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tekering

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Everything posted by tekering

  1. And that's only if you're lucky enough to have a corporate account with them. Ordinary customers can't get anything shipped from Japan for less than $120.
  2. One of the most significant characters from the Lost Light has finally joined my crew: Getaway! MMC's "Exitus" scales well with IDW lines from a variety of manufacturers.
  3. Hasbro occasionally puts both Star Wars and Transformers collectors in this position. It's a MUCH bigger problem if you collect Marvel Legends, however.
  4. To be fair, those were adapted with Neil Sedaka's permission, and he's properly credited (both onscreen and the various soundtrack releases). Fascinating, nonetheless: Keep 'em coming, guys! This is amazing stuff.
  5. Yeah, but the vast majority of it is pornographic parody (and as you say, fan work)... ...and that's GAINAX. Everything they did back then was a parody, in-joke, or fan service reference to something else (GunBuster in particular). Bubblegum Crisis, on the other hand, took itself seriously. There were deliberate references to Blade Runner in production design and character names; that's an homage. Filing the serial numbers off foreign pop songs and claiming them as your own: that's plagiarism.
  6. Nothing new there. Third-party designs have been making HasTak look like incompetents for over a decade now. To be frank, though, it's not really a fair comparison. Back in my fansubbing days, I remember the Central Park Media guys talking at cons about how much better fansubs were because there were no overhead costs, no budgetary concerns, and dedicated fans could spend all the time they wanted getting the work perfect, simply because "time is money" doesn't apply outside the business world. When it comes to 3P designers, they've had years honing their craft as they keep up with the latest developments in CAD and manufacturing technology... and they're probably spending more than 40 hours a week doing it. Conversely, TakaraTomy is where the design work is being done for the official figures, and Transformers aren't even a priority for a company with so many product lines. Furthermore, as in any large Japanese corporation, they're compelled to shuffle staff around every few years, so whoever was designing Transformers last year will be doing Bakugan next year, and the new designer on the Transformers team this year was doing Tomica die-cast cars up to last month. That's the way Japanese companies run things. They don't want any employees to get too comfortable where they are, or forgetting who's actually calling the shots. Nobody gets stuck in a rut, but nobody gets the chance to really excel in their position, either. They'll never have the chance to focus their skillset the way independent designers do. It's all about sacrificing the individual for the homogeny of the group, a concept deeply rooted in the Japanese corporate mindset. The "actual talent" must remember their place in the hierarchy, lest they realize how lucrative their talents could really be and leave the company... only to start making superior products for the competition. That's what the old men at the top are really afraid of. The quality of their products is a tertiary concern at best. Thus we get inconsistent product lines that shift their focus every few years... Like, just when you thought Masterpiece had abandoned the G1 toy aesthetic to go full-on Sunbow cartoon, we suddenly get MP Skids...
  7. That's a terrible idea. There are world-shattering events that occur between Homecoming and Far From Home, including five years of continuity (and five other movies!), and it's just gonna cause confusion to skip over that. Peter's a significant character in both Infinity War and Endgame, and the death of Tony Stark has a devastating effect on him (just as Peter's disappearance had a powerful impact on Stark). It would be like jumping from Star Wars to Return of the Jedi, without bothering with The Empire Strikes Back because, you know, Luke's not really the main character in the middle film.
  8. This is a fascinating aspect of the anime industry I was completely unaware of. Are there other egregious examples outside of BGC?
  9. Damn, I paid a 2500% markup for mine.
  10. Our mysterious benefactor is finally revealed! I'mma shoot some Invid Shock Trooper vs. Bioroid diorama pics just for you, bud. Even without the biover, it's still a good price.
  11. I don't think this was meant to refer to the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but nonetheless I'd also recommend the show. It's a worthy follow-up to the Captain America film trilogy, exploring the same sociopolitical themes and ethical dilemmas absent from the rest of the MCU. The success of the series has certainly sold me on a John Walker action figure; the question is merely whether the SH Figurarts is that much better than the Marvel Legends "US Agent" figure...
  12. All we have is speculation at this point... and the Space Battleship Yamato live-action film is a relevant example for comparison (perhaps even more so than the G-Saviour pilot film). To be fair, that Yamato live-action film had a lot going for it: spectacular CGI effects gorgeous production design a sumptuous and rich orchestral score, based on the original music innovative costume design a well-paced plot (something very rare with Yamato films) It could've been a great film, were it not for one fatal flaw: the acting. Great acting may not be enough to elevate a cheap B-movie, but poor acting has ruined some of the most expensive films ever made. Unfortunately, Japanese are not known for naturalistic performances to begin with, and Yamato cast pop musicians as the leads, rather than dedicated thespians; casting idols for their star power is a necessary evil in such big-budget endeavors, but even the accomplished actors in the cast gave broad, tongue-in-cheek performances more in keeping with a sitcom than an apocalyptic sci-fi drama. Without the right cast (and the right director to set the tone), the same could easily happen when adapting Gundam for live-action. I mean, has a good film ever been made from an animated TV series? Are Detective Pikachu or Transformers: Bumblebee the best examples we have?
  13. Good God, that's from 1980! Oomori was performing on TV when she was still in elementary school! Forty years later, you guys are really blowing my mind with this stuff.
  14. Wow, that's just beyond the pale. Either Youmex bought the song rights entirely -- in which case the original composers weren't properly credited -- or Kōji Makaino has a LOT to answer for.
  15. ...and that was the last time his wife ever got to pick the movie. Thankfully, my wife has learned to trust my judgment, rather than relying on her own intuition.
  16. I've been waiting years for this MP'85 Minibot lineup to finally become a reality! Seaspray was the last holdout, since none of the third-party options available were cartoon-accurate enough -- even FansToys' initial FT-27 release -- but at last, FT-45 "Spindrift" ticks all the boxes.
  17. Homage? That's charitable. I'd call it a blatant rip-off. It's even more shameless than their Streets of Fire "homages." Thanks for sharing!
  18. It's just a question of semantics. It was written and produced as a Macross sequel, then subsequently relegated to "a parallel world," and "not one that followed the same storyline as the others." By choosing to ignore it in all further Macross works, doesn't that mean it was stricken from canon? I think you misunderstood me. "Poorly-received" and "profitable" are mutually-exclusive... otherwise Batman and Robin could not exist. Macross Delta was poorly received because it disappointed fans, both in Japan and abroad. That's a purely subjective statement, based on my own reading and discussions with other Japanese and English-speaking fans. My opinion has no bearing on the financial success of the series (or its merchandising, which is another issue entirely). Financial success can be measured objectively; perception and reception cannot. There's also way too much opinion misinterpreted as fact.
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