Seto Kaiba

I'm sure if they really wanted to they could find some rationale to go to court over it, but if past performance is any indication... they won't have to. Ever since Harmony Gold inadvertently started the whole Big West vs Tatsunoko legal brouhaha, they've been assiduously avoiding using anything from Macross in a way that could be actionable. Dodging legalities is more than likely the reason Harmony Gold opted to kill or otherwise dispose of any and all familiar faces from the Macross Saga who weren't plot-critical in a nice, safe comic book miniseries where the odd fact that comics are technically merchandise gives them the ability to use those designs in a Robotech title without the need to fear litigious retribution. Nah, that big honking MacGuffin and various attempts to recapture it are the central plot point for pretty much two-thirds of the entire Robotech continuity. It'd take a LOT of extreme rewriting and shoddy editing to banish that plot point... and if they manage that, why even try to call it Robotech? Why not just stop beating around the bush and give that mess a new, more appropriate title like Baron von Macek's F*cking Plagiarized Adventure, How to Lose an Audience in 10 Minutes, or perhaps Battlefield Earth 2. No matter what they call it, if the movie does make it to release there's little doubt it'll be a big winner at the Razzies just like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was. (Incidentally, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was nominated for Razzies in seven categories, incl. Worst Actress (Megan Fox), Worst Supporting Actress (Julie White), Worst Screen Couple (for Shia LaBeouf and either Fox or any Transformer), Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel, and Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay. It actually won Worst Screenplay, Worst Director, and Worst Picture.)

Any way you shake it, the course of action that Warner Bros and Maguire Entertainment are most likely to take will be to sidestep any potential legal entanglements surrounding the source material by using only those aspects of Robotech that are owned entirely by Harmony Gold. In short, only those aspects of the story not present in the original show that were created by Harmony Gold during the adaptation process.

Eh...the idea of having a race of giants as the antagonist(s) wasn't exactly an original idea when Macross's creators did it in 1982. You could argue the earliest example was Gulliver's Travels, which was published in 1726. Of course, if you want to refine it down to giant space aliens, 1973's La Planète Sauvage, a French animated film, is the earliest example I can find. Now, if they were to incorporate aspects that are quite distinctly Macross... like their uniforms, mecha, and insignia, then they'd be in trouble for sure. Whether they'd be able to get away with them being giant aliens cloned for use in war is dubious, since Robotech did change the backstory significantly, which could potentially put them in the clear. After all, it's not like clone armies are something unique to Macross either.

Yeah, apparently the novelization says he's half-Zolan, while 2059:Memories labels him as half-Zentradi. Macross Chronicle appears to favor the latter.

Well, y'see... the way copyright law is written with respect to derivative works, there's no way that Harmony Gold could give Warner Bros permission to do a straight-up adaptation of Macross. However, they can freely use any of the aspects of the "Macross Saga" story that they can legally claim copyright on. In short, they can freely use anything they created that wasn't present in the original work. So, yes... they can technically make a Macross Saga movie. It won't look anything like the Macross Saga that Robotech fans are familiar with, since the copyrighted mechanical and character designs are owned by a company with whom Harmony Gold is not on good terms, but they can still use the character names from Robotech, and have it be about an alien ship called Zor's battlefortress, and have Robotech Masters and all of that malarkey. It won't have most of the landmarks of the Macross story that so many Robotech fans mistake for Macek's handiwork, but at least the names and the general thrust of the plot (giant aliens want Zor's battlefortress back) can be the same.

If anything, the recent behavior of producer Tobey Maguire might shed some light on what's going on with Robotech's live-action movie. Robotech isn't the only project he's involved it, but it does seem to be far and away the lowest priority, since he's also producing two other films... Tokyo Suckerpunch (in which he is also starring), and Afterburn... which are slated to come out in 2011 and 2012 respectively, if memory serves. Clearly Warner isn't the only one who's finally realized what they've bought. But, as my example illustrated, the type of "veto" power they're talking about has been given to property owners before... though it's doubtful they had enough clout to get it added to their licensing contract.

Eh... there's no indication that they are, so the safest assumption is that they're not. I would In the show, perhaps... it's not the case in the supplementary publications. I've heard that 2059:Memories indicates he's half-Zentradi, and he's featured with several of the other half-Zentradi characters in an Extra Report in Macross Chronicle as well...

You might want to try this thread for samples of art from the new-ish manga Macross: the First. Part of the reason you're not finding it is probably that you're looking under the wrong title... its proper name is Macross: the First, and the reason you won't find any DVDs or Blu-Ray releases of it is because it's not animated, it's a manga series running in Macross Ace magazine.

Regrettably, I don't... I only purchased the five I needed for my own collection, though I've got a friend who might. He owns a hobby shop, and was importing Chronicle for a few customers of his. I can't say for sure that he has any, but I'll be happy to ring him up for you when his store opens in a few hours and check. If he does, I'll shoot you a PM. (Incidentally, I found a few more binders floating around on Yahoo Auctions Japan, which were in a bundle with five binders and a few issues of the magazine for ¥15000, or about $170 USD)

Unfortunately, it looks like you're probably not going to have a lot of luck finding Macross Chronicle binders for your collection unless you're honestly willing to pay through the nose. As you said, it doesn't look like HobbyLink Japan or HMV have any. Nor, for that matter, does eBay. You can find some on Amazon.co.jp under "used" and "collectible", though you'd better be prepared to shell out as much as $80-$110 USD + shipping per binder. If you're unwilling to shell out for them at that absurd price, the official binders aren't your only option. I know someone here on the MW forums found an alternative to the Macross Chronicle binders with the right ring spacing for Chronicle pages. I think it might've been sketchley who found it, but don't quote me on that.

Yeah, I'm on like episode 51, and it's been a very satisfying series so far... I've had fans of the manga talking my ear off about the way the series really ends for a while, so the ending's not exactly going to come as a surprise, but over 50 episodes in and I've yet to find a bad one. Yeah, Talos and his gf are still trying to get me to watch the second season, but I'm pretty uninterested in it... the repetitiveness of season 1 kind of killed it for me, and Yoriko just annoys the piss out of me. Her VA should just stick to non-verbal animal noises in Tenchi Muyo sequels and have done with it. Now that I've finished with that, I've moved on down my queue... breaking up the mecha and action run with a harem comedy before moving on to L-Gaim.

Eh, it's not like it matters... after all, even in the best of times it's far more likely that a new Robotech project will crash and burn than that it will survive to see a proper release. Even if they do finish and release it, it's a safe bet that nobody in the industry or, indeed, outside the ever-shrinking Robotech fandom will actually care or even take notice. If it ever comes out, it'll be exactly what we've come to expect from Harmony Gold... a badly-concealed attempt to continue masturbating what parts of the source material they can freely use to shake the fans down for some quick cash. So, it's basically just this image flipped horizontally and with Sera substituted for the basic Inbit Protector?

No, not really... it seems unlikely that J.K. Rowling had the ability to veto the script for one or more of the Harry Potter movies, just based on what she herself had to say about her involvement. After due consultation with a reliable Potterhead (my ex), it does appear that J.K. Rowling was given the power to review the script for each film and delete any portions she felt were inconsistent with, or contradictory to, her vision for the story. The genesis of the whole "Dumbledore is gay" brouhaha was apparently one such edit wherein she deleted a scene where Dumbledore reminisces about an old (female) lover from the script, scratching it out and penning "Dumbledore is gay" in the margin. An extremely unusual level of control for an author, but J.K. Rowling was the creator of one of the hottest properties of the time and someone with a frightening amount of money, which no doubt prompted them to make an exception in her case. An outfit as small-time as Harmony Gold isn't going to be given any such say.

Gee, put it like that and you might hurt Tommy's feelings by making him think that people might not want a side story about an Invid princess with boobs bigger than her head. Nah, that particular rule only applied when it was Macek talking about the failures he presided over during his tenure as creative director. If something went right, it was always his idea or part of his grand vision, even though he almost invariably had nothing to do with it. If things went awry, it was always someone else's fault and the result of either circumstances beyond his control or executive meddling that went on over his head. Hilariously, it almost invariably worked the other way around, with the decisions the fans all point to as evidence of Macek's genius having been made without his involvement by other, more competent people in positions of actual authority. By the same token, the decisions that many fans loathed in the various failed sequels were mainly his doing. Truly, he was a man with one and only one skill... the ability to fly under the radar while taking credit for the work of others and blaming others whenever his own decisions ended in catastrophe. Yes, it does sound like the sort of thing Macek would do, doesn't it? I doubt it, though, since what we're getting is Tommy Yune art as a "teaser". Odds are it's going to be an extremely brief and amateurish-looking OVA knocked out for a shoestring budget by some studio's janitorial staff like Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was. Y'know what? That's a good thing. As you haven't been subjected to their company for nearly as long as I have, you probably missed the fact of life that the vast majority of Robotech fan projects turn out to be utterly unoriginal rubbish unfit for consumption by human, or even animal, audiences. At least the guys who made Genesis were trying to put their own spin on things... the blokes behind Skull Knights seem to just be trying to thieve as much from the Macross Zero OVA as they think they can get away with. Killing more fan projects is only going to accelerate the rapid decay of Robotech's fan population. It increases the already overwhelming feeling of stagnation that's begun to get to even the most hardcore Robotech fans active in the online community.

Well, for once it looks like Google Translate and/or Bablefish aren't playing you false... that definitely says "Kamiya Power Shovel". パワーショベル is a reasonable enough approximation of the english words "Power Shovel", romanized as "pawaashoberu", and 神谷 is Kamiya. My guess would be that it's referring to the piece of mining/excavation equipment known as a power shovel, a type of excavator.

So, in other words, it's just more of the usual gibberish from a borderline-illiterate nutjob that even the Robotech lunatic fringe has a hard time taking seriously these days. I'm not surprised in the least that MEMO is doing everything he can to hype this latest weaksauce bullsh*t from Harmony Gold... he's been sucking up to Tommy since Robotech.com opened, and he probably still thinks that it'll get him a job at Harmony Gold. I wonder what Steve and Tommy think of him now that he and his best pal have essentially killed the Robotech.com community section.

It's possible, yes... but I doubt we'll ever get the particulars of the contract out of Harmony Gold. If there's ANYTHING in it that might be perceived as even remotely unfavorable to them in any way, you know they'll bury it deeper than Jimmy Hoffa. After all, Harmony Gold always put a higher priority on appearances than on substance. That's why they've been presenting the announcement that the movie project exists as though the movie'd already been made, and why they're announcing that Warner has the merchandising rights to the movie like it's something out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, I have the strangest urge to join the U.N. Spacy... (Max and Kakizaki are clearly liking what they see too. )

Of course... it's dollars to donuts that's exactly what happened with this new unnamed project they're allegedly working on. As many in the fanbase are still engaged in wailing and gnashing of teeth over his death and "remembering" what a visionary he was, Harmony Gold could get them to buy into just about anything by saying that it was something Macek had envisioned. Hell, it started before the man even died with them inviting him back in an advisory capacity, a choice which made the dumber fans think that he would have at least partial creative control over the series again (ironic, as it turns out, since Tommy Yune had far more success in his tenure as creative director than Macek ever did). I'll wager that, if this side story is really something they're working on and not just noise they're throwing out so people think they aren't just jerking off to Shadow Chronicles concept art, it was something that crossed Macek's desk only briefly, and was probably one of Tommy's ideas that Macek said wasn't completely stupid, or something like that.

Yeah, I had a moment like that when I looked up Bin Shimada's filmography. I knew he'd done both Paptimus Scirocco and Stick Bernard, but I had no idea he'd also been cast against type as a shy and indecisive bike cop (and main character love interest) in You're Under Arrest!, which I'd happened to be watching at the time.

Among other things, I collect art books from mecha anime titles. If my interest in mechanical design ever wanes or it gets too expensive, I'll probably stop collecting... though I'm fairly conservative in my acquisition habits so getting burned out hasn't been an issue. Not really applicable to my situation... but since my interests are fairly diverse I haven't really managed to burn myself out on any one title. Don't collect toys, for the most part... though I'll go up to about $100 or so in rare cases when something genuinely appeals to me. On art books? $500 tops, if I run across a bunch of titles on my wish list. Models/toys are something I don't normally collect, so I think the most I've ever spent in one year was ~$120 (incl. shipping). My ex shared my hobby, so it was never a source of contention. My new girlfriend is somewhat amused by it since mecha isn't really her thing, but since I don't tease her about the stuff that she collects, it's all good. On a bookshelf in my study. I did once... when I found several rare Macross II art books and magazine features, but then Macross Chronicle came along to give me something to get good and angry about, and that pushed the melancholy out of my head. Now I'm just slightly amused that I apparently know more about Macross II than Chronicle's writers.

Of course not... they've made it abundantly clear that they're crossing their fingers and hoping that Warner will make a successful live-action adaptation of Robotech to undo the damage Macek did to the franchise during his tenure as creative director. They claim that they "have a say" in the movie, though it's obvious from the way they act that they have no influence on the project whatsoever and are just along for the ride. Because the hardcore fans are their safety net in the event that the decision to bank on the live-action movie to revive interest in Robotech doesn't pan out. If they were no longer dangling the promise that they'll reveal the fate of Rick Hunter over the heads of the fans, what's left of the fanbase would fall apart almost overnight, leaving them with nothing if the live-action movie project falls apart. Now, that doesn't mean that Tatsunoko is actually involved (unless it was mentioned explicitly in the videos). It's entirely possible that Tatsunoko could have only been involved in a minor advisory capacity and to get approval to use the Mospeada designs. It doesn't mean that Tatsunoko will be doing the animation.

Of course... though as one would expect from a publication undertaken on such a large scale and relatively small timeframe, Macross Chronicle is not without its fair share of errors of both the typographical and omission varieties. Some, but nowhere near all, of the errors got an errata page slapped onto the inside of the back cover of issue #50, which unhelpfully was not a pull-out page intended to fit in the binders. While some of the more obnoxious typos, like the hotly contended VF-19 engine thrust error, are only slightly frustrating, the real achilles heel of the publication is what got left out. Some sheets had preexisting information from other sources simply omitted, and the gaps filled in by wildly inaccurate guesswork that often contradicts the official data. In a few cases, there was ample evidence that they had access to the publications containing the missing information and, for whatever reason, simply didn't reference it like they had done on other sheets. Nowhere is this more crippling to the completeness and accuracy of the magazine's coverage than the pages devoted to Macross II, which are all but useless due to the aforementioned predilection for substituting guesswork for proper research and some genuinely sloppy editing. In this, Macross II was done some justice in the form of an absolutely beautiful painting of the Mardook fleet for their worldguide sheet.

Okay, the only one in there that came as a surprise was "gas leak"... that still doesn't really excuse the fact that the ones who are looking for an engaging narrative and good writing are looking in the wrong place... they could do much better watching most any of the made-for-TV movies the SciFi (SyFy?) channel runs these days. You shouldn't... it's their own damn fault for having unrealistic expectations that are impossible for the franchise's owners to live up to. Anyone who honestly believes those idiots at Harmony Gold are capable of producing something of value despite 25+ years of evidence to the contrary DESERVES to be disappointed. There comes a time when, if a man is determined to hurt himself with his own stupidity, you can no longer justify feeling sorry for them. For Robotech fans, that time came many years ago. Better late than never, right? I have a hard time with the term "realist Robotech fan", since it really does sound like a contradiction in terms. A Robotech fan who is also a realist would know full well that the franchise will never produce anything of value, and such a viewpoint would likely cause them to give up on it altogether. Robotech's fanbase has the same sort of bizarre obsession with the fate and deeds of every minor, background, or one-shot character mirrors that of Star Wars, with the notable exceptions that Star Wars is actually popular, and that the expanded universe titles which are still canon actually cater to that tendency. For Robotech fans, what this means is a lot of guesswork and unanswered questions as they attempt to find significance in the actions of every character who's ever shown up in the show... often with results that are irritating beyond belief for anyone who's unfortunate enough to get dragged into it. Plus it goes against what Tommy had said previously about Shadow Rising being on hold because they were waiting for the live-action movie to succeed and raise the whole franchise's value in the eyes of its investors.

Ah... I looked into the manga version of that one a while back and thought it was fairly well executed for a zombie apocalypse story. I'd imagine that, as with the manga, it all falls rather flat if you're not really into the whole zombie thing. If they stay true to the source material, there'll be plenty of fanservice and the occasional bout of female cast members being "almost raped". Not really my bag, but if they aped the style of the manga it will be a very stylish zombie apocalypse, if nothing else. At the behest of Talos and his girlfriend, I'm wading through the first season of You're Under Arrest!, which has thus far proven rather less entertaining than I'd been led to believe. The animation quality takes an abrupt and unexplained nosedive right after episode 4 (which I was told later was because episodes 1-4 were an OVA and as such had a higher budget) which hinders enjoyment a bit. The show's cast is endearing enough (excluding Yoriko and Nakajima), but at some 31 episodes in I have to say that it feels like the writers ran out of ideas early on and resolved to just keep re-using the same four or five plots with different characters each time. I've also started watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood in the lulls between meetings at work via Hulu, and found it to be surprisingly enjoyable. IMHO, it blows the original series into the weeds in terms of quality and makes itself much easier on the viewer by brooming Ed and Al's Shinji-esque long bouts of whining in favor of moving the plot ahead.