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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Signs point to "Yes, we have enough episodes to have plenty of story left after the heist". Andor season one has been announced as having twelve episodes. If the series started as it meant to go on, that's four three-episode story arcs. Showrunner Tony Gilroy confirmed that the series will have two seasons with the second building up to the events of Rogue One. (Based on my research, they were originally going to do as many as five seasons but scaled it back for feasibility reasons.) We did, but it was crap. Mind you, the stakes are a lot higher in Andor than they were in Solo: a Star Wars Story. Vel's team are trying to make off with the quarterly Imperial payroll for an entire sector so the money can fund the rebellion instead.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Harder than miclone flesh and bone, sure... but the biochemical modifications that are done to make something like a 10m tall humanoid function make them extremely durable and able to not only survive but win at fisticuffs with something like a Valkyrie.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... as I said, all that stuff was already in Macross Frontier. ALL of it. Macross Delta just half-assed the explanation, so half an explanation of an established mechanic of the setting ended up sounding like a new and ill-conceived macguffin instead. For the record, it was. Macross Chronicle goes into more detail about Song Energy being a biological fold wave. Macross 7, of course, went into a bit of detail about exactly HOW mechanical amplification is done (the amplifier being a modified fold system) and explicit connections between that and the fold amps used in Frontier and Delta are drawn in Macross E by no less a person than an all-grown-up Elma Hoyly, now in possession of a doctorate and working as a researcher studying biological fold waves and Var syndrome. (It's also noted in Frontier that the fold wave emissions of the fleet's technology were a big part of how the Vajra were able to track the Frontier fleet... not just high-intensity fold waves from fold-wave radio and radar systems, but background emissions from gravity control, running reactors, and the like.)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    When it comes to the color of Heimdall's hat, Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! has a nasty case of Protagonist Centered Morality. Heimdall does... But aside from that and some incidental property damage early in the film, the film never manages to actually construct any kind of argument (cogent or otherwise) for why Xaos's defense of Lady M is "right" and Heimdall's opposition to her is "wrong". It's actually kind of weird that they never even make a serious effort to refute Heimdall's assertions about Lady M using her influence to manipulate New UN Government policy. There really isn't any arguing Cromwell's point about Mikumo, since it's been acknowledged in the previous film that Lady M broke interstellar laws and used banned technology to create Mikumo as a de facto (and illegal) clone supersoldier. When Exsedol later summarizes Cromwell's positions for Max and Arad, what he lists is all common sense stuff like advocating for more widespread use of unmanned fighters to reduce the risk to pilots and advocating for cloning and cybernetics because they offered the potential to improve medical care for the wounded. The audience is clearly supposed to see him as some kind of well-intentioned extremist, but there's really nothing extreme or unreasonable about his views. They're only presented as "wrong" because they're at odds with Lady M's views, which Xaos unquestioningly supports. If it weren't for the lyrics of Yami_Q_Ray's songs being edgy AF there wouldn't really be much of anything to even mark them out as the film's antagonists besides the protagonists fighting them (and losing). (Considering Xaos were acknowledged to be unlawful combatants in the war between the New UN Gov't and Windermere IV, it's hard to even argue that Xaos's hat is appreciably a lighter shade of grey than Heimdall's.) Norse references all over the place, lol. Ever since Macross 30, the franchise has been doing that increasingly often. Many of the placenames on Uroboros have meaningful names drawn from Norse mythology relevant to their significance in the story, and the antagonists were named for a Norse poem conveying Odin's wisdom, guidance on proper conduct, and advice for living. Fitting for what their role is in the story. Heimdall is a similarly meaningful name. The Norse god Heimdall was the god who kept watch for invaders and for the onset of Ragnarok, who drank from the well of knowledge at the roots of the world tree and who is responsible for summoning the gods to the final battle at the end of days with the Gjallarhorn. The organization Heimdall wants to let the human race acquire and exercise the knowledge of the ancient Protoculture to guard against humanity's destruction by outside forces. (It's interesting to note that the god is also associated with the goddess Freyja. Heimdall did battle with Loki, the trickster god of chaos, to recover Freyja's torc Brisingamen... a name derived from the word Brisingr (fire) for which the star cluster the series is set in is named.) Heimdall's flagship, Battle Astraea, is a bit off-brand, since Astraea is a Greek minor goddess, but also an extremely unsubtle mission statement. Astraea was the virgin goddess of justice, purity, and innocence who once lived among humans but fled to the stars when her disgust with humanity's growing obsession with material wealth (gold) grew to be more than she could bear. It's said that she would one day return to usher in a new golden age for humanity. The BattleTech reference is a more limited one, to Heimdall's battle against Loki to recover the Brisingamen he stole from Freyja. None that I am aware of. I could write one, but it'd have to wait until at least Tuesday. I've got an indecent amount of work to get caught up on before Wednesday and way too many home repairs going on at once.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    While I agree with almost everything you wrote, I will (sort of) speak in the movie's defense on this one point if only for the sake of fairness. Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! is no different from the previous film or Macross Delta TV anime in the sense that it's not really doing much that's new or particularly novel with the franchise's setting or its technology. In fact, these "new" fold wave-based performance improvements are lifted from the ending of the Macross Frontier movies the same way that the Macross Delta TV anime lifted most of the Macross Frontier TV anime's ending. It's actually a lot worse in some ways because these technologies were also already present in Delta Flight's VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds and the Aerial Knights Sv-262s all along. In the VF-31's case, it's THE feature that sets the Siegfried customs apart from the military's VF-31 Kairos that it's based on. The long and short of it is that fold waves are used to manipulate the exotic matter that's produced and used in overtechnology that manipulates gravity. Tech like gravity and inertia control units, thermonuclear reactors and engines, fold systems, barriers systems, and dimensional weapons like macross cannons and heavy quantum beam guns. Fold quartz is a purer form of the fold carbon crystalline resonators used to produce that exotic matter, and when used in place of fold carbon it produces exotic matter that can exert more intense gravitational forces than normal (esp. if boosted by more powerful fold waves). That allows for reactors to run hotter by compressing fuel more to produce more energy and greater thrust in engines, more intense fold effects that can cross fold faults, and more powerful dimensional weapons. That is the basic principle behind the Fold Wave System that was introduced on the YF-29 in Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye. (Taken to the extreme, that is also how you make MDE weapons... instead of using regular heavy quanta and fold waves produced by fold carbon, you use fold quartz and the more potent fold waves it produces and with enough of it you can produce a super-intense fold effect like a temporary black hole.) Delta Flight's VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds already had an economized and less capable version of the YF-29's Fold Wave System from the outset. The Kairos Plus just increases the amount of fold quartz available to the system to improve its output. The Sv-262 Draken III's had an even more economized system that used gravitational compression of exhaust flow as a sort of a pseudo-afterburner (that is copied on the Sv-303s) called a Fold Reheat system. All that's happened here is that Absolute Live!!!!!! is improving the economized versions of the tech already in use while Heimdall is applying the same technologies more broadly.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Infuriatingly so! From what is said in the Absolute Live!!!!!! movie itself, Heimdall's Battle Astraea is a modern Battle-class supercarrier from one of the main fleets of the central New UN Spacy that disappeared and was presumed destroyed several years before the events of the movie.
  7. Seto Kaiba
  8. Seto Kaiba
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Spoiler tag your spoilers. There are still a lot of people who haven't seen this one yet.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    OK, one open question... did anyone else feel like the movie had absolutely terrible audio editing? Due to some emergency home repair I had to watch using the 2.0 PCM audio track and any time the focus of the music changed from Walkure to Yami-Q-Ray or vice versa it didn't so much fade as just hastily drop one song for the other in mid-syllable. Is the mastering just really bad on the 2.0 or is the 5.1 similarly affected?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Say it out loud... it sounds like "See if I"... making the manual section "See if I Care".
  12. Seto Kaiba
    To answer, in spoiler tags naturally.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    In theory. In practice, not so much. After all, he was obliged to build his film on the foundations previously laid by J.J. Abrams' underwhelming The Force Awakens using the same characters and continue the plot he'd already set in motion. He was allowed to make the Star Wars movie he wanted*... as long as it did so within very narrow guidelines, using characters and set pieces already established by someone else, to satisfy the demands of a studio that was worried after The Force Awakens was criticized for being "too safe" and too derivative of previous films. I would assume Andor's showrunners have a somewhat freer hand since only a few cast members are playing established characters and Cassian's backstory is one big blank. Given that the sequel trilogy ended up a mess because Disney tried to be hands-off and then panicked and got super hands-on, I am not sure I would be prepared to label those as mutually exclusive possibilities. * Terms, Conditions, Limitations, Waivers, Exceptions, Notes, Footnotes, Subordinate Clauses, and Managerial Because-I-Say-So's may apply.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, we got at least one useful detail out of the new movie. The big bad's fancy ship is NOT a reclaimed Battle Galaxy.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    OK, so... some non-spoilery thoughts now that I've watched it. Pairing Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! with Macross Frontier: the Labyrinth of Time seemed like a bold idea at the time it was announced. A little too bold, now that I've seen it. The 12 minutes of Macross Frontier: the Labyrinth of Time are WAY more memorable than the 124 minutes of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. Setting it up so Labyrinth of Time plays FIRST was definitely a bad idea, because Absolute Live!!!!!! feels like an afterthought in comparison. It might've been advertised as Absolute Live!!!!!! with a special extra feature Labyrinth of Time, but the reality is the other way around. The Labyrinth of Time, with special and entirely optional and not-at-all-worth-it extra feature Absolute Live!!!!!!. I was worried I'd feel ripped off if Absolute Live!!!!!! was a bad movie. I do not. After The Labyrinth of Time, I am not only content, I am HAPPY. I feel no shame in admitting I even got a little misty-eyed there for a few minutes. It is a BEAUTIFUL coda to the Macross Frontier movie storyline, like Flash Back 2012. I love how Ranka worked Alto and Sheryl's callsigns into the song she sings in this... Skull 04 and Fairy 9. That's every bit as cute as Master File having Sheryl's bodyguard detail using modexes of her birthday and Alto's. The opening song of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! is about the most forgettable thing I've ever heard. It sounds like minimum-effort BGM from some 90's-era video game. Autotuned to hell, back, and back to hell AGAIN. Either Heinz forgot how calendars work, or the writers did. They seem to have kind of given up on the premise of Walkure and Delta Flight operating together with airshows going on during the non-combat concerts. Delta Flight's only real contribution in the first number is launching the multidrones, which then just vanish and are not visible at all in the concert. OK woah. They remind us that Windermereans have a typical lifespan of 30... but they start having or planning to have kids at the age of FIVE?! Previous material suggested Windermereans aged at more or less the same pace as humans for their first 18 or so years! THAT'S JUST CREEPY! Bogue stops just short of telling everyone to read White Knight of the Black Wing to hear his full backstory while he's pooh-poohing Hayate and Freyja's relationship. I kind of wish he'd broken the fourth wall and started doing some Gilderoy Lockhart-esque shilling of his own backstory. Walkure's songs in this really are pretty weak. This movie lacks a certified banger like Forbidden Borderline, Our Battlefield, Love! Thunder Glow, or Walkure Won't Stop. This is a two hour movie. It takes exactly thirty-seven minutes for it to stop screwing about and get to the actual plot. Considering the Aerial Knights were on the delivering end of The Worf Effect throughout the TV series, it's surprisingly satisfying to see them on the receiving end this time... and yet insubstantial all the same, because none of these characters have had more than the most basic development. Heimdall has time for random property damage, but is simply too polite to shoot down Delta Flight's Siegfrieds when they're unmanned and being summoned remotely. Captain of the Macross Gigasion, Maximilian Jenius... this is MY movie now. If the movie's big bad is supposed to be an unreasonable nutjob, the writers do a REALLY AWFUL job of making him sound anything less than justified in his views. Max clowning on Delta Flight is everything I hoped for and more. He takes on the entire augmented Delta Flight on his own and humiliates them ALL in an absolutely savage manner while wearing a smug little smile. Then he destroys them VERBALLY to make sure they FEEL the damage. The number of times in this movie Walkure has to be reminded that their gimmick is to sing DURING battles is distressingly high. At least once per battle. SEVERAL times in the last one. And some spoiler-y thoughts... TRIPLE spoiler tagged just in case someone misclicks. Well, that was certainly a thing that I watched. The Labyrinth of Time puts a magnificent cap on the story of Macross Frontier and publicly shames its successor before Macross Delta drunkenly stumbles to a long-overdue end with a well-animated but badly written, clumsily executed mess of a story full of unremarkable music and telegraphed plot "twists" where the villain's motivation makes infinitely more sense than that of the heroes and OG Macross characters show up to drive home how disappointing Delta's are with the subtlety and grace of a piledriver seating a channel marker.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Fun story. During development, the radio and climate control head unit in the DN101 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable was called the "Central Friendly Interface". It was changed after someone noticed they'd have to file the maintenance requirements under "CFI Care" in the shop manual. I've seen (and shot down) a few at my present employer that were entirely accidental. People abbreviated variable names to get them down to the Vector CAN 32 character limit and accidentally created some foul language in the process.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Speaking as an engineer, and knowing what engineers are like, the English speakers are probably the reason it was saddled with that unfortunate acronym in-universe.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    They made it themselves. It's not a finite natural resource, it's a manufactured synthetic material. OTEC's study of Alien StarShip 1's technology extended not just to its many sci-fi gizmos, bu to the materials used to make them or essential to their operation. They studied the material and experimented with methods of reproducing it until they succeeded. The same goes for all of the fold carbon used in the thermonuclear reactors of the Valkyries, Destroids, etc. They reproduced the fold carbon they found in Alien StarShip 1's systems as best they could to make those systems work the same way.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I'm planning to watch my copy this weekend... though, to be honest, I'm actually kind of dreading it. On the one hand, everything I've heard from my friends in Japan who saw it in theaters was broadly positive and suggested that the movie was where Macross Delta actually starts living up to the "Macross" name. I'm heartily sick of being disappointed by the lazy work on display in Macross Delta proper and the middling-at-best first movie, so I'd like nothing better than for the second movie to blow me away and leave me feeling like the slog to get here was actually worth it. On the other hand, I absolutely 200% dread the movie's "big reveal" because it's a painfully anticlimactic answer to the franchise's oldest unsolved mystery. On the other other hand, I am greatly looking forward to seeing Delta's collection of underdeveloped expies of Macross Frontier characters, third-rate washouts from Brisingr's local New UN Forces, and other assorted bush league "talent" get completely upstaged in their own ****ing movie by a special guest character from another series. On the other other other hand, could someone please pass the geiger counter?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Considering that the VF-1's structural frame and the composite used for its armor are both made of ludicrously tough Overtechnology Materials (called "space metal" in the oldest TV series material, and "hypercarbon" from DYRL? on) said to be a hundred times as strong as armor-grade steel, I'd be inclined to suspect that structural fatigue is not high on the maintenance crew's list of concerns. Especially once you factor in the additional increase in structural strength when the energy conversion armor is active, and the VF-1D's being short-term stopgaps for the soon-to-be-delivered, built-for-purpose VT-1 Ostrich.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I guess that would depend on what you considered "ideal". To have the cannon(s) available in all modes would be difficult given the VF-1-like transformations of the VF-5000 and VF-11. The VF-1 managed it by putting its laser cannon(s) on the monitor turret and having the monitor turret on the underside in Fighter mode. There really isn't a great placement for a gun that'd make it available in all modes like that on the VF-5000 or VF-11, since they moved the monitor turret so its gun could cover a rear-facing arc. Since the arms block the wing root in GERWALK mode and the wings fold up when in Battroid mode, the best bet would probably be sticking the gun in the nose similar to what the Sv-262Hs did, so it'd at least be available in Fighter and GERWALK modes. Either that or mount them in the vertical stabilizers like the YF-21/VF-22 did.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Of course they're gonna spin it in a "glass half-full" manner, they're promoting their own work. Glass half-empty is a much more objective way to look at the admission that they put Max in a YF-29 arbitrarily and didn't even bother to think up an explanation for a septuagenarian private citizen conveniently possessing the single most powerful prototype military aircraft in existence. (Esp. since the last character in a similar position had to invest his life savings AND get special corporate participation to get a previous-generation VF that'd been downgraded to export specification, and after establishing at length that his employer straight-up couldn't afford to build a fully-operational fold wave system.) Whether it's half-full or half-empty, someone still did a sub-par job of filling the glass. 😉 (We engineers, however, just keep 50% of our water in a redundant glass.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I'd prefer to keep any and all Force users at arm's length from Andor. One of the things that makes Rogue One and Andor more compelling as entries in the Star Wars metaseries is the absence of the usual iconic space wizards and all their nattering on about things they've foreseen, their destiny, and the Will of the Force. IMO, the protagonists (and antagonists) in these stories are a good deal more relatable and interesting if they're just regular people instead of space magic precognative laser sword one man armies. The characters also feel like they have a lot more agency in the story without all the Force's preordained baggage. TBH, I've never particularly cared for the way Star Wars's main films treat the Jedi and Sith like they're action figures the Force is shuffling around from one fated encounter to the next. Like, the Jedi and Sith's trust in the Force is practically kayfabe. They know their lives are scripted but try to act like there are actual stakes involved. Andor has finally started to assemble some interesting characters, but the writing needs some serious TLC. If they'd run this one out one episode at a time, they wouldn't have had an audience left by the time the story starts moving 20 minutes into episode 3. Right now, the story's kind of bloated, unwieldy, and slow. It's gradually picking up the pace but the series feels like it kind of resents the director putting the spurs to it. I'm still looking forward to episode 5, in no small part because that should prove a lot more energetic than the rest of the series thus far.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Palpatine's already promoted himself to Emperor Palpatine at this point, right? I can't see the Imperial head of state going anywhere without it being kind of a major production. If they were to throw in a big name Imperial art aficionado visitor to Luthen's gallery as an easter egg, why not someone a bit lower down like Admiral Thrawn? If memory serves, he spent quite a bit of the trilogy named for him sitting in an art gallery on his flagship. Or maybe Governor Tarkin. He seems like he'd be Wicked Cultured and they've done that kinda-frightening CG recreation of Peter Cushing's face for Rogue One.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Did anyone ever do one for the MtF J Kai head?
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