, shot through with plot holes, nonsensical if you think about it even a little, painfully dated and cliche, or just plain bad writing. Barring a brief moment early in the development of Sentinels, Robotech has never had access to great or even good writers. If the writers have to build on that nonsense as the foundation of their story, well... garbage in, garbage out. That's why HG decided to burn the whole thing down and start over. So they could minimize the extent to which they built on that poor foundation. They made a strong start in partnership with Wildstorm. Their main problem from that point forward was that they couldn't afford to hire actual writers with their pittance of a budget, so what they ended up with for their new series pilot was a fanfic-tier script that takes entirely too much from the then-recent Battlestar Galactica remake and a second and third act outline that reads like a mockbuster version of Do You Remember Love?. Titan Comics... I'm not convinced that wasn't a pisstake for its entire run. If it wasn't, then it devolved into one with amazing swiftness. Its entire final story arc and inclusion of references to previous comics and other failed Robotech properties was one massive Take That! aimed at Robotech as a whole. The end is almost a Neon Genesis Evangelion-level deconstruction of Robotech as a whole, with each failed property presented as yet another iteration of a neverending cycle of miserable failure from which nothing is learned and nothing is gained because the same mistakes are made every time. The one and only way out? Abandoning slavish devotion to Robotech's failed concepts and ideas and striking out in a different direction. It probably would still be running if not for the licensing handover to Funimation Crunchyroll and the agreement with Big West. That's called "fanservice"... which is all this new comic line is. They've given up, now that they have to compete against Macross in the west they're just focused on publishing the feel-good stuff for the remaining fans because the alternative is trying to compete against Macross on merit... an unwinnable fight.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It's not completely nonsense, it's just so close to it as to make no odds. Clone and Mordecai are two of the titles I point to when I need to demonstrate why Robotech comics only ever retread old ground... because when you ask Robotech licensees for original content, that is the kind of garbage you get. (At least, until Titan Comics proved you could screw that up too...)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, good old Academy Comics... the first Robotech licensee to lose the license due to being just plain incompetent. But not the last.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Wrong franchise for that in-joke... but the level of scientific irresponsibility's about the same.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Robotech never had a very large following, but the fans it did have were pretty starved for content after the series ended. With no new animation coming after Robotech: the Movie's failed its North American test run and Macek mismanaged Robotech II: the Sentinels into an early and shallow grave, a fair number of its fans moved on but the (awful) novelization of the Robotech TV series and the Robotech comics filled the void for those who remained. Because Robotech was a relatively obscure property, the comic book publishers willing to pay for a license were inevitably the small independent publishers that were frequently struggling to survive. The inherent instability of the publishers and the quality issues caused by their limited resources combined with the inevitable diminshing returns that any long-running property would experience to create a decade-long gradual decline in quality from its mediocre beginning that was puncutated by cancellations and sharp drops in quality whenever the license changed hands. It's not that people were starved for anime content... it's more than Robotech fans were starved for Robotech content, and they drifted away from the franchise gradually as the quality of the new material got worse. The Robotech fans around now are the ones who either stuck with it to the bitter end or rediscovered the franchise during its short-lived renaissance in the early 2000s. These small publishers didn't need enormous circulation to turn a profit, so the then tens-of-thousands of Robotech fans were enough to get by. For their part, Harmony Gold was probably just trying to get some value out of the licenses they'd paid quite a bit of money for after attempts to continue animated Robotech had fallen through in '86 and '87. The heyday of Robotech comics was '88-'98, and their terminal decline was bookended by the next Robotech animated failure: Robotech 3000. That was when they decided to burn the whole mess down and start over, and the questionable legal advice they got while doing so was what led to their falling out with Macross's owners and attempts to stop Macross licensing starting in '01. That was the point when Harmony Gold's maintenance of Robotech became about having something out so they could demonstrate use in order to hang onto their Macross trademarks.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Every time someone starts dumping images from old Robotech comics I feel like we're watching some clerk of the court lay out the prosecution's exhibits at the comic industry's equivalent of the Hague.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Just goes to show how much more responsible the Earth UN Government was. They built an irresponsibly gigantic gun instead. EDIT: It is in fact a completely different UN Government also in Macross that later built the irresponsibly gigantic bomb and then stuck like eight of them on one ship.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur?wprov=sfla1 Would you be horrified to know we tried to do this in real life? Because we did.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    On a basic level. They're meant for different purposes, so that's about as far as the descriptions actually go. It could be said that the weapons described are all more "exotic" options rather than the usual multipurpose missiles of various sizes. For instance, the AOM-8S is described as a two-stage air-launched anti-orbital interception missile. It's essentially an outlandishly huge rocket-propelled bullet with an inert (non-explosive) heavy metal kinetic warhead that's meant to be launched by a Valkyrie in a planetary atmosphere to strike enemies in orbit. The first stage is used to get it into space from the firing Valkyrie's present altitude, and the second is used for terminal acceleration to turn that large heavy chunk of metal into a lethally fast spear. The CHM-2 is a modified version of the SACHM-1 high-speed surface-to-air missile that has been reworked for use as an air-to-air missile. It's square because the SACHM-1 was designed for an armored box launcher platform. Its effectiveness is criticized because its initial acceleration after launch is slow. The AGM-118 and AGM-112 are, as their real world-inspired designations would suggest, primarily (but not exclusively) air-to-ground missile occasionally also used as an anti-warship missile. From its description, it's basically an aircraft launched cruise missile designed for stealth. The AGM-118 uses an explosive warhead, while the AGM-122 is a larger model following the same basic design that instead is more akin to the AOM-8S in that it carries a payload of inert armor-penetrating tungsten rods that it's designed to accelerate to ludicrous speeds. The RMS-5 needs no real explanation, it's a fighter-launched thermonuclear reaction warhead. The ALP-125 is similar in concept to the SPP-8 and LPP-12 in the VF-19 book... which is to say, it's a rocket-propelled gun. Where the SPP-8 was basically a missile built to chase enemies and spray them with coilgun-launched buckshot and the LPP-12 is the same in principle but uses a chemical laser, the ALP-125 is a more aggressive version that uses a miniaturized explosive based on reaction warhead technology to produce a single incredibly powerful laser blast that also results in the destruction of the missile in a substantial explosion. It could be thought of as a single-use missile-carried version of a strike pack's beam cannon in terms of firepower and is implied to be less than safe to use due to the literally explosive nature of its laser excitation. The ASM-91 is a stealth-focused anti-ship missile that's a relative of, and shares some parts with, the HMM-111CS high-maneuverability general-purpose missile. It's unusual as anti-ship missiles go in that it's designed to take a conventional explosive warhead instead of a thermonuclear reaction warhead, being intended for precision strikes against key systems like communications and air defenses rather than simply obliterating the enemy ship through thermonuclear brute force.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Tearmoon Empire has an interesting premise oddly reminiscent of the work of Kotaro Uchikoshi (Zero Escape series) and Tappei Nagatsuki (Re:Zero). In a nondescript medieval fantasy setting, the Tearmoon Empire is overthrown by a populist revolt similar to the French Revolution due to the corruption and excesses of its ruling noble class and 20 year old First Princess Mia Luna Tearmoon is publicly executed by guillotine after three years of imprisonment for her crimes. For reasons unknown, when she dies her consciousness travels back in time eight years to inhabit the body of her twelve year old self. With the knowledge from her future self's diary that somehow also traveled through time, she sets out to use her future knowledge to change her ways and prevent her future death by preventing the collapse of her nation. In that sense, it's very reminiscent of the first and third parts of the Uchikoshi's Zero Escape trilogy (999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Zero Time Dilemma) wherein the protagonist(s) are stuck in a sort of demise-induced time loop in which their consciousness travels back in time to inhabit their past self as they struggle to manipulate events to prevent their demise and/or a larger-scale calamity.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Feeling a bit under the weather and binging the current season's offerings today... The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch is, thus far, a relatively harmless and cutesy slice-of-life comedy about a witch who adopts and raises a baby she finds abandoned in the woods one day. The show's comedy comes from a mixture of "the struggles of a single parent in a fantasy world" and the adopted daughter's overprotective streak when it comes to her mother. It's not great, but it's lighthearted and fun enough that I've had no trouble sticking with it through four episodes so far.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Statistically speaking there's gotta be something good coming out this season... There's Part II of Birdie Wing - Girls Golf Story, which was a drug trip and a half in a world where golf is such serious business that there's a massive underworld based largely if not entirely upon gambling on it. OVERTAKE! is also supposed to be pretty interesting, it's another unconventional sports anime about Formula One racing. Goblin Slayer II is a lost cause. I know, I've read the light novel far in advance of what's being adapted. As amusing as "Medieval Batman preptime meme" was, the story's got no real direction after Water Town and it loses a certain je ne sais quoi without the anime acknowledging the light novel's particular conceit that the world is literally a tabletop game and Goblin Slayer a particularly uncooperative character who occasionally manages to literally interfere with the game itself. Spy x Family II has a lot of promise... that one was solid gold last season. I've got hopes, however limited, for The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch and Tearmoon Empire. I've heard some mixed reviews of Rurouni Kenshin's remake series... apparently it's got much higher production values, but they've edited the story to grim it up quite a bit with the removal of a lot of its comedy.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the new season's off to a meh start... Jujutsu Kaisen continues its headlong march into "Too Bleak, Stopped Caring" territory with a story arc that seems to exist for the sole purpose of having the villains massacre as many civilians as they can. It really feels like it's run out of things to show and is resorting to Gantz-style gore porn in an attempt to seem "edgy" and "mature". This series is a lot more fun when it's just Yuji and his classmates screwing around and loses a lot of what makes it fun and interesting when it gets into its action sequences. The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent got a second season this season, and it's pretty unremarkable just like the first one. It's not a bad series by any means, but it's clearly still taking the lion's share of its inspiration from Miya Kazuki's Ascendance of a Bookworm but without the sheer scale of that story's vision and worldbuilding. It follows many of the same plot beats, but because Sei seems to be the only character the story has any interest in developing she's left to trail an ever-increasing number of shallow stock prettyboys right out of any fantasy-themed otome game in her wake as she moves through her story. The story could be interesting if it made more of an effort to establish the other main characters a bit and get more into the stakes of her story, but it doesn't... so it's just Sei and like half a dozen palate swaps of the same generic bishounen love interest. I'm about to start I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness... which seems like it'll be pretty dull. It seems like the longer a title is these days, the more form-letter its plot becomes. EDIT: It's pretty tedious. A self-professed Demon Lord living in a house out in the woods tries to teach an extreme doormat girl who's been framed for treason by her fiance as an excuse to dump her some healthy comping mechanisms, through his extremely hammy methods.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Hey, someone rescued it... even odder, Netflix rescued it. The same Netflix that AGGRESSIVELY quit NuTrek because of Discovery. Will wonders never cease?
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Third book in the Dark Imperium series. Despite being an enormous Hope Spot for the Imperium as a whole, Guilliman spends a LOT of his post-resurrection time jobbing for Traitor Primarchs. He's actually died TWICE so far. The Lion, for his part, has gotten off comparatively lightly... introducing Angron to the Emperor's shield, face first, and generally having just woken up from an extraordinarily long powernap.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much my reaction as well... Gundam SEED was a breakout hit that pulled some of the highest viewership numbers and merchandise sales in the franchise's history, rivaling the likes of Zeta Gundam, and I've read about how the studio was hoping the Cosmic Era could become a second Universal Century and hastily greenlit a sequel to capitalize on it. That said, I'd thought the relative failure of Gundam SEED Destiny had sunk those ambitions and that what followed was just to tie off the bloody stump left by Destiny's failure to stick the landing. A movie on top of that uninspiring ending just feels like closing the barn door after the cow's already in someone's burger.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, I'm sure there are more customers than just the Macross 5 fleet. It's just not particularly likely that those other emigrant governments, central NUNS fleets, and possibly private military companies had a large enough Zentradi population among their numbers for the preferences of the Zentradi to be relevant in selecting their equipment is another matter entirely... We've never even seen a VA-14, for that matter. Only the original "Spiritia Dreaming" VF-14 and the Macross M3 version... with many fans mistaking the former for a VA-14. An issue not helped by the Spiritia Dreaming VF-14 being an enhanced armament type. Probably not very... it's a highly specialized design, and each version of it is basically a one-appearance wonder. The original Variable Glaug and its (New) UN Forces miclone-suitable version only appear in Macross M3, the unmanned Neo Glaug only shows up in Macross Plus: Game Edition, and the manned Neo Glaug bis has a whopping two appearances: Macross the Ride and the novelization of the Macross Frontier TV series. Basically the one confirmed operator outside of the Special Forces are the Zentradi Marines, who are also a smaller group. It's possible the D-type is a locally-developed variant. We know those are a thing as early as the 2040s.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    There is some commentary here and there in publications like Great Mechanics G and the series artbooks. I'd assume a definitive discussion probably exists in the liner notes and extra features for the Macross Delta TV series and movies. Yeah... it's trying, though admittedly I'm not sure that part of the story really needed elaboration. It was unpleasant enough as it is. To be honest, I wonder to what extent they're actually favored by the Zentradi since a fair number of them are simply inferring they're favored by the Zentradi based on their only known users being the Macross 5 fleet. The VBP-1/VA-110 Variable Glaug is the only one that's really designed for Zentradi operation, because it was developed and built for a rebel Zentradi group and then independently reproduced by the New UN Government after capture. It's possible the VA designation is simply what they felt was the closest fit based on its gun-heavy armament, or it may have been intended to deceive since the designation's a clear nod to Project Constant Peg (which also used 110 numbers for flight tests of captured Soviet aircraft). I wonder how much of it is that the Zentradi actually favor these designs, how much of it is them simply gravitating towards designs optimized for deep space operations where they'd feel most at home, and how much is simply "solidarity" buying from a Zentradi-run company like General Galaxy.
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