Renato

Yeah, the glasses thing was that Vanessa was wearing old glasses from her school days or something.. I don't remember the details well... Anyway, the point is that she didn't see that there were any incoming enemies and so when they appeared she felt she was to blame, because of her glasses. Kakizaki over the comm link then said, "Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it, DEMEKIN (a goldfish with protruding eyes)!" And proceeded to go berzerk, spamming the enemies with his missiles. Later, Vanessa goes to apologize to Kakizaki for having failed him, and says it was her fault and that she got new, better glasses so it will never happen again. Kim and Shammy tell her that she needn't bother apologizing, since "Zakky" is of lower rank, and anyway he rudely called her a goldfish! To which, Kakizaki stutters, "I didn't say 'demekin'... I-I s-said 'beppin'!!" (which would sound similar over a noisy comm link), which means "pretty girl".

No, it's a crucial detail. You didn't write additional stickers, you wrote additional markings. If that was actually in the text, the implication would be that there are definitely markings on the valk itself already, and you can add additional ones, whereas that connotation is not there in the original text. And I only brought up the podcast so that you would have a chance to get to know who we are and what we do, before making blanket statements like "a gaijin in Tokyo". I'd rather help to contribute and collaborate and not have my input be ignored just because it appears I'm wearing the "I live in Japan" badge of misguided honour. I don't like to talk about myself much, but I've been speaking, reading and writing Japanese for 15 years, I did a postgraduate degree here and wrote my thesis and other academic publications in Japanese and teach at a Japanese university in Japanese, so if you don't like my input, that's OK -- could you just choose a better reason, please? It's not even the word "gaijin", it's the insinuation that I somehow think I'm better just because "I'm here and you're not". I'm just trying to help, man.

You could be right. Technically it doesn't say "additional markings", though. It says that you get marking stickers and decals that you can ADD to the basic colouring. That's why I think they're basically all stickers, though I did write "most if not all". Regarding the bragging about the 30th sticker, yeah, I thought the same, but we have to wait and see. Hmm. You should really listen to our podcast: http://www.macrossworld.com/category/speakerpodcast/

Whaaat. OK, that's it -- tell me your home address: I am so THERE. On topic, my mother-in-law runs a manga cafe, and the other day I went over to check out the new shop she just opened recently. Among the books there, was a full set of MacTheFirst so I finally started reading the chapters I missed, since I only ever collected the ones that ran in Macross Ace, and then only got Newtype Ace sporadically. For that reason, I have been semi-avoiding this thread just in case spoilers come up. To my surprise, I found that a lot of the chapters were quite well done and original. I liked the one about Minmay's "other" Hikaru, "Ruu-kun" the photographer, I liked the chapter on Mars Base Sara (or Salla, or whatever) with the plot twist, and I really liked the adventures of Roy and Kakizaki in the asteroid field, and the whole thing about Vanessa's glasses. I didn't read the Tales of South Ataria ones because I ran out of time. While I still think that there's a lot of treading of water right now in the series, I'm relieved that there was so much character story in the stuff I missed, since the "we're spending a whole chapter inside a meeting" thing had been done for several of the issues of NA that I did buy and I was starting to get soured on the series.

Yeah, apparently it is, but I haven't unlocked it yet. Probably because I'm rubbish, though.

Argh. I've been trying to point this out almost every day here for the past week. They've been saying it won't come with the markings for a while now, there's no need to ask anything. For example, they've gone to the trouble of writing "This is an example with the stickers/decals applied" on each and every photo in this gallery that Dark_Ghost provided: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=39106&p=1051978

Expect most, if not all of the markings to be decals. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=39106&p=1050122 The Valkyrie will come with base colours, probably the stripes, but they've been trying to make it clear that it won't look like what you see in the pictures straight out of the box. They've gone out of their way to mention that it's just an example of how to decorate the valk.

It's been announced that the markings won't come on the figure.

To clarify, he said it was one of the things h wishes he could do if it was possible to ignore such things as budget, considering the sums they would have to pay Kawamori to oversee the transformation engineering.

Apart from the 5.1 mix on the movie, this seems to be the full HD release of the "HD Remaster" editions that they released first on DVD between 2007 and 2009. In other words, you can compare the video on the first pressings of the early 2000s DVDs with the more recent HD-Rm versions and that should provide a hint. That is exactly what happened with Macross 7 -- the HD-Rm DVDs from 2007 looked amazing, and when they came out on BD you got the full, true experience. Gubaba described it best as "it's as if you were watching the actual cels being projected on your TV" and I couldn't agree more. The other really fantastic remaster I can name is the Yamato BD set, which is incredible, crystal clear to the extent that you can make out all the dust particles and scratches on the surface of the cels, even the shadows of the painted sections on the matte backgrounds. I don't think you need to worry about picture quality here in the slightest.

Yep. Trust me, if it wasn't for that extra zero, I would be a proud owner right now.

Considering there are only 10 being made for the first run, "not easy" is an understatement!

It won't look like that out of the box, though.

Hey, it looks like I can use wi-fi internet in my hotel after all! I just came back from the Fire BomBAR where I met MW members Bariaburu Faita and Hebime (I think that was your screen name?? I actually only ever knew you by your real name!) and it was great. I already knew the owner so I knew what to expect, but it still thrills me that such a place exists. Anyway, we took a group photo of Howard, Howard, and my wife and I, but I just realized now that that was with the owner's camera only, so we have to wait until he uploads it onto the official blog. I only took this one photo here: Thanks again, guys, and see you again soon! We podcasted about it months ago! http://www.macrossworld.com/category/speakerpodcast/

But that's pretty much the case, as I mentioned 2 pages ago.

It's here, yo, among with the rest of my DYRL stuff (apart from the Gold Book, which I keep in my office).

Yes, PURE EVIL. In fact, here's a message from Satan himself to those responsible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA8mM1YOHKM

Good point. What happened? I wonder if all of the Scoopda posts transferred from the front page have ended up like this now.

Yeah, I have read 2channel, but I didn't know about those specific topics... Wow. What intrigues me the most, though, is the concept of "competitively spending money" on characters.

Also, the caption underneath the top and bottom views of the fighter mode states that the waterslide decals and sticker sheet are of identical markings, designed to compliment the "basic colouring" of the plane itself. The implication in this case could be taken to mean that the Valk will not actually come with all the logos readily tampo printed. As many of you may have noticed, they like to imply things, rather than straight out give specific details.

The main reason why MW tends to stay away from all that is that it is mostly made up of old-school fans, who grew up with the original series, and favour realistic military action/hardcore sci-fi elements over others. You will see that the underlying trend is that SDF Macross / DYRL are quite respected and loved, Plus is considered cool and 7 is love-or-hate. Frontier is in generally appreciated because of its action, design, music and nods to the original series, but not so much for its characters or their relations, nor school setting -- again, painting in broad strokes. This may reflect somewhat of a disconnect with the tastes of younger generations of anime fan. It seems to work for the purposes of MW, though. Wait, what??

専用 means that it is specially intended for use with this toy. It does not carry every single connotation that the English word "exclusive" carries. 写真の専用スタンドを使えば、手軽にディスプレイできる -- "if you use the special stand in the photo, you can display it easily". It doesn't explicitly say the stand is included, but the implication is there.

I agree with most of Xard's observations. I should also point out that the creators did a great job differentiating Ranka and Sheryl's pop styles, while still making them sound unique enough to compete in the real world chart. It would have been relatively easy to make Ranka sound like a typical idol singer, but her music sounds nothing like AKB48 or most other idol acts of the past few years. Same with Sheryl -- she appears based less on Japanese pop acts and more on Lady Gaga style Western "divas". What nonsense? It's addressed even in the actual show, what with the Jamming Birds, etc. It doesn't matter that rock was dominant; Japan's music scene had its own set of idiosyncrasies.　Bands from the 90s like B'z, GAO, Pink Sapphire, TUBE, even Southern All Stars (who had been around for decades already), are all rather strictly pop music acts with a rock band set-up on the surface. M7 does a good job differentiating the Fire Bomber sound not only from the other many, many bands and music styles that appear in the show, but also from the popular music of the time in Japan.

Yep. They're just round the corner from (one of the places) where I work. Also a bunch of good record shops and live music venues there, so that whole area is perfect if you're into music. BOMBAA!

I should put up the picture from the other thread right here, too, to make discussion easier. Also, ESP is a Japanese guitar company, known for their high-end items and they are well-known for making special customs. Does anyone remember the Mylene Special bass from the 1990s?