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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Machine translation is a tool like any other. What you can make with it will reflect your experience and the patience and care you put into its application. I don't think it makes fan works less valuable in any way. Careless use of it can create some frustrating misunderstandings... but so can careless manual translation. The risk of errors is higher with the machine translation, but for a quick-and-dirty summary it's at least "good enough". One thing I really love is that it has driven a massive improvement in OCR capabilities. There was a time, long ago, that I was stuck manually transcribing every book I worked on one character at a time (often with a magnifying glass). Now I can just plonk the book I'm working on under my fancy laser book scanner and let the machine transcribe a whole page in just a few seconds that I can paste right into my working file and have the original text side-by-side with the translation with minimal effort. Perhaps the one thing that chapter does well that the series didn't (because the arc was jettisoned to a gaiden manga) is explain that Windermere IV's grievances with the New UN Government were legitimate. The TV anime and movies never really delves into why the Windermereans wanted out of the New UN Government as badly as they did, though even the novel here kind of glosses over that as frustrating as the Windermereans found the New UN Government's [restrictions on/control of] fold quartz extraction frustrating the restrictions were set for very good reasons like discouraging any more idiots from unsealing canned evil in Protoculture ruins and preventing the proliferation of a material that can be used to make planet-killing bombs.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Machine translation has clearly made some progress in recent years. There's not nearly as much "my hovercraft is full of eels" in this as an attempt a few years ago would've had. That said, I kind of feel like Kodachi is reaching way too hard to try to make connections to other Macross works in this one.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    After the most recent episode, it really f***ing does. Actually, it's kind of weird that we've got a couple different titles this season that have plots revolving around a female lead who is essentially a helpless crybaby who needs to have everything done for her. Maybe it just feels extra weird to me since my weekly watch group has been doing Tenchi Muyo!'s OVA timeline, where (as the punny title suggests) the men are "useless" and the women run everything.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It is a little depressing how much of this season is white noise-tier writing. I've kind of given up trying to get anything of value out of Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right, Let This Grieving Soul Retire, My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me, Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota, The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest, My Awkward Senpai, Solo Camping for Two, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, A Gatherer's Adventure in Isekai, and A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace. Most of them are not bad so much as just bland. My Awkward Senpai, Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota, Let This Grieving Soul Retire, and Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right never venture beyond their single premise for any episode. Li'l Miss Vampire is probably the worst of the lot. It's started to feel kind of cringeworthy and incel-ish, to be honest.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    The Protodeviln? They aren't, as far as we know. Probably never have been, in the direct sense. It's a fairly safe bet that the mind control tech the Protodeviln used on the Varauta forces is the same stuff they used for the Supervision Army, and the way it's described in-series and in supplemental materials it's basically Hollywood hypnosis. They drain a person's spiritia to weaken their mental defenses and then equip them with a sonic device that emits special sound waves to keep them in a sort of hypnotic trance so they're suggestible enough to follow orders. The only people the Protodeviln have really controlled in a direct sense are the people they possess in Macross 7 like Gepernich, Gigile, or (occasionally) Sivil.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    They would have to be. The war between the Zentradi and the Supervision Army has been going on for 500,000 years. The captured and brainwashed Protoculture civilians and Zentradi soldiers who made up the original generation of Supervision Army soldiers are no more immune to injury or to the ravages of time than a Human. Given that the Protodeviln and their Supervision Army drove the Protoculture to the brink of extinction in a few short years, there would be only one way for the Supervision Army to feasibly sustain itself long-term: using the existing factory satellite infrastructure in the territory they controlled to create fresh clone soldiers, mobile weapons, and ships for their cause. Ultimately, the Zentradi and Supervision Army are two inexhaustible armies of Zentradi clones locked in a Forever War with each other because their last orders were to "destroy the enemy" and anyone capable of ordering them to stop died or disappeared half a million years ago. They didn't really ditch the Supervision Army. They were defeated, captured, and turned into Sealed Evil in a Can by the Protoculture's Anima Spiritia. They remained sealed for 500,000 years until Humanity colonized the Varauta system and started poking around in the Protoculture ruins on one of the other planets in the system, where the Protodeviln happened to have been sealed. They accidentally let the Protodeviln out, causing the events of Macross 7. Of course, since the Protodeviln were simply the Supervision Army's top-level commanders rather than being some kind of puppeteer parasite controlling those people directly, their defeat and sealing did nothing to actually stop the Supervision Army. Their brainwashed troops just kept right on fighting according to their last orders.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing, in all likelihood. The Protodeviln aren't controlling their forces with telepathy or space magic or anything like that where No Ontological Inertia might apply. Being drained of spiritia (mental energy) puts people in a state of mental collapse that makes them more vulnerable to technological mind control. As shown in Macross 7, the spiritia-drained Varauta forces were kept in line by mind control devices built into their helmets and other headgear. The Protodeviln learning to generate their own spiritia and taking off wouldn't free them from control. Only the removal of the mind control devices and a good blast of sound energy to help them regenerate the lost spiritia can bring them out of it. Kind of the same reason the Supervision Army wasn't really slowed down much at all by the Protodeviln being defeated and sealed away by the anima spiritia in ancient history.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    There hasn't been any mention of direct contact with the Supervision Army in any official media AFAIK. Macross 7 depicts the New UN Forces encountering the Supervision Army's creators/leaders (the Protodeviln) and fighting a war against what is essentially Supervision Army v2.0, but nothing is said of the original Supervision Army forces still fighting the Zentradi across the galaxy. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a Zentradi force from a Supervision Army one at a glance though. The Supervision Army wasn't a bespoke army created from the ground up to fight for the Protodeviln the way the Zentradi were developed to be the Protoculture's army. The Supervision Army got its start as an ad hoc force made up of anyone and everyone the Protodeviln could capture, drain of spiritia, and mind control into doing their bidding and in their initial rampage across the galaxy their forces grew mainly by the simple expedient of doing the same to everyone they captured and making use of existing ships, weapons, facilities, etc. from those they captured. Most of their forces would have been captured and mind controlled Zentradi, and that's probably even more true in the modern day 500,000 years later. Their forces likely consist almost exclusively (if not entirely exclusively) of Zentradi clones using equipment produced in captured factory satellites. Aside from ship classes and some equipment that may have been unique to certain regions and Protoculture emigrant governments, their forces probably look almost exactly like the Zentradi at a glance. Since the New UN Forces practice a policy of "avoid whenever possible" when it comes to the "wild"/"lost" Zentradi roaming the galaxy, it's entirely possible they've detected several Supervision Army fleets and simply not stuck around long enough to tell them apart from the regular Zentradi.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    That might have something to do with their international agreement with HG, who still have the exclusive merchandising rights to the original series outside Japan. Now, I'm not a super-big collector but IIRC the VF-31A was a very hot ticket item when it came out... made quite a bit of cash for the scalper crowd. IMO, it's not a bad thing that they're revisiting in-demand items that didn't get widely distributed for the benefit of the international crowd too. Wasn't the problem that it was a web exclusive because they didn't think anyone would want the CF version compared to the character models, only for it to turn out to be a high-demand item that got scalped to hell and back?
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Now, I'm not saying they're the same picture, but... ... well, when the group is a blonde "prince" leader, a cold and calculating megane who actually runs things, mischievous twins, an immature kid and a gigantic stoic... well... let's just say it could be hard to tell which one you're referring to without some extra context. 😆 Honestly, that there hasn't been a parody bit under the title Darwent Castle Host Club is both a shame and a waste. I assume they left Qasim and/or Hermann out of the wall scroll because they're not as photogenic as the other five.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Probably owes a fair bit to how most anime licensing flows through the US, and the US distribution situation immediately screwed it up by splitting the license up among multiple companies.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how fiercely sought-after the original DX VF-31A release was, I imagine this'll be fairly well-received. It's still the best looking of all the VF-31s, ironically.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Capturing and relocating enough factory satellites to make a noticeable dent in the logistics of the Zentradi's Forever War with the Supervision Army is probably impossible with the resources Humanity currently has or will have at any point in the foreseeable future. According to Macross Chronicle, each individual fleet (not a main fleet, a regular one like Vrlitwhai's) has a logistical support backbone of approximately 20-50 factory satellites. Each main fleet is made up of hundreds or thousands of branch fleets, and at the Zentradi's peak there were approximately 5,000 main fleets. The Mechanic Sheet for the SDF:M TV series factory satellite asserts that there are millions of factory satellites out there just making battle pods day in and day out. Tens of thousands making battleships. Hundreds building the huge fleet motherships/mobile fortresses. And because the Protoculture can never resist going overboard, there's also a factory satellite making other factory satellites.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    So, it's a bit difficult to say for a couple reasons. First, several different estimates for the number of Zentradi main fleets still active in the Milky Way have been given over the years. "Over 1,000", "between 1,000 and 2,000", and "between 2,000 and 3,000" have all been given at various points. IIRC in DYRL?, Perfect Memory, and SDF:M TV respectively. So there's a rather broad range of possibilities there. If we assume Boddole Zer's 118th/425th (depending on version) main fleet is typical, that's anywhere from 4.8 billion to possibly 14.4 billion. Second, it's possible that not all main fleets are the same size. The only one we've seen animated is Boddole Zer's fleet of approximately 4.8 million warships. Macross II prequel games Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song both went for the "millions of ships" route for the three main fleets presented between the two games and the fourth one the timeline mentions encountering later. While it's not strictly official setting, Master File mentions a main fleet (the 1,534th) that is "only" 120,000 ships strong. Third, factory satellites are in play. The Zentradi forces have their galaxy-spanning network of factory satellites churning out new ships, pods, and soldiers constantly and the big fleet motherships are no exception. Depending on how much opposition they're facing from the Supervision Army at any given point, that number could be going down OR up. Thus far, the only confirmed intergalactic travelers are the Vajra. Presumably this is because they benefit from the superior abilities of fold quartz-based "super" fold navigation.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    So, is it Goo or Mobile Saurian Godzilla 00? Or does Godzilla just have terrible version control? Another couple films and we've got Godzilla 98, Godzilla Me, Godzilla XP, and Godzilla Vista!
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Getting to around the midpoint of the season, and I'm a little disappointed by how many titles I've tried have faded into glorified white noise. Let This Grieving Soul Retire, Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota, My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me, A Gatherer's Adventure in Isekai, Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right, and A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace all just feel like background noise-tier TV now. Most of them aren't really doing anything with their premises at all and the ones that are are doing the bare minimum formulaic effort. I've been having a lot more fun revisiting some older titles with my watch group. We're crawling through the entire Tenchi-verse one title at a time in parallel with some other titles from past seasons like The Ascendance of a Bookworm and Overtake!.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix kinda-sorta answers that question in the section SV-51 Last Stand: the SV-51's Final Air Battle. (Pg108) I summarized it a bit here, but the even-shorter version is that when the Anti-Unification Alliance remnants tried one of the several "Hail Mary" attempts to revive their lost cause after the Alliance itself collapsed in 2008 they got absolutely clowned on by a bunch of VF-0+'s in one of the largest VF air battles before the First Space War. Operation Scoria, an attempt to launch a surprise attack from a base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and capture the UN Forces Alaska Base, was foiled literally before it ever got off the ground when a mixed force of B-52s and VF-0+'s attacked their base. The story, recounted by the leader of the SV-51 unit, reads as a mounting series of "Oh cr*p" moments as what he expected would be mopping up a bunch of out-of-fuel VF-0s turned into his own forces getting stomped:
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Right here.✋ So much. What a stupid idea, making The Machine of Inexorable Horror into a kid-friendly action buddy. There is one Terminator movie. Everything else is just swamp gas or a mirage or something.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    $20 an hour sounds like a lot, but we're talking about downtown Los Angeles where cost of living is sky high.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Got a bit bored after taking down the Halloween decorations and decided to do some number-crunching on one of the data gaps on the VF-0. Specifically, the Mauler RoV-15 anti-aircraft/anti-missile laser cannon(s). Macross official setting materials don't really have anything to say about how powerful the cannons are, only that they were a replacement for a previously-intended machine gun. The VF-0 Master File book benchmarks the performance of the Rov-15 against Mauser's BK-27 revolver cannon. The BK-27's a German 27mm revolver cannon made for surface-to-air and air-to-air use. It's good for 1,000-1,700 rounds per minute and the 27mm mine rounds it uses have a muzzle energy of a hair over 157kJ. Since the performance of the RoV-15's said to be almost exactly the same, we can use that as a benchmark. (157kJ*1000rpm)/60sec = 2,621kJ/sec or approximately 2.6MW. The energy-on-target is probably a fair bit lower, but when all's said and done it suggests the VF-0's capacitor-driven RoV-15 is around 1/2 the output of the VF-1's production-intent RoV-20. Pretty darn impressive considering the generator supporting it is a pair of overtuned turbofan jet engines. Even if it needs 30s to recharge for every 3s spent firing, a 2,000kW+ class output is insane for the time period and power source.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    They clearly understand Humans are intelligent... but that doesn't necessarily mean they understand English or even care to. Most animals make a variety of noises for communication and with contextual clues a Human can easily tell the calls of a distressed animal from an aggressive one from a hungry one and so on. We make fishing lures that are designed to imitate the movements and sounds of injured prey, we make duck calls designed to imitate the sounds of the mating calls and feeding calls of various duck species. If Humans can figure that out for tons of different animal species on our own planet, a spacefaring species like the Preds can definitely figure out the context behind the sounds we make without needing to actually understand the language and imitate them the same way we do.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The Banished Court Magician is still drunkenly stumbling through all the usual "Kicked out of my party but it's OK because I'm godly powerful" story beats. I have to wonder where it's going, because it's already doing the "humbling the jerk who kicked the protagonist out" part and it's not even halfway into the season. Normally that's for the end of the first major multi-volume story arc.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Functionally-graded materials are pretty common in nature... skin, bones, teeth, and tendons are just a couple examples. Considering the Protoculture's great fondness for imitating biology in their technology, it's surprisingly appropriate that the materials they use to do so would also imitate life. (At least, the ones that aren't out-and-out alive like the Evil-series weapons and other examples of their biotechnology.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... the different flavors of social media all have their own ideal use-cases. Message boards are definitely the superior option when it comes to building a community around a single specific topic or an interrelated group of topics like a specific hobby, special interest, skill, or fandom. It's easier to share large volumes of information on a message board and they're more searchable than successor formats like subreddits. The one area where the message board is still alive and well is the corporate world. So many companies with multiple internal message board systems for different operating areas... so much so that Microsoft Teams even built a message board system into itself for corporate/professional users. Facebook, Twitter, and their various imitators are mainly for online small talk and are terrible venues to try and have an in-depth discussion of anything. They're good for advertising, for gossip, and for incidental daily life nonsense but not much else. Interactions there, and on video-centric options like Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, etc. are structured around reacting rather than discussing, so they don't really encourage conversation.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    When it comes to most forms of Overtechnology Material (OTMat), the particulars of how they are created is left unspecified except in one odd case. "Space metal" itself is not a specific material. Rather, it's an umbrella term that bordering on being a brand name that encompasses an array of different exotic alloys and composites that a firm named Dyna-Metal developed based on reverse-engineered OTM and produced in space-based factories. There were a bunch of overlapping names for this family of new materials based on Overtechnology including Space Metal, Space Alloy, Dynametal, OTMetal, and OTMaterial. Among the few details we do know is that there generally aren't any fictional exotic materials involved in their creation. They start with ordinary everyday raw materials like carbon or aluminum and they're processed into engineered nanomaterials and then those are combined into alloys or composites to achieve the desired balance of properties. The composite armor of things like ships and Valkyries and Destroids are functionally-graded composites that combines layers of a bunch of different materials with different properties to get to a balance of different attributes like structural rigidity, flexibility, weight, projectile resistance, etc. Hypercarbon is probably the engineered nanomaterial that crops up the most, used heavily as a superior analogue to carbon fiber and in various nanostructure arrangements like fullerines and nanotubes. The one material that explicitly uses exotic/fictional materials is also the only one for which we get some description of the actual manufacturing process: fold carbon. That one's pure sci-fi, being a crystalline material made of exotic particles that catalyzes the creation of exotic particles used for gravity control. Because it catalyzes the creation of the raw materials it's made from, it builds up naturally inside of running thermonuclear reactors and fold systems. Specially modified reactors are used as crystal growth furnaces to mass produce the stuff.
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