Renato

Thanks, I thought I was misremembering something, but yeah, that was probably it. And as far as I can tell from all the information I have seen, Anime Friend was not a subcontracted studio, rather it and Tatsunoko produced the show together as a co-production, along with Mainichi Broadcasting of course. It was AnimeFriend who then subcontracted to Korea. I think the fallacy probably comes from the fact that we often hear Tatsunoko's name more often, mostly because of its connection to Robotech. Since the RT deal was between Tatsunoko and HG only, the credits only pay tribute to Tatsunoko, leaving Anime Friend in the dark. When it was "revealed" some years back that some footage was farmed out overseas, people started hearing this unfamiliar "Anime Friend" name and thought that that was the foreign studio, I guess. The fact that Anime Friend does not seem to have survived the 80s doesn't help in its recognition, either.

Again, the individual keyframe artists etc. are to blame for that, not where it was produced. I do not have the specific data for Mospeada episodes, but I can try to find out. Either way, it all depends on who was drawing what.

Gah, I missed emphasazing my point and instead went off on a tangent. Anyway, I just wanted to put to rest the "Anime Friend sucks" thing, because they themselves were actually just as skilled. On the Macross DVDs you can see a promotion reel with a lot of episode 1 & 2 footage which Animeigo used to show their remastering before & after split-screen thing. The end of the sequence clearly states Produced by Anime Friend in Japanese: 制作：アニメフレンド. Now that animation looked pretty damn good to me so I think we should try to put an end this confusion between which studio did what.

Yeah, but that's what I mean by "I guess they can still be considered lazy". Besides, when you look at coordinator Hiroshi Iwada's "average day" at the time (gets up at seven, goes to all these studios and gets to bed at 3am according to the Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti book) you can hardly blame him. Gotta remember that the amount of designs Studio Nue wanted the show to feature was monumental for the time and must've been pretty overwhelming. Also, remember that in the Animeigo commentary I think Noboru Ishiguro mentions that Itano had to go to hospital from overwork (and he himself mentioned it again in the AnimeGiga interview earlier this year -- although he said he postponed entering the hospital to enter a motorcycle race because he didn't want to let his teammates down). Seems like it would've been nigh impossible to finish making the show with just those two studios in terms of both human resources and funding. If I remember correctly, in some litigation documentation from when Nue sued Tatsunoko a lot of details were revealed, and I think I recall that they could only carry on making the show financially thanks to the sale of the overseas distribution rights to HG.... which I thought was ironic at the time hence I remember it till now. I'm not 100% sure though, so don't quote me, rather, let's find the literature again and quote that.

She was an actress, not a singer, and not really an important character though, so we knew Minmay was gonna win. You do have a point, though.

Gonna copy and paste from the Frontier Ep 3 Thread which I derailed for a bit to get this point across. I think this is an important point which should not get buried amongst other posts so I'm finally giving its own thread. I'm not sure who it was that originally started the whole "Anime Friend SUCKS!! Curse you for the poorly animated knife fights!" but it really has astounded me that it has snowballed to the point that Anime Friend is now synonymous with bad animation on this site. For a time we even had the phrase "Anime Fiend" become a bit of a fad. As some of you know I am very interested in the production side of Macross and try to find out as much about the animation industry circa 1982-5 as I can, including the different studios etc. I would like this thread to be not only a discussion on Anime Friend and their antics but also any other interesting fallacies or maybe just tidbits of information concerning the production of our favourite shows like Mac, Orguss, Mospeada, Megazone 23, etc. For example, the missiles seen on the tailfins of Max's VF-1A in one episode (the one where they go on the recon mission and Misa is captured) were not an animation error but actually designed and animated by Ichiro Itano for a purpose -- because in the previous episode the GBP Aromoured valk has such a tough time against the same type of enemy craft while it is disposed of with such ease by Max, Hikaru and gang in the next. Stuff like that. (By the way, I looked up the credits for the episode of Orguss I mentioned: it wasn't Star Pro, it was a company called K Production, but sure enough a Korean outsource still).

Rapidshare links on Macrosshare.blogspot.com, dunno about any torrents. Be advised that that one is the TBS cut version. The MBS version which aired in Kansai contains extra footage of Satelight, Bandai's VF-25 prototypes and IAD's (member here) radio-controlled SV-51. I asked my friend to record it ages ago so I hope the file is still on his hard drive. If so maybe we can upload it somewhere. I'm typing this for the second time because of stupid computorzz. I apologize if it sounds too direct and rude.

Unfortunately, this is not entirely accurate information, as I have tried many times to explain but failed miserably to get through the "AnimeFriend Veil of Hatred" . I am now even thinking of putting this up on the Compedium under the fallacies section now thaqt they've gone wiki wiki wild wild west. OK, Anime Friend: They were not technically a Korean studio, they were a Japanese studio which collaborated with Tatsunoko to produce SDF Mac and DYRL (note: Studio Nue is not an actual animation studio, it is a design production agency). In fact, I believe Anime Friend employees were mostly people who had left Tatsunoko (much like Production IG today). Now, these guys actually working in Anime Friend were by no means bad, or "couldn't draw" or anything like that. Take a look at some of the sourcebooks for Macross, particularly the TIAS ones and you can see a lot of their work (I'll give you page numbers next time if you want). For example, the episodes where Ichiro Itano is doing the keyframes for the action scenes, it doesn't matter who the hell traces the final cel to be photographed (be it an Anime Friend or Tatsunoko or Studio bloody Ghibli), what matters is the Itano original image. That's all they have to do. Now. WHY do some eps of Macross look so ugly? The answer is who was in charge of the keyframes and the art. AnimeFriend actually outsourced some of their work to another studio in Korea: Star Pro. OK, everyone who knows a little bit of katakana, go check your SDF Macross DVDs: all the really bad episodes of Macross, beginning from the 3rd episode, have the "原画" (genga / keyframes), 動画 (douga / in-betweening),　仕上げ (shiage/finishing) credited as スタープロ　or STAR PRO at the end of the episode, as opposed to the name of the person in charge, like Mikimoto in episode 4, etc. Some sourcebooks even name the guy in charge at Star Pro, his name is Park something, I dunno. So, Anime Friend was not the crappy studio that you all think it was, that was Star Pro. Though Anime Friend could be considered lazy because all they gave Star Pro to go on where the basic storyboards and stuff and said "go make this" without providing the keyframes themselves so I guess the blame falls on them anyway. Whatever. Take a look at that ugly episode of Orguss, "My Factory". Its "style" is VERY reminiscent of the Max/Millia wedding episode so I'm sure it is Star Pro, though I haven't checked it, and I'm sure Anime Friend had nothing whatsoever to do with Orguss, it was Tokyo Movie Shinsha that were in charge of the animation. OK, I think I ought to start my own thread about this.

I think it came from some recent interview, maybe in Newtype?

That's what she said...

That's another thing, I've stopped reading the manga because it's kind of like a cheap spoiler. I've read up to episode 3 I think, but I'll only pick it up again when I'm a little bit further into the TV show itself.

I really am enjoying this show so far. As I said before, AT LAST THERE IS SOMETHING INTERESTING TO WATCH ON JAPANESE TV. Just feel I need to play devil's advocate for a little while, though. Some questions still remain unanswered: Why did the President order the shell to fully open in the first episode, when in the exact same situation in Macross 7, Max ordered "Shell Down"? (Maybe I misheard, but it was obvious that the shell was never lowered). Why does Mikhael have two names?? Why does the vajra survive getting its head blown off when it is killed by a tiny knife in the previous episode? And the thing which is really beginning to bother me is this: at what point does all this stop being fan-oriented homages which we all enjoy, and start becoming just a re-hash? I don't think we are there yet, but I would like to have the show go off on its own tangent already. Yes, I like the original show and I love that the snuck in things like the litter robot thing, and the Minmay rescue thing redux was cool, but as I posted loast week, I certainly had a bad feeling that they're going a bit too far down this road. Now we've had the scene where they were all trapped together. Normally in Macross this is used so tht the characters can relate to one another and open up a bit more, but they hardly had the time to do that here. I'm not sure what good it served the story to have them trapped together since it was only a few minutes, other than showing Sheryl's "I didn't get to where I am by just standing around!" attitude. Next week we've got "Miss Macross" and it seems Ranka is wearing that yellow Minmay dress. Hmm.... I'm torn between the Macross fan in me enjoying these "updates" and the critic in me saying "oh, here we go again.." Here's hoping it gets genuinely original soon. Having said all that, I am really optimistic that after a while this series will get genuinely exciting and unpredictable. I'm waiting for that white-haired guy (Ypsilon from Votoms?) to show up. Oh, and chunky Konig Monster goodness.

But I think Kaifun IS Minmay's brother in DYRL... I know in SDF she says he's "like" a brother, but in DYRL he is never described as such and his character synopsis in the TIAS book says "Minmay's brother and manager". Don't want to ruin your party or anything, though..

Oh sweet baby Jesus, YES!! Thank you very much! Hot on the heels of the EXCELLENT Itano one, at last, the Kawamori interview. Gonna download it right now.

Ｓｅｃｏｎｄ ed Ivanov? When did this come out??

That was great, thanks a lot! I enjoyed the way that they explained everything clearly and that it was obviously aimed at a wider audience than your average otaku. I'm going to need to check out that new series he's doing now... Although I really didn't enjoy Gantz. Also I want to watch the AnimeGiga interview with Kawamori, anyone have that..?

BUT I'M HUNGRY NOW!!!! Kidding! Seriously, Macross and food? INSTANT WIN!! Of all the other news, this is the thing I'm looking forward to the most!

OK, muchas gracias!

I think he's gonna get with Nanase. (If he hasn't already)

Absolutely, I mean, the whole series felt really disjointed but this was the worst! You wait months wondering what happened to the characters after the island got nuked and it's all like "oh we're OK, gonna go over there now, k thnx bai". It pissed me off because I remember when I started watching ep 5 the first time, I was fixing a drink or something just as it was starting, and when I sit down I'm like "Eh? Have I got the right episode??" Anyway, despite my pet peeves with the show, yes I would like a movie edition, even if no extra scenes are made; who wouldn't want the chance to see this on the big screen?

Javier, Nice. What exactly is the content of the DYRL drama LP... I've seen pics of it, but never seen it in real life. It looks like it is two discs..? Also, what illustration is your avatar from?

Yeah, that bothered me too. His name was Ivano Gunther. And Gigil too. He was using somebody's body until that got beaten up or something then his "Evil series" body awakened... so is that poor guy's body just lying dead now?? Although I guess since Gigil blew everything on the planet to kingdom come anyway... I like Macross 7 a lot and though it has its faults, I think it's a great story with great characters you can really get involved in, and at the end of the day if you don't have that, you nd up with something like... Macross Zero. As others have said, the opening is great, and though it may be sacrilege, as much as I'm loving Macross Frontier, that opening absolutely pales in comparison to the pure rush you get when you hear Seventh Moon. Those first strums followed by the foot-tapping beat are like a warning that you ought to "prepare yourself -- you're in for one heck of a 25 minute ride!" Plus Yoshiki Fukuyama can and will own everyone in the world, ever.

Nyaha! Or what about when Alto got cock s hit in the face by Ozma?

I'm one, I always get logged out. Dunno why. Anyway, great episode. Looking forward to next week! FINALLY! SOMETHING WORTHWHILE WATCHING ON JAPANESE TV!!

I can't even remember if I ever posted in this thread or not. Anyway, I like any and all genres of music as long as it is good; meanwhile bad music just makes me so angry... Anyway, off the top of my head, here are classic albums I would happily spend my days on a desert island with: The Who -- Live at Leeds (The extended 2 CD remastered edition with the whole concert plus the entire hour-length rendition of "Tommy"), Bruce Springsteen -- Born to Run, The Doobie Brothers -- The Captain and Me; Led Zeppelin - too many to choose; Boston -- 1st album; Queen -- Greatest Hits I; Joan Baez -- Gracias a la Vida (Here's to Life); Macross -- Rhapsody in Love (not just 'cause I had to throw this in -- it's simply awesome); Supertramp -- Breakfast in America; Marvin Gaye -- What's Going On; The Blues Brothers OST.... etc I'm listening a lot to radio these days. Any Jazz fans here, take a listen to this station, I constantly have it on recently: Jazz & Blues KKJZ 88.1FM Long Beach University California. They stream online.