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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! has nothing but scorn for your desire to know anything about the new mechanical designs. The liner notes contain no useful information whatsoever. Based on what little is said and shown in the film proper, I would assume - and I must stress that this is an assumption - that the VF-31AX Kairos Plus is still using the detuned FF-3001/FC2 engines that were originally fitted to those airframes as part of the Siegfried custom specification before the improvised repairs. Expecting sense from Absolute Live!!!!!! is asking too much of it. So's expecting a coherent plot, well-choreographed action, answers of any kind, or really anything satisfying at all beyond Max absolutely clowning on Delta Flight before telling them the many ways they absolutely do not measure up. Plus or minus a few modifications, it's the same basic airframe as the Siegfried and that was already being pushed to its limits with the 1,875kN of the detuned FF-3001/FC2s. I'm not sure they had room to significantly improve the engine output. Their outing in battle suggests they're still nowhere even close to the YF-29's level and might not even actually be a significant improvement on the Siegfried. No indications given about where they even got some of the parts. It's possible they used the facilities of the factory satellite that they made the repairs on to produce the various bits they needed that weren't on-hand hardware.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Not necessarily, because not all Zentradi fleets are equipped the same. This is far more blatant in Macross II's timeline where the Zentradi are more regularly the antagonists and other main fleets are shown with a wide array of mecha and several unique ship classes not found in the Boddole Zer main fleet. However, even in the main Macross timeline there is some evidence that some fleets have equipment or equipment variations that others don't, either due to factory satellites in that fleet's supply chain being lost or breaking down or because it was only ever available to Zentradi in one specific part of the galaxy. Macross Chronicle's coverage of the "enemy battle suit" from Macross Plus posits this as a possible origin, an independent development by some Protoculture colony world or regional government in their Stellar Republic that was not universally adopted.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Y'know, I don't think it's ever come up. Whether that means Vrlitwhai and Exsedol are extremely odd Zentradi and more normal ones skip right to attacking, that the New UN Forces are much more proactive, something else, or some combination of factors is unclear. If I had to guess, I'd assume that the New UN Forces are likely unwilling to risk allowing a larger Zentradi force to acquire any information about an inhabited planet since they've heard this story before and know how it ends.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    One would assume there are at least some measures taken to minimize the risk of detection once an emigrant fleet settles on a planet. Nothing is mentioned, AFAIK. I'd assume a fair amount of it is simply taking appropriate measures so folding ships entering and leaving the system don't attract unwanted attention and maintaining an early warning picket in the space around the system to detect an approaching Zentradi force. Past a certain point, it's a do-or-die defensive battle and to the New UN Forces credit they do seem to mostly win those when sufficient reinforcements are available. To a certain extent, there is that element of living with the risk that your planet might one day be found and attacked by a Zentradi fleet. It's not something that people can really get away from. It's just kind of the cost of living in the galaxy the Protoculture ruined. All that's really changed is humanity knows about it now. I'm not sure that would necessary be any different than an encounter between the New UN Forces and the Zentradi. The Supervision Army was made up of captured Protoculture and Zentradi, and without cloning facilities for the Protoculture the way there were for the Zentradi it's likely an all-Zentradi force now and using mostly the same equipment which the regular Zentradi forces use. The New UN Forces could conceivably have fought the Supervision Army a few times and not even realized it because they're not checking whatever inter-fleet IFF codes that the Zentradi use.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's Star Trek: Picard... everyone being broken and miserable is this show's one prevailing theme. Everyone apart from Worf, Geordi, and Beverly has already had at least one season of trauma and misery. Very true, though since Star Trek fans have responded very negatively overall to the Kurtzman NuTrek original designs and some of the best-received fan videos are shops which replace the Kurtzman designs with classic ones, you'd think they'd have tried a different tack. Compare the reception to Kurtzman's copypasta armada in season one with the flotilla of updated TNG ships from STO in season two. This is one case where they could literally have done NO new ships and actually gotten praised for it. Instead, replacing the extremely well-received animated USS Titan with this fugly kitbash called the Titan-A and introducing a new Enterprise for no real reason just smacks of laziness. They don't want to put in the effort to get fans invested in a new ship so they're trying to borrow the fanbase's affection for an older one by borrowing the name. Not to Trek proper. Back before NuTrek launched, I know Star Trek Online was at least semi-officially considered to be its own self-contained alternate universe opposite the Relaunch Novelverse. I don't believe that position has changed, or at least if it has I haven't seen any official statement about it. NuTrek has been borrowing starship designs from STO because fans dragged Kurtzman and Chabon hard for the copypasta armada of one badly CG'd ship Riker shows up with at the end of Picard season one.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Indeed. The scale of the threat posed by the remaining Zentradi forces really can't be overstated. Not only are there still approximately 3 million ships of the 4,795,122 ship Boddole Zer main fleet still abroad in the galaxy after retreating from the final battle of humanity's First Space War, there are said to be between 2,000 and 3,000 of the original 5,000+ main fleets still at large. Each of those main fleets has hundreds or thousands of its branch fleets spread across massive areas of space searching for, and engaging, the Supervision Army. The best-equipped (or most excessive) emigrant government New UN Forces have the firepower to defeat a branch fleet on their own... the smallest regular operating unit of the Zentradi forces. Anything much bigger, and the best choice is to tuck tail and run. The mechanics of fold navigation are a double-edged sword that mostly works in humanity's favor at this stage. Because it's essentially a form of teleportation by folding higher dimensional space, the odds of chance encounters with the Zentradi are quite low. Still nonzero, but low enough that humanity is still essentially flying under the radar despite its burgeoning interstellar civilization.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe the new villain is a former events coordinator from that resort Picard stayed in on Risa, determined to take her revenge for his stubborn insistence on doing nothing but reading. Really, they're running out of anyone who has any real reason to even dislike Picard never mind feel murderous rage towards him and the Federation. The Next Generation was too episodic for Jean-Luc Picard or the crew of the Enterprise-D to gather much in the way of recurring nemises (nemesi?) or offend anyone badly enough that they'd come screaming out of nowhere to try to destroy the Federation and murder him. He only really managed a few people who had something against him personally and they're all either dead or in such disgrace that they can't really get at him personally never mind try to destroy the entire Federation. This villain either has to be a "remember the new guy?" or this crazy lady is a Son'a/Ba'ku come for revenge for some reason. Are we looking at Ru'afo's mum or something? That problem ended up getting magically solved offscreen and then never mentioned again. (Voyager's VG warp nacelles were supposed to be the fix, at least initially.) Two in one season... this means that, somewhere along the way, both Will Riker's USS Titan and Worf's USS Enterprise-E were destroyed somehow offscreen. Why do the writers have it in for everyone and everything like this? Everyone MUST be miserable and haunted and broken and nothing familiar from better days is allowed to exist. My question would be more why they didn't use the name of the Odyssey-class ship Picard commanded before retiring... the USS Verity. The tie-in/prequel comic that set Picard up had him commanding the USS Verity as his flagship for the Romulan evacuation. Why not just use THAT one? It's just lazy writing. Destroying the Enterprise once was a sucker-punch to the audience who were certain the writers would never do it. Past that point, it became an expectation that the writers WOULD do it because they went and established that practically every Enterprise ends its service in a violent demise.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming humanity doesn't end up destroying itself first or getting destroyed by the Zentradi... yeah, probably. Emigrant governments are going to need quite a bit of time to build up substantial defense forces that can independently withstand even a Zentradi Branch Fleet's attack. Even in 2060, all but the emigrant governments with the largest and most powerful defense forces have to call upon their neighbors for reinforcements when they come under attack by a Zentradi branch fleet or other sigificant threat. The obligation to answer such calls comes up in Macross Delta: the False Songstress when Macross Galaxy sends a distress call in the face of a Vajra attack and in Macross Delta: The White Knight of the Black Wing when Windermere IV's Aerial Knights take a beating helping to repel a Zentradi fleet attacking one of Windermere IV's neighboring systems. With most emigrant governments being able to muster only a few dozen to at most a few hundred warships, they're badly outclassed by the sheer scale of Zentradi forces. It will take quite a while for humanity to be able to deploy a military force on anywhere close to that insane scale or to develop weapons that can sufficiently level that playing field. (Master File presents a story about a 2030s-era encounter with a very small main fleet of just 120,000 ships that was still time for the brown trousers. Spica III was wiped out, and the New UN Forces had to draw every available ship and fighter from Earth and all the neighboring systems to wipe the main fleet out before it stumbled on any other worlds in the immediate vicinity of Earth.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    If nothing else, I have every confidence Jack Black's performance as Bowser will leave no piece of scenery free of toothmarks... which is 100% on-brand for Bowser. I am just NEVER going to get over the idea of Mario actually having dialog.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    So... that was a thing that I watched. I have no idea what the hell it was, though. If I had to guess based on the content of that trailer, I would say either Patrick Stewart or the rest of the writers room are on a mission to burn what remains of TNG to the ground in a fit of pique after seeing Picard's reviews. Either that or it's a cry for help. There's nothing sane about repeatedly writing yourself in scenarios where everyone hates you and you and your friends are miserable and likely to die horribly. Jean-Luc Picard was a consummate diplomat. Why do so very many people seem to harbor murderous hatred for him now that he's like a hundred and a robot? The cast reunion the showrunners swore Picard wouldn't become aside, are they just grenade-fishing for loose ends to tie up for fanservice's sake? Lore and Moriarty? Those two were done to death back in TNG.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, it does sound logical at first glance... but it's not the safest option on the table. Avoidance is. By the 2030s, emigrant fleets use taskforces of stealth warships to scout ahead of the fleet on its planned course and provide a defensive early warning picket in a wide area of space around the fleet's current position. Nothing's safer for the civilian population than spotting trouble ahead of time before it spots you and getting out of dodge before that trouble in potentia can detect you or at least before trouble can reach you. Nobody wants to be caught in a do-or-die defense of an emigrant fleet against a superior force. That ends poorly way too often, like Macross Galaxy getting wiped out by the Vajra. Variable Fighter Master File adds a few extra details in the VF-25 book. Namely, that emigrant fleets making an emergency fold jump to escape a threat will deploy a fold wave jamming unit to mask their departure and that there is a (thankfully little-used) practice of either self-destructing or otherwise destroying ships that cannot escape and are left in imminent danger of falling into Zentradi hands with information about Humanity.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Really, nothing about "Lady M" makes sense... and to make matters worse, all the information about her is presented as either secondhand or rumor.
  13. Seto Kaiba
  14. Seto Kaiba
    That'd be a hell of a plot twist...
  15. Seto Kaiba
  16. Seto Kaiba
    There may well be. Then again, there may not. Someone has to be brave enough to actually test the hypothesis first before we'll know for sure. Disney's not as confident in the brand as they were when they were before fans tore them a new one over the sequel trilogy and Solo. With Andor handily grabbing most of the attention, I suspect we'll see more efforts towards original storytelling with a minimum of fanservice. Nothing succeeds like success, after all. If they can keep bringing fresh product like Andor that isn't buried in self-indulgent fanservice they can probably undo a lot of the damage the sequel trilogy and Solo did. Yes, novels are adapted to screenplays all the time... but there's a big difference between adapting an already-popular novel that had broad appeal like, say, Jurassic Park or Harry Potter, and adapting a licensed novel intended to cater to a much smaller audience. It's almost exclusively the former. (It can work under the right conditions, but because western audiences are still locked into "animation is for the children" Japan's cheap way of doing it is seen as unattractive to most studios and the production cost of these direct-to-streaming shows is absolutely insane so studios are being very cautious. Mind you, being cautious is not the same thing as exercising good judgement either... it's possible to very cautiously make huge numbers of terrible decisions, like The Rise of Skywalker.) Being a fan of something does not mean you are not able to recognize its flaws. It usually means you love something despite, or even because of, its flaws. If there are writers who are fans of the EU, they're no doubt exercising their professional judgement to separate what they personally enjoy from what's workable for the general audiences. 😉
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, they can't all be gems... but talk about a missed opportunity for a prequel meme!
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how many questionable mushrooms he ingests, it's possible he's just having a REALLY bad trip.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Forgive me for belaboring the obvious point, but there's quite a galaxy of difference between the kind of writing in licensed works that is intended to appeal to die-hard fans and the kind of writing intended to appeal to and engage general audiences. What die-hard fans might consider good or even exceptional writing in Expanded Universe material is not at all likely to be well-received by the casual audience because the fundamental expectations regarding what constitutes "quality" are different. One of the main reasons Andor stands head, shoulders, knees, toes, and a human pyramid of wookiees above its contemporaries in the Star Wars franchise is that its writers are actively avoiding the self-indulgent obsession with fanservice that is the hallmark of EU writing and that too often becomes the norm when you have fans working on properties they started as fans of.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That is just plain cruel. 😅
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Well, technically speaking everything the Zentradi use is a "Protoculture design"... but given that the ship was configured to be crewed by giants and there is mention of battle pods recovered from the wreck, it's a very safe bet it was something the Protoculture designed for the Zentradi to use. Possible explanations for why the class itself is associated with the Supervision Army include that it was manufactured by one specific region of the Protoculture's civilization for the Zentradi fleets protecting them and never achieved widespread adoption, or that the factory satellites for the Zentradi fleets operating around Earth were destroyed long ago and the Supervision Army forces are the only ones still operating that class in that region of the galaxy. (In DYRL?, its origin was changed to being a Meltrandi ship, as they became stand-ins for the Zentradi's enemies in that in-universe movie.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It's worth noting that that rule did bend quite a bit in the recent movie, and has had the occasional little deviation here and there in previous works.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, it did. Exactly like that, in fact... because that art by Kazutaka Miyatake depicts Alien StarShip 1 shortly before she crashed on Earth. It's based on the production line art that Miyatake drew for the Supervision Army gunship encountered in "Viva Maria" which was said in-series to be the same type as the Macross, and which official publications (e.g. Macross Chronicle) use as art of the Macross's original (pre-refit) appearance.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Spoiler tag your spoilers, the movie just became available to most fans outside Japan. Boy did I ever underestimate what a bunch of hacks were working on Delta... Quite a lot of fans seem to be rather upset by the whole thing too, both because it's a cheap and meaningless attempt to garner some interest from older fans that has no real impact on the plot and because it's a tediously mundane answer to the setting's most enduring mystery.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Wow, so Chris Pratt's Mario voice is just... regular-ass Chris Pratt voice. Having seen Super Mario Bros. in theaters as a kid my hopes were not high to begin with, but it's weirdly disappointing to hear Mario not sounding like the outrageous (but not entirely unrealistic) Italian stereotype Charles Martinet has been voicing since 1992. EDIT: In a way, it's even weirder to hear Mario having actual dialogue instead of just various reaction sounds.
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