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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Caught today's episode of GQuuuuuuX over lunch... it was pretty disappointing. Last episode sold us the idea that there was going to be a big, climactic confrontation between the Twelve Olympians and Pomeranians for first place in Clan Battle and a possible double assassination attempt on Kycilia Zabi. We get none of that. The Gundams don't even fight. The writing in this episode is back to being a hot mess... particularly when it comes to the two main girls weird obsession with Shuji, a personality-less character they've spent almost no onscreen time with. Their sudden devotion to him and willingness to both fight over him and kill for him comes off as downright psychotic. The new designs being introduced are getting progressively less fugly. However, that appears to be a function of Studio Khara's ham-handed designer having to divide their limited time across multiple machines and therefore not having enough time to ruin each classic machine to the same extent as the Gundam and Zaku. The Psycho Gundam Mark II looks fine and almost UC-like until it starts dropping its armor and becomes an off-brand Evangelion in a maroon banana hammock for some reason, but the Gyan and Hambrabi made it past Khara's designer seemingly without more than a very minor aesthetic overhaul.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Must be my apparent youthfulness talking (😅), but I'm not sure "kids" and "young" are words I'd use to describe the Star Wars: the Clone Wars fandom. Unless, of course, it were in a sentence like "they probably have young kids by now". Tales of the Underworld is aimed at people who were tweens and teens when The Clone Wars came out... almost 17 years ago. Musings on whether 30 really is the new 20 aside, the Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld series is very much a Star Wars series by and for the most die-hard of Star Wars fans. It doesn't really have anything for the casual audience because its stories are so heavily dependent on fanservice. Both stories feel like they were written more to pad out the Wiki pages for their respective characters than because there was anything worthwhile to do with the characters. Worse even than the usual Filoni fanservice-first halfassery.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That "young crowd" is strictly imaginary. This is a spin-off from a 2008 TV series. Anyone familiar with these characters in their original context is likely at least in their mid-20s.🤣
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Watched Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld today. If I had to pick two words to describe it, those words would be "unremarkable" and "unnecessary". It's another Dave Filoni Star Wars animated title marked by all his usual creative excesses and his "fanservice first" writing style. Raspy-voiced Sith assassin Asajj Ventress and walking Western movie reference Cad Bane were clearly chosen becaue they were fan favorite minor characters in The Clone Wars and not because Dave Filoni and Matt Michnovetz had any story about either of them that was worth telling.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Supervisor Meero almost certainly believed the same was true of herself. That she was surely too loyal to the Empire to ever be arrested and sent to a space gulag. I can only imagine the vast numbers of people who might begin dreaming up false charges in order to free themselves from Senator Binks's company.🤣 Most of the Empire's prisons were Republic and/or Separatist prisons first... and probably went right back to being Republic prisons after the war. The only thing more horrible than that hypothesis is the cursed knowledge imparted to me by The Clone Wars... the terrible, forbidden knowledge that...
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe Director Krennic will arrange for Dedra to have an appropriately entertaining bunk mate to help the time pass more easily during her stay on Narkina 5. I can think of a few people in the Star Wars universe who would make ideal companions for her...
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl has finally decided to veer into romance... which I guess is a nice change of pace from the main girl bashfully shoving the main guy through the nearest wall with her super-strength every time he gets close.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the power of dogsh*t-tier writing is a pathway to many plot developments some consider to be unnatural. That said, in Star Wars, I think we've only seen one person actually return from death and that was just recently. Emperor Palpatine and Mother Talzin both tried to avoid dying for real by using the dark side to turn themselves into the undead. Palpatine used the dark side to anchor his mind to his dead-and-rotting corpse like a classic voodoo zombie or a lich. Talzin used the dark side to turn herself into the galaxy's nastiest lingering fart, existing as a vampiric mist made of "magical ichor". Both of them needed to feed on the life energy of other people to regain a functional body and avoid dying for real. Boba Fett just pulls a "reports of my death-by-felching in a giant anus monster in the desert were greatly exaggerated" since he suffers a classic Disney villain "death" offscreen during Return of the Jedi. Dedra Meero... well... her ticket is likely to get punched in a less survivable, more verifiable manner.
  9. Seto Kaiba
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level season two has lost a lot of the wit and charm that made the first season enjoyable. All I can really say for it now is it's bland and inoffensive white noise. Classic Stars... yeesh. Seven episodes on and still as unintelligible as ever. On a lark I decided to check what its rating was in Crunchyroll's app, and it's barely holding onto a 3... which considering you have to REALLY screw up to get below 4 on Crunchyroll is pretty impressive. Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? remains pretty watchable, if rather formuliac. The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows has not really improved in any way. It remains, as it has been, one of those isekai-adjacent, low-effort, generic power fantasy titles. In other words, the laziest kind of slop imaginable. For my money, this season's standout is The Apothecary Diaries S2. Just as enjoyable as season one, and with the promise of quite the explosive payoff at the end of a major story arc from the light novel.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Very excited for that. Strange New Worlds might not be the most groundbreaking Star Trek series out there, but it really does a fantastic job of recapturing that lighthearted cameraderie, that feeling of high adventure, and the sense of wonder that was such an integral part of the original Star Trek and its successors in the 80's and 90's. Even my parents, who are OG Trekkies, absolutely love Strange New Worlds. They've been eagerly waiting for news of when the new season would drop ever since I first got them to watch the series.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I've seen video of him praising Andor's writing, particularly its handling of the Empire, at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023. He seems to hold it in high regard, though in some other interviews he also seems to want to cling to Star Wars's kid-friendly roots as one might expect from a guy whose entire portfolio is spinoffs of a cartoon. That certainly seems to be the case. If nothing else, he's passionate about the job. That is... yes. That's it exactly.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    As much as I would love that, Tony Gilroy has indicated he's not really interested in a long-term commitment to franchise filmmaking and there is no way Disney is brazen enough to do a partial reboot on Star Wars so soon after rebooting it the first time in order to get rid of the unremarkable and unsatisfying but financially successful sequel trilogy. It sucked before... we're just going to be more aware of how much it sucks now that Star Wars has, by luck or good judgement, produced a series that doesn't. Going back to shows that read like Dave Filoni playing with his Clone Wars and Rebels action figures is going to feel like one giant leap backwards creatively, but it's far too late for them to recalibrate their creative process for Ahsoka season two or Maul: Shadow Lord, both of which are Clone Wars/Rebels spinoffs.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... y'know, you're right. There is a visible toilet on the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian. I guess poor Mando just has to cross his legs and wait now that he's got that Naboo starfighter. 🤣 Kiloparsecs. It's difficult to believe Andor and The Rise of Skywalker are even in the same franchise, so vast is the difference in quality. Imagine what we could have had if the likes of Tony Gilroy had been given creative control of the sequel trilogy instead of Jar-Jar Abrams.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    That seems to be the case for practically any hyperspace trip in Star Wars. Jump cuts are used to preserve the flow of the story, but it definitely feels like Star Wars hyperdrives are so fast that you can get anywhere in the galaxy within a day or two. Luke and Obi-Wan's trip to Alderaan in A New Hope seems to take only a few hours. Anakin's trip from Tatooine to Coruscant in The Phantom Menace seems to be an overnight flight at most. So very many characters take interstellar flights in small fighters with no evident way to deal with basic biological necessities (and are never shown racing to the john right after landing) that it seems to suggest most hyperspace trips are a matter of a few hours at most.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, that's not quite right IMO. Disney has been fairly consistent in trying to keep Disney+ Star Wars titles at least as family-friendly as the Star Wars main series movies. However, only a few titles are actually made specifically for children. That's your LEGO Star Wars titles and Young Jedi Adventures, and arguably Skeleton Crew. Most of their output is nostalgia-driven, fanservice-based material that's aimed at an audience with fond memories of the Prequel Trilogy. Filoni's shows are practically all based on his The Clone Wars cartoon from 2008. Rebels and The Bad Batch are both direct sequels to The Clone Wars. With, I think, one exception the three seasons of Tales of are all prequels or sequels to specific character arcs from The Clone Wars and/or the prequels. Most of the stuff about Mandalorians in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett is from The Clone Wars and supported by Rebels, particularly the darksaber and Mando's weird cult. Obi-Wan Kenobi is built on fandom's profound affection for Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequels and the character's sassmaster role in The Clone Wars. They're not aimed at kids, they're capitalizing on the nostalgia of people who were kids (or die-hard fans) in the 2000s when the prequels and The Clone Wars were new. The Acolyte is one major exception there in that it's not directly tied into any pre-existing movie or series. It's a tie-in to an ongoing Expanded Universe multimedia project instead, and suffered badly from being run by a promoted fan who was a devotee of that specific part of Star Wars history. Andor, though... Andor is what happens when Disney stops trying to pander to Star Wars's aging audience with promoted fans writing glorified fan fiction in an attempt to set the Guinness record for most franchise references per minute of screen time and, instead, hires talented non-fan creators from outside to develop and tell a character-focused story for more than just Star Wars fans.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    My group just finished Andor S2 Ep10-12. Honestly, just cancel the other Disney+ Star Wars shows at this point. Tony Gilroy and Andor have set the bar unfeasibly, unachievably, insurmountably high in a single Herculean work of cinematic mastery. This is an unfollowable act. Andor should be the model for future Star Wars stories. We have no need of the Jedi and the Sith, their lightsabers and heavy-handed talk of destiny and moral absolutes. This authentic, human drama about regular people living in the Star Wars universe has far more impact than anything else the franchise has done besides Rogue One. Like, I were working on one of the other in-development Disney+ Star Wars titles right now I'd be sweating bullets because this is what every other Disney+ Star Wars show will be compared to going forward. Hopefully the critics will have some perspective and not simply murder the next series for not being on Andor's level.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Caught today's episode of GQuuuuuuX. It's... actually not bad. The series is getting off the dime and deciding to actually do something.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Classic Stars remains delightfully unintelligible for another week. I have watched... six!... six episodes of this hot mess and I still have absolutely no f***ing clue what it's about. None. It's like that one episode of Deep Space Nine where everyone's got aphasia and can't form coherent sentences. Things sure are happening, but I don't know what any of it means.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    OK, the section in Macross Big Encyclopedia isn't very large... it's basically 2/3 of a page on pg94. The bit in Variable Fighter Designer's Note is a lot bigger, multiple full pages, starting on page 232 thru page 239. There's a concept art section for it in Shoji Kawamori Designer's Note starting from pg577 to 581 which has some good detail shots of the internals of the pack. The movie's Official Complete Book has some decent color reference too.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    My group won't be able to get together to watch it 'til Wednesday, but we've decided to make a double-header out of it... Andor S2 #10-12 followed by dinner and then Rogue One. Gonna make an occasion out of the conclusion of what, by ratings, is likely the best Star Wars title ever made. 😁
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Reality, it must be admitted, has terrible writing.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    We're not told exactly how much cloning was done, but it was apparently done quite extensively... enough that recessive genetic disorders became an issue within a generation, and that they were able to crew emigrant fleets by cloning personnel with essential skills and knowledge. Macross II: Lovers Again was, I think, the first Macross title to play with the idea of a post-war world where much of the population was at least part-Zentradi. They seem to be not quite as common in Macross Plus and other later titles, since most of the characters we see are standard Humans, but part-Zentradi aren't in short supply either. Humanity adopting some Zentradi technology doesn't seem particularly strange to me, or even connected to the population numbers. Earth got its hands on a LOT of pristine overtechnology thanks to the end of the war, the defection of a hundred-plus Zentradi ships, and the capture of dozens of Factory Satellites. It's only natural Humanity would be leveraging superior versions of the technology they've been copying where possible. There's that, yeah. Though we also see some in Veffidas's backstory where she's basically participating in Zentradi street fights, and Macross 7 Trash also involves the fighting instincts of the Zentradi being hard to control. I think the guys in Circle FANKY probably agree, since they included the Daedalus II-class in their Battleships of the Galaxy series devoted to main timeline Macross. It didn't... there are several intermediate designs. The DYRL-based timeline leading up to Macross II: Lovers Again has a very different course of events and technological progression. Quite a few post-war dates and events seen during the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series still occur, but occur years after the war instead of months. For instance, the Megaroad-01 launches in 2014 not 2012, or Komilia being born in 2018. The pace of overtechnology development is a fair bit slower, and Earth only captures the one factory satellite seen in the TV series. But it advances nevertheless. The VF-1 is replaced by the VF-1 Kai Attack Valkyrie in 2018, the VF-4 is introduced in 2014 and upgraded c.2036, and then 2054 sees all the previous gen Valkyrie designs and ships get replaced en masse during a major tech boom following a massive conflict with a Zentradi main fleet out near Pluto. Earth's capture of a second factory satellite leads to a second overtechnology boom that gives rise to new classes of ship and a new generation of Valkyries and Destroids. They start with the VF-XX c.2060, then there's the VF-2 in 2072, the VF-2SS in 2081, the VF-2JA in 2086, and the VA-1SS Metal Siren in 2092. Not the one in Eternal Love Song, a Great Offscreen War in 2054 between the UN Spacy and a Zentradi main fleet that found the emigrant ship Million Star just a short distance from Sol. The fighting was so intense that a large portion of the Spacy's fleet is lost, but the factory satellite captured leads to the development of a lot of new ships and mecha seen in the OVA. Yeah. Macross II's official timeline is the first official mention of the UN Spacy mass-producing Macross-class ships... years before Macross Frontier established the existence of the Macross-class SDFNs. Exactly why they use a mixture of Macross-class and Megaroad-class ships for emigrant fleet missions is unclear, but they were launching them until 2054 at the very least. The 2054 Zentradi war is caused when a Macross-class emigrant ship stumbles directly into a Zentradi main fleet. You mean art reference or technical reference? It has its own section in books like Variable Fighter Designer's Note and Macross Big Encyclopedia. The technical writeup is in Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet F Movie SMS 04A/B. The actual writeup is pretty minimal, since the "Super Pack" is really just a small chemical rocket booster, a fuel tank, a laminated shield, and the fold wave projector/missile pods on the wingtips.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The point is that they didn't have enough people to lock down the entire building like you're proposing should be easy. Anyone who actually knew her would know full well that she wouldn't hurt or kill anyone. Mind you, it doesn't really matter in the end. Those senators who are inclined to [believe in/support] Mon Mothma are going to question the Imperial official account of whatever happened no matter what and likely assume the Empire is lying or at least distorting the truth. Senators who are inclined to support the Empire are going to accept the sanitized Imperial propaganda version of events likely without question. Some of them have already seen one of their colleagues in the process of getting disappeared by the ISB, and are doubtless going to suspect that if Mon Mothma's escort did kill someone they did so in defense of their charge.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    There was a really prominent example that happened in a major First World country about four years back... Oh, absolutely. The Emperor is the origin of the Empire's systemic arrogance and belief that they have everything and everyone under their control. He played the Republic so completely and so well that he has reason to believe that there's nobody who can pose a real threat to his rule. Mon Mothma's story arc in the Andor-adjacent novel The Mask of Fear is basically a longform explanation of why the Emperor doesn't consider Mon Mothma any real threat. Her outspoken pacifism and naive attempts to curtail the Emperor's power through Senate legislation unintentionally buys her years of being beneath suspicion as a possible rebel in the eyes of the Empire. The ISB was never able to link her to any rebel activity despite years of surveillance since she wasn't actually involved in any. That was all Luthen/"Axis". So when the ISB starts planning her arrest, they misjudge the situation quite badly because they think they're going to get no more than token resistance from a pacifist bleeding heart senator who would never hurt a fly. This is a person whose idea of political violence is a tersely worded letter. Odds are the Empire probably didn't consider her a real threat even after her escape was aided by a rebel agent. She was just an unpopular senator from a wealthy family. Cutting off her access to her family's money and monitoring her associates would be enough to render her powerless in the Empire's eyes. As a rebel leader, she'd be more hindrance than help due to her naivete and reluctance to take decisive action. They were probably more interested in using the knowledge that she had rebel ties to help identify actual rebels and arrest them than they were in bringing her in as a "rebel mastermind". You're assuming - without evidence - that the Ghorman Massacre is just the events that we see onscreen and not something that continued after Cassian fled town. After all, this is explicitly described as a worse event than the so-called Tarkin Massacre that killed 500 people. You're assuming the people in the story have the same omniscient knowledge the audience does. Bail Organa's guards - and the ISB agent infiltrating them - were dressed as civilians and using weapons smuggled into the Senate. What bystanders saw was some random lady try to grab Senator Mothma away from her escort, shout about being an ISB agent while brandishing a blaster, and then get shot as a rebel spy by the senator's own security. The bystanders are NOT going to have a clear picture of what actually happened there... esp. since the ISB is unlikely to publicly admit that the two people who died were ISB agents. Considering the Imperial reputation for gung-ho violence that recently saw a massive massacre on Ghorman occur, some of the public might assume that the people who died (e.g. her "trusted" driver of many years) died trying to get her to safety while she was being abducted or something along those lines. Audiences would be complaining that her escape was too easy if nobody got hurt. The senators siding with her weren't going to do so openly, for fear of being the next to be disappeared by the ISB. They would already have been skeptical of the Empire's story too.
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