Seto Kaiba

Eh, more or less... thus far there hasn't been any indication that they intend to extend the run of Macross Chronicle beyond the 50 planned issues. Back when they put out the organization guide for getting everything into five binders, they did say something to the effect of five binders fitting "all 50 issues". Just to be safe, I checked the publisher's website, and there's nothing there which indicates an extension at the present time.

True... though at least in some cases we have to consider magic labor-and-material-saving appliances like the factory satellite... labor and material processing expenses are a substantial part of the cost of something like a fighter jet or a tank... delete those from the equation and they're not very expensive at all on a per-unit basis... We just don't get help like that in the real world...

Instead of asking increasingly silly questions, you could consult the first post in the thread... which contains an adequate summary of the situation. As you could have ascertained from doing nothing more difficult than check Wikipedia, this all started because Harmony Gold started sending cease and desist letters to import toy dealers on the grounds that they'd somehow gotten it into their heads that the rights to the original Macross series they'd acquired from Tatsunoko as part of their original license agreement also extended to all of Macross's sequels. So, of course, this prompted the back-and-forth where Big West and Tatsunoko sued each other to confirm that they owned the rights they thought they owned. The end result was that nothing really changed... Big West and Studio Nue (joint parties) still owned the original material they'd created, and Tatsunoko owned the animation they'd produced and the rights they'd been given in their contract with Big West. Tatsunoko also went after Bandai to demand restitution for Big West and Bandai "profiting unfairly" from Tatsunoko's work on the original Macross series with their sequels... a demand the courts rejected in pretty short order. As a result, the claims Harmony Gold had made about their license giving them rights to all of Macross were quickly invalidated, and they quickly turned to trademarking the Macross name and logo in the US, and acquiring the DYRL merchandising rights from Tatsunoko to block any goods and distribution licensing that might threaten the terminally ill Robotech franchise.

Really, this is an entirely needless assumption... none of the copyright confirmation lawsuits which rattled back and forth between Big West and Tatsunoko in the early 00's actually changed anything as far as rights to the original Macross series. All they really did was reaffirm the status quo... that Big West owns the intellectual property that they funded the creation of, and the franchise as a while, while Tatsunoko owns the physical animation they paid for and produced, and the rights they were given under contract (merchandising and distribution outside of Japan). If we take the remarks made by Carl Macek in his Robocon 10 interview at face value, Harmony Gold always knew that they couldn't use the copyrighted character and mechanical designs from the original Macross series. So really, any speculation on what would've happened if Tatsunoko had given Harmony Gold all rights to Macross is entirely needless... you can't sell what you don't own, and the courts have already weighed in on that matter with some force... Tatsunoko never had any legal claim on the intellectual property (characters, mecha, etc.) of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series because weren't involved in its creation in any way. As I've illustrated above, such an event could never come to pass because Tatsunoko never actually held those rights to begin with, and you can't legally sell or license something you don't own. For the sake of argument... if Tatsunoko's lawyers had switched off their brains for some reason and allowed Tatsunoko to grant Harmony Gold ALL rights to Macross in their license agreement, the portions of that agreement concerning rights Tatsunoko did not own would essentially be null and void. Those portions of the contract simply wouldn't be in any way enforceable. Big West could (and likely would) sue Harmony Gold for copyright infringement, and no doubt Harmony Gold would've rounded on Tatsunoko with a great big "WTF GUYS!". The fun part is that, depending on how the licensing agreement was written, Harmony Gold could potentially turn around and sue Tatsunoko for contract fraud... and expect to win handily. As I've already explained above, the rulings wouldn't have to retroactively cancel out anything, because the disposition of rights to the series didn't change... all that happened was both parties confirmed what rights they own. Since the rulings concerned ownership of copyrights, the rulings of the Tokyo District, Appeals, and Supreme courts would be enforceable internationally under the host of treaties which make up the bulk of international copyright law. Had the court rulings changed the disposition of rights that Harmony Gold had originally acquired under license from Tatsunoko, Harmony Gold would've been affected by the rulings... but they didn't, so the whole point is moot. It doesn't... the court rulings didn't actually change who owned what rights to the series.

Well, I guess that clears up pretty much any questions as to the reliability of that information... it's definitely a dick move on Harmony Gold's part to use an ultimatum to try and force fans to give all their hard work to Harmony Gold with no expectation of compensation or credit. Bah... the real shame here is that the closure notice on RobotechX isn't legitimate. It would just be too funny if, after spending all those years backstabbing fans, sucking up to Tommy, and trying to police the fanbase for heretics, MEMO's own website was targeted for closure by Harmony Gold. It would be just compensation for the way he's acted, especially now that he's tried to frame me and HP for the cancellation of Robotech Genesis and the deletion of a bunch of Nenead's stuff from DeviantArt. Yeah, you were fool enough to submit it without reading the submission waiver of rights and now your work belongs to Harmony Gold.

Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best, eh? Well, I'm definitely looking forward to the Macross Frontier mechanic sheet, I can't say any of the other stuff stirs my interest... especially not the Macross Quarter and the VF-5000. Honestly, there ought to be a rule that they can only print dedicated character sheets for people who actually had some kind of characterization or relevance to the plot... shallow stocks like Nanase, Nene, and Raramia belong crammed into Extra Reports or on "People of <BLANK>" sheets. Every time I see one of these, it gets me curious... the more info on the colony program the better. Equipment to nuke the space whales? Okay Macross Chronicle... NOW you have my attention... No Azrael... we're NEVER done... Chronicle 47-50 are gonna be 32 pages of Mylene and the VF-1. Somehow, I think that's it for timeline sheets... period. After seeing the incredibly disappointing Metal Siren sheet, I don't think I could stomach seeing a Parallel World continuity Timeline Sheet in all its maddening incompleteness.

Huh... looks like the promo images for #46 are the atmospheric version of the VF-11C Super Thunderbolt from Operation Stargazer, a joint character sheet for Pixie Team background characters Nene Rora and Raramia Rerenia, and another "Game and Advanced Valkyrie" Extra Sheet with the Milky Dolls and the Feois. #47 seems a bit more interesting, with another "Variable Fighter Development History" sheet (apparently featuring the VF-25 and VF-27) and unless I miss my guess covers the business between Project Super Nova and the "present day". Also mentioned (but not pictured) is a character sheet for "flower girl" and Rex's biker gang (I think, I'm not sure about the last one), and another Sound Force related history sheet...

Doubly appropriate for a Harmony Gold panel, since ignorance is one of the few things keeping the Robotech franchise from doing what it's been threatening to do since 1986... sink without a trace. Oh, considering what I've heard about JuanRT being almost as determinedly pro-Harmony Gold as MEMO is, it does sound rather like it was intended as a trap. I don't speak any Spanish, but with a setup like that it seems pretty much inevitable that they'd try to discredit Nenad or goad him into saying something inaccurate so they can carry on pretending that UEG are the apefaces, not Harmony Gold. Admittedly, that explanation HP got from Nenad is frightening... Harmony Gold tried bullying UEG into submitting their work under the terms and conditions of their fanworks agreement. In practice, that's a choice between ceding all rights to, and control over, their work to Harmony Gold or giving up on their fan project. Talk about dick moves... good grief. It's even more disgusting that MEMO's running around behind the scenes trying to pin the blame for Harmony Gold's asinine behavior on me and HP. That man is a bootlicking toady with no shame whatsoever.

Really, the reasons behind Harmony Gold's extreme reaction to the rather amateurish Robotech Genesis CG fan film project and not other, far more unambiguously detrimental fanworks is a complete mystery. Of late, the only times when Harmony Gold has felt it necessary to trot out their legal counsel to start shooting cease and desist notices at people have been occasions when they feel the rights they obtained from Tatsunoko under license have been threatened or violated. It makes perfect sense for them to have gone after that MechWarrior game, since the developers were violating their rights and a pre-existing court settlement. I can see them looking the other way when it comes to YouTube, since the show is already out on YouTube AND Hulu. That said... there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason for them to go after UEG and their Robotech Genesis fan film. I can see two possible reasons for their actions, but since UEG Productions is determined to clam up we'll probably never know the real reason for this. The more likely of the two possible explanations for Harmony Gold's sudden move to kill the Genesis project, which MEMO seems to have fixated on, is that they saw or otherwise heard about UEG's plans to eventually go commercial with their talent at some unspecified point in the future. The answer may be as simple as Harmony Gold not wanting a fan film based on their work associated with (and owned by) another company, and deciding to put a stop to it in order to prevent another MechWarrior-like situation or other legal complications from coming to pass, and didn't want to be arsed to hammer out some kind of deal with UEG either. The other possible, though far less likely, explanation for Harmony Gold's completely over-the-top response to UEG's fan project is that they thought the project's status as a derivative work based on Super Dimension Fortress Macross (and maybe Southern Cross too) would draw unfavorable attention from Big West (and their lawyers) if they had officially supported the project like Nenad asked them to in his e-mail to Kevin McKeever. They might've seen it as a lawsuit waiting to happen if it was mistaken for something done with official sanction or support, and decided to protect their business interests by killing it before it could become an issue. Of course, both of these are strictly theoretical, and assume that Harmony Gold is behaving in a rational fashion... which may not be the case. And I got it from one of the other folks he'd talked to.

Eh, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers... If they actually went after EVERY fan project with the potential to make their official products look bad, there wouldn't be any fan projects left. They just target the most visible ones that aren't already kissing their asses. No, what's REALLY funny is HOW MEMO's been telling UEG that we did it... reportedly he's been telling them that I "posed as Harmony Gold" and contacted DeviantArt to demand the removal of all of their Robotech Genesis fan works. The lies MEMO's telling are getting more and more extravagant and unbelievable as he attempts to undermine someone who just doesn't give a poo about Robotech anymore.

Oh yeah, I remember that post... though I'm not sure if we could really call seeing Harmony Gold resume their bad habit of killing off any fan project that could potentially one-up them or is run by fans critical of the way Harmony Gold runs the franchise. On the one hand, it's always amusing to see Harmony Gold shoot themselves in the foot by abusing the loyal, long-time fans who've been keeping the franchise alive all these years. On the other hand, you can't help but feel bad for the fans who put months or even years of their free time into their project, only to have it turn out to have been for nothing when Harmony Gold gets nervous and starts threatening to sue. Considering that at least one of the Robotech die-hards had a signature reading "Death to Macross Purists" on his Robotech.com profile for a good long time before anyone could be made to do anything about it, one could say that Harmony Gold has already given tacit approval to the idea of having Robotech fans resort to violence and intimidation tactics to silence critics. It seems a pretty safe bet that MEMO would endorse it, since Bendo does and MEMO has already endorsed Bendo despite that. All the same, since they've failed spectacularly to attract the attention of the people they want to draw into the Robotech fanbase, they really ought to take heed of how their actions appear to the long-term fans who keep them employed. Is it bad that I thought this post was totally awesome? Shh! You're not supposed to tell them that I'm really The Awareness, leader of the Haydonites and the secret menace destroying all things Robotech and protoculture... they're not supposed to find that out until Robotech XLII: Rick Hunter gets a Fixed-Rate Mortgage! Nothing at all... but let's be honest here, what do they care if the fans think they're jerks? The only fans they care about are the die-hards who'd buy Tommy Yune's bowel movements so long as they put "Robotech" and "Masterpiece Collection" on the box somewhere.

Now you're just splitting hairs... I suppose you could say that he is one of the people who best exemplifies the qualities of being a gratuitous kiss-ass for Tommy Yune and hating anyone and anything that goes against Harmony Gold's company line and going to almost any lengths to shut those people up... but I'd still prefer to say "worst" since those aren't positive qualities from the average person's perspective. Actually, I can do the Cobra Commander voice pretty well... that's actually how the Macross II RPG group I used to run got the name for the fighter squadron the player characters were in... (one long evening of warped humor involving a comic printed in the back of an issue of Toyfare that one of the guys brought over to discuss the super-poseable RT stuff) Eh, even then... UEG was pretty adamant that they weren't aiming to make a profit from it, and continue to insist so... if we take their remarks at face value (and the e-mail they've shown) then they never represented themselves as a business entity looking to make a profit from it, just a fan group looking to see if they could get some kind of support for their fan project from HG, a move that probably would've benefited Harmony Gold enormously if they'd had the sense to spin it right... but they opted to can it instead.

Whatever their particular shortcomings, they'll be someone else's problem soon. He's aware of it, trust me... one of the first things I did after he uploaded M3 to Macross2.net was do a complete inventory of links to make sure we didn't have anything broken. The absence of VF-0D battroid art is a known issue, and presumably one that will be corrected either once we find some decent line art image stock or Chronicle goes out of print, whichever happens first, due to that informal agreement most of us have not to publish scans of Chronicle while it's still being sold. Insofar as coloring goes, the process tends to involve tedious examination of the animation and existing line art stock, and rather a lot of checking and double-checking until he's sure it's correct. This is made somewhat irritating by the lack of good color and black-and-white line art for Macross Zero and Macross Frontier... and Chronicle's occasional inexplicable deviation/correction of the existing color scheme. It's basically just coloring the basic pattern and shading, and then tweaking the colors until they look "just right". Since my collection of Macross Chronicle is more complete than Mr March's (for the time being) and I'm the one with virtually every Macross II book and magazine at my disposal, lately we tend to end up exchanging .gif images over MSN while we're doing color checking.

And let us make no mistake, the creators of Macross are fully aware of just how impractical things like VFs would be on real-world battlefields. Remember, they've always had VFs and destroids down as extremely expensive hardware, and have toyed with the idea of replacing them with more cost-effective, non-transformable unmanned fighters on at least two separate occasions... in Macross Plus and in the backstory of Macross Frontier. On more than one occasion, the initial cost and upkeep costs for a particular VF were cited as reasons for its development, adoption or rejection (ex. VF-5, VF-6, VF-7, VF-9, VF-14, VF-171, VF-25), and the same goes for the AIF-7S Ghost, which became the primary air force of many emigration fleets because they cost 1/3 of what the VF-171 does, and that thing's considered extremely cost-effective for a VF. So, let it never be said that Macross's creators are completely blind to the fact that something like a VF would be an implementation nightmare, or that the increased cost would make non-transformable fighters much cheaper and far more appealing by comparison once they were on roughly the same technological level... they just keep coming up with various reasons to keep the VFs as central figures in the story because it's much more exciting than watching some mook in a control center ordering UCAVs about.

Okay, you have a point there... multiple variants of the AC-130 did mount howitzers... but it's not exactly a nimble plane, and certainly not one that will win a turning contest with a fighter. Really, there's no practical application for the magic, fairy-dust farting wonders that are Variable Fighters in a real-world battlefield. There are just too many implementation issues.

You'd have to ask Nenad or one of the other UEG guys for the exact reason Harmony Gold sent them a Cease and Desist notice... but they've adopted a policy of silence when it comes to that particular issue. I know, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that some Robotech fans probably believe that it's true. Quite a few of them, including Maverick_LSC, Doug Bendo, and WDKaiserV1 (the guy who had the "Death to Macross Purists" signature) readily reiterate the theory that I'm lying about the Macross licensing issue to cause "pain and suffering", and that I'm the sinister lord of a cabal of Macross purists who've infiltrated the Robotech fanbase and are working to destroy it from within. I'm like Cobra Commander to these people, except I'm actually competent and I almost never lose...

And y'know what... after all this time it's still bloody ridiculous... funny too.. I wonder who they're gonna go after next... HP's Atlantech? Robelwell202's "Destroid's Last Dance" fanfic? It seems like anyone who's running a Robotech project these days is now open to attack. I guess they're still targeting the UEG crowd because they actually managed to come close to putting something of marketable quality out there. Why can't they go after someone who deserves it, like Maverick, MEMO, or Doug Bendo? Oh, I very much doubt that RobotechX is in any danger of being shut down by Harmony Gold. After all, it's MEMO's baby, and he's one of the very worst ass-kissing Tommy Yune fanboys and goose-stepping pro-Harmony Gold fascists. You've got nothing to fear... your site's an unofficial police box for the Harmony Gold division of ThinkPol. Speaking of... strange rumors have recently started reaching my ears concerning Harmony Gold's legal counsel and the cease and desist notice they sent concerning UEG's Robotech Genesis project. If what people are telling me is true (I'm still trying to verify it for myself, so it may not be), MEMO1DOMINION and several others have been telling people that I was the prime mover responsible for Harmony Gold's sudden urge to shut down the Genesis project. In the account that reached my ears eyes, they've been telling people that, for reasons that could best be described as "cartoonish villainy", I used my connections to Harmony Gold's legal counsel and/or senior management to get them to shut UEG's Genesis project down. Now, this is so patently absurd that I'm hoping to high heaven that it's not true. If it is, then that just says something horrible about the whole Robotech fanbase and the deepening state of denial it's in. They can't debate with us like civilized folks, so they have to resort to demonizing us by making us out to be saturday morning cartoon show villains who just want to make the heroes suffer for no reason. The part I really don't get is that after spending all this time and effort trying to discredit my statements about the Macross licensing situation, they've supposedly done a 180 and are now telling people I have secret connections to HG's legal staff that I use to crush those who oppose me. If I really had THAT much clout, or any connections to Harmony Gold's senior management and legal counsel, I probably would've convinced them to hire someone competent to run the franchise by now, or just done away with the franchise altogether and gotten us some stateside Macross licensing.

Indeed... the hosting package for Macross2.net was a good fit for my needs around six years ago when I was still almost totally inexperienced as a web designer and was only looking to run a basic website and forum on which I could host the Macross II RPG my friends and I were involved in. Now that my web design skills aren't so limited and the focus of the whole thing has long since changed to assembling the most complete reference for the parallel world continuity that Macross II inhabits, the hosting service's restrictive and hopelessly antiquated that it's pretty much useless for all but the most low tech of applications. At present, the server's configuration is so outdated that in another six months or so it won't even be able to run phpBB or Joomla... hence the need to move. Fortunately, M3 is low-tech enough to take full advantage of the package's few redeeming features without being unduly hindered by the missing functionality, and thus it seems to suit Mr March's needs well enough for the present. I'll take care of the redirect thing at the root index later this evening. (In the interest of fairness, Yahoo's customer service did promise to review my complaints and update their software accordingly... but we're approximately 18 months on from my initial request and nothing has really changed) Somehow, this fails to surprise me...

Well, as the one who actually does all the maintenance on M3 is Mr March, I'll have to leave that one to him. It might just be that it's something planned for a future update, or something he just forgot in the tidal wave of minor color corrections and the new articles and all that jazz. Rather than beat around the bush, I'll just come right out and say it... my attention has been directed elsewhere. Between real-world drama I won't waste your time with, a change in the scope of the project that the site was intended for, and the most erect of dick moves by the hosting service provider, I never quite got around to finishing construction of the site as I had intended. Since I was already lending my Macross II knowledge to Mr March when the owner of the previous M3 location forgot to renew his hosting package and the site went 404, I figured since I had an underutilized and thoroughly undercapable server whose chief redeeming features were an absurd amount of storage space and an even more absurd amount of bandwidth, it'd be no imposition at all to let him use as much as he needed so that his site wouldn't disappear. Basically, the site's being used as little more than an extremely low-spec mirror for M3 while I focus on unburying myself from a tidal wave of crap and will eventually be moving my project (and probably M3 as well) to a new hosting service and URL that isn't run by a bunch of pathologically dishonest, dyslexic chimpanzees. I just haven't had the time to remove the last of the prototype content for the old site and put up a redirect. EDIT: I just realized my first sentence had halves of the same sentence phrased two different ways giving completely the wrong impression... it's fixed now.

Well, the existence of the MHD system in the FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine is already part of the VF-1's compendium article. Since the Compendium requires that everything be backed up by a print source of some kind, there really isn't any way for us to cover it in the other articles. The VF-1's simply the only article where the sources went into such excruciating detail. The whole atmospheric flight mode thing can be added since it comes from Great Mechanics DX (courtesy of Sketchley), but the space flight bit that I posted is informed speculation based on the information provided, which means it's technically inadmissible. In practice, it's almost certainly the way VFs actually do get around in space (waste not, want not, you have a known quantity in the ion thruster, and a ready source of plasma, why add extra weight with a whole second set of propellant tanks), but since it isn't explicitly given in a reliable canon publication (VF-1 Master File is far out in left field because it borrows a lot from an old, long-discredited tech manual doujin that was printed around the same time DYRL came out) there's no way to include a source that explicitly says "this is how it works".

Let's be frank... it used to mean something to the fans. Examining the way in which Harmony Gold managed the franchise over the years, you have to wonder if it ever meant anything more than a quick buck to Carl Macek and Frank Agrama. And y'know what... I got threatened with a ban on Robotech.com not once but twice for saying exactly that... once for just saying it flat-out, and once for jokingly calling the movie Robotech III: the Sentinels II (Detroit 0), and several other names including "Tommy Yune's Day Off" and "Robotech III: the Search for More Money". For both, Maverick accused me of posting personal attacks against Harmony Gold staffers and threatened to ban me...

Okay, this is actually a question that seems to have an answer... one which has been around since the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series. Among the design features mentioned as having been incorporated into the FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines used on the VF-1 is a system identified solely as "MHD", situated at the back of the engine near the exhausts. "MHD" is the accepted shorthand form of "magnetohydrodynamic(s)", which in all likelihood is identifying that part as a plasma ion thruster. In that case, the means by which variable fighters get around during space flight is remarkably similar to Star Trek's impulse engines... just without the mass-lowering subspace field. Plasma from the thermonuclear reaction engines would be vented through the engine and accelerated using a high efficiency ion thruster with thrust-vectoring nozzles to provide propulsion and basic maneuverability in space. This would also account for the higher rate of fuel consumption in the engine, to provide enough plasma to serve as propellant, and also explain why VFs so frequently employ large boosters and additional propellant tanks for extended space operations. (As a side note, this explanation also agrees in general terms with the explanation provided in the VF-1 Master File, in that the VF-1 uses a "rocket mode" for its engines in space, as plasma ion thrusters are technically rocket engines, though that book is not canon) Incidentally, this system is also how the VF-1 (and likely all other VFs) gets around underwater... MHD ion engines have already been used to propel boats using no moving parts and seawater as a propellant. See this Wikipedia article for the general details.

Not just that, but back around 2001-2002 Harmony Gold went back to Tatsunoko and acquired the merchandising rights to DYRL. Since Macross is pretty much the only part of Robotech that sells, and they've gone to so much trouble in their quest to keep Japanese Macross products out of the hands of American fans, it's highly unlikely that Harmony Gold would terminate their relationship with Tatsunoko. Of course, we could say the same solely on the basis that their future development plans for the Robotech animated series require the use of intellectual property from Genesis Climber Mospeada, which is owned by Tatsunoko.

To be honest... he hasn't done anything to deserve that guest of honor spot. Outside of his brief tenure as marketing coordinator for Harmony Gold's Robotech franchise, McKeever doesn't have any actual experience working in the anime industry. He definitely doesn't have any credentials or accolades that'd make him a person of interest for convention-goers at Anime Next. It's a pretty safe bet that the convention organizers wanted Tommy Yune, but he couldn't be arsed to go to a convention that wasn't a major stop on the tour and sent his coffee boy instead. (Just in case you were wondering, McKeever seems to fit the usual Harmony Gold staffer mold in that he's almost totally unqualified for the position he holds. In terms of his qualifications, he has a BFA in Lighting Design from Emerson College, and the most notorious titles in his production credits are Jackass, Kids Say the Darndest Things, and Billy Frankenstein. He also claims to have some experience in theater production, though he doesn't list the titles... only the venues, none of which are particularly impressive. In particular, he seems extremely proud of his work on Jackass, which as most would agree is nothing to be proud of.)

Yes, Smith & Tinker founder Jordan Weisman also co-founded FASA. How involved he was with its day-to-day operation and the events surrounding Harmony Gold v. FASA, we don't know. It does seem odd that he wouldn't have informed his licensees of the constraints, but then again the terms of the settlement in Harmony Gold v. FASA were kept confidentation, as confirmed by Catalyst Game Labs. Catalyst thought they'd found some kind of legal loophole, but apparently it didn't pan out. It's possible that Piranha Games went through a similar situation. Either way, what they did was a clear violation of Harmony Gold's exclusive right to develop and produce merchandise based on the original Macross series for sale outside of Japan, and it looks like both Catalyst and Piranha had an "Oh poo" moment when the cease and desist notices brought it to their attention.