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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Alas, that's no YF-24 in there... it's actually a custom VF-25 captioned "VF-25 Messiah Valkyrie / Legacy". 's just a VF-25F with a cropped delta wing. EDIT: A lot of those craft there are Master File squadrons or variants out of Macross the Ride, the VF-25S to the right of the Messiah Legacy is a VF-25S from the SVF-440 Dullahans (a squad out of the VF-25 Master File), and you can see the VF-19ACTIVE Nothung, Paladin Prophecy, VF-11B Nothung II, and VF-4SL Lightning in those as well.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well... the YF-25 Prophecy first "appeared" in Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime, though IIRC the YF-25 only showed up in the two Macross Frontier movies as background filler. It showed up in the first movie as a toy in the background in one of those promotional gigs Ranka did early in her career, and once later on in an establishing shot in the Macross Quarter's hangar. The serialized novel-slash-Macross Frontier prequel/side-story Macross the Ride and the Macross 30 video game turned the YF-25 into a main character mecha... being one of Chelsea Scarlett's "mid-season upgrade" mecha in Ride (in those colors) and Leon Sakaki's starter mecha in 30 (in a teal color). (Leon's version is sort-of visible in the attached picture... it's the one to the right of Michel Blanc's VF-25G.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So, since SoftBank usually misses the mark by a few months, it's a Christmas release?
  4. Seto Kaiba
    No sir, they are not. While Palladium Books has accidentally used the DYRL cockpit variant line art in their books in both the old and current editions of the Robotech RPG, they've never included stats for the Strike Pack. The current ("2nd") edition did mistakenly include those UUM-7 micro-missile pods that first appeared in DYRL (reportedly the result of lazy editorial copypasta, albeit NERF'd to keep it from totally overpowering the "Alpha"), but only the VF-1 Super and Armored Pack have stats in the books. They do offer mecha modification rules in one of the other source books, but something with that many non-standard options is going to handle like a cow in a supermarket cart and break down the minute someone so much as sneezes in its general direction. Or some Macross fan taking a not-so-subtle potshot at the "alternative" Super Pack arrangements from Variable Fighter Master File: Squadrons of the SDF-1 Macross. There is one in those books presented with two NP-BP-01 boosters up top and two more on the wings. We've got plenty of sarcastic folks here on MW who'd totally take that up to 11. Still... it's downright Orky. NEVER ENUFF DAKKA!
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure it's a question of estimating the total number of Robotech fans out there as it is the number who are willing to drop a significant sum of money on a toy from Robotech's least popular saga. I'd be particularly wary of using Robotech Academy as a means for estimating their numbers too, because you got some folks who flatly refused to pledge regardless of their love for the "original" Robotech series due to the distasteful way they were throwing Carl Macek's name around, and quite a few folks who'd pledged with the intent of withdrawing their pledges at the last minute to ensure failure (an unnecessary gesture, to be sure). A lot of Robotech's fan base is what you'd call the "casual" fans who might buy the show on DVD once or twice, and might look into the comics if something particularly catches their eye (almost invariably Macross-based material). They're not the market Harmony Gold and Toynami would be depending on for an MPC Spartas or Auroran. The market for something like a MPC line based on Southern Cross designs is the a proper subset of the relatively few fans out there who are willing to pay the rather lofty prices demanded for the somewhat sub-par Toynami offerings... namely, those rare fans who don't think Southern Cross is an unholy mess. There's a fair amount of antipathy towards Southern Cross and the Masters Saga of Robotech in evidence... on Robotech.com in particular, the Southern Cross Army had the reputation of being a bunch of incompetent idiots who dropped the ball at the worst possible time and allowed Earth to be invaded twice in quick succession. That's part of why Toynami seems to think that making Masters Saga MPCs is not a safe investment. Tommy's capitalized on this sentiment to actually make a number of cheap shots canon... like turning "Commander Leonard" into a confirmed rabid xenophobe, traitor, saboteur, spy, and a terrorist leader responsible for hijacking a starship and nuking a vital planetary defense installation.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Not being a toy collector, I could not honestly offer an informed opinion myself... but the opinions I've heard from people who are toy collectors suggests to me that your take is probably accurate. (The build quality fiasco over the Shadow Fighter helps too.) Most folks weren't, general consensus is that the disaster that was the "Maia Sterling" MPC Shadow Fighter was the last straw for the Toynami MPC line... both because almost nobody cared, and because the build quality was terrible enough for Harmony Gold to issue a recall. Thus far, Toynami remains adamant that the potential return-on-investment for Southern Cross merchandise is so small that the most likely outcome would be them ending up upside-down on the design, tooling, and manufacturing costs. Considering there's very little love for the Masters Saga, and equally little love for the post-legitimate Macross design MPCs, I don't think they'd have guaranteed sales of more than a few dozen.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. The Auroran (chopper), Spartas (tank), and Logan (ugly lozenge-shaped VF) are the three main mecha for the series... the only other Glorie forces robot to get a name was the police robot that Jeanne knocks over with her hoverbike early on (the Garm, possibly named for the dog who guards Hel's gate in Norse mythology). The other, minor, background robots that show up in the OP and as filler here and there don't transform and don't even have names... IIRC, only one of the many background filler non-variable fighters has a name, though there's some contention among those who care enough over whether it's supposed to be the "Sylphid" or "Shrewfield".
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Except for the Zor bioroids and the various specialist Southern Cross Army mecha (all but one of which don't even have NAMES), pretty much.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    But not half as entertaining as the game itself... for me, the massive number of bugs and shoddy execution were totally what sold the game. It was like wandering onto the set of someone's unauthorized Alien b-movie. I got at least one laugh for every penny I spent on the game, so IMO money well spent (at discount rate, but still...) EDIT: Yes, I bought it AFTER I heard what a trainwreck it was... the reviews were so hilarious I just had to experience it for myself. I'd be afraid of Alien: Isolation though... it's got the warning label right there in the bottom right corner.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Might have something to do with sales of the New Generation MPCs being so appalling that they cut the limited runs down to just 5,000 before canning the whole line. They weren't selling, and with MOSPEADA fans able to get their hands on stuff via a direct sale from Japan, it's no surprise why. Thus far, I don't believe Harmony Gold and Toynami have reversed their stance that there isn't a viable business case for making any Southern Cross toys... sales haven't exactly been fabulous for their New Generation/MOSPEADA stuff, what with them not yet sold out of those dreadful New Gen MPCs even after cutting the production runs by 66%, so they don't seem at all inclined to try their hand at Robotech's least popular saga. Southern Cross fans are, I'm afraid, probably out of luck there. That's looking like a "when hell freezes over" option...
  11. Seto Kaiba
    The ADV set didn't... it didn't even give episode titles, just two screenshots from each episode and the episode number. Animeigo didn't really give synopses either, unless you count the occasional staff commentary on aspects of an episode's story.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Everything about the man is blue, from his hair, to his uniform, to his car, to his plane, and he's is European... an aviation buff like Kawamori putting something like that in by accident? Not likely... especially in a series that already has more aviation in-jokes than one can readily shake a stick at.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Probably for the best... just look at Max. His hair's blue for the sake of a blatant aviation in-joke.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... as far as I'm aware, Misa's mother's ethnicity hasn't been specifically identified. All we have is her name (Sakiko Hayase), which seems like a fair indicator that she's Japanese when coupled with her residence being listed as Japan (and Australia).
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe that's why Robotech.com has stopped doing really visible April Fool's jokes... it's become impossible to distinguish between the sort of thing you'd do for an April Fool's joke and the kind of thing their management does with a perfectly straight face on a daily basis. Ah well, trolls be trollin'.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I think what we're doing is one part lamenting his -er- lamentable ignorance and one part wondering if he's a troll, an idiot, or if he's genuinely been taken in by Harmony Gold's misdirection. I agree that if it's simple ignorance, there's probably no legitimate excuse when even the Robotech wikipedia article makes at least a token effort to distinguish between Robotech and Macross, and the matter could've been clarified with five seconds spent on Google. If he's being willfully trollish or has been misinformed by Harmony Gold, it's a more complex issue.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe "metaseries" might be a good word to use instead, since last anybody heard they still considered at least one of the comics published under the Wildstorm imprint to be an official part of the Robotech story. Come to think of it, that's probably why they're so deadset on muddying the waters between them and Macross... to make it look like they haven't spent the last thirty odd years tossing cards into a hat and giving each other piggyback rides between abysmal failures.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Whoops, my bad on the author bit. Still, one has to wonder who they think they're fooling these days... they didn't start pulling this nonsense until about 2000, when Harmony Gold decided Carl Macek had screwed the franchise up beyond recovery and tried to start fresh. Once they needed a way to reinvent Robotech as a credible SF/mecha anime franchise and created Robotech.com, they started making a concerted effort to mislead Robotech fans and the general public about Robotech and its relationship with the original shows. Anyone can check this bizarre misdirection on Wikipedia in ten seconds flat and figure out it's BS, so why are they even trying? I'm not sure if they just think that any press is good press (even press that makes them look like cretins, apparently), or if they're SO misled themselves that they've started buying into all of their own lies (instead of just "Robotech is successful and influential").
  19. Seto Kaiba
    ... and now I'm humming the old GI Joe theme song at work... You have to remember, EXO, Harmony Gold has historically put a LOT of effort into doing two things with regard to the Japanese originals and the greater Macross franchise: Trying to convince Robotech fans that the original Japanese shows Robotech was made from are flawed and inferior shows that were dramatically improved by Carl Macek's "vision", to such an extent that they sometimes make bizarre claims that the Japanese studios that made those shows think Robotech is the superior version. Trying to deliberately blur the line between Robotech and Macross, for the purposes of self-promotion (trying to cash in on Macross's reputation), discouraging Robotech fans from pursuing Japanese Macross titles (trying to keep them thinking that the two are interchangeable), and enabling their misleading statements about Macross rights. Long Vo, misinformed as he is, is probably a victim of... and it sounds rather over-dramatic to use this term, since any idiot can find out the truth on Wikipedia... Harmony Gold's misinformation campaign. Though it must be admitted that the Robotech fandom's bad habit of trying to "adopt" every series they think is cool (including a great deal of Macross) into Robotech on an informal basis... particularly where the RPG is concerned. Ten minutes nothing... a quick read of the Macross wikipedia article is usually enough, though whether he's defending that just because he's embarrassed or if he's actually thick enough to believe it is anybody's guess.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That's not fan art, at least... that's from Robotech #0, the comic book relaunch/Macross Zero-knockoff.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    This "mixup" happens a lot where Robotech is concerned... too often for it to be believable as a coincidence, honestly.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Ach... I'm gonna miss him. I wasn't a fan of his later work, but I loved the hell out of Aladdin when I was a kid, and he was fantastic in that.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    I don't recall if the ADV Films dub release of Macross had notes included on the DVDs themselves, but it didn't come with any liner notes as print media.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, it actually is a helicopter... they just never seemed to find a way to work that part into the animation. 1st Border Red Devil asked me to translate a piece of Southern Cross art a while back, a leaflet with information on the TASC's Auroran, ATAC's Spartas, and a tiny bit on the Bioroid... and one of the captions there specifically refers to the Auroran's Cross-Fighter mode as a Helicopter mode. Specifically, it was the following caption between the Cross-Fighter and Crusader modes, which reads: クロス・ファイター形態は180度転回可能なヘリモード. "Cross Fighter form is a helicopter mode that can turn 180 degrees." (That it has a helicopter mode should come as no surprise, really... the Auroran's basically a transformable Sikorsky X-Wing.) EDIT: That's not a "variant" without blades, that's Crusader mode, which is the Auroran's jet fighter form... the blades are simply folded back along the fuselage near the tail.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    From any of the very few official publications for the original Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross? None that I've seen, no. Part of me suspects that the reason the Spartas has the driver exposed is because they put so damned much effort into the Arming Doublets that, when they ended up having to make a fairly generic robot show, they didn't want all the work they'd put in to go to waste by having the pilot be hidden inside the mecha all the time. The many and varied Robotech works, almost all of which have been disowned by Harmony Gold, offered a plethora of excuses for the design leaving the pilot exposed. The official stats they have for it acknowledge only that having the pilot position totally open to the elements was a really bad idea and made operating the tank unpleasant in bad weather. Other than that, the only explanation Robotech currently offers that has any sanction from Harmony Gold is that the Spartas was originally developed to function as a light reconnaissance vehicle, claiming the open cockpit offered the pilot an unobstructed field of view (apparently forgetting that the Mk.I Eyeball comes in a distant second to high-grade camera systems with infrared and night vision, making having a sealed cockpit and monitors far more advantageous than trying to view everything with the naked eye).
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