Renato

Thanks for all the spoilers guys, I guess that's it for this thread.

Yep, I'd have no problem with that (other than aesthetics, but if I had to choose, I would deal with it because I care more about what the characters do and say than what they look like). Agreed. ROTF should have developed the Autobots from the first movie much more, but they were hardly in the film at all. The dynamic between Starscream and Megatron was handled fairly well, though. Personally, I have wanted a live-action Transformer movie since the 1980s. I guess I had high expectations. Edit -- LOL at Taksraven praising his own thread.

So what happened with the woman who was injured in that stunt? Did she recover? I heard that the reason for re-using The Island footage in a scene was in a way to cover her medical expenses, or maybe just because they didn't get the shots they wanted...

Nah, it's more like Satelight is owned by Sankyo, a Pachinko company, so they can throw tons of cash at the Macross franchise if they want. They did the same thing with Aquarion.

You seem to be categorically disagreeing rather than actually making a counterpoint. Wolverine and Cyclops and Jean Grey act pretty much identical to their comic counterparts in the movies. Would it have hurt so much to have Ratchet actually fix something, since he is referred to as the medic? Was Jazz the Earth-loving kind of bot we all know? Who is Jolt? Why is he there? Should we care that Arcee got killed (did anyone even notice)? You're saying this worked better as is, without having followed the X-Men example? What is so bad about characterization? What specifically would not work? I'm not saying we should have Dinobots or something, I'm saying these movies should be about the characters. Then again, you did also say: Which is basically "eat it and shut up," so all I can say is touche'.

I don't care if they don't look 100% the same, as long as we can tell who's who, and care about the characters. If the merciless killer Prime of the movies is exactly what the producers/audience want, then fine, so be it. But then they should take away the "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" line from the character's dialogue, which is in the first movie. And they should not have put Peter Cullen's voice in there, either, then, since we all think G1 Prime immediately upon hearing it. Potentially, you can make a good movie out of whatever ridiculous concept you can think of.

Why are most of these arguments "all or nothing"? I agree that the original G1 designs may not work in a live-action format. But why can't we see cool-looking robots instead of scrap-metal mountains, then? They might even manage to make proper toys out of them then. And it's not just their appearance, they hardly interact at all with the human cast, which is way over-crowded anyway. The stories in these damn movies are so broken up they almost metaphorically resemble the mess of spare parts that make up the Transformer designs. Is that supposed to be irony or poetic justice or something? I watched Revenge of the Fallen again the other day, after a couple of years. Jesus... There seemed to be so fewer Transformers than in the first movie, even though technically there were more! "Such and such wouldn't work in live action" has actually been disproved many times, like with Spider-Man, etc. I never thought they would keep that cheesy suit the same. But they did. In X-Men, they got rid of the yellow and blue suits -- but they left in the characters' personalities. Isn't it funny how X-Men is not the story of Senator Kelly and his political battle to pass the mutant registration act? It's the story of Charles Xavier, Wolverine and Magneto, and they act just like Xavier, Wolverine and Magneto should. I'm not saying "EVERYTHING HAS TO BE IDENTICAL TO G1", but if you're gonna put Optimus in a movie, DO NOT give him lines like "ANY LAST WORDS??" then have him shoot a now-harmless decepticon IN THE FACE. It's like Charles Xavier randomly getting up from his wheelchair and helping himself to some ice-cream. That's not doing justice to the character. So, not only can we no longer identify the characters visually, but we do not know who the F they are through their actions, either. Megatron grovelling at the Fallen's feet? Whatever happened to "NOBODY SUMMONS MEGATRON!! I BELONG TO NOBODY!!"? I think the first Bay movie, though it had plenty of issues, was OK. It should have had more characterization, but that's OK. I thought there would be room for improvement in the sequel. Then no.2 came along and they just went in the opposite direction, more of the bad, less of the good. The 3rd doesn't come out for a few more weeks over here, but I still don't know if I want to go. I definitely want them to go back and see what was good about the original TF stories and characters and just do something with that. We know that the scriptwriters are good, but we also know that Bay screwed up their scripts into nonsense. Enough is enough. Wouldn't it be cool if Transformers was praised for its own merits as a movie, rather than how much money it made?

Perhaps, but... The 30th anniversary of the birth OF ME is in just over two weeks! WHY NO MESSAGE OR VIDEO OR SIGN PETITION?? Edit -- "Is this a dagger I see before me..?"

Well, an "insider" friend of mine spoke to bandai and he told me what they told him.

OK, so here's what I heard today. Apparently that pic of Battroid mode is a photoshop job, made up of reconstituted arms, legs, etc. all placed in position to look just like the CG lineart. Note that that does not mean the actual toy will not look like the picture, of course, but I thought I ought to mention this just in case. "Actual product may vary" indeed...

I won't deny they are getting better but Bandais invariably turn into floppy pieces of crap. I enjoy the Hi-metals because the floppiness is less of an issue on a smaller scale, but for larger toys ratchets should be essential.

Looks like a better version of TransFORMERS.

Exactly. Bandai originally thought their Boys Hobby division could handle the VF-25 but obviously it was abysmal. Since then, FLEX -- who have a lot of experience designing valk toys -- has been doing most of the design work for them, meaning that essentially the VF-27 and YF-29 are like Yamato products in Bandai packaging.

That was cool, right up until he said "Yamoto".

From what I hear down at the water cooler, this is already in the works. We'll see how it turns out.

LOL. Good riddance, Urkel-Valk.

It's October.

Jwasko, I want to quote your post, but if I do I will be spoiled, because the text inside the tag will be revealed. So, what I wanted to say is: Worse even than the abysmal ROTF?? Geez, that sounds pretty damning... Well, if I remember well, he also abhorred the 1986 movie, and I absolutely loved it. I remember he called the soundtrack "deafening", but I think it's awesome. Then again, I'm not a little kid anymore (unfortunately).

Thanks for the article. Uchiyama was a big deal in Japan, but he certainly was not the only pioneer of the loli thing, there were many more like Hideo Azuma etc. As to how SC would have turned out... Well I imagine something quite similar to the lusting that resulted from the predominance of Reina Stoll or however you spell her name, from Machine Robo. One thing that bugs me is that the article mentions that Tatsunoko produced Orguss, when it was actually TMS with Artland. Surprising, since Matt usually knows his stuff.

Damn, if I could see movies for that price, I'd go twice a week and see every single release, no matter the genre, content, director or stars.

You know what? I never really thought about it, but yeah, you're totally right. I don't really watch that much fansubbed anime but I remember when Frontier was airing, there were a lot of issues with the translation.

'Nuff said, huh? OK, now this is GREAT! This should be the official trailer. No BS, just pure unadulterated "THIS IS WHAT YOU'RE PAYING FOR" advertising strategy. Like they say in the UK, "It does exactly what it says on the tin".

Agreed. It's been a good ride. I can't speak for "future" Macross shows, but Frontier, although it brought in younger fans, was not targeted at kids like SDF and M7 were, so I do not foresee another nostalgia boom fifteen years from now like we have seen for the other shows. Who knows, though. It DOESN'T. That would have been the major selling point and there's no mention of that ability anywhere. Argh. Aren't they similar enough to Bandai's already?? Go back to ratchets, Yamato, seriously. Me too. Although at this price I don't know that I wanna be taking this thing apart much.

On the front page of the paper this morning was this headline: http://japanrealestatecommentary.blogspot.com/2011/06/japanese-women-cut-salarymans-allowance.html Bloomberg source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-27/japan-s-men-survive-on-15-a-day-as-wives-tighten-purse-strings.html The market is shrinking, I point this out every so often. If you want to keep buying high-quality toys, you are ever-more in the minority. We are in the tail-end of the nostalgia boom now, and only a select few of us will be able to afford these ever-more limited items.

Nope. ■付属品：熱気バサラフィギュア（1/60VF-19改ファイヤー用）/ファイターモード用接続アタッチメント/マーキングステッカー/取扱説明書 (http://www.yamato-toys.com/items/detail.php?gid=1914&infolnk=index_pickup180mm) Accessories included: Nekki Basara figure / Attachment piece for Fighter Mode/ Marking Stickers / Instruction Booklet That's it. Hey, I never noticed you could write comments on that page. Hmm. I wonder if that's a new feature of their site. EDIT -- I told them that while I'm happy they are allowing attachment to Figher, for the asking price they could have made them real working speakers. Though, of course we know that's probably not true. Seems the comments don't display publicly, but they "received it".