Seto Kaiba
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Actually, the design for the whatever-you-wanna-call-it the Galaxy bigwigs "live" in looks a LOT like the brains on the command deck of Ingues's mobile fortress in Macross II: Lovers Again.
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Other numbers are shown on 'em in the animation proper... a smaller number stencil under the canopy frame on the side of Max's bird is "SV-003" (presumably Skull/Vermillion 003").
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IIRC, isn't the Stampede Valkyrie an acknowledged inspiration for the VF-25?
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Honestly, that'd be about the only intelligent move left to Harmony Gold at this point... but they'll never do it. One of the sordid little truths that leaked out during the more candid discussions with the people in charge of Robotech is that Harmony Gold's senior management ascribe to a view of the franchise more in line with ours than the highly unrealistic and/or overly optimistic viewpoint being pushed by the idiot brigade they hired to run the franchise. To them, Robotech is just a poor performer with such lousy future prospects that it's not worth investing more than the bare minimum necessary to keep it alive enough to continue generating revenue. As wise as it would be for them to let Robotech slip into obscurity and obsolescence to clear its reputation of the stink of all its failures and the bad karma, the decision-makers at Harmony Gold are also businessmen. Despite all its many sins, Robotech continues to generate a modest income stream from products whose development costs have been covered for decades. To bring the franchise to full-stop for years before trying to reboot it from the ground up would entail both the loss of the revenue stream it currently generates AND a significant investment of time, money, and resources into reviving a property with a 100% catastrophic failure rate in developing original material. Since they know Robotech is a turd with no prospects, they're clearly realists... they'll stick with the assured profits rather than gambling on the uncertain and almost certainly doomed promise of future profits.
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Dunno what the madmen of the Robotech.com Ghost Town preservation society are saying, but the more moderate fans over on Palladium's forums seem surprisingly reluctant to talk about it. The few I've managed to wrangle an opinion out of seem to be of the opinion that it's going to be a turd.
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Oh, no kidding... the more I read of what Carl Macek had to say about Robotech before and after Harmony Gold decided that the time was ripe to "reboot" their failed toy commercial from the 80's and try to pass it off as a completely serious sci-fi/action anime series, the more I think that Carl Macek was basically nothing more than a sock puppet that Harmony Gold used for the purpose of promoting the show and disparaging the original Macross. After his final attempt to revive Robotech got canned in pre-production by Harmony Gold and he was replaced as the creative director by Tommy Yune, his "tune" in interviews and such pulled a 180. He went from the way he was in the late 80's and the early 90's, which was being essentially honest about the show's origins and his involvement, to suddenly buying into the hype that he was anime's answer to Gene Roddenberry and disparaging the source material for Robotech as flawed and inferior to what he envisioned for it. If he really was their sock puppet for all that, it would certainly explain some of the outrageous and fairly obvious lies he told. Still... 's kind of a dick move to repeat a bad idea from the past and then stick a dead man with the blame.
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While it doesn't scare me or even particularly surprise me that Harmony Gold is stupid enough to try the same bad idea twice on the forlorn hope that it'll work the second time around despite being seen as bad practice by the industry in general on top of all the bad ideas related to its execution, I have to say that the part that surprises me is that they preemptively assigned the blame for its inevitable crash-and-burn failure to Carl Macek. Does it strike anyone else as odd that, after spending close to a decade twisting the truth and heaping lies and hosts of largely undeserved plaudits on Macek to an extent verging on hagiography, they'd take the time to ensure he got all the blame for the ill-conceived stopgap title they're trying to use as a smokescreen for their lack of progress elsewhere.
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It does, but we're putting a priority on the Macross II stuff... since all the translation legwork on that is done. It's just a matter of finding the free time to finish the web design portion of things. Maybe over the holiday break, since the free time I was supposed to have this past week or two vanished into a minor family emergency.
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Yes and no... I've got most of the material written and waiting to be reviewed by helpful souls like Talos, but the site design has been moving at a slower pace than I'd like because I've been absolutely slammed at my day job. We're strongly considering an alternative approach that would expand the coverage into the "main timeline" too, sort of as a characters and continuity version of what M3's done for mecha.
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"Klan Klang" is how it's usually romanized in official publications. (IIRC, a literal reading of the kana for her name is "Klan Klan")
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Likewise, I've got a pretty extensive library to draw on... my main timeline collection's grown by leaps and bounds now that I've finished my Macross II research. You'd be correct in your assumption... none of the Macross Frontier movie stuff is printed in Macross Chronicle (or I'd have it covered already). The annoying part is that it's not in the movie art books either. I was kinda hoping that they got printed in a magazine article somewhere (maybe a Newtype issue, or Great Mechanics, I know they're not printed in DX.17), but I've had no luck turning up clean art of Michel's VF-25G w/ Tornado Packs or the movie version of what the series called the VF-171EX.
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Now that's something that Talos and I talked about at some length... Right now, the Macross Mecha Manual's basically only covering what's unambiguously canon in Macross, barring a few minor entries over in the Game and Advanced Valkyrie section. One the the things Talos was eagerly pitching was the idea that we could/should add another section for alternate continuity and manga materials. Stuff like Macross the First's special versions of the VF-1D and VF-1J, Kamjin's ship with the tentacles, that sort of thing, maybe some of the stuff from Macross Mechatronics, unused but polished concept art like Kazumi Fujita's VF-XS Valkyrie II concept that showed up in Animage before Macross II came out. It's definitely a possibility, but it's one we gotta explore with His Marchness before we proceed.
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I'm a patient guy... I can put the preorder confirmation under the tree and wait a week. Definitely gonna get the Visual Book, the last one was totally worth it even if I did get tenderized on the cost of shipping. If it's like the last one, it'll give me cleaner art stock to give to March for M3.
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Huh, I'd forgotten about that one. Yeah, definitely. That should go in the Macross 7 section if, as has been proposed, we're gonna add stuff from M7T to the site.
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Thanks guys! That had us scratching our heads for a bit.
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Maybe you can help with this... I was looking at said replacement chief engineer just the other day with Talos, and we can't agree how her surname should be romanized. Is it "Bartlow" (British) or "Bartolo" (Italian)?
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Yeah, there is... it's just a matter of catching up to Mr March and cornering him long enough to get him to either build the new section out with the material I've collected for him, or at least give me the go-ahead and .psd files to do it myself. What I've got "on deck" right now in terms of art stock and/or translations includes: New Article Material in the Queue (Pending!) VF-25F w/ Tornado Pack VF-27y w/ Super Pack YF-29 Durendal YF-29 Durendal w/ Super Pack EX-Gear (SpecOps? movie ver.) Macross Quarter-class (MF25 movie ver.) Macross Quarter-class (Macross-17 ver.) Macross Quarter-class (Macross-23 ver.) Battle Frontier (movie ver.) Battle Frontier (Vajra ver.) VF-19EF "Caliburn" VF-19ACTIVE "Nothung" SV-52y "Oryol" [Eagle] VF-1X++ Valkyrie "Double Plus" Hakuna Sp. VF-19A Excalibur Brauhitsch Sp. VF-4SL Lightning III VF-9E Cutlass Berthier Sp. YF-25 Prophecy YF-25 Prophecy w/ SPS-25P/MF25 "Paladin" pack YF-27-5 "Shaher Female" ADR-04-Mk.XV "Super Defender" VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei VA-100/VBP-1 Variable Glaug (actually a Neo Glaug) VF-0 Custom "Zeek" VF-11D "Thunder Focus" Queadluun-Alma Heaven-class cemetery ship (tentative, M7T) QF-3000E Ghost manned conversion (tentative, M7T) VF-1 Custom "Refined Valkyrie" (tentative, GAV) Daedalus II-class space carrier (tentative, GAV) VF-1 Valkyrie (DYRL-II alt. history ver., tentative) 216 new fan-art pieces by Flaming Guantlet Article Updates in the Queue VF-2SS Valkyrie II VF-2JA Icarus/Ikaros VA-1SS Metal Siren VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie VC-079 "SNN Valkyrie" Defender EX Phalanx Custom Tomahawk II Giant Monster GERWALKroid Actually, that's another thing for which improvements have been talked about... specifically, cleaner, higher-quality scans of the mecha from Macross Frontier. Speaking of... if anyone knows of a publication that contains reasonably large, clean art or CG models for Michel's VF-25G w/ Tornado Packs and/or the version of the VF-171 Nightmare Plus w/ the EX version's super packs from Sayonara no Tsubasa, please shoot me a PM telling me what book or what magazine and issue so we can import that in the near future.
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I'll level with ya here... I have no bloody idea. Actually, this is (part of) a topic that's come up a lot lately in my chats with other Macross Mecha Manual contributors. I've been importing the relevant art books and other materials to put together sections for the Macross Frontier movies and the new stuff from Macross the Ride, and trying to stay on top of things with my own translations, but I'm uneasy about the idea of editing M3 without first getting the go-ahead from Mr March. It's his site, after all... I just provide the administrative services and some of the translations and art stock and the like. It's been a few weeks since I last talked to him, but when I do I'll be sure to raise the subject and see what we can do. I've got the site design know-how to do most of it myself, but the art side of things (like image clean-up) is entirely beyond my skill set. There's also been a little talk about how to treat stuff from manga like the Macross 7 Trash series or Macross the First. I've also put a little time in against the task of going over M3's existing coverage to see what needs to be updated/revised, and there are a bunch of other updates that are basically ready to roll... enhancements to the Macross II section, and a whopping 216 pieces of fan art by Flaming Guantlet that are long overdue to go up.
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Well, for starters, Variable Fighter Master File isn't part of the official Macross setting... the note on the credits page at the back of the book says as much. As far as Skull squadron's status in the official setting is concerned, all I've got for you is a great big shrug. Hikuru's skull squad is, AFAIK, still MIA along with the rest of the forces attached to Megaroad-01. Certain other squadrons were likely named after it later on, such as Max and Milia's "Dancing Skulls" and S.M.S.'s Skull team, but I don't think we've ever seen anything of the real Skull squadron since Flashback 2012.
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How does that old saying go? An infinite number of monkeys working at an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare? The rest of them are writing Robotech scripts.
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They can't connect the dots because there aren't any dots to connect, so they "manufacture" a few to get conversation rolling and provide what they fondly imagine is a passable imitation of progress in the Robotech franchise. Ah, thank you. The vast majority of them are 30+, yes. IINM, isn't the average age of an active Robotech fan over 32 now? What little's left of their fanbase in the wake of Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION's purges of anyone who has an opinion or is even a little knowledgeable about Macross are the vestiges of the '85er crowd and the South American contingent. Unfortunately, ailments like being a conspiracy nut with poor pattern recognition skills or just having a terminal case of the stupids aren't age-bounded behaviors.
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Meh. In the unlikely event that the live-action movie does come out at sometime in the distant future, it'll likely be the same kind of low budget, direct-to-video atrocity as Starship Troopers 2. No idea. A few years ago, there was a rumor going around that Harmony Gold's contract with Maguire Ent. over the live action movie rights had a short fuse expiration date that already passed, but I don't know if there was ever anything to that.
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According to Macross II's creators, it's set in 2092. Macross Ace wasn't the first publication to get the date wrong for the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA either. In the early 90's, the American licensee distributing Macross II got it into their heads that the OVA was set in 2089, a number which was picked up by the authors of the Macross II role-playing game (Palladium Books) and the distributors of the Macross II manga (Viz Media). In Macross Chronicle's timeline sheet for Macross II, the date is also listed incorrectly as 2091... which might have been a joke at the OVA's relationship to Gundam, by placing it in the year 0079 on the New Era calendar.
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Yep, that's the impression I've gotten from my talks with various people in the fandom and on the business end of things. They did pretty well for themselves with the Legacy set and the extras-free collected edition of same, "Robotech Remastered" wasn't selling worth a damn, the "Protoculture Collection" enjoyed lukewarm sales primarily because of the extra features from the old Legacy set that somehow got missed out of "Remastered", and now the A&E edition isn't selling worth a damn because almost anyone who would've ordinarily bought a copy already owns one of the previous remastered editions and isn't willing to spend another $80 to buy the same damn thing in a slightly different box with minimal new content. In my more recent interactions with active Robotech fans, the general opinion of the set seems to be "It's not worth it"... which tends to be motivated by the knowledge that even though it has more "features", it has less actual content. Ouch... yeah, that seems like a pretty damning indicator of "Not selling". Out this way, in Palladium's backyard, the few stores which carry anime haven't even bothered to stock the A&E edition. The few of them that carried Robotech DVDs have unsold copies of Robotech Remastered and the Protoculture Collection sitting on their shelves gathering dust. The same copies, I'm reliably informed, that have been there since those particular releases came from the distributor. Seven years? That's peanuts to a die-hard Robotech fan. After all, the true faithful waited almost two decades for Robotech to fart out a single, anemic direct-to-video "movie" to continue the disjointed collection of plot holes and spelling errors they all too often mistake for an actual story. Considering what happened in the intervening time, I'm not sure if that's patience or a lack of basic pattern recognition skills, but if they're still hanging on after almost thirty years with nothing to show for it, another couple years shouldn't dissuade them overmuch. More times than any sane person's brain can recall without shutting down in protest... it helps that the people doing all of that speculating are somewhere on the spectrum between "spectacularly dense" and "brainwashed and crazy". From the public announcement that the live-action movie rights had been picked up? Five years next February or thereabouts. On balance, it's really not all that surprising that they've developed a bad habit of posting uninformed speculation and trying to blur the line between their wild guesses and fact. It's the only way they can maintain interest in the project and the franchise in the absence of any actual progress. Yes, they lie and distort the facts... all in an effort to convince themselves that Robotech isn't a complete non-entity that the world forgot sometime around 1987, and that they haven't wasted years (decades) waiting patiently for a comeback that isn't coming.
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Oh, I don't doubt it... what I doubt is that the ones presently making a fuss over the "large Alpha" will ever be among them. The Robotech fans raising that particular stink are fairly dead-set against the OSM, to the point where some seem to find the idea of Robotech drawing on OSM stats and such deeply offensive... which is bloody stupid in my humble opinion.
