Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12940

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's what's got your knickers in a twist? Oh, I expect the motivations are largely the same. If you tell the same story over and over again with no lasting plot or character development and just start over every time you get stuck, you're going to lose audience members pretty quickly when they start getting bored of the same ol sh*t. Minor freshenings like this are about the only way for new authors to make their mark on a series and try to liven things up when the mainstream American comic book industry is largely stagnant and sees maintaining the status quo as all-important. Kinda missing the forest for the trees here. The Bioroid is a pretty obvious imitation-brand Zaku in terms of its appearance, including having a higher-spec command model painted red. When they're first introduced, they even do the Zaku's iconic glowing eye thing with the same sound effects. (Seifreit himself does a pretty passable Char imitation, right down to the regicide he closes out the series with.) ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but a line like that makes me want to question how much you've had to drink and how recently you last saw an optometrist. It looks like a Zaku wearing a set of dollar store rugby pads and a novelty codpiece. "Iconic" implies that it's distinctive and recognizable. Definitely not a word that should ever be used in connection with Southern Cross, which was canceled because barely anyone could stand to watch it. "Alien-looking" is pretty dubious too. The regular Bioroid's gun was a keg with a handle that shot lasers out of the bung. The red Bioroid's gun looked like a frying pan that shot lasers out of the handle. Granted, this is technically correct. Neither of them is remotely cool. Actually I was referring to the usage of TV Zentradi character and equipment designs. Macross 7's in-series movie "Lynn Minmay Story" had a TV series ver. Quamzin. Macross Frontier had TV series Zentradi body armor used by the NUNS 33rd Marines, and the rogue leader was the spitting image of TV Quamzin. Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy straight-up had TV Quamzin as a major antagonist, and his body armor from the series was inexplicably depicted as a flight-capable powered suit used by the enemy Zentradi and was selectable for the player in New Game+. Macross Delta also uses the TV Zentradi body armor for Zentradi ground troops. That said, there isn't really any clamor for the original character designs (except maybe Quamzin) considering how goofy and dated they look. It's hard to take them seriously when their style of dress says "fashion victim" rather than "clone soldier". Even Robotech fans struggle to take the novels seriously... Harmony Gold publicly disowned them as being Robotech-in-name-only eleven years ago. The Sentinels aliens are such boring, shallow stock monsters that even when they revisited Sentinels in Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles they did their best to sweep the lot under the rug and forget they were ever a thing even after attempting to give them designs that looked less idiotic.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Is it just me or does she look like Rick Sanchez in a bad wig? Those downvotes on the comment that dragged politics into this didn't come out of nowhere... that's a fair indicator of where folks stand. Better we leave it at that and keep the discussion of real world politics out of this entirely.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    As hard as I look, I can't see anything in this dreary mess that is remotely political. It's just a badly written gritty reboot fic, a slightly different aesthetic riff on the same old schlock that Robotech was peddling in the 90's comics. Well, yes... that IS a strong argument in Macross's favor. I mean, who's going to sit down to watch Macross and say "Y'know what this character drama and fast-paced dogfighting action needs? A halfassed Zaku knockoff and some space lobsters who are completely devoid of intellect or personality until they evolve into a halfassed Zentradi knockoff!"? Riveting stuff that ain't. ... did you miss that TV series Zentradi designs show up in Macross 7, Macross Frontier, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and Macross Delta? Who, for all their faults, are still a million times more interesting and relatable than any "original" alien race from Robotech. Let me be brutally honest here, the Sentinels aliens were Planet of the Cliches stock monsters that would've been considered too embarrassingly lame for inclusion in the legendarily camp Star Trek cartoon. Pretty much what you'd expect in series with a creative director who thinks L. Ron Hubbard is good sci-fi. There's no excusing the Space Kaij... er... Protodeviln. But the Zolans had their quaint charm and the Vajra managed to be pretty intimidating despite not being the actual villains of their series.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure what you're on about WRT the story... but then, I'm honestly not convinced there actually is a story. I'm halfway to believing that this is just another one of the Defense Intelligence Agency's insane black projects, except this time they're trying to weaponize bad art instead of woo bullsh*t like psychic powers. It's Robotech, FFS. What we deserve is for them to stop flogging a horse that died in '86 and stand aside so we can have some proper bloody Macross in the West. Anyone who hasn't learned by now to expect disappointment from Robotech probably deserves to be disappointed. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Complaining about a lack of quality in Robotech is like going to the zoo and getting upset because they don't have a manticore.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Does it still only count as speculation after Frank Agrama's already been tried, convicted, sentenced, fined, and only narrowly avoided serving his prison sentence because his age enabled him to exploit an amnesty law meant to reduce overcrowding in Italy's prison system? After handing the family business off to his daughter Jehan, she's embroiled in her own tax evasion scandal after criminal prosecutors in Italy informed the US Internal Revenue Service that she failed to disclose income from a foreign corporation called Byram Enterprises Ltd. for a whopping 22 year span between 1982 and 2004. She got slapped with a $900,000 tax penalty, which was upheld in court. The last update, filed this past March, indicates she's appealing the summary judgement in the IRS's favor. (Amusingly, the basis for petitioning to have the ruling overturned is not that she didn't commit the crime, but that the evidence proving her guilt was improperly obtained from the Italian courts, a claim the lower court didn't find remotely convincing.) Right now, they don't need to... since they can hold everything hostage with those trademarks they filed for. It's not clear if their license agreement with Tatsunoko includes a first right of refusal when it comes to renewals, but if it came down to a bidding war they definitely couldn't outbid Big West/Bandai for the rights. That's the big question, yeah. Tatsunoko has coveted a share of the profits from Macross sequels for over a decade, so much so that they went to court in an (unsuccessful) effort to get it. I think if Big West decides the time has come to sit down and talk, Tatsunoko will be game and they'll hash out some kind of compromise.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Obviously I can't claim any insight into Big West's global strategy for Macross, but I doubt that the goal was to undermine Robotech. Harmony Gold does a good enough job of that on their own, no outside help necessary. Doing it out of spite would be unprofessional, so I expect Big West is just acting on the discovery of an emerging market... and spiting Harmony Gold in the process is just a happy accident. Fansubbing has done far, FAR more to spread word of Macross than having the official releases in stores in the west. It's probably what drew Big West's attention in the first place. Fansubs are an effective tool for measuring interest in a legitimate release of a series. It sounds paradoxical, but several distributors have noticed that shows with fansubs tend to sell quite well when a legitimate release comes out thanks to the presence of a pre-existing following for the series, and that when shows stream as simulcasts or on short delays after airing in Japan via services like Crunchyroll or Hulu Plus, the number of illegal downloads is greatly reduced. Really, I think that ship sailed back in about 2008... if not earlier. The internet and the rise of internet fansubs have made it next to impossible for Harmony Gold to continue kidding themselves and their fans that Robotech is a thriving franchise. They could keep their fans largely in the dark back in the early to mid-90's, when the only coverage Macross's new releases were getting was in specialist hobby magazines like Animerica, Mangazine, Mecha Press, and Protoculture Addicts. If a series didn't get picked up for distribution in the US, it may as well have not existed at all. I think Macross Zero was probably the first big wake-up slap. Distributors were mentioning it at conventions, sites like ANN were following it and posting news. The online Macross fandom was making noise about it, and there were fansubs available online. Harmony Gold couldn't bank on having it fly under the radar, and that left them looking bad. The cat was out of the bag. When 2008 rolled around and we got Macross Frontier, there was just no escaping news of it. Internet connections were fast enough that joe average could download a fansub and watch it. Contrast between Macross's progress and Robotech's stagnation had never been quite so stark, and it did draw a lot of attention from Robotech's quarter. (There were some really crazy theories Robotech fans bandied about in an attempt to dismiss its hype. The weirdest being one chap who persistently pushed the idea that Macross Frontier was intended to be the last Macross series, based on an English title on a Newtype article about the movie Sayonara no Tsubasa that said "THE FINAL".) Back in 1999-2000, Harmony Gold did aggressively pursue US-based import sellers to stop carrying imported Macross goods. The cease and desists they sent as the crux of that effort contained that false claim to have exclusive merchandising rights to all Macross titles rather than just the original series, which kicked off the Big West v. Tatsunoko copyright confirmation filings in Japan that are discussed so often here. (HG's goal was to avoid having the Toynami Mastepriece Collection VF-1 toys competing with higher-quality Macross VF-1 toys from Japan.) Harmony Gold succeeded in scaring those import sellers away from carrying Macross goods, but it only really resulted in transferring their business to export sellers based in Japan. Harmony Gold's rights under license exclude Japan, so there wasn't anything they could reasonably do to keep the online stores based in Japan from catering to the desires of the fans who had previously used the US-based import sellers.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The first was one of the re-releases of the Macross Frontier movies (the 30th d Shudisuta b box), the Macross Delta series was the second, and Passionate Walkure is the third. It's been sold out for years, came out back in 2014.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Credit where credit is due, it helps immeasurably that my relatively paltry formal legal education is supplemented by an infuriating amount of on-the-job experience with the limitations of licensed IP owned by other companies and bolstered by the experience and insight of several friends from my current employer's OGC who are only too happy to give an informal once-over to something that's not "another bloody NDA" in their spare time. There are occasions, like that very brief summary of the difference between a copyright and a trademark, where I fear I may be oversimplifying too much and losing context as a result. We can only hope... but I have to wonder if Big West is even interested in waiting. Macross Delta: Passionate Walkure is set to be the third major "domestic" Macross release sporting official English subtitles. One has to wonder if they intend to do an end run around Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko by the simple expedient of putting English subs on all their domestic Macross releases and arguing that it isn't breaking any laws or contracts if fans in other countries import the domestic Japanese physical media. Any way you shake it, it seems likely that Harmony Gold is going to end up paying for the various legal shenanigans surrounding its payment of royalties to Tatsunoko. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended with Tatsunoko cutting Harmony Gold off entirely, but if they do offer HG a renewal I'd be shocked if it wasn't much more expensive and on much stricter terms. You can bet the language that enabled HG to use royalty money to pay for lawsuits will be gone, and they'll probably crack down on the usage of their IP from MOSPEADA and Southern Cross in Robotech as well. From Tatsunoko's viewpoint, the downside to cutting Harmony Gold off completely is they'll lose a modest stream of licensing revenue from Southern Cross and MOSPEADA. Neither of those shows was ever a big earner, but a little bit is better than nothing. Their best bet for an all-fronts victory would probably be re-upping Harmony Gold's license for Southern Cross and MOSPEADA only, and then dangling the newly-freed Macross rights and associated trademarks in front of Big West as an opening move in negotiations aimed at getting Tatsunoko distribution control of Macross's sequels (and thus the share of sequel profits Tatsunoko coveted badly enough to sue for in 2005) outside of Japan.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, I see. Yeah, that's not really a case of Satelite not being "Valk-accurate" then. Circa 2067, the Χάος branch on Ragna seems to have an agreement with the Brisingr Alliance NUNS similar to the one SMS's Frontier branch had with the fleet's NUNS in 2059 WRT testing the military's next-generation main variable fighter in actual operational circumstances. Presumably the reasoning was the same: liability limitation on the military's part, since if the civilian contractors snuff it during testing or in a dodgy/suspect combat situation it's legally considered an accidental death. The Kawamori interview in Great Mechanics G's Spring 2016 issue suggests the VF-31 Kairos won't be entering military service with the Brisingr Alliance NUNS until 2069-2070... two to three years after the events of Macross Delta. Granted, the multidrone chargers would be useless in a unit that wasn't operating in support of a Tactical Sound Unit. The ones in the series, however, all belong to a single fighter wing that has operating in support of Tactical Sound Unit Walkure as its main mission. It's less surprising that the chargers are disused when you note that the multidrones themselves are largely forgotten after about the fifth episode. Once Windermere showed up with a countermeasure that shut the Cygnus multidrone plates down mid-fight, they sort of faded into the background even though Makina and Reina were supposedly working on a way to protect them from it. It's like the writers couldn't figure out a way to work them into the story, or just preferred the drama of Hayate losing yet another arm blocking a shot from a Draken's beam gunpod.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I'd hope it comes with more than just a liner notes booklet, considering it's 25% more expensive... $15 for a postcard that'll only work with Uta Macross until year's end is a bit steep. Do any of the other listings out there mention extras besides the standard on-disc featurettes and the postcard?
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Japanese physical media is always pretty expensive... the average is like $63.50 a disc, though the words "limited edition" almost invariably comes with a markup on the distributor's side. My guess would be that part of the markup is extra features like an art booklet or something.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    To dispute the trademarks in the US would require Big West to have a pre-existing presence distributing Macross shows and goods in the US. They don't have that, so no... Big West would not be able to challenge those trademarks. They would have to wait for the trademarks to expire and register their own. Trademarks are not copyrights. Copyrights are ownership of a work, trademarks are an exclusive right to use a symbol, logo, term, etc. for commercial purposes. US trademark law is stupid like that, since it gives preferential treatment to the party that first used the mark commercially in the US, rather than the actual creator of the thing.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, they could... because Harmony Gold has trademarked the UN Forces roundel from the original Macross series. They've also trademarked the word "Macross", which would theoretically let them go after anything that used it... even fanworks based on shows they don't have rights to. No, trademarks apply to pretty much any form of use... their are protected uses under fair use doctrines like parody and informative purposes, but projects like fan art and fan films are a much greyer area that frequently is dependent on the goodwill of the owner or licensee of the IP. If Harmony Gold's claim is true, what motivated the decision to shutdown Robotech: Valkyrie Project was likely that HG itself had endorsed the fan film project... Big West presumably not being about to let HG do an end run around their copyrights by saying it was only a fan film they were supporing.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, as far as derivative works go, 17 U.S.C. § 103(b) and foreign equivalents are in full force. Like Harmony Gold was so efficiently reminded in their arbitration with Tatsunoko, the copyright on a derivative work only extends to new material contributed by the author(s) of that derivative work. It doesn't confer any rights to the original work. Harmony Gold seems to have been operating under a bizarre belief that having used MOSPEADA designs in several derivative works constituted permission to use those designs indefinitely even after the license lapsed. Once the license lapses, those works simply become unsellable... HG can't commercially exploit works that contain intellectual property it doesn't hold the rights to. Since they don't own the IP of Macross, Tatsunoko can authorize some forms of derivative work (e.g. translation/dubbing of the existing footage) but it couldn't create new animation based on that IP or authorize anyone else to. Fanfics and fanfilms... well... that's down to the individual discretion of the owner(s) of the IP and any relevant licensees. Creators in the anime and manga industry seem to be pretty OK with it on average, or at least resigned to the inevitability of it if they aren't. Western IP owners/holders are noticeably more strict and inclined to shut down fan projects if they feel the integrity of their work was threatened, like the famous Star Trek: Axanar fan film case. Harmony Gold has alleged in the lawsuit with PGI and CGL that at least some of their efforts to shut down fan projects were on the orders/insistence of Big West [and/via] Tatsunoko (specifically, Robotech: Valkyrie Project, which made extensive use of Macross designs). Other instances of them shutting down fanworks were reportedly motivated solely by HG's individual discretion (e.g. Robotech: Genesis, a fanfilm based on the HG-created backstory of Zor using Southern Cross and MOSPEADA designs.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Since the only VF-31A Kairos units we see in Macross Delta are the OPEVAL/trial production units operated by the other three flights in Χάος Ragna branch's 3rd Fighter Wing, I'm not sure that I'd say the multidrone chargers are necessarily deadweight. The 3rd Fighter Wing operates from the carrier Macross Elysion - Walkure's mobile HQ - and are only ever seen sortieing in support of the Tactical Sound Unit and its protection detail (Delta Flight). It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to outfit them with multidrone chargers so they can recharge Walkure's Cygnus multidrone plates in the event Delta Flight is drawn out of position or one of its members is lost in combat. Those multidrone plates don't seem to have much battery life, esp. in pinpoint barrier mode, so having extra chargers on hand feels more like hedging one's bets to me. It wasn't Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried that showed that one. IIRC it was a VF-31A Kairos model kit featured in Hobby Japan's Macross Modeling: Macross Delta Special Edition mook. (CD Japan has this book marked "in stock at supplier" for a reasonable price if you're interested.) The ordnance container for that custom kit showed a sensor pod with micro-missile launchers built into it instead. The DX Chogokin VF-31A came with a regular multidrone charger, IIRC. (I still haven't unboxed mine.) Seems like a sound argument to me. I'd originally written the missiles off as potentially having come from somewhere else like a Cheyenne II with a surface defense loadout like the Cheyennes that appeared in Macross Zero but have never been properly documented in artbooks. That does appear to be an isolated incident, however. The rest of the time the VF-25s aren't shown using anything like medium or long-range ordnance in their combat with the Vajra. It's all close-in dogfighting... possibly something to do with the Vajra's strong ECM abilities.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, it's some other (smaller) New UN Spacy Special Forces unit with a Your-Name-Here protagonist who has no dialog.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Probably should've phonetically spelled it "Yahn"... but yeah, I figured most folks who weren't from America would be familiar enough with the Czech/Dutch/Finnish/German/Polish/Scandinavian name "Jan" that it'd get a pass.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    On 23 July 2047 at 1920 hours Earth standard time, the idol group Milky Dolls were kidnapped from a performance at an Earth UN Forces memorial event and taken as hostages to the abandoned New UN Government colony world of Elysium by a Zentradi anti-government group whose leader seeks a return to a life of pure warfare. The New UN Forces brass dispatch the NUNS Special Forces stealth carrier VCV-551 Valhalla III on a mission to rescue the Milky Dolls. ("Operation Orpheus") All told, the rescue mission spans eight events (after the tutorial)... destroying the enemy's ground-based radar, wiping out a power generation satellite, destroying the enemy's ground base, a brief spot of mopping up enemy air forces, intercepting an enemy attack on the Valhalla III, downing an enemy transport and destroying their weapons plant, mopping up enemy forces left inside the old colony city, and finally taking out the enemy's HQ in an old mobile fortress. EDIT: Names are a bit of a sticky wicket, since the protagonist's name is whatever the player decides to enter...
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Really, I have no idea. It's one of several background designs in Macross Plus that have not been conclusively identified in any official publication that I am aware of. It's commonly thought/suspected that the black fighter to Jan's left (our right) is the version of the VF-14 Vampire that appeared in Macross 7 PLUS. But for that VF-22-esque canopy, I would say it looks like an old Advanced Valkyrie design (this one) that Macross Chronicle adopted as the VF-X-11 Advanced Fighter Technology Integration prototype.1 I can't think of a reason New Edwards Test Flight Center would've held onto a fifteen year old initial prototype for the previous generation main fighter though, so maybe it's an earlier experimental aircraft in the YF-21's design chain? (Also, very slight pet peeve... there's no "g" sound in his first name. It's Jan - pronounced "Yon".) 1. Which is not to be confused with the VF-X-11 No.1 and No.2 prototypes from Macross M3, which should probably have been YF-11 No.1 & 2 as they're recognizably the Shinsei Industry VF-11 Thunderbolt... just No.1 lacks canards and No.2 has them.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well well well... happy birthday to me, it seems. Seems like everything ends up marked "Limited Edition" these days... but yeah, this'll be the one to get with the decently informative liner notes and all.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Something that shows up a fair bit in model kits for the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series version of the VF-1. The series animation budget being what it was, they didn't show the pylons holding the three RMS-1 thermonuclear reaction missiles to the wings in Ep27, so it looked like a three pylon configuration to the viewer. Macross: Do You Remember Love? later showed that there was a double mount pylon for those RMS-1s. Variable Fighter Master File also picked up on the three pylon configuration and cited it as being an alternate wing configuration for the VF-1 Valkyrie.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not as such, no. Big West and Tatsunoko's copyright confirmation filings in the Japanese courts in the early 2000s ended with essentially zero changes in the disposition of rights to the original Macross series. To keep things simple: Big West and Studio Nue own the intellectual property of the original Macross TV series, and as such are the only ones who can use or authorize the use of that intellectual property in new works (e.g. sequels). Tatsunoko Production owns the production materials from the animation production which they bankrolled, and the rights that were given to them under contract as payment for bankrolling that production process. In short, Tatsunoko owns the copyright on the actual footage itself (but NOT the IP it contains), and the international distribution and merchandising rights to the series which were given to them as compensation for funding the animation production. Those rights are the ones Tatsunoko licensed to Harmony Gold USA in 1984. Put simply, Tatsunoko does not OWN the mechanical designs of the original Macross series, and they're not able to authorize anyone to use the designs in new film works... but they DO own the exclusive right to use those designs in merchandise outside of Japan. Along with their exclusive right to distribute the series outside Japan, what they have is essentially a proper subset of the copyright rights to the series. That's the basis on which Harmony Gold is bringing this lawsuit against Catalyst and Piranha. It's alleging that the designs named in the lawsuit are derivative of those in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and that as such those designs violate their exclusive right (under license) to exploit the mechanical designs of Super Dimension Fortress Macross in merchandise in the west.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Giving them props would be premature. That motion to dismiss was a Hail Mary that not only didn't pan out, but actually backfired rather badly by putting HG in a position to request and provide more documentation from Big West and Tatsunoko proving their rights under license. (Amusingly, from the statement from Tatsunoko, both they and Big West are in HG's corner on this one, since HG is essentially compelled to defend the Macross IP in court on their behalf under their license.) I don't believe so. Tatsunoko owns the international distribution and merchandising rights for the original SDF Macross series, and the trademark is filed in a region where Tatsunoko's rights make them the sole entity able to commercially exploit the series.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur's Caution Signs and MODEX section would probably be the most complete version.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    SMS and LAI did. The reason it's a 改 is the base frame was an actual VF-0A before Katori got her mitts on it, and it's a kludge of parts provided by LAI and General Galaxy. By that point in the story, Hakuna Aoba's past as a NUNS Special Forces pilot had come out and he was eyebrow-deep in the whole conflict with Fasces. After getting royally REKT in his VF-1X++, presumably they felt compelled to give him something that he'd be able to not die in when the enemy was using 4th Gen equivalent or better fighters.
×
×
  • Create New...