Seto Kaiba

Hey, some Sigmarines from not-Fantasy. Here's hoping we get a Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson eventually if they're leaning into Fantasy.

Considering how toxic many of the more outspoken Star Wars fan YouTubers are, it's more a case of having seen enough that we've been conditioned to expect toxic fan behavior from any unsolicited YouTube video. 😅 If so, then I'd say they're right for the wrong reason. Disney+'s previous Star Wars failures definitely hurt Skeleton Crew's prospects, but I'd argue that the cause of those failures has consistently been the franchise runner's extremely narrow view of what a Star Wars story should be and the comic book-like decline in quality and accessibility that comes with the escalating number of tie-ins and crossovers. The producers resistance to making original stories like Skeleton Crew is why the franchise struggles. The Mandalorian was a solid series at the outset, and its gradual decline perfectly parallels its increasing connectedness to plot threads and lore left over from Dave Filoni's pre-Disney The Clone Wars animated series. The Book of Boba Fett fell flat right out of the gate because it was one massive fanservice push built around an underdeveloped legacy character. Ahsoka and Obi-Wan Kenobi similarly fell apart because they were written around fanservice and expected to sell because of a beloved legacy character not because there was anything meaningful to the story. Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire are pure and unnecessary fanservice. The Acolyte ended up a trashfire because the show's promoted fan producer-writer was more interested in showing her affection for the High Republic period and the Jedi than telling a coherent story. Those tie-ins and crossovers might bring the die-hards out in the short term, but they're a self-defeating premise in the long term because it's only a matter of time until some fan sacred cow gets made into hamburger. The Bad Batch is just a mediocre-at-best direct sequel to The Clone Wars that improves the more distance it puts between itself and what it spun off from but never really made itself into a distinct entity. The good shows - Andor and Skeleton Crew - work because they're compelling original stories that are in the Star Wars universe but don't depend upon connections to the "main" Skywalker narrative. Andor is connected to the main narrative indirectly, but those connections are superficial to the story and you replace Cassian with any other character and nothing would change in the story. Skeleton Crew, for its part, is just a fun, totally stand-alone adventure in the Star Wars galaxy and that makes it both entertaining and accessible. I think that even if it didn't get a huge following initially that audiences will pick it up in time because of how accessible its story is. Unlike all of the other Star Wars shows to date, Skeleton Crew is a completely self-contained story. You don't have to have seen another show to understand what's going on the way you do in most of the others. That makes it easy to pick up, and the light and generally fun adventure story keeps it easy to remain engaged with even if Star Wars is something you have only a casual interest in. Its viewership might've suffered due to previous failures, but that's mainly because Skeleton Crew is the kind of show Disney+ should've started with.

Hard pass, I don't need to see some toxic fanboy YouTuber whining about a good series because it doesn't fit their narrow worldview. It's a fun show to watch, and that's all it needs to be.

Closed captions differ from subtitles in the sense that they are required (by law in the US, Canada, and a few other places) to include support for the hearing-impaired. That's why they include things like *upbeat music* and so on that would not normally be included in subtitles meant for non-impaired viewers who simply need a translation. There's also a specific way that they're embedded in media so they can be natively handled by TVs and such, which doesn't support things like superimposing translations over signs. Essentially, they're less versatile than the DVD/Blu-ray subtitles most people are used to because of how they're formatted and the legal requirements they aim to satisfy.

Hm... I dunno. At a few points, it almost feels like the writers are either of two minds about Jod or are facing some executive meddling saying "You can't have him do that in a kids show!". From the start, Jod was shown to have little in the way of qualms about the act of killing as we see in his ordering the freighter captain spaced and his execution of a defenseless Brutus. He's clearly willing to terrify the kids into compliance with explicit threats of violence towards their loved ones and he has to be aware that his crew were going to hurt and kill a lot of people when they seized the mint and enslaved the local populace to keep it running. IMO he comes off as reluctant to hurt the kids because of his own baggage... but prepared to do so if he has to as he's done with everything else. Maybe it was executive meddling, maybe they were just trying to make sure he didn't cross the line into irredeemable territory in case they get a second season and want to bring him back.

Hopefully they'll go back and revisit the subtitle options and such once the region-specific remasters and releases are done.

It's kind of pointless now, considering the prices of the Macross Blu-rays in the west are basically at price-parity with Japan... but for a long time it made really good sense to take action to prevent re-importation of media because the US DVDs and Blu-rays were about half the cost of the Japan domestic market releases.

Well, the end is here... with "The Real Good Guys". I really have to hand it to whomever in the art department designed the At Attin safety droids. They look so generic and unthreatening on their own, but jerky way they move and their croaky voices are lend a genuine air of quiet menace to them when they need it. Their unblinking security camera stare is genuinely unnerving in its presentation. We do get a statement that suggests that, while At Attin has been isolated from the greater galaxy for a very long time, it hasn't necessarily been out of contact. As bosses go, it seems like the Supervisor was load-bearing... I love that Neel gets a Big Damn Heroes moment after so often being The Load in this series. After eight episodes of dithering, we finally get the answer to one of the bigger questions... Jod's powers. There's an absolutely beautiful effects shot as immediately thereafter... followed by the arrival of the New Republic. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with this ending. It's not the direction I thought they'd go with the ending, but it works pretty well. They made pretty good use of all the characters, the story wrapped up in a reasonably satisfying way that offered both closure and enough of an opening that they can continue the story in a second season should they decide to. A very strong ending, on balance. The only real problem with the story and/or the ending is the previously-discussed "if you think about it at all" one regarding the value of Old Republic credits.

It's the experience I've seen on Smart TV apps running Hulu, I have not tested it yet on any of the sets at my place so I am not sure that's just a thing that's happening on certain TV or mobile device versions or if that's a universal thing in the video stream.

If it's right in the middle of scenes, that sounds like it's probably to support the unskippable in-app advertisements for people on the lower subscription tiers.

Yep! That guy. Thanks to Star Wars: the Clone Wars being the longest Star Wars TV series by an enormous margin and Hondo's status as fan favorite character, he's pretty much THE space pirate in Star Wars. (Search "Star Wars pirate" in Google and five of the first eight image results are him as are almost all the article results.) He seems to have been one of the few pre-Disney fan favorites that Disney willingly ran with rather than replacing, alongside Saw Gerrera, Ahsoka Tano, and Cham Syndulla. In comparison, Jod and his crew seem both a lot more threatening and a lot less competent... but a lot of that is probably just Hondo being from a much less dangerous era and having Creator's Pet level plot armor. 🤣 It'll be interesting to see what they do with Jod in the end. Skeleton Crew's finale is about 24 hours away.

Caught the latest episodes of Headhunted to Another World and Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms today. Headhunted to Another World feels like it's struggling with its own premise after just a few episodes. The diplomatic work is being done offscreen by someone else, and the whole episode is basically given over to ship-teasing the protagonist and his demon girl coworker, with an extended digression to explain that having every demon dress like they're in a Boris Vallejo painting is a totally necessary part of their culture and the story and not just blatant fanservice.😅 Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms isn't beating the B Gata H Kei allegations. Mona's just Yamada if she were incredibly vain instead of lowkey horny all the time, and Kuroiwa's just Kosuda with a (religious) reason to not put up with her sh*t. It's still funny, but its premise is going to wear out its welcome pretty fast.

Not s'much. After all, the few times we see a Zentradi on foot disable or destroy a Valkyrie it's one of the larger, stronger, and more durable Zentradi command types doing it. The kind of soldier who is a monster even by Zentradi standards. The few other times we see Valkyries taken down hand-to-hand by Zentradi, they're usually doing so with the benefit of a battle suit's mechanical strength like the few we see in the OVA Macross II: Lovers Again.

The Clone Wars started out reasonably kid-friendly, and despite the fairly consistent level of scenery-chewing ham from the villains it gets surprisingly dark in its later seasons. Kind of a pattern with Filoni's work, really... and for better or worse he seems to have essentially set the tone for the vast majority of new Star Wars development. Skeleton Crew is one of the few titles that ISN'T tying in to his work in some way. That's probably WHY the pirates are a lot more bloodthirsty and cruel than the franchise's usual. Not buyin' that argument any more than the last time you tried it. I see way too many Star Wars costumes on the trick-or-treaters every year to believe for one second that the only people watching Star Wars are adults. 😉 My niece and nephews are about the right age to take an interest too, though ours has always been more of a Star Trek family. By in large, the only bloodthirsty bilge rat who's been outsmarted by the kids is Jod... who seems to be ill-prepared to deal with children in general. Possibly a product of him being a padawan who survived Order 66 if the show's incessant is-he-or-isn't-he teasing pans out. I kinda suspect the kids will ultimately trick Jod, and possibly his crew, into destroying themselves.

Yeah, that's a pretty accurate read on Hondo. He was a very flamboyant leader who would offer great rewards for crew willing to charge into danger, and was usually the first one to leg it when things went south. He usually bordered on being an ineffective comic relief villain. Compared to Hondo's crew, who were more the "rob you and leave you alive" sort with occasional ransoming of VIPs, Captain Silvo's (or Brutus's) pirates in Skeleton Crew come off feeling shockingly bloodthirsty and violent.

Yeah, as I noted a few posts back, the overtechnology materials (OTMat) used in a Valkyrie's structural frame and armor are incredibly strong all on their own. Initial-generation OTM composites are said to be around 200 times as strong as conventional alternatives in the oldest versions of the technical materials. Enough so that those same materials describe the (pre-energy conversion armor) VF-1 as "lightly armored" yet able to effectively laugh off fire from any conventional weapon. The example weapon the text cites as ineffectual against the armor is a cannon so laughably huge it has no real world equivalent. The armor material is so tough they needed to invent new kinds of armor-piercing ammunition and high-energy explosives to defeat it.

🤣 I know, right? As much as I complain about exactly that, Hondo is so intrinsically associated with space pirates in Star Wars that seeing space pirates without him feels wrong somehow. Ironically, Hondo is far too affable and principled to do the kind of things Jod is doing. Before we got cast photos, there was speculation that Jaleel White was hired to play Hondo in live action.

So... so far, I'm Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class is definitely feeling like it's on course to ecchi romcom territory after the most recent episode. It's still fun and funny, but the fanservice has started to creep in. I'm going to keep at it, because it's still a lot of fun. Blue Exorcist's latest season is as unstintingly dark as I remember it being from the manga, with Rin using Mephisto's master key to explore the world before the Blue Night that drove his brother quietly mad. Okitsura: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Knew What She's Saying is on course to be my favorite for the season. It's an adorable little love story tied to a very affectionate introduction to Okinawan culture, which has enough of a sense of humor to make incredibly dense jokes about it. (They also seem to be on a mission to include a major reference to another anime series in every episode in the process... first Zombie Land Saga as a metaphor for how common "Hina" is as a surname, now Jojo's Bizarre Adventure to explain the locals relaxed attitude towards timeliness.) I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons really is something. What, I don't know... but it's something! It started out like a serious drama, jumped ship from that genre about halfway through its first episode, seemed set to become a "slow life" series with a comedy aspect, and after a Deadpool-esque extended fourth wall break wherein the former queen-to-be turns and delivers an explanation directly to the audience seems set to become a romance series instead. One thing I will describe it as is "feel good". After running out on that dippy and unfaithful prince, Leticia seems to be determined to live her best life with a level of abundant good cheer that is downright infectious.

🤣 It's not literal... at his worst in The Clone Wars, Hondo Ohnaka is Disney levels of family friendly as a space pirate. He's just obnoxious and incredibly flamboyant, and he shows up so much during The Clone Wars that one could be forgiven for assuming he was the Galaxy Far Far Away's ONLY space pirate captain. So he's "f*cking Hondo" as if to say "and then there's this *sshole again". He returns in Star Wars: Rebels, having lost his crew and resorted to solo acts of piracy, con artistry, and general scoundreldom. After watching The Clone Wars and Rebels, having a Star Wars story prominently featuring space pirates but with no sign of Hondo feels subtly off, like seeing a photo of a family member but someone's photoshopped out one of their eyebrows or a front tooth.

Nah, Maul was confirmed (and then shown) to be alive way back in the fourth season of The Clone Wars... about six years before Solo: a Star Wars Story, in an episode that aired ~6 months before Disney acquired LucasFilm. The reason he's a crime lord in the movie also goes back to pre-Disney Filoni material from the show's fifth season. Creator's pets in Star Wars seem to be pretty death-proof. It's why I'm so surprised the crew working on Skeleton Crew have been able to restrain themselves from including f*cking Hondo, who often seemed to be the only space pirate in the galaxy in Filoni's work. (I kinda see why they didn't, though. Hondo's really not an intimidating man, he couldn't pull off what Jod is pulling off.)

Now, in all fairness, the Star Wars franchise had already developed a profound love of the Disney Villain Death trope long before George sold it to the House of Mouse. The old Expanded Universe had Boba Fett survive his trip down the sarlacc pit and Palpatine treating death like a revolving door. It was already a tired trope when Filoni used it to bring Darth Maul back as half a robot spider in The Clone Wars a year or two before the Disney acquisition. Disney's twist was reducing lightsaber stab wounds from "instantly fatal" to "a booboo requiring a really big band-aid".🤣

OK, that's a fair point... though, in his case, redemption equalled death (after an amputation, humiliation, and being barbeque'd alive in his black leather gimp suit) so it's not like he got off lightly or got to stick around. He didn't get a free heel-face turn or any forgiveness for what he did. 🤔 I'll give the most facual weight to what shows up on Disney's quarterly and annual earnings reports WRT LucasFilm and Disney+. It's a bit of a wait, but the best data is first party data. Let's just agree that he died... it's preferable to acknowledging that The Book of Boba Fett exists.

Tried Even Given the Worthless 'Appraiser' Class, I'm Actually the Strongest and whooboy is it a stinker. It's yet another one of those isekai-adjacent j-fantasy stories where the world runs in MMORPG logic for no adequately explained reason and the world is full of fantastic bigotry as people discriminate against each other based on character class. The whole first episode is mostly just devoted to showing how horrid the setting is, in all the usual ways like the protagonist being left to die by the rest of his party, getting maimed by overpowered mobs, etc.

Nobody in this show is memorable, that's a big part of the problem. It's an unnecessary sequel to Rebels, where the few returning characters have that problem where their story is picking up after The End and any character development is in "Well, sh*t, what do we do with them now?" territory.

It's mentioned in the show's Wikipedia... aggregators TVision, JustWatch, and Whip Media have variously had the series as the top-streaming show in the US, in the top five in the US, or in the top ten in Canada. IMO, it'd be pretty weird if Jod were "redeemed" in the final episode. The last few episodes have made a point of having him Kick The Dog to remind the audience he's a cruel, evil, bloodthirsty space pirate who has no real qualms about killing.