Seto Kaiba

After six episodes, I'm strongly considering proposing a new title... Yuri for Fun and Profit. Yeah, I definitely got that vibe too... especially considering she can't seem to remember that her arm is actually injured half the time despite the wrap.

Yeah, he had potential. It's a bit of a shame that, after the Ferengi flopped, the TNG writer's room never really settled on a second candidate to take over the role the Klingons has previously occupied as the Federation's primary antagonist. They toyed with the Romulans and they toyed with the Cardassians - both debuts featuring future Gul Dukat actor Marc Alaimo - before they ultimately kinda gave up. Jean-Luc Picard not really having a signature villain besides Q definitely worked against Picard in the writer's room since the Romulan connection that drove season one was entirely offscreen and then they just did the Borg twice. TBH, while I've seen this particular complaint a number of times I honestly can't say that I see it myself. Both Discovery and Picard are very badly written and definitely suffer a fair amount of "protagonist-centric morality" as a result being Main Character-driven shows instead of Star Trek's usual ensemble-driven format, but apart from a few brief and terribly hamfisted moments I don't recall them getting overtly political. They're preachy as hell, but that's just what happens when you have a writer's room that doesn't really "get" Star Trek trying to make DSC and PIC sound a bit more like classic Trek by having the main charater deliver a filibuster-length speech. Jean-Luc may be memetically famous for them in-universe and out, but they lose a certain je ne sais quoi with the show making his positions hypocritical, clueless, or just plain wrong half the time. In all fairness, that's a topic that certain Trek characters have struggled with in TNG, DS9, and ENT. Some of those are at least as cringeworthy in terms of execution, despite the showrunners having the best of intentions. Comes up a fair bit in the relaunch novelverse too... albeit mainly because of species that are androgynous, hermaphroditic, undergo some kind of metamorphosis that causes them to change biological sex at a certain point in their life cycle, or have more than two biological sexes like Species 8472 (5+) or the novelverse version of the Andorians (4). The Trill in general seem to exist to invoke this, considering how often people stumbled over Jadzia's pronouns WRT her symbiont's switch from a legendary dirty old man to a relatively more reserved young lady. (They at least seem to be good sports about it, though.)

I am not much of a toy collector, so please take this as vague guidance at best, but I found them to be a little on the stiff side. The range of articulation is not quite what I would have liked. I'm not sure about the endurance, since I just posed them once and put them on a shelf as knickknacks.

Macross's sequels have zigzagged the idea of whether the Zentradi stand out or not quite a bit... The idea that part-Zentradi have issues managing the elevated physical aggression the ancient Protoculture designed their Zentradi ancestors with was a new idea brought in with the Macross Plus OVA and subsequently abandoned not long after it. I guess Master File felt compelled to explain why this supposedly widespread problem that was regarded as an obstacle to the YF-21's adoption as next main fighter was never mentioned again... both in terms of it being a widespread but not universal issue and the introduction of a cure that permanently resolved the issue. Zentradi in subsequent sequels always blend into the population perfectly until the story needs them to not. I guess that's the benefit of them being an amazing technicolor population with a much greater range of normal body types than humans. You can have most Zentradi look identical to humans and still have a bunch of them be green, ghastly pale, seven feet tall, and so on. Like how Milia looks completely human except for her green hair (and that may be excusable by rule of anime), while the inhabitants of Macross 5 are mostly the ghastly pale type of Zentradi to make it obvious to the viewer Macross 5 is an all-Zentradi fleet. Looking a little more into Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II... the events of the Macross Plus OVA's final episode are glossed over for in-universe reasons. It's said that there was an official announcement shortly after the incident to the effect that "a super-AI system went berserk" but that most of the information about the incident remains under seal so all people can do is speculate and theorize. Interestingly, the Master File actually takes the view that the BDI-equipped YF-21-2 was objectively superior in terms of specs due to the incomplete nature of the X-9 Ghostbird's AI and that it should have had an advantage despite having used up most of its ammunition fighting the YF-19-2. The thing that made it an even fight was that the DECU6000/Sharon Apple had self-evolved to a "super AI" thanks to the illegal bio-neural chip installed by Marj. From there, it returns to toeing the official line by indicating that the incident proved the dangers of AI technology and the continuing usefulness of manned fighter aircraft which prompted the New UN Forces to abandon the X-9 and quietly resume Project Super Nova as though it'd never been cancelled. General Higgins's pro-AI faction apparently lost an enormous amount of influence and their rivals had a field day crowing about the insufficient anti-hacking measures in the X-9 program among other things like smugly indicating that you can't hack an organic pilot. (Which the Macross Galaxy fleet apparently later took as a challenge.) While hypnosis proved to be at least partially effective against Isamu and the YF-19-2, it's noted that the YF-21-2 proved to be completely impervious to Sharon's attempts to infiltrate its systems due to the BDI's radically different architecture. The section talking about the decision to reinstate Project Super Nova mentions that while the military went with the more conventional design in the YF-19, they persuaded the New UN Gov't's assembly to approve limited requisitions for the YF-21 as well as a special forces fighter despite its higher production and operation cost. Development of the YF-21 restarted in November 2040 using the YF-21-3 that had been in storage on Earth. The Brain Direct Interface (BDI) was scaled back to become the BCI (Brain Computer Interface) that operated as a support system for the manual controls. The new system required a new airframe control AI designated ANGIRAS-BRAIN-2, which combined with the other refinements led to the military issuing YF-21-3 a new provisional designation as YF-22. Two more units (YF-22-2 and YF-22-3) were produced and later tested at New Edwards in the first half of 2041 and approval for mass production was granted after space trials ended. The first mass production VF-22 rolled off the line to the Earth NUNS in 2042. Having switched from pursuing the next main fighter role to a special forces role apparently hurt GG quite a bit financially too, since that sharply reduced expected production volumes by order of magnitude... from "tens of thousands" to just a few hundred. General Galaxy was apparently struggling at the time due to having taken many contracts for things like spacecraft and stardrive systems for the New UN Forces and civilian enterprises. They got a bit of a shot in the arm when the UN Spacy Weapons Test Center proposed building the VF-22 in batches of 200 to "test the transition to a production design", allowing development of the VF-22 to continue using the budget that'd initially been earmarked for the X-9 Ghostbird. The concept Argus Selzer apparently developed from this was to customize the VF-22s to the needs ot the various local commands requesting them since no one location was expected to need more than about ten VF-22s including spares. This proposal ultimately led to the New UN Gov't parliament approving the purchase of 100 VF-22s, and later expanded by another 200 aircraft, but it's said that the number of aircraft actually produced and delivered might not have been accurately reported due to losses in development accidents and production of replacements. The last bit talks about the possibility that the VF-22's extremely high stealth performance was used for illegal operations... with the book's in-universe author presenting that as likely, but probably a necessary evil. The new variants described in the book are an odd bunch. The VF-22B is said to be a modified Block 5 VF-22 from 2045 that abolishes the vertical tail in order to reduce the burden on the energy-intensive active stealth system. It's said to have also adopted a new stealth paint based on carbon nanotubes that reduced reflected light, making the VF-22B stealthier at close range by making it harder to detect via LIDAR and optical cameras in addition to its improved radar stealthiness. It's said to pay for this via a reduction in maneuverability and top speed from the extra weight added to its wing surfaces. The VF-22D is an extended fuselage based on the VF-22B that abolished the BCI and adding a second crewman in order to operate as a dedicated attack aircraft able to carry a whopping ten large anti-warship reaction weapons. This unfortunately resulted in a significant loss of speed and maneuverability, so the end result was it was diverted to training use. The YVF-22E is a VF-22D modified as a side-by-side cockpit attacker with two BCI systems. It contained refinements to the system that prevented the operator's emotional state from interfering with the system's decision-making functions. The YVF-22U is another odd bird... the YVF-22E was further modified to attempt to use it as a forward drone control ship where the copilot could control multiple Ghosts using the BCI. It's said to have been able to control up to six Ghosts and 24 target drones, though the handling is noted to be VERY dependent on the individual operator. The YVF-22VG is a fairly straightforward case of GG attempting to swap the extremely expensive flexible wing material for a traditional variable geometry wing. The YVF-22SA is an attempt to address a defect in the VF-22S in which its laser cannons could accidentally damage the airframe itself in high-g maneuvers by introducing a set of movable dorsal laser cannons. Next change I get, I'll have a look into the Structure and Systems section.

Coming off an insane week... decided to watch something absurd. Yuri is My Job! is... odd. It's definitely unconventional as stories go. An incredibly vain and nasty high school girl who's put her all into a facade of being cute, innocent, and charming in order to bag a rich husband accidentally injures someone on the street and is dragooned into covering their shifts at a theme cafe modeled on a private girls school in which all of the staff are working in character as schoolgirls in various yuri relationships. For all the protagonist's confessions to scumbag motives early on, it's surprisingly easy to get invested in her peculiar struggle because she has absolutely no idea what's going on, her coworkers can't be arsed to explain anything properly, and so she's left to fake it 'til she makes it and hope that she doesn't piss her new coworkers off too badly. It might help a bit that I'm honestly as lost as she is... (Or maybe it's that a sympathize with her for having such a wildly irresponsible manager who waited until her third shift before bothering to explain even the basic rules of her new and very odd workplace?)

Making another valiant effort to get through Buddy Daddies... this show is absolutely awful. A similar premise worked in Spy x Family because the kid was intelligent enough to understand what was going on with both of her adoptive parents even if she didn't understand the implications every time. The kid in Buddy Daddies is beyond stupid. I don't know how old she's supposed to be, but she has an IQ like a basement apartment number and the self-preservation of a clinically depressed cartoon lemming. Worse, she's incredibly annoying and they keep trying to make her being annoying the focus of the comedy. 😕

... and if you just go through the motions and do the bare minimum to make the story feel Star Trek-like as in Picard's third and final season, you might score some brownie points with the die-hard fans through fanservice but it won't make it an engaging or interesting series for the casual viewers who make up the majority of the audience. ... and this is why ever single origin story given for the Borg in Star Trek's 100% non-canonical "Expanded Universe" has been absolute garbage. First Contact already ruined the Borg by turning them from an inscruitable alien race who evolved into a symbiotic relationship with their technology and a completely alien set of priorities and benevolent (in their view) intentions into boring cyber-zombies led by an incredibly hammy and openly malevolent B-movie villain called the Borg Queen. The whole idea was incredibly stupid and they knew it, since it required them to repeatedly deny that the leader they'd created for the Borg was the leader of the Borg. It just got worse each time the Borg appeared, hitting its nadir in Picard's second and third seasons where the Borg Queen - who is definitely a personification of the collective and not at an individual being with its own agency according to the writers - is basically the last, lonely, pathetic survivor of the Borg collective. The last thing we need is another sh*tty origin story like Star Trek: Destiny to come in and reveal that humanity is responsible for creating the Borg. Yes, you read that right... in the relaunch novelverse the Borg were created as a result of something humans did. Specifically, the crew of the NX-02 Columbia. Ref. Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Into Darkness, Star Trek: Beyond, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard... All attempts to make Star Trek into something un-Star Trek-like... and all, notably, massive failures for the studio and the franchise. Best known in this franchise as "the crew of the USS Discovery".

One thing that Star Trek fans have that I consider an advantage over the Star Wars fans is we've always understood that our expanded universe is pretty awful and that most of us are pretty grateful that it's all non-canon and always has been. License novels, comics, video games, and so on never get great writing and honestly the stuff that does get put down in those has no business being in the TV shows because it's mostly awful fan service garbage. The Borg are a great example of that because a couple of different explanations for their history have been tabled over the years, and all of them are incredibly stupid. Without exception. Strange New Worlds would tend to disprove your argument by virtue of its very existence. The problem is what you're proposing here is, of course, that spin-offs focusing on all of the different alien races wouldn't really appeal to anyone except die hard fans. To have a successful series on streaming you need broad appeal. And, to be frank, you need a cast that the audience finds relatable and interesting. That's why the main characters of Star Trek are inevitably human. It's much easier for the audience to relate to them if they are either humans or human-like aliens with allegorical relationships to human culture. The only thing that was standing between the franchise and renewed success when the first new TV shows were being planned was their obsession with making everyone into a miserable bastard. Everyone on Discovery is miserable. Everyone on Picard is miserable. Everyone in the galaxy is miserable. They made things so dark and so bleak and so very unlike what audiences expect from Star Trek that nobody wanted to watch it. It says an awful lot that as soon as they put the optimism back in, all of the sudden people were tuning in in droves and lauding Strange New Worlds as a wonderful installment in the franchise. If the writers working on Picard had kept TNG's trademark optimism instead of bowing to Discovery's obsession with bleak and dark, the series would probably have been much better received... and likely would have joined SNW as one of the higher ranked shows instead of being the second worst by audience rating. That would have been harder to work with, since at the end of DS9 he had ascended to a higher plane of existence and gone to live with the prophets. They're pretty powerful, and it would take an awful lot of tension out of the series if the protagonist could simply stop time or teleport anywhere at will or step outside of linear time whenever something inconvenient happens.

I prefer to take the view that, in his prime, Picard was such a consummate diplomat that he just never made any mortal enemies. To me, this moment right here is peak Jean-Luc Picard. He never had any big bad who could come back in Picard and just try to ruin his life since 90% of his encounters with hostile aliens ended like that. So instead, most of his issues in the Picard series are self-inflicted.

Oh my, the Borg got it way worse than our boy Worf ever did. It's a hell of a downgrade to go from being the franchise's second-biggest threat to the Federation behind Q to being an enemy that could conceivably have been defeated by the Pakleds in a stand-up fight. That's why TNG's writers conceded that the Borg were simply Too Awesome to Use. When they were introduced, their technology was so far beyond what the Federation's best that a single Borg cube destroyed a fleet of 40 Starfleet ships at Wolf 359 without even breaking a sweat. That really hadn't changed by the time of First Contact either. A single Borg cube once again flew right through Starfleet's best defenses without issue and was right on Earth's doorstep before Starfleet brought it down using a weakness detected through Picard's link to the Collective. In order to be a recurring antagonist on Voyager, they had to be MASSIVELY downgraded and it got worse the more they showed up. They didn't just lose the mystique they had prior to First Contact, they were straight-up jobbing and by the end one rinky-dink Starfleet science ship that left BEFORE the events of First Contact had killed the entire Borg collective. Q should've been warning his kid not to provoke Janeway instead of not to provoke the Borg. The Borg got between Janeway and coffee, and Janeway removed the obstacle. I don't disagree... just, y'know, there's that very human tendency to link the protagonists to the most iconic of their antagonists as "their" villain even if the same enemy is fought by multiple crews/characters. The Borg Queen might've been introduced in First Contact, but Janeway's the Starfleet captain the Borg Queen absolutely hated and even feared. Jean-Luc was less a mortal foe than an old flame who dumped her. So, to me anyway, it really doesn't feel like season three's antagonists were an appropriate plot. The Changelings were always a DS9 thing, the Borg Queen was Janeway's archenemy not Picard's. Really, it's more an issue with TNG having not produced a signature antagonist for Picard due to it bouncing back and forth between several weak ideas.

Bringing back Jean-Luc Picard would have made a lot more sense either as some kind of political thriller with Ambassador Picard and his staff getting up to some kind of high stakes shenanigans, or Starfleet Academy Commandant Picard overseeing a training ship. Of course, any of that would depend on the creative staff being able to write compelling original characters... and as Discovery and Picard both attest, they just couldn't. S3 of Picard was less awful, but it's still a pretty weak exercise driven mainly by fanservice and a cast reunion IMO. Better by far than the previous two, but a terribly low bar to clear even on a bad day. Pretty much, yeah... I've watched a bit of S4 and it's less dreadful than S3 but not by much. Inscruitable aliens is definitely way better than Green Space Karen as an antagonist... but the main issue is still that the cast are just unlikeable and Burnham has too much Main Character Syndrome. In absolute terms I'd agree with you, but to many fans there's a certain sense of propriety involving which character a particular antagonist is most involved with. We've gone over that in previous posts, so I won't rehash it. The thing you have to remember about why the Borg are really more a Voyager villain than a TNG one is that as iconic as "Q Who" and "Best of Both Worlds" were, those were what set the Borg up as Too Awesome to Use in the minds of TNG's writers. They couldn't become a recurring nemesis because there was no way for the Enterprise's crew to plausibly win. That's why they only show up five times in 176 episodes and 4 movies with only three of those being actual confrontations. Compare that to Voyager, where 26 of the show's 172 episodes have appearances by the Borg (essentially one entire season) and across which the Borg are repeatedly humbled and outwitted by a much less elite and much less heavily armed Starfleet ship than the Enterprise-D or Enterprise-E. It's what took them from their status as The Dreaded in TNG to just another recurring Trek villain in Voyager, and the epilogue of Voyager is what put them at death's door in time for Picard. The Borg set some kind of all-time record for most profound Villain Decay, going from bodying whole fleets of Starfleet ships without breaking a sweat to having Janeway repeatedly outwit and defeat them with a tiny science ship and then in a one-two punch to being SO RONERY and just wanting friends before being revealed to be down to a single ship populated mainly by the corpses of cannibalized drones that gets destroyed by a bunch of elderly retirees in their restored classic car. No other antagonist in Star Trek - and few others in fiction - have gone through such profound villain decay. The Borg were THE DREADED in TNG, but by the time Voyager finished with them they were bordering on a lethal joke enemy, and when Picard rolled in they were on the brink of dying out on their own before Jean-Luc rolled up to take them off of life support.

Well, that's what happens when you launch a second series as a "saving throw" built around the Star Power of a single returning cast member because your original series flopped. Not Viacom/CBS/Paramount's finest hour. Especially considering the finale of season three is basically nicked from The Rise of Skywalker... which was not exactly a great moment for writing either. "Somehow, Palpatine returned" "Somehow, the Borg Queen returned and assimilated everybody" It's the same picture. No you would not. That is pretty much exactly what Star Trek: Discovery is starting from its third season to the end of its fifth and final season. That was their solution for the second time they retooled Discovery due to its poor viewership and worse reception among fans. They moved the whole affair almost 1,000 years into the future (from the mid-23rd century to the end of the 32nd century). It is even dumber than Discovery already was. Bruh, Star Trek has ALWAYS been political. ALWAYS. From the very start. And it was NOT subtle about it. Saying you want Star Trek with "no politics" is saying you want Macross without VFs and music or Gundam without Newtypes and Mobile Suits. ... that actually sounds worse. Like, "an original Star Trek novel by William Shatner" worse. Nearly as bad as that one time Shatner wrote a self-fic about how the Borg and Romulans brought his ass back from the dead post-Generations and he solo'd the entire TNG cast before defeating the Borg forever and dying a second time. I'mma take a hard pass, esp. since the Borg have already suffered so much villain decay that they were practically a joke by the end of Voyager. This was just an undignified end to an enemy that had already begun to feel like less of a real threat than the Pakleds. (Which makes it all the weirder that the Borg Queen's got it in for Picard when Janeway's the one who wrecked her sh*t.) In the future, they might retroactively write Discovery's 3rd-5th seasons out of the timeline as a parallel world but I think we're stuck with Picard. If only because it seems to mark the end of a brief dark period in the Federation's history that presages a more hopeful and positive era now that the Borg are officially done-for, the Federation's post-Dominion War isolationism is breaking down, and they've finally given civil rights to artificial life forms. Enterprise was doomed from the start and its showrunners knew it... its biggest opponent wasn't the network, it was that audiences were suffering fatigue from more than a solid decade of Trek on the air and losing interest. The franchise needed a break, but the network wasn't having it. Picard was also doomed from the get-go because it was built on the faulty premise that Patrick Stewart's star power would be enough to win back the fans even if all they did was start a second series using the same formula as the failing Discovery series and swap their OC out for a beloved established character. They didn't realize that forced Picard to be so wildly out of character most of the time that he hardly seemed like the same person.

Master File certainly seems to lean that direction... or at least, the at-the-time unsubstantiated fear that this problem would be widespread and affect Zentradi and part-Zentradi was used as part of the justification for passing on the YF-21 in favor of the X-9 Ghost. That borders on an Obi-Wan Kenobi "Certain point of view". The most doggedly literal interpretation would be that Project Super Nova was officially a response to the increasing frequency of armed incidents between emigrant populations and the central military including civil wars, rebellions, and anti-government terrorist activity. A big part of the Advanced Variable Fighter concept involves making stealth attacks behind enemy lines to sever the chain of command and end conflicts with minimal casualties. The fear that the advanced technology of the VF-19 and VF-22 might be used in an attack on Earth by those anti-government elements also spurred arms export restrictions that contributed to the development and deployment of the VF-171.

I'm headed into a ten day "Death march" type release period, so I figured I'd relax and knock a bit more out before things go to pot. So... when Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II finally gets down to the actual fighter itself... it kind of skips right to the prototype phase, mentioning in passing that the General Galaxy design team produced thirteen experimental testbeds (XVF-21) before completing the initial YF-21-1 prototype in early 2038. The prototype was completed around three months ahead of Shinsei Industry's YF-19-1, and had its maiden flight on Earth at the General Galaxy headquarters before being sent to the New Edwards Test Flight Center over on Eden for evaluation. Its test pilot at the time was New UN Forces Cpt. Holks Benetosch. YF-21-1 had a completely conventional control system, and was used to test the prototype FF-2450A engine, the aerodynamics of the prototype aircraft, and the stealthiness of operations with a fold booster. It was the primary test aircraft until the BDI-based YF-21-2 was rolled out on 17 June 2039. YF-21-2 was ferried to Eden by a Uraga-class space carrier. On delivery, Guld Goa Bowman assumed the role of primary test pilot after two weeks spent conferring with NUNS Cpt. Benetosch on the progress of YF-21-1. The reason a civilian like Guld was made the primary test pilot is because the introduction of the radical new control system was beyond the expertise of any existing pilot and Guld was considered the only one who understood the system well enough to operate it in testing despite the evident dangers of having the team's lead developer also serve in a potentially fatal capacity as test pilot. The YF-21-2's BDI was specifically tuned to Guld's brainwaves for testing, so it was considered too dangerous to allow anyone else to operate it. Testing went so well that it was considered to be progressing almost too smoothly, and with the YF-19 program at a standstill after the loss of the YF-19-1 in a testing accident, it's said that the General Galaxy team believed that they had the Next Main Fighter contract in the bag and that soldiers on the base were betting that General Galaxy's YF-21 would win in the end. It's then briefly mentioned that what ultimately screwed the YF-21 out of what seemed a sure victory was that the BDI system's stability was dependent on the stability of the pilot, Guld Goa Bowman... The subsequent section "Fatal Error" gets into the circumstances of the Macross Plus OVA itself with the gunpod accident that disabled the YF-19-2 (on 6 February 2040). It's said that the official reason cited for the accident was an issue with the ammunition management program resulting in the accidental explosion of the YF-19's gunpod. The case is said to be officially resolved, but without a clear explanation for how the YF-19's gunpod came to be loaded with live rounds considering that the test plan only called for paint rounds. It's conjectured, based on testimony and the loss of log files from the YF-21 shortly before the accident, that it was intentional sabotage on the part of Guld Goa Bowman. (Which was the case in the OVA.) General Galaxy knew that General Gomez, leading the investigation, was a part of General Higgins's pro-Ghostbird faction and lobbied to have the investigation dropped before they could be implicated, reasoning that if the Ghost X-9 became the next main fighter the YF-21 would still be adopted as manned support. It's mentioned that, ultimately, uneasiness about the reliability of the BDI came about as a product of Guld's increasingly erratic behavior. There is an interesting discussion there about the issues Guld was experiencing. Master File rolls with the idea that Guld's issue was less psychological and more a consequence of his heritage. The Zentradi are said to have heightened aggressive impulses as a part of their design, and some peace children born after the First Space War essentially suffered from a sort of impulse control disorder caused by their Zentradi genes. It's said that, in the 2040s, this was treated with medication while the modern approach is gene therapy. The belief that this innate characteristic common to the Zentradi was causing the unexpected behaviors from the BDI system was ultimately what scuttled plans to adopt the BDI on a production basis... though it's also mentioned the whole question was arguably academic, as the New UN Forces had decided to go with the Ghost X-9 by the time these problems were uncovered. The next section deals with the Sharon Apple incident...

It's more detailed than Macross Chronicle's version, but if you discount the parts about the motivations behind Project Super Nova being phantom enemies and the Spica Shock, it's not exactly contradictory. Ludmilla Blackwood is a non-canon character invented for Master File, but General Higgins's role as the #1 supporter of the Ghostbird project is a part of the official setting as is Guld's educational background and the nature of his pilot license. Argus Selzer is also an official setting (mentioned only) character.

Assuming they get that far, probably. If ~100 chapters = 1 season or 1 Saga = 1 season, we're looking at the possibility of Brook in season 5 or thereabouts? Season one is a cut-down version of the East Blue Saga, so presumably next season will be the Alabasta Saga with Baroque Works as the Big Bad (which they teased in this season), then Sky Island, then Water 7, then Thriller Bark, the Summit War, Fishman Island and the timeskip, Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island, Wano, and the Final Saga/Laugh Tale assuming they go all the way. I'd assume Brook will probably be changed quite a bit if they get far enough to adapt Thriller Bark since his signature line (besides singing Binks's Sake) is just sexual harassment... which probably won't go over well.

Yeah, I saw a lot about that when the news dropped that Games Workshop was discontinuing a whole bunch of legacy Firstborn kits.

I covered this one a while back based on the trailers. It looks like season one is a pretty condensed adaptation of the East Blue Saga, the first six story arcs and approximately the first 100 chapters of the manga. The first four story arcs (Romance Dawn, Orange Town, Syrup Village, and Baratie) are where Luffy acquires Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji respectively. The fifth, Arlong Park, is the fight against the fishman pirates, and the sixth (Loguetown) is the windup to Luffy and his crew actually entering the Grand Line where the main story kicks off. (Basically, this entire season is prologue.)

Gettin' caught up on a few titles... Jujutsu Kaisen has started running again, and I have to say that I enjoy this series so much more when it forgets about the supernatural action and is just the main trio messing about as ordinary teenagers. It's just so relentlessly grim otherwise that I have a hard time caring what happens to the joyless, unlikeable characters infesting the story. Undead Girl Murder Farce is speeding into its first season's final story arc, with the team now going after werewolves who appear to be behind a string of murders in an isolated village. Still interesting, still entertaining, I'm hopeful it'll end on a high note because I've enjoyed the hell out of it so far. Classroom for Heroes... isn't worth anyone's time. It is a form letter exercise in the standard "the ultimate hero is reincarnated, tries to lead a normal life, fails to be even slightly inconspicuous, and gets a harem" storyline that has been garbage every time it's been done. My Tiny Senpai is devolving into similarly form letter ecchi fanservice with little semblance of an actual story and less of character development. I feel like I've insulted the writer of My Senpai is Annoying after initially thinking it was a copycat of that series with the genders flipped. Probably gonna start The Legendary Hero is Dead!, season two of the gun-eatingly insane sports anime Birdie Wing, Yuri is My Job, or go back a bit and watch Ai Tenchi Muyo! or Tenchi Muyo GXP: Paradise Starting.

So... continuing from where I left off... The VF-22 Master File skims over the actual creation of General Galaxy and talks instead about how the newly founded General Galaxy made a habit of scouring the population of Zentradi left on Earth to find individuals with particularly high aptitude for the sciences and engineering. It's noted that while the Zentradi are little different to humans in terms of intelligence, that most first-generation Zentradi immigrants to Earth were of the combatant types who were more inclined towards/interested in physical activity. Those who had been assigned to headquarters and logistics type roles were apparently had an easier time transitioning to research and development work. General Galaxy's dev team ultimately ended up with less than twenty engineers initially, many being individually-tutored Zentradi recruited personally by Kurakin. Argus Selzer, formerly known as Toran 825, is said to have been Alexei Kurakin's top student and inherited leadership of the company and the position of the company's chief engineer after Kurakin's untimely passing in a flight test accident in 2026. That section wraps up with the mention that, as "peace children" born after the First Space War began entering the workforce one particularly noteworthy half-Zentradi by the name of Guld Goa Bowman was considered the most promising new recruit to General Galaxy's VF Development Division. The next section goines into Guld's own history a bit. It's noted that, while he was enrolled in the Aeronautical College of Engineering on Eden, he obtained a Valkyrie pilot license through the New UN Forces internship system. On graduation, he moved to Earth to take a position at the General Galaxy head office in the VF Development Division as a flight control systems researcher, where he caught the eye of Argus Selzer. When Project Super Nova was initiated, General Galaxy held an internal review of independent research to select systems best able to meet the military's need and Bowman's proposal for a radical new man-machine interface (the Brain Direct Interface) was adopted. It's noted that it wasn't entirely accurate to refer to Guld as the YF-21's chief engineer, but General Galaxy made a concerted internal effort to credit him with more involvement in the project out of respect for him after his unfortunate passing in the Sharon Apple Incident. They also note that, out of respect for him and his contributions, the development base "Guld Works" was named in his honor. There's mention of a large number of experimental aircraft including a number of modified VF-9s and VF-14s that were used to evaluate various aspects of the YF-21's proposed design including the deformable wings and the adoption of the Inertia Vector Control System. Two are described in some detail... a unit codenamed GG-103 that was used as a test platform for the YF-21's deformable wing and a unit GG-106 that was used to evaluate the YF-21's battroid mode body plan after testing revealed significant issues with the introduction of the inertia vector control system to older models on an experimental basis. There are some mentions of how the New UN Forces mandated that various parts be used, occasionally from third-party or rival corporations, and that there were some attempts at sabotage by supplying defective parts to the parts pool the New UN Forces assembled that were then randomly sent to either Super Nova developer. It's mentioned that there was apparently some dispute among the design team working on the YF-21 whether to adopt a three-hulled/trimaran design similar to the VF-4 and VF-14 and accommodate the military's armament requirements by increasing the space between the engine nacelles or to adopt a more radical design that focused on internal storage to focus on better stealth performance combining passive and active stealth. Bowman was a champion of the latter proposal that ultimately won out. Guld supposedly missed the completion of the YF-21-1 because he was busy at Eden Aeronautical Institute of Technology completing the prototype of the BDI for Unit 2. There's mention of Dr. Ludmilla Blackwood, a frequently recurring character in Master File, having been one of the lead developers of both the next-generation airframe control AI ARIEL used on the VF-19 and production VF-22 and the self-learning AI used on the Ghost X-9 and Sharon Apple system having been potentially in communication with both Guld Goa Bowman and Jan Neumann of the YF-21 and YF-19 teams respectively and helping resolve the issues of making the airframe control AI play nicely with Guld's BDI system.

Never been a Space Marine player myself, but I've always liked the Mk.VI helmet. It's iconic of the older editions of WH40K, and now particularly of the Horus Heresy since the Mk.VI was introduced by the loyalists during the Heresy. I'd like to see JOYTOY do some Heresy-era stuff so I can maybe get a Garviel Loken, a Sigismund, or maybe someone like Aeonid Theil... the Ultramarines had way more character in the Heresy than the boring pack of starcharses they are in modern 40K, even if the entire galaxy was actively taking the piss out of them in 30K.

As it's a holiday, and for once I'm not being dragged into the office anyway, I decided to spend some quality time with Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II. This is definitely one of the less-good Master File books and it takes a lot of weird liberties with the VF-22 design... but there are still some interesting tidbits here and there, esp. as it's written from a point around 13 years after the in-universe publication of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur. Like the VF-19 book, the VF-22 book spends a fair amount of the introduction praising the VF-11 as an extremely capable multirole VF that was overwhelmingly superior to Zentradi battle pods one-on-one to the extent that the New UN Forces considered it unthinkable that they would lose in an even fight. This VF-22 book goes a bit farther and asserts that the VF-11 had no noteworthy drawbacks and that as a result development stagnated somewhat because the only perceived needs for other/newer models were to cover roles that the VF-11 wasn't designed for. Unlike the VF-19 book, the VF-22 book walks back the idea that the "Spica Shock" - the incident in which a Zentradi main fleet appeared and destroyed the colony on Alpha Virginis III in 2037 - was the prime motivation for Project Super Nova. Instead, it paints a picture of both Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy lobbying the New UN Government to approve development of new model VFs on two points: Preventing the stagnation of technological development. The existence of "unknown threats" in the galaxy. In the former case, there's an interesting take on the subject of an unmanned (all-Ghost) air force in which it's presented as being proposed by Shinsei and General Galaxy as a far future ideal that was fundamentally unworkable at present. The reason? Employment. Due to the size and nature of emigrant fleets, the military was one of the largest employers of young adults who'd grown up in the aftermath of the First Space War and they couldn't feasibly switch to an all-Ghost airforce without tanking the economy. Nevertheless, that idea was carried forward by a faction in the military headed up by General Higgins while an opposing faction championed the continued development of manned fighters through the Super Nova project. The latter point carries an interesting implication on its own. Namely, it suggests that the New UN Forces may have been aware of at least two specific threats before they were officially encountered. The first mentioned is the Protodeviln. The VF-22 Master File suggests that the New UN Forces were at least partly aware of a possible energy lifeform on the Varauta system's ice world for years before they were accidentally released by the Blue Rhinoceros Corps. The other unknown-at-the-time threat mentioned is the Vajra, who the book asserts have (at the time of the book's writing in 2063) come to be regarded as potentially responsible for a number of unexplained incidents in which survey fleets had lost ships and carrier-based aircraft without explanation. The Spica Shock was apparently the coup de grace that convinced the New UN Government and New UN Forces that, in all likelihood, the two defense corporations had a pretty good point. After dinner, I'm gonna dig into the next section, that seems to be about Alexei Kurakin's founding of General Galaxy and his training of handpicked Zentradi students to become General Galaxy's core development team.

The MEP prototype that was sold at auction on eBay would have been, had it been completed and green-lit for production and sale. I'm not sure how selling the .stl files would be classified... esp. if the licensee they were made for is getting out of the franchise. 🤷‍♂️ It was one-of-a-kind... but now that the .stl files used to prototype it are in the wild, well, I wouldn't be surprised if the person who paid over two grand for the poor-quality physical prototype that anyone can now recreate for about $40 between the cost of the .stl and printer filament feels a bit scammed. That's the great advantage of model kits... they can be a lot more screen accurate since they don't have to make most of the concessions that come with transforming.

I would. That's kind of the pattern we've been following for the last 23 years and counting. The toy licensee in question will do all of the VF-1 variants, then they either give up or move on to the MOSPEADA mecha. Then they give up. They never ever move on to Southern Cross. It has been thus ever since Toynami had the license and refused to even consider doing the Southern Cross designs because the expected return on investment was much too low. With no Japanese toys to copy, anyone doing Southern Cross mecha toys is going to have to invest a lot more time, money, and effort into designing the toys from scratch. That will naturally have implications for quality and cost, but it's also going to make it significantly harder to turn a profit. Southern Cross is the basis for Robotech's least popular saga, and with sales already falling precipitously when they transition from Macross to MOSPEADA the expectation would be the sales will slip even further when they switch to Southern Cross. Selling a large number of toys will almost certainly be impossible, so they can do one of two things: raise the price or reduce the quality. The problem is that doing either to the extent that it makes the toy profitable effectively precludes production. And if the licensees Harmony Gold had 23 years ago couldn't find a way to make the toy profitable when interest in Robotech was peaking, they're sure as hell not going to find it now a good decade after the franchise curled up and died for the second time. This toy prototype that ended up being sold at auction is a product of failing to look before one leaps.

Not surprised. I guess the folks who were bidding on it have a proper understanding that there will probably never be an official commercially available transforming Spartas toy. It really is a one of a kind collectible. And with the amounts some of the robotech fans have pledged to things like kickstarters, this isn't even that much.