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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not going to get my hopes up. Isolation was a masterclass in horror game design. The dev team had a rock solid story concept and a finely honed understanding of how to create and manage tension. It was polished so close to perfection that I honestly don't think there's anything the dev team could add to the formula they created that wouldn't simply detract from the horror. I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but I doubt lightning is going to strike twice.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Started The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians today. The visual aesthetic of the series is very bright, but not offensively so and the art style is quite pleasant. Many of the backgrounds and objects in scenes are colored and textured like they were done with colored pencils rather than inks, which lends the whole thing an oddly pleasant storybook aesthetic. It's the story of a girl who, after meeting a mage one night when she was young, decided to study her entire life to become a mage herself and then failed to gain admittence into the magic program at the school she applied to. It's a little bit shoujo, a little bit slice of life... but weirdly charming for what it is. The only thing that bothers me is I'm not sure anyone in this series except the one mage girl at the start knows how hats work. (The uniform includes something styled like gakusei-bou, but only the girls seem to wear them and they're worn off to one side at like a 45 degree angle and with the brim pointed down... which just looks weird.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I'm glad to hear that they didn't attempt to modernize Ranma 1/2... some titles really need to be in their native timeframe to work as well as they do. Started the second season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat today, and it picked up exactly where the previous season left off. It jumps right back into the civil war plot that started at the end of last season, with a war council of the region's nobles debating what to do about the opposing faction in the succession crisis kicked off by the assassination of the provincial governor. The art quality is just as good as last season's, and the writing continues to evade virtually all of the isekai genre's usual blatant wish fulfillment pitfalls. No superpowered protagonist, no harem nonsense. True to its title, Ars is making his way in the world as a capable of but average leader by finding talented subordinates using his appraisal skill and then trusting in the skills and expertise he hired them for. In a way, it's quite a refreshing change from the genre's staples. It's standing on the strength of the character writing. Gave Mecha-ude a whirl, and... well... it's pretty much a shounen anime form letter. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be "nondescript". The story is just another one of those "generic Japanese youth finds a clingy macguffin and then has to join up with other users of clingy macguffins against the evil organization that wants the clingy macguffins for themselves". The art style is "every shounen anime of the last 10 years that isn't Jujutsu Kaisen, Bleach, or One Piece". The way the titular robot arms are integrated into people's clothes makes it feel like it wants to be family friendly Kill la Kill but has none of the personality.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the new simulcast season has officially started. So far, I've got seven titles bookmarked. The second season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World is probably the one I have the highest hopes for. I've also decided to give Let This Grieving Soul Retire, Mecha-Ude, 365 Days to the Wedding, Goodbye Dragon Life, Re:Zero S3, and I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History a try. Have you ever had one of those moments where you judge a book by its cover and then read it only to discover you were absolutely correct? That's what I'm having at about 4:16 into I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History's first episode. Isekai titles already suffer from a punishing lack of variety, and the otome game-based ones doubly so due to a lack of diversity in storytelling. This is definitely more towards the shovelware end of the isekai quality spectrum and it makes little secret of its copycatting My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. The closest it seems to want to come to putting its own twist on it is having its protagonist want to become like the villainess in the game (and fail from earnestly trying too hard) instead of trying to avoid it (and succeeding too much). Kind of avoiding starting Re:Zero season three yet... that story has always been a little too dark even for me. I'm glad I'm not a shounen anime fan, because it sounds like those people are PISSED right now. My Hero Academia apparently ended recently with an incredibly unsatisfying end... Now Jujutsu Kaisen is under fire for its own terrible conclusion, which has the mangaka being accused of both stalling and character shilling for the villain... Both titles are being branded as having "The Worst Ending Ever" right now... better hope Eiichiro Oda sticks the landing with the ending of One Piece in the not-too-distant future, or there might be riots.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    February 1983 to approximately June 1984. Takatoku Toys's 1/55 VF-1S came out in February 1983 and the company declared bankruptcy around June 1984 due to losses incurred from sponsoring several anime titles that underperformed. Their assets were liquidated to repay creditors and, after rescuing Takatoku's contract fab Matsushiro Toys from its own subsequent bankruptcy, both the original molds and Takatoku's designs for future Macross toys ended up in Bandai's hands. New toys based on Takatoku's design were sold under Bandai's recently established HI-METAL starting in October 1984.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Oof... no punches pulled there. I agree with a lot of what Brayton's saying there. Alien: Romulus is, in a lot of ways, exactly what fans like me have been hoping for. An Alien film that returns to its roots with Alien's iconic claustrophobic horror. Its main stumbling block is that its writer-director's profound affection for the source material drives every aspect of the story. That devotion to all of the little details made it visually stunning, but its devotion to formula made it too predictable to be scary. Especially when the tension is frequently punctured in order to highlight a blatant fan-friendly reference to past films or games.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It's always been one or the other... they're the only two good movies in the franchise. Nah, that was writer/director Fede Alvarez's doing. He's a self-confessed huge Alien fanboy who, armed with the substantial creative control that comes from being a writer-director, partly used the film as a "fix fic" to correct things that bothered him about the franchise's setting. One of those things he, as a fan, went out of his way to fix that a more sensible writer would probably have left alone was the lack of direct connections between the main series and Ridley Scott's semi-orphaned not-actually-a-prequel Prometheus and its disastrous "The studio said I had to put xenomorphs in this one or they'll fire me" followup Alien: Covenant. He even went out of his way to retcon out Ridley Scott's Covenant stance that David 8 created the xenomorphs, a plot hole the fans had been annoyed with for years. A smarter writer would probably have left that out completely, since Prometheus never fit with the franchise thanks to Scott, Spaihts, and Lindelof trying to use it to soft-launch a completely unrelated storyline about rogue AI instead of actually writing an Alien prequel and only grudgingly connecting it to Alien in the sequel while still trying to make Evil AI into the greater scope villain.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    No, it's just a reference to one of the iconic scenes in the movie. During Hikaru and Minmay's date (the one that ends with them going for a joy ride in a VT-1) one of the places they visit is a sort of holographic cosplay boutique with a room full of circular projectors that, when stood on, project a holographic costume over the person. In that boutique, they both jump through several different sets of projectors which put them in various themed costumes. The final set of projectors they land on in that scene put the two of them in a wedding dress and a wedding suit like those in that art.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    When I read that post, I was sitting in my office... which currently has no less than three different Macross wallscrolls hanging in it and adjoins a room with four bookshelves and three display cases given over mainly to Macross stuff... and all my inner monologue could come up with was: They have taken the bridge and the second hall. We have barred the doors but cannot hold them for long. The floor shakes... jpop... jpop in the living room. We cannot get out. A pile of untranslated books looms in the dark. We cannot get out. The Macross shows are coming.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Part of the reason it's not as big a deal as it feels like it should be is that the Zentradi probably had a lot of help from unscrupulous defense corporations like Critical Path. Critical Path in particular are so overtly villainous that not only were they apparently selling to all sides in the Second Unification War, their CEO manages to still be a minor villain active in the novelization of Macross Frontier despite having been dead for about eight years at that point. It's hard to say, since we get few glimpses far enough into the past to see what these PMC units were previously using and we've only seen a few branches of each. The novelization of Macross Frontier suggests that the Macross Frontier fleet's branch of SMS was outfitted with VF-19As and VF-22Ss before they transitioned to trial production VF-25s. Macross the Ride instead says a fleet-specific VF-19E monkey model (the VF-19EF). We never get to see what SMS Sephira branch uses because the only aircraft of theirs that we see in Macross 30 is the YF-25 that Leon has been asked to deliver to SMS Uroboros branch (as a parts donor for the YF-30). The SMS Uroboros branch wasn't a proper branch so much as a clandestine research outpost and there doesn't seem to have been any consistency WRT what Valkyries it had. It may have had the VF-11C as standard, since that's what they dig out of storage for Mina. We never learn what Xaos's Ragna branch used before the VF-31. Even in flashbacks, we see Arad using a VF-31A instead of his VF-31S. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they were using old VF-171s or even older models like aftermarket VF-17s or VF-14s. Xaos's Pipure branch had the VF-171EX in the early 2060s, and one of them ended up customized after sustaining some damage. One of their researchers had a privately owned VF-19.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    <.< >.> Pretty sure it's straight up annexed a couple rooms in my house by this point.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle does cover a selection of enemy mecha from the games... but its selections are a bit weird and inconsistent and heavily biased towards Macross VF-X2. For example, it has the Variable Glaug from Macross M3 but not the Zentradi combining mecha from the same game. It's got most of the boss or mission objective enemies from the Macross VF-X2 game (e.g. Macross 13, the Hatchet-class destroyer, the Rorqual-type unmanned sub, and Vandal-type gunship, and the Annabella Lasiodora and Gjagravan Va mobile weapons). It's got the Meltrandi capture ship, Zentradi jamming station, and Queadluun-Nona from DYRL?'s game version. VF-X itself is represented only by the Feios for some reason. Early polygonal 3D was pretty rough, and they were working with the Playstation 1... it's not super surprising they had to compromise that way to get enough enemies onscreen.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    This has been a pretty unremarkable season... Caught the final episodes of Ossan Newbie Adventurer, The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant, and No Longer Allowed in Another World today while home sick, and none of it was really... eh... impactful? Interesting? None of it was bad, it's just deep in "So OK it's average!" territory. It passes the time but it does not really entertain. My hopes are much higher for next season's lot.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Very little, admittedly. Like the Variable Glaug, we know almost nothing about its development because it was developed in secret by anti-government forces using technology from a stolen New UN Forces VF. All we have beyond that is some information about encounters with it in game stories and some basic physical and performance data. Yeah, you'd think a development like that would be a pretty huge deal in-story... but somehow it doesn't seem to have been. If I were to speculate as to why, my hypothesis based on the current state of the Macross official setting would be that the Feios Valkyrie was probably every bit as Awesome But Impractical as the VF-19 and VF-22 were. The New UN Forces ended up dropping their plans to adopt the VF-19 as a main Variable Fighter because its performance proved to be too much for most pilots to handle and it was too expensive to be practical in large numbers for most governments. The VF-22 was just as bad, if not worse, thanks to the highly complex and difficult-to-manufacture Inertia Vector Control System and Brain-Direct Interface. The Feios Valkyrie almost certainly has all the same problems, given it's a 4th Gen equivalent VF with even higher performance than the VF-19/VF-22, so it was likely only built in small numbers for the same reasons: too expensive, and too hard to find pilots for. (Those anti-government groups don't have the financial resources or recruitment potential of the military either, so they probably felt those issues even more keenly.) The remark about updated Queadluun-Rau systems comes from the Macross Digital Mission VF-X Official Program, but is not elaborated upon. It seems rather likely that what it's referring to is an improved version of the Inertia Vector Control System that is basically the one distinctive/unique system of the Queadluun-Rau.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility, given what we've seen of Zentradi names in post-war titles. Especially if his family were Earth culture otaku like Naresuan.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's pretty clear that's not the case if you think about it. After all, Quamzin and Laplamiz didn't have any relationship other than a professional one until very near the end of the original series. They had their first kiss in episode 32, which is set in November 2011. That's barely a month before they both died in episode 36, which is set at the very end of 2011. There's not enough time for the two of them to have had a child together before they both died. (Temjin's expanded backstory in the novelization of Macross Frontier describes him as being a natural born Zentradi whose parents had been among the Zentradi who defected to the UN Forces during the First Space War and continued to serve in Earth's defense forces after the war. That rules out Quamzin and Laplamiz being his parents.) We can be pretty sure that it was not... both for the reasons stated above, and because we know the character was not originally named Temjin during development. There is one part of your hypothesis that does actually work though. There are several other Zentradi characters who are noted to have taken Human names, sometimes with historical significance, because they are essentially Earth culture otaku. Macross R's villain Naresuan is one such example... He was a defector who took the name of a king from the history of Thailand for some reason.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Finished Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture tonight... and I gotta say this is one I would NOT recommend. It's a very lazy, very half-arsed sequel to Lelouch of the Rebellion that just kind of mindlessly repeats plot points from the original series. The writing remains pretty bad to the very end, and if anything the fight choreography gets significantly worse towards the end as most fights devolve into high speed circling each other. Its big twist is... ripping off Mobile Suit Gundam F91 and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny at the same time... the villain is basically Great Value Rau le Creuset and his master plan is the same on Iron Mask used in F91. When all's said and done, it's as beautifully animated as you'd expect a Bandai Namco Filmworks project to be... it's just boring as hell. None of the characters are developed, the mecha designs are all derivative and generic, the choreography's flat and lifeless, and by the end it just degenerates into a string of cameos by Lelouch of the Rebellion characters who seem to occupy every important position in the world outside of Hokkaido.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The whole call might not've been scripted, but you still totally got fobbed off with a scripted non-answer. 😉 They just redirected your inquiry to an automated customer support web form that isn't even for that purpose and isn't monitored by an actual person. We already knew from Big West's announcement six months ago that the Macross titles are coming to Disney+ this year. Spamming a subscriber feedback web form with a title they've already licensed and announced release plans for isn't likely to yield any feedback at all never mind change a release date that can only be at most about 3 months out.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... maybe he's that confident (or overconfident) in Gladiator II. Maybe he's trying to pressure the studio into greenlighting Gladiator III based on hype alone before Gladiator II ever hits theaters. Maybe he's just George R.R. Martin-ing so he can secure some appearance fees to talk about what he'd like to do. Maybe he's just feeling insecure because Fede Alvarez stole his thunder and probably his franchise by making a better Alien movie than his last two attempts.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Disney+ has already licensed the shows, announced the impending release, and is in the process of rolling the shows out worldwide. You got a scripted response from a customer support person (or a ChatGPT voicebot) that has no knowledge of, or involvement with, the release process. A scripted response that's almost certainly meant as a non-answer to people asking why shows Disney+ hasn't licensed aren't available on the service.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Feelin' much better today, thanks. 😁 I've heard that you can mitigate migraine symptoms with potassium and salt supplements (or potato chips and bananas), so I've been experimenting with that a bit. Oh yeah, the technology was invented in 1961. It's basically the same principle at work in lasers using crystal gain mediums applied to fiber-optic filaments. By treating an optical-quality crystal like an optical fiber with laser-reactive compounds like neodymium and yttrium ions you can shoot a laser beam from a solid state laser diode down the fiber where it will excite those compounds to the point that they release photons, increasing the intensity of the beam. They use a type of dielectric mirror called a fiber Bragg grating to confine the beam and amplify the output. Essentially, it's a laser system where you can have a focusing/amplification barrel that is many MANY times longer than the actual physical length of the laser device because the optical fiber can be coiled, spooled, etc. to reduce the system's size instead of having to be laid out in a straight line. This also allows the final emitter to move and rotate without having to physically move most of the actual components because the actual gain medium is a flexible cable connected to a laser diode on one end. I did find one more interesting remark about VF-mounted laser weapons in the VF-22 Master File. The VF-22's rear-facing laser is said to be a lower-powered setup (8,000kW instead of the VF-19's 9,500kW) but what they sacrifice in power they make up for in extra range by being variable frequency lasers that can be tuned to compensate for power loss by switching to frequencies that are not absorbed by atmospheric gases and achieve ranges of up to 15km. It also mentions the use of free-electron lasers for the bidirectional laser cannons. Presumably the same tech is used in the VF-17.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I don't see a ton of difference on that front... there's more texture to the faces, but the facial animation rigs don't seem to be significantly improved vs. what was used back in MS IGLOO. There's still a lot of lockjaw-style expression and the body movements still look very stiff and unnatural.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    So... I was laid up in bed with a nasty migraine today and ended up going down another overtechnology rabbit hole when left to my own devices. In this case, laser weaponry. Master File initially doesn't have a lot to say about OTM laser weapons, but some of the later volumes like the ones for the VF-19 and VF-25 drop some details about the specific laser technology being used. The VF-0 volume actually has something VERY interesting to say about what they replaced. Official setting materials have said for a long time that the UN Forces originally wanted a conventional cannon for the Variable Fighter's coaxial gunmount, but that they couldn't find a way to make it work with the aggressively limited space inside the monitor turret of the VF-1. As you know, the fictional company Mauler that makes laser and beam weapons in Macross is the setting's version of real world firearms manufacturer Mauser (now a division of Rheinmetall). The VF-0 Master File names a very real Mauser product as the original planned weapon for the VF-0's monitor turret: the Mauser BK-27 revolver cannon. It's said that the VF-0's RoV-15 laser cannon was designed to be as close to the stopping power of the BK-27 it replaced as possible. The lasers that replaced the Mauser/Mauler BK-27 27mm cannon are multi-wavelength fiber lasers that combine up to six separate laser wavelengths into a single beam using a doped fiber optic cable as the gain medium. They apparently lack a final focusing lens or a proper cooling system to allow them to operate with maximum flexibility in space and atmosphere at the expense of range... which at least neatly explains why laser weapons, which should be the most accurate and longest-ranged of all the weapons on offer, are typically only used at short ranges.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Crunchyroll announced their Fall 2024 simulcast lineup: https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/seasonal-lineup/2024/9/18/fall-2024-anime-crunchyroll The highlights thus far announced include: A new Dragon Ball series, Dragon Ball DAIMA. A long-overdue third season of Re:Zero, anime's attempt to weaponize depression. A second season of Shangri-La Frontier 365 Days to the Wedding A second season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World A fourth season of Blue Exorcist, continuing the previous season's re-railment back to the manga's plot. A second season of the Ruroni Kenshin reboot Seven titles in the lineup have yet to be announced at this time. The Summer 2024 simulcast season's slowly grinding to a halt... and it's still pretty darn unremarkable. Caught the final episode of Pseudo Harem today, and it remained as cute-but-insubstantial as ever right to the end. Failure Frame's penultimate episode kind of lost me again. It's a pretty standard isekai overpowered protagonist shenanigans with stakes so low an ant could use them as a limbo bar. Very excited for the Overlord movie that just came out... Overlord: the Sacred Kingdom. It fills in the two-volume gap in the anime's fourth season between the trip to dwarf country and the destruction of Re-Estize. The trailers looked pretty promising, quality-wise. Lately, I'm kind of wishing for a fourth season of Ascendance of a Bookworm. The English translation of the light novel's 33rd and final volume dropped a week or so ago, and I've started reading it over from the beginning. I definitely wish the anime extended past the end of volume five where things REALLY get nuts.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It's a six episode series, so it's borderline OVA territory. It's a UC story, so it's hardcore playing it safe. UC takes no risks and pushes no envelopes. It's pretty much the fanservice embodiment of mindless self-indulgence. I'm actually kind of disappointed in the action scenes we've seen in the trailer, since they compare unfavorably to the last One Year War CG side story we got. Those Type-61 tanks on the Federation side are practically crawling up to the Zeon front line when in MS IGLOO 2: the Gravity Front we've seen those things are so fast and so nimble they can just about tapdance and have no problems taking out Zaku II's with adequate range. Kind of expecting, having seen that, that there's going to be some hardcore jobbing on both sides to try to build tension because they've already given the game away that it's the Gundam that's going to REALLY mess these Zeeks up.
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