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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    My guess would be that we're probably getting close to the saturation point... Robotech's fanbase is very small, and has relatively few convention-goers. One of the recurring themes you'll hear if you talk to people who AREN'T drinking Harmony Gold's kool-aid about their convention panels is that the single largest group of attendees is usually people trying to get a good seat for whatever presentation has the room next. I doubt that'll contribute much towards their quota. Either way, the resounding lack of enthusiasm many Robotech fan groups have expressed for the project is, in its own way, being felt by the Kickstarter. The KS comments page is halfway to a full-blown flame war, and there are a small number of fans who are supportive of the project trying to get various forums to lock the threads full of criticism for the idea, asserting (perhaps correctly) that the overwhelmingly negative reaction is dissuading people who are on the fence from backing it.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    What's really telling is that over the past few days, the size of the average contribution has been steadily trending downward. Two days ago, when computed without the three significant outlying values, the mean donation was approximately $49.98. Last night, it was $46.32. That tells us that, while they are bringing in new backers at a trickle, those new backers aren't giving nearly as generously to the project as the first-ins did. To date, I've only seen one person seriously attempt to defend the Kickstarter or the ideas therein... and that's one of those nuts who's a frothy-mouthed fanatic who's likely just responding to the surprising and welcome hope expressed by some Robotech fans that this failure will convince Harmony Gold to either sell the franchise to someone who can actually develop it better or at least relinquish their stranglehold on Macross. My good chum, what makes you think that hasn't already happened? The Robotech live-action movie has every appearance of a license that was only taken out so Warner Bros could sit on it and do nothing.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That might be true for the older fans among us, but the younger ones were introduced to anime and/or mecha through other, less obnoxious shows. Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED are cited a lot among younger fans as their gateway to mecha anime, which they typically encountered on cable television. For me, it was arguably a mixture of Macross II and Escaflowne. You wouldn't be alone in not liking Southern Cross... even Robotech fans can't stomach it, which is hilariously tragic considering that its Robotech adaptation is the centerpiece of the Robotech story. But hey, it was bad enough to get canned in Japan when barely half done, so...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It's more linear in the sense that each "saga" theoretically follows directly on from the previous one, with recurring characters and so on. You boil down the Robotech fanbase's wishlist as far as future stories go and you'll find the overwhelming majority of them don't give a tinker's damn about the characters that Robotech inherited from Southern Cross or MOSPEADA. What they're really after isn't a new generation of characters or any of that bull... what they want is the continuing adventures of "Rick Hunter" and all the other Macross Saga characters. That's why they keep coming back to wanting the Sentinels to be revisited... because that's exactly what that was, the continuing adventures of the Macross Saga cast with some original characters who were largely just watered down copies of the cast of the Macross Saga (something the "movie" hangs a lampshade on in one of its very first scenes). Quite a few Robotech fans have trouble migrating to Macross because they've spent so long having Harmony Gold dangle that particular carrot over their heads... so when they find out that Macross's sequels feature new casts and leave the characters of the original series alone after they earn their ending, they're a little disappointed. Then, of course, you've got the few fans who suffer from a case of reactionary-butthurt, where they hate Macross and everything associated with it because they're Masters Saga fans who are bitter about that saga's status as the un-favorite and distant third place to Macross even in Harmony Gold's eyes.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yeah... but you have to consider that the overwhelming majority absolutely hated it. So much so, in fact, that the moderators over on Robotech.com ended up banning or otherwise driving away much of the site's member population with their efforts to suck up to Tommy Yune by banning his critics. The desperate fans who will take anything with the word "Robotech" on the box are the dregs left over from that purge... the fans who are so deep in denial you wouldn't put buying one of Tommy's turds in a box past them if they slapped the word "Robotech" onto the box and issued a limited edition certificate with it.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, since Big West has at least partial ownership of Southern Cross as well due to their role in financing it, Harmony Gold is either unable or unwilling to risk using intellectual property from that one as well. The only two Southern Cross holdovers that've appeared in new animation have received some pretty heavy makeovers and they've gone well out of their way to avoid showing any Southern Cross mecha and even stuck not!Jeanne into a MOSPEADA riding suit instead of her distinctive arming doublet in their new animation for Love Live Alive. It's just not clear how much of their reluctance to use that material is "We can't", "We don't want to risk it", and "Why would anyone want to?" respectively, since they freely admit that the "Robotech Masters" saga is far and away the least beloved of the fanbase.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Because, after over a decade of being lied to by Harmony Gold, the Robotech fans often mistakenly attribute a lot of things that had been present in the originals to the "creative vision" of Carl Macek... and because, at this point, they're so desperate for a new Robotech ANYTHING that many have discarded any pretense of having standards. That's what the Kickstarter is obviously banking on, that the fans will be SO excited at the prospect of anything new with the Robotech name on it that they'll throw huge sums of money Harmony Gold's way without thinking twice.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    EDIT: Okay, this post was entirely too maudlin originally... Let's just say that there are a lot of people in the Robotech fandom with really desperately terrible pattern recognition skills... it's too depressing to contemplate the alternative.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, I suggested that back on page 1... though I also suggested that it could spell the end for Robotech in general, since one of the few things keeping the fans around is the (false) promise of continuing the story in animation.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    You'll note that the version of the Sentinels media being released now is actually not the same as the one they were putting out years back... IINM they've excised any Macross footage that was used in it. Part of the reason they're able to get away with the Sentinels as a re-release is because it's so old and Big West didn't challenge it decades ago, but it's mostly because they actually did make more than a slight effort to redesign the characters and they never got far enough to use the potentially legally contentious designs like the ripoff destroids. It's also worth remembering that 20 years ago, Harmony Gold hadn't yet soured relations with the owners of Macross, so now they're much more cautious about what they use and how they use it to avoid a lawsuit. Comic books are legally merchandise, so that much they're allowed to do under the terms of their license from Tatsunoko. That's also why Harmony Gold used a comic to put every last potentially problematic character who was still recognizable in any way (like Britai and Minmay) into a grave or on a bus before they rolled out the Shadow Chronicles "movie". The only characters who were allowed to remain were ones who'd been redesigned such that they were completely unrecognizable.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    They tried that once, in the failed Robotech II: the Sentinels series... and that kind of minimal redesign is still straying dangerously close to a copyright infringement lawsuit. That's why, when they went to do Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, they made sure all the returning characters - even those that would only be appearing in the comic book - were all but entirely unrecognizable so the owners of the Macross IP wouldn't find cause for a lawsuit. That's why "Rick Hunter" in the Shadow Chronicles now looks rather like Hideo Kuze and has none of the distinguishing traits that the original Mikimoto character design had. "Lisa" also already got a redesign for the comic, and she's just another woman who's got the same generic pornstar body as all the women Tommy draws and couldn't be picked out of a crowd of one unless you had been told beforehand it was supposed to be her. Characters with more distinctive appearances, such as Britai, Exsedol, Max, and Milia were killed off or "put on a bus" because a redesign is still pretty risky... especially for the latter two, who are some of Macross's most-recurring characters. The "VF-4 Lightning" you think you see there is actually a AF-03 from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, which has a similar shape, but does not transform. (If you've seen MOSPEADA, you'll remember this as the fighter Yellow Belmont crashed on Earth in.) No... the truly staggering amount of legal baggage the Robotech franchise already carries, coupled with the bad press from all of their various jackass behavior, would probably be enough to put almost any network off the series no matter how good it was. As the production staff are literal amateurs, the writers pathetically inexperienced, and the company behind it painfully out of touch in the industry, the chances of it getting green-lit are slightly worse than those of the Earth spontaneously stopping mid-spin to toss everyone into space. There's a very good reason they won't revisit the Sentinels concept... it's too risky, from a copyright perspective. They're staying well clear of anything overtly Macross wherever possible, because they know they've soured relations with Big West bigtime. The idea of doing a series set between two of the sagas derived from Big West-owned material is akin to suicide, and just trying to use the characters the fans would expect to see in that ungainly mess would be navigating a legal minefield with very little chance that they'll come out intact. Sentinels is off the table eternally because there's just too much danger of provoking a lawsuit... they'll never put it in those terms, but they're adamant that they will not be revisiting the Sentinels series come hell or high water and it doesn't take a genius to see why. As far as stories revolving around Zor and the "Robotech Masters", that runs into two problems... the first being that the fans are going to expect to see things Harmony Gold can't legally use like the Zentradi. The second is that the Masters Saga is, per what Harmony Gold's own staff and licensees have had to say, is far and away the least popular part of Robotech. A lot of fans simply loathe the whole saga on principle, to the extent that Toynami won't do Masters Saga toys because they're convinced they won't sell. If the goal is to "give the people what they want", then anything involving the Masters is demonstrably what they don't... at least, as far as any objectively measurable evidence is concerned (e.g. polling data).
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The key difference there, terry, is that while old Gene might've been a little nuts... at least his ideas were his and there were some decent people behind their execution who knew how to moderate and distill his insanity into something palatable. Neither of those has ever been true for Robotech. Especially Robotech II: the Sentinels, as that was practically paint-by-numbers in its completely generic sci-fi setting and they STILL screwed it up horribly. When your strongest story concept is something that leads to you firing experienced writers for telling you it doesn't make sense, it's time to consider a change of career.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Well, they have to budget for all the time they're going to waste "promoting" the pilot by adding a few slides to that one PowerPoint slideshow they've been working from since 2004 and flying themselves all over hell's half-acre to hold convention panels to show it to the half-dozen fans who care enough to attend each one. All that airfare, hotel accommodation, etc. costs money. Though, being serious for a moment, they'll probably end up spending a significant portion of that money on the voice cast... the old voice cast are reportedly SAG members now, so they command a much higher payscale than when they were working for HG back in the day. Oh, it has one piece... I think. it's in an update on the Kickstarter, but it's of a posthumous character (Zor). Harmony Gold is notoriously stingy when it comes to preproduction art, the whole Shadow Chronicles project only released a few pieces in one issue of Newtype USA the entire time the film was in production. Two or three other pieces of concept art were put out on the net by a Robotech.com moderator who received them in confidence from Tommy, but between those two events that's less than ten pieces total.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the Robotech fans seem to have learned from getting burned so badly on the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter WRT quality, timeliness of delivery, lies upon lies, so it's not inconceivable that a few more significant burns and they might actually learn that supporting Robotech is a massive waste of time and money that nets them nothing in return but the contempt of the company they're supporting.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it wasn't their Kickstarter, for one... it was done by Palladium Books. Near as anyone can tell, the reason that it did so well (at first) was that it was being supported by not just Robotech fans, but Palladium Books' fans, and BattleTech fans who wanted miniatures to use for the "Unseen" mecha. 'course, now that it's over a year behind schedule, the backers have been lied to so many times you could reclassify this as a Presidential election, the quality of the minis has been condemned very vocally, and a whole lot of bad press has basically ensured there will not be an expansion... let alone a repeat performance.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, when you think about it, this is actually cause for TREMENDOUS good cheer. Harmony Gold is clearly desperate and at the end of their rope as far as keeping Robotech limping along goes. If the Robotech Academy project ends in disaster, as it almost certainly will, this could possibly be the final straw for Robotech that gets them out of Macross's way in the US... or at least makes them more receptive to coordinating Macross releases on Big West's terms. Let's hope 2015 will be the end of an error, and the start of an era.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    So Palladium claims... but everyone involved knows that's a load. It's already over a year late, and won't be ready for at least a few more months, never mind the quality issues. What made it a debacle is the massive PR fiasco it turned into because of the game's lateness, the perceived inadequacy of the response to the quality issues, the lack of clear direction, and the many times Palladium lied to the backers and then got caught in those lies courtesy of their own news posts. That feeling of betrayal they'd fostered so well in the hearts of the backers has effectively killed any future potential the game might've had... and if the couple comments posted on the Robotech Academy Kickstarter are any indication, poisoned the well both for future expansions and for this new Robotech Kickstarter.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    From their pitch, which is mostly "This was Carl Macek's idea, honest!" it sounds like a series made entirely out of the Wesley episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Yep, a little late in the year for an April Fools' joke... though anyone not suffering a recent head wound could be forgiven for thinking it really was one. Put bluntly... because Robotech is a much-maligned virtual non-entity with an unbroken track record of abject failure, owned by a company that treats it like a hobby because it's a money pit with a minimal return-on-investment under the best plausible working conditions and accordingly won't throw any more than the absolute bare minimum budget at it. None of those things are going to attract any professional who's actually qualified to do the jobs they need done. That's why Harmony Gold's Robotech staff is made up on ascended fanboys with largely irrelevant skill sets... because nobody who isn't already a fan would be foolish enough to think that was a career with ANY future potential. People go into a business like cinema hoping for fame and fortune, not ridicule and a paycheck that barely covers SoCal's cost of living. If this is, in fact, a case of Frank Agrama having no confidence or faith in the "creative staff", who could possibly argue that lack of faith is unwarranted?
  20. Seto Kaiba
    No problemo. I was a little disappointed that they didn't throw the Macross II valks in as an extra, or the VF-4 at the very least. I could cheerfully do without the other M3 valkyries. Still, it was nice that they cheerfully threw in a bunch of designs from the 1st and 2nd Macross Frontier movies and even made the Macross Frontier version of the Ghost a (technically) usable craft. All in all, I thought it was a great game. (It's the whole reason I own a PS3.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... it was, on paper anyway. The Shadow Chronicles "movie" was supposed to be the first episode of what would be either a 3- or 4-part OVA, but the development and production of the second episode was put on indefinite hiatus almost right away because they convinced themselves that the proposed live-action movie would make Robotech a hot Hollywood property and land them an actual budget via outside investors. Didn't work, as you probably guessed, so the second episode probably won't ever come out.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Nope... they seem to have skipped a few where convenient, because the characters are drawn from specific time periods and they're flying what are roughly appropriate mecha from those points in their respective home storylines. The Macross M3 character mecha and VF-17 were apparently left out because Max, Milia, and Gamlin are from the late Macross 7 period, after which point all three are flying VF-22s.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Alas, no... none of the mecha that Max and Milia had in Macross M3 are available in-game. The table jumps from the VF-1 Valkyrie right on up to the VF-11B Thunderbolt. Consequentially, that means no VF-3000, VF-5000, VF-4, VF-9, or VF-14. They also left out the VF-17 Nightmare, though they included a few VF-17 paintjobs (Diamond Force, Milia's VF-17S) as paint options on the VF-171 Nightmare Plus. The VF-19F/S Super Pack is also MIA.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Oh for pity's sake... When people suggested that Harmony Gold try funding more Robotech via Kickstarter, they were being sarcastic. It's one thing to have Harmony Gold's own staff tell people that their management thinks Robotech is such a wasted investment that they won't even put their own money behind it unless they absolutely have to, and then to see proof that they've given up hoping that someone else would come along and agree to fund their mess. It's quite another to see that they've finally given up any pretense of that godawful mess being successful and are now begging fans to fund the next wretched abortion because they can't even make a sound business case to themselves. I wonder if the remaining Robotech fans are really gullible enough to fund that mess, since the Robotech tabletop game kickstarter's turned into a goddamn fiasco. They probably are, and that's just tragic. Also, a 2015 target release date? Pfft... yeah right. These clowns missed their own release target for their last planned sequel by... seven years and counting?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno... but they certainly offer some practical benefits when it comes to handling large livestock, wouldn't you say? A hippocow's bunny-sized to them. They probably have other uses in terms of heavy labor that would otherwise have to be done by destroids or heavy and cumbersome construction equipment.
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