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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    D'you reckon there's any kind of contractual language preventing Zachary Quinto from reprising his role as young Spock in Paramount's Star Trek movie reboot trilogy? Seems a waste to recast when there's already a prominently known "young Spock" actor out there.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Wherever that's going, it can't possibly end up weirder than Dan Abnett and Ian Edington's Pike-centric Star Trek: the Early Voyages comic. They did come up with some interesting stuff in that series before it got canceled though, like the USS Enterprise stumbling onto a surviving colony of pre-Surak Vulcans who still had starship-grade psionic weapons (like the anti-personnel one in TNG's "Gambit"), or the TOS-styled version of the Miranda-class.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Just in case this wasn't confusing or frustrating enough, available records indicate that commercial first aired in 1985... after Hasbro and Toei/Sunbow redesigned and reintroduced Jetfire as Skyfire "for legal reasons" (in "Fire in the Sky", which aired on 8 Dec 1984). EDIT: Which, in hindsight, would tend to rule out the theory that Hasbro went into it with foreknowledge that they couldn't use the Jetfire design in animation.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    During the One Year War, as long as your surname wasn't "Zabi" Char/Casval was depicted as a reasonably honorable, competent, and caring commander in the Principality's armed forces. He cared enough about his subordinates to not only try to prevent them from making potentially fatal errors, but also to at least try to rescue them when possible. Unlike a LOT of Zeon soldiers he treated civilians and even enemy soldiers with respect and dignity, he never engaged in the kind of gleeful killing of noncoms that the Zabis did, and he was forthright enough to even basically give Kycilia a warning as to his intentions. (Grudge notwithstanding, he seemed to actually genuinely like and/or respect the few Zabis who were decent people like Garma and Dozle.) He was still a bad guy, but he was a bad guy with some actual standards in a series where most Principality soldiers were cackling puppy-kickers or at least the kind of a-hole who'd hit a woman. It's not a petty grudge, he goes straight-up thermonuclear when he discovers Haman is using Mineva as a puppet in the hopes of rebuilding the Principality of Zeon. That's one of the signs that Char/Quattro hasn't jumped off the slippery slope yet like he does in Char's Counterattack. He spends almost the entire first two-thirds of the series trying to advise people in ways that will prevent them from repeating his mistakes as Char. His treatment of Mineva is basically a "oh come on, this one hasn't even DONE anything don't turn her into another one I'll have to do away with!". Yeah, by Char's Counterattack Char has jumped off the slippery slope completely thanks to his frustration with the Earth Federation's corruption and his kooky dad's ideals being held up by biases against spacenoids. He's reached his personal despair event horizon, and is basically crafting one elaborate do-or-die scenario where either his ideals triumph or he's put out of his misery by Amuro. You get the feeling he knows he's suffered moral decay to the point of acting like Gihren Lite, and wants someone to stop him.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Does anyone else hear that noise? The one that sounds like terrified screaming?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Tatsunoko's actual stated grievances in the arbitration that the lawsuit spun off from were more to the tune of Tatsunoko thinking Harmony Gold was shorting them on royalties owed for the usage of Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA in the home video and streaming markets. (Harmony Gold counterclaim being that they were actually allowed to deduct legal fees from the various brand protection lawsuits from royalties owed.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Perhaps not an actual lawsuit in court, but it's possible there was a sealed arbitration or an exchange of cease-and-desists. The "production bible" used by the staff of the Transformers cartoon mentions that Jetfire's design was changed for "legal reasons", but no specifics are given as to what the "legal reasons" were for redesigning Jetfire in the eleven month period between HG acquiring their license to the SDF Macross merchandising rights and Jetfire/Skyfire's first appearance in the cartoon. It's a popular theory among Transformers fans that the change was to avoid a legal fight with HG, but nobody aside from one staffer has commented, and only to affirm that there were "legal reasons" for the change.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Not quite everything. Section 2b says that, on expiration of the license, Harmony Gold USA may no longer use or exploit derivative works produced under the license [using/based on] the works licensed from Tatsunoko. Section 2c is the one that answers Focslain's question, indicating that all copyrights, trademarks, etc. on the original shows Harmony Gold held or filed for under license revert to Tatsunoko. In short, the only parts of Robotech that Harmony Gold will retain access to once the license is up are the parts that were 100% their own original creation. Anything that was simply adapted from the shows licensed to them by Tatsunoko is off the table and owned by Tatsunoko. New material HG created would be owned by HG, but the parts that are based on the shows would be unusable due to being based on a property HG no longer has access to. At the end of the day, all they'd be left with animation-wise is Robotech 3000, the only 100% original work they had. They might still be able to use the names they changed, the show's macguffin, and some of the setting details HG came up with themselves. Pretty much.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Tatsunoko has the international distribution and merchandising rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and the international merchandising rights to Macross: Do You Remember Love?. (Harmony Gold only added the DYRL? merch rights to the scope of its license in the early 2000s, in their bid to stop the higher-quality imported Macross VF-1 toys from competing with their Toynami VF-1 MPCs.) The reason the sequels aren't being released here is the trademarks that HG filed for on Macross's logo and several key terms and symbols like the UN Forces roundel and "UN SPACY", which allow them to block pretty much all Macross licensing by threatening to sue for trademark infringement.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Of course Harmony Gold's Robotech staff are publicly acting like renewing the license is a foregone conclusion... they're literally not allowed not to. The company's default PR strategy when it comes to anything remotely negative is to deny and keep denying even after the truth becomes comically obvious. There are some examples where the truth came out almost 25 years ago and they STILL deny it to the hilt in public appearances. Mark my words, if they're not able to renew the license they'll do the exact same thing Palladium Books did when Harmony Gold yanked their Robotech license. They'll deny anything is amiss and categorically insist that all is well, to the extent of forcibly silencing anyone who claims otherwise from any of their online communities, until just before the license's term expires. Then they'll act like the loss of the license is a brand new stunning development, clearance their leftover inventory, and become mysteriously unavailable until the dust settles. Not to mention Tatsunoko's been spotted extending an olive branch to Big West at events in Japan. If Big West offered Tatsunoko a percentage in exchange for yanking HG's license, I don't doubt for a second they'd jump at the chance. They wanted it badly enough to sue for it back in the early 2000s.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    IF they're following the same release cadence as the last two shows, yeah.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming they're unable to negotiate a renewal, yes. A few years ago, renewal would've seemed pretty likely. Now that relations are souring between Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko, and Tatsunoko is under new management, there's a fair chance it really will end up not getting renewed since Tatsunoko is seemingly feeling sufficiently hard done by over the matter of royalties to blow off an arbitration settlement order to pay Harmony Gold's legal fees.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    That's what the topic post says, yeah... possibly the same technicality is in play that was used in the cases of Macross Frontier and Macross Delta, where a cut-down promo/teaser version of its first episode gets aired in the last week or so of December before the series proper starts airing the first week in April of the following year. For Macross Frontier, the "Deculture Edition" of the first episode was the only part of the series that aired in 2007 (on December 23rd and 28th). The series proper didn't start airing until 3 April 2008. For Macross Delta, the Mission 0.89 cut of the first episode was the only part of the series to air in 2015 (on December 31st no less). The series proper started airing 3 April 2016.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    That'd have to be referring to the original G1 Transformers Jetfire toy having been a redeco of the Takatoku Toys 1/55 VF-1S Valkyrie. All I've ever seen from Hasbro WRT the reason the G1 series staff were instructed not to use Jetfire and eventually replaced him with Skyfire was a non-specific "for legal reasons".
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Or, alternatively, just hire Mikimoto some extra help so he can carry the Mobile Suit Gundam: Ecole du Ciel and Macross the First at the same time. The backgrounds and mecha are drawn to a pretty high level of detail, so that's probably where a good portion of the production time goes on each chapter. Isn't that more a "never subtitle an OP/ED song" rule? I know I've seen at least one title on there in which songs sung by characters in the episode proper were subtitled. Considering they're one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, simulcast streaming outfit handling anime properties for the US, they'd be the most likely candidate.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing yet, AFAIK. If the production of the new series is running on a similar timetable to what was done for Macross Frontier and Macross Delta, we probably won't see any real news until September or October, with the reveal of the new show's title and the first teaser trailer.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I'll admit, as much as I like Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin for its return-to-form storytelling and its dedication to lavishing attention on some neglected parts of Universal Century history... the faithful recreation of the retro late 70's character designs does look more than slightly out of place at times when juxtaposed against the modern animation-level mobile suits and backgrounds. That and how EVIL Char is in the Gundam: the Origin version of events. Char in the original series was definitely no saint, but he at least hovered around "Noble Demon" territory. Gundam: the Origin's Char runs on "No back left unstabbed" and is WAY more cruel and sociopathic. Whatever its faults, Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin feels like its main goal is to tell a story and all that noise about gunpla is secondary. That alone is enough for me to excuse a LOT of sins on its behalf. I don't particularly care if the story plays Gundam tropes dead straight or radically defies formula, as long as the story's engaging it'll get a pass from me. That's why titles like the Build Fighters and Build Divers series leave me cold... the story's not the point, it's just steering you to whatever new MSV design goes on sale next week.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That's not really an answer to my question. What you're talking about was thirty-three years ago, a brief period of a year or two between Robotech's broadcast debut and the one-two punch of having both Untold Story and Sentinels fail to launch that dragged it into the abyss it's been in ever since. It would've made sense to cover Robotech seventeen years ago, when Harmony Gold was making a real effort to salvage the franchise and start fresh. Covering it now feels like wasted effort when it's got nothing going for it but a series of increasingly comical and self-destructive lawsuits, a couple of Kickstarter disasters, a laughably bad comic, and a merchandise line that's mostly ugly apparel. I suppose the first one might be justified on those grounds, since Robotech was the spawn of that attempt Revell made to create a Transformers knockoff based on Japanese model kits. For Robotech proper it feels a bit out of place, since toys weren't exactly something Robotech did well... or at all, for most of its lifespan. Granted, but it's mostly ugly apparel rather than toys... to an even greater extent than before now that Palladium Books lost the RPG and tabletop game license.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I have to wonder... why bother making a video like this now, of all times? Robotech has literally never been less relevant. All the franchise has had going for it for years has been the lawsuits it's involved in. The last serious effort to continue the Robotech series was the Shadow Chronicles OVA that ended up canceled after just one episode... and that was eleven years ago. What little they've done since doesn't even bear mentioning.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Now there's a Gundam show worthy of interest. Ditto. IMO, Gundam Build Fighters and Gundam Build Divers are expressions of what's wrong with the Gundam franchise... they're exactly the sort of teaspoon-shallow, blatant toy commercial anime series that Yoshiyuki Tomino fought tooth and nail to prevent the original Mobile Suit Gundam from being turned into. It's not a story, it's a collection of 24 minute advertisements for MSV Gunpla liberally garnished with in-jokes.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Given that Zentradi is arguably a dialect of the Protoculture language, it seems unlikely... the two languages don't sound anything like. I wonder if it's the influence of the personnel who ended up possessed by the Protodeviln... Ivano Gunther and Cpt. Autolmauer, both of whom have German-sounding names.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin was a decent-enough manga series, though I felt its attempt to mix character art in the retro 70's art style of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime with more detailed modern-styled mecha action sequences looked jarring and made the characters feel out of place at times. Where Gundam: the Origin and Macross the First differed was that Origin stuck to a regular release schedule in serialization that kept the audience engaged. First had delay after delay because it was always taking a backseat to Mikimoto's other projects like Mobile Suit Gundam: Ecole du Ciel, so the persistent delays hamstrung its ability to gain a following once it moved from Macross Ace to other publications. The reason I suspect it wouldn't do so hot in the US and abroad is that even a "sure thing" title like Gundam: the Origin tanked in the original attempt to bring it over.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It's still pretty niche, and let's not forget that Latin America tends to be Robotech territory... which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of taste or sense. Even before then, really... the Robotech series had already worn out its welcome as early as 1992, with hobby press from the period leading up to Macross II: Lovers Again's release being not at all shy about taking shots at Robotech. Hard to say... but I'd bet against Netflix. They seem to be more interested in pursuing development of their own original anime productions, like their partnership with Tsutomu Nihei that's led to them doing Knights of Sidonia and now a Blame! movie. Hulu's mostly picking up older shows, with a few Bandai simulcasts. Crunchyroll and/or FUNimation would seem the logical choice. Macross does have a past business relationship with Shogakukan, who own Viz Media... one of the bigger manga publishers in the US.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    I'd expect demand for Macross manga to wax and wane in sync with the releases of Macross animated features. Both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta had enough momentum to sustain a fair number of manga titles, light novels, and video games. Gundam proved that the market would sustain a reboot manga like that with Gundam: the Origin. I suspect the problem in Macross the First's case was simply that Mikimoto-sensei being overcommitted kept the releases too far apart to build up a strong following. Outside Japan? I dunno... there is a decently large "underground" Macross fandom despite the franchise's No Export For You status but I'm not sure it'd be enough to make the manga a bestseller. After all, the Americanized derivative is a virtual nonentity even in the already niche anime market in the US.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    It's been a dog's age since the last time I played Macross M3, but I think that's the Prime Minister of the New UN Government c.2030.
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