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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    In general, fighters are designed to be at least somewhat unstable in flight because that instability is the root of their greater maneuverability. That comes up in passing in Macross Delta during Hayate's first training flight when Hayate is complaining about the support AI not letting him fly the way he wants to. Digital flight control systems help keep inherently unstable fighters flying straight and level until the pilot decides not to. Where that became a problem for Shinsei Industry's YF-19 and VF-19 is that the design was so inherently unstable to achieve the greatest possible maneuverability that, even with the ARIEL airframe control AI's assistance, its handling was much too sensitive for the average pilot. That, combined with its excessive engine power, made it so unstable that the prototype's evaluation had already hospitalized two test pilots and killed two more before Isamu was attached to the program and caused a number of loss-of-control accidents in the early phases of the military's effort to adopt the VF-19A. Shinsei Industry spent years refinining the VF-19's design and its control AI software in a bid to improve its handling to the point that average pilots could fly it. The VF-19F/S was one attempt to address those underlying problems, packaged with a bunch of other optimizations and improvements. Unfortunately by that point it was too little too late and the revised arms export laws put an end to the attempts to phase in the VF-19 as a next main fighter that'd already been hobbled by its control issues and insane price tag. Isamu being Isamu, he was having none of that when he tried to obtain a VF-19 for his own personal use at SMS. He deliberately went with the original, badly unstable and unsafe, control AI software to get as close to the YF-19-2's handling as possible.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well... I have now watched Fantastic Beasts: the Secrets of Dumbledore. I'll say this for it, Mads Mikkelsen's performance as Gellert Grindelwald is vastly superior to Johnny Depp's in every respect. He's a lot more subtle, nuanced, charming, and quietly malevolent in a way that better fits the style and tone of the piece. Depp's performance (and makeup) always felt out of place, like he'd wandered onto the wrong set while filming some new Tim Burton movie and nobody could pluck up the courage to tell him he needed to leave. As for the rest of the feature... it's better than the previous two, but it's still no better than mediocre. It's increasingly obvious that the writers are struggling to justify the title's premise with each new installment. Curiously, that seems to be reflected in the title card too, with each successive film making those two words smaller. There seems to be a bit of a struggle to come up with enough story for the film's runtime as well. The first half-hour of the film has no fewer than three separate instances of characters recapping the events of the previous two movies aloud to each other. It wouldn't have stood out so much if they hadn't done it three times in quick succession, and/or if the ones on the receiving end of that recap weren't the ones who did the things being recapped in the previous two films. What we got story-wise is halfway between being a heist movie and a political thriller, which does neither especially well. They feel compelled to spend a few minutes hanging a lampshade on Katherine Waterston's (Tina Goldstein's) absence from the plot and introducing the new character, Eulalie Hicks. "Lally" is pulling double duty as a replacement for Tina and Leta, as the story's main minority-representation character and the designated action girl. Unfortunately, she spends most of the film as Jacob's minder and consequently gets very little character development apart from Newt and Dumbledore gushing about how amazing she is. That kind of leaves her feeling like a flat, generic Strong Female Character™. Her one distinguishing trait apart from being The New Girl is her... attempt... at a transatlantic accent. It makes her every line of dialog sound stilted and unnatural to the point that she's actually kind of headache-inducing to listen to. For what it's worth, The Secrets of Dumbledore does tie off the bloody stump that is Credence's storyline and the whole Queenie-Jacob thing as well. So if this one underperforms to the point that one or both of the remaining two planned films are cancelled at least there's some closure.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Getting ready to watch this one later this evening. I've managed to avoid spoilers thus far, so about all I've heard is that there's a fair consensus that it's both the best of the Fantastic Beasts trilogy so far and still kind of a train wreck of a movie. From the news about the cast, it certainly sounds like it was a problematic production on all kinds of levels... one key actor fired, one supporting actor imprisoned, and two other key actors unable to get involved due to the pandemic and schedule conflicts.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's hard to say, in no small part because of the ambiguity surrounding the VF-19E's base design. The VF-19 2nd mass production type exemplified by the VF-19F and VF-19S would be the logical point for customization for most purposes, since the 2nd mass production type's design benefitted from some structural simplification and a lot of additional refinement and polishing from Shinsei Industry's engineers in an attempt to address the problematic aircraft's stability and control issues. That said, the 1st mass production type has its fair share... thanks in large part to Macross the Ride introducing several different customized VF-19s based on the A-type and the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army's local specification of the C-type (VF-19C/MG21).
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Not in those specific terms, no. In-universe advocacy for the Ghost X-9 and its successors was on two or three basic talking points centered around reducing risks and costs: A force made up of autonomous unmanned fighters can engage and defeat enemies without the need to put human lives at risk. Unmanned fighters can exert the full potential of the technology used in their construction since they aren't limited by human reaction times and biological g-force limits. Even semi-autonomous unmanned fighters are much cheaper to build and operate than Valkyries due to far less mechanical complexity and the lack of a pilot who needs to be housed, fed, trained, and draws benefits, etc. Oh, it wasn't unintentional at all... it was very much the primary purpose of the Sharon-type AI. It wasn't meant to be used offensively, though. Early emigrant fleets had issues with rioting because of their comparatively spartan living conditions and other difficulties. The Sharon-type AI was meant to help mitigate those problems by helping an emigrant fleet's population keep calm and carry on. Not mind control, but a sort of music-based relaxation hypnotherapy so the tensions that resulted in those riots wouldn't build up to the bursting point in the first place. Way more humane than calling the riot police out to bust heads after things go pear-shaped or pumping their water or air supply full of mood stabilizers to calm everyone down. But you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. (A more malicious take on the idea was used by Macross Galaxy, who trapped their implant-using populace in augmented reality to help them escape the stresses of living in the fleet's awful conditions.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Don't Hurt Me, My Healer is finally attempting to cram some actual character development in in the last few episodes. Feels too little, too late, and the reveal that Carla has feelings for Alvin definitely feels forced considering how absolutely toxic they are to each other. Ascendance of a Bookworm is finally getting to the good bits, though that means the season is likely almost over. Ferdinand's Big Damn Heroes moment was in the most recent episode, so now... Skeleton Knight in Another World is still kinda copying Overlord's "Men of the Kingdom" arc... looks like they're headed to this setting's equivalent of the Slane Theocracy to recover some enslaved elves or something of that note. Trapped in a Dating Sim is still kinda... existing. Leon is mildly entertaining at times, but really his magnificent bastardy is the only reason to watch this otherwise fairly mediocre show. It's kind of shocking how bad the animation in this one gets. The robots, especially Leon's Arroganz, is off model so often that if it weren't for the higher quality animation work in the OP I wouldn't be entirely sure what it's supposed to look like. RPG Real Estate is still rather cutesy but otherwise kind of a bland and inoffensive slice of life comedy. Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It is still managing to be funny, but it kind of feels like it lost sight of the actual plot.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    General Galaxy was probably involved given that they ended up as the manufacturers of the economized Ghosts modeled on the X-9. That said, the main mover behind the Sharon-type AI was the a conglomerate called the Macross Concern. The Palo Alto II Research Institute that created the Sharon-type AI and the Venus Sound Factory that was Sharon Apple's production company were among its subsidiaries. Considering the logo on the bio-neural chip might as well say "INSANE INSIDE", Marley had good reason to freak the hell out that such an expensive and dangerous piece of military grade AI hardware was now running on a processor notorious for producing erratic and dangerous behavior.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    In so many ways... that's what ultimately led to him becoming a reservist and then joining SMS by the late 2050s. Sure he can. He plays Max in multiple shows, and by the time of Macross 7 or Macross Delta's second movie he's basically the storyline's Big Good. (This season, he's reprising his role as Ferdinand in Ascendance of a Bookworm... also an unambiguously heroic character who just had another Big Damn Heroes moment in the most recent episode.) Macross Chronicle offers the view that the VF-19P, like Basara's VF-19 Custom, is a derivative of the Spacy's VF-19F. Macross Plus is, essentially, a Macross-ized version of an orphaned non-Macross IP that Kawamori was working on c.1985 called Advanced Valkyrie. It was about an organization called NOVA that was testing a competing pair of transformable fighters at Edwards AFB (on Earth). Many of its designs eventually migrated into Macross after being recycled in various other series concepts incl. Air Cavalry Chronicles (the prototype for what became The Vision of Escaflowne) as the VF-9, VA-3, VF-X-11, etc. Looking at it, someone screwed up... which is par for the course for that wiki unfortunately. That's a picture of the VF-19ACTIVE Nothung from the Macross the Ride Visual Book.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    He was probably a bit preoccupied, since the New UN Forces rewarded him for his "heroism" in a suitably karmic way that suited their actual feelings on the matter. They put him on the promotion track to a desk job and kept him plenty busy so he wouldn't have time to get into trouble. Issues with the control AI aside, the Ghost X-9 was essentially a finished design already nominally approved for adoption by the New UN Forces. There wasn't a lot that needed to be done to get it production-ready except some minor tweaking and replacement of the AI with an older, more stable semi-autonomous type. It's significantly simpler and cheaper to manufacture than a Valkyrie, esp. a 4th Gen Valkyrie with advanced techy bits like pinpoint barriers and thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines. Sharon Apple's music was kind of the same deal. The music itself wasn't necessarily at fault, the media just needed to be sanitized to remove any traces of Sharon's interactive audiovisual subliminal protocols before it could go back on shelves. Presumably the benefits of having been developed as a conversion of a manned fighter... it could be converted back into a manned fighter without a huge amount of effort while retaining many or all of the improvements. Given that, in the Macross Frontier novelization, Temjin of the NUNS 33rd Marines uses a Neo Glaug bis as his fighter in place of that Queadluun-Rhea/56 he used in the TV anime its specs are likely on the high end for a 4th Generation VF just as the Neo Glaug posed a similar level of challenge for Isamu in the game edition as the Ghost did for Guld in Macross Plus proper. One thing to remember is that some of these explanations are post-facto justifications Macross's creators came up with to better tie things together. Macross Plus is an especially odd case, since it wasn't originally conceived as a Macross title at all... they just kind of applied a thin Macross veneer to the existing story.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Not a scapegoat, but an authentic malicious actor who was directly responsible for the Sharon-type AI going out of control. Macross Chronicle is pretty clear on the subject of it being Marge Gueldoa's installation of an illegal bio-neural processor in the Sharon-type AI system that caused Sharon to form an ego around the emotion data sampled from Myung Fang Lone and subsequently go crazy rampage nuts. The Sharon-type AI had already shown some instability and tendency to hostile action beforehand, but it was the bio-neural processor that made self-awareness and the ensuing Hal 9000 moment possible.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Blame the YF-19... it was just too gosh-darned heroic-looking, so Kawamori replaced it with the less main character-y VF-171 Nightmare Plus for Macross Frontier and beyond. The one that came closest to winning was, amusingly, the Ghost. Because the economized derivatives of the Ghost X-9 like the AIF-7S/QF-4000 are high-performance unmanned fighters that cost only 1/3 of what the VF-171 does and operating them doesn't involve putting a flesh-and-blood pilot at risk, the next-generation Ghosts still ended up effectively sharing the main fighter role with the VF-171 in most places. In a few emigrant government air forces, the semi-autonomous Ghosts derived from the X-9 became the next main fighter anyway despite lacking full autonomous capability. Yeah, the New UN Government had good reason to cover up certain aspects of the Sharon Apple project. Exactly how much of the story was given to the civilian population is not entirely clear, but they seem to have at least been aware that Sharon Apple went berserk (via the ban on responsive/interactive virtuoids), that she used her music to hypnotize the populace (via the ban on her music), that the military was involved in stopping her, and that some of the underlying technology used in her design was to blame (because that tech was subjected to operational and export restrictions or bans). What the general public probably didn't get told is that the Sharon-type AI was actually a military project and that the stuff she did on her rampage was simply using capabilities she had been designed with. You see, the Sharon-type AI was developed as a support system for management of emigrant fleets. Its original design intent was to employ audiovisual subliminal hypnosis to allieviate stresses and tensions experienced by emigrant populations in transit and prevent the kind of rioting and social disruptions that occurred aboard a number of early emigrant ships due to their comparatively harsh living conditions. As an additional function, it was also outfitted with the means to take direct control over a fleet during an emergency. The idol career of the virtuoid "Sharon Apple" was a paper-thin cover story for carrying out field testing and data collection on the Sharon-type AI's hypnosis capabilities.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... well, this is one of those areas where the explanation starts to feel a bit like "exact words" rules lawyering from the showrunners. The Ghost X-9 wasn't developed simply to be a next-generation unmanned fighter. It was developed as a fully-autonomous next-generation unmanned fighter intended to supplant manned fighters as the main fighter of the New UN Forces. When Sharon Apple went berserk and seized control over the Ghost X-9 prototype (and the Neo Glaug prototype in the Game Edition), the ensuing scandal and necessary coverup convinced the New UN Government and New UN Forces that a fully-autonomous unmanned main fighter just wasn't a good idea with the available technology. So they cancelled their plans to adopt the Ghost X-9 (AIF-9) as the next main fighter of the New UN Forces and instead awarded a win to the YF-19 in Project Super Nova. What got cancelled wasn't the next-gen Ghost itself... but the plans to make a fully-autonomous version the next main fighter. Install a more traditional AI control system in there and/or put program restraints on the autonomous air combat program used by the Ghost X-9, and you've got an extremely high-performance next-generation semi-autonomous unmanned fighter. Instead of becoming the next main fighter, derivatives of the Ghost X-9 like the AIF-9B, AIF-7S, and AIF-9V instead replaced older models of Ghost in a supporting role in the New UN Forces as seen in Frontier.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2022/06/04/box-office-jared-leto-morbius-bombs-again-with-85000-friday/?sh=58afc67a1cee Morbius limped back into theaters on the back of a meme and earned... only $85K upon its return?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Up to a point, anyway... the Protoculture's civil war - the Stellar Republic dissolution conflict - came to an abrupt end when the Protodeviln emerged and attacked both sides, so past a certain point the irresponsibly dangerous inventions weren't a product of an arms race anymore. They were just building irresponsible stuff for the hell of it, or because they wanted to use one or another of them to improve the situation of their species. Which makes the Spacy's decision to bomb the Windermere IV ruins out of this dimension entirely awfully prescient... they know enough to know there are things the Protoculture left behind that oughtn't be messed with.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Or simply that we're looking at snapshots of what they could do at radically different points in their history. Unlike many ancient precursors in fiction, they don't seem to have hit a technological plateau and stopped advancing even after their civilization started falling apart. They kept building newer, more advanced, and more irresponsibly dangerous nonsense.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Mind you, watching Macross in chronological order is inadvisible... production order provides more consistency. But, all in all, it's not like Protoculture society was monolithic either and we mostly see them through the lens of what they did to someone else... be it leaving the Birdhuman behind to destroy humanity if we didn't develop as planned, accidentally trapping energy beings in prototype bioweapons, or creating massive clone armies, so the inconsistency there that reflects their tech level is also partly influenced by what time in their history those things were created as well.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Kinda, yeah, if you were to watch Macross in chronological order. The Birdhuman in Macross Zero borders on indistinguishable from magic when it regenerates itself rapidly after activation. They're talked about in totally mundane terms in SDF Macross and DYRL?. Then in Macross 7 the Protodeviln are products of their technology whose abilities again veer heavily into indistinguishable from magic, between vampire-like feeding on people's mental energy, biological beam weapons, biological reactionless space flight without protective equipment, etc. In Frontier, they're mundane scientists copycatting Vajra biology. Then in Delta they veer back into indistinguishable from magic by hiding massive constructs in higher dimensions, buildings made of glowing rocks that respond to songs, and a dangerous forbidden ritual that could create a human hive mind.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    OK yeah, Love After World Domination is my #1 for this season. I lost track of time after I decided to watch one episode over lunch and ended up watching the rest of the available episodes. Can't even recall the last time I was so engrossed in a series that I lost track of time! I'm not sure what's better...
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Episode 5 of Love After World Domination. There's a scene where Fudo gets sick and collapses during a date with Desumi and ends up in the hospital with appendicitis. I lost it when I read the note on the boquet of flowers in his hotel room. It's a get-well letter from the head of the evil organization GEKKO wishing him a swift recovery, and expressing the hope that if he were to perish that it would be at his organization's hands. I have Coke up my nose and my sides hurt.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    The Protoculture like hopping back and forth across the border of "Sufficiently Advanced", but humanity... yeah they're kinda just tossing algae and plankton at oceans and hoping for the best.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I can only watch Attack on Titan's last few episodes in fits and starts... not just because it's ridiculously grimdark, but because it's so incredibly DUMB. I'm still not caught up there because I can't stop cracking up at how everyone's horrified looks come off as DULL SURPRISE! and how insanely lame the plot is. Thankfully, there is an overabundance of good stuff this season. I've got no less than eight main shows I'm following and a bunch more I've only just started. Love After World Domination is rapidly becoming my contender for this season's #1 though.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    OK, a couple episodes into Love After World Domination and I'm genuinely surprised by how much fun I'm having with this series. Not just because Fudo and Desumi are painfully earnest people... but because, as a result, absolutely everyone else ends up entertainingly wrong about their motives and actions as they increasingly twist their respective day jobs into excuses to see each other and abscond for some alone time.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Not necessarily just the ruins... there's no natural explanation for the Yuria Archipelago on Uroboros having islands in the sky and various orphaned floating rocks, for instance. Of course, we are also seeing the galaxy as it is approximately half a million years after the Protoculture's civilization was wiped out so it's moderately likely that quite a few of the allegedly natural Class A worlds weren't like that when the Protoculture originally found them. Not the ruined settlements, but the massive fold wave resonators hidden alongside them in fold space...
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Started Love After World Domination today... It definitely has a lot of the same feel as Miss Kuroitsu of the Monster Development Department... except that it's aggressively, painfully cute. XD EDIT: OK Red's approach to a confession is a bit creepy... he read through her social media accounts to learn all about her first. That's a bit stalker-y.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Odds are if it was once a Class A habitable world, it's probably not one anymore thanks to the Zentradi and/or Supervision Army. Reminds me of the plot of Phantasy Star Online 2's 4th episode... the whole schtick there being that the Theia impact hypothesis for the moon's formation is correct, and that what crashed into Earth was a defective copy of the living planet Xion the Photoners (that setting's abusive precursors) had made in an attempt to access the akashic records. It eventually recovered from the crash enough to start steering the course of the planet's development...
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