Seto Kaiba

Considering the state of reliability the last book shows, and this book's invention of several new variants we've never heard of before and are completely unprecedented in the animation and production materials, the whole book oughta fall under "fanfic", just like the VF-1 Master File and Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual. If it's 100 total, that's not so bad... 50 per side, if the packs are fairly large, is reasonable enough. After all, the VF-19 manages to squeeze what, 24 mini-missiles into each leg bay? (discounting Chronicle's inexplicable reduction) Last contents question (honest! mine's on order): Do they give us a cutaway of the gunpod that shows the feed system and internal view of the magazine?

No, the "Lancer's Rockers" sourcebook for the old Palladium Robotech RPG wasn't a bad book... it was a hilariously awful book. I laughed myself sick at the pictures of all the musicians trying to look "gritty" and "awesome" while wearing their goofy-ass Mars Colony uniforms and rocking out on 60's retro-futuristic musical instruments so silly and dated looking they could almost be rejected props from the original Star Trek TV series. Also... saying that Palladium's Macross II RPG has a few errors in it is truly a masterpiece of understatement. It's no exaggeration to say that there's more wrong than right in the core book, and the subsequent publications don't do the job any better. To be honest, I'm not sure what my favorite screw-up in those books is... but getting the year the OVA's set in wrong and representing the Macross Cannons at 1/12th actual size are definitely strong contenders... but that's more a function of them not having much access to the information, and then ignoring most of what they DID have.

Indeed... but the poor sod in question just doesn't want to accept that Harmony Gold has essentially disowned everything produced before 2001 except the "original" series. What he's been falling back on is some remark attributed to Carl Macek that says that all of Robotech's licensed materials are canon. Whether or not Macek actually said that remains to be seen. He's so desperate to convince me of this that he called Palladium's offices in Taylor to try and get them to back him up... which is kind of disturbing on several levels. As far as the actual authorship of the RPGs, that'd be Kevin Siembieda's handiwork. The info in the old edition was, according to him, a mixture of stuff translated out of the few art books they were able to get their hands on and wild guesses based on many long sessions of freeze-framing recordings of the episodes that were airing at the time. The old edition is so wildly inaccurate nobody could possibly mistake it for canon. The new edition is supposed to be better since it's allegedly being vetted by Tommy Yune before release, but even then a LOT of mistakes slip by. Tell ya what... let's trade places. You can deal with these fruit loops in my place for a while and enjoy all of their entertaining idiocy. I'm pretty miffed with the whole lot of them right now. One of the handful of RT fans I thought was actually an OK guy is acting like a complete bellend... throwing a goddamn hissy fit because he lost his admin powers on RDF-HQ. I have just two words to say to this: FUND IT. Raid nothing... Harmony Gold's staff just don't have a clue how to write. I've heard some noise about Tom Bateman having written a slightly less suck-ass story treatment for the movie, and that it was axed due to Tommy's massive ego. (alarmingly plausible cause of death, no?)

If the project hadn't met its conveniently untimely end thanks to the exchange rate crash, Matchbox bailing out, and Macek's ineptitude, who knows how much they might've ripped off? Obviously they couldn't be TOO obvious about it, since that'd invite a lawsuit. On an unrelated note, I've received a few e-mails from a Robotech fan who's got it into his head that the old (1st Ed.) Palladium Robotech RPG books are the last word on what is and is not canon. As a result, I got to hear one of the craziest conspiracy Robotech fanboy conspiracy theories of all time... This bloke (who I won't name) told me that the RPG is the last word because Macek said once that all the stuff made for RT was official, and that all the material in official publications like the Infopedia and AoTSC book should be ignored because it was all the result of the insidious influence of the Trekkies, who he thinks have essentially taken over Robotech.com. This guy is 7 1/2 beers short of a six pack, easy.

It most certainly did...

Of course... Robotech's creative process is based entirely on finding something relatively popular and either license it for rewriting or just steal parts of it in the faint hope that by assembling a "new" story from bits and pieces of stuff that don't suck and have nothing to do with each other, nobody will notice and the end result won't suck too terribly either. As I've said many a time, the only thing that changed over 25+ years for Robotech was the name of the show they were ripping off. It started with Sentinels trying desperately to combine parts of Macross and Star Trek: the Next Generation into something vaguely watchable. For Robotech 3000 they were ripping off the old Roughnecks: the Starship Troopers Chronicles CG series and Terminator (or possibly The Matrix). Now, in the 21st century, we've got Shadow Chronicles making a shamelessly transparent attempt to ape the story and tone of the Battlestar Galactica remake with some vague references to Macross. Somehow, it really comes at no surprise that Harmony Gold would attempt to rip off some parts of Transformers: the Movie. The popularity of the movie is one factor that Macek identifies as a cause of Robotech: the Movie's failure. Since it was quite popular, of course they'd attempt to steal what they could from it in hopes that they'd get away with using someone else's better-written material to disguise their own weak efforts.

Eh... wasn't the stated goal of the AVF project to develop a replacement for the VF-11 that could equip a pin-point barrier system and external fold booster? Are we talking about the same goofy looking set of super parts the VF-19F/S had in Macross 7, or are these something else? (Perhaps a close cousin or intended design predecessor to the packs in question?) Now THAT forms an odd mental image... How many are we talkin' here? More than 40? More than a hundred? We into VF-25 territory with 200+? Oddly, this is one of the designs I'm most curious to see... I'd always considered the idea of an ELINT/AWACS model VF-19 impossible due to the way it transforms, but they've apparently gone and made one... the guitar pick-shaped radome's an odd touch, and the designation is just BLEH. I'm assuming they probably parroted the line about which of the VF-19's variants were modeled on which version... I'm guessing they probably show or at least mention the VF-19C as being an upgraded VF-19A, and the VF-19E (which you said is the basis for Basara's machine) is a long-wing version of the VF-19F/S? Ordinarily, I wouldn't spend a dime on a non-canon (and thus essentially useless for my purposes) book, but these clever people keep doing such an exemplary job in making the master file books eyebrow-raisingly perplexing, thus parting me from my hard-earned money yet again...

Well, yes... but it bodes well if we can confirm the data presented by other means if we can't get our hands on the article that originated the description. Once I get back from dinner I'll check and see if we have the issue on hand. Then we can MAYBE remedy said lack of written information... (which is, of course, contingent on whether or not the magazine actually covers the mecha in any depth) EDIT @ 21:43: Nope, turns out I don't have that exact issue after all. Just the first three issues from that year.

So, the moral of the story is that the vocal Robotech fans are the biggest douches of all? I've lost count of the number of crackpot arguments for why Robotech is better... almost all of which either boil down to nostalgia, bloody-minded ignorance, or both. Of course... the Robotech story has always had all the depth of a teaspoon. Take away its basic nature as a story assembled from three unrelated stories, and you've got yourself a generic sci-fi action story about a pack of gormless soldiers fending off an invading force of evil aliens bent on humanity's destruction and/or the capture of some non-specific macguffin with giant fighting robots. (I just realized I've described what Avatar would be if the teams changed jerseys)

That was fast... I only mentioned the topic to you five minutes ago. Yeah, that's almost certainly the culprit... though I don't recall ever seeing it up close in battroid mode. (Convenient model and texture reuse, making it a khaki VF-25G)

's probably the khaki VF-25s we see during the final few episodes... I think I may have this issue. I'll check when I get home.

Unless I'm misremembering something, there's only the one variant of QF-2001. Did you perhaps mean the QF-2200? If so, the QF-2200D-A is a long-range reconnaissance variant fitted with extra sensors in the nose, whereas the QF-2200D-B is the version fitted with a high-thrust turbofan jet engine to serve as an ad hoc booster system for the VF-0. The base model (QF-2200D) is a long-range low-fuel-consumption high-altitude recon unit.

Ripoffs ripping off ripoffs... damn, it's almost Zen in a way... Who's the bigger douche? The plagiarist, or the guy who plagiarizes the plagiarist?

Oooo... now there's a rarity in this thread. Not sure what "real" Robotech is, now that Harmony Gold's disowned 99% of it for being cheap attempts to cash in on the brand name. But they (think they) have such a good thing going for them with the complete lack of talent or originality in their "creative" process. They don't do any actual work, just slap together a badly written Robotech fanfic with existing characters, designs, and set pieces. Ooo, that's an easy one! Because even the most devoted Robotech fans usually find the experience of watching the Masters Saga either profoundly annoying or excruciatingly painful. Apart from a half-dozen very strange, very belligerent people, nobody cares for the content of the Masters Saga, and would very much like to sweep it under the rug and just pretend it never happened. As far as the AF-03 Combat goes, Robotech's only real gimmick is transforming robots (which is why they've taken such pains to make just about everything transform or at least imply that it does), so using a non-transformable fighter like the Combat would detract from the "experience". Well, yes... but if they did that it'd be all the more obvious that RTSC was a blatant attempt to rip off the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Truly, the only thing that changed over 25 years was whose work they were plagiarizing.

Huh... yeah, there's a definite similarity there. Now, if the design of the "Super Shadow fighter" tells us anything about the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles "creative" process, it tells us that their inability to produce anything of quality doesn't mean they don't know what the fans want. As anyone who's been anywhere near a Robotech fan in the last two decades could tell you, what the vast majority of Robotech fans want is a continuation of the Robotech story that recaptures the feel of the "Macross Saga" and resumes the story of the all-important Rick Hunter. Since they've known since at least 1986 that continuing the story using character and mecha designs from Macross is impossible, the Super Shadow fighter is the next best thing... an attempt to impose Macross design aesthetics on Mospeada mecha.

We tried SO hard to forget... and you had to go and remind us. Seriously though, even the Gamma Fighter isn't an original design either. True to form, Tommy took an existing design from the original shows, modified it a bit, and tried to pass it off as something original. In the case of the VF-13 Gamma fighter, it's just a transforming version of the non-transformable Mars Colony AF-03 Combat fighter from the original Genesis Climber Mospeada. Like pretty much all of the other "new" stuff he's come up with during his tenure, it's something old that's been tarted up as though it was new and original... a process that's been Robotech's stock in trade since 1985. It's not just you... though I'm still not convinced the Silverback is original either. I can't shake the feeling that the "vehicle" mode looks a bit like a Mospeada-style clone of Halo's Warthog, and the "robot" mode puts me in the mind of Psalm of Planets: Eureka 7's LFOs. Hell, it could also be the horrible mutant offspring of that "Scorpion" jeep thing from Unreal Tournament 2003. (On a pseudo-related note, I think I found a Mospeada reference in Five Star Stories of all the strange places...)

It's been a month since Harmony Gold's tasteless attempt to use Macek's memorial service to promote the live action movie. All the fuss died down pretty fast, and Harmony Gold only managed to get a handful of pieces of wildly inaccurate borderline hagiography out the door, most of which contain less fact than a fortune cookie. Oh come on... that was AWESOME. That and the fact that they seem to have stolen fairly half their new cast from Star Trek: the Next Generation and other sci-fi from the same period. ('s why I call the redesigned Janice "DData") Oooooohhhh... so THAT'S why all the Haydonites talk like graduates of the Emperor Palpatine Memorial College of Divination. Always with the "foreseen"...

From the look of things, Saraphys and I are probably the only ones who actually picked up on it. The way people on here react to anything Macek-related these days, you'd think you wandered into some kind of Bizarro-MacrossWorld, where all the people who usually treated the man like an inept con artist get up in arms about anything that could be perceived as being disrespectful to him... even if that person is making a perfectly valid point. It's bad enough we have to put up with the borderline-hagiography about the man from the idiot brigade on various Robotech sites, but now even illustrating the simple fact that Macek's death has become Harmony Gold's new raison d'ineptitude is suddenly being classified as hitting below the belt here? At the rate we're going, it won't be too long before some overly-sensitive soul puts out their own tearful "LEAVE CARL MACEK ALONE!" video on YouTube. Y'see... part of the problem is that this sudden "Don't speak ill of Carl Macek now that he's dead" trend is conducive to exactly what SHOULDN'T be allowed to happen... covering up the fact that the man was a talentless hack who spent most of his career telling lies to take credit for someone else's work and exaggerate the extent of his involvement and input. It's not "sinking low" to point out the simple fact that Harmony Gold will likely continue using Macek's death as an excuse for their lack of new material and as a means to promote their doomed projects. So he made the point with humor instead of with the usual air of exasperation and annoyance that normally marks this thread? So what? And yet... it's still some of the best writing Robotech has ever had. Scary, isn't it? Aren't low-budget productions fantastic? This just in... Robotech: Shadow Rising will be a direct-to-YouTube video feature done entirely with sock puppets. Sources close to Harmony Gold have confirmed that as a cost-saving move, the all characters will be voiced by a drunk intern from the mail room, and Janice Em2's singing voice will be provided by a tone-deaf budgerigar with an inner ear infection. Well of course the death of Daryl Taylor is traumatic... after all, he's voiced by the most talented voice-actor on the entire cast, and he's the only one whose dialogue isn't taken from a badly-written Star Trek-Robotech crossover fic. Of course, it gets even funnier when you notice that they didn't bother with antialiasing when they added texture to the CG models, so every ship, fighter, and mecha in the film ends up surrounded by a minute haze of gray and white pixels, like an amateur-hour photoshop project.

No, Rob Liefeld is a genius... not an artistic genius by any means (unless you're counting "suck" as a genre of the fine arts) but rather a wizard at self-promotion whose talents allowed him to make frankly embarrassing amounts of money and become one of the most recognized figures in comics despite having only marginal artistic talent. So, given his usual PR tactics, by new Robotech "projects" he means "new toys" or "new reprinted comic books". As he's already admitted that Harmony Gold is sitting on its collective hands waiting for Warner to fix the franchise's horrific reputation so they can get decent financial backing for the next animated movie, and the voice actors are maintaining that they were told Shadow Rising is on hiatus and haven't been contacted since, it's rather unlikely that the "new projects" are anything to do with continuing their lackluster Shadow Chronicles OVA. Considering they unashamedly used the man's death AND funeral proceedings to pitch the Robotech-in-name-only live action movie, I think anything anyone here has to say is pretty much fair game and in far better taste than anything that's come out of the Harmony Gold offices in the past month or more. Oh puh-leeze... the man was an incompetent hack and a shameless liar who spent the vast majority of his career attempting to take credit for someone else's work. I'd say by now the man is fair game again, especially since Harmony Gold is gleefully and quite unashamedly riding his corpse's coattails in the name of promoting their crappy movie.

Really? I didn't get the same "stripperific" vibe from her that I got from Ariel and most of the other girls in Shadow Chronicles and Prelude. To me, the uniform looks more like an attempt to hide his usual stripperific drawing style under something that almost looks military-like.

Yes, that would be my recommendation... there are some good-quality fansubs out there for that one, and it was once released in the US too, so it shouldn't be that hard to find. I would recommend watching the shows in rough production order, so you get a good feel for the timeline of Gundam's Universal Century. Some of the OVAs later come back and fill in the gaps between shows. (And the OVAs are where I personally feel the franchise shines... and many number among my favorite Gundam titles... there and only there will you find a giant robot pilot laid low by something as mundane as a plate of carrots) Above all else, just make sure to pace yourself... two, maybe three episodes a day tops will get you through it at a decent enough pace, and you'll be able to take everything in without it becoming overwhelming or frustrating. You can find a summary of the production order here, along with their availability outside Japan, but it mixes all of the AUs in with the UC continuity shows: http://www.mahq.net/animation/gundam/gundam.htm A reasonably succinct list of which ones belong to the UC can be obtained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Century#Universal_Century_Gundam_series_and_films

Indeed... but this thread still needs more Ishtar... I'll have to set up my scanner and post some of those great watercolors of her Mikimoto did as promo art for Macross II and for the novels.

Sounds interesting... didn't like Sheryl very much during the first few episodes, but she really grew on me later in the series. I'll probably pick up the collected edition of the manga when it comes out. I was hoping they'd get around to expanding on Sheryl's history, didn't expect they'd actually do it, so I'm kind of looking forward to this.

If you look at the early concept art, it's pretty clear that's really a function of his complete inability to comprehend fiddly anatomical matters like the way spinal columns work and that wrists really shouldn't be as thick or thicker than the person's biceps. His early drafts of Vince Grant look like The Incredible Hulk, and there's still something wrong about how most of his female sketches have them standing ramrod straight, with their chests thrown out in a posture scientifically designed to cause intense lower back pain.

Speaking of obnoxious things that don't mix it up, would you kindly come up with a new ad hominem attack? That one lost all its bite a loooooooong time ago. Seriously... even though Macross II was, by all accounts, a sequel that played it safe and didn't try to mix it up as much as subsequent efforts did, it still had a hell of a lot more originality than most of the later UC Gundam shows. There comes a time when, even if you have a winning formula, you still need to mix it up a little to keep things from getting stale. Gundam doesn't exactly do that a lot, and on the rare occasion it does, it's usually an alternate universe story. As a result, the whole UC timeline is a parade of samey conflicts against space fascists (and usually the same bunch of space fascists at that) who usually want to drop some kind of large stellar mass on Earth's surface and/or commit genocide, broken up by the occasional rebellion against the corrupt Earth Federation when they get too heavy-handed trying to keep the space fascists in line. Like I said (and you apparently ignored), it's a winning formula and they're smart enough not to screw with it just because they can... but it's best to take it in small doses to keep the conflicts from running together and the standard-issue whiny protagonist from driving the viewer up a tree. It's the same problem Evangelion has... it's a classic show, but the average viewer can only take so much whining per day, so it's best to pace yourself when you're watching it. This is actually what I suggest for Macross 7 as well... it's not a BAD show, it's just not a show most people should try watching all in one sitting. Eh... Quirky? Yes. Awesome? No. To be entirely fair to ZZ Gundam, if you prefer the somewhat grimmer tone of the rest of Gundam then you'll find the second half of ZZ Gundam much more enjoyable. The first half is, as you said, similar to the Macross 7 TV series. In particular, it has that lightness of tone and silliness that occasionally crosses the line into what some might consider full-blown stupidity, and others might consider highly amusing anarchic comedy. It's all down to taste, but I'll be surprised if anyone seriously attempts to defend the Moon-Moon episodes as anything but a clandestine attempt to weaponize bad writing. The "better mechanical designs" thing is really down to taste too... Gundam 00's got a lot less recycled footage. I don't deny that the second season was a steady slide towards a train wreck ending, but the first half was an extremely well-executed show. I can't really say the same for Wing, which never really bothers to explain why the protagonists are wrecking Earth's poo and killing everybody until the wrap-up OVA, and tosses new factions in and has characters make knee-jerk faction changes whenever they run out of ideas. If you'd read my whole post, you'd realize it's not a double standard at all. Both shows have a formula that works for them. The difference is that Macross makes a concerted effort to mix it up a bit with each iteration, trying new things with the characters, the mechanical designs, the love triangle, etc. They take their concept to new and interesting places. Gundam doesn't make as much of an effort to try new things, which can leave some of the shows feeling like the only thing that changed were the names of the characters, and sometimes not even that much (like the jump from Mobile Suit Gundam to Zeta Gundam and from Zeta Gundam to the latter half of ZZ Gunadm).