Seto Kaiba

It's been delayed enough they should call it Haruhiko Mikimoto Forever.

The whole premise of Alien: Earth seems like a massive continuity problem all on its lonesome... I have a feeling they're relying on Weyland-Yutani being the Evil Megacorporation staffed by Lying Liars Who Lie to spackle over the massive plot holes. Either that or they're going to fall back on the idea that the company is just SO big that its left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing. Mind you, how much the company knew about the threat on LV-426 prior to Aliens has effectively been retconned several times. The theatrical cut implied they didn't know about the derelict on LV-426 or why the Nostromo had been lost, though the special edition cut suggests they were at least aware based on the colony's distress calls before all contact was lost. Then, of course, Alien: Romulus and Alien: Isolation suggest they knew about the xenomorph 37-42 years before Aliens thanks to the recovery of the Nostromo's flight data recorder by the Anisedora and the recovery of Big Chap from the Nostromo's wreckage. Maybe this is a hamfisted attempt by Scott et. al. to pivot back to the abandoned plot thread about David supposedly creating the xenomorphs.

Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class has reached its final form... which is to say, its story has developed into one of those isekai-adjacent jfantasy stories that relies heavily on isekai tropes like a world that runs on JRPG/MMORPG logic and a loser protagonist who effortlessly gains godlike power, a harem, and fame, just without the part about being reincarnated into another world. For bonus points, the protagonist even has weeb fanfic self-insert traits like superpower-induced heterochromia, super speed bordering on being able to teleport, and using a katana in a setting where everything else is modeled on western fantasy aesthetics. All they're really missing at this point is white hair and a Nomura-esque questionable-at-best understanding of how belts are meant to be worn. As deep as Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class is in bad fan-fiction trope territory, it's actually pretty painful to watch. It's played absolutely straight, but it feels like watching someone's chuunibyou power fantasy delusions play out in their imagination. It's definitely a strong contender for this season's must-skip series!

Yeah, and the internal bay in the lower leg is not actually in the official spec in most publications either... which makes one question whether it's standard gear on the C-type or some kind of improvised equipment. Yeah. Later titles like Macross 30 did the same despite having ample power to render underwing missiles. I suspect by that point the motive changed from saving on processor resources to just not knowing what to draw.

Ameku M.D. is really an amazing series in its own way. Not because it's a good mystery series, no. Because it's an atrociously bad one where the solution to the mystery is either Insane Troll Logic or Dora the Explorer levels of obvious to everyone but the characters. The most recent episode is a murder-by-arson case where the victims are the world's worst archaeologists from the previous case who nearly died from huffing grave mold, and it takes a distressingly long time and multiple firebombings for anyone to suspect that the culprit might be the guy who directly told the victims AND THE INVESTIGATORS they'd die in a fire in the previous episode. Bonus stupidity points for the fact that there aren't even any red herrings here... he is the ONLY CHARACTER in this story who is not either part of the investigation team or a victim.

CDJapan still has it available at time of writing. https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/BCQA-20

As far as we know, all of the Valkyries used by the 727th Independent Squadron are stock. No unusual variants, ace customs, non-standard equipment etc. Macross VF-X2 also has the VF-1 Valkyrie as a selectable aircraft, and it is also able to spam missiles without a Super Pack equipped. What that says to me is that the Valkyries in-game are meant to have missiles hung on their underwing pylons which were not modeled for some reason (likely game engine or system limitations).

My copy just arrived. Box was a bit dinged-up, but the contents arrived undamaged.

CDJapan's delivery flew close to the ground, I've just been informed a batch including mine is already out for delivery in multiple cities in the east coast and midwest.

There are, but those are few and far between. Normally when an idea sounds dumb on paper it's because it's dumb in any medium. 😅 There is an outside chance that Alien: Earth could be good... but it's such a long shot even compulsive gamblers wouldn't bet on it. The best we can realistically hope for is another bland but serviceable splatter story like Alien: Romulus, where a pack of too-dumb-to-live Wey-Yu wagies seemingly do everything in their mortal power to get themselves eaten. Well, that and continuity problems. This whole premise sounds like a buttload of continuity problems.

Teaser trailers are supposed to build anticipation for a release... this is kind of achieving the opposite. Oh boy, another brief shot of a xenomorph frantically scrambling along the walls and ceiling of a nondescript metal corridor at high speed like we haven't seen exactly that dozens and dozens of times already in practically every title outside the original movie. Woo... 🙄 After Romulus, my hopes for a return to actual horror are basically nil... this is gonna be another story where a pack of standard horror movie morons do everything possible to get eaten by a dangerous wild animal, like backpackers hiking across a national park in clothes made entirely from raw beef steak.

Online stores catering to international buyers have officially started shipping preorders of the new DYRL? box set as of about two hours ago (JST). CDJapan notified me a short time ago that my copy has shipped, and should be here before the week is out. 😁

Nope. Not so much as a word. I was actually pretty confused by it, since up until the very last second it looked like Georgiou was going to... Doing that would've been a pretty big retcon, though. I can only assume the showrunners remember exactly how badly previous retcons in Discovery went over with fans and decided to play it safe. Well, we'll see what comes of the interviews now that the movie has pretty definitively bombed. Back when Section 31 was first pitched to the public, I'm sure Michelle Yeoh was probably very enthusiastic about it. She'd signed on to Star Trek: Discovery knowing it was meant to be a seven season commitment to a major studio's flagship property and the lynchpin of an entire streaming service. A nice, steady paycheck in other words. Paramount then offered her what was essentially a contract extension and a pay raise to disembark the sinking Discovery for the starring role in a series. More, and bigger, steady paychecks. Whether she's happy with the character... well... a few interviews have seen her express her dissatisfaction with playing "bitchy" characters like femme fatales. Quite a bit of what she's said about the character suggests the producers promised a "redemption arc" and an opportunity to pivot her character away from being typecast like that if she signed on with Section 31. I guess that's why the movie makes an attempt to gradually scale back Georgiou's signature cattiness, her habit of reminding the people she talks to that she's VERY promiscuous, and her visible enjoyment of others fear and suffering. They ultimately didn't scale it back very far, and did so in a very halfhearted and desultory way, as that basically accounts for her entire character outside of her last episode on Discovery.

Indeed you did, but I was determined... and I managed to watch this dreck without giving Paramount one thin dime. If anything, the camera work in the bar scene screamed "parody". It's the kind of camera work you'd expect in a spy movie spoof like Austin Powers, Johnny English, etc. That's the thing... it doesn't. Mind you, this isn't something we can credit the writers of Section 31 with even a little as it was foreshadowed as far back as the original Mirror Universe episode "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS) in 2267 and established to have already happened by the time of "Crossover" (DS9) in 2370. The Terran Empire was a profoundly unstable and unsustainable government that was forever at risk of collapsing in on itself like a failed souffle. The "glue" that kept the Empire together at the societal level was a combination of militant xenophobia and an extreme form of Social Darwinism. The Terrans are products of an alternate history full of awfulness that left them societally paranoid, and the event that led to the Empire's formation was the ultimate paranoia fuel: the existence of aliens. First Contact in 2063 led the Terrans to form the Terran Empire for fear of being invaded and conquered by hostile aliens. They've basically been burning the universe down ever since, having channeled their xenophobia into a Humanity-first master race ideology. That paranoia-fueled initial violent expansion into the greater galaxy became a self-fulfilling doom spiral. The Empire could only be maintained by keeping the population focused on external threats, to the point that it became circular logic. The Empire needed more resources because it was expanding and conquering new territory, and it was expanding and conquering new territory because it needed more resources. Eventually they were going to run up against an enemy they couldn't beat or the pace of their expansion would exceed the rate of new resources coming in and the whole thing would fall apart. Mirror!Spock predicted in 2267 that the Terran Empire would last at most another 240 years unless its internal policies changed dramatically. We already knew from "Crossover" (DS9) that Mirror!Spock's prediction turned out to be excessively optimistic and the Terran Empire had long since been overthrown by the Klingon Cardassian Alliance as of 2370 (103 years later). As of 2324 in Section 31, the Terran Empire seems to be at death's door because it has run out of resources and can no longer sustain the expansionism that's keeping its populace united. Pre-Kurtzman materials suggested that Mirror!Spock became Emperor at some point after 2267 and tried to reform the Empire into a more peaceful democratic society like the Federation, only for it to be subsequently overrun and conquered by the vengeful Klingon Cardassian Alliance in 2295. The novels from the Relaunch series also suggested that, after the Terran rebellion overthrew the Klingon Cardassian Alliance in the 2370s, they had learned enough about the value of cooperation and compassion to form a Federation-like government of their own and had made peaceful first contact with the (much kinder and more benevolent) Mirror!Dominion. Kurtzman-era materials seem to be a lot more pessimistic. Unless that rift is doing some timey-wimey stuff, the Terran Empire seems to still be around (but actively falling apart under the weight of a resourse crisis) in 2324. We also know from Prodigy that they didn't learn anything and simply reformed the Empire by 2384 after defeating the Klingon Cardassian Alliance

It's back up... apparently my suffering has not yet ended tonight. This feels like the previously mentioned what-year-is-this-set-in just became a bit of a plot hole. Eleventh pause. 1:24:25. Talk about a waste of a character, a plot... none of the aspects of this relationship work or make any sense at all. He hates her but he loves her but he hates her and wants to take revenge for HER family but he loves her as he's dying but he hates her for what she became... can we get a tiny bit of consistency please? Well, that was frankly awful. I got through the whole thing despite my modem's attempt to preserve my sanity through honorable suicide. I can honestly see why this is the lowest-rated Star Trek title of all time. It DESERVES it. Star Trek V at least tried to be thematically consistent with the rest of Star Trek. Section 31 is an unholy mess that tries to make a quip-heavy Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff out of the very worst parts of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Into Darkness. The whole movie looks and feels unmistakably cheap. I don't know if Paramount has disclosed how much was spent to make this movie, but it either wasn't enough or someone made the inexplicable creative decision to spent vast sums of money making a mockbuster-tier Star Trek film. So much of the design work from this film looks like it was nicked from Red Dwarf. Georgiou's garbage scow would fit right in parked next to one of the Starbugs and the cyborg in particular looks like someone nicked a Replicant costume from the BBC property master. The story is such a mess of terrible, cliche, unbearably stilted writing that it's actually almost a mercy when the action scenes start and everyone stops talking. The reason it's not is that the action sequences have so much shaky cam and motion blur that you'd swear the camera operator was a drunk Parkinson's patient with an inner ear infection, and the editing is clearly trying VERY hard to disguise the mediocre-at-best fight choreography with dozens of mid-fight cuts. As harsh as I judge some films and shows, I seldom feel like I've seen a true "Zero" on a five-scale or ten-scale. This is an authentic zero. This is "See me after class" levels of poor performance. This is the kind of project that, if it had come out in theaters, would probably have killed the franchise stone dead. This is a career ending fiasco of a film that ought to see Paramount clean house. If Alex Kurtzman isn't "invited to leave" after this, I will officially start wondering who on the board he has compromising photos of because there's just no explanation for how he can keep failing like this and still be employed. I was prepared for a bad movie. I was not prepared for a movie this bad. Yikes.

I am armed with a stiff drink, and the firm opinion that this film is what Miles O'Brien really experienced in that alien prison where he felt like he'd served a life sentence. Eighth pause. Not because there's anything wrong with what's being done onscreen, but because there's some missing context that I wanted to look up. According to showrunner notes and some fans who worked backwards from the stardate given at the start, this film is set in the mid-2320s. Approximately 2324, 40 years before the start of TNG. This is set 66 years after Georgiou disappeared into the future with the Discovery, meaning the Guardian of Forever didn't put her back in 2258. This is also 57 years after the events of TOS "Mirror Mirror" that led to Mirror Spock overthrowing the Terran Emperor and trying to reform the Empire. Apparently Spock's efforts didn't work as intended, since Dada Noe is suggesting the Empire is as aggressively expansionist as it was in the 2250s. Ninth pause. 1:01:39. This is officially an idiot plot. This plot only worked because everyone forgot the one character trait that only one specific character had. Especially glaring given that it was also literally the only reason said character was present at all. I cannot believe there are still thirty-two more minutes of this tripe. Tenth pause. 1:03:13. There is SO. MUCH. SHAKYCAM. It's like every action scene is filmed by volunteer cameramen with Parkinson's disease. I know the fight choreography sucks and they're trying to hide it with shakycam and a thousand cuts but it just makes what they're attempting to cover up more obvious. At this point, my internet connection died... apparently desperate to spare me from the rest of this incredibly awful film. I'll have to watch the rest when it comes back up.

Well, as I've found a way to watch Section 31 without having to re-up my Paramount+ subscription for the worst Star Trek story ever committed to film... I'm going to wade into the sewage retention pond that is Section 31 and see for myself just how bad a Star Trek movie written by Pakleds can really be. Libera te tutemet ex inferis... ... I've already hit pause once at just 21 seconds. The now-customary "flyby" with the show-specific ship is (dis)graced by what I assume is going to be the new main ship for this story. It is so ugly, clunky, out-of-place looking for Star Trek as a whole that I honestly paused to confirm I was not the subject of an elaborate prank. It's oddly reminiscent of the ugly, clunky, boxy ore hauler that the too-dumb-to-live kids in Alien: Romulus fly. This is not an auspicious start. Someone working on the film - likely several someones - probably thought that was clever. I didn't think they would tip their hand quite so early, but here we are... having hit pause for the second time at just fifty-three seconds into this 95 minute film. Apparently this film's version of the Terran Empire, unlike the one seen in every previous work incl. Discovery, decides who the next Emperor is going to be with an off-brand version of The Hunger Games instead of by overthrowing the previous Emperor. We finally get the title card at about 10:20. OK, I am sorry... I have to stop for a minute. This is so *ss. I'm just... ugh. No. No no no no no. NO. ... I am at 13 minutes exactly and I am flabbergasted at how cheap this entire film looks and feels. This is not even B-movie fodder, this is This is the fourth time I've had to hit pause because I can't stand what I'm watching. What they're doing to Michelle Yeoh here is criminal in and of itself, but the everything else elevates this from simple abuse of a fine actress to a cinematic crime against humanity. Five. I'm at 14:10 and I'm having to pause again out of disgust because some writer thought it was a good idea to have Michelle Yeoh say how much her character gets around and that trying this new drug would be one of her few first times left. Dishonor on you, writer. Dishonor on you. Dishonor on your cow. Dishonor on your whole **** family. We couldn't get past this without having at least one legacy character from better times, could we? The "meet the team" scene goes on for an intolerably long time... mainly because the characters keep interrupting and insulting each other for no clear reason. It flows like a river of bricks, and the viewing experience is about as pleasant a pissing gravel. I am only 22 minutes and 6 seconds into this monstrosity. Pray for me. I refuse... REFUSE... to believe that any person could pull off any of these stunts in six to eight inch PLATFORM HEELS. (And yes, she's still wearing them, we see one get stuck in a wall!) Seventh pause. I am 32:12 into this cinematic atrocity. The first act is over. There are good films and bad films. There are films that are so good they're great, and films that are so bad they're somehow good. This film - Star Trek: Section 31 - it a bad film. A worryingly bad film. It does not have a story. It has a hostage situation. This is an assemblage of events held against their will at phaserpoint, made to align into something that vaguely resembles, but is almost exactly unlike, a coherent narrative. It is trite, cliched, stale, unimaginative, ill-considered, and at best cringeworthy to behold. If I were a judge, I would rule in Michelle Yeoh's favor if she sued saying that releasing this film constituted an act of defamation. I am going to go get a stiff drink before I wade back in to finish this.

One tiny nitpick, "the whole Section 31 thing" actually started in DS9's 6th season episode "Inquisition". It has definitely always been iffy. Even DS9's producers regret the addition of Section 31 to the setting. They were trying to introduce more moral ambiguity into the show's Dominion War arc, and on the surface the idea that the Federation secretly having its own state sec organization similar to Cardassia's Obsidian Order or Romulus's Tal Shiar seemed like it'd be a logical way to do it. They didn't quite understand how stupid and fanfiction-y the idea was the way they presented it. The idea proved to be too tempting to future writers who were looking for a way to make Star Trek darker, edgier, and more action friendly. ENT's use of Section 31 is probably the single most restrained example of the organization in the franchise. It was all downhill from there. It was not a great sign that Discovery's second season started borrowing from the already not great relaunch novelverse, and then twisting that to make it even darker and more nonsensically edgy than it already was. Because the people working on Star Trek don't want to write Star Trek stories. They feel constrained by Star Trek's vision of a brighter and more hopeful future where the human race can get along, where diplomacy can end or even prevent conflicts, and where science and exploration are what's really important instead of war and death. Basically, they want to be writing something more like Star Wars, Rebel Moon, or any other generic space war story. Something less cerebral, where they can focus less on having character driven stories and moral/social allegory and more on having lots of exciting action sequences full of big budget special effects. I have a feeling she's done after this. The only reason she did this movie was because it was part of her existing contract from Discovery's third season. They thought they were going to do a spin-off TV series originally, and ended up walking that idea back to this made for TV movie because Discovery's viewership numbers were still trash even after the show's second major retooling. It feels like this got made just because of pre-existing contractual obligations, not because they had any actual idea of what to do with it.

Big oof... the professional reviews are starting to trickle in for Star Trek: Section 31 and, as predicted, it's atrociously bad. Pithy turns-of-phrase like "Set phasers to shun", "Boldly going where no one should", and "An embarrassment from start to end" feature prominently among the gentler professional reviews from news outlets. Less diplomatic professional reviews call the made-for-TV movie "unwatchable", "a mistake", and "a mediocre episode of a television show that doesn't exist". At time of writing, Section 31 has done what Star Trek: Discovery narrowly failed to: dethrone Star Trek V: the Final Frontier as the single worst-reviewedStar Trek title of all time. And it managed it in both categories on Rotten Tomatoes with a 20% critic score and 20% audience score, compared to Final Frontier's 23% and 25% respectively. I wasn't planning to reactivate my Paramount+ account to watch Section 31 because I figured it would be a turd, but after reading the reviews I'm questioning whether even hoisting the old Jolly Roger is worth it to subject myself to this cinematic crime against humanity. Here's hoping this disastrous public failure will finally be enough to convince Paramount that the time has come to evict Alex Kurtzman and the Pakleds he's staffed the franchise's writer's rooms with and tell them to take the other doomed Discovery spinoff with them when they go.

If you want to use the Disney+ app to watch, you need one of the bundles that includes Hulu.

Tried out two more new titles last night... Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf and The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World. Also got caught up on Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class. Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class has finished pivoting from being misery porn to establish how "edgy" and "adult" its world is to being form letter isekai power fantasy of the laziest kind. The protagonist, whose name is apparently "Ein", is an unlikeable doormat of a person who has godlike power foisted upon him by the guardian of the World Tree for no real reason (appparently they just had godlike power sitting around and didn't want it to go to waste? I don't know). Anyway, he gains the power of Super Appraisal, which basically amounts to permanently gaining all the powers of anything he looks at in his inexplicable JRPG-like fantasy world. Also they give him infinite carry capacity hax, a super powerful katana (because Katanas are Just Better in this western fantasy-style world), and install a big-tiddy elf waifu with no personality in his left eye to provide infinite heals and fanservice. The whole thing is so lazy and cynical it would probably have worked far better as a parody than playing it straight. The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, though... now that's a gem. A fish-out-of-water isekai parody-comedy about a super sentai hero who ends up trapped in a standard western fantasy JRPG isekai world trying to get home. A lot of the humor comes from hanging lampshades on just how corny all the tokusatsu action tropes he depends on are, but it's done so well and so lovingly that it comes off as an affectionate parody of both genres. I had enormous fun watching it and I can hardly wait for the next episode. Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf is another isekai or isekai-adjacent title... this time involving a salaryman who visits a fantasy world in his dreams each night, and is brought to the sharp realization that it was no dream when he accidentally brings his elf companion back to Japan with him on waking. So the two of them start leading a double life of isekai fantasy adventure and daily slow life romance across the boundary of the two worlds. It's cute, it's kinda funny. It's not great but it's eminently watchable.

Akemu M.D.: Doctor Detective is only four episodes into its run. It was scraping the bottom of the mystery story barrel two episodes ago. Now it's a good thirty, maybe forty meters down into the bedrock beneath the barrel. They're trying to do an "is it supernatural or isn't it?" sort of "mystery" now, and that kind of story does not work with the series premise of (allegedly) realistic medicine. It's so incredibly dumb that it's impossible to take seriously... so much so that the only thing the writers can think of to build "suspense" is to have the protagonist play the pronoun game to drag out the answer even though the "mystery" is so simple it only takes a minute and a half of in-story time to actually solve. This is, perhaps, made worse by the fact that they then stand around talking about the solution to the mystery with all the energy and enthusiasm normally reserved for discussing income tax paperwork while all three doctors present ignore the slowly dying patient in agony on the floor behind them.

OK, I have to admit the lack of originality in Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time is impressive in its own right. There's still not a single original idea on display, but it seems to want to be a Greatest Hits version of plot twists from every other isekai series and a few non-isekai titles too. It's every "slow life as a pharmacist" isekai (of which there are a LOT), but it's also borrowing from Shield Hero, KonoSuba, and most recently So I'm a Spider, So What?, Overlord, and even Fullmetal Alchemist. Does total commitment to a lack of originality count as an original concept in and of itself? I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time is... well... truth in advertising. It is, yeah, another fantasy commentary on Japan's incredibly toxic work culture with the protagonist being a girl who joined what's essentially the fantasy equivalent of civil service (working the adventurer's guild counter) because she wanted a 9-5 regular job with benefits. She is, instead, dismayed to learn that the job entails hideous and inhumane amounts of overtime because the local adventurers are a pack of idiots, many of whom are incapable of properly clearing dungeons. So whenever the overtime causes her repressed rage to reach the breaking point, she goes to settle accounts with those dungeon bosses personally... armed with her unstoppable desire for proper work-life balance and a stupidly huge hammer (impl. to be powered by same). As someone whose day job often entails hideous and inhumane amounts of overtime, I find this both unreasonably entertaining and amusingly cathartic. Two episodes in and I am sold. The only thing that could make it better is if she used more profanity.

None that I am aware of. It can be difficult to see given the amount of spinning Alto's doing, but the animators did in fact model both gunpods on Alto's VF-25F for the entirety of that sequence. At 20:17, right after Grace calls them "insects", there's a clear close-up shot of the underside of Alto's VF-25 where the two gunpods appear to be stored side-by-side in the usual position. When they switch to Battroid at 20:45, the GU-17 ends up in the right hand and the SSL-9B appears to be stuck to the underside of the left wing Armored Pack where it fits over the dogtooth on the front of the wing glove. Then Alto tosses his GU-17 and the SSL-9B somehow ends up in the right hand after two more mode changes. If I had to guess, I'd assume that the same magnetic attachment system used to detach and reattach packs in the field (like we see Alto do toward the start of Ep14) is being used to connect the gunpod to the Armored Pack for safekeeping. (Variable Fighter Master File, while not official setting material, puts forward the suggestion that the VF-25 is designed to carry up to three gunpods at a time... one on the centerline and one on the dogtooth of each wing glove similar to what we see Alto do in the final episode.)

Well, I have good news on that score... your recollection/assumption is indeed correct. That's a propellant tank, not a micro-missile launcher. I think the propellant tanks are first mentioned in This is Animation THE SELECT: Macross Plus Movie Edition's writeup of the YF-21, but they're also described in a few other places including Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II. There are additional micro-missile launchers in the YF-21's FAST Pack, but they're on the other pair of packs that are often referred to just as "additional weapons container". The diamond-shaped ports matching the type seen on the YF-21's dorsal surface are the business end of the launchers.