Seto Kaiba

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...

Really... I disagree, though your response was infinitely more mature than Gubaba's, and I do appreciate that. The problem here is, I think, in the approach they take when they attempt to correct Wanzerfan after he posts something incorrect. So far, the general response has basically been variations on "You're an idiot, you have no clue what you're talking about, and you need to shut up and stop posting". That's not going to do anything but temporarily discourage Wanzerfan from posting in that thread, and make him less likely to accept corrections or help from that person in the future. Instead, it would be a lot more helpful, productive, and mature to point out to him that he's made an error, offer a correction, and then perhaps point him in the direction of resources that he can use to refresh his knowledge and/or acquire fresh perspective on the topic... this reducing the chances that he'll make a similar error in the future. That approach has worked pretty damn well for me in the past. It's probably why people on Robotech.com still refer fans with tough questions to me despite my having received a ban nearly a year ago... they know that I'll politely and thoroughly answer those tough questions and clear up any misunderstandings they might have without calling them names or accusing them of being a troll for having gotten something wrong. If, as we profess, we really do want to mend fences with the Robotech crowd and discourage the sort of hostility that we know all too well, it's counterproductive to treat people the way Wanzerfan is being treated here. Y'know what... I'd rather be hated for being the guy who said it wasn't okay to attack someone for being a bit ignorant than be part of the crowd and join in condemning them as a troll. This is really a matter of simple logic. If you help them, they will learn. If you're a jerk to them, all they'll learn is that you're a jerk. Y'know... I haven't actually checked. I'll log into my Hulu acct. and find out later. Due to simple curiosity, I actually have both the remastered Animeigo version and the ADV Films dub version on DVD. I consider the Animeigo version superior in most (if not all) regards, though the more commonly available ADV dub version isn't bad... at least not while you're watching it subbed. Yeah... that's as accurate and succinct a summary as I've ever seen. The old novels and comics aren't as big a subject of controversy as they were back before '01, but they're still looked down on... and the tragedy is, as you've said, that doing so doesn't leave them with a lot to talk about these days. Ever since Tommy and Kevin came out and said that none of the old stuff is valid Robotech anymore, the fanbase's attitude towards the old stuff is generally dismissive. I get the feeling the reason they fall back on "witch hunts" as often as they do is that it helps alleviate the boredom by finding a target to vent the fanbase's frustration on.

Wow... you really are takin' a leaf out of Bendo's book, aren't you? If you don't like what a person is saying, you leap to attack the person directly and act as though anything you say or do is above reproach. I guess in all the time you've spent on RobotechX getting chummy with MEMO, his bad habits have started to rub off on you. This makes the content of the private message you sent me all the more ironic, since I seem to be the only one here who's willing to say that it's not OK to attack someone because they say things you don't agree with. If you really need it spelled out for you this bluntly, fine. The point I am laboriously tilting at, and which you are arrogantly trying to ignore, is that you and taksraven are attacking another member for no reason other than that he's ignorant. You've already come out and personally said that you don't care what his thoughts are on anything because you've decided his opinions must be asinine. You've consistently harassed him, belittled him, and labeled him a "troll" because he makes more mistakes than the average member. That isn't just thoroughly inconsistent with what we profess to do here as far as trying to stay out of the cycle of mutual hostility between Robotech and Macross fans... it's a violation of the MacrossWorld Rules & Guidelines section 1.4, something that azrael seems to have conveniently forgotten, as he's indulged in flaming Wanzerfan himself. Furthermore, as I've already explained on more than one occasion, I find it frankly unfair of you to insist that we give MEMO a chance to not act like a bellend when you insisted that you would not give such a chance to Pizza the Hutt, who, unlike MEMO, actually apologized for his asinine behavior and made an effort to turn over a new leaf. You treated the kid with nothing but suspicion and hostility, and that makes us and MacrossWorld look like exactly the sort of villains the Robotech lunatic fringe wants us to be. Do you understand now? Has it ever occurred to you that what you're doing here is precisely the same thing that the militant members of the Robotech lunatic fringe do whenever they don't like what someone has to say? You won't hear me deny that Wanzerfan is ignorant as the day is long, but he's no troll. He's just an opinionated loudmouth who could do with a hand in getting his facts straight. Instead of acting like Pizza the Hutt used to when MEMO was egging him on, why don't you try talking to him and helping him get his facts straight? Did you notice that when I made an effort to talk to him and get to the bottom of his misunderstanding, he had no problems explaining and we quickly corrected and remedied the problem. By attacking him, all you accomplish is putting him on the defensive and making him less inclined to accept corrections from you in the future. Seriously, between you and Gubaba I feel like I've been cast in the role of a disappointed parent scolding two belligerent children for bullying other kids on the playground. You do realize you can just change the audio selector to "Japanese" on the ADV DVDs and watch it with subs instead, right? The AnimEigo edition's gonna be hard to find because it's been out of print for a while now. Y'know... as I said above, that's not really going to solve the issue. It's just going to make us look like exactly the sort of judgmental, exclusionary apefaces the Robotech die-hards spend so much time telling people we are. Of course, since you've already given carte blanche to people flaming and flame-baiting Wanzerfan in a previous post, I wouldn't expect you to understand that.

So, you're basically asking me to rephrase my objections to your behavior in such a way that it feels less like I'm telling you off? No, you can just cope with it as-is. Butch up and read it, buttercup. Okay... granted, the ADV Films dub of Super Dimension Fortress Macross is probably some of the worst work. It does, however, retain the great virtue of being free via Hulu so he can at least sample it while he's waiting, as the DVDs are backordered or unavailable at most stores. 'kay, if you'd ended this part about two sentences early I would be pointing to you as a good example of how to deal with someone in Wanzerfan's situation. You got off to a good start, but you kind of tripped at the finish line there. Either way, I'll talk to Wanzerfan directly via IM or PM later and get him set up with everything he needs to watch Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Macross 7, Macross Zero, and Macross Frontier.

Hey now, don't go grabbing all the credit... j_wong and I were commemorated on that page too. I even saved a copy of it for posterity before Geocities went down. Oh no, no... you've misunderstood, I'm not getting worked up over this or taking it personally. All I'm doing here is expressing my disappointment at your abject failure to practice what you preach. You talk a big game about how you find the antagonism between Macross and Robotech fans deplorable, but when the time comes to show a bit of that tolerance you become the antagonist instead. That's falling pretty far short of the mark, don't you think? Not every Robotech fan is going to be pleasant, charming, and easy to get along with. The moral of the story here, for those of you who need Aesop to spell the lesson out for you, is that instead of rushing to call names and level accusations of trolling when someone does something untoward, you ought to try talking to them first to see if it's just good old fashioned human ignorance or if there's genuine malice behind it all... something you've repeatedly failed to do. In the case of Wanzerfan, there's more than ample evidence to suggest that the only force at work here is good ol' fashioned human ignorance.

Okay guys... I have a question. Y'know, I'd really love to know how you guys managed to consistently behave in such a fashion that I end up as the voice of sanity and tolerance. I'm probably the last person who should be called upon to fill a role like that... especially where Robotech is concerned. After all, I'm probably the person the remnants of the Robotech fandom demonize most. I really hate when you guys put me in this position, because being mild-mannered and tolerant damages the undeserved supervillain-esque "street cred" the Robotech fandom's lunatic fringe is so busy trying to give me. Really, at this point I have to wonder whose behavior is more questionable... yours or Wanzerfan's. I can't help but remember the last time that sniveling cocksection MEMO showed up here and started running a line of total bullshit about the Macross legal issue, something he clearly knew nothing about. Do you remember what you lot did? When people told him to shut his ignorant ass up, you lot started bleating to us about how we needed to be nice to him despite his proven track record of being a dick. Despite ample proof that he was a douche who didn't deserve the chance, you whined, sniveled and protested in a fashion that would've done Chris Crocker proud and eventually got your way. Curiously enough, when someone who'd been making an ass of himself in the past showed up and was making a conscious effort to amend his boorish behavior, you were instantly suspicious of every little thing he said and did and point-blank refused to give him a fair chance. Y'know what that is? That's hypocrisy, boys and girls. It's just my opinion, but it's f*cking stupid to give a chance to an unrepentant douche and refuse one to a guy who was showing no signs that he was trying to start trouble, apologized openly for his past behavior, and claimed to be trying to turn over a new leaf. Tell me, do you remember the funny part of this little reminiscence? In case you've forgotten, let me remind you: You protested that we needed to be tolerant and give MEMO another chance, and he and his friend Maverick immediately proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they deserved nothing of the sort by acting like twats. On the other hand, I protested on behalf of Pizza the Hutt, who was openly repentant for his past deeds and made an effort to change his behavior... he might've made an off-color joke and lost his posting privileges, but he hasn't let that OR your refusal to give him the same chance you gave MEMO stop him from engaging in civil correspondence with me or let it dampen his enthusiasm for exploring the rest of Macross. Now... we've arrived at a similar juncture with Wanzerfan. Once again, we have a person who has said quite a lot of stupid and occasionally offensive things... but with no outward sign of malice and no clear agenda, he gets accused of being a troll for what appears to be nothing more than simple case of being opinionated and ignorant. Instead of trying that tolerance and understanding bullsh*t you were preaching at us to show towards MEMO and actually trying to get to the bottom of it, you immediately leap to conclude that his reasons for voicing an opinion for or against something must be asinine or that he has this malicious agenda behind it all. You advocated for MEMO despite the fact that we KNEW beyond any shadow of a doubt that he had a malicious agenda... yet there's no sign of one from Wanzerfan and you'd rather write him off as a malicious troll than try to get to the bottom of it. That makes even less sense than the stuff he comes up with! Really... the only thing I can conclude from all this is that contrary to what you say about wanting to end all the hostility and judgmental @sshole behavior between Robotech and Macross fans... you're part of the problem. In lieu of acting like twits, why not try talking to the guy and getting to the bottom of it for yourselves? Y'know what... s'long as I'm telling you off, I might as well go whole f*cking hog and say that I honestly think Pizza the Hutt should be unbanned and given an honest chance to prove that he's not the same venomous f*ckwit we came to know at Robotech.com. He's been nothing but civil, polite, and friendly in the e-mails he and I have exchanged over the past couple of months, and I firmly believe that his interest in Macross is genuine.

Okay, yeah... that explains a lot. For the record, that big Robotech 25th Anniversary shindig that's scheduled for the 18th isn't the handiwork of Harmony Gold USA. It's a "by the fans, for the fans" sort of affair, and rather the most impressive of its kind in recent years... particularly considering Robotech's status as a virtual nonentity in the American anime industry. Huh... now there is one esoteric list. It was pretty much a given that the so-called "original 85" of Robotech would show, since that's still held up as the defining version of Robotech. Most fans don't have any use for the old Comico comics, and the ones I know generally found the old Sentinels stuff that didn't relate directly to the story of the core cast profoundly boring, and treat it as something best left forgotten. There's not a lot of love out there for the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA/movie either... though at least part of that is the profound lack of information on it, and the sad fact that almost all the information out there for it in English is completely incorrect. Huh... I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this is perhaps the most bizarre complaint about a Robotech story I've ever personally heard. It may just be that I've never understood why Robotech fans seem to want complex backstories for minor, borderline-irrelevant characters who appeared in, at most, one or two episodes. The last time I watched the Robotech series was a good few years ago, but even my somewhat atrophied knowledge of the original Robotech series is raising red flags over your complaint. Jonathan Wolfe, which is the correct way to spell his name, was with the Expeditionary Forces during the Sentinels arc and was sent back to help fight the Robotech Masters... in the reliably canon and pseudocanon parts of Robotech, there is no significant continuity issue in his depiction in the new comics. Insofar as your complaints about Macross Plus... my suggestion should be obvious: watch the rest of the bloody show before passing judgment on it. Lumping Sharon Apple in with conventional "insane AI" plots really isn't all that accurate... and her motivations are explained in the course of the series/movie. 'kay... that's easy enough to remedy, assuming you're willing to make peace with watching subtitled shows in lieu of the official dubs Harmony Gold is steadfastly preventing anyone from making. You can watch the recent ADV dub of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross for free here, on Hulu. For the rest of Macross, you'll have to make peace with the idea of watching fansubs, which are readily available for all of the other Macross shows except the most recent movie.

Considering the usual quality of ADV's handiwork... haven't Southern Cross and Mospeada suffered enough? Eh... out of sheer, bloody-minded boredom, I've gotten back to watching Queen's Blade while I sit and wait for a service pack to finish installing on one of my other computers.

Okay, yeah... you've got me there. Insofar as the present situation affects the general availability of legitimate Macross goods in the Americas, nothing has changed. The circumstances being what they are, it's unlikely you'll see any changes until such time as Harmony Gold USA either voluntarily surrenders, or is forced to give up, the trademarks they hold on the Macross name and logo in the US. Since they seem determined to hold onto those trademarks as a means of protecting Robotech from having to compete with Macross on a level footing (a death sentence for Robotech), the only time we're going to see legitimate releases of the rest of Macross in the states will be when Harmony Gold either goes out of business or finally produces a Robotech sequel so loathsome and pathetic that they decide to cut their losses and just sell the franchise to whoever wants it. Just looking at the general lack of forward motion on the proposed Robotech live-action movie and their decision to put Robotech: Shadow Rising on indefinite hiatus while they wait for Warner to unf*ck the Robotech franchise's piss-poor reputation, I would say that the latter case has never looked more realistic.

Excellent theories, gentlemen... but having actually spoken with the man at a few points in the past, I'm pretty firmly convinced that he's a flesh-and-blood human being or at least a very convincing Mudd-style android. STill, it's a mystery to me how he can manage to be so consistently wrong when he posts. I don't think he's doing it on purpose... Yeah... no kidding.

Better late than never... thanks for the confirmation on that. I hadn't gotten around to installing Windows 7 on my desktop yet since it's having motherboard issues and the manufacturer wants it to go back to get fixed.