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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Funnily enough, several folks on the Kickstarter called him on it, saying pretty much exactly that... "If you had the distribution rights to the rest of Macross, you wouldn't be f'ing around with this Kickstarter nonsense". It's kind of a pathetic knee-jerk effort to silence the increasingly vocal protests against Harmony Gold forcing no-export-for-you status on Macross when they can't do anything useful with Robotech. I guess tomorrow we'll see what the wages of sin are. Not the first time someone in this thread has drawn a parallel to North Korean propaganda... it seems like, just as in North Korea, the ones writing and disseminating the propaganda have an unrealistically low opinion of everyone else's intelligence. Unlike the North Koreans, it seems Harmony Gold isn't clear on how this "internet" thing they keep hearing about lets just about any idiot off the street find enough information to poke their claims full of holes.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    They're pretty committed to the lie too... McKeever's still trying to sell the people protesting that Harmony Gold needs to get out of the way of Macross licensing on the old lie that they own the distribution rights to ALL of Macross's sequels and derivatives. That alone reeks of a certain kind of desperation.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Update it for who? They've banned almost everyone who ever had an account on there, and most of the people who didn't get the banhammer got sick of their sh*t and left of their own accord. (It's so bad there that even Harmony Gold's high propagandist Kevin McKeever had to admit the only part of the site the higher-ups care about is the store, the rest is not worth spending money on, as their view reportedly goes.) Absolutely. We made, ironically enough, the exact same assumption about Robotech fans that Harmony Gold did... that they're no better than magpies with wallets, and live with a compulsion to collect anything with the word "Robotech" on it. Many of 'em bucked that particular stereotype when Robotech Academy was announced, though even the people on the Kickstarter have pointed some fingers at the "200 fans who'll buy anything". Some of them have lived down to our expectations, however. To me, there's nothing sad about Harmony Gold's persistent failure to accept reality. It was sad the first time they got carried away with their enthusiasm and misguided belief that they were clever and ran full-tilt into the brick wall of their own incompetence. Four or five further encounters with the exact same brick wall at top speed have robbed the situation of anything that might evoke a pity response. Their incompetence and refusal to believe that the anime industry doesn't work the same way it did back in 1985 have reduced their antics to the level of Wile E. Coyote... we watch them execute their absurd little plans knowing for a certainty that no matter what they do they'll never succeed. The only thing in question is how badly they're going to be hurt when it's all over. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, Harmony Gold is barking mad. Even if this gets made, it's guaranteed to end the same way as Shadow Chronicles. Why? Robotech Academy is supposed to be able to bring in a new generation of fans if it goes to air, but Robotech Academy is no ambassador. Every faction, plot point, and character has SOME contextually-vital connection to the original series... the original series that 99.9% of their target audience is not going to have any knowledge of. It's set as a side story to a series that was never animated, full of characters whose defining character trait is a tangential relationship to an absentee character or someone who was never characterized to begin with, and it relies on the audience having foreknowledge of the least popular saga of Robotech to know about or care who the antagonists in the series even are or why they think they can find what they're looking for on Earth. This isn't like Frontier, where having seen a lot of what came before was merely a bonus... for this mess, you need to have seen Robotech's original series AND seen or read some version of Robotech II: the Sentinels to have any idea who these people are or why you should care. This is the exact same problem they ran into with Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, where the "sibling nobody ever mentioned" main character was lambasted as an author-insert fantasy persona of Tommy Yune, and a cast full of expies did nothing at all to endear themselves to the audience.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Well, Harmony Gold's sunk a lot of time and energy over the last fourteen years into trying to condition Robotech fans to blindly and obediently buy anything and everything they arbitrarily slap the word "Robotech" on. They spent a bunch of time telling an assortment of hilariously transparent lies about Macross and the other original shows, and quietly endorsed the jackassery that their volunteer moderators and the stooges of those moderators were perpetrating by podcast. They worked damn hard to put the Robotech fans in an adversarial relationship with anime hobbyists in general and Macross fans in particular to maintain that captive audience of theirs. From the last mass-banning of their critics after Shadow Chronicles came out to the start of the Robotech Academy Kickstarter, things were looking like they'd actually succeeded. It seemed like Robotech fans were so desperate for something, ANYTHING with the Robotech name on it, that they'd buy garbage like Robotech: Love Live Alive or the crossover with Voltron and praise it like it was something with actual artistic integrity. That's why the large-scale mutinous muttering and widespread acrimony over the Robotech Academy Kickstarter came as such a profound shock. We're so used to Robotech fans desperately grasping at straws to find something praiseworthy about whatever laughably feeble mess Harmony Gold kicked out the door last that having them suddenly announce "No, this is rubbish and we're not going to support it or even pretend otherwise" was about the last thing anyone would've expected... never mind how the KS's comments section has devolved into a borderline flame war over the Macross embargo issue.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I'm straight-up nauseated by the way Harmony Gold is honestly hoping they'll be able to surf Carl's coffin to success. I didn't have much use for the man when he was alive, and I'm not a big believer in a due to the dead, but the way they're expecting the fans to empty their bank accounts "for Carl" is crossing the line twice. The old saying goes that when one finds oneself in a hole, the first thing one should do is to stop digging. Harmony Gold seems to be of the opinion that, upon finding themselves in a VERY deep hole, digging to China is easier than putting the shovel down and climbing out.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Hey, some nutter tossed in ten grand for the privilege of making "pew pew" laser noises into a microphone that Harmony Gold may or may not use... that alone is more backing than they've had in the last five days or so.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Because it's the Yamato from Space Battleship Yamato that's had the bow replaced with the main gun of the Macross from DYRL?. Real original, Creavision... I know I mocked the first ship design as blatant fanwankery, but they didn't have to live down to my expectations.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1381502542/robotech-academy/posts/923789 I think the comments section might be right when they suggested this is a desperation update.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Problem is, that "proposal" is basically the exact same completely unworkable idea that every Robotech fan has at some point... it's "what if we just remade the original series to be more like Macross?", though they usually don't put it in those exact terms. In reality, it's no more complete and even less workable than Robotech Academy. Academy may be a mess, but at least it's a technically non-infringing mess.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... it could pass on a technicality, since Robotech III: the Odyssey was Carl Macek's master plan for Robotech after Robotech II: the Sentinels was finished. It never formally entered development, but it's worth mentioning as a failure because it ending up as a non-starter basically signified the death of Carl Macek's grand ambitions for the animated Robotech series*. Thanks to a combination of factors torpedoing Macek's plans for Robotech II and beyond, we ended up stuck with crimes against animation like Robotech 3000 and the hopefully similarly-truncated Robotech Academy. * For once, I'm not being sarcastic here... even though the vast majority of Macek's ideas were absolutely terrible, the sheer scale of what he'd planned to do was nothing short of audacious. When you intend to make a series so vast every calendar day has its own episode, you're planning on a grand scale even if it is rubbish.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Just my two cents, but since it's literally McKeever's job to be the most vocal supporter as their marketing man and their de facto public relations schmuck, that might not be the best indicator that he's the originator of the idea. It would make a certain amount of sense if he was, since he was the one who (repeatedly) aired the "Harmony Gold won't fund development of a new series until they get an episode commitment from a network" thing on the Robotech.com forums a few years ago. Whoever the "guilty party" is, they must be sweating bullets right now. 17 days to go, and they only just achieved 1/3 of the total pledge amount they need to get this off the ground. Unless their panel at SDCC lights the world on fire, this will most likely meet with a premature end. To be honest, I think the industry figured that one out 'round about 1992... when articles in American anime magazines covering new Macross releases started to use phrases like "Forget Robotech" or only mentioned the Robotech portions of a side-by-side release of Robotech and the original shows as an afterthought. It'll definitely make Frank and Harmony Gold look bad... well... worse than they already do, anyway. Frank's reputation isn't what you'd call spotless and saintly ("acquittal! acquittal!", said the Harmony Gold parrot), but the Robotech staff have been doing an amazing job of making Harmony Gold look bad since at least 1999 thanks to some legendarily poor judgement. In all likelihood, it was the overwhelming runaway success of the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter that convinced them that the fans would be throwing fat stacks of cash at Harmony Gold over Robotech Academy. They probably should've looked at details other than the total take, since the RRT Kickstarter turned into an ongoing public relations disaster for Palladium Books that has reportedly deteriorated to the point of backers threatening legal action against Palladium and even exchanging death threats on the comments pages. Water from a poisoned well, as they say...
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Sir, I salute you. Sure they did, how else do you think they came up with Janice Em... or as many Robotech fans know her, Commander 36DData? That depends on a few different factors, as of PB's last update... namely, the speed with which the goods actually reach Palladium Books' offices in Westland, the amount of time they can spare to prepare the stuff for shipment, etc. So, thanks to the vagaries of international maritime shipping and overland shipping, and the serial laziness of Palladium, there's a possibility that no backers for RRT will get anything prior to Palladium selling their limited stock of airmailed material at GenCon. MOSPEADA probably would've done better, IMO, if it had kept the planned original emphasis on the titular mecha instead of going for a piece of the Macross transforming fighter toy profits with both hands and fumbling the original concept in the process. SDCC's looking like it's going to have to be one hell of a Hail Mary save if they want to pull this off... the 3% a day loss continues, with today's projected final total of just 63% ($316,302) and a high-low projection cone that is now entirely below $270k ($205,552 to $266,126). If this keeps up, they'll never make it to 50%, let alone 100%.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I... kinda do. It must have been one truly hilarious, sleep-deprived, 3:00 AM brainstorming session that led to someone on the staff saying "Y'know what this show needs? Sentient lemur fairy people." That must have been one hell of a trip. Hm... now there's another weird thought. Matchbox (Mattel) was bankrolling the development and production of the Robotech II: the Sentinels animated series. Wouldn't it be a kick if it turned out the reason Harmony Gold so consistently refuses to continue the Robotech II: the Sentinels series is because their contract with Matchbox is still valid? Wow... it's... a summation of the most pessimistic musings the Robotech fans have been talking over. Class of raw recruits who are expies of/rivals to existing characters (Sentinels) including the seemingly-mandatory generic prodigy and spunky action girl, lost in deep space on a ship the don't understand and unable to use their fold drive to get home (Macross Saga, Sentinels), and beset by aliens who just want their sh*t back (all of it). This makes Astro Plan and Space Gandam V look like masterpieces of original thought. As Robotech plots go, this is practically paint-by-numbers.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Er... forgive me for saying so, especially since I am probably the last person who should be correcting anyone about anything that appears in Star Wars, but that craft in the video has four cannons and only two intakes (or four semicircular intakes). The art I've found for the Z-95 on the Star Wars wiki "Wookiepedia" shows the stock Z-95 as having two cannons and four circular intakes like the stock X-Wing from the original trilogy. It looks a fair bit like this thing, which is apparently a very heavily modified custom Z-95, which seems to be derived from the same Ralph McQuarrie sketch as the craft in that YouTube video... the sketch in question was posted a few posts previous in that same Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/starwars/status/491274058323877888
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe, maybe not... or perhaps the winged fairy lemurs will be something important to them the way the original Sentinels had that Tirolian scientist obsessing over miniature purple shih tzus.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted. Like I said, I haven't really been paying attention to anything related to the new Star Wars flick... but that design's got my attention. Looks like a neat design, and I kinda like that "used future" look it's got going on. A little more streamlined than the old X-Wing, but not so much so that it ends up in "Raygun gothic" territory like the various Naboo craft out of the prequel trilogy. It still looks utilitarian and serviceable though, which is good. I didn't like how some of the prequel trilogy stuff looked like it had put looking cool ahead of being workable in a fight. (Of course, I know the square root of bloody nothing about Star Wars, for the most part... my exposure to it consisting entirely of the six movies, the Thrawn trilogy of novels, and the old X-Wing vs TIE Fighter PC game, so my experience with SW designs is very limited.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno, tribbles were always pretty passive trouble... and the flying monkeys were a good deal bigger. That thing puts me more in the mind of something that might've been exotic background fauna in something like Dunbine or Escaflowne, or at least on the cover of some progressive rock band's album. That's not to say it wouldn't be a real hoot if those adorable little things have been picking on the Robotech Masters... that'd be one step worse, humiliation-wise, than the Galactic Empire losing out to the frigging Ewoks.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe this'll mark me out as some kind of heretic, maybe it won't... but I think that design on the Twitter page is kinda cool lookin'. I've been ignoring the news about the new Star Wars movie(s) until now, but this actually has me vaguely curious to see what they're doing. Well played, Mr. Abrams... well played indeed. Also, I kinda liked the "weathered" look the Rebel aircraft had... having them look a little roughed-up made them feel more like something used by an outfit that wasn't overblessed with resources.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's hard to believe these things are supposed to be antagonists now... there are more menacing-looking Beanie Babies.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Behold, the Children of Zor... (Image source is the Robotech "Legacy Collection" DVD set by ADV Films, Extras disc No.3 "Elements of Robotechnology III" character animation model sheet gallery.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Because, shortly after the Shadow Chronicles was released on DVD they landed that live-action license agreement with Maguire Entertainment and apparently believed that Robotech was going to be receiving a fast-tracked big-budget live-action movie, and their management put Shadow Rising on indefinite hiatus in the hopes that if they waited to cross-promote it with their live-action movie they'd land much better investment deals and be able to make a higher quality film. (They were actually shockingly candid about this, apart from McKeever's desperate backpedaling over what the actual meaning behind "indefinite hiatus" is.) The generally-held theory behind Robotech: Love Live Alive is that it was something rushed out to capitalize on the death of Carl Macek (it was marketed as his last project) and to distract fans from the general lack of anything resembling forward motion from both the Robotech live-action movie and Shadow Rising. The fans on Robotech.com and elsewhere repeatedly called Harmony Gold on the way their decisions were eroding away what momentum had been gained by Shadow Chronicles, though that seems to have largely fallen on deaf ears. As far as turning to Kickstarter, I think that's prompted by the attitude Harmony Gold's management had/has towards investing in development of a new series. For the past few years, even Kevin McKeever could be caught admitting on the forums that senior management would not approve the development of a new series unless a network offered them an episode commitment before development began. As that's the very picture of a self-defeating position, they may well have turned to Kickstarter to fund their development as a way of circumventing their management's unwillingness to fund development of a pilot. It's worth remembering that Harmony Gold sets a much lower bound for "successful" than the industry normally does... so what THEY consider to be doing well enough for a sequel is, in all likelihood, what a more competent company would consider a bad situation. Funny story... the "Children of Zor" were/are actually a concept that didn't make it into the aborted Robotech II: the Sentinels project... there's supposedly some concept art of them on the Sentinels extras disc in various Robotech DVD releases. I'll try to find my copy.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It certainly seems that way... several of the Robotech-related websites that I'm aware of have actually outright banned discussions and/or news posts about the Kickstarter because none of the Robotech fans present had anything even remotely nice to say about it. With Tommy's actual behavior stuck in Schrodinger's Cat territory, Tom has always come across as being the "one sane man" from Harmony Gold. I must confess I'm a little floored at the complete absence of a frothing fanboy denunciation of Tom's mild response to the Kickstarter. Normally the mere mention of his name has the Harmony Gold volunteer thought police bouncing off the walls with barely restrained impotent fury. I'll say this though. The attitude I've seen from a lot of people who I've known for a good long time, and who usually could count themselves among Robotech's most ardent and rational defenders, is not much different from Tom's. Their objections are most commonly threefold: "It's not Carl's idea, it's Tommy's", "It's a bad idea", and "That it's a Kickstarter is a very public and obvious vote of no confidence in Robotech on the part of Harmony Gold". Most of those doing the backing, except for the 200 or so that the Kickstarter backers have pointed to as the "Take my money!" crowd, seem to be operating out of cautious optimism and not the unabashed blind enthusiasm Tommy's trying to attribute to them. Yep, McKeever's been making some leading remarks that there'll be some kind of "big reveal" about the involvement of Rick and the others at the SDCC panel... so I think it's safe to say they're praying for the SDCC panel to save their bacon, otherwise this's going down.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    While I know that it's kind of a YMMV thing, there's a pretty big gulf between interacting with Tommy Yune in his official capacity as the "creative director" for Robotech and interacting with him "off the books". On the occasions I've run into him when he's giving a public speech or something about Robotech, I definitely see shades of the preening egotist and a little bit of the natural troll mode that seems to piss people off by his choice of words alone. The few times I've managed to have a candid, off-the-clock discussion with him I've found him to be no more or less irritating than pretty much anyone I run into in the course of a normal day. At the end of the day, I'm stuck in the same position on him that I am with Carl Macek. I honestly can't tell whether the guy who's able to piss people off just by talking is his actual behavior as a professional, or if it's some kind of silent protest he's indulging in while his job forces him to echo the lies and distortions that are the Harmony Gold company line. 's like Macek's interview shortly after Robotech.com went online. Did he really have so little respect for the intelligence of the average Robotech fan that he was convinced the obvious lies would pass without inspection, or was he grinding his teeth silently while he dutifully copied out a HG-sanctioned official answer? Wow, they're really doing a full court press with this one... though this is one of his less offensively idiotic interviews, IMO. It does confirm one thing for us, this is absolutely an attempt to salvage Robotech II: the Sentinels (again) and cash in on that sweet, sweet wellspring of Macross nostalgia. Starting at the end of the 2nd Robotech War, is it? McKeever's doing the usual "dangle-Rick Hunter in front of the fans to get attention" thing on Robotech.com too, though this time it doesn't seem to be working. They're trying the same sell as they did in Robotech II... the descendants and pupils of the Macross Saga cast. I'm a bit baffled by this idea of mecha that are going to be transitional designs between the 2nd and 3rd Generations, because their established continuity actually has the mecha of the Masters Saga developed AFTER those of the New Generation. They might be doing something awful to the timeline again... unless this is their way of referring to the Convert and the Condor out of MOSPEADA's backstory.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The footage is included, IIRC, in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross release on blu-ray... so it's available on home video, at the very least.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    ... isn't Shadow Rising already dead? I know they said they were going to resume work on it since the LAM was all kinds of not happening, but they've done nothing with it as far as anyone (VAs included, AFAIK) knows. The LAM was a goner the moment they started publicizing that even Sylvain White had passed on it. Obviously I can't say for certain, but their sudden all-or-nothing focus on the Robotech Academy Kickstarter says to me that the LAM's dead in the water and that Shadow Rising is either on the back burner or canceled (again). Updating the aesthetic to appeal to a more modern audience... and to be more in line with the Shadow Chronicles uniforms and so on. Harmony Gold doesn't consider the footage of the Sentinels "movie" to be canon, so technically they're free and clear here in that the Prelude comic didn't use them either. It's just as well, since the Masters Saga is the fandom's un-favorite (according to HG and Toynami, anyway) and the old Sentinels uniforms are Southern Cross-based and VERY 80s. To me, from a practical view, it's actually a sensible decision. As far as "why not set it 20 years after the 3rd Robotech War", the answer is the same as for Robotech 3000... because the big draw is "the continuing adventures of Admiral Rick Hunter and friends", and without that they really don't have an audience that would be big enough to justify doing anything at all. (I'm sorry to keep harping on that, but that's the reality behind every "why didn't they do something new" story question.) You'd be wrong there, friend... I'm told there are some real nasty ones on certain Robotech facebook groups. A buddy of mine admins one, and he's had to roll out the banhammer for a few unpleasant lads who seem to have nothing better to do than bait Macross fans. (I won't get into the details, but what's been shown to me via that friend is profoundly unpleasant.) I don't really count the ones on Robotech.com, because the mods there are actually spurring them on, and without their agitation most are actually decent enough folks. The ones I'm aware of are mostly die-hard Southern Cross/Masters Saga fans who are embittered by the way Harmony Gold focuses on Macross and the Macross Saga above all else.
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