TheLoneWolf

Just finished watching episode 5, very dissapointed. I wasn't even this dissapointed the first time I watched Macross II. First off, let's start with the good. Great cgi mecha battles! And, that's about it. Now, the bad. Way too preachy. I guess no one told Kawamori that the cardinal rule of film making is never preach to the audience, especially as blatently as he does in episode 5. To make matters worse, it's the same unoriginal maxim that we've heard before. Nothing original. Speaking of original... The dialogue, it's a standard b-grade movie script. Who wrote the dialogue anyways, George Lucas? D.D. and Nora: they start out the series as cookie-cutter villians and die as cookie-cutter villains. These two, especially Nora, had the potential to become complex and compelling antagonists. There are several moments that defy logic, like Shin falling for 10 minutes and never hitting the water. Or, unprotected characters who able to stand, speak, and breathe without the slightest of difficulty, despite being thousands of feet in the air. But since this is an anime, I can write these off as "anime magic" rather than bad writing. I won't factor the fantastic or magical events in to my review. This is the Macross world and, apparently, anything is possible. Overall, I'll give the Macross Zero OAV two out of four stars. I'm not critiquing this OAV on how well it ties in to SDF Macross or how awesome the fight scenes are, just Kawamori's ability to put out a well-rounded and sophisticated story.

Not necessarily. - The R1 SDF Macross by Animeigo is superior to the R2 release - The R1 Macross Plus features a rich Dolby Digital 5.1 English audio track. The R2's feature a pathetic Dolby Digital 2.0 track for both English and Japanese audio.

you mean like the elintseeker yet everybody wants. I was one of those who paid $500+ for a 5-second Elintseeker. But unlike super-unposable, pilot-less Q-Rau, the elint transforms and is far more than a repaint. If the q-rau were in the $50 - $60 range, I might be tempted to get it. But as it stands (no pun intended), it's too much money for too little.

Yup, only took 'em 5 years! If you factor in that the fact that the DC used off the shelf parts, has a user-friendly OS, and is easy as sin to program for, 5 years is a long time. Anyways, you're better off waiting for a PC port rather than a PS2 emu. It'll look better at a fraction of the processor power

Probably not for another 2 years, unless you're willing to settle for 1 fps and glitchy hell.

Hey Renato, can you tell us what Japan's reaction is to Macross Zero ep.5?

Awesome, that's the best way to go about it! Good luck getting this issue resolved.

Definitely belongs in the feedback section. Anyways, if you recall, the mods gave Capt Rico a very hard time for images that were far less risque' than the links you posted. I think the mods said something about this being a family friendly site or something...make of this what you will. Btw, I don't even think Shawn is around much these days. You'll be lucky if he even hears about this

I don't mind cut scenes, just as long as the dialogue is intelligent, introspective, and moves the plot forward. But in Sons of Liberty, 75% of the dialogue was utterly pointless and did nothing to enhance the story. One would think Kojima is simply in love with hearing his characters speak, regardless of what they're actually saying.

My roomate graduated with a CIS degree and is good to his computer hardware. But last fall he bought a Dell Inspiron and twice, in less than a year, he's had to send it back for a hard drive failure and a faulty motherboard. It's not like the laptop was taken to a bunch of fraternity parties or off-roading, the Inspiron just went through average everyday use. Thank goodness for the warranty, because this amount of failures in such a short amount of time is inexcusable. Dell used to be a great company 5 years ago, but these days it seems their quality control has gone down the crapper.

Better late than never...

Opus, c'mon, don't tell me you guys didn't notice the perverted undertone this title had.

Wasn't his name Loshan or something? I remember that he used to try to sell his Valkyries for astronomical prices back in the day. I'll bet he's one of the few people pissed off by the Bandai reissues and Yamatos.

Only 90 minutes? And you know most of that time will be spent explaining the history and re-introducing old characters. Not much time left for plot, character development, introspection, and all the other ingrediants that made Macross/Robotech great. Can we say weak? I wonder what Harmony Gold's going to do when their current flagship title goes down in flames.

I consider Escaflowne a hit, but it came out seven years ago. I don't think that qualifies as "recent"

That makes a whole lot of sense. HLJ wouldn't want hundreds of angry emails demanding their money back. The plot thickens.

I don't think Yamato would release TV FP's on the account of one TV Valkyrie. True, the Hikaru J is from the TV show, but it's also possible to get it with FP's. Yamato would have a tough time selling stand-alone FP's for only 1 1/2 toys. Now, if Yamato released more TV valks....

Lots of good ideas regarding a new Macross series, but whatever it's about, a new series must revolve around singing (at least according to Kawamori). In the Macross universe, there are only so many ways that you can weave it in without compromising the story. Macross Plus did a great job of integrating into the story, while Macross Zero seems to be stretching it. I hate to come off as blasphemous, but Kawamori hasn't had a 'hit' in recent memory. I have to wonder if sticking to a formulaic plot (singing saves the day) will help Kawamori develop interesting and original stories, all the while keeping his trademark Valkyries.

No problem, I'm just glad you let me know about the screw covers before taking an exacto-blade to them

My bad, did you expect a newbie to spend time searching that labyrinth we call a gallery? Even then, most of us skip the main page and jump straight to the forums. But I do agree that a webpage would've been an overall better idea, less flim-flam (like my post here) and more of an uninterrupted flow of information.

I agree with ewilen that a web page would be the best idea. Primarily that you could easily include several comparison shots between the various toys. We could spend pages describing the differences between the Banprestos, Bandai's, K&M's, Yamato's, etc, but it wouldn't mean jack to a newbie. However, organized pictures in HTML format would be immensely helpful.

It's possible Yamato may have glued the leg together. I don't own a Q-rau, so I can't say for certain. When I was disassembling my 1/55 reissues, I had the exact same problem. I unscrewed the nosecone, but the two-halves wouldn't seperate because they were also glued together. So I just got an exacto blade and gently cut between the two halves. It worked like a charm. Thanks for the tip TheLoneWolf. I think the hexagon thingies might also be keeping the leg together. Hexagonal shaped things? I believe those might be screw covers. If they are indeed screw covers, you can gently pop them off with a flathead. If you could take pictures of them, that'd be awesome

I know Silicon Knights programmed the game, but I was under the impression that Kojima was behind the creative aspects of the game. As a game, it's fine. Everything else, meh.

There's one word for SvC Chaos... broken

Compared to the lineart, the 1/60's proportions are much more accurate. I also love the weight that the die-cast adds. However, the detachable legs are a dealbreaker, especially when it comes to gerwalk mode. They're just not stable enough.