Seto Kaiba

Seems that way... Really, I can't imagine how that could possibly come as a surprise to anyone. On paper, the so-called "Shadow Saga" is supposed to be a stand-alone fourth saga in the Robotech universe, but in practice the Shadow Chronicles story (and Prelude in particular) are nothing more than a poorly camouflaged continuation of the Robotech II: the Sentinels "movie" and comics. Unfortunately, since the Wildstorm comics formed the basis of Tommy's continuity reboot... they are, for all practical purposes, canon.

Unfortunately, you are... it's just another one of Harmony Gold's shameless attempts to milk the more gullible members of the Robotech fanbase for a few more dollars without doing any actual work... made all the more amusing by the fact that they're trotting this out as "new" material to celebrate the 25th Anniversary.

Steel Battalion... that game was an overpriced, badly-engineered clusterfart with the controller from hell but, god help me, I loved every second of it.

Why am I suddenly tempted to break out into a chorus of "Circle" by Harry Chapin? Really, you don't have to hope for that... it's pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point. If they ever manage to get the lurching atrocity that is the Robotech live-action movie into production, the legal ramifications of adapting those sagas and the pruning necessary to get it down to two hours or thereabouts virtually guarantees that the end result will bear practically no resemblance to what the fans are familiar with regardless of how much reverence the film crew has for the "original" Robotech. By Robotech's standards, ANY new product coming out... even if it's just a blatant repackage of an old product... is still progress.

You really do need to have a bit of history with the online Robotech fanbase to fully appreciate how rare something like JT's Protoculture Times podcast is. The vast majority of Robotech fans just don't have the talent, the inclination, or the patience to create something that doesn't suck. Any attempt to do something like the Macross Compendium or the Macross Mecha Manual for Robotech is almost guaranteed to fail because the continuity is in such total disarray that the canonicity of any particular Robotech title is almost entirely a matter of personal opinion. The closest they have is the uRRG, and that only maintains some coherency because it's intended to be a reference for a fan-fiction series, not the universe of the series. Blogs and podcasts are frequently no better off since their hosts seldom try to make any real effort to do something of substance, more often than not choosing to fall back on kissing Harmony Gold's ass in hopes of gaining legitimacy and an audience. Zen's podcast stands out not because it's a remarkable example of podcasting, but rather because he's attained a reasonable level of success and garnered the favorable notice of a great many people without kowtowing to Harmony Gold or having to invest in toothpaste and mouthwash specifically formulated to remove buttock smell. Unsurprising, to say the least... JuanRT is a good friend of MEMO's, so of course he's adopting MEMO's usual attitude of "MacrossWorld people are the devil!".

I've borrowed the first few chapters of the light novel, and while it didn't exactly wow me in print I can definitely see some potential for awesomeness in the animated adaptation.

It is, a bit, isn't it? It's a shame .

Eh, I'd make that tiny bit of effort for Sentinels, if only because it was, is, and likely always will be the only part of Robotech's canon/pseudocanon universe that has anything resembling original content. It might be horribly campy, corny, dated, and stupid original content... but beggars (Robotech fans) can't be choosers. Are you sure? Considering how the dialogue in his podcast has more "ummmmmmmmmm" than a Buddhist monastery, there'd be no way to tell if he devoted an episode to it or not. Even if he did, the only thing that would come of it would be his three serious listeners nodding in agreement, and the rest of us laughing ourselves sick at his stupidity. Really, it's a mixed bag... sure, some of the pro-Robotech mental cases seem to have had a few screws loose even before they got involved with Harmony Gold's sinking ship, but you gotta give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the malicious manipulative streak of Harmony Gold's "Robotech team" in their many attempts to keep their fans as ignorant of Robotech's origins as possible and stir up hostility towards fans of the originals.

Yeah, pretty much it doesn't say anything that couldn't have been gleaned from watching the movie trailer. On the subject of the micro-missile launchers, it seems to have eight of them built into the pack's wing surface... six on the dorsal surface, and two on the ventral surface.

Try spelling his name correctly next time... Bah... now THERE'S a stupendous waste of time in the making. It'd be an enormous waste of time and money to pursue dougbendo in court for slander. It'd be easy enough to prove malice and that there are mooks out there who are stupid enough to believe his garbage (Maverick, MEMO, etc.), but it'd all come to nothing in the end. He's a BestBuy sales floor minion, so the odds of me being able to recover enough in monetary damages to cover the costs of bringing suit against him are slim at best. In the end, it's just not worth it. He's a powerless TalkShoe guttersnipe who's trying desperately to compensate for the powerlessness he feels in his soul-crushing menial job by being an internet tough guy. EDIT: and don't even get me started on the Freudian implications of his penis fixation... Indeed... those Starship Troopers movies with Casper van Dien were atrocious... though you'd probably like the 1988 Studio Nue Starship Troopers OVA. It's the closest any adaptation has come to the story of the novel, right down to the Marauder armor.

Too little, too late... it would've been nice to have had those things a few years ago even if the animation quality in them has more ups and downs than an insomniac on a pogo stick. I wonder how never having had Gundam ZZ released outside of Japan is going to affect the average viewer's impressions of the Gundam Unicorn OVA...

Yes, I did... and I'm telling you your assertions are baseless (for the most part). It's possible... after all, they'd be most vulnerable to those on their own home ship. Of course, it's also entirely possible that the forces protecting Macross Galaxy were either employees or mercenaries (though in practice, they're the same thing) doing it for a paycheck. Macross Galaxy IS a corporate entity after all. Speculation, nothing more. Which really makes you wonder if they're going to explore this in the second movie... I hope they do. The conspiracy thing was introduced way too late in the series.

Yeah,

Oh, definitely... the Robotech fandom has always been something for people with more money than brains, and the most devoted fans give off that same "creepy militant cult of the mentally subnormal" that you get from scientologists. In what can only be described as true poetic irony, Harmony Gold's forum moderators even fall back on that same policy of "use any means necessary to silence the unbelievers" that the scientologists use, and the company itself relies heavily on litigation to silence anyone they think is a threat. The parallels here are almost TOO perfect... it's eerie... and are just made creepier by the fact that one of the characters created for Robotech II: the Sentinels was named for L. Ron Hubbard... L'Ron, the Kabarran ambassador to the REF. He appears in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles too. Indeed... Harmony Gold is pretty small-time, and the few celebrities who seem to know about Robotech are likely either saying they love it out of professional obligation (like Tobey Maguire), or are such small-time nobodies that they don't matter to anyone. (I think Wil Wheaton was one of them)

Okay, I'm game... Assuming that I was looking to actually guarantee some measure of success for the Robotech live-action movie, I'd probably try to get Michael Rymer onboard as the movie's director. Odds are the Robotech live action movie would remove most of the more Star Trek-y elements that Harmony Gold layered onto it in the late 80s, in favor of a flick more in line with Independence Day, and that's right up Michael Rymer's alley. If I wanted the movie to fail, I'd probably avoid Uwe Boll (since he's a little luckier than usual about crossing over into "so bad it's funny") and go for some complete unknown with no professional credibility whatsoever... maybe some mook from BET whose sole experience is directing rap music videos.

Eh... are you asking me who I would pick if I wanted the project to actually succeed (which I don't), or are you asking me who I'd put in charge if I wanted it to fail (like it's practically guaranteed to)?

Um... need I point out that you lot are the ones dragging this thing out into a big dramatic affair? I'm really am mystified as to why you can't understand how I could possibly take MEMO's attempts to frame me for Harmony Gold's practically (and in one case, literally) criminal behavior personally. I said my peace and that was it, I'm not the one who kept trying to raise objections to it. But since the powers that be have spoken and decided to get this thread back on track, let's get back to talking about the shittyness that is Sylvain White. I'm kind of surprised that they would even approach someone like him. At least in the early stages of the project they seemed to be taking it rather seriously, to such an extent that they brought in Lawrence Kasdan, a writer of no small talent. D'you reckon they realized the Transformers bubble finally burst and decided it wasn't worth appealing to top-shelf directors, or are they just mucking about before quietly brooming the project altogether?

No, it doesn't look like he supplied any hard evidence (as if such a thing were possible over the internet), but with his off and on attempts to portray himself as a Harmony Gold insider and/or administrator he could have sidestepped the whole issue of evidence by saying he'd got the information directly from Tommy/Steve/whoever. It still costs money to defend against a spurious lawsuit, and you can't always recoup the costs. As a businessman, I take anything that could result in litigation VERY seriously. Well, at least in the context of Harmony Gold's intent, there's little doubt that the Robotech series was originally dumbed down and targeted towards the same preteen/early teen demographic that Transformers was. The two shows even had roughly the same market model. True, a lot of stuff that today would've been deemed inappropriate for kids slipped past the censors, but the intent was still for it to be a kid's show.

Ugh... as much as I enjoy watching Harmony Gold undermine themselves and their franchise with the sort of gleeful stupidity that's long since become their trademark, I can't help but feel bad for the fans who get victimized by them... they're putting a lot of time and effort into a labor of love, and getting smacked down for it. So, for the sake of the fans whose hard work is being showcased, I really hope we won't see a repeat of the UEG fiasco. EDIT: Though at least UEG can be commended for not letting it sidetrack their plans for continuing to develop their talents.

Yeah, that's Gensomaden Saiyuki... it does get better later on.

Okay, yes... WE know that MEMO is a pathological liar and never checks his facts. Was UEG aware of that right from the beginning? We don't know. In what seems to be a growing trend in this thread, you've missed the point completely. His actions were malicious no matter how you shake it, and had UEG not known better it could very well have ended with us being dragged into court alongside Harmony Gold. That his chances of success were minimal is beside the point... he was still doing his level best to blame us for something asinine Harmony Gold did.

HP already covered it... so my post is superfluous.

Eh, you're kind of missing the point here... the Harmony Gold kissasses themselves aren't the ones who matter, it's the ones they're trying to deceive that ultimately mean success or failure for the Robotech franchise. That so many of them are willing to believe that this fifth-string failure as a positive step for Robotech says a LOT about the current state of affairs in the Robotech franchise. Okay, I'm going to come right out and say it... did you all put your brains in backwards yesterday and today? I seldom see such an impressive hat trick when it comes to completely missing the point. For the last time, I'm not talking about Maverick and MEMO's behavior as though they actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. They don't. They never will. Now that that's said, let's knock you all off your soapboxes for a minute and make damn sure I get my point across clearly this time. The point I've been trying laboriously to get to here is that while MEMO is out there busily slandering a bunch of people and trying to frame them for Harmony Gold's offense, genuinely working to incite the kind of hostility Gubaba claims he wants to forestall, Gubaba's coming here and telling us all (including the people MEMO is trying to frame) that we've all got to give MEMO another chance because he really is a wonderful person and that all of his trolling, malicious behavior, habitual lies, and other jackassery was done in fun and we all somehow just missed the farting joke. I'm sorry if you have problems understanding why, while all that's going on, we find you waxing poetic about what a wonderful, misunderstood person MEMO is a bit asinine. Now where the hypocrisy comes in is in the difference between the way you're treating MEMO and the way you treated Pizza the Hutt. MEMO has NEVER attempted to apologize for any of the horribly offensive things he's done, and he's still trying to spread misinformation to cover Harmony Gold's ass and make UEG look like the bad guys. Yet Gubaba wants MEMO to be given a free pass for all of his malicious misdeeds because the two of them are suddenly best buds. Pizza the Hutt came here, hat in hand, and APOLOGIZED for what he did. He tried to make amends, and all Gubaba did was bait him and make snide remarks about him to me over the PM system, despite my repeated protests to give he kid a chance to make good on his promise to turn over a new leaf. No matter how you look at it, Gubaba's behavior is the very picture of hypocrisy, and he needs to realize that. He wants us to all give MEMO another chance when there's no sign that he wants to stop his malicious behavior, yet when someone who actually wants to put things right after acting like an ass comes here all he does is bait him and tell me that the guy doesn't deserve the chance. This is exactly how MEMO and PTH got along when MEMO was using PTH to antagonize people... "I'll look the other way so long as you're not coming after me". I'm sorry if you think this is unduly hostile, but this is what I honestly thing and I'm not one for censoring my opinions just to make other people feel better about themselves. Now that I've said what I wanted to say, let's move on and get back to the topic at hand.

It's funny because it's lamentably true...

Okay, I can kind of see what you're getting at, but remember that the reactions of the fans to the various news items that crop up is almost always a good metric for measuring the deterioration of the Robotech franchise as a whole. It may not be as relevant as Sylvain White's helpful hints, but it's still at least somewhat relevant. Sometimes, I get the feeling that I'm just talking to myself when I post. Other times, I'm dead certain that I am. This is one of those times. The point that I'm trying laboriously to get to here has nothing to do with bitterness or any garbage like that. Really, I could not care less about being banned. What I'm getting at here is that we shouldn't accept "well he isn't being a dick right now" as a valid excuse to look the other way when he has a long history of acting like a dick and treating people badly. Whether or not his specific intent was to get UEG to go after me with lawyers, I have no idea... but there is no doubt at all that he was trying to convince UEG that I was ultimately responsible for all their legal hardships. That's malice right there, and no doubt about it. Similarly, his attempt to point the finger at me and HP for the DeviantArt fiasco was just downright sleazy and unforgivable. If something had come of it, it could've been construed as criminal too, for that matter...