Seto Kaiba

Yeah, and the dialogue doesn't have enough meaningless technobabble or pro-military xenophobic hate speech either. Personally, I'd rather see that talentless waste of space cast in a role much more appropriate for an actress of her caliber... perhaps as a department store mannequin or a particularly obnoxious hatstand. Like so many "up-and-coming" new actresses, the only thing she's good for is giving the hormonal middle-school boys in the audience wanker's cramp. Easy! The same reason everything else happens in Robotech... "Protoculture".

Y'know, I was about to sit down to a well-deserved bowl of ice cream after a hard day's work, and now I'm just nauseous. Sure thing... the only size comparison image available is on the 10 meters per pixel scale, so it's TINY, but here's the ship in question:

Not that I'm aware of... I think Mylene was the one who started it, then Enika, then Ranka. Bah... you imported Macross Ace, I imported Macross Chronicle... the only thing I had to go by was the stuff you showed me on MSN.

C'mon... what were you expecting? It's a manga targeted towards teenage boys, so of course they're going to try to get their attention a little with a bit of cheesecake before delving into the story at large. It doesn't really do much to impact the story either way. I'm not sure why more recent Macross titles think the title's resident "Minmay" always needs a furry little companion... it just feels unnecessary to me. Enika didn't really need one in Macross 7 Trash, though much of my antipathy toward Ai-kun is probably a result of loathing Ranka. I'm inclined to agree, Minmay's original chinese dress was cut pretty high up way back in '82, so I don't think it's really fanservice to have a similar amount of leg showing in her slightly-redesigned dress unless they're being blatant about it (like that bit with her dress and a breeze, or her sitting on her cart in volume 1 in a pose designed to show off her figure).

And would you believe that, according to The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, that ship is meant to hold up to 750,000 colonists? It's absolutely nuts... As I've said before, details on Robotech 3000's production history are pretty sparse, and I'm no expert on that particular failed Robotech concept. (Nobody is, really... there's just not any information out there on it) Anyhoo... given that the concept art in question is dated June 1999, it seems unlikely that it was produced for Tatsunoko's attempt to salvage the series with traditional animation. From what I've read (which isn't much) the attempt to salvage the series by handing it over to Tatsunoko didn't go down until after the CGI teaser trailer bombed at FAnimeCon 2000. Given the art style and date, I'd be inclined to say this stuff was done by/for Netter Digital when they were still in charge of the project. To say that Harmony Gold thought they had the rights to everything Macross would be somewhat misleading at best... it might be more accurate to say that Harmony Gold thought they had the right to control distribution of all things Macross. At Robocon 10, Macek freely admitted that they knew full well they couldn't use any of the designs from Macross in Robotech sequels as early as 1986. With that in mind, I find it highly unlikely that they went into Robotech 3000 thinking they could use Macross designs in it without a lawsuit. Considering the multiple views, I'm assuming the point of the Macross-esque stand-in was to show how the bays were oriented in the ship and how they were to function (which is admittedly still rather like the launch arms on the ARMDs and Zentradi battleships in Macross). The shape of the bays and their placement seem more inspired by Mospeada though.

Do we have a firm release date for this one yet, or are they still playing silly frakkers and moving the date back every month or so? It looks damn nice, even if it's probably going to be as thoroughly non-canon as the VF-1's own Master File book. It's worth it just for the art, IMO, but the technical writing is nice too, even if it's not an authoritative canon source.

Okay, it may just have been for convenience's sake... Image 14 (Eric Art 7) labels the fighter seen in Image 16 as "Design for Veritec to come later. Just for scene". Could just be that the designer threw together something from Macross he'd liked for the purpose of demonstrating the bay design, and it wouldn't been replaced later by something less obviously ripped-off.

That it does... and that's kind of unsettling in its own way. Now, I'm well aware that Robotech has all the artistic integrity and originality of a Korean knockoff, but I'd still like its "creators" to at least TRY to do something original. Having each and every attempt to continue the Robotech story devolve into "how can we keep ripping off Macross without getting sued" doesn't really do Robotech's total lack of credibility any favors, and it just irks Macross fans. Just more proof (as though it were needed) that Harmony Gold's "creative team" are a pack of talentless hacks. It's not the ship, it's the fighters... the airframe shape is markedly similar to the VF-2SS Valkyrie II from Macross II: Lovers Again, just with the intakes moved inboard to where the arms would be, and the wings taken from a VF-22. The super parts they're equipped with have "wings" that look like enlarged versions of the Valkyrie II's Super Armed Pack, and the dorsal pods in place of the Valkyrie II's railgun and center missile launcher look like they're smaller versions of the dorsal boosters from the VF-1's super parts. Are you sure that's from Tatsunoko's attempt to salvage the series? It's dated 28 June 1999, the year before the disastrous test-screening of the Robotech 3000 teaser at FAnimeCon. I'm no expert on the production timeline of that one, but just from what I've read on it Tatsunoko didn't pick that turd up until after the CG trailer was shot down.

We'll see... though unless there's some mysterious gold mine of art and information that I've somehow missed, I'm gonna go ahead and say the space would probably be better spent on the Monster Mk.I. You could fit every piece of hard data we have on the VF-2JA onto a notecard, and there's just not enough art to actually warrant a four-page spread unless they decide to do the transformation on the back of the fourth side.

Isn't posting scans from Chronicle verboten on these boards until the magazine goes out of print?

Azrael said the projected release date was October 2010, but not set in stone by any means.

Well, duh... it's Carl Macek. Once he got it into his head that he could convince people that it wasn't his fault his entire contribution as Robotech's creative director was a sequence of embarrassing failures by hyping himself as a creative visionary whose great plans were constantly undermined by cowardly executives and bad luck, he'd tell just about any lie to make himself look good. If he didn't lie about the extent of his involvement and contributions to Robotech and the anime industry, the only people who would know who he was or give a toss what he'd done would be Robotech fans and the people whose fandoms suffer the occasional inconvenience at Harmony Gold's hands. It's kind of pathetic that the only way to get a halfway honest answer out of Carl Macek was to look up what he'd said about that particular subject over twenty years ago, before he became a habitual liar.

Eh... the stuff you quoted is almost certainly bullshit. Even Macek himself was (initially) quite open about the fact that they couldn't have missed the mark harder if they tried. He himself said that the test screening had a decent percentage of the audience walk out partway through because the parents present thought the movie's mature themes inappropriate for the age group the movie was targeted to, and their children in particular. He cited that, executive meddling on the part of Cannon Films, and the success of the G1 Transformers movie as being the major factors that killed Robotech: the Movie and caused it to be canned and never see a theatrical release here in the states.

lol wut? Nope... as a point of fact, he's not even allowed on most of the Robotech fansites out there. He received a permanent ban on Robotech.com way back in like '04, and he got a permanent ban on RobotechX.com last year. He's attempted to come back to both under a few alternate screen names, but he gets found out pretty quickly and banned again. About the only person who supports his bullshit is MEMO1DOMINION, a man notorious for using people like the idiot in question as stooges to harass the people he doesn't like into saying something he can ban them for. So no, he's not the leader or spokesman of the Robotech fanbase... he's just some idiot with delusions of grandeur trying desperately to make someone care about what he has to say.

Eh... the only time Tommy ever takes notice of what Robotech fans are doing is when he's either plotting to make them surrender their work to him so he can take credit for it, or plotting to kill the fan project for stepping on his toes. The idiot in question does nothing Tommy would want to take credit for or call attention to, and he's not doing anything of any real value that might make Tommy look bad by comparison, so Tommy doesn't care. Yep, it was only ever performing well against the Fz-109s when it was fighting inside the dome, where the VF-14-based Fz-109 is at a distinct disadvantage. Once the battle was in space, it was spanked so quickly it wasn't funny... and with a UN ace at the controls too.

Well, the stated purpose is to discuss and inform people about the Macross licensing thing and why Harmony Gold are a bunch of tossers... but if we're going to discuss stupidity in the Robotech fanbase, let's at least focus on the people who actually matter, and not just some internet gutter snipe who calls people names on some free podcast because he's desperately trying to compensate for the fact that his life is going nowhere. If you're looking for stupidity from people who matter, you still don't have to look very hard where Robotech is concerned... Tommy Yune is a veritable treasure trove of moon logic and idiocy... so was Carl Macek. Hell, you can even have a go at the abundant stupidity from Luceno and Daley, or Spangler, or any of the other idiots who've contributed their dubious talents to Robotech over the years. Considering the semi-recent developments explaining that all gunpods from the GU-11 on were using rounds designed for penetrating energy converting armor, one would assume that to be a major area of advancement over the years, considering energy converting armor visibly improved.

Do we ever even see either of those in battroid mode in the animation? I don't recall seeing it, but it's been a while since I last watched DYRL. If we don't, then that's probably why only the fighter and GERWALK modes are colored.

Okay, I prepared for comedy gold... so where is it? There's certainly none to be had in that pathetic Doug Bendo video, unless you find the fact that the functionally illiterate mental midget can't even spell simple words like "reborn" correctly the very height of comedy. Why waste time and posts bringing examples of his stupidity to our attention? Seeing him acting like a goddamn idiot and dribbling bullshit out of both sides of his mouth is nothing new... it's been a 24/7/365 thing for him since at least 2003. Lemme spell it out in plain English: Doug Bendo is not worth a minute of anybody's time. He's never contributed anything of value to the Robotech fan community, and nobody of consequence cares what he has to say. He's just an idiot with a degrading dead-end job and an internet connection who desperately wants someone to take him seriously. He's a joke, and not even a funny one.

Wait... what? Wasn't "laser machine pistol" also what they identified the TV version's gun as? I guess the short-range electron beam gun is something of a myth then...

There's a word for that... and that word is "fan-fiction". (Of course, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to label all of Robotech as somebody's hackneyed attempt to commercialize a badly written Macross-Mospeada crossover fan-fic)

Somehow, I doubt Macek would've been able to avoid much of the spite and bile directed at him even if he'd never deluded himself into believing he was the anime industry's answer to Gene Roddenberry and started pretending the Robotech TV series was the result of his grand creative vision. Now, I won't deny that Macek's history of telling ridiculous lies to exaggerate his own input and take credit for the work of the show's original creators will probably be a major part of how he's remembered, but that's far from the only reason anime fans considered him a blight on the industry. After all, there's also his profoundly offensive attempts to claim that he'd made the shows he worked on better by deleting the original cultural context and setting and "Americanizing" them, or trying to convince everyone that anime had no value on its own and his rewrites were profound improvements over the originals. Eh? Let's be honest here... Robotech II: the Sentinels was Macek's attempt to rip off Star Trek in hopes of giving his lurching, nightmarish atrocity broader appeal. Calling it original is a bad idea... the only thing that changed was who they were stealing ideas and set pieces from.

True, it might not be all that surprising, but it's still disappointing in light of the fact that those non-anime portions of the Macross II timeline are far more important to the continuity than those in Macross's main continuity. Welcome to my world. Did they, as I expected, identify its pistol like they did for its opposite number in the TV series? Just from the snippets I've read, it seems like the Mardook worldguide sheet doesn't have anything that couldn't be deduced from the animation or taken from the existing artbooks. Not surprising or disappointing, I'm just too thrilled to have that beautiful painting of the Mardook fleet. (Gonna blow that sucker up and make it my display background) Excellent. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice...

Indeed... were Tommy to man up and stop throwing a fuss-fit every time someone criticizes him would be a huge leap forward in his growth as a "professional" artist. Tommy's current achievements do lose a certain something when you notice that Shadow Chronicles is basically Tommy's personal masturbation material.

We needn't wonder why some Robotech fans are keen on integrating large portions of Macross into the Robotech universe when they would object to using most any other series... it's actually quite obvious. In any rational assessment, the only part of Robotech that at least 85% of Robotech fans actually give a tinker's damn about is Macross. Those fans just want to see more of the Macross Saga characters, and see more cool transforming fighters like the VF-1 instead of the lackluster offerings from Southern Cross and Mospeada. They keep hoping that Macross will be made into Robotech because it's the only way they'll ever get a Robotech continuation that isn't pathetic. Admittedly, while I would like to see Robotech stand on its own and stop mooching off Macross, the very idea that it could is preposterous. In the end, Robotech is a whole considerably less than the sum of its parts. Even the Masters Saga and New Generation are essentially incapable of standing on their own merits, as everything in Robotech ultimately hinges on the Macross story and characters. Were someone to start developing a Robotech series capable of standing on its own, why bother calling it Robotech, since it'd be a whole new universe bereft of everything made previously. They could get away from the name's legacy of failure and call it something more appropriate like The Adventures of Captain Scowlyface and the Stripperific Android. Without Rick Hunter and, more importantly, Macross, the idiots at Harmony Gold might as well give up and stop wasting everybody's time with their ineptly-assembled garbage. Also, don't go giving Tommy any credit for the mechanical design of the "Gamma Fighter", because it's not even close to being original. It's a transforming version of Mospeada's AF-03C Combat... one with a battroid mode that ends up looking suspiciously like a blockier VF-9 Cutlass. Nobody of consequence, that's who. About the best you can expect is that Tommy'll get ahold of that episode, notice they're taking a dig at his baby, and cry himself to sleep every night for the next month before siccing MEMO on them... just like he did when I got to saying that Shadow Chronicles was a massive steaming turd in a novelty box shaped like a larger steaming turd.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. So they're giving Macross II a timeline sheet after all? If they get the year right, then I'll consider it a rousing success, even though they seem to have completely forgotten a colossal portion (about 80 years worth) of the timeline including at least three plot-critical wars with the Zentradi. Huh... wicked cool.