Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12864

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    We have a reasonable idea of what it looked like, since the Sv-154 Svard is one of those Kawamori trademark reuses of a design concept he made for a prior non-Macross project. Specifically, it's the LV-7 Valorous Rapier "Excalibur" from Air Cavalry Chronicles. Air Cavalry Chronicles was a further development of the cancelled Advanced Valkyrie project which also never made it to production. Its story and design works would part company with each other as the story underwent a genre change to become The Vision of Escaflowne and the design works finding their way into Macross 7 and Macross M3. Early emigrant fleets don't seem to have been very large, all in all. The 1st, 3rd, and 5th generations of emigrant fleets seem to each be separated by an order of magnitude in population. Megaroad-01 was said to have around 80,000 people in its fleet in total, with 25,000 living aboard the emigrant ship itself. Those Zentradi ships are physically big, but they don't actually hold a huge number of people or mecha because the crew themselves are 125 times the size of a human (5x in all dimensions) and the ships have to be supplied for long-duration spaceflight. If you work backwards from the Boddole Zer main fleet's total population, the size of the average battleship's crew is something like 1,500 people tops on a ship that, to scale with its crew, is about the same size to them as a Nimitz-class carrier is to us. (So around 1/4 or less the crew of a comparably sized Human naval ship.) With a composition like that, esp. early on, you'd probably be far more likely to have Regults than Destroids. (The old Sky Angels book does assert that postwar carriers used a lot of Regults.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    No.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I believe it's an extra feature on the Macross Frontier digitally remastered edition box set.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's the one. I don't think I've checked the newer Frontier Blu-rays for subs... haven't rewatched the series since I got the last set. But yeah, with subs on the way from US distributors we'll get it one way or the other. I kind of expect we'll also see a re-release of the original series with English subs in Japan as another end-run around Harmony Gold's ongoing-but-reduced stupidity.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's just showing the points of articulation for the transformation.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    None mentioned or shown, so presumably not. Windermere IV's War of Independence against the New UN Government was, by in large, the Great Offscreen War. We hear a great deal about it in the course of Macross Delta and related works like the gaiden manga White Knight of the Black Wing. We just never get to actually see it. The Macross Delta TV series showed us archival footage of disaster that ended the war (the Black Storm) and White Knight of the Black Wing shows us something of the lives of the Windermereans before and during the conflict, but we never really get to see the war itself. All we see for the equipment used in the war is the New UN Forces VF-22 and VF-171 and the Kingdom of the Wind's Sv-154. Considering the Aerial Knights who serve as Windermere's military were an aerial mounted cavalry force before transitioning to a modern air force, it strikes me as unlikely that they'd bother with infantry combat or armored combat in a land war. Likewise, since the Human settlers on Windermere were from Megaroad-04, it strikes me as unlikely they'd have a significant ground force or any Destroids since their emigrant ship was quite small by modern standards.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is." That one crosses the bounds of generations, but it's as bad as it sounds. That's "this is disturbing/upsetting to look at"... like how unintentionally creepy photos have been called "cursed images" for about a decade now. The sense that there's something deeply wrong with it in an almost supernatural way. I just don't find him funny at all. Like in Borderlands, he tends to play the comic relief character whose idea of humor is either self-referential meta humor or fart jokes and who drags every joke out WAY too long. He's excruciating to watch and to listen to, and he tends to make already bad movies much much worse for his presence.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Weird day, getting weirder. This is one of those movie ideas that just seems like a mass hallucination. Pretty sick of Jack Black, though... that alone is enough for me to seriously consider passing on it.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    And don't take your eyes off that monitor! NGL, I'd buy it... and I don't even smoke.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Big West was adding official English subs to select Macross releases well before that point. IIRC, they started with one of the Macross Frontier re-release box sets before making that standard practice from the Macross Delta TV series Blu-rays onward. It is nice that they didn't walk that strategy back after the distribution agreement though, so we can still import legitimate copies of the titles that weren't licensed with English subs.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Probably not. After all, the reason NERV built Tokyo-3 and its defenses the way that they did was because of the inherent limitations of the EVA units. Their not-actually-a-giant robot didn't have a usable internal power source and was dependent on a network of extension cords connected to high-voltage generators in the geofront under the city proper. Without the power supplied by external generators over the umbilical cable, an EVA unit's maximum operating time on its internal backup batteries was less than five minutes. Like a gaming laptop, the EVAs had just enough juice to get them to the next wall socket and no more. Even something as simple as leaving city limits under its own power was out of the question, so NERV designed their defenses around fighting inside city limits. They designed much of Tokyo-3 to drop into the geofront in the event of an attack and build a ton of buildings in town that were actually weapons silos and spools of charging cable connected to the geofront and its rail system. It wasn't until EVA-01 went absolutely apesh*t and ate the 14th Angel that it acquired a working S2 organ and thus a working internal power source able to sustain it indefinitely and free it from the neverending search for a free plug socket. None of the mecha in Macross have such a limitation... even if their range left something to be desired, the earliest Variable Fighters and Destroids that used gas turbine engines for power instead of compact thermonuclear reactors carried enough fuel to operate for at least several hours. Once compact thermonuclear reactors were in play, that became days or weeks between refuelings (planetside). They could roam freely, so there's no reason to potentially endanger a city or town by waiting until enemy forces reach it to fight them. They can attack enemy forces hundreds or thousands of kilometers from any conurbation and destroy them with massed firepower (because they don't have to deal with bullsh*t like AT fields) well before civilians are in actual danger. That kind of eliminates the need for weapons caches within city limits, unless the military base those Valkyries and/or Destroids are coming from is in town and then it's less a cache and more just the base's armory. WRT the Spartan, its hands aren't really made for using firearms. It has that electrified truncheon it can use in Zentradi riot control duty, but in practice it's not meant to carry any weapons in its hands. It's meant to throw hands. The manipulators are a reinforced type meant for punching and tearing as much as gripping and are said to be its main weapon. Not that I'm aware, no. The closest you get is a military base in, or directly adjacent to, a city like the Zentradi Marine Corps base on Al Shahal or the Aerial Knights being barracked in a hangar attached to Darwent Castle in Macross Delta. Macross Frontier did imply that there are some Destroids parked inside of Island-1 as last-ditch air defense, but that's for when things have gone TRULY pear-shaped like having to roll out the tanks to fight inside the domes.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    HG's a privately owned company, so the Agramas would have to be willing to sell... ... and it's unlikely they'd be willing to, for fear that Disney's attorneys and accountants would find things the Agramas would rather remain unfound while examining the company's books.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    True... 31 December at 23:59:59 is still technically "this year". I will laugh long and hard if that's the case, because I rules lawyer deadlines that way at work all the time.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Wistoria: Wand and Sword has finally managed to have an entertaining episode... what a pity it's basically unrelated to the actual plot. Apparently what this painfully half-arsed "Harry Potter if Harry were a muggle with super-strength" fantasy series needed to inject some entertainment value into the proceedings was... [checks notes]... It really is a shame that they pivot away from that amusing little fight to more of the incredibly lackluster protagonist Will and his dealings with the school's top students (despite being basically the lowest ranked student). (That "Harry Potter if Harry were a muggle with super-strength" seems to be an emergent genre of low-effort fantasy anime is distressing in and of itself. It was funny when Mashle did it but that kind of thing is only really funny once.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Impressive work... easily the most faithful rendition of the Logan I've ever seen. It looks more like a proper toy/model prototype than some professional efforts I've seen from the official licensees. Maybe you should be sending Toynami or the others your CV? You've probably shown more love for the Logan than the people who actually designed it at this point.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Just ordered mine. It is going to be sooooooo nice having a legit English subbed release of this movie instead of having to mess around with a media server to add a separate subtitle file to it.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    They're really dragging this release process out. 🤣 I'm glad that the Japanese releases are getting official English subs still, because at this rate it'll be 2025 before the biggest anime market in the west gets anything.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Against a Zentradi on foot... well, pretty much any Valkyrie's gunpod is going to be heinous levels of overkill. Valkyrie gunpods are high-powered cannons meant for use against armored fighting vehicles like Zentradi battle pods and battle suits or enemy Valkyries. Using one on a Zentradi soldier on foot is essentially using a high-powered anti-materiel rifle against infantry. It's way WAY more stopping power than you actually need to do the job and it's going to make quite a mess. The bullets they fire are generally high-caliber armor piercing explosive rounds with extremely high muzzle velocities. As we saw with the first Zentradi soldier which Hikaru encountered in the original Macross series, the VF-1's GU-11A 55mm gunpod was so powerful the Zentradi's armored pilot suit offered no protection at all. Many of the later models are at least as deadly as the GU-11, and quite a few are explicitly much more so. Pretty much any VF-mounted weapon is overkill against Zentradi infantry because they're all designed for destroying armored fighting vehicles rather than engaging soft targets. The Valkyrie's coaxial laser cannons would probably be the best weapon for the job. They're less powerful than the gunpod, they can't jam or run out of ammunition, they don't require reloading, the available fire arc is much larger than the gunpod's, and they can easily target multiple fast-moving objects because the Valkyrie's head can turn quickly and the shot moves at lightspeed.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Oh I'm sure they've known about VPN usage for ages, and while they are focusing on their various efforts to crack down on the password sharing in order to put off acknowledging that infinite growth is not possible for a little while longer, they're definitely also starting to quietly crack down on the now widely advertised use of VPN clients to circumvent the service's region specific blocks on content. That's what we're seeing here with people who are trying to access Macross content on Disney+ using VPN from countries where it's not supposed to be available yet.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Nice to know they're being consistent with the last couple Terminator features... that's basically the explanation the franchise has been rolling with since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Watched episodes seven and eight of Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture... and I'm wondering how someone got this show green-light for production in this state. It's a mess. It's not a little mess either. I was unsurprised to see the series director, Ohashi Yoshimitsu, is normally a storyboard artist and illustrator rather than being involved in any kind of production lead role. The writer, Kimura Noboru, is responsible for some of Bandai Namco's worst mecha titles including Gundam AGE... and it shows. This is a story filled with exploitative fanservice, lazy plot twists, and unlikeable axe crazy characters whose actions don't seem to be connected to any actual outcomes in the plot. It's not the worst recent mecha title I've seen - that dubious honor still belongs to Tatsunoko Production's 2019 series The Price of Smiles - but it's definitely the worst thing that's come out under the Code Geass name and rivals some of the worst installments of Gundam.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Wistoria: Wand and Sword is hitting levels of padded that rival Dragon Ball Z at its worst. Yet it manages to be more infuriating because there aren't a bunch of bystanders filling airtime reacting to every little thing, it's just the protagonist who seems to need to stop for five to ten minutes EVERY TIME he's attacked to gasp, panic, and wonder aloud about the magic he's being attacked with. If you cut out the padding, the fights in this series could be over in ten to fifteen seconds. Honestly, considering the protagonist's gimmick is being superhumanly strong, this is basically just "Mashle but worse in every way".
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Remembered that Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture exists, and decided to watch another few episodes. I am, if anything, still impressed at Bandai Namco's commitment to having zero original ideas. Might as well just call this Mobile Code Zeta Geass and have done with it... except it's nowhere near as good as Zeta Gundam. The plot is, to the last, just a retread of the original show's with some proper nouns changed.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    It was inevitable that the streaming services would get wise to the trick, since half of the VPN apps out there these days advertise themselves as being useful for circumventing region-based blocks on content.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, that's just how modern horror writing is. It's become a bit lazy, with the attitude that the audience is only really going to care about the obvious final guy/girl and so they don't have to bother properly developing any of the monster bait. As to why the cast is so small, that's at least justified in the story itself. That's definitely a question that bears answering by the director... why didn't they just make a film adaptation of Isolation, which would've been MUCH better. It's probably for the best that we never get that... Prometheus and Alien: Covenant had most of the same problems as Romulus (vis a vis the Too Dumb To Live cast), but in much less justifiable ways and the whole attempt to retcon David into being the creator of the xenomorphs was a terrible idea that never worked because of the timeline involved. It just left me bored, but compared to some of the awful writing in past installments I'd still put it above Prometheus, Covenant, Resurrection and the AVPs at the very least... and possibly above Alien 3.
×
×
  • Create New...