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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    So it's more an unofficial live action adaptation for Gate: Thus the Japanese Self-Defense Force Fought There?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, but the plot of the original Transformers series was pretty thin on the ground and largely episodic... so they could easily get away with porting over the iconic characters and a few set pieces in vaguely familiar guises, because the franchise had a large and devoted fandom. That franchise was always merchandise-driven rather than story-driven. Its fans were not expecting anything particularly deep or sophisticated from its story... they came for giant robots beating the tar out of each other, and that is precisely what the movies delivered. Yes, that is pretty much exactly what I'm saying. If you remove the fundamental characteristics of a Macross story from a Macross project - the aliens/space war, the love story, the power of song/music as communication, and the fundamentally optimistic/idealistic outlook - then it's not really a Macross story anymore. You can put the Macross title on it and try to fit it into Macross's timeline, but that will not make it a Macross story. (Essentially, I'm distinguishing between "a story with the word Macross in the title" and "a story that's thematically consistent with Macross".) If you look at the Macross franchise's history, you'll see the underperforming installments are all ones that tried to remove one or more of those characteristics of a Macross story. IMO, it's more like we're splitting hairs over what it'll take for a theoretical Macross movie to come out and make a lasting impact, build the fandom, etc. rather than coming out and being the Flavor of the Week that's immediately forgotten when a new sci-fi/action movie comes out. *cough* MOSPEADA and Southern Cross what? They don't seem to have actually gotten monetary damages on many of the occasions they've sued or threatened to sue... their stake in it is more a steady trickle of income from its merchandise and home video releases since all production costs were paid off ages ago. HG reps, including the famously deceptive McKeever himself, were quite open about their bosses only really caring about the profits from the official website store. For now, their plan seems to be selling or giving away licenses to indie toy makers and toy bootleggers to get something with their name on it out there... they've had a number of high profile crash-and-burns lately, so they're looking to put one in the wins column after Palladium Books and their own Kickstarter misadventure left them with more egg on their face than an industrial chicken farm could furnish in a year. It's Banky... it'll be BS. They wouldn't send Kevin the Coffee Boy if they were going to be imparting news of actual import.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    There's a bit of a difference between leaving out the core set pieces of an entire franchise and not adapting events from the first 8 minutes of the first episode of the first TV series that had at-most negligible plot relevance until they were revisited by a sequel TV series made over a decade later. Kawamori did try to get the basic Macross original series plot adapted in that cancelled project Macross: Final Outpost: Earth... so he found at least one producer in Hollywood willing to take a whack at a largely faithful Macross film before they shelved it. Really, I don't think Macross is a setting or story suited to a western live action adaptation... and I'm not at all put out that there's no plans for such an adaptation. If you take the music, the romance, and the optimism - the heart and soul of Macross - out of Macross, what you've got left when it's all done is flat and lifeless... we call that Robotech. That's why Macross Zero and Macross Plus weren't as well received in Japan as other Macross titles. They lacked that upbeat Macross love-conquers-all spirit. If you want a more grounded conflict without most of the SF elements between a world government and an anti-government force, you're basically just remaking Mobile Suit Gundam: MS IGLOO. You don't keep long-term fans by sacrificing the story's spirit. That's why the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies were a string of flops... they sacrificed the optimistic spirit of exporation in the original Star Trek for a darker, grittier, more conflict-heavy setting that got a lot of one-time casual views but failed to attract a following because it was ONLY mildly entertaining... there was no depth to it at all, no feeling, and no real sense of attachment to anything.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Some LGBTQ aspects are more accepted in the west now than compared to 3 decades ago. In fact, that'd probably be why they'd dump Yellow's crossdressing. Apart from his bio implying he was a bit of a Japanophile1, Yellow Belmont's crossdressing was for purely pragmatic purposes of disguise as a Mars Base soldier and resistance fighter. That could very easily turn into something the trans community would get up in arms about and cause some internet outrage. Rey's reaction to learning Yellow's real identity was played for laughs in the anime, but play it for laughs or play it straight you can bet it'll garner cries of "transphobic!" if they were to do it in a live-action series or movie. Then there's the inevitable backlash from the demographics who, for whatever reason, condemn that kind of thing and all of their fussing. I'd expect studios to be rather gunshy about that kind of thing after the way the accusations of whitewashing hurt Ghost in the Shell (2017) both before and after release and the brouhaha over Star Trek's first gay couple on Star Trek: Discovery where the writers could do no right. Then there's all the markets where LGBTQ stuff isn't as accepted as it is in the US... No, five'll get you twenty they'd play it safe, axe the crossdressing, and potentially make Yellow a woman. 1. [...] with an avowed interest in kabuki theater, where young men traditionally played the female roles.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure about an uptick, it's always had a pretty steady cult following. It'd probably be more live action-friendly than Macross since there are fewer fantastic aspects to the story like the Power of Music. (That said, it'd probably take a lot of work to make the Inbit look like a threat that could actually conquer Earth since they went down easy to light anti-armor rockets in the anime. I'd also expect them to dump the part of Yellow Belmont's story where he disguises himself as a woman.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet episode 8 was, if anything, slightly more of an audience punch than the OVA version was. Origin's version of the One Week Battle was, if anything, worse than any previous description of it in books or manga. Even MS IGLOO never actually showed the Principality of Zeon's assault on Side 2, and in this version instead of gassing colonies we see the Dozle fleet bombarding them with mega particle cannons until they either break up or totally decompress. The added punch comes from that little side arc about the inhabitants of Iffish that was in OVA ep5. They split it in the middle so the episode ends on a falsely optimistic note for Yuki and his girlfriend, which feels a lot more cruel than the OVA's take of going straight into the gas attack and Iffish being used in the attempted colony drop on Jaburo. (It is a bit annoying that the translator doing the subs hasn't figured out that "bunch" is a word... they keep romanizing it "banchi".)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That's kinda what people expect when you adapt a property to a live action movie... that you start at the beginning. Macross Zero was pretty to look at but wasn't received all that well. The plot with the music and aliens is pretty much THE iconic Macross story. You wouldn't make a Transformers movie and leave out the Autobots and Decepticons.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Animation is literal orders of magnitude cheaper than CG- and special effects-heavy live action production. The problem with animation is that, in many western markets, animation is still seen as a medium that's almost exclusively for children's entertainment. (Anime grappled with the same stigma in Japan in the 70's and early 80's and never entirely overcame it.) That'd be nice, especially since we've had Gundam: the Origin released in the US in multiple formats already... hardback editions of the manga, the OVA series, and now the Gundam: the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet TV edit. You remember correctly. Harmony Gold went to some pretty substantial lengths to get rid of anything overtly Macross or Macross-related when they were developing Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles for fear of litigation from Big West. They used the tie-in prequel comic book to summarily dispose of almost all of the remaining Macross holdover characters. "Rick" got an all-new design which resembled Hideo Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig and looked nothing like any previous incarnation of the character. Both "Lisa" and Minmei were sidelined to eternally-offscreen positions. Max and "Miriya" were Sir and Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Comic, and all other Zentradi characters were summarily killed off panel. The comic even redid panels from the Waltrip Robotech II: the Sentinels comic it was tying into to remove the VF-1 Valkyries and Spartas hover tanks and replace them with Legiosses or Ride Armors. They even, yes, went so far as to forbid the dialog from using the word "Zentradi" in the OVA episode itself (and using Macross designs was already off the table so its sepia-tone flashback was all generic scenes.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    If true, this is fantastic news for Star Trek... one of the principal architects of the stupidly gritty, action-ized, "new Trek" is gone. If CBS wants to double down on this by cancelling Star Trek: Discovery or go for a hat trick by also sinking Star Trek: Picard, I'll be prepared to call them very fine people.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    My educated guess would be that they're not. Adapting popular anime properties into live-action films in the West has historically been an almost foolproof recipe for an embarrassing box office flop. Even the relatively mainstream anime properties like Dragon Ball Z or Ghost in the Shell either failed to break even or went out as box office bombs. Alita: Battle Angel is the closest anime adaptations have come to a true box office success and even then industry analysts and studio insiders suggest the film was only marginally profitable and may have only just managed to break even. I would assume that studios will still only be looking at anime properties with the best levels of name recognition in the US. Titles like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Gundam, etc. If Macross's do-over debut in 2021 produces some serious public awareness for the brand then they might start considering it for a live action adaptation. I suspect it'll still not happen, since it has some aspects that just don't translate well to live action... like the role of music in the story.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Normally, a studio adapting an existing work wants to have at least some visual connection to the original if at all possible... which just isn't possible with Robotech, and is likely a large part of why nobody's willing to touch it. That and not being able to actually adapt the story of the TV series.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, all that's actually happened with it in over eleven years is that they paid out of pocket for a handful of Hollywood writers to do rough story treatments for a movie so they could misrepresent those writers as actually involved in production (and to have some fake tangible "proof" that it was actually being worked on). Like Warner Bros before them, Sony Pictures has zero inclination to actually make a Robotech movie. They only picked up the rights because it was a contemporary series to the Transformers series that Paramount is still making bank on. Considering virtually none of the IP from the animation is usable for such a film, no studio was ever going to even seriously consider making it.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it was pretty much dead on arrival if we're being honest. Ratings-wise, Robotech was an unremarkable middle-of-the-pack performer in its original broadcast run and its merchandise line was nothing to write home about either. Most companies would probably not have tried for a sequel series or a feature film with that kind of performance, but Harmony Gold did and once both efforts ended in failure they more or less abandoned it until 1999 and their ill-conceived attempt to revive the brand with Robotech 3000. Well, yeah... Carl Macek mistook the borrowed quality of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA for his own cleverness, and spent the rest of his life trying to take credit for the work of the original creators while simultaneously badmouthing them. He didn't have a freaking clue what Robotech's audience wanted or even who they were which, combined with his arrogant belief that he knew better than the industry professionals who created the material he was taking credit for, led him to fly three Robotech sequel projects into the ground. They never had much money for development because Robotech was never all that successful. Quality costs money. They had assistance from several extremely talented people early on, but Macek succeeded in driving them away during the development of Robotech II: the Sentinels. Without Tatsunoko to foot the bill for talent, they were on their own and the budget wouldn't stretch enough to allow them to engage the services of talented creators (not that Macek would've allowed it) or to produce high-quality animation. By the time they finally got rid of Macek and were trying to reinvent Robotech as a mainstream anime title, all of the damage Macek had done was too much for them to get a proper budget so they had to make Shadow Chronicles on a budget of less than $1 million provided by HG itself... which had to stretch REALLY far to cover development and production, especially in light of hiring big-name voice talent for bit parts like Mark Hamill. I know for a fact that Tom Bateman cared about the quality of the work they were doing, and I'm pretty sure Tommy Yune did too. There are limits to what you can do with such a limited budget when you're also splurging on voice actors who demand to be paid SAG rates. Pretty much, but it's the only Hail Mary that's really left open to them after Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles didn't deliver on all the promises Tommy made to his bosses and Robotech Academy became an embarrassing public failure. Yeah, it really was a poorly conceived attempt to make the franchise relevant. Shadow Chronicles was supposed to appeal to anime fans who'd never heard of Robotech, but the only way they could seem to think of to make it appeal was... well... drawing every woman to look like Shay Laren in a neoprene body stocking. Fanservice sells... but it was a rather cynical attempt to make Robotech marketable that didn't really draw anyone's attention. It did attract some hilarious comments when Harmony Gold made it available on Hulu Plus though.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Robotech was stagnating for well upwards of a decade before it ever got to that point. It's been a stagnant property ever since the plans for a sequel series (Robotech II: the Sentinels) and a movie (Robotech: the Untold Story) fell through in '86-87. The old comic books and novels were cheap, lazy, quick-and-dirty attempts to shake a nostalgic fanbase down for a quick buck with nothing like an orchestrating intent or creative direction. (I still maintain that the novels were Luceno and Daley C.S. Goto-ing them by swapping proper nouns out in rejected Star Wars manuscripts.) New material isn't forthcoming because every attempt to create new material is a failure... and it's happened so often that nobody wants to put their money in Robotech anymore. After Robotech 3000 spun in so badly that it bankrupted its principal sponsor and animation studio Netter Digital, nobody outside Harmony Gold was willing to finance a Robotech production. After Shadow Chronicles failed to achieve its promised revival of the franchise's fortunes and attract external sponsorship,, Harmony Gold's own management was no longer willing to finance its new developments. Then came Robotech Academy, where the hilarious mixture of naive incompetence, monumental arrogance, and good old fashioned crap quality combined to ensure that even the fans were unwilling to finance new Robotech development. They are playing a waiting game, but it's not THAT waiting game. They're waiting, and wishing, and hoping, and praying for some Hollywood studio to decide to actually make a Robotech movie, so they can simply sit back and collect royalty checks instead of developing material themselves. That was, by their own admission, the Plan B after Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles met such a negative reception. They wanted to use the movie to attract new sponsors to the animated series, and even that was eventually abandoned. What did ExoSquad do to deserve such a horrible fate? Hiring mechanical designers, talented or otherwise, takes money... at this point NOBODY wants to put money into Robotech. I don't think they'll bother. Virtually all Robotech merchandising is built on Macross. If they can't renew the Macross license, they'll fold rather than trying to continue on in vain because there's only a minimal market for imitation-brand MOSPEADA merchandise and virtually no market for Southern Cross. But Pinhead!McKeever has such sights to show you...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Some of the Harmony Gold "insider" fanboys seemed to believe that it's damage licensee confidence in the Robotech brand if the true extent of the limitations on Harmony Gold's license and its legal problems became public knowledge. The reasonable among us might have cause to wonder "what licensee confidence?", given that Harmony Gold was already scraping the bottom of the barrel in 2008 and have now moved on to licensing the brand to actual criminals in the form of Southeast Asian toy bootleggers.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    After watching that trailer, the vibe I'm getting is essentially Starship Troopers 3: Marauder by way of Independence Day... just with slightly higher production values than the former.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Harmony Gold's evasiveness is a survival tactic on a couple different levels. On the one hand, they don't want to get into the details of their legal situation because they can get into a lot of trouble if they do start talking about it and say something that they're not allowed to talk about from a sealed settlement or if they misrepresent the state of affairs and another interested party takes exception. (Like what happened when they claimed to have the rights to all of Macross rather than just its original series in 1999-2000 and it not only got them in trouble, it got Tatsunoko in trouble too.) On the other hand, they don't want to appear that they aren't in control of the franchise... and let's be honest, 99% of the fandom who are still holding out hope for Robotech's future are there for the Macross references. If they were to actually admit they can't use Macross stuff in new film works, they'd damage the fandom's confidence in their brand. As far as we know, it all expires together in 2021 based on comments made by Tatsunoko in their arbitration.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, they don't bother working her into plots anymore... she gets dragged out whenever they need/want to throw the odd reference to Macross into a story, because most Robotech fans are closeted Macross fans who couldn't give a crap about the other 2/3 of the "original" Robotech story. Like in their comic book bridge to the Shadow Chronicles OVA, she appeared solely to be captured and put through such grievous torture that she could never appear again because using her is too legally problematic. Or they'll just kill her off again... she doesn't seem anywhere near as important to the story as previous incarnations. We are, if anything, understating it. There hasn't been an honorable employee at Harmony Gold since Tom Bateman was forced out. This "information session" is going to essentially be the same kind of bullsh*t pep talk you see all the time from venture capitalist CEOs imploring shareholders to keep the faith while the stock price plummets and the company posts massive losses. The kind that, in any other context, would sound like a DPRK news brief... "All is fine. No more questions. Our glorious president will lead us to victory." Well, you get what you pay for. Harmony Gold set out to hire an international marketing coordinator for the Robotech franchise but, like all the other newly-created Robotech franchise positions, the advertised salary was more suitable for an entry level office job in a much less expensive-to-live-in area than Los Angeles. McKeever might well have been the only person to apply for the post, as it would only have appealed to a real idiot who would value working on Robotech over not being paid like an intern.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    He's not very effective at it, given that pretty much everyone remotely familiar with the Robotech and Macross franchise knows he's Harmony Gold's liar-in-chief. He's a joke and the only one who doesn't know it is him. (Even the other HG employees don't like him.) Again? They already did it once.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Lemme fix that last sentence... "Join Harmony Gold's coffee boy, Kevin McKeever, as he dispenses lies less believable than a North Korean news broadcast." There is no bloody way that McKeever of all people is going to give a realistic assessment of how totally screwed Robotech is when they lose the rights in 2021. He'll probably deny to the hilt that they're going to be losing the rights.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Alternatively, you can just fire the writers.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, yeah... as long as Bad Robot Productions is calling the creative shots, Star Trek is doomed to fail over and over again. Bad Robot is so enamored of the "action-ized", style-before-substance version of Star Trek they established with the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie that they're determined to make it the norm for Star Trek so they can keep cashing in even though Star Trek fans and licensees hate it.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It's a quintessentially American story... investing enormous amounts of time, energy, resources, and innovative spirit into disproportionate retribution for a petty insult from a highbrow snob. As a former Ford engineer and lifelong Motor City boy, I definitely have to go see this one.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Kinda my feeling, yeah. It makes sense in an OVA where your individual episodes might be separated by six months to over a year the way Gundam Unicorn was in its original format, but for a weekly TV anime series like Gundam Unicorn Re:0096 it's just a transparent attempt to pad the series by extending that ~3 minutes of reused animation from the OP and ED out to 7 or 8.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It's a bit much to ask us to wait until 16 June 2395 isn't it? One thing to say for Alex Kurtzman's tenure at the head of the Star Trek franchise... he's made Doomcock much more entertaining than Star Trek itself, by ensuring that he's never short of stupid decisions and highly visible incompetence to rage and storm about.
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