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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I doubt they'd permit it... that would be dangerously close to making the fan film copyright infringement instead of fan works, now that Creavision is on Harmony Gold's payroll. To be entirely fair to Tommy, probably ninety percent of the people I know who have seen Genesis Climber MOSPEADA can't say "MOSPEADA" correctly either, and many of them are avid anime hobbyists. Tommy is, at least from my own interactions with the man, what you'd call a "casual" anime fan. A lot of what you say there IS things Harmony Gold have said, but most of them have come from the pen of Carl Macek (who claimed Macross et. al. to be flawed and inferior to Robotech). As far as calling the Robotech Masters Saga "Southern Cross", Harmony Gold has been deliberately trying to muddy the waters regarding the difference between Robotech and the shows used to make it since Robotech.com went live in 2001. Actually, you're wrong about this. Practically every failed or aborted Robotech project has seen Harmony Gold blame one of their business partners for the failure, usually in the form of "so and so screwed up, so the project failed due to circumstances beyond our control". For instance, they laid part of the blame for the failure of Robotech: the Movie on Cannon Films, the distributor, for insisting on changes to the film because they thought it had a "downer ending" and had "too many girls, not enough robots and guns" and their decision to toss the finished product because the test audiences hated it. When the Robotech II: the Sentinels project collapsed, they blamed it not just on the exchange rate crash, but on Matchbox withdrawing its sponsorship of the project and the problems they had with writers supplied by Tatsunoko (who thought Robotech was a confusing mess). After Robotech 3000's trailer flopped, Harmony Gold canceled the project and then blamed its cancellation on financial trouble at the studio, Netter Digital... before admitting it was actually a pretty terrible idea on their part too. The Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles "movie" was delayed, and Harmony Gold pointed the finger at the distributors they were talking to, omitting that the reason distributors were reluctant to take it was Harmony Gold was asking a lot more than they had any right to. When the negative fan response to the film cropped up, they initially tried to blame it on DR Movie, and then turned to the boogeyman of "Macross purist trolls". They haven't pointed any fingers at anyone over LLA, but I'd suspect that's because it's a glorified DVD extra and didn't have a standalone release. You'd be hard pressed to find a Robotech release where they didn't throw SOMEBODY working for/with them under a bus when things got hairy. Harmony Gold disowned almost all licensee-produced material back in ~2003, and blamed EVERYBODY for a parade of poor-quality garbage that even they didn't consider fit to be called Robotech. Hell, they even used that as an excuse to keep Palladium Books on a short leash when they renewed the Robotech RPG license... citing the crap job Palladium did with the old game as reason to grant themselves a supreme editorial veto and review power over all content, much to the dismay of the Palladium Books gamers. Palladium, meanwhile, publicly WTF'd and explained that they'd missed the mark so hard because of a near-total lack of support from Harmony Gold. EDIT: They keep slipping... SideKick's all over the map, but Kicktraq's steadily trending downward, it's now projecting they'll just barely break 80% in the best-case scenario, with a projected finish of just 75%.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    If we were to count all of the impossible stuff that goes on in Robotech, like powering giant robots with a plant's frustrated libido*, we'd likely end up with more problems than seconds of footage. It does seem like a rather dangerous place to live, since it does look like it's far too close to the ring system to be healthy. *Yes, this is actually how it generates power according to Carl Macek. Honestly, I feel bad for them. This might look like a dream come true for them, but this project is destined to be a failure... and it's going to turn into a nightmare for them when the inevitable happens and Harmony Gold needs someone to blame. These guys're really passionate fans, and they're likely to end up being blamed for the project's failure and the inevitable decade-long wait for a new title in the best-case scenario. At worst, they might end up being blamed for Robotech finally being abandoned by Harmony Gold. That's going to be a bitter pill to swallow, being publicly blamed for doing grievous harm to the thing you care about.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Considering the quality of the demo footage, and the massive fiscal irresponsibility that will no doubt occur in the "feasibility study" phase, I'd say expect something that'll look like an all-CG version of Shadow Chronicles. That is to say, like a video game cutscene from the early 2000s.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It doesn't say on the page there, but the "About" link at the top of the page says that it's a weighted algorithm based on the size of donations over time, the number of posts on Twitter containing links to the project, and some unspecified metric regarding how the backers relate to each other. I think I prefer the Kicktraq projections, since those are based purely on financial trends rather than metrics may not have any direct connection to the amount contributed to the campaign. It's not even clicks they're tracking, it's all posted links regardless of whether or not anyone actually uses them. Neither one is painting an especially rosy picture of Robotech Academy's chances of success either... Kicktraq is projecting total failure for the project, with the projected mean backer contribution of less than 80% of the target, and their most optimistic picture of backer contribution still has them missing by almost $40k (and that's been steadily trending downward DAILY). The low end is also diving, but estimated at about $275k. Sidekick's projecting a mere 8% chance of success, which is definitely in the "hell will freeze first" tier.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Offhand, I'm not aware of anything that gets any more specific than that the Protoculture were modifying the local fauna on Earth to ensure the development of a sub-Protoculture species (presumably meaning "humanoid") adapted to the local environment to start preparations for future colonization. Since the Humans (and presumably Zolans) were modified local lifeforms, presumably any differences between sub-Protoculture species would be down to whatever the "seed" species was that was being modified. Aries Turner in Macross Zero had that hypothesis that it was being done retrovirally. For humans, it was homonids. For the Zolans (though I don't recall anything that explicitly said they were sub-Protoculture too), it's something like a marsupial (since they have pouches?).
  6. Seto Kaiba
    No, just that the culture of the ancient Protoculture could potentially be revived via the fragments of it encoded into the Zentradi and Meltrandi at a genetic level. Though... DYRL did establish that, in its version of events (and Macross II's by extension) the Zentradi and Meltrandi technically ARE the Protoculture (just modified for war in various ways through genetic and/or cybernetic engineering). The Protoculture in that version had gone to cloning-based reproduction before the war started, and indeed they credited it as one of the causes of the Stellar Republic's dissolution. It's supposed to be an official encyclopedia, so it's all canon... the new content was "supervised" by Kawamori. 's not like Master File, which also had official involvement, but carried an explicit statement that it wasn't a part of the official Macross setting.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, it's more like a reuse of a terrible idea that didn't make it into Robotech II: the Sentinels back in the 80s... that's where they dredged up the "Children of Zor". Heh, it's looking like we won't even get that far... Kicktraq's projections have finally caught up with the reality that even Robotech fans on the Kickstarter itself are starting to accept. Like the Detroit Lions, sometimes for Robotech, failure is the ONLY option: That's nothing new, he's one of the fans who believes that Carl Macek was a god and Tommy Yune's a demon sent to test everyone's faith. He's part of that same conspiracy theorist set as the late khyron_prime, in that he believes that they actually got so far as to develop the entire series plot for Robotech 3000 and it was tragically cut down not by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to literally everything about it, but by some internal politics at Netter Digital. KP's web page, before it went down with Geocities, was a monument to that insane paranoid conspiracy theory. Him and 90% of the rest of Robotech fans. This must be a strange experience for poor disturbed little doug, actually being in agreement with someone else for once. Harmony Gold's reacted with some considerable hostility to fan appeals to know how the money's going to be spent, which suggests (to them and everyone with a brain) that some massive fiduciary irregularities are imminent. If he thinks they might update Robotech.com, he's dreaming. Harmony Gold's execs said, via McKeever, point blank that they don't give a toss unless it's directly bringing profit in, which McKeever finessed to mean "they only care about the store". Well, yeah... seems like he's hopping on a lot of popular bandwagons lately. His viewership of one must be down. Admittedly, on this one he's off in lala land on the cost point, since Palladium Books has zero experience and the modeling studio faffed around doing substandard work for most of the Kickstarter. But hey, Robotech fans got burned and now they're learning. THERE'S the conspiracy theory. I knew it couldn't be a dougbendo podcast without one. As far as "if this doesn't work out, no more Robotech" goes, I effing well hope so. What is this, South Park?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Hey now, a single 30-minute pilot episode for a series no network will touch would STILL make it a banner year for Robotech... it's more productivity than they usually show in five. Nobody listens to that garbage... that's why dougbendo has to repeatedly download his own podcast to make it look like people actually care what he has to say. If I want to subject myself to the stream-of-(un)consciousness deranged ramblings of a mental midget, I'll turn on Comedy Central (or maybe CSPAN). At least that way there's a vague chance of something relevant or even mildly amusing happening.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Fixed that for ya... though some are ALREADY blaming us for the Kickstarter not doing too hot, and trying to use that to get any thread that's critical of the Kickstarter locked in the name of "protecting" it. Kicktraq's predicting 81%, so they're in the ballpark... though it's amusing that the only thing climbing is the percentage of the donation that belongs to a handful of people. 11 fans currently account for 30.5% of the $147,656.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Seems useful to me... now I don't have to bother printing off my own and taping it to the inside of each binder like I did for the last edition.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Not really, no... the locale where Robotech is at its biggest (which is still pretty small) is Central and South America. There are a few fans in countries like Serbia (IIRC, the Robotech Genesis lead was from there) but they're nothing like the frothing fanatics in the countries south of the border. (Pandering to them is why they had the Spanish VA for "Rick Hunter" make a video.) Looking distinctly like a "won't" at this point. A good chunk of the total thus far is from a small handful of people throwing obscene amounts of money at the project. Kicktraq's predicted target window has been steadily trending downwards and now is almost entirely in the failure zone. A few days ago that graph had it about half-and-half, now the high-end estimate is a mere $506k and dropping several grand every day. The low has dropped below $300k. Ignorance of that, or perhaps willful denial of that, is what Harmony Gold is counting on. They put a LOT of effort into making sure Robotech fans would blindly attribute everything they liked to Macek's contribution and slandering the originals as inferior trash, and now they're hoping for a payoff when fans mistakenly associate the quality material from Macross in particular with Carl Macek instead of its true creators. That'd be why they're so insistent that this is all Carl's doing... because the fans who know it isn't are already refusing to contribute and calling this the worst idea ever. If they were open about this NOT being Macek's doing, they'd barely get enough money to take a cab to the unemployment office.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Simple... because Harmony Gold is counting on Robotech fans' belief that everything touched by Carl Macek is solid gold to make this into something appealing. Apparently "everything touched by" extends to his wife, which is creepy as hell when you think about it.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, it was a dead horse fifteen pages ago, now we're flogging the cans of dog food that used to be that horse... but I'm sure the dog food did something to deserve it. I'm not surprised Harmony Gold is unwilling to spell out where the money is going. To date, the only people who've been willing to comment on the actual sales of anything Robotech have been former employees who no longer feel any obligation to the company line that Robotech is "selling gangbusters". Most of the cash would probably go to attorney's fees to ensure everyone signs some ridiculously convoluted NDA and checking to make sure every little thing won't get them sued six ways to hell. Where it becomes tragic is that they actually believe this is a thing people want... poorly-drawn knockoff Macross art signed by Carl's widow, who was responsible for the meme-inspiringly awful artwork in the book it's from. Of course the number of backers has continued to drop off sharply, to the point of almost being in single digits... this is their idea of an incentive, and that's awful. (I wonder if it's just a coincidence that the bottom fell out around the time they posted the FAQ?)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Fleets have been shown to have both civilian and military leadership... for instance, the titular fleet in Macross 7 was led by both Colonel Maximilian Jenius and Mayor Milia Jenius. The 117th Research Fleet wasn't a colony fleet (which would've been led by a civilian government) or a military taskforce (which would've been led by a Colonel or General). It was, as the name suggests, out there for the purposes of carrying out scientific research, so who better to call the shots than the program's lead researcher, our gal Mao. It's not... it's a misinterpretation of the bit in her Macross Zero character sheet that calls her the leader of the 117th Research fleet.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Harmony Gold couldn't do it before the lawsuit either, as pointed out (amusingly enough) by Carl Macek himself as one of the main reasons for redesigning every character in Robotech II: the Sentinels in an interview he did in 1995. Looking back at that, these people used to be capable of basic honesty back before 1999-2001... I wonder what changed.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    No... it's an attempt Harmony Gold made at an all-original Robotech series that suffered from such monumentally incompetent planning and execution that even Harmony Gold can't (and doesn't!) defend it as anything other than a MASSIVE mistake. It's lasting proof that, among other things, Carl Macek's "creative vision" was in dire need of some corrective lenses. That was his baby, and it threw some harsh light on the way that he was actually kind of rubbish when he wasn't leaning on someone else's intellectual property. The Shadow Chronicles art book has, in its foreword, what amounted to an apology for it being such a wretchedly awful idea... Not wishing to derail this thread by getting into the heavy matters of the actual troublemakers there, it's not Big West who did the bridge burning. Harmony Gold did a lot of scummy and questionably legal and ethical things to keep Macross out of the US, and it's come back to bite them in the ass time and time again. The deadlocked situation's only really going to be resolved when the Robotech franchise finally implodes. That's the reason a lot of Robotech fans are giving for not backing the Kickstarter... they feel that Harmony Gold using Kickstarter to beg the fans to fund Robotech Academy's development because the series concept is so surpassingly awful that they couldn't even successfully pitch it to their own management. Even among the faithful, there's the sense that if this doesn't take off it'll end up being Robotech's last gasp before its long-overdue end.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno, this does look like something an Ork speed freek cult would knock together, starship-wise. Pound for pound, it's looks to be principally engine... all it's missing is the red paintjob, because we all know red 'uns go faster! Because they have to stay away from making anything too obviously derivative of any designs owned, in part or in full, by Big West... and Big West was involved in both Macross and Southern Cross. It's a distressingly literal application of "damned if you do, damned if you don't", but clearly they're smart enough to realize that it's NOT better to ask forgiveness than permission if the retribution comes in the form of a career-ending lawsuit. Macross II: Lovers Again was developed under the sponsorship of Macross co-owner Big West, meaning they could freely make derivative designs based on the stuff that was designed for Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and Macross: Flashback 2012. It had some minor limitations on what could be done, according to creator interviews, but it wasn't anything like the kind of epic no-touch list that Harmony Gold has to contend with for Robotech. What makes you assume those two things are mutually exclusive? The most passionate, devoted Robotech fans are typically the ones who are the most fanatical and in the deepest denial about its failings and limitations. That zealous devotion leads them to act like complete bellends. So, yes... they ARE bad guys, but they're a-holes because they're loyal to "infinity and beyond" and have no patience or tolerance for anyone who isn't as deeply in denial as they are or who dares to question their rose-tinted, heavily warped view of reality. If you stay the hell away from the subject of Robotech, some of them are almost inoffensive. There are some who undeservingly get tarred with the same brush. Tommy Yune's actually an OK guy if you talk to him away from the convention panels and crap like that, and even Steve Yun's not bad. Tom Bateman was far and away the most personable one of them, though.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, but we had to endure Robotech-Minmei's caterwauling like a canary being given a barbed wire enema as punishment for it. Just my take on it, as someone who's actually had to go over the Shadow Chronicles production materials once or twice, but to me it looks like a conscious effort to make something roughly analogous to the Macross Quarter-class carrier from Macross Frontier... but with an aesthetic that combines traits from the Oberth-class from Macross and the Shimakaze-class gunships from Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. To me, the end result came up looking like the unholy lovechild of the METEOR system out of Gundam SEED and the Roger Young from the Starship Troopers OVA that Studio Nue did. The problem is that, by trying to meld those aesthetics, they've come up with something absolutely hideous that looks like it was hacked together by Orks.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Burn the heretic! (Just kidding ) While I applaud your optimism, I can't help but feel a little bad that you're likely to get it in the shorts if this thing actually ends up getting made. With amateurs and idiots behind it, the quality is going to be pretty awful. Worse than RTSC for sure. Also, to be entirely fair, every Robotech sequel except Robotech 3000 has been repackaging Robotech into something lame and unrecognizable. Robotech: the Movie repackaged Megazone 23 into something painful to watch, even just visually, because the spliced in footage was on smaller film stock. Robotech II: the Sentinels tried to repackage Robotech as equal parts Star Trek and Lost in Space led by a cast of expies of Macross characters. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles tried to repackage Robotech as a mixture of Macross: Do You Remember Love? and Battlestar Galactica, and Robotech: Love Live Alive was just a mangled version of MOSPEADA: Love Live Alive I dunno man, the Shadow Chronicles was a pretty limited concept since the idea was to plunge humanity right into a fourth war as soon as the third one was done so they could play bait-and-switch with "Rick Hunter", and using him as the draw was the whole reason they made the thing at all. As far as "Macek's vision"... well, there's a lot less actual vision there than most folks credit him with (a lot of decisions were forced on the project by simple necessity or by Revell), but at least that's a damn sight more respect than he's getting from Harmony Gold right now. At least you're being rational about the backing of the pilot, I can't imagine how PO'd the people who threw five grand at it would be when it doesn't get picked up. Yeah, MEMO is a moderator there... he's one of two chiefly responsible for the place being a ghost town.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Probably because they're desperate for cash... Kicktraq has been predicting failure pretty consistently, and by an ever-increasing margin. They were probably hoping Macross fans would be eager to self-identify as loathing Robotech to troll the Kickstarter (the popular Robotech fanatic fanboy's dismissive stereotype of the "Macross purist troll") that they'd gain some ground.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Development is additive, and today's creators in the anime industry are people who grew up with classic shows. Even Macross's creators were Gundam fanboys. They take the parts they like and develop them in new and different ways. This is, for all of the design's supreme hideousness and clumsy execution, no different. So far, Kicktraq is still predicting failure by an ever-increasing margin, though, and that would lend credence to what I've seen on various sites where the "previews" of concept art are serving to further divide an already mutually-hostile fanbase.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Only if you've already lost your faith in humanity... otherwise it's just intensely depressing.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    ... are those... drills... in its engine nozzles? The UEEF's given up on protoculture in favor of spiral energy now?
  24. Seto Kaiba
    To be entirely fair, the Robotech fans don't really have much left to them besides the seething, unfocused rage of the "betrayed" fans, many of whom were backers on the other Kickstarter that's turned into such a PR disaster, or the blind faith of the fanatical fans who believe that one day the stars will align just so and magical space radiation will shower down on us to transform RT into something commercially viable for the first time in its history. Also, as much as I'd love to agree with you in principle that spewing "nerd rage" to the public isn't going to influence anyone to do anything, I have to admit that in this case it might actually be achieving something. The fans nerd-raged about what a bad idea it is and how it demonstrated Harmony Gold had so little confidence in this they wouldn't fund it themselves, and it persuaded a fair few other Robotech fans not to back it. So, in some small way, the nerd rage is actually accomplishing something... to the extent that Harmony Gold shills are trying to get various fansites to lock threads where people are speaking critically of the Kickstarter's content because they're convinced it's hurting the Kickstarter itself.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Simple answers: Palladium forums: Because many of the users there care not at all for Robotech as a series, and are only interested in the RPG for its own sake (in a way, that makes them the smartest Robotech fans, since they aren't holding out hope for a comeback). Some are misled about it thanks to having only read the brief, heavily distorted summaries of the legal situation put out there by Harmony Gold shills like MEMO, but those are few and far between. That's also where the Southern Cross wishful thinkers in denial hang out, so there's a little denial in play too. Robotech.com: No, we can't... because anyone who was sane and knew what they were talking about was banned by both Mav and MEMO for contradicting the aforementioned distortions. If you start making good sense, you get banned for "causing pain and suffering" (presumably to Kevin). Kickstarter: Doing more to dissuade Robotech fans from continuing to support Robotech than any reasoned argument we could put to them... MacrossWorld: We're so used to Harmony Gold having zero originality in its material that naturally MacrossWorld users are going to look first to where the idea could potentially have been drawing its "inspiration" from. (In short, "What shows are they ripping off this time?", since last time around it was Battlestar Galactica's remake and DYRL?.) *shrug* From the design cues it appears to borrow from MOSPEADA designs, there is at least some evidence to suggest this is going to be used in a fashion similar to the Macross Quarter (a small, highly mobile carrier with a small crew and a large forward anti-ship cannon and a small fighter complement). I don't think it visually resembles anything from Macross though.
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