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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I have to admit, this has been a season of pleasant surprises... quite a few shows I was expecting to be tedious have turned out to be immense fun. On the whole, I think the biggest surprise of this season is I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons. The story has seamlessly changed premise about three times now, each of which is profoundly unexpected. It really has a lot of charm to it. Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms is still a lot of fun, being a cleaner take on B Gata H Kei, though it is getting funnier now that there's at least one active shipper on deck among the cast. OKITSURA: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl is still a ton of fun too... one of those romcoms where everyone can see it, just not the protagonist. Its tongue-in-cheek insights into Okinawan culture are fun too. I'm starting another one that wasn't previously on my radar in just a minute. I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Check Out on Time. Is it just me, or are there a lot of shows lampooning Japan's toxic-as-hell office culture this season?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Are you claiming to be privy to the internal decisionmaking criteria Disney uses to decide if these shows are successful or not? A third-party estimation of the total viewership in terms of minutes watched during the release period is not an infallible metric for judging success or failure. It's not even all that reliable, given that it is an estimation based on sample populations in 210 regions within the Unites States only. Most other analytics being cited are similar, limited to capturing viewership statistics voluntarily and/or mainly in the US market. Skeleton Crew was released worldwide. So even if those estimations are accurate, and they probably aren't, the data is far from conclusive because it only covers a fraction of the global viewership. The TL;DR here is you're jumping to conclusions based on data we know to be incomplete and can reasonably argue is only a rough approximation. Whatever criteria Disney's going to use to decide if Skeleton Crew was a success or not are known only to them and possibly the showrunners, but they have more reliable data than we do because they're the ones collecting first-party viewership statistics from their subscribers directly. It's been suggested by people connected to the production that criteria like how the show ranked on their service and trends in episode-by-episode number of viewers are among the factors being considered by Disney. We'll know if it was successful or not in a couple months when Disney reports out to its shareholders. ... looking at the numbers, I don't think this is accurate either. Marvel seems to be suffering a bit from diminished returns after over a decade of pumping out content, but their box office gross (adjusted for inflation) shows they've really only had a few stumbles lately. The Marvels was basically the only one they actually lost money on, and the underperformers largely are doing about as well as the first couple films with the exception of Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. They're not making as much money as they were when Marvel movie madness was at its peak but they're making damned respectable bank on it still. Same with Star Wars.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The glaring asterisk hanging over this statement like a Death Star is "Does anyone actually take what Star Wars fans say seriously anymore?". Word of mouth can help or hurt a series, but only if the opinion of the person spreading it can be respected. Ever since Disney acquired LucasFilm and Star Wars, Star Wars fans have been loudly complaining about practically everything to do with Star Wars. A fair amount of that overlaps, intentionally or otherwise, with obnoxious culture war BS. Nearly thirteen years of non-stop complaining has taken all of the sting out of negative word-of-mouth from Star Wars fans because negativity is the expected reaction to anything new. If Star Wars fans were unanimously praising something, that'd probably turn heads because of how out-of-character it is... but the world is so used to Star Wars fan negativity that I'd assume it'd actually prompt people to check the series out assuming it can't possibly be as bad as the fans say. Never mind that almost all of the actual coverage of Skeleton Crew is broadly positive and has been for the show's entire run. That's very different, though. Game of Thrones was very well received by die-hard and casual audiences alike until that disastrous last season. It wasn't just unsatisfied die-hard fans complaining, it was poorly-received by everyone. The nearly universal vehemently negative reaction to that last season is what ultimately soured public perception of it to a degree that nobody is willing to recommend it. It was like having a delicious meal at a lovely restaurant, and then spending the entire night sh*tting yourself unconscious from food poisoning. No matter how good the food tasted, you wouldn't recommend that restaurant to anyone. That's just denying reality. These shows are developed to be limited series from the outset, and if they were flopping we would not be seeing Disney doubling down on its promise to deliver a new series every year and developing new seasons of existing shows like Ahsoka and Andor. If they were truly all flopping like The Acolyte did, we'd expect to see more news of confirmed cancellations (direct statements that any future plans have been scrapped) and we'd be seeing breaks in the release schedule as production scaled back or the whole concept was abandoned like the anthology movie series was after Solo: a Star Wars Story spun in. The reality seems to be more that the fans are just determined to be unhappy, and will declare failure no matter how well a series does.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, I wouldn't even call it "copying". Star Wars is right up there with Gundam as a franchise that obsessively follows a formula set down by its earliest installments, and woe betide anyone who tries to deviate from it. It's not that they're copying, they just only know how to write one kind of Star Wars-Approved rogueish character. 🤣
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Based on recent comments by the Skeleton Crew showrunners, Disney is looking beyond just the absolute viewership in terms of the total minutes watched when assessing the performance of these shows. They suggested that the trend in individual viewership - whether the show is gaining or losing viewers across its release period - when determining whether the series is successful or not. They noted that it's encouraging that Skeleton Crew steadily gained viewers across its run as Andor did. That may get it its second season if the showrunners can sell the studio on the new storyline.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Who does he actually fight though? He sucker-punches that one guy while escaping from the stockade at Port Borgo, he buys his way out of trouble on At Achran, he outwits a mall cop or two at that day spa, bullies some children half his size, and then struggles with two out-of-shape desk jockets on At Attin.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... maybe. Personally, I think that the way the writers handled Jod regaining command of his pirate crew was a good fit for how they'd developed the character previously. Jod's not much of a fighter. He is, however, a talker. A conman. He's got a lot of charisma and he's good at persuasive speaking, so he bluffs his way out of trouble whenever he can. If he got into a straight fight with Brutus he'd probably lose and die, but he's able to talk his way into a stay of execution with the promise of access to At Attin and then rules lawyers his way back into command by killing Brutus in "single combat" after someone else had already incapacitated him. He's also so used to talking his way out of trouble that he's completely unprepared for someone else to start rules-lawyering too... which is how the kids and SM-33 get the drop on him when they steal the Onyx Cinder back. A big fight during the show's climax would've stolen focus from the main characters (the kids) though, and with the villain's plan coming together having Jod and Brutus duke it out would've distracted from Jod's master plan that the kids were trying to stop. An Entertainment Weekly interview with the showrunners a few days back definitely bears out the idea that Skeleton Crew's viewership mainly suffered as a result of The Acolyte being its predecessor. Like Andor, it gained rather than lost viewers as the series went on which augurs well for prospects of a second season.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    No such luck, it seems. Both in official setting materials and in Master File, infrared emissions seem to (realistically) be the one area where Valkyries continue to struggle when it comes to stealth. There is a level of unavoidable infrared emissions simply because the engines exist. Thrust is produced by heating propellant. Whether it's using fusion plasma, lasers, electrical arcs, or even combustion, the end result is shooting hot gas out of an engine nozzle in order to move and that's going to produce detectable infrared. Valkyries have been noted to use the same basic techniques for reducing infrared emissions that real world stealth aircraft like the F-117, B-2, and F-22 do. They can mix bypass airflow back into the exhaust stream in the engine in order to reduce the exhaust temperature at the nozzle, and they can use their fuel tanks as heat sinks. They still have to have ways of radiating waste heat to keep a variety of other systems cooled, so there are various radiators and heat exchangers scattered across the airframe including the sub-intakes and wing glove. In space, the wings and fuel tanks therein are used to store heat during combat and then radiate that heat away to cool the aircraft outside of combat. The fancy new Radar Absorbant Material that Master File describes as having first been tested on the VF-17 before becoming the standard on the VF-19, VF-22, etc. which it calls FAM or EFAM (Electromagnetic radiation Fold-wave Absorbant Material) seems to be bad with heat in general. It's not mentioned as being effective at mitigating infrared and the stuff is actually described as heat-sensitive. It becomes less effective when it gets hot and as a result basically stops working when the VF is using its wings to vent waste heat. (I did find it very interesting to read about nevertheless, since between that and the "preview control active stealth" system description that explains how 3rd Generation active stealth differs from the previous generations feels a bit like foreshadowing of the Mirage Package on the Sv-303.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    That's the continuation of a trend that started back in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I went a little further down the Overtechnology material science rabbit hole on this one today between loads of laundry, and it's gotten even messier. The term "space metal" is actually still used in several more modern sources including Macross Chronicle, but it's one of like five terms that are used semi-interchangeably to refer to the same broad family of exotic supermaterials derived from overtechnology: Space metal Space alloy Dynametal OTMetal OTMaterial ... and that's not counting the overtechnology-derived composite materials that incorporate conventional metals, those (and other) exotic metals as well as exotic non-metallic materials like hypercarbon, reinforced hypercarbon-carbon, hypercarbon fiber, hypercarbon nanotubes, etc. Like an exasperated zookeeper cleaning out the primate house, all I can say is "This sh*t is bananas." Hypercarbon seems to be especially versatile, being used in practically any kind of composite arrangement you can get carbon fiber into nowadays like carbon-carbon, reinforced polymer, and metal matrix composites. There's one unrelated section I found while down that particular rabbit hole in Master File that talks about how fold carbon is synthesized and refined and then pivots twice into the subject of how studying Zentradi reactors and fold systems that a film of fold carbon particles was a near-ideal radiation shield, and then into how that was subsequently adapted into a next-generation radar-absorbent material that can be dynamically controlled to absorb specific frequencies using fold waves. (That and the explanation of how the 3rd Gen active stealth system works is a trip too...)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... that'd be pretty out-of-character for the space pirates in Star Wars. As odd as it sounds for what is, after all, a space fantasy series... the space pirates in Star Wars are a lot more grounded and realistic than Hollywood's standard silver screen swashbucklers. Like Hondo Ohnaka's and Gorian Shard's, the depiction Jod Ja Nawood's pirate crew owes far more to modern Somali pirates than it does to the likes of Jack Sparrow or the many fictional versions of Blackbeard. These aren't "dramatic sword fight" pirates, these are "shoot unarmed people and take their sh*t" pirates... maybe "capture you alive and hold you for ransom" pirates if you're lucky enough to be a VIP. Having Jod fight Brutus to the death at the end of the series would've been more action-friendly, but it wouldn't have meshed with the story or the tone of the series. It probably wouldn't have been much of a fight either, since if Jod hadn't killed Brutus the crew would've been loyal to Brutus and easily overpowered Jod.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    A character doesn't need to the most overtly evil or violent or whatever to be the Big Bad... they just have to be the principal antagonist who's pulling the strings behind most of the conflict in the story. Jod may not be the most overtly violent or threatening character, but he's absolutely the one manipulating events and people to fulfill his desire to pillage the legendary treasure planet the kids call home. He protects the kids because he needs them to find out how to reach At Attin, and the minute he can get there without them they're betrayed, taken prisoner, terrorized into compliance, etc. so he can rob their homeworld. Brutus may be more overtly threatening in a physical sense, but he's not the driving force behind the show's conflict. He's out of scope for fairly half the story, and he's only really reacting to Jod's escape and then Jod's attempts to manipulate his crew until he ends up dead at Jod's hands. He exists mainly to justify why Jod has to travel with the kids on the Onyx Cinder and so that Jod has someone to kill to reestablish his villainous credentials towards the end.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    So, I watched the latest episodes of Bogus Skill <Fruitmaster> and Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class, and this is some absolute trash-tier programming. The animation quality itself is lackluster, but the writing is just hot garbage.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I too was surprised to not see an after-credits scene on Skeleton Crew's final episode to tease a next season. Maybe, after The Acolyte, the showrunners felt it was too much like tempting fate. IMO, having Brutus around for the finale would've been a mistake. His role in the story was to be a foil/rival to Jod, a usurper who Jod could dethrone right before the end of the story to properly assert his Villain Credentials from the first episode. If Brutus had still been alive, he'd have been at loggerheads with Jod the entire final episode and detracted from Jod's intended role as the show's Big Bad. As far as the body count... well... it is supposed to be a kid's show.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time should still be very grateful it chose to qualify its title with "possibly", because three episodes on it's a solidly unremarkable-in-every-way form letter isekai series. It's not bad. It just had nothing whatsoever to distinguish it from the hundred other isekai titles with the exact same premise. It does seem to be starting to take pointers from The Rising of the Shield Hero in the latest episode, with the protagonist buying slaves to help him in the field and choosing an exotic Ill Girl who he then cures of her ailment. A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School feels like it has completely exhausted its premise after about 14 episodes. Its entire writing strategy seems to be "random bullsh*t go!", which can be fun if done right (e.g. Excel Saga, FLCL) but definitely isn't being done right. I'm Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class is... serviceable. The series has all but stopped acknowledging its own awful premise as of episode three and transitioned to a far more conventional romcom story about two people who are earlobe deep in denial about liking each other. The farther it gets from that rough start the better it gets in terms of wanting to mace the author, so... stay the course?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Kind of a "now what?" ending, eh?
  17. Seto Kaiba
    There's also the question of what moral position the author intended to depict too... Macross Delta is complicated by the fact that a good chunk of its backstory was jettisoned into manga side stories.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    If memory serves, Sukehiro Tomita cited the adjective 婆娑羅 as the origin of his name In an interview conducted for Animage's Feb 1995 issue. My frankly ancient print dictionary does not get into the etymology of the term properly, but the Wikipedia article I cross referenced for it does attempt to connect the two terms as an etymological origin.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    One thing to remember, both as a storytelling principle and a general fact of life... the right thing and the nice thing are not always the same thing. That's a theme that recurs a lot in Macross Delta, especially the second movie where it's basically the antagonist's whole deal. Moral absolutes like "good" and "evil" are a reductive oversimplification that ignores the inherent subjectivity of morality and wrongly assumes that the same values are universal across cultures and time periods. So very many things that we today would consider historical atrocities were committed by people who firmly, sincerely, and completely believed that what they were doing was morally correct. That's one of the reasons sci-fi loves to play with the concept so much. Good and Evil are a matter of perspective, not fact.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    There was an app update for Disney+ today, and I am sad to report it does not fix the issue with the subtitles being desynchronized or banish the fade-to-black moments.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It's not really a made-up name so much as a meaningful name. In Japanese, "Basara" (婆娑羅) is an adjective meaning "being self-indulgent", "acting without restraint", or "behaving in a flashy manner". The term goes back to late 14th century Japanese imperial court politics. Basara Nekki's name was chosen deliberately to reflect the character's tendency to be an unrestrained, self-indulgent free spirit. It's also, for unrelated reasons, a surname in Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Bosnia, Slovakia, etc.) that as far as I can find is etymologically indicative of a person's family being from Bessarabia (a region in Moldova).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Star Wars is kind of a victim of its own success. It had a very successful formula and made a huge cultural impact on whole generations with the original and sequel trilogies, but as a result now that the creatives working on it are people who were fans of it as kids they have a very narrow concept of what a Star Wars story can be. Andor was a sign that Star Wars has good stories left in it if creatives are willing to look outside the franchise's narrow conventions, and Skeleton Crew is IMO a vindication of that viewpoint. Not at all... and I'd say the latter doesn't even exist given how meaningless that statement is. No, the difficulties Star Wars faces are because its current crop of creatives are long-time fans themselves. The series and story concepts they're coming up with are things that appeal to them as fans... and the deeper they go down the fanservice rabbit hole the worse the shows get. It's no accident that the best Disney+ Star Wars series (Andor) is also the only one where the showrunner's not a Star Wars fan. Skeleton Crew owes quite a bit to whoever managed to keep its showrunner and/or writers on task developing a fun, accessible, stand-alone adventure story that's just set in the Star Wars galaxy instead of a formulaic Star Wars story. Whoever that was is the real MVP at Disney LucasFilm.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    OK, yeah I see that desync... the subtitles seem to start running slightly fast on my setup after that first fate-to-black on episode two of Macross Frontier. I wonder if whoever set this up forgot to disable the commercial break flag for ad-free customers or something?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    OK, I must've missed (or forgotten) that someone had already checked. I tried running the first episode of Macross Frontier on Disney+'s Hulu integration using a Google TV 4K unit, and while I did see the fade-to-black at around 3:39 in the video it does not appear to have caused subtitles to noticeably desync for me.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Hulu has a Disney+ integration, though. Has anyone checked the issue is repeatable accessing Hulu via the Disney+ app? EDIT: I have the Disney+ w/ Hulu integration, so I'll check it momentarily.
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