Seto Kaiba

*sigh* Fine... fine... I'll be his keeper for a while to give you a break, 'kay? 'kay dude... let's be serious here for a minute. What the f*ck? I have no idea how you even do this... how can a man be wrong this consistently? Now, we've known each other for a good long time, so let me offer you a piece of friendly advice: Rigorous fact-checking, like Sam Adams, is always a good decision. Before you click the "Add Reply" button, take a moment to make sure that what you're about to say is factually sound. I recommend you add Wikipedia, the Macross Compendium, and a few other resources to your browser's search bar to facilitate this. If you had checked beforehand, you might have noted that the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie was animated by DR Movie, not Gonzo. Likewise, if you had taken the time to look up their Wikipedia or IMDB pages, you would have noted that the only hispanic member of the comedy act Cheech & Chong is Cheech Marin, his partner Tommy Chong is Canadian-American and of mixed Chinese and Scot-Irish heritage. Must've been a slow news day? Either way, it does feel a bit messed up for him to be there talking about it all as though he actually had any kind of involvement in its creation or editing.

Fantastic! Eh, they're about on the same level in terms of the quality of the writing... it's just that the SyFy originals almost certainly have a far bigger budget per made-for-TV movie than Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles did.

Okay... I have a question. Has anyone out there (apart from Saraphys) been following a series called Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari? I'm told it goes by the name of Saint Knight's Tale, and that it's supposed to be a spinoff of the Tenchi Muyo! OVA series in the same vein as Tenchi Muyo! GXP. Is this show actually worth a look?

We did... or at least, I thought we were just holding off until Macross Chronicle finished its print run. Either way, yeah...

Granted, that's a reasonably brief context-free summary of where Robotech was in the 90's. You can't, however, assume that Robotech fans are going to look at that period and what it produced logically and impartially. In the eyes of the majority, the only part of Robotech that actually matters is the animated series. Putting aside all the myriad criticisms of the quality and content of the novelizations and comic books, what the fans wanted most of all back then is more or less the same thing they want today: a continuation of the Robotech animated series. It should come as no surprise then, that their preoccupation with the animated series would lead them to think of the new animation-less 90's as a release drought. It should go without saying that Harmony Gold's decision to axe literally everything created in that period because its licensees did whatever they wanted hasn't helped the way the fans see that period with the benefit of hindsight. Naturally, the devoted Robotech fans could care less that Harmony Gold let Macross II: Lovers Again and Macross Plus slip past... after all, they're not Robotech. Just from my interactions with the old-timers and some of the more recent Robotech fans, I've gotten the distinct impression they see the 90's as a waste... where Harmony Gold wasn't doing anything, and the licensees were busy making Robotech titles that were nothing like "real Robotech" (meaning the animated series). Of course, we would be predisposed to see that period as something good... a time when Harmony Gold wasn't pretending they had a goddamn clue, and before they started using questionable legal tactics to cockblock the legitimate importation of Macross goods. Y'know... the "purist" Robotech fans who see the animation as the only part of Robotech worth paying attention to would probably take that statement in a wholly unironic sense and mean every word. For them, the 00's are giving them what they wanted... an animated direct continuation (however abortive) of the Robotech TV series, with the promise of more Robotech animation in the (vague) future and a possible live action movie. They ought to be over the moon about it all... and many of them are.

Nor did I... particularly since his supposed magnum opus, Robotech, failed to produce a viable sequel and was all but forgotten in the span of only a few short years. I guess he has a lasting influence as one of the most reviled figures in the industry, if nothing else. They named "Macekre" for him... and he even won the dubious moniker of "The Antichrist of Anime". Well, yes... the announcements for Shadow Chronicles, Shadow Rising, and the live action movie were about as close to formal announcements as Harmony Gold usually gets with its Robotech projects: Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was announced at AnimeExpo 2004, Robotech: Shadow Rising was announced at the 2007 New York Comic-Con, and the announcement that Shadow Rising was on hold because of the live action movie was made during their panel at AnimeExpo 2009. The obvious answer to the question of why their announcements don't get well publicized is that Robotech is still a virtual nonentity in the anime industry. It's such a small, forgotten title that most people haven't heard of it, and most of those that have don't care. The announcements are so vague because they announce them VERY early in production... that way they can milk the project for several years worth of minor news pieces and leaks to stir up hype about it and keep the fanbase from thinking they might be slipping into another release drought. Because... as I've said... the goal isn't so much to announce that there's something on the way so much as it is to prove that they're actually doing something. One of the worst, if not the worst fear of any Robotech fan is the return of the decade long release drought in the 90's where bugger all was coming out except piss-weak comic books and novels. By trotting out these vague announcements, they can assure the loyal fans that they're still making progress... even if they're not. It's all about appearances.

Yeah... it looks like some very badly titled FAQs on Microsoft's Windows 7 website are hinting that as well... that so long as you have valid install media and a license key for that version of Windows (Home/Pro/Ultimate) you're allowed to go back and forth between 32bit and 64bit installations as you see fit... and the upgrade utility even includes tools to go from 32bit to 64bit as a no-activation upgrade instead of a clean install. Not a bad idea, but I'm not liking the upgrade process from Vista to 7... that could definitely have been designed better. Still, I'll ask the manufacturer if they sell their systems with a dual 32/64bit anytime upgrade DVD, since that'll sort any other issues I might have with the process. 7's a slick OS... shame about the install process tho.

Oh yeah, that's a tactful thing to say to someone you're asking for information... no way in hell I could possibly take offense over that. In all seriousness, I don't remember. Do you remember the brand of bread that was in the sandwich you had for lunch three months ago today? Probably not. Still, not being able to provide you with the answer you seek isn't sitting right with me, so I'm undertaking to dig through my chat logs, e-mails, and forum private messages looking for an answer for you. Eh... my guess would be around the time some public relations person at Harmony Gold decided that calling him that made him sound more impressive... as a more accurate description of his achievements and standing in the industry would make him sound singularly unimpressive and robbed the piece of much of the intended impact. It certainly wasn't the first time they stretched the truth past the point of absurdity in the name of promoting their hackneyed mess. Actually... to be fair, that isn't an original claim by any means. In fact, it looks like MEMO was paraphrasing some statements Carl Macek had made to similar effect (chiefly concerning the story) in a "fan interview" published on May 21st, 2001. You can find the pertinent quotations in part 2 of the 3-part piece... about two-thirds of the way down the page in response to a question by Robotech.com user Ein. For your convenience, here is the section MEMO was probably drawing on: Utter poppycock, of course... considering that this interview was conducted just a few years after the release of Macross Dynamite 7... and that the interim titles had been Macross II: Lovers Again, Macross Plus, and Macross 7... most of which place at least as much importance on music as the original series, and most substantially more so. ... as has been pointed out many a time before now, the vehement debates were a large part of what kept the online fandom chugging along in the period between the first major fansites popping up in the late 90's and the lukewarm reception of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles in '06-'07. The animosity is practically a fundamental part of Robotech fandom... they kept themselves entertained for a decade or more squabbling over whether the series or the irreverent novelizations was the superior version. Unless things have really turned around since I was banned from Robotech.com, it was practically an article of faith among active Robotech fans that the novels were rubbish and the people who cited them in discussion were treading a thin line between "contributor" and "troll". Lamentably, some Robotech fans (like MEMO) see such conflicts as avenues for personal advancement and do what they can to ensure they continue unabated. Until those individuals are singled out and removed, or at least lose the ability to enforce their position by abuse of moderator power, the Robotech fanbase will never get the chance to straighten out its priorities. Which is, I think, at least part of why they react to discussion of Macross with such hostility. True, they've spent the last decade or so being told that Macross is inferior garbage fit only for "correction" and inclusion in Robotech. Still, it's no stretch to picture them as finding discussions of new and exciting things happening in Macross to be irritating... to the point of seeing it as implicit bragging... because of their frustration with the lack of similar movement from Harmony Gold. (The only analogy I can really think of for this is the irration you see in guys who've just broken up with their girlfriends and have to endure a friend waxing poetic about his new girlfriend. )

Eh... there's an ulterior motive in the downgrade. Specifically, that I want to rid the machine of all the trialware, bloatware, etc. that the manufacturers inevitably load new systems down with and start from a clean install of Windows. As it transpires, while I have several dual 32/64bit anytime upgrade DVDs for Vista that I've used for that purpose in the past... the one I have for Windows 7 is 32bit only. *shrug* I guess the worst case scenario is that I pony up a C-note for a fresh OEM copy of Windows 7 32bit and use it to replace the existing 64bit version that comes with the machine.

Hey guys... I have a brief-ish question for anyone who's currently running a Windows 7 box. Long story short, I'm looking into getting a replacement for my now-5 year old HP Pavilion laptop. I'm somewhat leery about the idea of them coming, by default, with the 64bit version of Windows 7. I'm probably going to get a somewhat minimalist machine, and thus won't need the 64bit version's expanded memory addressing abilities or any of the other dubious benefits the 64bit version confers. So, I what I want to know is if it's possible for me to downgrade the system (via reformat and clean install, obviously) from the 64bit OS to the 32bit version of same using the same OEM license key. I ask because the manufacturers I've talked to are mysteriously tight-lipped on that note (I actually ended up in a chicken-and-the-egg dilemma with HP's phone rep somehow), and there's no shortage of contradictory answers on the various tech forums out there. Can I get a yea or nay from someone who's actually tried this (or the reverse?). Also, further to my earlier problem... it's a confirmed Firefox issue, not a Norton issue. Yay resolution, probably caused by the plugin container, given that manually disabling the plugin container sorts the problem right out. ^^

Eh... well, then I don't know what to tell you. It must have been something I gleaned from one of my occasional interactions with the handful of influential 85ers I keep in touch with. It had to have come from a source that I'd rate as at least reasonably reliable, otherwise my inherent scholarly distrust for anecdotal evidence would have caused me to ignore it entirely. I have an excellent memory for detail, but I'm not perfect... and to be fair, you're asking after minutae from a three-month old conversation. The odd circumstances you're citing are explained in the original anecdote though. Ah, I see... yeah, it's not at all surprising that something like that slipped past me unnoticed. I am, after all, not exactly a fan of Transformers. I've got fond childhood memories of the original Transformers Generation 1 series and Transformers: the Movie, but beyond that... nothin'. Didn't bother looking into the comics, and caught only a few episodes of later shows (incl. Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and Armada)... none of which were to my taste.

IIRC, it was in the discussion of the Robotech production process in one of the Robotech Art books that someone had brought to my attention at the time. Sorry I can't be more precise, but you are asking about a discussion we had nearly three months ago. I would consult my copies of the books for you, but I've long since crated up all of my Robotech stuff and put it in storage because nobody in what remains of the Robotech fandom talks about the show anymore.

Still... not the best decision they could've made under the circumstances. It's not like they would've found anyone objecting to it if they'd gone for something a bit more realistic and serious, since the vast majority of people who saw Speed Racer on television are in their fifties now. Who knows? Perhaps the producers of Transformers felt at least a little bit more secure in their decisions knowing that no matter what they did the majority of Transformers fans were going to hate it and spend months or even years whining themselves inside-out about it. At least the producers of the live action Robotech movie have nothing to fear either way, since any bleating about its fate on the part of the existing fanbase is at best going to be the shrilling of a handful of belligerents. Damn... lol. That's a speed cancellation fit to rival even the fastest project collapses in Robotech's history.

Okay, the feet don't really work that well... but that's still kinda badass. Eh... that's why there aren't that many incoming fans in the Robotech fanbase. There was a brief boom where a fair few new people were coming in back in ~2002-2004, but that was mostly word-of-mouth introduction and the hype from the brief uptick of interest they're praising as a revival these days... most of the people who came in during that period had an average tenure of about a year before getting sick of Robotech's lack of forward motion and seeking greener pastures.

Eh... really, I think you're both drawing a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison between the mecha designs of Macross and those of Transformers Generation 1. Just going from what I've heard about the production of the "Bayformers" movie, one of the main problems they had in adapting the familiar designs of G1 Transformers into something halfway believable for the silver screen is that almost all of them treat conservation of mass as more of a polite suggestion than a universal law. Something like the inexplicable disappearance and reappearance of Optimus Prime's trailer could be dealt with, but there's no rationalizing G1 Soundwave and Megatron's amazing and inexplicable ability to alter their body mass to such a worrying extent that they can pass for a human-scale cassette deck (which isn't that inconspicuous these days) or a pistol small and light enough to be used by other Decepticons one-handed. Sufficed to say, they have a whole host of issues that would make them unfeasible or ridiculous looking as a straight port-over from their animated counterparts. By in large, Macross's mecha designs have no such drawbacks, which would work in their favor if a straight-up adaptation were to be made... in that case, the main beef would be that we don't fly F-14s anymore. ^^; Ah, yeah... it was more or less inevitable that this year's convention tour would have the increasingly desperate die-hard Robotech fans praying for news of big things to validate their misplaced faith in the franchise. I can only guess at how stupid one would have to be to think there was a chance they'd be showing the trailer for the live action movie on this year's convention tour when the proposed movie doesn't even have a script yet. At least all the mooks who were holding their breath waiting for a Robotech: Shadow Rising trailer this year had some cause to suspect it... since they at least started making that one before putting the brakes on it while they waited for Warner to unf*ck their reputation. Still, I suppose it's to be expected... the paid trolls at Harmony Gold and their ringleaders, Carl Macek and Tommy Yune, have put decades of work into making the Robotech fandom a herd of ignorant cattle who'd make even the most inbred backwoods redneck look positively on the ball by comparison. All that's left of the Robotech fandom is the blindly faithful core demographic of 30+ year old men waiting patiently for the sequel that will never come, and the few newcomers who've just discovered anime and will, more often than not, come to their senses and drop Robotech for a show that actually has potential. EDIT: I just finished reading the "Scale" article on Teletraan 1... and just about laughed myself sick.

Oh, most any company is going to care about how it's perceived by its prospective customer base. As far as the idiots at Harmony Gold are concerned, the question of maintaining their "image" is less a matter of ensuring the rest of the industry thinks they're a competent outfit, and more about ensuring their phony baloney jobs remain safe by keeping what remains of the loyal Robotech consumer base convinced exciting things are happening and that they're the ones responsible for it all. It's no accident that so many Robotech fans mistake Harmony Gold for a company that actually produces its own content... that's how Tommy Yune, and Carl Macek before him, stayed on the payroll. Indeed... an endeavor aided in no small measure by the sad fact that many Robotech fans seem to actually want to be lied to. Plenty of loyal, long-time Robotech fans want to allay their fears that they've wasted decades on a franchise that has yet to make good on promises it made back in 1986, and as such will happily accept even the flimsiest lies about how popular and well-respected Robotech is in the anime industry.

Damn, that's sad news indeed... I really enjoyed his work on Perfect Blue. R.I.P. Satoshi Kon

You would think so... but the answer to your question is a surprising and unexpected "No". Of all the anime magazines I've collected from that period for their coverage of Macross II: Lovers Again, the ONLY one which mentions Robotech in connection with the OVA is the inaugural issue of Animerica... and generally in an extremely dismissive manner. The other articles from that period studiously ignore Macross's relation to Robotech in their coverage of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA, and only draw on it to offer name equivalencies for the few important characters whose names changed significantly (basically, just Kamjin) in their discussions of Macross's production history. Perhaps the best, and most telling, snub directed at Robotech in those issues was the one in Animerica, where the Robotech Perfect Collection is described as "a dual Japanese/Enlish video compilation of the ever-popular 1982 science fiction TV series, Superdimensional Fortress Macross" and the Robotech half of the video release is only mentioned in a single sentence tacked onto the end of the article as an obvious afterthought. Viz briefly mentions Robotech in their translation of the Macross II: Lovers Again manga, and Palladium only mentions Robotech in the foreword of the first Macross II RPG book to explain how and why Macross II has nothing to do with Robotech and then gives a brief rundown of Macross production history in Japan. In an odd touch, while almost all of the articles gloss over or completely forget to mention Robotech, they ALL mention Macross: Do You Remember Love? at great length and almost invariably give a rundown of the movie's plot. Given the profound absence of attempts to hype Macross II: Lovers Again based on its tangential relation to the already somewhat-scorned Robotech series, one can only assume that the OVA was hyped as "the most eagerly anticipated anime sequel ever" at the time due to knowledge of the franchise's popularity in Japan. Naturally, it ended up being somewhat underwhelming after all that... DYRL's a tough act to follow even today and Macross II was not exactly the most innovative sequel of all time either. Insofar as the Robotech live action movie's writers go, there's no indication that they've retained Kasdan after rejecting his story treatment. Usually if that happens to a writer, they collect their paycheck and go on to work on something else. Harmony Gold has, as everybody here knows, a loooooooooong history of misleading news pieces, so that he's still credited on a powerpoint slideshow that hasn't seen a major update in three years is not an indication that he's still involved. That they continued to bring in new and less credible writers as time went on speaks to their increasing desperation.

No problem, I'm here to help.

Umm... while I don't own an iPad, I did get the chance to use one for a few days while I was doing on-site work with a client. Please bear in mind, I'm not anything like an impartial critic. I do not like Apple's products, for the most part, so my impressions of the iPad are no doubt colored by my less-than-good first impressions of other Apple products. I own a Zune, so take that for what you will. Your mileage may vary. Unfortunately, I only had the chance to use my borrowed iPad for 3 days before the company we were working with (an auto parts supplier) decided they were great but not suited for widespread adoption. I was using the standard Wi-Fi model w/o the 3G support, and found it to be (surprisingly) a reasonably capable tablet. I avoid using tablets whenever possible since they're usually not as durable as normal laptops, and my working laptop tends to get the crap beat out of it in the line of duty. My concerns about its durability seem to have been a bit excessive, since I didn't manage to kill the damn thing in three days hard work. The onscreen keyboard's kinda awkward to use for someone whose hands are as big as mine, but the keyboard dock sorted that well enough. The only significant beef I had with the thing was that there wasn't a conventional stylus, but it looks like there are aftermarket solutions for that if you feel like shelling out fifteen bucks. Didn't care for iOS, but that's really a pointless complaint considering the product. Functionally, the iPad is a good looking, functionally adequate tablet that doesn't really excel in any meaningful way. It's a pretty package and some visually impressive twists on run-of-the-mill functionality. If you really like Apple or want to be on the bleeding edge of tablets, it's okay I guess... I'll stick with my Lenovo ThinkPad X60.

Hmm... an interesting question to be sure. It's pretty much a given that if Harmony Gold had never tried to get the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series onto TV back in the 80's, they would never have made Robotech or a Robotech-like show. They would never have had to partner with Revell, which would've left Revell to distribute Macross, Dougram, and Orguss kits under their "Robotech Defenders" line. Likewise, Revell's aspirations for a Transformers-like series that would help advertise their kits would probably have died with the failure of the Robotech Defenders comic book miniseries. Since their attempts to get Macross on the air were what eventually culminated in a combi-show rewrite, it's likely that they would never had had a syndicated TV series at all, and would have continued peddling dubs by mail order. Since their rewritten adaptations of Southern Cross and Mospeada didn't go over well even back in the 80's, it's unlikely they would've succeeded by combining those with another lesser-known show. Harmony Gold would have, in all likelihood, never had a feeble franchise to hang onto and annoy everyone with in the first place. Southern Cross and Mospeada would have been virtual nonentities until the late 90's or early 00's, when fansub groups started digging into old shows like Armored Trooper Votoms and Heavy Metal L-Gaim. Odds are that America's first encounter with unedited Macross would've been the 1992 debut of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA, which was hyped to all hell in the handful of anime publications of the day. If that didn't ignite interest in the rest of Macross, the Macross Plus OVA would almost certainly have done so when it came out just a few years later. There would've been little-to-no opposition to bringing the rest of Macross over (apart from all the obvious music licensing issues in Macross 7). To give you a straightforward answer... no. Apparently, virtually no progress has been made on the proposed live-action Robotech movie since the project was announced back in 2007. It seems to be stalled in the earliest phases of pre-production, after Chuck Rovin left the project for The Dark Knight. They reportedly don't even have a working draft of the script yet, let alone a director or a cast. It looks like they passed on Lawrence Kasdan's draft, and that of the idiots who did Smallville, and are now relying on virtual unknown Tom Rob Smith... a writer with no experience working on sci-fi or action titles, and specializes in cold war-era murder mysteries set in Soviet Russia. Tobey Maguire, on the other hand, seems to have put Robotech on the back burner, and is focusing on Tokyo Suckerpunch and Afterburn, both films which are slated for release in 2011 and 2012 respectively. My advice to you... don't hold your breath. The live-action Robotech movie seems to be a continuation of the fine Harmony Gold tradition of talking a big game and accomplishing nothing at all.

To be fair, many of the larger compromises weren't compromises at all... they were directives handed down from on high from senior management at Harmony Gold or at the network for one reason or other. Eh... even back in the early 90's folks were starting to see Robotech as less of a gateway show and more of a roadblock between them and "proper" anime.

Indeed... that's certainly plausible. It's also possible that the Zentradi, fixated as they were on destroying Earth's surface, completely overlooked relatively small installations like the L-5 manufacturing station, the space colonies, and Apollo Base. After all, the Zentradi are used to dealing with space stations the which could easily fall into the "small moon" category, and something as insignificant as an Island-3 colony cylinder might slip by unnoticed since it'd neither shot at them nor attempted to move under its own power.

Now, if one thing has held true with regard to the sort of fanatical Robotech fans who anoint themselves to be the chosen defenders of the Robotech fandom, it's that they usually know that much about the Robotech series itself, let alone the original shows they so frequently deride in the name of lauding Carl Macek's glorious vision. Of course, considering the idiot we're talking about was thick enough to assert that despite not understanding so much as a word of Japanese, that he fully understood the entire setting, plot, and story of Macross Frontier better than those who saw it subbed or speak Japanese despite having only watched low-quality raws of the show ONCE, that should tell you something about the quality of his arguments... It's actually kind of sad... the very people who continually laud Macek as a visionary genius are the ones who've never understood what the man was actually trying to do with Robotech and his later work, because they've all constructed an elaborate fantasy for themselves in order to convince themselves that Robotech is popular and successful, and that because they like it, it must be what Macek meant to do. This delusion, of course, was not helped by Macek's profound and frequently expressed tendency to stretch the truth to increase his own kudos. Is that what it was? F*cked if I remember that poo... the writing wasn't exactly fantastic, nor was the art... the clear intention was to appeal to the we-swear-its-not-Super Dimension Fortress Macross nostalgia factor of the Robotech fandom to get them to buy the damn book.

Hmmm... it depends on what did in the disk. If it's a failure of the disk surface then you might be boned, but if it's just a failure of the file system then you might be able to salvage it using the repair tool on the Windows Anytime Upgrade CD that came with most new Windows Vista machines (and also normal Vista install CDs).