Renato

I don't think it's that kind of research, I took it to mean that they were investigating space and stuff, looking for hospitable planets rather than conducting experiments and what not. Batou Glad to see another Led Zep fan onboard. I never felt the need to introduce anyone to Led Zeppelin because everyone knew them anyway, and they either liked them or not, that was fine with me. In the past I have shown Macross 7 to a few people who don't watch anime and some of them did enjoy it and get hooked. British, Japanese, French, whatever. And that includes girls, by the way. I never preach to the crowd, there's no joy for me introducing anime to an anime fan. I want non-anime fans to see before they judge, and if I hadn't succeeded in the past, I wouldn't be doing that now. The "I thought I was gonna hate it, but it's not bad" is all I'm going for. My girlfriend is Japanese and she doesn't like anime because of all the moe stuff. I showed her Tokyo Godfathers, Wings of Honneamise and Shinichiro Watanabe stuff and she enjoyed them. Unfortunately, Frontier is so full of the stuff that people hate about anime that there is little hope to ever dispel any of the preconceptions they have about anime as a whole. And to the people who say "Macross will always be the stuff of geeks so who cares", well, so is Star Wars, Spiderman and Transformers but that doesn't stop them from making lots of money at the cinema. Men and women of all ages went to see them, not just BotCon pilgrims! I don't mean everyone in the world should become an MW member and buy Yamato 1/48s, but the makers could at least try to appeal to a little bit of a broader demographic instead of pigeon-holing the show to enjoy a success within a niche market and then lay dormant for another ten years. That's why those other franchises are so successful. Yes, it's a niche market, "so whaddya expect, duh" but it doesn't have to be. EDIT -- Because I know what some people are gonna say... Yeah, alright, Star Wars and Spiderman etc are guaranteed successes anyway because they're household names. OK, well, what about stuff like V for Vendetta? Watchmen? A lot of "subculture" is becoming mainstream these days.

Thanks a lot, Shawn! A while back, I bought a MZ23partII record which had come with an autographed card dated 1987, I'm guessing it was Kumi Miyasato. She has a great voice. The whole 80s thing looks real cheesy now, but that's all part of the heart of Megazone. And those are mostly good songs too. My favourite is Lonely Sunset. Those bloody otakus cheering ruin the thing a bit on the live tracks, though. Ah, bless.

Ah, OK, I misunderstood. Heh, that would've been a funny turn-out of events: ANNO: "Er, I'd like to make a TV anime about angels coming down to destroy humanity, and giant robots made to fight them..." TV EXEC: "Wow, sounds great! Now, Mr. Anno, let me just check your resume here..." ANNO: *gulps* TV EXEC: "1982.... Macross? Wow, that's impressive... What did you do on it?" ANNO: "Erm... the, uh..." *whispers* TV EXEC: "GET THE HELL OUTTA MY OFFICE!!"

That is EXACTLY the reason I want to show Macross to people. I want to tell them how there is much more to anime than just loli hentai. Well, I'm sorry for thinking Macross had integrity and was above all of that. I enjoy reccommending movies and music to friends and then maybe if they like it we can have a good talk about it, or they might like to see or hear something similar. In this case, I can't even get started. And since I'm in Japan, it's no use showing people Miyazaki or Fireflies cos they've all seen it. Well, I cannot enjoy it fully, since I'm obviously not the type of otaku it seems to be catering to. Again, I guess I was wrong to expect something different from the "Pretty Cure" calibre of anime. Good action, though.

*Sigh*. I want lots of people to enjoy animation. Unfortunately, having these types of "wacky" characters with annoying voices are exactly what turns average people off. I don't get why people say things like "it's anime, that's the way it is". It's giving out such a bad image, this shouldn't have to be the stuff of geeks. Shinichiro Watanabe's stuff (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo) is the only anime I can show non-anime fans so I can convince them that it's not all otaku crap. The more this stuff comes up in Frontier, the less argument I have for convincing the layman of the potential of Japanese animation. BTW, Shinichiro Watanabe specifically said in the interview he's happy when the old guys who run Teishokuya (little mom&pop owned restaurants/cafes) tell him they enjoyed his show last night. THAT'S what's important. The BIG picture.

Oh, Jesus Christ, that's not even funny. I feel so f*cking embarassed watching that kinda crap. Yeah, could be. That's certainly better than the "big secret" about the Vajra revealed this episode by Roy (cos I can't remember his real name).

Oh, and that violin thing was great. It shows what a good song it is with a different arrangement. I'm not liking the "real" version, though.

Really? Not heard of that... And the DVD and CD releases don't seem to feature covers by him. You are right about his designs being too complicated for the average animator to handle (hence the adition of Kenichi Katsura for Macross 7)... Well, I have been ready for years but nobody has come close so far. Maybe Toshiro Kawamoto, but he's hardly young. I don't mind the main trio of Alto, Sheryl and the other one so much, but the rest of the characters are just so badly drawn it's amazing they expect the CG to blend in with them. In Mac Zero, too, I mean Aries for example was God-awfully designed. Those fat lips. Oh, and speaking of which, Edgar... (Edited for clarity)

Exactly what I was thinking.

I just watched the episode and I do not remember this..?

Yep, and Time Bokan is great classic stuff. Anyway, I think Hideaki Anno did a lot of work mainly on episode 27 "Ai wa Nagareru", most famously he drew that shot of all the navy blue Phalanxes opening their missile hatches. A lot of his shots were full of detail mecha stuff. Never heard of him doing anything related to the knife episode because I thought that was all (mal)handled by Star Pro.

Yes.... Check out the names in the end credits. See anyone familiar..?

Oh yeah. I had forgotten all about them.... Well, thanks a LOT, man.

The new Figure Oh issue has a feature with Kawamori visiting the Bandai factory in Shizuoka. He's getting all excited handling the legendary molds for the 1/72 VF-1 kits. In my opinion, Figure Oh is the only magazine that caters for the serious toy fan in Japan, the others seem more like phonebook-sized Gundam adverts, with no articles.

Yeah, the Gobots weren't as bad as we think back of them as being. I think the lameness factor comes mostly from the Hannah-Baerbera cartoon. The robots were fine as toys, and the sheer variety (and accuracy) of the vehicles was novelty enough. Transformers were quite accurate to their vehicle forms back then, too (shame the only TF line to ever feature that again would be the BTs). I had quite a few Gobots, including that submarine guy. My little brother has it now.

Thanks for the scan, TheLoneWolf. There is some amazing detail in those layouts that seem to be lost a bit when on the actual screen (Hopefully the Bandai Visual remaster can make it look great..?). I just realised a few hours ago, though, that Private Time is actually NOT the Focker reminiscing episode, rather, it's the one with Misa waiting for Hikaru to go on a picnic. Agh. Dunno why I got it confused with Rainy Night. Yeah, anyone that Private Time one DEFINITELY was mostly ugly, ugly cel work, but still it seems that quite a few additions by Mikimoto himself did make it in there. Notably, several of the face close-ups of Misa, Hikaru and Minmay. At some point I will get round to watching the episode again and will give timecodes for the Mikimoto shots... Other than that, consider the rest ofd the episode "Koreanimation". By the way, another tidbit: check out pages 92 and 93 of the TIAS 7 book (the one I mentioned in the post above). There is a double page spread of the Ichiro Itano sequence from episode 18 (where Roy dies and Max kicks ass) which features Itano's layouts for the keyframes, Mitsuru Yoshida's colour application guidelines, and running along at the bottom is the actual cel art, which is actually credited to Anime Friend.

Thanks, would you mind also scanning any accompanying description or caption text that may be near it? Cheers. The process you're describing is the usual practice for the animation director. Which would mean that the studio had access to Kawamori's layouts and lineart, hence this is more evidence that this shot was most likely not animated in Korea, but was either done in-house at Tatsunoko or AnimeFriend itself. OK, I'm gonna re-watch the episode later and see how many different shots of varying quality there are in this thing.

OK, found a discrepancy. Kawamori is credited as scriptwriter on page 91 of the Graffiti book, while that entry is blank in the TIAS book.

OK, I'm back with the page numbers. This info s actually in several books, but for now I'll just state a couple: First up, the This is Animation: The Select #7: SDF Macross 下巻(vol. 3) Cover: http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/books/tia7f.jpg Page 119 gives a simple run-through of the episodes, their corresponding airdates and main staff members for each: Script, Storyboards, Performance, Character animation director, Mecha animation director and art director. Intriguingly, the scriptwriter for "Phantasm" is not credited. Maybe it's a ghost writer, ha ha. Point is, this Park guy (can't read his first name, I'm gonna ask a Korean friend) is credited for mecha and character animation for episodes 13: Blue Wind, 20: Paradise Lost, 22: Love Concert (Oh GOD, I still get nightmares about Minmay's eyes in this one), 25: Virgin Road, 29: Lonely Song, 32: Broken Heart (thanks to him we get the YF-1R!! Yay! Robotech fans rejoice!) and 34: Private Time. The same credits for episode 3: Space Fold show a different nam; I can't read it but it is still Korean, and the end sequence clearly states Star Pro, so the Park guy probably just took over for the rest of the episodes. Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti (Cover: http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/books/series_best.htm ) This one gives a similar list, though not as tidy, spread out over pages 90-93. So far I have found no inconsistencies. But it surprised me to see Private time in there. Clearly, there are shots drawn by the usual staff of Macross, and I can' rememember where but I am certain I saw the layout drawing of the VF-X that appears in the scene with Roy in the hangar being credited to Kawamori himself, but I can't remember where. Could've been in the Perfect Memory book, but I cannot be sure because my copy is in storage in the UK. Anyone know the pic? It is the same line drawing as the cel, but is is the layout for the keyframe, so the directions for the colourists are there, etc. In fact, I will try to get the chance to re-watch the ending sequence of Private Time to see if Star Pro makes an appearance... I think that episode contains footage which was already planned for other episodes and Star Pro may have filled in the gaps, while the Mac staff switched a lot of scenes around. Which would explain why Roy's hair is long, then short, then long again.

I have both those books but I don't remember seeing that in there. I'll take a brief look again just in case. EDIT -- Holy CRAP!! It IS in there. Huh. OK, I'll try to scan and upload it as soon as I can, but I don't have a scanner and the one in my lab is broken, so it'll have to be next time I go to my friend's place. Should be in the next couple of weeks or so cos I'm thinking about doing a whole batch of stuff.

Haven't seen any srt files floating around for the new remastered Mac7 raws, shame cos then it'd be perfect. Then again, I can't find any of the extras either. And I'm also dying to know about the quality of the SDF Remaster. I guess everyone in the English-speaking countries who is a fan already has one or two versions of this without having to put down 400 bucks for another. Shame. (Again).

It's Mahara, not Uehara.

Well, I've not heard about it originally featuring a Gamlin-style beam gun, but yes, that's what I mean. Though I understood that the "error" was more one of continuity -- Itano said he insisted the sequence be re-shot because the enemy mecha was the same as the one which took a million missiles to take out in the previous episode with the GBP, so it wouldn't make sense that having established that, it would be so easy to blow up in one blast using a regular valk in the next ep.

Yes, they settled on the "Robotech" name for the series so that it would tie-in with the Revell kits which included Macross designs at the time. Which means had they gotten the rights to the shows, they may have tried to incorporate Dougram and Orguss into ther story. Hmm.