Seto Kaiba

Hm... let's see: My Zune HD A Thousand Sons (by Graham McNeill) Prospero Burns (by Dan Abnett) Last month's issue of White Dwarf (Skaven battle report & Dark Eldar tactics) My girlfriend's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a battered old alarm clock

Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that Kevin is going to continue telling Robotech fans that things are going great for the franchise right up to the point where Tommy gets sick of his toadying and has him fired, or the franchise finally collapses under the weight of all the bullshit and broken promises it's accumulated over the years. Mind you, McKeever's just doing what comes naturally... being disingenuous and/or outright deceitful isn't just in his job description, it's an integral part of the Robotech creative process. In the end, Robotech.com is going to just fall apart when the community shrinks below the handful of people that currently visit the site. Their draconian Terms of Use and asinine moderator behavior have just accelerated the process, it was always going to happen.

Oh, granted... but on most official fan community sites, the management has at least enough common sense to realize that telling the fans to their faces that you only care about their money and that you'll never do anything for them unless it directly results in you making a profit is probably a really bad idea. Now, I've never worked in a marketing department, but I'm pretty sure telling your customer base you think of them as entranced magpies with wallets isn't going to go over well no matter how you spin it. If you maintain a good relationship with your customer base and throw them the occasional bone at your own expense, they'll be a lot less likely to desert you for someone else when you finally do screw up royally... and this is something most franchise owners get, but Harmony Gold has never really understood. Even though the stuff that isn't directly related to "Buy our sh*t!" on a franchise's official website isn't going to generate revenue in and of itself, it keeps the fans active and happy. It gives them something to talk about in the forums, and it makes the fans feel like the company actually cares and isn't just trying to shake them down for a quick buck. That happy-go-lucky feeling makes the fans that much more likely to pony up when the store rolls out a new product. Keeping the fans happy is a long-term investment in your entertainment franchise... though I suppose since Harmony Gold has more or less eliminated everyone who wasn't a fanatic, they probably don't think it's necessary anymore.

Harmony Gold's staff is full of excuses for why the franchise's official website is never updated... and they shed some light on how the Robotech franchise is run. On a couple of occasions, the staff has been surprisingly (and unintentionally, no doubt) straightforward about why they never do anything with the franchise's website. The reason given by Kevin McKeever when he was asked why they've never bothered to update the actual content of the franchise's official website was that the "powers that be" only care about the store. Since robotech.com doesn't bring in any money via its community section or the Infopedia, they don't see those parts of the site as having any importance. On robotech.com, the store isn't there for the sake of the community section, it's that the community section is there solely for the sake of the store. As to why there's no news, they claim that the front page of the site can only be updated after news pieces go through a time-consuming and unnecessarily laborious approvals process. The lack of news is a mixture of the company's own bureaucratic intransigence and having nothing that's actually newsworthy. WB has apparently forbidden them from saying what little they know about the live action movie, and because Shadow Rising is on hold and they have no other prospects, there's just no news to talk about. McKeever even claims they got the Twitter feed so they could sidestep the approvals process to get things on the front page of robotech.com. XD As for the absence of "Rick Hunter"... they're not letting an inability to use the original character and mechanical designs stop them from trying to continue the ongoing story of Rick Hunter... it's just that they gave him a new face so the fans just have to take their word for it that it's the same guy:

Eh... it wasn't always thus. It's just that so many of the remaining Robotech fans have spent their whole lives trying to justify their continued faith in the Robotech franchise, and latched onto Harmony Gold's claims that the Robotech TV series was a genre-defying masterpiece that created the anime industry in North America because it's easier than admitting they've wasted twenty-five years obsessing over a franchise that flopped back in the 80's. Harmony Gold encourages that behavior, because it's good for business in the short term. Those fanatic fans are blind to Robotech's problems and are eager to prove to themselves that the franchise is still alive and viable, so they'll buy ANYTHING with the Robotech name on it. Admittedly, since I was a Johnny-come-lately to the Robotech franchise when I first joined Robotech.com in '03, that's the only Robotech fandom I've ever known. I think I was probably one of the last rationally-minded fans purged from the fandom in the name of protecting Tommy's fragile feelings. Nowadays, if you visit a RT fansite and you aren't one of the nutjobs who thinks Robotech is the best thing EVER, you're the enemy. Oh, of course... and since '06, the fanatics have been doing their best to purge anyone who spots Robotech for the long-dead mess it is from the fandom so they won't bother "the real fans". The minute anyone starts to ask uncomfortable questions like "Can we see some proof you're working on Shadow Rising?" or "Is there any actual news about the live action movie?" then they're marked for a ban on robotech.com and robotechx.com and then told they're a "Macross purist troll" and kicked out. But so long as certain individuals think they have something to gain from supporting Tommy, any criticism of him will get a Robotech fan labeled persona non grata... Hehe... I find this almost painfully ironic. The "true savior" of Robotech was the one man who'd had even less success than Tommy at inflicting new material on the fandom. Talk about the blind leading the blind... Because expanding their interests outwards would entail admitting that Robotech isn't the be-all end-all of the anime industry, and the uncomfortable realization that nobody outside the fandom gives a damn about it. Just think of it as Warner Bros proactively protecting audiences nationwide from Robotech... though the lack of any potential for rebooting Robotech can't be blamed entirely on Tommy. In order to get a series out there, the idiots at Harmony Gold would need to get a network to give them an episode commitment first, and the morons that've been tasked with running Robotech (Carl and Tommy) have so thoroughly destroyed its reputation that no self-respecting network will touch it, and even Canada's SPACE channel stuffed it into a timeslot that would have been dismal even for an infomercial. Since no network will touch Robotech, and even Tommy admits they have trouble getting investors in Robotech projects, the chances of a reboot are zero. You can probably credit Carl for this more than Tommy...

It shows up twice in the 2nd Macross the Ride piece Graham posted in this thread (February issue), on half of the title spread (behind the VF-19ACTIVE) and on p143 right below the diagram of the race track. It's labeled VF-19A, and it's clearly got the pre-redesign body.

Oh, the Shadow Chronicles movie had dialogue... it's just that they put a lot of effort into hiding it behind copious and completely tasteless fanservice so nobody would notice it's mostly a mad lib made up of Star Trek cliches. In the end, I guess they were crossing their fingers and hoping their target audience of long-time Robotech fanboys and hormonal teenage anime hobbyists would be too concussed by all the cleavage on display to notice that the bulk of the dialogue and all of the character interactions are stilted, lifeless, and completely unnatural. Yup... you just have to remember that Robotech's Minmei had the attention span of a gnat hopped up on Red Bull and an IQ to match... at least until the Sentinels comics, when they made her into the ship's bicycle instead.

Not quite... if I'm reading this right, he started riding in the back seat of his father's VT-1 at age 3, but he didn't start learning to fly it until he was 8, which is still crazy early. It does appear, from what's written about him on Dengeki Hobby's website, that he has a cybernetically-reinforced body.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly... but that won't stop some Robotech fans from getting bent out of shape over this interview because Richard Epcar didn't act as though voicing a couple of minor supporting characters in a series most anime fans don't even remember was the greatest achievement of his career. To be honest, I can kind of see why he'd want to escape association with it. Robotech's track record of embarrassing failure is just part of the problem, there's also the fact that they reportedly contracted him for 3 movies and then suspended it all in medias res and told him "Don't call us, we'll call you". Yeah, I've noticed that too. On the one hand, you've got Robotech fans acting as though Robotech is the single most celebrated anime series of all time, and on the other those same fans are hailing it as the single greatest achievement of American/Korean animated SF. It's bad enough they've obviously lost their grip on reality, but the crazier ones put the cherry on it by arguing that all anime is inferior trash, that the originals have no value whatsoever outside of their use in Robotech, and that Macross's creators are breathlessly in awe of Robotech's success and desperately trying to imitate it wherever they can. They've spent so long lavishing the stagnant Robotech franchise with affection (via cash) and trying to convince themselves that Robotech is still worthwhile that they can't get by without the wall of delusions they've built around the fandom to protect it. Robotech isn't what these people are really defending with their asinine behavior... what they're trying so hard to protect is their rose-tinted childhood memories of the show. Now that everyone knows what Robotech really is, and the franchise is a stagnant, failed mess, they work themselves into a fury defending their rosy memories of the show to avoid having to acknowledge that the show they loved back in the day really isn't all that good or memorable. Eech... so it's the JAG of anime.

Heh... nice. I just got done reading a funny little thread over on Robotech.com, where the populace is venting its outrage that Ricard Epcar's recent interview failed to mention his roles in Robotech in favor of Daisuke Jigen (Lupin III), Batou (Ghost in the Shell), and his roles in Digimon. They won't even post a link to the interview for fear that it will "corrupt" Robotech fans. The OP was positively beside himself that they said nothing about "his most-well-known roles" as Ben Dixon and Lunk.

True... and if Macross 7 is anything to go by, there are already quite a few hobbyists and the families of Space War 1 veterans out there with vintage VF-1's that they've somehow kept in good working order. There's also one example in Macross VF-X2, where the head of the Critical Path corporation (Manfred Brando) was somehow able to buy his own VF-17S Nightmare. Thing is, the bit on Dengeki Hobby's website seems to imply that there weren't that many SV-51/52 airframes that survived the war, so it's probably unlikely that their numbers went up by much... maybe a custom job for serious hobbyists or something? Yeah, but like Manfred Brando, Richard Bilra had ownership of a interplanetary megacorporation fattening up his wallet.

Dunno... I can't exactly see a VF being a low-cost hobby vehicle, but since at least a few examples survived the destruction of Earth's surface in Space War 1 and are still being used, making new ones probably isn't out of the question. After all, someone's gotta be making replacement parts to keep the surviving airframes running.

In theory, this might answer some questions about how they filmed the air combat scenes in the Frontier fleet's "Birdhuman" movie... The teeny little pictures we've seen show it's got an A-type head... in light of all this, I'm kind of wondering if he got his hands on a VF-1X somehow. Oh yeah... I'll second that emotion.

Eh... correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it you that was plugging his ears and insisting that the show itself is wrong regarding the effectiveness of the VF-0's laser weapons? You were the one trying to make your whole case based on the veracity of sources. Still waitin' for you to source your claim about the VF-0 and SV-51 with anti-laser coatings BTW... had a brief skim over the sheets and didn't see anything to that effect. (Seriously, inquiring minds want to know... the only VFs I've seen anything on anti-beam coatings for are the VF-19, VF-25, and VF-171EX.) 's not really new, IIRC... the novelization of Macross Frontier has them using an SV-52 w/ reaction engines in the filming of the "Birdhuman" movie. How they did it in the animation is anyone's guess... in light of what's new in Macross the Ride, they may have actually had one or more SV-52s on hand for the job. Huh... kinda like the VF-14 then. Guess that cinches it... SV-51/52 wins by "Word of God". Can't say that I'm all that surprised. Presumably the military spec model wouldn't compare that favorably, being a Space War 1-era machine and all... but I would imagine the heavily customized race machine from Macross the Ride would be able to keep pace with the VF-19's being used, at least in terms of maneuverability (dash speed not being super-important in a slalom type racing event).

Okay Macross R... you have my undivided attention. Awesome! You just made my day.

No, I'm afraid it isn't... which is why I said as much in the first place. If we're to discuss the merits of the VF-0 and SV-51, we should at least stick to reliable sources... 's all right... I voted for the SV-51 on the grounds that it was a craft designed for combat service, rather than an impressively-capable test plane. Plus I think the multi-axis thrust vectoring and canards give it a decided leg up in maneuverability. 'course, the original topic of the thread does also specify that they're competing ala Project Super Nova, so presumably the effectiveness of their weapons would be a factor.

Or... and bear with me on this... you could cite the source for your claim instead of acting like a bellend. If it's actually in there, and your present behavior is enough to make me doubt that it is, then it shouldn't be a problem for you to tell us what sheet it's on, or even where it is in that sheet. I can't help but think that your new "no, I won't tell you where I got my information, go find it yourself" attitude is strongly reminiscent of the attitude Shaloom took once he was caught in a lie. Now, are you going to cite your source or should we just assume you're spinning a yarn? Sorry to burst your bubble, but the books aren't a higher authority than the show... they're a companion to it, not vice-versa. This ridiculous line you're spouting about "power of plot" is basically just you trying to say that the show itself is wrong because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe. We have the animation that shows us that the VF-0's laser weaponry is basically useless against the Octos's energy conversion armor in a high-power state, and thus we have good cause to suspect that the SV-51 would have little to fear from it. So far, you haven't actually provided a counterargument to the visual evidence from the show itself... all you have done is claim that the show is being deceptive somehow. (Seriously dude, this isn't like you... what gives?)

Forgive me for saying so, but this whole "power of plot" counter-argument to disprove what we see in the show itself doesn't really stand up. The print sources don't have the power to out-and-out overrule what's in the show itself. What we literally see is Roy trying and failing to inflict any damage on those Octos units until he hits an exposed missile. That is the bare fact of the matter. Roy's lasers didn't have the power necessary to damage the Octos, and thus it's logical to assume that the SV-51 would enjoy similar near-immunity to the VF-0's laser weapons. Both... Roy lands a number of direct hits and several glancing blows, none of which do any damage until he hits that exposed missile. Okay, now I have a question... where, pray tell, does it say the VF-0 and SV-51 are sporting anti-laser coatings on their armor? It's been a while since I've revisited Macross Zero, and I haven't gotten around to reviewing it in Chronicle yet. Can you please cite a source for this? I ask, because the only VFs I've seen mention of anti-optical weapon armor for are the VF-19 (mentioned in the M+ OVA, presumably extends to the VF-22 as well), VF-25, and VF-171EX. Now, if we're going to argue this point, we should first ask ourselves what the power state for the Octos's energy conversion armor was. Presumably they follow the same general set of guidelines that VF's do, where the ECA is off (or, at best, in a low power state) in fighter (or submarine) mode, and only operating at full power in battroid mode. That Octos was operating in submarine mode, then its energy conversion armor was almost certainly at its lowest power state, making it a much softer target. In your rush to argue "power of plot", you seem to have overlooked a lot of rather obvious evidence to the contrary. ... and what canon work would that be? Seriously, inquiring minds wish to know. Except that, if we're arguing the circumstance dictated in Master File, you're over the mark for the maximum power consumption of the VF-1's laser weaponry by a factor of two. Bear ye in mind, I'm not arguing whether the capacitor would be an asset... I'm arguing that the firing duration it supposedly confers doesn't jive with the series, or subsequent descriptions of a similar setup in later models of fighter in the Master File series.

'k... what I'm saying here is that, capacitor or no capacitor, the output of the VF-1's power plant should be more than sufficient to run the lasers indefinitely until the system starts to overheat, which seems to be the case in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The idea that those lasers can only operate for 20 seconds even when the fighter isn't devoting most of the reactor's output to flight is kind of inane... especially when there's obviously at fair bit of surplus output kicking around. It's particularly incongruous in the context of what the VFMF: VF-19 book shows about later applications of the same damn technology used in the same place. Reductio ad absurdum? Damn man, I'm actually disappointed... you're the LAST person I'd expect a tactic like that from. Just throwing this out there, but I'd hazard a guess that the big power cables feeding the laser system are probably in the same place as the other big power and data cables feeding the other hardware in the head. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but these books are meant to be supplements to the animation, not vice versa. ... and, in the animation, the lasers don't do a very good job against the Octos units. The one Roy destroys blows up because Roy gets CRAZY lucky and manages to land a hit on an open missile launcher with a live warhead still in it. Earlier in the very same scene (Macross Zero ep4 ~8:30) we see him shooting at the actual armor of those two Octos units with his lasers and doing no damage until he hits an exposed missile. Now, I dunno about you, but seeing Roy's VF-0S try and fail to damage two Octos units with its lasers and seeing the shots bounce off without causing damage is pretty cut and dry proof that the VF-0's lasers don't have the necessary oomph to damage energy conversion armor of the same general power level. I'm really not sure how to make an argument any more definitive than that.

Do I even need to point out how ridiculous the idea of doing ANYTHING stealthily in a giant robot is? Even in Zentradi terms, the VF-1 Valkyrie is BIG. Mind you, Master File isn't even remotely consistent on this note... VFMF: VF-19 says the VF-19's head-mounted weapons are powered directly by its engines. It'd be understandable in the VF-0's case, since that mecha has to rely on ordinary turbofans for power, but the idea that the VF-1's operating power requirements are SO tight it can't spare 0.4% of its net power output to charge its laser weaponry borders on the absurd. I could understand the capacitor if it was used to power the gun in emergencies and was being constantly recharged by the engines during normal operation, but for it to be the only source of power for the gun is just nuts... even where the VF-0 is concerned. If they've got enough juice kicking around to run the plane's engines at 200% for any period of time at a moment's notice, they can spare the 5MW necessary to fire those lasers at full power directly during operation. It also, as I've said, doesn't support what we see in the show regarding sustained firing of the lasers as an improvised cutting tool. If this is the case, it doesn't augur well for the VF-4 either... its engines aren't much better than the VF-1's in terms of output, and its beam weapons are its main armament. If asking for 0.4% of the overall reactor output is a step too far, I'd hate to be caught flying a plane where that's my main close-range defensive option if I've got at most 15 seconds of use in them. But we see it being used as a cutting tool on multiple occasions in the original series alone, and that would seem to indicate that at least someone in the design team was considering the possibility of using it for other purposes. Again, we never hear any mention of the gun running out of ammo... only of it overheating. As noted above, even Master File gives us a clear-cut example of head-mounted beam weaponry being powered directly by the mecha's reaction engines. Insofar as whether the VF-0's built-in laser weaponry would give it a significant edge over the SV-51... I doubt it. Questions of how it's powered aside, the VF-0's lasers don't appear to have the necessary "oomph" to do damage to ECA-equipped mecha. IIRC, they had little in the way of success against Octos units, and the bulk of those were powering their ECA and other systems with a diesel-turbine engine.

... and it's inexplicable stuff like that which makes me heartily glad that what's in Master File isn't part of the official setting. The wording here is a bit unclear, did you mean the VF-0 or VF-1 has the capacitor... because it would make no sense in the VF-1's case. Yes, the dialogue in "Blind Game" indicates that Max's laser is about to overheat while being used as a cutting tool. There's no mention of capacitors or the lasers running low on (or out of) power. Having such an aggressively short operation time would make the lasers next to useless as a cutting tool if it required long-term operation (and slicing a battroid-sized hole into a hatch certainly does). The VF-0 could easily justify having such a capacitor, but for a VF-1 that's sitting on two 650MW reactors, they've got more than enough juice to do away with such a thing.

But... but... that's not Tommy's doing! You heard what he said, it's those horny Korean animators who made it that way! Now, the subject of Robotech's technological progression and the steadily deteriorating capabilities of the Earth forces mecha is something I've been badgered about a lot lately. The way so many Robotech fans out there will never take a straight answer when there's a baseless theory to be had never ceases to amaze and disappoint me. It's oddly impressive the way veteran Robotech fans have come up with so many ways to justify selectively throwing out any canon source that's inconvenient to whatever theory they've come up with. Really, I've half a mind to say the majority of Robotech fans aren't really Robotech fans at all... but rather, are Robotech fan fiction fans. (Of course, that's kind of pushing it... since Robotech itself could easily be called Carl Macek's post-facto attempt at pseudo-official Macross fan-fiction)

Oh, naturally... but I like to think of it as the good people at Warner Bros doing us all a solid by indirectly calling a halt to Harmony Gold's plans for another pathetic direct-to-video Robotech movie. By purchasing the rights for a live action Robotech movie, no doubt for a pittance, they've prevented Tommy Yune from perpetrating another two hours of his revolting Robotech II: the Sentinels fan-fiction on the world. Hell, in this scenario the only ones who don't come out ahead are the Robotech fans who've got their heads stuck up their asses... also known as Tommy's suck-up brigade. Aside from those nuts, everybody wins... Robotech fans don't have to suffer through it, and Macross fans don't have to suffer the humiliation of being associated with it, however distantly. Oh yes, because a failure to explicitly deny an obviously ridiculous conspiracy theory validates it... right? To be honest, some days I'm not sure if you're honest when you say things like this or if you're trying to troll us and just not doing a very good job. Now, I'm going to do something unforgivable here... I'm going to bust out the most powerful weapon anyone can bring to bear against a statement like this: context. Yes, the idiot moderators at Robotech.com did lock the thread about MAXIM model Sarah Mulch being in the RT live action movie... but did you bother to note WHY they locked it? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't because it was some crazy fanboy theory. It was locked because it was a redundant thread. They already have a dedicated thread for casting speculation. They've let crazy fan theory threads run for ages without locking them, and this Earth Defense Force rubbish is no different. It's not a redundant thread, and it's HG volunteer mods stirring up hype with lies to keep the fans from slipping into a "bugger-all's happening" coma. Wanz, calling that thread a debate of any kind is giving it far more credit than it deserves. Hell, that happened long before Tommy noticed that Robotech's technological continuity is completely broken and that the mecha get progressively less capable with each passing generation. Prior to the "retcons" he imposed to try and impose a sense of technological advancement (rather than deterioration) on the timeline, I probably wouldn't have been at all surprised if, two or three more alien invasions down the road, the Earth forces were left to fight off a new alien invasion with the REF's new state-of-the-art weapons... heavy rocks and harsh language.

I didn't say they would have to... I said if they would probably do it if they wanted the target audience (i.e. people who aren't Robotech fans) to take the movie seriously. Anyone with an internet connection could look Robotech up on Wikipedia and easily learn about the legacy of failure and incompetence it drags around in its wake like a bit of bog roll stuck to its shoe. If your target audience decides to skip the flick because it's based on a downright camp-tastic series that spent the last 25 years on a sequence of attempts to make itself popular and/or relevant that all ended in embarrassing failures, then you're not doing a very good job marketing it, are you? Earth Defense Force seems to be nothing more than an "original" movie with a thoroughly unoriginal premise. Aliens attack Earth, they ruin our sh*t, and then humanity builds up a force to fight back the next time they show up. If it were the Robotech live action movie in disguise, you can bet Harmony Gold wouldn't be keeping quiet about it. They'd be tossing each other off with glee and touting the chance that someone with actual talent (however minimal) is involved with the project as proof that Warner is actually taking Robotech to be some kind of potential blockbuster. In short, even putting aside things like common sense and the news articles about Raimi's project that make it painfully obvious Earth Defense Force isn't Robotech, the simple lack of "See, we're actually getting something done for once!" from Harmony Gold is ironclad proof that Earth Defense Force has nothing whatsoever to do with Robotech.

Uh... well, part of the reason for your confusion is that you're mixing traits from two different versions of Britai. The DYRL designs have supplanted the TV series designs in many respects, and Britai's is one of them (as shown in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier). The Britai design for the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series had a faceplate that was basically nothing but an elaborate eyepatch. The art from the series (Entertainment Bible 27 pp119) indicates that his eye is still there, but it appears to be misaligned (ala Strabismus) and possibly blind. How his eye came to be that way isn't stated... it could be the result of battlefield injury, or it may be a congenital defect. The other commanders we see in the TV series don't have that same eyepatch. By the opposite token, the version of Britai from Macross: Do You Remember Love? sports a faceplate that appears to be a functional cybernetic prosthetic. The movie shows it with a few flickering lights, and something that is clearly a lens under the protective cover. Other commanders we see sport similar modifications (Boddole Zer, Ogotai, etc.) and in Macross's parallel world continuity (Macross II et. al.) those are pretty unambiguously shown to be a cybernetic prosthetic. Whether commanders like Britai are fitted with them before they go into active service is unclear, but there is one known instance of one being fitted to replace an eye lost in combat. In the Macross II prequels, Quamzin narrowly survives his fight with Roy, and when he next appears in 2036 he's sporting a new cybernetic eye to replace the one he lost in 2010. (Macross Frontier's Temjin may be a thinly veiled reference to this and Kamjin's loss of an eye in the original series)