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Renato

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  1. Renato
    Well. I guess things are WINDING DOWN...
  2. Renato
    You cannot just say "in terms of content..." and expect not to have any other factors play a role in the outcome, such as who made the film. Pixar/Disney has huge name value and if they say they will make a movie about an old guy with balloons, or a movie about a flying air conditioner that can predict the future, or heck, even watching paint dry... then people will go see it. The only animation works that have that kind of name value in Japan apart from Disney are Ghibli films. Growing in popularity recently are Mamoru Hosoda's works, and maybe Shinkai Makoto. Macross is so far down the list. Frontier was a huge success, but within the anime subculture. If we are only talking about content, then what you suggest is that we take the approach of a show which everyone can enjoy, which has worked in the West. There you have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of Japanese society when dealing with pop culture. Like I said before, there is an anime stigma. Most people in the mainstream will not watch anime by virtue of it being anime. You can make it as attractive, interesting, family-friendly as you like. ESPECIALLY moe and robot shows. There is a barrier there that you cannot break through. Add to this the fact that the mainstream is much less accepting to change or innovation, because they have a different attitude to media consumption. Look at Japanese TV shows, movies, etc. They are so completely different to US ones. There is no Japanese "House of Cards" or "Game of Thrones". And even if there was, it would only be a minor hit in the grand scheme of things, or a huge hit within an isolated subculture. That is why, for example, Pacific Rim failed at the box office here. And English-language news people were surprised, saying "What? We thought the Japanese would love it!" No, they don't. It is a subculture, and there is resistance from the mainstream. That is why I believe my "bondage movie" analogy works much better than your "Up" analogy. Because the mainstream is repulsed by S&M, but there is a healthy subculture that is sustainable within its own confines. Same with robots and little girls. Shows with robots are childish, and shows with little girls are considered perverted. There is no pre-existing stigma against old men with balloons.
  3. Renato
    Wheeljack looks amazing! But here's something else: In the bottom-left corner of the photo of the page with WJ on it, there is a small news tidbit that says there will be a 1/1 scale "Convoy trailer" as part of the 30th anniversary project...
  4. Renato
    Play-Asia is based in Hong Kong, not Japan. HobbyLinkJapan and Ami-Ami are based in Japan. In my experience, they tend not to jack prices up. I would also suggest Amazon.jp for BDs and CDs, but since this particular item (Movie box set) is classified as a "game", they won't ship abroad. How much will they charge for the series? It's already out (no subs, though), and I think it's like 25,000 yen or something. They already DID release the films separately. I even bought (the good) one, which is why I was not actually going to get this release. I changed my mind just because I'm interested in the production notes and the storyboard comparisons, etc. You can make millions of these BDs/DVDs and sell them at 100 yen (50pence?) each if you want, but they won't sell out and you'll be left with dead stock. There is not going to be any "mass market penetration" -- I hate to sound like a broken record, but anime is a niche market. When you have an ageing society that doesn't watch cartoons and you try to sell a cartoon about giant robots and little girls, you are marketing your product to a specific group of people. Let me give you a very tasteful example. Do you like bondage movies? People getting tied up and whipped? I don't, but it is a market. You can try to lower the price, increase numbers and try to stimulate mass consumption of this particular product, but you can't change social consumption trends! You can't make money by giving people what they don't want. It's an extreme example, but the same dynamics are at work here. There is an anime stigma. I realize that Wolverine in the 90s was an unknown character for the mainstream and yet now you have Hollywood movies being made with enormous budgets that millions of people worldwide watch. But therein lies the difference between Japanese society and Western society -- mainstream penetration is really rare, with subcultures remaining removed from the mass and developing on their own. Maybe if Macross was given the opportunity to flourish in the West you would have cheaper BDs. Actually I'm fairly positive you would. But we all know who to blame for that, right?
  5. Renato
    Megaprime: Every Macross Blu-Ray to date has been region-free. This should not be an exception. "Even by Star Wars standards" --> Is that the most expensive standard you can think of, then welcome to ultra niche-market consumption and the appropriate pricing strategies for such. In my opinion these prices are reasonable by Japanese animation disc standards. For more detail, I suggest you listen to the most recent Macross SpeakerPODcast where we actually discuss in depth and at length why there is such a discrepancy. I don't mind people who speak their mind about prices, but I do ask that they try to at least understand why those prices are like that in the first place.
  6. Renato
    So, he's not recommending the BD set because of the "issues", and he's also saying there is little chance for a state-side BD release. I don't see how that really helps the poor guy who asked the question.
  7. Renato

    HI METAL LOVE THREAD

    Renato replied to VFTF1's topic in Toys

    "...The generation of kids that started on Zero..."
  8. Renato
    I'd be interested to hear what is meant by a "commercial Macross website".
  9. Renato
    Is it me, or does that scan look distinctly like it reads "YF-25F" and "YF-25G"?
  10. Renato
    As far as I know, on the PSP versions of these games, maxed-out valks are not all the same, the more advanced ones are still better than the older models. I don't know if that applies to M30 because all my valks are still Rank 1...
  11. Renato
    OK, thank god for Sunday. It gave me quite a bit of time to progress.... until the return of that end-of-area huge alien queen boss thing. Argh, that one-shot-kill laser..!! I think I remember somebody (VF-15 Banshee, maybe?) said to use Ranka to freeze it, and then shoot the horns, eggs and then boom. I will try that next time, I didn't have Ranka equipped that time, and since there is no save point, I wasn't going to do all the way back to the ship to re-equip and then do then entire dungeon all over again just for that. Meanwhile, I managed to get the YF-21 and if I can manage to tune it up, hopefully it will be effective against that boss, what with those arm-lasercannons and pinpoint-barrier (will that protect me against the one-hit-you're-dead-haha alien laser??).
  12. Renato
    This doesn't really answer your question but the swirly grey plastic has been a staple of Hastak toys since the 80s. I remember that being odd even when I was a kid.
  13. Renato
    IIRC Keith had a change of heart after the MacII valks were featured in the PSP games. I feel like I don't even know him anymore.
  14. Renato
    Marzan: As far as I understand it, it is not Lego themselves who is doing it. Cuusoo is sort of like an official Lego competition where the public submits designs and some of them get shortlisted and have the opportunity to become a product. If the VF wins, they can still market it in Japan. The question is whether they will bother with all that. The Hayabusa spaceprobe was a Cuusoo thing as well and I believe that was a Japan-exclusive so you never know.
  15. Renato
    I was playing the base where Rod says "There is no point in living in a world without Mia!" and then Rion/Leon says "OK, let's take this outside, yo", so I get ready for them to duke it out and then the game froze on the loading screen.
  16. Renato
    No extras to speak of other than creditless openings and endings. What could they fill the 100 page booklet with, though, I wonder?
  17. Renato
    With the PSP Control Type, just press L1 + L2 together to unlock targets.
  18. Renato
    Look at their facial expressions in every shot. I've given up hope on that front. All I want is that any good outweighs the bad. Although even in the trailer we have a trademark Oshii fish-eye lens shot, so... :/
  19. Renato
    :lol:
  20. Renato
    By definition, any toy costs less than a more expensive one. I was wondering that too. It looks like that'll be an exclusive for the online shop orders or something... the text is too tiny to read properly, but that's what I could make out.
  21. Renato
    Here, in a few minutes, I expect.
  22. Renato
    Save already put up pics of the Arcadia booth on FB. Except for the ubiquitous spelling mistake, the 0D CAD looks good.
  23. Renato
    As it should do, since it IS a series. No way the tension in the movies can be sustained for 13 episodes.
  24. Renato
    Wow...
  25. Renato
    So Optimus Prime is basically Wheelie now.
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