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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Where that matters for projects like Robotech Academy is that it can't be chalked up to simple coincidence... because there IS a demonstrable link to the original designs. Copyright law with respect to derivative works is a bit of a mess when it comes to there being provable violations, but it's not something a company in Harmony Gold's situation wants to take chances with. It's actually something Carl Macek identified as a significant problem with Robotech sequel development in an interview he did for Robocon 10 that was published in the Summer '95 run of Robotech comics. Trying to make the characters separate and distinct from the copyrighted source material while also preserving some semblance of connection to who they're supposed to be isn't an easy balancing act for properties built on someone else's IP. Harmony Gold's non-answer as to why they totally redesigned all of their returning characters that weren't from MOSPEADA made no sense, but it makes perfect sense if you look to Macek's candid explanation from '95, and factor in the souring of relations between Harmony Gold and Big West. If it wasn't an issue, why did they even give a facelift and new uniform to Emerson when the ASC is still a thing and he doesn't survive the 2nd war?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... my read of it was essentially a (brief) acknowledgement of what Macross II's prequels suggested. Namely, that the Zentradi (and Meltrandi) military hardware isn't necessarily uniform across the entire galaxy. Some fleets have slightly different variants of the same designs (like the Nousjadeul-Ger and Queadluun-Rau), or even whole families of mecha other fleets don't get. In short, that both versions exist and are in service at the same time, and what version a fleet has depends on what factory they're getting them from.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Copyright-wise, it's all a question of how close his appearance is to the original Macross designs by Mikimoto. They redesigned him once for Robotech II: the Sentinels, but there were still some visible cues to who it was supposed to be (his crestlike hairdo), even though his wardrobe was different. Ever since their legal slip-up in the early 00's, they don't seem to think even that major redesign from Robotech II is far enough from the original to be "safe", hence the use of Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles to go dispose of anyone too familiar to use and present totally new, nothing-in-common redesigns of the ones who were too important for them to dispose of. The familiar-but-distinct thing is ALWAYS a legal minefield. The problem is that, given the overwhelmingly negative reaction to those redesigns on Robotech.com and elsewhere, their new look didn't go over well. It left them in a pretty awkward place, so they have a choice between taking a risk and making him look more like his Mikimoto origins or keeping his Hideo Kuze-clone look and alienating the long-time fans who are the ones doing all the funding of the project. Looking at what they've done with Emerson, their attempt to Macross-ize the design (or at least his uniform), it definitely makes me think that "Rick" won't put in much of an appearance. All to the better, the fans'll feel less betrayed if Harmony Gold doesn't go for bait-and-switch again and focuses mainly on the new cast. They tend to miss the characterization when it comes to the holdovers from the show. EDIT: On a related front, why aren't they trying to create an original ship design based on the Southern Cross aesthetic the way they did for the Shadow Chronicles movie with a MOSPEADA-esque ship? That seems like a no-brainer, but instead they made that ugly mess...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I've noticed that as well... there's been some noise on a few sites about Harmony Gold saying some of the money was going to be used for a feasibility study for a series, which has apparently spiraled into awkward questions both on Robotech.com and on the Kickstarter page about how the money will be used and why they're asking for so much. That one estimate that only $150k was actually needed to produce an episode gets quoted a lot in those discussions. I'm not sure if it would actually affect the pledge rate... the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter seems to have done a LOT of damage on that front.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That's the fun part... they're ALL Harmony Gold's. Just at varying levels of "revisionist history" over the years. The one that I'm referring to is the oldest version, back before they started in with the retroactive arse-covering. Their original claim was that the Tatsunoko-supplied writers couldn't get their heads around the Robotech version of things, and tried to address the problem by relating everything to the original shows instead. Every version of every failure story ultimately gets progressively revised by them to make them look better and displace blame to other parties. A few years ago they changed their tune from "Robotech: the Untold Story did poorly with test audiences" to "the test audiences loved it but the distributor didn't". Kinda makes me wonder how they're going to try and dress the Robotech Academy failure up. They almost always tart the flops up with something about how it was a fantastic idea brought down by circumstance. It's gonna be hard to put a bow on a lack of support from the backers in the likely event they don't break $500k (and projections suggest they might not even break $300k!). Will they blame Creavision for not faithfully executing Carl's vision? Will they blame the backers for not supporting it enough? Or will they actually admit fault on their part for once?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    That would explain why SideKick's chart has so many ups and downs... the metrics they use there are supposed to be based, in part, on the way the individual backers have contributed on Kickstarter campaigns (their ability to "pick a winner"?) as well as the exposure they give to the project on communities like Twitter. Considering how many Kickstarter campaigns fail, it might be fair to just lump them under "suckers". *sigh* What part of "Harmony Gold's own account" didn't sink in? Having to constantly correct you is getting tiresome and largely isn't relevant to this thread (and thus is irking the OP). Let it go, man. You don't know what you're talking about.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Since a lot of this is being rehashed on the Kickstarter's comments page, complete with all the vitriol and half-truths that Harmony Gold usually brings to such discussions, they're not likely to stay ignorant for long. The hostility on the comments section is very likely helping drive down the number of backers AND discourage backers from increasing their pledges.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Back then, Harmony Gold was making a concerted effort to revamp Robotech and the public perception of same to make it into a moderately credible mecha anime franchise. Now that they've realized they're no damn good at creating original material and the general public is smart enough not to mistake their nonsense for real anime, they're backpedaling somewhat. They're trying for a "By the fans, for the fans" sort of vibe now, which is generally seen as a bad sign for a franchise. Robotech: Love Live Alive is not a stand-alone release, in order to sell it they had to package it with RTSC. Case closed. Also, what you heard is wrong. Even Harmony Gold's own account from the 80s indicated that the writers supplied by Tatsunoko couldn't get their heads around the Robotech plot and, in frustration, tried to relate everything to the original three shows. Yeah, that seems likely... after all, Rick Hunter is probably the most dangerous character they could use, legally-speaking. This is exactly the kind of bait-and-switch routine they pulled with Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. They advertised it as being the "big reveal" of Rick Hunter's fate and his return to the series, then had his only role be to have a few seconds of dialog via a viewscreen and then promptly disappear again so the fans desire to know what happened to him wouldn't be sated, robbing the franchise of one of the few questions keeping the fans watching. The best part is that the backers are likely wise to this game in the wake of RTSC, so it won't improve things much. Robotech Academy will likely have Rick say a few words over the radio, and then sail off to parts unknown... which is probably for the best, because Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles' comic flanderized him into a naive dumbass. I remain amused that the Kicktraq projections continue to trend downwards while Harmony Gold is acting like this is already a done deal... they're estimated to only make about 75% of their target now, as opposed to 80% just two days ago. The projection of the backer contributions has them potentially barely breaking $250k. Part of me suspects that the Robotech fanbase is actually a lot wiser to Harmony Gold's game than Harmony Gold thinks, and every subsequent update is giving them progressively colder feet about putting more money into it.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Debatable, but I would be inclined to agree with it... on the following grounds: Honestly, this is the one case where I honestly think that Robotech did something other than sh*t all over the source material. No bones about it, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross was an OFFENSIVELY awful show, and shouldn't have even been allowed to run as long as it did. (What information exists suggests it got canned a little more than halfway into what was down to be a 39 episode run.) Robotech didn't really "improve" the story, but they did manage to make the characters more tolerable by eliminating or glossing over some of the more egregiously awful characterization choices by the original creators. Jeanne was a complete airhead who shamelessly admitted to having no goal beyond "Marriage is a woman's happiness". She tells the viewers she joined the army purely because she thought it'd be a good place to snag a good husband, and would quit as soon as she'd done so. Her acting out was simply because she was an ass. The rewrite made her more tolerable by tying her into characters people didn't loathe (Max and Milia Jenius from Macross) and giving her a REASON for her acting out and the lenient treatment she got from the military police (abandonment issues courtesy of her famous parents). It also minimized her sudden and total loss of competence once they brought over Seifreitti (RT: Zor Prime). Southern Cross made its female characters into chauvinistic stereotypes of women... you have the good little housewife-in-waiting (Jeanne, for whom this is apparently meant to be a positive trait), the man-hating career woman (Lana, for whom this is clearly meant to be a BAD thing), and the amazonian woman who loses her edge because she falls in love (Marie). These were toned way the hell down or eliminated, and they even applied a motivation to the Zor Lords, who had never really got the chance to properly explain why the wanted the protozor so badly in the original show. Macek didn't make it better, but he did spackle over a lot of the plot holes left by the show's cancellation and a lot of the offensive idiocy in the series on the part of its leading ladies. That's something, at least. Didn't help it much though, since the Masters Saga is still the Robotech fandom's un-favorite (something Harmony Gold readily admits, and Toynami has used as a reason to not make Southern Cross-based merchandise). This, of course, poses a problem for them with projects like Shadow Chronicles and Robotech Academy... because people expect some of these Masters Saga characters to still be around. They don't want to actually USE them, but they have to throw a nod or two that direction or the fans'll bite them in the ass over it. In this case, they're throwing one of the least offensive characters from the Masters Saga at this project... General Emerson.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Indeed there are... in fact, you can find a good one on this very site.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Then apparently you never read his Robotech.com fan interview... because in there, he talks at some length about how Macross is such a flawed series, and proceeds to claim that Macross's creators think Robotech is superior to their own work to the extent that they allegedly base future Macross sequels off Robotech instead.* It's pure horseshit, but as inconsistent as he is about the views he has on the originals, you have to wonder whether that's his honest (deluded) opinion or he's simply a sockpuppet for what Harmony Gold was trying to do to discourage Robotech fans from exploring Macross more. * That claim of his, that Macross is taking pointers from Robotech and de-emphasizing the role of music and so on is rich in comedic irony once you notice the most recent titles at the time he wrote that were all from the Macross 7 story arc. Perhaps you're confused as to the definition of "stand-alone"... because what you just described is not stand-alone, it's a paired release with the Shadow Chronicles garbage. Stand-alone would be if it was release... well... on its own. Not everyone, but it's more common with the Robotech Masters Saga than anywhere else... probably because Southern Cross is not a show that many people have any love for, and therefore there's no pressure to make a distinction between the two like they do for Macross and The Macross Saga. These days, fans seem to make a conscious effort to differentiate between Robotech's Macross Saga and Macross proper, which leads to a lot less confusion now that awareness of Macross is on the rise thanks to Macross Frontier and the ready availability of fansubs. Admittedly, the abbreviations can get confusing... since they sometimes shorten the Robotech Masters Saga to "The Masters Saga", but abbreviate it RMS, and use TMS for "The Macross Saga".
  12. 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%.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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?).
  17. 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.
  18. 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?
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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?)
  25. 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.
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