Seto Kaiba

United States of America Super Dimension Fortress Macross - Japanese Audio / Subtitled (AnimEigo, 9 DVDs) - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (ADV Films, 7 DVDs) - Aborted English Dub (Harmony Gold, VHS) - Aborted English Sub (Streamline, VHS) Macross II: Lovers Again - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (Manga Ent., 1 DVD or VHS) - Translated Official Manga (Viz Media, 10 issues) - "Micron Conspiracy" Spinoff (Viz Media, 5 issues) Macross Plus - Dual Audio Ver. / Subtitled (Manga Ent., 2 DVD?) - Japanese Audio / Subtitled (Manga Ent, 1 DVD)

Yes, I do... ever since Tommy let slip that senior management put the brakes on Robotech: Shadow Rising while they wait for Warner to make a move, they've been under pressure to get something out there to convince the fans that their fears of a backslide into the release doldrums of the 90s are baseless. This fly-by-night attempt to put together a side story on the cheap is exactly the sort of thing I would expect them to do to produce the illusion of progress. Remember what they did back when Shadow Chronicles was delayed for the third or fourth time? They tried to distract the fans by trotting out a badly animated (and hilariously ill-timed) PSA supporting the United Nations. Even people who are ordinarily reliable can be wrong... or spreading misinformation, which Harmony Gold puts rather too much enthusiasm into.

Uh... yeah, let's put no faith in hearsay and "friend of a friend" tales. I'll admit it sounds very plausible, but until they actually announce it as such or it becomes obvious by other means (e.g. screen captures or trailers) then I think I'll hang onto my skepticism over the whole Love Live Alive dub hypothesis. It just doesn't jive with what's shown in the only piece of promotional material we've seen for it. If they were advertising Love Live Alive as an idiotic side story for Robotech, why advertise it with a picture of Sera carrying Invid weaponry? Just knowing who's left active in the online Robotech fanbase, there's going to be one hell of a fight over how that'd fit with the revamped continuity. Rhade would probably poo out a kidney trying to make a case for how they could fit it in. Name me one attempt to revive Robotech that HASN'T come off as at least a little bit desperate.

Likely... but since cost was apparently a significant factor in the decision to drop the VF-19 as the future main VF in favor of the VF-171, one has to wonder if it was only the more affluent colonies that bothered trying to equip their defense forces with VF-19s in large numbers. About the only time we see VF-19s operating in large numbers is around Earth in 2051. Why not? Well... there were the changes in tactical policy that occurred during the 2040s that put a greater emphasis on the use of unmanned fighters, and the emergence of a cheaper new main VF that was easier for pilots to handle, versatile, and cheaper to boot that showed up around the same time the VF-19 was starting to be adopted by various fleets. (The VF-171)

In keeping with your request, I will say that while I generally feel that subtitles are a better way to watch... I do not hate all dubbed anime, I respect the necessity of it in making shows accessible to a much wider audience. That said, I still felt that the ADV Films dub of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross show was one of the worst dub jobs I've ever seen. It's that kind of all-bad all-the-time that gets rather worrying after you see a few episodes. The bad casting decisions, lousy script, mispronunciations, and stilted performances leave the whole thing feeling almost like they were trying to do a bad job. I'm not gonna say any more about it now, because I prefer to pretend those discs don't have an English audio track.

If you're not getting your maximum daily value of dakka from that smaller capture, it comes in XL size too. Just looking at it, it looks like the new arm guns mounted on that remodeled König Monster are just a reuse of the rotary cannons off the existing Cheyenne CG model. We'll have to wait and see if they actually meant this new model of König Monster to have been modified with Cheyenne II parts, or if they were just borrowing the art to save time and didn't think anyone would notice. Clearly done up in Basara colors too... but as far as I'm aware there's been nothing to suggest we'll actually be getting an appearance from him. I'd say it's more likely that we've caught a glimpse of some crazy Fire Bomber fan's hobby machine... probably Ozma's. It's like that Hobby HiZack done up in the color scheme of the original Gundam in Char's Counterattack... only potentially more disturbing.

Now, I gotta ask... has it actually been confirmed that the so-called "side story" Tommy's working on is a dub of Genesis Climber MOSPEADA: Love Live Alive, or is that just your assumption? I'll admit that Harmony Gold doing a dub of Love Live Alive to make a quick buck and maintain the illusion of progress sounds plausible enough, but it isn't the only possible explanation... and it certainly doesn't explain that bizarre and anatomically improbable bit of promo art Tommy was showing around. Despite all the noise we've heard from the spin doctors at Harmony Gold about how this so-called side story is the final part of Carl Macek's vision for Robotech, I doubt he actually had much to do with it. Harmony Gold has been downright shameless in using the man's death to promote projects he had no involvement in, and I can't shake the feeling this was, at best, something he only mentioned in passing. It was announced that he'd only returned to Robotech in an advisory capacity, so I doubt Tommy's rampant ego would make way for doing what someone else wanted. Even if this side story project turns out to be a pathetic failure by the standards of the rest of the industry, you can bet they'll still laud it as a massive success. Harmony Gold sets the budgets and sales targets of Robotech projects absurdly low... that was they can call it a success even if the only people who buy it are the fans. If it really came down to an honest-to-goodness failure even the fans wouldn't buy into, they'd probably throw the blame on Carl's shoulders since he's not on payroll anymore and he's not exactly in a position to refute them. Okay... let's not fall into the trap of pretending that Carl Macek had some kind of preconceived creative vision when he made Robotech. It's simply a matter of record that the creative decisions that shat the Robotech TV series into being were generally made far above Macek's head and forced on the project by simple business necessity. The decision to combine Macross with other shows to get it long enough for networks to take an interest in it as a syndicated series was forced on them by Revell, and the choice of shows to add was made from only those shows that Harmony Gold had already licensed. The "creative process" of Robotech is really more the story of a man who just wanted to dub Super Dimension Fortress Macross and trying to make the best of a bad and rapidly deteriorating situation in the hopes of cashing in on a popular trend than any the story of someone struggling to carry out an original creative vision.

Granted, that's been a problem in the past... but for the last year or two we've had a bigger problem with crazy Robotech fans coming here just for this thread. Usually, the crazies from the Robotech fanbase who show up on MacrossWorld just for this thread fall into one of two basic flavors: drama queens looking for anything they can take offense to, and zealots who think criticizing the show or its "creators" is the very height of villainy. They're mercifully rare... but in some cases even a date with the banhammer can't keep them from coming here to "spy" on this thread. Hell, at least two of those padded-room tenants are still coming here on a fairly regular basis, even after being banned, just to see what I'm saying about Robotech. Between all the various nutjobs "spying" on me, there've probably been more Robotech podcasts about me and what I have to say than there are about Carl Macek and Tommy Yune put together. That's 90% of Harmony Gold's marketing strategy right there...

Eh... to be honest, we came to the correct conclusion ages ago. For the most part, the actual progress that's been made on that front is the discovery of additional evidence that supports our conclusion. It might not be entirely necessary, but it's nice to make sure everything is well-documented. To be honest... it's because some of the people here are still crazy or optimistic enough to hope that Harmony Gold might one day make an original Robotech title that doesn't completely suck. For the rest, the value in this thread is as a venue to vent about, or get a cheap laugh out of, the increasingly ridiculous antics of Robotech's more vocal proponents and supporters. Nah... they haven't fallen back on another round of witch hunting as a source of amusement just yet. I think they might have finally realized that they've run out of convenient targets for their hostility now that they've scourged the fans of the novels, comics, failed projects, and Japanese originals from their midst. Has that actually happened recently? I think the last one was Pizza the Hutt coming back under a thoroughly transparent alias to ask questions about the Macross licensing issue to settle a debate with another Robotech fan. Other than that, the last major visit was when Doug Bendo, Maverick_LSC, and MEMO1DOMINION all crashed this thread and received various punishments for acting like complete bellends.

Gubaba's gonna get caught on the technicality that Macross Generation is a radio show rather than a television show. It ran for ten episodes back in Spring 1997, and was set on Macross-9 in the year 2047.

Granted, it's be a nice theory of the animation or story supported it in any way... or at least if the animation of the OVA/movie didn't completely rule it out by showing us that the events of that flashback happened in quick succession. There's no real ambiguity there... not even the tiniest implication that there was any intention of sexual assault, let alone the actual act. No problem...

Huh... maybe that's what we should start calling them. It's certainly justified by their track record of truly epic failures. Presumably, because they're really only marketing their stuff to people who are already Robotech fans, and they have a VERY low opinion of the average Robotech fan's intelligence. Not without reason, mind you... No, he's not alone in that... I haven't seen Gurren Lagann yet either. I did toy with the idea of watching it when it showed up on Hulu, but it was the dubbed version and the dub was awful.

I know I'm a bit late in weighing in on this one, but better late than never... right? Personally, I don't think there's a single piece of evidence that could possibly support the conclusion that Guld raped, or was trying to rape, Myung. It's pretty much beyond dispute that Guld had one hell of a temper, and that at least part of his anger management problems had their roots in his hybrid physiology. The "complete" flashback we see when Guld fires on Isamu and Myung leaves no room for the rape hypothesis. Unless you're suggesting that Myung took the time to obligingly put her torn top and her pants back on after Guld finished and Isamu just sat there and watched after being punched once, then rape is right out. That it might be attempted rape is equally silly, for the same reasons. Isamu was right there and clearly still had has wits about him since he was able to rush to her aid immediately. The actual substance of Guld's final memory sequence there shows him seeing Isamu with Myung, completely losing his sh*t (out of jealousy, presumably), attacking Isamu first, then going after Myung, then seeing himself in the mirror, having an "oh sh*t" moment, then legging it. Hey, you're the one who posted about it first, referring to it as "the rape scene" as though there was no question that was what it was... I think you've long since forfeited the right to complain. To address your actual question, no... that we only ever see Guld's incomplete recollections of the event until he thinks he's killed Isamu would seem to indicate that he doesn't really remember what happened. It appeared to be a source of intense psychological trauma for him (enough that it consistently caused him problems), and that would seem to argue in favor of him blocking out significant portions of the memory as a coping mechanism. He seemed to genuinely think Isamu was the one responsible, which does seem to point towards him repressing all memory of his involvement in it. Given their behavior when discussing Myung later in life, I'd wager the motivation for Guld going ape sh*t and attacking Isamu and Myung was probably something along the lines of "You're my best friend, how could you screw around with the girl you know I like behind my back?!". After the fact, Guld did explicitly treat it like the two of them were competing over her (even referring to it as such at one point), and like he had "won".

Nor mine... but there's no denying that he certainly has it coming and Myung probably wouldn't hesitate to. It's possible, but unlikely, that the manga adaptation of Macross Plus will offer an epilogue or something once they finish making it... but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Nah... extenuating circumstances would probably get Isamu off the hook for the most part.

This'll probably get merged into the Newbie thread by the first mod who runs across it, but s'long as it's here... Your guess is as good as mine... as Agent ONE said, he got the girl and that's all we really know. Like most of Macross's protagonists, he exits stage left after his story is over and that's that. I'd like to think he and Myung hooked up and she beat some self-control into him with a frying pan, but there's really no way to tell. No... at least, not in any reliable source. I'd have to dig it out and check, but I don't think his character sheet in Macross Chronicle goes beyond the events of the Macross Plus OVA/movie. It's possible there's more about his career in Variable Fighter Master File - VF-19 Excalibur, but that's an unreliable book to say the least.

He's talking about the following warning that's currently attached to each and every cup/mug in the robotech.com store: In a way, it's kind of messed up... when McDonalds found out that their commemorative Shrek glassware might contain cadmium in the art from Shrek printed on it, they issued a massive voluntary recall, but Harmony Gold just slapped a warning on the store entry and kept selling them as usual.

Yeah, that's about the letter of it... Tatsunoko didn't get involved in the production of Macross until after Studio Nue and Artland had already created the designs and story of the series. Tatsunoko was only brought in after Big West had already pared the planned number of episodes down to 27 and concluded it was still going to be more expensive than they were willing to foot the bill for. That much comes to us directly from the "The Making of Macross" section in Macross Perfect Memory. Tatsunoko came along later and created the screenplay based on the story that Studio Nue and Artland had already made. Do you understand now? No, what you said was that Studio Nue and Artland contracted with Tatsunoko to make the series... I've quoted and linked to the post where you said as much. The fact of the matter is that it was Big West who sought out Tatsunoko's cooperation in animating the series.

I know... it was a joke. Just about any upgrade that increases firepower can be labeled an application of "more dakka". It's been a while, but I believe they did something to that effect in Macross VF-X2, where the VB-6 is originally from. Just based on the existing animation and line art from Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?, the city is spread out through the ship's "torso" and "legs". Macross Chronicle WorldGuide sheet 15 supports this notion as well. There are top-down maps of part of the city from the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, but they don't show its orientation inside the ship. The line art and animation of the series and movie shows the parts of the city inside the ship's torso are arranged in layers... up to four layers deep in places, and the areas inside the legs are somewhat more open... though their ability to manipulate gravity meant they didn't necessarily have to stick to just horizontal surfaces for building. Line art showing the orientation of the city components inside the "leg" of the movie variant of the Macross is available on the DYRL SDF-1 Macross page on the Macross Mecha Manual.

No problem... we aim to please. Therein lies the problem and the great paradox of the Robotech fandom... in order for Robotech to have any kind future it needs to make something original, but the Robotech fandom has spent the last twenty-five years being hung up on the surviving Macross cast and their story. The overwhelming majority don't want a new and original Robotech, what they want is Robotech: the Rick Hunter Chronicles. For one... I didn't assert that Carl Macek's attempt to "Americanize" Macross was disrespectful to Big West... I said it was disrespectful to the creators of Macross: Studio Nue. What they did would be like a translator who had obtained the rights to publish a translated version of Harry Potter deciding to combine it with Lord of the Rings by changing all the character names and then crediting only himself and the original publisher without a single mention of J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien. (I apologize to any literary buffs I just offended with that lame analogy) Tatsunoko didn't create Macross... they took the existing story, characters, mechanical designs, etc. and made them into a screenplay and animation. That's all. So yes, Harmony Gold is being extremely disrespectful to the people who actually created Macross by crediting only Tatsunoko Productions... a company that wasn't involved at all in the creation of the story, characters, mecha, etc. There's a link to it right there in the block of text you quoted from my post... second to last paragraph. But if you need it again, I have no problem quoting it for you again: (wording is yours, the emphasis is mine) Take as much offense as you like to this... a conscience should be accurate the majority of the time, and on those grounds I have to say you're rather unqualified for the post.

To be honest... it's been ages since this thread was actually about the Macross legal/licensing situation and the role Harmony Gold plays in keeping most of Macross out of the hands of western fans. There was only so much we could talk about the irrefutable facts of the court documents and other sources of information. Once we got to the point where we had more-or-less unassailable conclusion based on those facts, there wasn't really a lot left to talk about. I'm sure there are plenty of possible specific motivations we could attach to Harmony Gold's use of their trademark to prevent other distributors from licensing Macross shows, but the underlying motive is plain to see... they're afraid Robotech will be plowed under by the higher quality Macross shows, and they don't want to see that happen unless they can profit from it as well. Just as you said, they want to be able to profit from Macross without doing any actual work... just sit back and demand royalties for the use of the name. No, it's a matter of record that Harmony Gold acquired the "rest of world" distribution and merchandising rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross under license from Tatsunoko Productions, who received them as payment for their involvement in producing the series. You might be mixing that up with the tiff between Harmony Gold and FASA over the "unseen" designs in Battletech and MechWarrior, where there was some confusion over the legitimacy of the rights FASA acquired to those designs via a model kit manufacturer. The whole mess ended with an undisclosed settlement that recent events make clear involved FASA surrendering any claim on those designs... something they apparently failed to communicate to the companies they sold the franchise to. Well, no surprises there... it's not like Robotech fans have a lot left to talk about nowadays. They've long since exhausted every significant topic for discussion in the "original" Robotech series, and in the absence of forward motion on Shadow Chronicles and the proposed live action movie they don't have anything buzzworthy to hold their interest. So, naturally, the more desperate and self-deluded Robotech fans spend a downright disturbing amount of time trying to manufacture their own hype. The end result is, of course, an absurd collection of wild guesses and bullsh*t held up as though it were fact. Pity them, for theirs is a miserable lot with not even the faintest glimmering of genuine hope on the horizon.

Not a bad idea... the only problem I can think of is that in places there are going to be so many "lies" coming so quickly that the subtitled corrections are going to either have to race by so fast nobody can read them or pile up until they completely obscure the animation. Probably both in a few scenes.

Thanks for posting that, Tom... you've got great timing, I mentioned it a few posts ago. True... this fan-made "restored" version of the Robotech closing credits sequence doesn't do anything to change the way Harmony Gold tries to avoid crediting the creators of the original shows. It does, however, serve as an excellent demonstration of what I was telling terry the lone wolf... that Harmony Gold's failure to acknowledge the contribution of the show's real creators isn't because it's difficult or unfeasible, but because they just don't care to for whatever asinine reason. It might've been excusable back in the day, but they had a chance to fix it recently with Robotech Remastered and chose not to. As far as I'm aware, their bread and butter is their rental properties and their buying and selling the distribution rights to various shows.

Just going by the content of your last couple of posts... that's a frighteningly long list. In the interest of brevity, let's just skip right to the salient points... ... like this fantastic example of your inability to stay on topic. It would probably be easier for you to grasp what we're talking about if you weren't desperately racking your brains for something that isn't wrong. It's a mystery to me why you seem to think that this is in any way relevant to what we were discussing. The whole point that we were discussing after you let your fingers get ahead of your brain and claimed that neither Voyager Ent. nor World Events Pro. never revealed their shows came from Japan was why it was profoundly unprofessional and somewhat insulting for Harmony Gold to consistently fail to acknowledge the people whose creative vision and hard work created the shows they were bastardizing. That the animation of the series was farmed out to a couple of different studios in the course of events has nothing to do with it. What really drives home how little you understand is that just a few posts ago you asserted that it was Studio Nue who contracted with Tatsunoko, rather than Big West... and inexplicably suggested that Big West "put the screws to" Studio Nue and Artland over it. That's really a completely different issue altogether and has nothing to do with what was being discussed... the brouhaha over Harmony Gold having "disrespected" the original shows by rewriting them (badly) and combining them into Robotech is more a hindsight thing than anything else. Of course, not crediting the original shows and their creators is disrespectful to the source material they were adapting into Robotech. The main reason for that complaint is that rewriting shows to "Americanize" them went out of fashion a few years after Robotech debuted, and Carl Macek's repeated insistence that the originals were inferior by far to his version. That's an insult to the original work and its author any way you shake it. QFT

Kind of hard to interpret that as anything other than a clear indication that you don't understand the situation. How is that holding Harmony Gold to an unrealistically high standard when their contemporaries managed to credit the original creators of the shows they were rewriting (e.g. StarBlazers), and for ages now it's been the industry standard to credit the original cast and crew as well as the English dub staff? If everyone else in the industry is already doing it as standard operating procedure, there's nothing unrealistic about expecting HG to follow suit. Hell, even if we excuse the omission of the actual creators from the original credits, that still won't excuse their omission from the redone credits sequence they did just a few years ago for Robotech Remastered. Even back then, they clearly knew who was involved in making each show. It wouldn't have been at all difficult to credit them for their work then or now.

One day, you're going to learn to make sure you understand the situation before you post. Today is obviously not that day. For starters, in the film industry it's considered standard practice to acknowledge the people who were involved in the production process in the show's credits. In some cases, particularly where various guilds are involved, it isn't optional and there are actually lengthy sets of rules to determine how various contributors are credited for their contributions. The reason George Lucas resigned from the Director's Guild of America was because he got fined $250,000 for not crediting the director in the opening title sequence. Even without guild involvement, the fact remains that it's insulting in the extreme to adapt an author's work and then not credit him for creating the original... and that's exactly what Harmony Gold did. At the very least, they ought to have also credited Studio Nue, Artland, Ammonite, and Artmic for their involvement in creating the original shows. Secondly, as you should already know unless you're breathtakingly dense, Tatsunoko isn't sole owner of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. Their ability to manipulate it is limited by the parts of it they actually own and the rights they were granted to it under their agreement with Big West. To put it simply, it's jointly owned... if they're going to credit one owner, they ought to credit the other as well. Lastly, if you actually understood the situation at all, you would probably understand that we're not trying to paint Harmony Gold as anything. Harmony Gold has provided abundant proof that they're jackasses, and we treat them accordingly. Big West and Studio Nue didn't kick off the legal tiff with Tatsunoko, it was started by Harmony Gold's attempts to block importation of Macross merchandise. The only thing that Macross's creators have done in all this is they refused to let Harmony Gold force them into giving them approvals over stateside Macross licensing and an undeserved share of the revenue using their dubious trademark. That's not being a "bad guy", that's being a smart and ethical businessman. What Harmony Gold is doing is, by any other name, extortion. The facts point to only one bad guy (Harmony Gold), and one company that doesn't see a sufficient potential return on investment in taking Harmony Gold to court to make them stop acting like twats (Big West).