Einherjar

It proves that if it doesn't have The Hoff, it's not Knight Rider. Not even a Transformer can save it.

Hope there's no hard feelings between everyone now.

Besides being a proven point of interest for fans, the continuing story of Rick Hunter could be a way to one up what Macross decided to stop talking about, and for good reason as Robotech proved with the overuse of characters over the years. Worse when you're working on a character created by someone else who loosely based it on another character and putting them in situations they were never intended to be in before. If the promo for Robotech 3000, the only other production featuring no one from Macross, was better planned, would the response still be the same (I do not know if they created characters for that one, even decedents of others or anything)? HG would have been free to stop talking about Rick Hunter and maybe Protoculture nonsense, but would finally have to make up their own stuff from scratch.

Here's some funny Half-Life Machinima (spoilers): "Follow the thoughts of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a 27 year old physcist and neurotic individual." Which inspired a second version "Follow the thoughts of Mr. Barney Calhoun, a black mesa security guard and neurotic individual." And yet another version "A chronicle of the innermost thoughts of Adrian Shephard, a 22-year-old Army Corporal and cowardly individual." There better be a Half-Life Decay version coming up.

That would make the Haydonites the worst of the bunch, starting wars with people over a vaguely defined negative relationship with Protoculture, which everyone else has to use. They're like the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars. Guess it would be too cerebral for Robotech if conflicts did not revolve around some limited resource.

Although they never went into depth about its importance in Shadow Chronicles, I thought Protoculture was supposed to be the MacGuffin if they cared enough about what they were doing. There's now a shortage with ramifications for their universe and they've shown that everyone is completely useless without it. Instead, the focus was beating another alien threat and finding Rick Hunter. Granted, the MacGuffin producer needed to make the MacGuffin was with Mr. MacGuffin, the stakes were too high to end on another cliffhanger with very little new getting accomplished. It can't get any bigger than all the important stuff in the universe drifting towards a Black Hole and the writers stuck in a corner. Can they really make Rick Hunter important enough to keep alive anymore? We've seen him change from a youthful teen pilot to emo Admiral and now a barely recognizable old man, and most of it off screen even. While other things have been happening on another side of the galaxy, he's somehow still relevant with everything going on. Forever losing contact with him somewhere in the galaxy seems more preferable. I doubt Rick and everyone else still alive from the Macross Saga will make it to the end of a sequel. They'll probably also replace everything with another MacGuffin if they ever address it. I would say something more efficient, but then that would make everything factions have fought for meaningless.

Out of all the Robotech comics, the Wildstorm ones are probably the most vibrant of the bunch, if only because they were one of the few made when digital techniques came around. It still doesn't help the parts that mattered besides the plot, the mecha and character designs, which look like a cross between quasi anime and Western animation. I'm not bothered that I spent money on the comics though, a dollar is a dollar, they were supposed to be E-Bay fodder anyway. But by the end of the Robotech comic run, how many reiterations of the original designs by Mikimoto and others from all three series go through by other people? I'm assuming not everyone they hired just traced over the originals and at least tried to innovate.

It was a good review, but one thing I want to ask. Besides what you said on the previous podcast about it, was there really any particular reason why this OVA was chosen out of all the stuff in the 80s as the general starting point for Robotech: The Untold Story?

Dragonball Evolution 2 Oh wait, dammit! Dragonball 2 Shooting This Fall?

I didn't see that coming. Guess it's like the Trukk not munky controversy that came with Beast Wars. Anyway, in the wake of Shadow Chronicles and Rising fiasco, what other things can happen to cause further outrage from the live movie with the current trend of remakes?

Not everyone who is a Robotech fan, old or new, posts on the official site or the other related sites. They might talk about it once in a while on blogs and stuff, but not as regularly like other people. You know, bigger priorities, hobbies or other things. Conventions are probably the most people get to see how far along the franchise is going, but they're not as obsessed about it or anything. They could be just reminiscing about the good times by going to these panels regardless of their opinions about the current stuff (they do talk about the history of Robotech often enough). They could have a more realistic idea of what's really happening with the franchise too. However, attendance numbers are very important for HG to keep this going. It kind of reminds me of something like a very restricted Star Trek/Star Wars convention tacked on to an anime convention. They do the same road show every year but are not as productive as both Stars overall , not even charity work sometimes. They do call it The Robotech Convention Tour 200X after all. And I paid a dollar each for the Robotech From the Stars single issue comic books, some variant covers, and an Antarctic comic. It felt like a low-risk version of Macross Zero that didn't try to go anywhere.

Good point, the cost to enter a convention are pretty high sometimes. If you wanted to stretch the money you spent just to get in the thing you might as well see as much as you can, even a low priority Robotech panel. I'd be curious to see if it really is the same thing every Robotech panel.

I remember a couple of years ago someone on Animesuki posted a picsub of the Evangelion Audio Drama "After the End." The entire script was translated into English shown as subtitles while the video showed a picture of whoever was talking at the time. It worked out well, but I'm surprised that it didn't catch on for other audio drama projects. Unfortunately, the torrent is no longer available on Animesuki as en example. But, if an accurate script for the drama albums did exist, could that be possible?

Until some concrete news comes around they'll have to wait for the next anime/comic book convention to hear anything. "They're working out the details for the LAMR. Well, there's always Anime Expo 2008. At least we met the staff." "Still working out the details, huh? Darn, maybe at Comic-Con 2008, that's when big news in the industry always comes out. Thanks for the shout outs and free stuff." "They have nothing to show, but they promise they're working on it. Okay, certainly they'll have something up for Mecha Con IV. Nice costumes this year btw." "I met some of the staff. But dammit, definitely next year for the 25th Anniversary of Robotech." "They're still working out the details from Anime Expo 2009. Good to hear it come straight from the staff, it's enough for me. Hope something happens at Comic-Con 2009. It's the 25th Anniversary of Robotech for crying out loud." Notice a pattern?

I don't know about that. When you're the company that helped pioneer the storytelling style what would eventually be known as Streamlined, Macekre, and Americanitis and still rely on them, you really think foreign companies would want to work for you? They might leave HG with their foot in their mouths with this revival if they somehow get involved.

Fine, I hate the soda machine robot. Unreliable when you need it the most and annoying every other time. SODA!!!

I have to admit the first time I watched Shadow Chronicles, with vague knowledge about Robotech beforehand, I had no idea the significance of most of the actors chosen for the film. I thought they just hired people from the same talent pool most English dubbed anime turn to. Kind of ironic, at least I think, that one of the selling points about the film is that they brought back a lot of Robotech "alumni" to the project, but they've all worked on so many other series together that it really isn't a big deal. Anyway, I quickly recognized Dan Warren from Macross Plus, because it really was just Yang Neuman with no change in voice acting style, and didn't really care for the rest. Of course, I also recognized Mark Hamill and maybe Chase Masterson, if only because ads wouldn't stop mentioning them. But after watching the movie I wished they'd stop because they didn't matter anyway. EDIT: I forgot that Janice is still alive after Shadow Chronicles, maybe people should ask Chase Masterson if HG got in touch with her to work on Shadow Rising.

But that can exist in any kind of fandom, especially since this is the Internet, no matter the subject. It's possible that any fandom can have these kinds of problems as well, not just macrossworld.

You serious about this thread?

The reaction over Dragonball Evolution may have changed the perception of similar works (Asian/anime material) as instant money makers for Hollywood. It did do better in Asia over the Americas and Europe maybe, but other productions will have to do better to avoid the same fiasco. Making it vaguely similar to the source and putting a (different) label on it isn't going to work anymore. But licensing will be a big problem for Robotech too (other people wrote it better than I ever can here previously, so I won't even try to explain it).

You forgot an important point about Frontier, Seto: it had an ending, probably two with the movie coming out. With Shadow Chronicles... well, it's hard to tell if they had a plan besides from the leaked script or if they'll get to tell it anytime soon. Heck, they might stick to tradition and have it in comic or book form. I don't know, but that's a basic storytelling problem to me. EDIT: Maybe a production problem too, but come on HG. Even the Cylons had a plan and they kept reminding the audience almost every week about it.

Eh? Welcome to Fall Out Toy Works EDIT: Actually, a tribute to the original Metropolis?

I thought it was more like this: Is this feature good enough to entice you to buy the previous 85 episodes and other merchandise to get into Robotech? That's a common pattern with other series, but here it's almost required browsing to really understand what's going on. In fact, it could have been the strategy until they could start Shadow Rising. The problem might be narration style. Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles took 1/3 of the film to go over material from the previous series and set up this new chapter. Surprisingly, they killed off the narrator (maybe the Carl Macek insert for the story) who was an arguably important feature from the original series. He was replaced by a character(s) who may know more than they should about the past and current situation. Macross 7 and Frontier was not as connected to the previous series, but still took 1-3 minutes at the beginning of the first 8 or so episodes to get people up to speed. By contrast, as time went on they stopped relying on narration to get the main story going. DYRL? and Plus had minor exposition while Flashback 2012 used no new dialogue, only animation.

That's just his taped shows, he has over 300 audio recordings of similar quality on talkshoe. You might want to pace yourself, or get some booze ready, if you're going to dive further into the Robotech Fan. You might want to check the previous topic for that stuff: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=153 http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...st&p=732649

He must be a fan of "The Future is Now" by Joanne Harris. Btw, who is Joanne Harris anyway?