JsARCLIGHT

ANN, IMDB and Wikipedia all list his death as fall from height / suicide. Several other sites recycle / reuse the same bios from those three. I have not seen anything so far hinting at anything other than this fall from height / suicide death scenario. Perhaps his death was initially reported as a motorcycle accident to cover up a suicide? I don't know, just guessing. Edit: or perhaps (with all respect) he was on a motorcycle that somehow fell off a building? From the sound of things either there is one heck of a misinformation program re: this guy's death in place or he really did fall off a building.

Does anyone have any links to any stories or credible biographies notating the "motorcycle accident" death? Everything I read all over the web says he died by falling seven stories off of / out of a building with most calling it suicide.

Hate to rain folk's parade here but I've owned just about everything Toynami has put out at some point in time... superposables both alpha and valkyrie, posable valkyries, MPC VF-1's, Imen and my dreaded MPC Alpha. Out of all of them, the only thing I would rate as a "quality" product was the Imen... they alone had the trifecta of decent materials, decent paint and decent fit and finish. Everything else was commonly sub par with smudged / misaligned paint, floppy limbs in the MPC's, horrid fit between parts, transformations that left gaps and clunky "sorta transformed" states, in the case of the posables and superposables the gummy material they where made out of made posing them difficult and in three cases of mine valkyrie arms and heads just plain twisted off because they became "stuck" between each other and alpha's arms or legs would rotate out of joint and would never go back in or the ball would twist off in the socket. I had to send parts of my Alpha back to be replaced, like many people had to. And before anyone says it, I am NOT "rough with my toys". Most of the things that broke on my Toynami things happened under the gentlest of movement or transformation. All my toys where shelf queens... they broke or fell apart under the most minor of movements and handling. It got to the point before I sold them all off as parts that I didn't even want to touch them out of the fear of something else breaking, falling off or getting more loose. I would not call all these things "mistakes" nor would I call them unique to Toynami... what I DO call them is shoddy, especially for the high price tags these things commanded right out of the gate that I paid. I see a lot of folks throwing around terms like "you just got a bad one" but nearly every Toynami thing I've owned (outside of the Imen) has had many of what I consider basic things wrong with them. My frustration, anger and dislike of Toynami is based on all this... I have yet to own something made by Toynami other than an Imen that was not screwed up in some way. And for the record it is not just Toynami... this "low quality high price" thing is sweeping the adult collectible market. I've all but stopped buying toys in general because it seems everyone is rushing shoddy, poor fit / finish overpriced stuff to market lately. Also for the record I never try to openly complain about the quality of toys... Toynami is just a very, very sore subject with me. In the end it is all opinion and personal experience... just as I have no doubt people have had glowing experiences with Toynami toys you cannot assume that we all have or that those of us who are complaining are doing so in "baseless" fashions. There are a lot of folks just like me who have "had it" with companies like Toynami.

I was ecstatic about the Toynami VF-1, only to be horribly let down. I was ecstatic about the Toynami Legioss, only to be horribly let down again. I was ecstatic about the Toynami Tread, only to be horribly let down yet again. Considering how much more complex / fragile the ride armor models are above the Legioss and Valkyrie designs, my faith that Toynami can pull this off is actually in negative numbers. I predict stories of wheel swing arms snapping off right out of the box, hands disintegrating and all other myriad of issues being posted when these things come out. I learned my harsh lesson, to never, ever, under any circumstances get excited about anything Toynami claims to be releasing. It's a negative way to live but it keeps me from throwing a $80 toy at the wall when I wait and wait and wait for it only to have it fall apart in my hands.

The Odyssey Hal Pod versus Frank Poole, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Actually that is what worries me the most... Kojima. His "directing style" has gotten more and more talky, preachy and downright boring as time has gone on. Heck, a large portion of most modern Metal Gear games are the player sitting there doing nothing while watching a FMV sequence featuring blabbing characters, grandstanding bosses and monolouging support characters only to be rewarded with a few minutes of play time followed by another giant block of FMV's. Kojima has really found a way to yank the player out of the game... I sincerely hope whoever directs the movie remembers it should be an action piece and they focus more on the "stealth espionage action" rather than fill the thing with huge blocks of rambling dissertation on world politics and the interpersonal relationships between a vast cast of minor characters who are introduced and promptly killed off.

Heh, did anyone notice in that picture that that guy is just blatantly STARING right at her chest? "Um, dude, I'm like... totally up here..." And check out the droop on that left hooter. I think she needs to go back to the RDF Plastic Surgery Center and have that checked out... if that goes untreated she may develop a spinal tilt to the left and have to change her name to Ilene.

Exactly... I rate everything in two categories: good and crap. This one looks like the latter.

What else? JAPANIMATION! (runs away) Seriously though, a group of people I know here locally who are anime fans who see things made in the states made to look like anime they call "amerime".

From those screencaps the CG seems to me to be really spotty... I mean, the Legioss fighters look like they came out of a video game what with their flat and blocky look... not to mention their total "I made this in photoshop using two color fills and the text tool set to times new roman" texture maps. But then the bad guy units are so rounded and "smooth" with tons of obvious CG "sheen bloom" highlights on them that is sorely lacking on the Legioss fighters... and then we have these huge capital ships that seem to have tons of subtle panel detail and weathering across their large expanses of solid color areas. It almost leaves me with a feeling that three different companies did the three different vehicles. I sorely hope these things look better moving than they do in these screencaps.

Please steer the topic back to Macross and away from all the doomsday prediction.

[Johnny Carson] I did not remember that. [/Johnny Carson]

Shouldn't it be "South Ataria Island"?... or is that too geeked out even for a geekshirt?

In the end it's all a cartoon, all that matters is what you see on screen and how you the viewer feel about it. There is no "truth" in any of this, as with all science fiction the "truth" changes from year to year, project to project. Something new is created that screws up the lineage of something and alters what once was "the truth" into something new. For all expectation the truth is what the viewer sees it to be because it is constantly in flux. The glory of cartoons is that they can be anything their creators want them to be... hence why you can have old designs radically change in scope and ability over time or between projects and the creators can go back and add or alter their old designs to better adapt to the new things they make.

Popular theory is they learned about the Zentradi from the wreckage of the ASS-1. Of course it would have been nice to actually see that rather than a bunch of floating rocks and birdmen in Macross Zero but far be it for me to complain. Also just to clear up my line of talking I was not really speaking to size differences in the valks but more or less the massive varied general technology differences. To me, a common shmo with no real knowledge of fighter planes and their linages, it appeared that the VF-0 was vastly superior to the VF-1... it had fancy pupil tracking computers for weapons handling, it had fancy 180 or 360 degree cockpit screens in battroid, it appeared to have a much more complex transformation cycle (even though it was effectively the same) and above all it appeared more "modern" and "high tech" than the now dated design of the VF-1. It just seems to me to be a move backwards from this awesome eyeball tracking targeting computer full frontal screen in battroid fancy sharp edges with little jaggie things design to this very dated, rounded, "soft" design that lacked all the fancy computer and cockpit options. To put it in terms I and "car people" understand, if the VF-1 was a 1957 Chevy Bel Air and the VF-22 was a 2007 Corvette I was expecting the VF-0 to be a 1934 Chevy Five Window Coupe... instead it was a 1969 Camaro Z-28 with Cross Ram induction... in other words the VF-0 appears to me to be vastly technologically superior to the VF-1, fuel drive engines or no.

Not to mention their designs where wildly different than the previous generations of variable fighters. The stuff in Macross is like any other big robot show, the designs change with the times we live in and reflect the current styles of real world fighter aircraft and other design trends. The VF-0 to me is nothing more than a retconned, redesigned and "modernized" VF-1 with nice sharp "modern design" edges and angles. I still find it humorous how much more "modern" and advanced the VF-0 appears in the show than the VF-1 does in the original show yet they still kneecap it by things like "conventional engines" and the like... it's like fighter design massively jumped forward, then fell backwards, then jumped forward again and continued to yo-yo like that inside one unit. It's got crazy advanced weapon tracking computers with eyeball movement recognition and the like but it still uses gas engines. Then when they finally get the nuke powerplants they remove the great computer targeting systems and other advanced goodies. It makes no sense... unless you view it all as a retcon. In the end the shows will always reflect the current trends of the time they where made in. Big, Small... doesn't really matter that much. I think the lines of Kawamori saying "OOOoooooooh! Joint Strike Fighter! F22! F117 Stealth Fighter! The new valks need to look like THAT!" are more apt than any sort of "logical development" through the series. Then they add in other "oooooooh cool" gizmos and stuff and just keep the ball rolling. Who cares if continuity wise the new design is supposed to exist before the other old stuff, which by logic would make it a simpler design. It's the same problem Gundam suffers from... so many retconned stories added into the continuity with new, crazy-nuts advanced units being built before or side by side with ancient stone age units... after a while people like me give up trying to put logic to it all. It looks cool... that's about as logical as it gets.

If I was to guess? Technology gets smaller with advancement. If I had to sum it up in a word? That word would be retcon.

Unless that brown VF-1J he flew in training was his assigned unit and it was repainted once he finished training... either way I have money he lost that left arm in training somehow as well.

In SDFM TV Hikaru lost a left arm off of every Valk type he flew at one point in time or another.

Film may be a visual medium but it looks to me like the chief place this new "thing" created by HG falls short is in the area it counts most: story and character. Seriously, they could have spent billions on ILM and Weta Digital to make the thing look better than anything to date and if it still had the same cockamamie story it would still suck. In a nutshell this project suffers from every kneecap a hollywood sequel suffers from... they can't get the original artists, actors and writers from the original shows so they hire different ones... those different ones have "new, different" ideas and pick up their own little footballs and run with them. The same goes for the creative departments and the talent. It's like someone having the rights to Ben Hur and trying to make a sequel decades later using new actors, new story lines and new technology but in trying to recapture the same "magic" as the original they somehow completely miss everything that made the original what it was and the new project ends up a shallow piece rife with stereotypical action scenes, canned plot lines and shallow "seen it before" dialog and set pieces.

But they probably DO have some bad blood against Yamato with the whole Toycom (US Domestic arm of Yamato) Macross Plus toys thing in their mutual past. It might just be me but I'd think twice about giving a license to a company I had to C&D in the past and as Yamato I probably would not be asking for a license from a company that shut the door on me in the past. Plus HG has stated in quite bold terms that they hold Toynami's MPC line as their "Mospeada" toys for release in Japan. I would assume that would mean Toynami has been given HG's Japan license go ahead. Why would HG suddenly contract someone else to make very similar foreign market toys that directly compete with the other company they licensed? It makes no sense. Yamato and HG "teaming up" on anything in the near future just seems way too hard to swallow.

Um... guys... how can it be Mospeada? Doesn't everyone's favorite punkass bitch Harmony Gold hold exclusive worldwide rights to all Mospeada things? Why would they grant Yamato, an apparent rival in the Macross toy department, licensing rights to make Mospeada things? If I'm wrong somebody correct me here.

Either Orguss or Dorvack.

The forum you originally posted in is reserved for Macross things only. This forum, the Other Anime and Science Fiction forum, is the only place on this site you may discuss things which are NOT Macross. Hope that clears up any confusion.

Wrong forum, belongs here in the Other Anime section. Carry on.