Seto Kaiba

Of course... that poor cobra bit into him and discovered to its peril that his body was made up of 70% bullsh*t instead of water like a normal person's. Let's not unintentionally perpetuate the lie by calling it "Carl's vision". It was, after all, a poorly coordinated effort done entirely at the insistence of the network and their toy partner. None of the important creative decisions in Robotech were made by the hack we knew as Carl Macek, they all occurred far, FAR above his head. So speaks a foolish fellow who doesn't understand the industry he works in... typical of a Robotech staffer. Time and time again, the anime industry's consumers have made it very clear that they want a viewing experience as close to what the original Japanese audience got as is possible. That's why shows like Robotech are considered by the majority to be substandard and the names of the companies that make them are watchwords for failure and incompetence. Can you blame them? It's practically a thrown gauntlet as far as the integrity of the author's work is concerned. To change parts of the author's vision and then claim the result still reflects the original author's intent, or to claim that the rewrite is a superior work to the original as Macek did is the very height of arrogance, and could only be taken as an insult by those responsible for the original. Even after it's canceled, they'll still be saying that... They also did a lot of hard drinking, if some of the earlier VA and writer interviews are to be believed... due in no small measure to there being a bar in close proximity to the studio. Said bar apparently played a large role in getting Rebecca Forstadt liquored up enough to record Minmei's singing bits. Sure you can... the internet produces thousands of talentless fan-fiction writers every year, many of whom have no respect whatsoever for the works they bastardize. The lot of them are already operating on Macek's level in terms of both creativity (or rather, the lack thereof) and artistic integrity. At the end of the day, Robotech is nothing more than a badly written piece of Macross-Southern Cross-Mospeada crossover fan-fiction granted partial legitimacy via a licensing agreement. The man couldn't save his own company, or even his own do-nothing job at Harmony Gold... how could a man like that possibly save the entire industry he spent his career failing in?

Wow... these people are clearly earlobe-deep in denial about the fact that Robotech had pretty much no significant impact on the anime industry and just a 25 year old anachronism that some extremely thick real estate company just won't let go of. This whole "Robotech was responsible for creating the American anime industry" line is just more bullshit Macek started back in the 90s to make himself out to be the Gene Roddenberry of anime. The man was a habitual liar, prone to telling his audience anything they wanted to hear once he thought he could make himself famous by painting himself as anime's great messiah. Actually, it's quite easy to understand why these people keep insisting that Carl Macek somehow single-handedly created the entire American anime industry. The elaborate facade of deceptions they've built around Macek's role in the formation of the industry are part of the web of lies that keep the self-deluded Robotech fans thinking that Robotech was an important, influential show ahead of its time instead of just another squirt in the crowd that nobody gave a toss about even in 1985. If they don't push aside the contributions of every person and show that came before (and after, for that matter) then the illusion that Robotech actually mattered at one point quickly falls apart. Faulty assumptions, of course... but an essential part of the illusion that has kept them in jobs despite having accomplished less in 25 years than Studio Nue accomplishes in six months. Unless they can convince people that Robotech mattered at some point and that it could matter again, there's no reason for anyone to pay attention to it. In several of his later interviews, after he'd gotten it into his head that he was a creative genius fit to rival George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry, Carl Macek tried to claim that even the creators of Macross felt that Robotech was far superior to their own work, and even that they were striving to imitate Robotech in future sequels by placing reduced emphasis on music. A statement about as far from the truth as it's possible to get, and a lie which depends entirely on keeping Robotech fans completely ignorant of Macross. That's a damn lie... we all know Al Gore created the internet. Don't forget Tatsunoko Productions, Studio Nue, and Big West... according to Macek they're all such big Robotech fans that they wanted to imitate Robotech when they made more Macross shows.

Now, what I found amusing about the non-video coverage of the event that I've seen via their Facebook pages and Twitter was that while Harmony Gold was gushing about how the panel's line was huge, the room itself was only about 2/3 full during the presentation, putting a pretty sizable dent in their bragging rights. From the pictures I've seen on Robotech.com, it looks like, for all the protesting about the size of the line, the RT panel's turnout was actually lower than last year's. For me, just the thought of being in the same room with a creepy, obsessive idiot like MEMO creeps me right the hell out. Having to watch him hero-worship Tommy Yune from the audience would probably send me scurrying to the nearest trash can to throw up. And there we have it, kiddies... substituting endless lamenting over Macek's death for providing actual content, just as predicted. I wonder how long it'll be before they blame the collapse of the "new" feature or Shadow Rising on his untimely death. So, business as usual... Shadow Rising is still on indefinite hiatus while they wait for someone with actual talent to fix the mess that ham-handed hacks they've had for creative directors and licensees made. Yep, business as usual... all hype, no substance. Rest in peace, Carl Macek... your legacy of lies and wild exaggerations will live for as long as Harmony Gold thinks they can make a buck off Robotech.

Someone wanna summarize the bullshit-a-thon for us so those of us with no patience for watching Tommy Yune stammer and pretend he isn't wildly incompetent?

--V No such luck, I'm afraid... since all things Robotech tend to fly right under the general public's radar, and the Robotech: Invasion videogame was rather unpopular even among Robotech fans, it's unlikely that you'll find a decent walkthrough for the game on any mainstream gaming site. Your best bet is probably to dig up an archived copy of RobotechResearch's coverage using the Internet Wayback Machine and other sites like it to see what can be recovered that way. When I checked the Wayback machine, the most recent archival copy of the walkthroughs was made on 14 July 2008, and had complete walkthroughs for only the first seven missions of the game.

It looks like a trace of a page from Mikimoto's Macross: the First. If you wanna see that exact same scene drawn by Mikimoto himself, it's in Macross: the First Vol.1.

Or it could just as easily be meaningless window-dressing drawn by Tommy to show in lieu of actual content. After all, it's been his standard practice for years to toss up a new piece of art every few months when the griping about having nothing new gets too loud. So, imagine the most logical scenario? Gotcha. Given Harmony Gold's track record with the franchise over these past 25 years, it was to be expected that Robotech's big 25th anniversary bash would end up being all hype and no substance. Who'd criticize you for that? Most, if not all, of the VAs who worked on Robotech 25 years ago have gone on to do good work on a variety of good shows. The only time that working on one show is enough to mark you for life and ruin your career is if that show is Star Trek or Star Wars. The sane fans aren't bad people, they're just overly nostalgic or have bad taste. So, business as usual... and they're already implicitly using Carl's death as an excuse for having nothing new to show for 25 years of faffing about.

Exactly... this latest announcement that an unspecified Robotech "production" is going to be released in 2011 smacks of a knee-jerk attempt to convince the fandom their failure to follow up on the "success" of Shadow Chronicles isn't going to be the start of another slide into inactivity and failure like Sentinels and RT3K were. Yes, the statement that Harmony Gold put Shadow Rising on hold while they waited for Warner Bros to raise the franchise's image in the eyes of potential investors came from the mouth of Tommy Yune. McKeever was the one who initially said it was on hiatus, and then came back to say that hiatus doesn't mean what general convention and common sense say it means. Richard Epcar confirmed the movie was on indefinite hiatus, and he also said that resumption of work was on a "don't call us, we'll call you" basis. As to why this latest announcement has come dribbling out of the corner of McKeever's mouth instead of from someone who actually matters, who cares? With a track record like Harmony Gold's, it'll either be a pathetic joke that only the most deluded of die-hard fans will try to defend, or it'll be canceled as a money pit and quietly ignored while Robotech fans pretend it was a blockbuster epic in the making that fell victim to circumstance, like they're presently trying to do with Robotech 3000. Yeah, you'd expect that would be a pretty big news item, but there's absolutely nothing to indicate that anything of value actually happened. I'm unsurprised that nothing has been posted in the AX thread on Robotech.com, since that particular hive of scum and villainy is all but dead these days. Our predictions of only a few months previous have come true in a most startling way, with the site's traffic having dropped off to almost nothing thanks to Maverick and MEMO banning or otherwise driving away anyone who was a long-time contributor or even remotely inclined to actually discuss Robotech itself. Whatever it is, it's almost certainly by Toynami, so it's probably George Sohn's turds in the box instead.

Ooo! I cracked the code! The new production is a new Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow to replace the one they've been using non-stop since 2006! No, I'm pretty sure the fluid that filled my mouth when I saw a somewhat battered looking cardboard box with the Southern Cross Army crest on it was vomit, not saliva. Hey, maybe now that Toynami's managed to reduce interest in the masterpiece collection from a max of 15,000 unit to a mere 5,000, they're going to cut it still further and do a Masterpiece Hovertank! They couldn't sell outta those if they limited the run to 20 units.

Now there's something I hadn't considered... maybe they DID license that cheap Chinese knockoff of Macross and Gundam as some of their fans were hoping.

Good grief, are they still trying to get people to buy that tired old line? It's pissing into the wind, to be sure. It's a choice between taking that at face value and being all surprised when 2011 rolls around and they have nothing to show for it, or going with the line that Tommy let slip and the VAs confirmed... that the movie's on hold while Harmony Gold waits for Warner's live-action movie to fix the franchise's poor reputation. They'd initially promised they'd release Shadow Rising in 2009, and see what happened to that. No, this is almost certainly just more noise about Shadow Rising that will likely amount to nothing. I'd rate the chances of it being another new edition of the Shadow Chronicles movie much higher than it being something actually new. Maybe Warner and Maguire Entertainment finally gave up and decided to do Robotech's live-action movie as an shoestring budget direct-to-DVD movie like Starship Troopers 2.

Now, before I begin posting my thoughts about The Last Airbender, I would like to first qualify my statements by saying that I'm not a fan of Nickelodeon's Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon. In fact, the sum total of my exposure to the characters and setting consist of maybe three minutes of animation witnessed while channel surfing, and the revolting shipping fanart posted on /co/. As such, I'm writing from the viewpoint of the outsider, a casual viewer going into the movie knowing nothing of the mythos or the story of the fantasy universe. I can't exactly say I was an objective outsider, since I expected the movie to be over-hyped rubbish as soon as I heard our good friend Mister M. Night Alphabetsoup was involved. That said, take it away... myself. Oh god... where to begin? I'd heard some things about the movie in chatroom last night, and the impression I'd gotten was that I was in for another so-bad-it's-funny Wire-Fu action flick with pretentions to being a serious fantasy story. Since I already had a half-day at the office for various reasons, I phoned my girlfriend up and dragged her along to the cinema so we could both catch a cheap laugh and she'd stop complaining I never take her anywhere. Now, without giving away any spoilers that might offend those who actually want to see our boy M. Night's latest unintentionally hilarious train wreck, the best I can say for the story is that it's BAD. I get the feeling that M. Night sat down with a screenplay summary of the TV series and said something to the effect of "Woah, poo! There's too much stuff here to make a two hour movie!" and then, in the misguided belief that he's some kind of genius, resolved to make it all fit anyway. The fruit of his labors is something I can't help but compare to Frankenstein's monster. It's a shambling mess composed of salvaged parts from something that was once whole and wholesome. A lurching abomination that very plainly should not be. The only suitable analogy I can think of to describe the way this movie vomits huge quantities of exposition at the horrified viewer is to say that the experience is like trying to fill a teacup with a firehose. There's just SO MUCH coming SO FAST that there's just no way for the audience to take it all in. Rather than gradually build up the universe's mythos over the course of a few installments, Shamalamadingdog resolved not to gamble on a sequel being made, and crammed three movies worth of exposition into an hour and forty-five minutes. The young actors are clearly NOT up to the task of vomiting out these huge torrents of exposition, and it all comes across rather flat and emotionless, like the whole movie's being performed by the guys who shout line prompts from offstage instead of the actual actors. The screenplay itself feels like it was written by someone who'd only ever read about the show's story on Wikipedia, since scene changes occur with an almost audible "clunk", and many scenes meant to be emotional just come off as being narm. The movie's devoid of actual emotion, and as a result even the obviously crowbarred-in romance subplot feels almost we're watching aliens try to understand human behavior by imitating scenes they saw on TV. To add to the movie's woes, the CG effects used to display the "bending", the universe's magic du jour, are laughably bad... even amateurish. After about an hour or so of seemingly random crap happening in succession, I started to get the distinct impression the movie was desperately rummaging around to find something that would make it live up to its pretentious claims of being an epic fantasy story. The gleeful idiocy of the cast and seemingly arbitrary and pointless events that make up most of the story reduce M. Night Shamwow's "serious business" fantasy story to unintentional comedy in short order. The dialogue jumps back and forth between "Here, let me state the obvious" and parroting the same line over and over again, almost as though it's a cue to change scenes. If we were to take this at face value, M. Night is either a talentless berk or he bought a gradeschooler's creative writing assignment after it earned a "VERY POOR, SEE ME AFTER CLASS" from the teacher. There's a lot of stuff that I'd like to criticize about the setting itself, but I can't be sure that it wasn't that way originally and M. Night just managed to make it worse in his adaptation. Particularly the six-legged flying water buffalo or whatever the hell that thing is, Ang's (sp?) glowing blue buzz cut, and the nagging feeling that all of these white people are probably supposed to have been played by Asians to go with the faux-Chinese setting. If this wasn't a film clearly intended to be taken seriously, I would be lauding M. Night for an excellent work of ironic parody of generic fantasy fiction and wire-fu movies. In place of that, all I can say is that The Last Airbender feels like the result of an attempt to combine the impenetrable depth of Lord of the Rings with the same sort of quirky-yet-dark style of the later Harry Potter movies on a faux-Chinese backdrop right out of Disney's Mulan. It's not a good movie by any means. It's not even a so-bad-it's-funny movie. It's just all bad, all the time. The sort of movie where you leave the theater wondering why you just paid eight bucks to be confused by a strange Indian man.

It's not just you... part of the reason I decided not to renew my account when it came up for renewal a few months ago was the steady decline in the quality of their service. They seem to have been cutting back for a while now. I guess the prevalence of ad-blockers and rising bandwidth usage finally started to get to them. I can't say you'll have any better luck with their competitors, since I've heard a lot of noise about MegaUpload's pop-up ad windows and the banner ads on MediaFire being detected as malware by several antivirus programs.

Eh... while I would be interested in seeing a new animated Macross series based on Macross: the First, or at least its design aesthetic (which appears to be a merger of Mikimoto's earlier work on Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and the Macross 2036), I'd rather it wasn't a reboot. If they absolutely HAVE to treat it as the start of something entirely new for Macross, I would rather they used it as the basis of a new alternate universe, in much the same way Gundam has done over the years. It's not like having the show set partly (or fully) in the past is going to hurt the integrity of the narrative. Obviously the fact that the events depicted in Macross: the First are set in what is, from our perspective, last year hasn't hurt the book any. Likewise, having major plot-critical events occur in the past (from a modern-day perspective) hasn't hurt Star Trek. Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan is every bit enjoyable after 1993 as it was before, despite the fact that we didn't have world war against an army of genetically engineered supermen that year. Of course, we can always cheat like Kawamori did and view the whole thing as fictionalized versions of real events within the universe, in which case any contradictions or conflicts or any issues springing from having an oddly anachronistic future are all gravy since it's all down to dramatic license on the part of that future TV show's creators.

Indeed... and it would be better for both parties to just let it die quietly and never do business with each other again. True, their initial run of Macross Saga-based Masterpiece Collection toys sold okay during the brief resurgence of interest in Robotech that followed the opening of Robotech.com in 2001, but interest in the toy line dropped off as soon as they'd finished covering the Macross Saga. Once they'd exhausted that, most fans no longer had a reason to care. The way Toynami handled the recall of the Maia Sterling VF/A-6ZX killed what was left of the fanbase's interest in the toy by reissuing it with an entirely different set of severe defects after promising not to build the reissue in the same factory and then going back on their word.

By my estimation... low enough to by a serious tripping hazard in a lilliputian town. As long as you can keep any data that would allow someone to quantify your "success" out of the hands of your critics, you can generate empty but impressive-sounding hype by simply setting the bar so low that sales that would be mediocre or pathetic for any competently run company are grounds for declaring your product's sales wildly exceeded expectations. For a company like Harmony Gold, that depends almost exclusively on keeping their repeat customer base ignorant and blindly loyal, this sort of obvious malarkey might as well be second nature. Even though their lies and exaggerations are embarrassingly obvious, they have a consumer base that's been conditioned to want to believe their lies as a means of convincing themselves they haven't wasted 20+ years of their lives on a show that had no significant merits of its own even when it was new.

Huh... well, so much for McKeever's tired old line about how Robotech merchandise sales are "going gangbusters". That they can't even move enough of their limited edition merchandise to meet the limit they arbitrarily imposed on it really says something about the dire straits the franchise is in. I have to admit, I can see why they find it easier to continue lying to the fans. If they ever came clean about how poorly the merchandise sells, the insane little fantasy world so many of its fans occupy would collapse under its own weight. True... I think a fair few members of the Robotech fandom got carried away with the idea of new Robotech merchandise, and forgot that they didn't actually like the Beta/TREAD or the New Generation, and thus didn't actually buy it when it came out.

Eh... only so much of the blame can be laid on Toynami's doorstep. After all, the idiots running Harmony Gold continue to do business with them because quality is no object, and the idiots they're peddling this trash to are so dimwitted and ignorant that they'll buy it anyway even if it IS crap. Slapping a "limited edition" label on it is a safe way for Harmony Gold and Toynami to ensure that the nostalgia-blinded man-children that make up most of Robotech's fanbase will snap them up without hesitation to prove to each other that they're "serious" fans, while simultaneously ensuring that they won't end up stuck with a bunch of unsellable merchandise cluttering up their warehouse. Of course, that last part hasn't worked out terribly well for them since they forgot that very few members of the Robotech fanbase actually give a damn about the New Generation or Mospeada. Oh, nobody in their right mind would willingly shell out $200 or more for a cheap knockoff of legitimate Macross or Mospeada merchandise, or even the legit stuff Harmony Gold's peddling at a huge markup... the thing that lets them keep getting away with it is that the majority of Robotech fans are not only hideously stupid, but also monumentally ignorant. Their mindless, slavish devotion to the Robotech "brand" and Harmony Gold will prompt them to buy any damn thing with the name or logo on it, regardless of quality or price. Some of them simply aren't aware of the fact that they can easily get the same product at much higher quality and at comparable or lower prices by importing the OSM goods instead. Others just don't care, because they've bought into the Harmony Gold bullshit.

No idea... but if I had to guess, I'd say that there's a strong possibility that Harmony Gold decided to discontinue the New Generation masterpiece collection after the reissued Maia Sterling VF/A-6ZX came out. There's been no movement on further New Generation MPCs since the Maia MPC was recalled, and the generally poor quality of both the initial mold and the reissue of the Maia Sterling one seems to have put a lot of Robotech fans off the idea of buying into the New Generation's Masterpiece Collection. Judging by the current state of affairs on the Robotech.com store, it's safe to say that the New Generation MPCs have sold pretty poorly overall. Despite being extremely-limited edition collectibles1, the only one of the New Generation MPCs to sell out so far is the very first one... Scott Bernard's VF/A-6H. Some of the New Generation's MPCs have been in the store for four or five years now without selling out, and appear to be in no danger of selling out anytime soon. My guess would be that they decided that they shouldn't waste any more time and money stocking products that don't sell, and made the decision to fall back on peddling Macross toys, which are practically guaranteed to sell considering the average Robotech fan's Macross-centric mindset. 1. Ordinarily, a limited run of 15,000 pieces. However, the runs have been getting progressively smaller as time has gone on. The Beta fighters were limited to 10,000 units, and the Maia reissue to 5,000.

Likewise... at least Sentinels was making a conscious effort to look like it was related to at least two of the three original shows. The Shadow Chronicles movie goes from obnoxious to horrifying when you realize that not only are you watching a bad Sentinels fanfic... you're watching Tommy Yune's personal masturbation material. Damn... that's a bit harsh. I guess Battlefield Earth could be conceived as a bit less obnoxious, since at least that wretched abortion has a little bit of closure... whereas Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles are little more than glorified pilot episodes for OVAs/series that were never made.

Isn't that essentially an unwritten rule already? Of course, I don't think there are many in the Macross fanbase who would be upset if we encouraged Harmony Gold to just go ahead and quit the Sisyphean endeavor that is trying to resuscitate Robotech. Nor would they be likely to hold it against us if we encouraged Harmony Gold to stop messing around and just go out of business already. Even then, they're kind of treading a line... I'd rate the chances of the project being brought to a premature end by a cease & desist order much higher than those of it being adopted by Harmony Gold as the flagship for a fanworks video section. Either way, since it's a Robotech fan project being endorsed by the lunatic fringe, its chances of ever being completed are fairly slim, and it's pretty much a given that it'll be crap. At the end of the day, this latest hackneyed attempt at a Robotech CG fan-film is just another example of the sad truth that even Robotech fans think that the only part of Robotech that actually matters is Macross.

Am I the only one getting a distinct "Master Chief" vibe from their barely-redesigned VF-1s? For some reason the head turret optics look oddly reminiscent of the armor that idiot war in Halo. It's billed as a Robotech project, Harmony Gold could be well within their rights to say "you're not going to use our trademarked name for your shitty fan-film, so knock it the hell off". And frankly, since this is just another shitty attempt by Robotech fans to ape Macross, a cease and desist order is probably the best thing that could possibly happen to it.

Nope, it doesn't look like they ever did... it's not covered on Liza Hoyly's character sheet, and there's no mechanic sheet for it under Macross Dynamite 7 either.

Yeah, there's no way to make that NOT sound incredibly hokey... tho I went back and fixed my minor factual error about what the speakers were originally for.

Eh... a little from column A, and a little from column B. The VF-19P's supposed to be a colony market variant developed from Basara's VF-19 Custom and used by the planet Zola's patrol force. Presumably the Zola Patrol would've armed their VF-19Ps with the same type of nonlethal shock gun pod they'd equipped their VF-5000s with, rather than the standard GU-15 Gatling cannon or speaker pod launchers. The speaker packs mounted on the VF-19P's shoulders in the line art are non-standard equipment developed by a Zolan scientist named Lawrence to allow Basara to sing to the galactic whales for the purpose of attempting to communicate with the galactic whales, and were also mounted on a VF-19P that Basara "borrowed" to sing to the galactic whales. (NB: Like all VF-19s in 7, the lineart for GERWALK mode shows the fighter holding a speaker pod launcher) Exactly how widespread deployment of the VF-19P was... your guess is good as mine. Thus far, the only customer for the VF-19P identified in canon sources has been the Zola Patrol.