Seto Kaiba

Eh... it's not nearly the overstatement you're making it out to be. However, since you've questioned it, it would be remiss of me not to clarify things somewhat. Now, putting aside the question of mecha anime enthusiasts... when was the last time you saw a Robotech pop culture reference? I'm not talking about how some Robotech fans point to Macross and Mospeada references they find in legitimate anime and assume are references to Robotech... I mean an honest-to-goodness, unambiguous reference to Robotech in popular culture? I don't think I've ever actually seen one. Let's compare that to Voltron, which has been referenced or parodied in Robot Chicken, Titan Maximum, Sealab 2021, Lost, Home Movies, Megas XLR, Family Guy, and South Park... and that's just in reasonably recent television. It's also been referenced in the lyrics of songs by artists including P. Diddy, Eminem, Busta Rhymes, and Edan. Hell, they've even referenced it in the web series Red vs Blue and in commercials for Sprite. Who references Robotech? Nobody, that's who. Yes, I don't deny that people in mecha circles are going to remember what Robotech is. For the longest time, it was practically an article of faith that anyone who posted about Robotech on 4chan's /m/ was trolling. They're going to know about it because they might've watched it at some point, or at least have heard about all of the controversy surrounding the way its owners block Macross licensing and screwed over the recent MechWarrior game. Ask the average schmuck off the street, and the odds are he'll remember, or at least have heard of, shows like Voltron, GI Joe, and Transformers... but Robotech? Good luck. I wouldn't call it a gap in popularity so much as a colossal gap in name recognition.

True... but you have to remember that it's actually pretty rare for Steve to wade in himself to mete out a ban for some offense, and usually when he does it's something that's actually against the rules. This more recent trend of revoking a person's posting privileges for various flimsy and contrived reasons is just something a pair of bad eggs on the moderator staff do to suck up to Harmony Gold for the sake of personal advancement. What those two hope to gain is more or less common knowledge... Maverick_LSC wants to be an "insider" fan because he thinks that having an inside track on future Robotech productions will earn him the respect and admiration of his fellow fans that his mod status doesn't get him, and MEMO1DOMINION is hoping that if he kisses enough ass he'll be offered a job at Harmony Gold the same way Kevin McKeever was. Eh... you wouldn't have a lot to fear as far as getting flamed for criticizing Shadow Chronicles by pointing out the plot holes. You might lose a couple DAYS counting them all, but about the worst you can expect is for one of the aforementioned moderators to swiftly remove your posting privileges for "attacking" Tommy Yune. It'd sound a lot more impressive to say that "Don't criticize Shadow Chronicles" is an unspoken rule... but we can't really say it's unspoken since Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have been quite clear that criticizing Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is verboten. Of course you're going to hear something like that from Kevin McKeever... it's literally his job. He's the marketing coordinator for the Robotech franchise, despite the fact that his behavior reads like a list of marketing and public relations cardinal sins, and most any corporate cynic will tell you marketing is "the use of fraud and deception to sell trash to idiots". 'course, it doesn't look like the movie is even offered on hulu anymore, so make of that what you will. I'd say it's probably because vague promises of future success are about all Robotech fans have had to cling to over the past nine or more years. The reason they don't want to let it go is because it's literally all they've got going for them. At least people remember Voltron... almost nobody remembers Robotech. At least... not fondly anyway...

Easy... the difference between a troll and a person who posts ignorant things is a question of intent. Put simply, what separates people like yui1107 and wanzerfan from the trolls is that there doesn't seem to be any malice behind their actions... just good ol' fashioned ignorance.

Not really... if she were doing it just to annoy the piss out of us, then I'd say she fit the classic definition of a "troll". So far, she seems to think her goals are actually achievable...

'kay... I don't have the energy to do this right now, so let's just pretend I posted another diatribe about how it's wrong to label people as trolls just because they speak/act without all the facts. Or don't. 's all good. I'm just too worn out to care. Given the content of her average post, I would guess that her problem is about 50% language barrier and 50% obfuscating stupidity. She knows she was given incorrect information, but she doesn't seem to want to accept that her decision to take drastic action was asinine.

Bah... and take all the fun out of rifling madly through the LA Times and other newsprint in search of answers? Huh... now, I distinctly remember Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION running off at the mouth (or perhaps "at the fingers") about how Robotech was destined to be Warner's tentpole sci-fi franchise, but I don't seem to recall them having ever mentioned Harry Potter in connection with all this. After all, there are still two movies to go yet in the movie adaptation of Harry Potter... that'll have 'em for at least a few years yet. Now that might be a little over-optimistic... after all, we don't know what they're going to do after they finish up Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye. It'll be getting kind of close to the 30th anniversary by that point, so I'd guess they'll go for another OVA if they can swing it. I wouldn't mind seeing an adaptation of Macross: the First. In a way, it's kind of sad that the realistic outlook on Robotech's future could be pithily summed up with a simple "It's dead, Jim." Back in the day, when rewrites weren't considered raping the source material, Robotech sort of accomplished the goal Carl Macek set down for it... introducing America to Macross. It's a disappointment that it eventually became something that ran counter to the original intentions of its "creator" and is stuck floundering around under the crushing weight of Harmony Gold's ineptitude. If there is new Robotech in the future, it will be the same kind of low-quality fanwank that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was.

Eh... as I don't have a whole lot of use for Michael Bay as a director and I never was that big a Transformers fan, any news about the production of Loud Noises 2 Junkyard Sculpture 2 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen slipped right under my radar. It appears that the official reason Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was rushed out was that, at the time, both the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild were making rumbling about going on strike and the 2007-8 Writers Guild of America strike. Now, as Gubaba already said... that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was rushed out because the producers were afraid it would be competing with the live action Robotech movie is a crackpot theory put forward by a pair of robotech.com moderators (Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION). They used it a lot as "proof" Hollywood was taking Robotech seriously and that the movie was going to be the next big thing. Their boasts about it just kept getting bigger, and after a while they were preaching that the live action Robotech movie was going to be some kind of epic, genre-defying masterpiece fit to rival or surpass Star Wars and Star Trek. As you can see, it's pretty much just wishful thinking on the part of the lunatic fringe.

Ah, thanks for taking the time to translate that for us. It certainly makes it a bit easier to understand just what yui1107 thinks she's going to accomplish. Huh... well, that's pretty much par for the course where the Robotech fanbase's knowledge of the Macross legal disputes is concerned. 's not entirely their fault, considering the great pains that Harmony Gold's staff and their volunteer forum moderators have taken to keep the information out of the hands of Robotech fans. 'kay then... here I was, hoping that I'd somehow misread her intentions and wrongfully concluded that she was completely out to lunch. As much as I would like to say that I find her idealistic desire to combat the plight of the Macross fans outside of Japan, she comes across as having a rather tenuous grip on reality. If she actually does start her own company to intervene in this, the only thing she'll accomplish is wasting a lot of her own time and money trying in vain to browbeat several corporations that have absolutely no reason to listen to what she has to say. It's not like she can even take them to court over it, since she doesn't have any stake in the matter and thus no grounds for a lawsuit. It's odds-on that they've already concluded she's a crazy old lady without a clue, and I don't imagine any attempts on her part to force Big West and Harmony Gold to reach a settlement will do anything to disabuse them of that notion. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see a fan who wants to change things for the better... it's just irritating to see that she's wasting her energy on an unrealistic and unachievable goal. And y'know what... they're better off for it.

Ah... really, the way the mouthier Robotech die-hards badmouth Macross shows they demonstrably know nothing about and have never seen reminds me a lot of the way that some console gamers who found they'd backed the weaker console of that particular hardware generation would invent nonsensical grievances with the competing console(s) just so they'd have something to complain about. I've never been a moderator, but in the last couple years I spent on Robotech.com it wasn't at all unusual for it to take Steve or, really, any moderator days or even weeks to take notice of a problematic thread and take action on it even with multiple people reporting the thread. The majority of the Robotech.com moderators just don't come to the site anymore, and the few that do usually only pay attention to one or two specific forums unless drawn by a crisis.

Eh... by the conventionally accepted definition, to say that a series or movie is "on hiatus" at some point in the production process typically means that work on the production has been (temporarily) suspended. The use of "indefinite hiatus" in that same context is basically a statement that work on a production has stopped with no indication of when or if it will resume. I suspect the reason you're getting pushback over your use of "hiatus" to describe the present situation is the result of something Kevin McKeever said and had to retract back around the time they announced that Maguire Entertainment had obtained the rights to make a live action Robotech movie. The first thing Kevin said was that Robotech: Shadow Rising was on hiatus... he then had to issue a retraction after that stirred up a bit of a furor and claimed that, contrary to what it says in the dictionary, hiatus doesn't mean they stopped working on it... just that they're working on different parts of it now. Tommy Yune later came clean on the subject and admitted that Robotech: Shadow Rising is on hold pending progress on the live action movie. Mind you, there's been no announcement that the live action movie is on hiatus... it would be more accurate to say it's stuck in development hell, i.e. they're working on it but they're not getting anywhere. Okay, yeah... there's your problem right there. If the best exemplar of a levelheaded and knowledgeable fan of both Robotech and Macross is rhade, there's a problem with your sample population. In the interest of fairness, rhade knows quite a bit about Robotech and is probably one of the few halfway-knowledgeable fans left on the wretched hive of scum and villainy we know as the robotech.com message boards. The problem is that he's got ambitions of moderator-dom, so he's prone to toeing the pro-HG party line. He also doesn't know a whole lot about Macross, but at least he has enough sense to consult past posts of people who do and rephrase what they wrote so he can look like he does. I very much doubt that he's actually seen Macross Frontier: the False Diva. It sounds more like he's reiterating complaints gleaned from the movie's review thread on these forums. Neither did I... QFT. Still, I would imagine their attitude is motivated less by a jealousy of Macross for having sequels and more by a genuine feeling of disappointment in Robotech's lack of success... a situation highlighted by the inevitable comparisons to the numerous successes Macross has enjoyed over the years. EDIT: Clarity!

Y'know, the real tragedy here is that what you're saying isn't just possible... it's entirely plausible. Hell, there's a pretty good chance that some enterprising Robotech fan blogger or podcaster has already latched onto that as a way of explaining the profound lack of progress on the project thus far. It wouldn't be anything new... the usual suspects on robotech.com have already been telling people Paramount rushed Transformers 2 for fear of having competition from Robotech. From there, it's not much of a stretch. Nah... from what I hear you're far more likely to get Steve. IIRC, when he's not policing the increasingly quiet BBS over on robotech.com, his job is to manage their licensing agreements and whatnot. I could name names... but that might be hitting below the belt.

Anyone for a chorus of Harry Chapin's "Circle"?

Eh... really, that might be overly optimistic. Let's be honest here... once you do away with all of their awkward announcements and empty promises about allegedly forthcoming Robotech works, there's not a whole lot of substance in their convention panels each year. If you take away their flimflam and deceptively worded platitudes, they might as well call the whole convention tour off because they won't have anything to talk about. I'm half-inclined to suspect the real reason Tommy up and announced this new "side story" project was so they'd have something new to make empty promises and awkward announcements about since they've long since exhausted any announcement potential in what little progress has been made on the live action movie.

True... but it'll also be a minor economic stimulus for the hatmaking industry. None whatsoever... at least, as far as I'm aware. IIRC, the last noteworthy mention of the movie was the news that they'd showed the rejected Kasdan story treatment to Sylvain White. By the way... did we ever manage to confirm that the supposed 9/15 "drop dead" date attached to the Robotech live action movie was for real? It's not like there was ever really a chance of it being made, but it'd be nice to see if it's dead or just going to stagnate for a few years before Warner quietly drops the license. Frankly... calling Robotech an "untested" property is probably being a bit too kind. I would guess that they see the DC Comics properties as far safer investments since they generally don't have a track record anything like the proven track record of failure Robotech has had under Harmony Gold.

Um... if I recall correctly, the official reason they gave for suspending work on Robotech: Shadow Rising was they'd decided to wait until the success of the live action movie raised the franchise's profile in the hopes they would be able to get more favorable terms and more money from their investors, and thus make Robotech: Shadow Rising a higher quality product than Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Hey, wait a minute... what part of that is sad again?

Well, at least you knew what you were getting yourself into. It probably comes as a surprise to nobody that the trade paperback edition of Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles was an amateurish mess. Ha... no surprises there. It was pretty much inevitable that Prelude was going to be a convoluted mess. It was Tommy's hackneyed attempt to stitch two horrible Robotech titles together to provide the illusion of continuity... the old Robotech II: the Sentinels comic books and his new Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie, the latter of which is little more than bad Sentinels fan-fiction anyway. Oh, a little from column A... a little from column B. It's a nightmare all right, but only for those Robotech fans who were holding out hope that the Shadow Chronicles story arc would actually be something of quality and give the Robotech franchise some semblance of credibility. Unfortunately for them, the Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles miniseries appears to be an unambiguously canon installment in the rebooted Robotech continuity as defined by Tommy Yune.

Granted... and I'm firmly in the camp of the those who do. IMO, having continuity between these stories whose settings are so distant from each other does a lot to help the universe feel bigger and more open. It's the same general sort of storytelling style I loved in Five Star Stories. Not really, no... I don't really mind that Kawamori's taking that approach with the main timeline. It works pretty well for him, and gives him the freedom to experiment with new and different things without having to take the Gundam route of starting a half-dozen alternate universes. It just feels like an attempt to wiggle out of the tiny issue of which of his two depictions of Space War 1 is "right" and justify his playing pick-and-choose from both. Oddly... that appears to actually be an animation error in a few scenes. The line art and battroid mode scenes show it as a VF-1J with a minor color palette change. The flight suit she's wearing is actually a color-reversed version of the one she wore in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Hikaru's had blue worked into it too.

One of the few good casting decisions in the dub version was hiring Jason Douglas to voice Klein Sandman... it's a shame both voice casts generally did a pretty lifeless job.

Depends... the more comprehensive the copy protection's defenses, the more expensive it gets on a per-license basis. On the whole, if you don't expect to move hundreds of thousands of units then it's probably going to be a waste of money to use anything more than the most basic on-disc copy protection. Since anime is a niche market here in the states, it's not surprising that a small-ish company like Animeigo wouldn't even bother with the basic copy protection. Either they felt the potentially preventable losses due to piracy wouldn't be significant enough to make using even a basic copy protection suite advantageous, or they're part of that smarter crowd that knows copy protection isn't going to stop a determined pirate and concluded it was a waste of money either way.

Eh... really, this is what's known as a "massive cop-out". It's a great way to handwave aside the little technology and pop culture inconsistencies in Macross (e.g. Michael's big goofy 90's cell phone), but it doesn't really help the fans much... especially with stuff like Macross Chronicle providing a continuity for the universe and examples of a continuity in the show itself. To the casual viewer of any given Macross show, continuity matters little or not at all, so it's all gravy either way. EDIT: Mind you, I still prefer the more straightforward approach that was taken in Macross II... the TV series never happened, DYRL is Space War 1 as it actually happened, etc.

Huh... y'know, I never noticed that before. Good eye!

True... as I said, there is a marked trend towards favoring the designs from DYRL in subsequent Macross shows, particularly where the Zentradi are concerned. The really fun twist that completely screws the whole thing up is that the chronology of the universe itself seems to go the other way... favoring the version of events shown in Super Dimension Fortress Macross over those in DYRL. It's probably best to try the "A Wizard did it!" approach and blame everything on the Protoculture. After all, they're not around to refute it. No... I'm talkin' about the entirety of the Macross 7 series, not just the Macross 7 PLUS "Milia the President" omake. In the course of the series, Milia flies her old VF-1J on several occasions... and the animation clearly shows it has the "Block 5" style hands from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross VF-1 design. The flightsuit Milia wore in the Macross 7 TV series is the same model she used in the original Macross TV series, only with the colors reversed and without the "buckle" on the waist. You can see both quite clearly in ep13-14. EDIT: Images courtesy of the MacrossWorld main page art section and Sketchley's Macross Gateway.

's not really a prerequisite for watching Gravion Zwei, IMO. It stands on its own pretty well... at least as sequels go. Eh... that was pretty much my reaction too. 'cept I had the patience to sit through the original Gravion series before tackling the sequel. I'm not one for the whole super robot genre, so I found Gravion a bit on the tedious side. The only bits I really enjoyed were those handful of unintentionally hilarious displays of "engrish" in scenes intended to be serious. Likewise... I looked into Gravion and Gravion Zwei because of the trailers I saw on a handful of ADV DVDs, and it did not thrill me. Y'know... I could make that sacrifice. Godannar didn't really have a lot going for it except for the completely over-the-top levels of fanservice.

Eh... that's a bit of an oversimplification. In practice, the creators of Macross don't seem to follow any clearly defined rationale when it comes to the use of designs from the original Macross series and the DYRL? movie. True, there seems to be a pretty clear trend in the use of the DYRL Zentradi (and "Meltrandi") designs in subsequent Macross shows, but the movie designs haven't completely supplanted the TV series ones. For example, during the filming of the in-series docu-drama "The Lynn Minmay Story", the actors playing Britai and Kamjin are dressed as movie Britai and TV series Kamjin respectively. Likewise, the flightsuit Milia uses whenever she sorties in Macross 7 is a holdover from the TV series as well. IIRC her VF-1J also had the "Block 5" hands from the TV series. Also, in Macross Frontier we see the 33rd Marines use a mixture of TV series and DYRL body armor. Etc. etc.

Eh... really? Just from what I read on yui1107's blog and website, the impression I got was that this was a bog standard case of a Robotech fan going off half-cocked after getting a mistaken or incomplete picture of the whole legal fracas between Big West and Tatsunoko over the original Macross series. IIRC, she recently mentioned she was aware that she'd gotten some bad information from someone, but wouldn't say who or where...