Seto Kaiba

Yes, we do... after all, we've been watching the Robotech idiot brigade do precisely that ever since news of the movie deal first came to light back in 2007. Oh, naturally... the Robotech fandom is nothing if not eager to accept baseless speculation by random fans over hard evidence from reliable sources. If it weren't for that, they would've had very little to talk about for the past 25-odd years. Endless retreads of the same handful of topics that already have official answers like "How does protoculture work?" and "Where was the SDF-2?" are, along with the periodic witch hunts, practically the official pastime of the Robotech fandom. They make up garbage like that because it's the only thing they can do, since Harmony Gold can't say anything about the Robotech live action movie project and Warner Bros doesn't seem to consider the film anywhere near as important as Harmony Gold wants the fans to think they do. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's a fandom that subsists almost exclusively on fans BSing each other and being BS'd by the franchise owners... that they'd start BSing each other in the absence of actual news about a project allegedly in development is par for the course.

Huh... that's a new one on me. I've never been able to get Windows Media Player to behave properly when I'm trying to play videos in exotic formats, so that's not exactly a huge surprise. I'm kind of surprised that you're not getting good results with Media Player Classic tho, since several of my friends practically swear by it. If you have CCCP, then you ought to be in good shape. If it's working in VLC, then you ought to have a good time of it. I've been using a mix of VLC and ZoomPlayer, mainly because VLC tends to chug a bit when the subtitles get moving too quickly.

Granted, they would have a hard time marketing it as a Robotech movie if they changed the name to something else... but as we've all seen, the only people you market Robotech stuff to and expect them to care is Robotech fans. It's supposed to be a reimagining anyway, so giving it a less corny title would probably do a lot for those whose unenviable job is to promote that turd... especially by separating it from Robotech's dire reputation. Oh, it's pretty much a given that EDF isn't Robotech in disguise... it's just that EDF's plot appears to have some superficial similarities to Robotech's teaspoon-shallow overarching story. Coincidence... not proof of a link. It's probably safer to assume they'd think of the pool cleaning apparatus before the TV series if you asked if they'd heard of Robotech. Oh good grief... do you EVER read other people's posts before you reply to them? It should be fairly clear from my post that I'm saying there's no chance in hell that Earth Defense Force "might be" Robotech in disguise... seeing as I said pretty much exactly that in the very first sentence of the post you quoted.

Huh... well, it would be helpful if you gave us a little more information about the codec and player setup you're using to play the video files, and how the files themselves were encoded. Without that, it's going to be rather difficult to help you address the problem. The recommended setup for most fansubs is to use either VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic, or ZoomPlayer, with the Combined Community Codec Pack. If you're using ZoomPlayer, the solution is simple enough... right click anywhere on the playback area, then go to "Stream Selection" and change the selection from "Original Picture" to "Flipped Picture" or vice-versa. In VLC, you need go to the Preferences menu (Tools > Preferences), change the settings mode to "Advanced", then go to Videos > Filters > Transformation and change the transformation type to "Flip Vertically" in the dropdown menu, or change it back if it somehow got set that way unintentionally. For other players, you might have to tinker with DirectVobSub directly (assuming you're using CCCP).

No... as Gubaba said, the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA is a sequel to the movie Macross: Do You Remember Love?. Macross II belongs to a parallel world continuity separate from that of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series and the other Macross sequels. In DYRL and Macross II, the Supervision Army doesn't exist. Instead, the Zentradi were at war with their female counterparts, the Meltrandi. The Mardook are something else entirely.

Not a chance... if it was, you can bet your ass Harmony Gold would be crowing about it and citing it as proof that they haven't just been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses eight hours a day. Nah... if the execs at Warner Bros want to market Robotech and have the audience take the ads seriously, the first thing they'd probably do would be to part company with the Robotech name and the twenty-five year legacy of incompetence and failure inextricably associated with it.

Yeah, it is... but didn't you notice how quickly his tune changed once MEMO started backing him? He went from loudly complaining about how horrible Shadow Chronicles is and how Tommy's ruining Robotech to defending it all and directing his bile at Tommy's enemies critics surprisingly fast.

Dunno... but given my own experiences with TalkShoe's ineptly-programmed services, I'm inclined to suspect it counts any search for the podcast title on iTunes as a download. Either that or he sits there every day that he posts a new podcast and hammers away at the download/refresh button to run his numbers up so he can say he's got "6000 lessoners". I think the most people anyone's ever seen listening to him live is six, who were all present to troll the hell out of his show. Ordinarily, nobody bothers to listen to him live even though his shows are all nominally an open-format call-in type podcast. Probably the most attention his podcast ever got during a live session was when PodCrashers came to troll it and he assumed it was me and HappyPenguins and a few others working under aliases. Like his hero Tommy Yune, little Dougie's a preening egotist... an odd trait for someone who, at age 28, works full-time at the sort of minimum-wage job normally reserved for high school students and reportedly lives in his mum's basement. Since he's invested so much of his pride in his e-penis, I suppose it's only natural he feels a little threatened by all the ground JT's Protoculture Times has gained by having a host who's neither a massive tosser nor a Harmony Gold sycophant.

Well... to explain it without delving too deeply into Macross 7's backstory, the Supervision Army is a military force made up of Protoculture people (and presumably Zentradi as well) who were captured and then brainwashed by the Protodeviln to help them harvest life energy from people. (The Protodeviln are a series of seven prototype super-bioweapons made for the Protoculture's civil war and based on the Zentradi that were possessed by energy beings from super dimension space which need to feed on life energy ("spirita") to sustain themselves in the material universe) As to why we never see them in Macross, except for the pre-reconstruction Macross and the similar wrecked ship Britai's ship encounters later on when they set out to capture a factory satellite, it's presumably because they're still fighting with the Zentradi elsewhere in the galaxy, and by all accounts are losing the war... since Britai was basically carrying out mop-up operations when he found the Macross in 2009. It could be argued that the enemy force in Macross 7 (Varauta Army) is basically a "new Supervision Army" though, since it's made up of spirita-drained and brainwashed people and headed by the Protodeviln.

Dunno... he's probably American, since practically everyone in Robotech's Macross Saga is. He's supposed to be Claudia's brother or something like that, so I guess he's supposed to be black.

Why? There's nothing about the VF-19ACTIVE "Nothung" outside of Macross the Ride. Since you're implying a plural there, I'm assuming you've mistakenly assumed the VF-19ACTIVE "Nothung"is the main variant made for Macross the Ride. Rather, it's a variation on the VF-19EF Caliburn, not vice versa. Apparently not, since the official specs provided (and discussed in the Macross the Ride thread) thus far clearly list the VF-19ACTIVE as being an unarmed, extremely-limited-production test plane. No... Macross the Ride JUST started... but since the NUNS apparently passed over upgrading the VF-19 in favor of the VF-25, it seems that the obvious conclusion is "the VF-25 has superior performance".

On the few occasions I've met a Japanese person who was aware of Robotech's existence, their thoughts on it could usually be summed up as "They did what?" or "That's stupid! Why would they do that?".

lol... guess I just have an unusually high pain threshold, since I actually sat through the entire thing twice.

Bah... the way the women in Shadow Chronicles dress, they probably pay for everything with big wads of glitter-covered $1 bills that smell like coconut oil, sweat, and shame.

Do you see any pockets in those skintight jumpsuits of theirs?

Why yes... yes they are. Everyone knows tons of T&A makes for a family-friendly show... right?

You've heard me say this before, so it shouldn't come as any great surprise... Yes, you are... and I'm surprised you're surprised about it. You've seen what the Robotech fandom is like these days with your own eyes. It's been kind of dodgy ever since the mid-90's, but ever since robotech.com opened it's become more of a cult than a cult fandom. Now that the renewed lack of forward motion and the strenuous efforts of Tommy's goon squad have succeeded in driving most of the casual and moderate fans away from the Robotech franchise, the only ones left are the frothy-mouthed fanatics of various creeds and the handful of fans who continue to love Robotech quietly and/or from a distance. To be blunt, an outspoken Robotech fan who hasn't sacrificed his sanity and sense of perspective to the great Carl Macek and his prophet Tommy Yune and isn't drinking the Harmony Gold Kool-Aid was practically unheard of when you started your podcast, and that condition's in no danger of changing.

Hm... my favorite would be Sylvie Geena from Macross II: Lovers Again, with Maximilian Jenius being a close second. She's one of my favorite Mikimoto character designs, and she was the first ace pilot from a real Macross title I ever saw. It certainly doesn't hurt that she pilots my favorite VF ever, and that she's canonically one of the two best pilots in the entire Sol system circa 2092.

Robotech II: the Sentinels was limited and confined by its very nature as a minimum-effort sequel and as literal plot spackle for Robotech's overarching story. The creative staff responsible for the Sentinels series clearly had neither the talent nor the wherewithal to make engaging original characters of their own for the show, so they took the path of least resistance and based the story around existing characters for whom all of the hard work had already been done by the creators of the original shows. That way, they could safely push shallow stock characters like Jack Baker and Karen Penn into the background and rely on familiar names with not-so-familiar faces like Rick Hunter to carry the series. 's actually one of the reasons I think the Invid Regent is the best damn character in the entire Sentinels series, and probably the best villain in Robotech as a whole. The other villains in Robotech take themselves seriously... they try to pass themselves off as deep and complex even after Robotech's (re)writers thoroughly washed any trace of subtlety out of the original shows. Even Edwards tried to be all complex and tragic, and it just felt SO stilted and false. The Invid Regent's not having any truck with that nonsense... no sir! He's an unapologetic saturday morning children's show villain. If there was an Invid space puppy around, he'd kick it because that's just what guys like him do. He laughs maniacally, he verbally abuses his incompetent underlings, and all of his evil plans are so shallow, simple, and pointless that even a grade school kid could figure them out without any trouble. More often than not, he's evil simply for the sake of being evil. The Regent is the one character in the entirety of Robotech who seems to realize just how amateurish and high-camp Robotech is... and he plays it to the hilt. That's what makes him great. Having actually read the Sentinels comics by the Waltrips, I didn't think wrapping it up with the 5-issue Prelude miniseries did them any injustice (that hadn't already been done to them by their own authors). Really... the idea of a vacillating ninny like Rick Hunter becoming a great, legendary war hero and leader of men is kind of insulting in its own right. Not to the character, but to the rest of the military in Robotech. If a twit like him is the great leader of what appears to be Earth's postwar military dictatorship, then it's really no surprise that things go as badly as they do later on. Now if it were Lisa, then it might be easier to accept that Admiral Hunter was a great war hero and talented commander... but noooooooo, Robotech can't handle the idea of a woman in authority, so she had to take a backseat to her spineless hubby. Macross's Misa commands Earth's first-ever space colonization mission. Robotech's Lisa becomes the bus driver who carts around her allegedly (and undeservedly) legendary husband while he calls all the shots and eventually quits the service altogether so he can have the spotlight to himself.

Cost was a factor, yes... but apparently the main factor that killed widespread deployment of the VF-19 and the VF-22 was that they were difficult to operate and the high g-force loads the more powerful engines put on their pilots were causing pilots to lose control of the plane. They didn't have a solution (at the time), so widespread deployment of the VF-19 and VF-22 got shelved. IIRC, they later considered sticking an inertia store converter in the VF-19 cost-effective, but opted to continue development on the YF-24 Evolution because it was thought the Vajra's abilities would exceed the VF-19's, and to preserve military jobs.

Eh... the Robotech II: the Sentinels series might not have (directly) borrowed substantially from the original Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, but in terms of originality it still belonged to the same category of shameless knockoffs as Space Gandam V and Astro Plan. Personally, I think having Robotech II: the Sentinels continue the story of Robotech's most popular saga (the Macross Saga) is actually a strong argument against the show. Instead of trying to do something new and original with the Robotech story and concept, which would entail actual work and talent, the "creative team" responsible for Sentinels opted to put forth the minimum possible effort by slapping together a series out of existing characters and set pieces. From what little they produced before the project fell apart, it was quite obvious they were relying on the appeal of holdover characters from Macross to camouflage the show's low quality. As much as I'd like to say that the fans would've been kinder to Robotech II: the Sentinels if Carl Macek and company had put in the time and effort to make something halfway original, we all know how it turned out when he tried. A million times zero is still zero. I would think the answer would be obvious. They would cheap out on the production of the comics or novels... partly as a result of being unable to afford anyone with real talent, and partly out of senior management's well justified stance that Robotech isn't worth taking any significant financial risks. We probably would've seen more comics of the same (generally low) quality as the "From the Stars" miniseries or the "Prelude" miniseries, and a novel probably wouldn't have even drawn the attention of most Robotech fans. They keep trying to make new animation because the majority of fans are still hung up on the Macross Saga cast and want a continuation of their story... only this time they had twenty years of desperate self-delusion influencing their assessment of its quality.

Yeah... I know what you're feeling seeing that thing. I kinda wish they'd opted to save the Tornado packs and make those Alto's mid-season upgrade instead. Every time I see that bloody thing, I can't help but wonder if a model kit company foisted that one on the movie... it looks, for all the world, like a VF-25-themed freshening of Kawamori's SW-XAII Schneegans...

Nah... if what little art we've seen is anything to go by, it's the wrong color to be Hakuna Aoba's VF-1, which appears to be a blue VF-1A. As Talos said, the one we see in the trailer is a red VF-1J.

Based on what I've heard and read about that, I can only assume it's because they were just bowing to the will of the network. They kept the show chugging along long enough that they were able to wrap it up gracefully enough, even though doing so meant an incredibly unsubtle cast change for T&A value. Now Robotech's creative staff... how those twits stayed employed is a mystery for the ages.

Ugh... no matter how many times I see it, I still find the YF-29 downright ugly and I can't imagine why they would need a mid-season upgrade that doesn't seem to offer anything they didn't already have in the VF-25 and VF-27. Eh? So far, its applications seem limited to only fold-related technologies like fold drives, communications, the dimensional shift thingy that makes the ISC go, and pin-point barriers. That's hardly a magic "make anything better" material. Now if you want to talk about tachyons or Robotech's magic flowers...