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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Just finished Love After World Domination. Definitely one of the season's stronger offerings, but the ending felt a bit... out of the blue? I know it can be hard to find a logical stopping point for a 12 episode-only anime that's adapting a manga, but the last episode is a "Giant Space Flea from Nowhere" plot. RPG Real Estate never really developed into anything of substance. It's just a cutesy slice of life schtick that is clearly aiming for the waifu crowd in a very halfhearted way. They tried to throw a serious plot in at the end, which fell embarrassingly flat. I would've liked it a lot better if they'd stuck with satirizing the (frankly absurd) housing market in Japan instead of the tedious sitcom nonsense they got up to instead. Good first episode, eleven episodes of bad followup. Don't Hurt Me, My Healer! unfortunately also started reasonably strong but quickly devolved into a stumbling mess with exactly one joke. Carla pretends to mishear something that is said to someone else and turns it into verbal abuse. It wasn't funny the first time, it wasn't funny the fiftieth. Nor, for that matter, is the endless repetition of the same plot where they go somewhere on a fetch quest and encounter some monster that conveniently isn't hostile and just wants to talk. It's not subverting expectations anymore when that's the standard form letter plot. Kaguya-sama: Love is War! season three remains a strong series to the finish. But then, that's one advantage of adapting a manga that's mostly finished AND was well divided into a story arc structure short enough to be adaptation-friendly. It'll be nice if they do a fourth arc to wrap up the entire story of the manga since now all that's left is the arc where...
  2. Seto Kaiba
    TOS is a product of its time for both good and bad. It's sooooo melodramatic at times, but that kind of camp and the terribly unsubtle musical cues and stings were the style at the time. It is pretty fun to watch a young Bill Shatner embark on his five year mission to ensure no piece of scenery is left without his teeth-marks though. Even more fun once you read a bit on it and realize how shoestring the whole affair was, and how much insane innovation and out-of-the-box thinking went into little stuff like props and set dressing. (Or how bad the costumes were, between the ones that had to be held up with double stick tape and the ones that had to be replaced every few weeks because they couldn't be washed without also shrinking.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Good lord that's pretty. The Mauler RoV-20 laser cannon is a 5,000kW (kilowatt) laser. I have to say, I love the attention to detail here. My inner engineer is torn over whether to keep the correct real-world classification of Class 4 from the warning placard on the side of the cannon or the fictional Class 5 from the tip of the barrel. Class 4 is currently a catchall for anything more powerful than Class 3B (which usually tops out around 0.5W or 30mJ depending on frequency and pulse duration). Those two labels should probably match either way, though.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    None, to be frank. That was the reason Palladium's introduction of rules for "IMUs" or "Frankenmecha" were not so much poorly received as they were laughed out of town. The few sample designs provided looked as terrible as you'd expect and combined parts from mecha of wildly different sizes without respect for scale... with fans immediately pointing out where that didn't, and couldn't, work. (The Auroran with Defender arms got dragged particularly hard, since the Defender's cannons are each physically bigger than the entire Auroran and they forgot about the ammunition entirely.) The human-built mecha of Southern Cross are around 6m tall, MOSPEADA's are ~8m, and Macross's are 10m+. The junkyard vomit that is the cobbled together battlepod replacements was just a bad stylistic choice that also failed to account for scale... but mechanical design is hard, and Palladium couldn't exactly afford to hire a professional, so they did the best they could within the constraints they had.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It is never established how large the actual Mardook main fleet is. It's implied to be on par with a Zentradi main fleet and echoes the visual presentation of Boddole Zer's main fleet from DYRL very blatantly. The first scouting force the UN Spacy encounters when they defold near Mars is a 30 ship taskforce. Thereafter, the UN Spacy fights a series of branch fleet-sized forces indicated to be ~1,300 ships strong. The Mardook replace them pretty casually throughout. When the Macross Cannons destroy about 800 ships in a single shot in "Station Break", another even larger force immediately defolds into the combat area to replace that branch fleet while the main fleet is chilling out near what appears to be Saturn.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Well, The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn as a Typical Nobody is... I'd like to call what it's doing "limping to a finish", but that would imply the story had some sense of direction. This is just a clusterf*ck of isekai protagonist tropes vaguely huddled together in the hopes of being mistaken for a narrative. This is the TV equivalent of shovelware. Cheap, low effort garbage hastily churned out in the hopes of riding some other title's coattails. I am flat amazed that this ever got the go-ahead from a production committee. Not only is the actual title false, but I get the feeling a more accurate one might be "Help, We Spent All The Budget on Animated Magic Circles!". Love After World Domination's latest episode was kind of iffy as well. I guess they're struggling to find a tidy way to wrap this up at twelve episodes.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    No other Mardook fleets are ever mentioned.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I'm not sure. Macross II's setting plays by rather different rules. The Mardook were an overwhelmingly powerful foe to the UN Forces in Macross II because they were effectively immune to the Minmay Attack, meaning there was nothing stopping them from pressing the advantage of their superior technology and overwhelming numbers. Ingues's mobile fortress tanked hits from firepower far exceeding what a Battle-class can produce as well. I don't think a typical emigrant planet would have much chance against them simply because they have such a huge numerical advantage, which is not appreciably a different situation from just being attacked by a Zentradi main fleet. We don't have any real idea what Earth's actual offensive capabilities are in the main timeline beyond "really really good", so it's impossible to say. They've never had to face a second main fleet in their timeline the way that the UN Forces in Macross II have done.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Well, in Gundam certainly... I can't really think of any other franchise that does so on a regular basis, and even Gundam doesn't do it to THAT degree. That is in full-on junkyard robot territory.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I'd be prepared to wager that the "fireworks" are exactly why the mods prohibited those topics. 🤣 If the strictly-objective aspects of the comparison interest you I can send you the information by PM as well.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Please forgive me if I misinterpreted your remark here... but the way I read it it sounds like you aren't aware that that "restyled" battlepod IS Palladium's art. Specifically, it's art from the last Robotech sourcebook Palladium published before losing the license for the second time: UEEF Marines. Palladium had to come up with its own art to replace the original, legally-problematic, art for the battlepod and destroid designs from the aborted Robotech II: the Sentinels series. They were also prohibited from doing anything of substance with the Sentinels plot itself due to HG's policy on that, so the book was mostly MOSPEADA concept art from the so-called Imai Files being given Robotech backstories and setting material that was Sentinels with the serial numbers filed off. Dunno why they decided to go with ugly kludges of bits from multiple mecha. The only possible explanation that springs to mind being they'd literally introduced a game mechanic to do exactly that in the previous book. Can't put that evil on Strange Machine.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, Leon Fou Barfort is a bit of a bastard... but not irredeemably so, given that he's doing it deliberately to show his contempt for the ridiculously sexist lady land he's living in and to play the villain in order to get the otome game story back on the rails. He gets mixed results with it, but it does make him rather difficult to like. He has a few moments that make him less obnoxious if not mildly relatable, but he does seem to enjoy playing the villain rather a lot. It doesn't help that the rest of the cast isn't exactly developed beyond the cliches of the otome game he so hated.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... cross-universe "vs." topics are expressly prohibited by the forum rules, so I'd err on the side of "you shouldn't". What I'll say on the matter without indulging a direct comparison between settings is that the Invit/Invid are from a setting and story where technology is more "fifteen minutes into the future" and laser weapons replaced hard rounds for the logistical benefits rather than any performance advantage. I'll explain in more detail via PM. There were some... limits... imposed on the replacements for the Sentinels designs. After all, the reason they abandoned the original Sentinels designs was for fear of a lawsuit given how obviously derivative they were of Macross's designs.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Someone did it with the X-9's AI and an upgraded Variable Glaug. Maybe that concept was another casualty of the Sharon Apple incident.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah. This first happened in the Macross II timeline, where after the First Space War the surviving elements of Stonewell, Bellcom, Shinnakasu, and various others merged into the dominant player in the VF market in that timeline: the Takachihoff Corp. (Named after in-universe character Dr. H. Takachihoff, who was named in honor of Studio Nue cofounder and Crusher Joe and Dirty Pair creator Haruka Takachiho/Kimiyoshi Takekawa. Macross Plus later established that the same thing happened in the main timeline, with Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu merging to form Shinsei Industry in 2012 and OTEC merging with the various destroid manufacturers to form General Galaxy in 2017. They didn't do great, but then neither did the VF-171s. The New UN Forces have their own separate units for Zentradi who prefer to live as giants, like the 33rd Marines in Macross Frontier. Veffidas was living planetside, though that was presumably before the ban on giant Zentradi on Earth came down at the end of 2030. Emilia's living on a remote planet that doesn't seem to have any strict laws against living as a giant, but the local populace are still afraid of her. Shinsei Industry was barking up that tree on and off for about twenty years, with various efforts to make the VF-19 actually-flyable by normal pilots. They don't seem to have ever achieved success in that regard and moved on to the YF-24 program and its derivatives.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I'm looking forward to better staffing, a new office, and no more gross abuse of OT, though I'll miss that sweet sweet overtime pay. Should be settled in well ahead of the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! blu-rays dropping. I want those Sv-303 specs, darn it all. I've got a ton of stuff from the Delta launch period pending translation that I've found while getting packed up, like the pamphlets from the Tomytec kits for the VF-31A and Sv-252.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Just FYI, that's not actually a new detail. Great Mechanics DX had previously mentioned that the idea of upgrading the VF-19 with EX-Gear and an Inertia Store Converter was entertained as an alternative proposal to the YF-24 program. It's noted that the idea was discarded for various economic and practical reasons. It's also noted therein that the VF-19 never achieved a widespread adoption to replace the VF-11 and was relegated to the de facto status of a special forces Valkyrie. I'm aware... you're referring to Oscar Brauhitch's VF-19A Custom for Team Shinsei. It's worth noting that what you're referring to is explicitly presented as a theory about the origins of Oscar Brauhitch's aircraft, not a fact. If the Macross 7 fleet was holding up the VF-19 as a possible alternative to the YF-24, that screams "set up to fail" given that the VF-19A in question lacks any of the proposed upgrades to address the fact that it was still an unflyable monster to the average pilot. So much so that it's repeatedly referred to as a craft that choses its pilot. That theory doesn't say anything about the Macross 7 fleet's New UN Forces adopting the VF-19, just that it was considered as an alternative. Apparently one that was not selected, given that later material indicates the Macross 7 fleet got the VF-25 in the end. That doesn't do anything to shift aside the Macross Frontier movie novelization also indicating the Macross 7 fleet adopted the VF-25. The only official answer to the question thus far is "VF-25". Mind you, you ignored one critical problem. The fix for the VF-19's performance exceeding human tolerances is adoption of EX-Gear and an Inertia Store Converter. Without those improvements, the VF-19's own performance effectively restricts its use to a small number of elite pilots able to handle its excessive specs. The essential material needed to build an Inertia Store Converter to make it accessible to average pilots is... wait for it... fold quartz. Even then, its performance is only about half that of a 5th Generation Valkyrie's. Plus it lacks maintenance-friendly improvements like linear actuators, and needs structural reinforcement to use anti-Vajra weapons (as noted in Macross R). The remarks about the export restrictions to emigrant governments aren't specific to one variant in all but one case. The one exception being Macross R, where it is specifically mentioned the Caliburn is a monkey model due to the New UN Gov't's reluctance to export the E spec. It is, however, repeatedly indicated that the number of VF-19s produced was small and that it never became a main variable fighter due to the New UN Government's reluctance to and/or restrictions on exports to emigrant governments, the high initial and operating costs, and its own performance making it a craft that most pilots could not handle.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    ... all none of them? Remember, Frontier-era and later materials indicate the VF-19 was never adopted as a main fighter due to export restrictions placed on them in the wake of the Sharon Apple incident, the high initial and operating costs, and the control difficulties that led to loss-of-control accidents and crashes during the initial attempts to adopt the VF-19 by the central New UN Forces. It would not have been possible to have the VF-19 become a main fighter for an entire emigrant fleet. Both the Macross Frontier movie novelization and Variable Fighter Master File indicate the Macross 7 fleet opted to adopt the Macross Frontier fleet's VF-25 as the fleet's next main fighter. Max and Milia sortie in VF-25s in the climax of the movie novelization, and in Master File Emerald Force was tasked to carry out operational evaluation on the two VF-25S's and four VF-25C's that the Macross 7 fleet produced for operational evaluation of the VF-25. And you'd be right. The Macross 7 fleet only had a handful of VF-19s, and would have gone from the VF-11 to VF-171 for their main forces. Even in 2058, the VF-19 was only ever a special forces bird made in extremely low numbers. (The Frontier fleet's lavish defense spending saw them hold a whopping 150 of them between units on loan to SMS and ones in the Frontier special forces. Galaxy had a single squadron of them in their Corporate Army.) Eh... it's a very safe bet they did adopt the VF-171. While Diamond Force and Emerald Force get all the screentime, it's a very safe bet there were more than just six special forces pilots in an emigrant fleet defense force of nearly 200 warships and some 2,700 aircraft. Only 718 VF-17s were built in total, that's much less than the number you would need to replace every VF-11 in the Macross 7 escort force and considering they were spread out to special forces units across the galaxy? Let's just say it's pretty obvious they didn't adopt the VF-17 as their next main fighter. (For the record, Master File identifies Emerald Force as the 5th Special Escort Combat Squadron, which would imply the existence of at least three more besides them and Diamond Force.) Also, some of the "improvements" to make the VF-17 on par with the VF-171 would've been downgrades. Available information suggests that it was. Frontier-era material explicitly puts Max and Milia in VF-25s, and Master File puts Emerald Force as conducting OPEVAL on the fleet's first few VF-25s. Yeah. Especially once you exceed the design tolerances of the airframe and aerodynamic design. Technically, the Defender IS a General Galaxy unit... General Galaxy was formed by a merger of the overtechnology research institute and manufacturing multinational OTEC and a number of other companies like Centinental, Viggers, etc. that made things like Destroids. The Macross Galaxy Corporate Army in Macross R uses the VF-171 Nightmare Plus as standard and one of their special forces units (Pegasus Squadron) uses a Galaxy-produced "improved" model VF-19C to flex on Shinsei Industry, but in the Macross Frontier novelization their forces also include squadrons made up of refurbished older General Galaxy VFs including VF-9s and a new variant of VF-17 designated VF-17F. The VB-6 had structural issues stemming from its sheer size and mass, which made it problematic to operate and maintain and made it slow-moving and cumbersome enough to require a VF escort in the field. The 2050s improved specification deployed by SMS addressed and mitigated some of those issues, but made the craft a good deal more costly in the bargain by adopting the same bank-breakingly expensive ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor used in the VF-25's Armored Pack to replace the previous armor and make it lighter. That'd likely have to be an emigrant fleet composed entirely of Zentradi like Macross 5 was... but the logistics inherent in keeping giant Zentradi around make it problematic at best, and Frontier was considered somewhat weird for the grandiose display of having a giant Zentradi community aboard (for tourism purposes). Cost and operating difficulties basically left the VF-19 in general in the hands of Special Forces pilots. Even the incredibly spend-happy Macross Frontier fleet went for the much more subdued VF-171 and built ~154 VF-19s to share between its special forces and local SMS branch. FWIW, the VF-171 did make a pretty decent playable unit in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. It was accurately put below the VF-19 and VF-22 in terms of performance, but it was still head and shoulders above any of the 3rd Generation and older VFs in the game. (It essentially stood in for the VF-17 as well, with many of its paintjobs being those from the VF-17.) The 117th Research Fleet was headed into Vajra space, so it would've been a priority for the newest, shiniest, killiest main VFs available. Especially as a research fleet with some heavy hitter corporate sponsorship behind it. The novelization of Macross Frontier indicates it was sponsored by defense industry giant Critical Path.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, soon I'll be able to get back to work on the Historica project. They've finally moved to correct my staffing levels, and I'll have a shiny new office in a few weeks. I'll be able to get back to proper translation work and won't be working 60-70 hour weeks anymore, so I can focus on web design.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    If that example's anything to go by, it just makes them a bigger target. Quamzin didn't exactly have a ton of luck with the Migg Pitt in Macross II's timeline, getting rekt by a single platoon of Valkyries and all. Considering the example's track record, it'd just take a bit more gunfire to put down and be less effective against fighting the smaller mecha. Earth and the central New UN Forces decided in 2057 to adopt the VF-24. The emigrant governments are spoiled for choice. Some of the New UN Government member states are noted to have transitioned to all-Ghost air forces in the previous generation, and will presumably eventually upgrade to a new generation of Ghost when one becomes available. Others will doubtless fill in the gaps in the disseminated YF-24 Evolution spec with the technology available to them and build their own local/"export" specification versions of the VF-24. A few, like Macross Frontier, Macross Galaxy, and the Brisingr Alliance, will develop their own original models of Variable Fighter based on the YF-24 Evolution spec. Some will sell that as an export specification to their neighbors. And of course there will be those who buy the export versions of the locally-developed VFs exported by governments like Frontier, Galaxy, et. al. over adopting the VF-24's export specification. There will also doubtless be those who drag their heels on the matter due to a lack of resources or a lack of a perceived need to transition to a 5th Generation fighter and will just keep rolling with whatever they have.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    General Galaxy's VF-171 Nightmare Plus was designed to address the main complaints the New UN Forces had about the Shinsei Industry VF-19: Cost Handling Performance respecting human limits So what General Galaxy delivered was a multirole VF with exceptionally good cost-performance, high operational versatility, and performance appropriate to a next-gen Valkyrie without going overboard or making it inaccessible to average pilots. As with most block upgrades, the changes are "under the hood" and don't affect its appearance. The Block IIIF is a slightly less extreme upgrade than the EX-type, but most of the changes are the same as the EX-type's. It adopted the same FF-2550F engine tuned to 67,500kgf and the same AA/AS/SF-06 integrated sensor matrix from the VF-25 that the EX-type did. They both received the same MDE armaments upgrade package too. The Block IIIF didn't receive the EX-Gear cockpit retrofit that the EX-type did for cost reasons, and also omitted the adoption of the better energy conversion armor system and VF-25's improved ablative anti-beam coating the EX-type got. All in all, it's the same as the VF-171EX except for the bits that make the EX-type obviously a hero mecha. Offhand, I don't recall seeing any art of the vanilla RVF-171... just the EX-type. I'd expect the RVF-171 to have the same head as the regular VF-171. It appears only in the TV series, and only in a flashback. Michael Blanc's sister Jessica had one at the time of the friendly fire accident that drove her to suicide. Master File calls it the VF-171AS. That's Gundam, which is driven by gunpla sales... so they always need a flavor of the week. In Macross, military procurement is handled a bit more realistically. Though the real world doesn't often see military grade aircraft end up in civilian hands or used as training craft for vocational schools. (In Macross Frontier's short stories and light novels, Mihoshi Academy's pilot training program is confirmed to be partly a feeder program for the Frontier NUNS flight school and its students train on aftermarket/civilian VF-1s... the VF-1C variant specifically.) Valkyries, like real world aircraft, can only be upgraded so far before you're basically rebuilding the entire plane from scratch into something that only outwardly resembles what it originally was. (F/A-18E/F Super Hornet for instance.) Upgrading a VF beyond what it was designed to handle structurally or aerodynamically can make it dangerously unstable as well. This is seen at several points in Macross R like Hakuna Aoba's VF-1X++, which was already pushing the limits of the VF-1 airframe before he gave it 64,200kgf engines from a drone and bolted more rocket boosters to it, turning it into an unstable mess that is one mistake away from being a fireball. Or the VF-9E, which couldn't handle its new engines in testing and developed a disquieting habit of exploding. Or the VF-31 Siegfried custom, which couldn't handle the stresses of overboosting with its fold wave system and needed a lot of hangar time between sorties. The Macross Galaxy fleet tried to make a show of keeping older model General Galaxy VFs in fighting shape, with mixed results. I'd imagine it'd probably be cheaper to phase the VF-11s out for something designed with that equipment from the outset. The Regults do use the thrusters in their feet for maneuvering, though I think that's just an angle-of-the-shot thing in DYRL. The five word motto of almost everything designed for the Zentradi: "Operator comfort was not considered."
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I really want to sit down with the studio doing Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It! and the original author and ask them something. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to throw a protracted storyline about an attempted gang rape into a happy-go-lucky romcom about socially awkward academics? But for the last two minutes or so, the entire final episode is Kanade being abducted by the guy she was seeing after turning him down and him and his generic hooligan buddies going back and forth between sexual assault and threats about same until Yukimura finds them and tries to talk them to death. WHAT. THE. HELL. I can't recall the last time a series made me this angry.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I'd hope there's a mechanism in the suit for urine collection the way NASA puts into suits intended for EVA. Macross, at the very least, hasn't gone to the very strange place Gundam: Reconguista in G did where the pilot seat of the main character's mecha includes a fully functional flush toilet. That Tomino felt compelled to include that in G-Reco was weird enough. That we had to see it IN USE (while multiple people were in the cockpit no less) was possibly the weirdest thing I saw all year that year.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    That assumes DYRL-esque realistic space maneuvering rather than the more dramatic constant-thrust-equals-constant-velocity you usually see. So 10 minutes of time running the engines at maximum power isn't necessarily a huge problem since there is no drag from atmosphere to slow you down once you reach a specific speed.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    They're not gonna be doing kung fu, but they're designed to allow a more or less unrestricted normal range of motion so they could probably get away with some fisticuffs. I wouldn't wanna be hit by an EX-Gear suit though, in the TV series ep8 Sheryl does a wall slam that cracks what appears to be a concrete wall while she's using a borrowed civilian suit. Offensively, they're made to wield those very large rifles.
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