Seto Kaiba

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.

Oh, that one... yeah, someone brought that one to my attention the other day. It's just pathetic that even now they're trying to find hidden meaning in insignificant trash out of some misguided belief that Robotech's 25th Anniversary isn't going to be the damp squib everyone with a brain knew it would be from the start. They just can't bring themselves to accept that Harmony Gold put the brakes on all future development in favor of sitting on their collective hands and waiting for Warner to convince people that the franchise isn't a complete waste of time and money. I see Maverick_LSC is out there to help the idiot speculation along. It's highly probable he's the originator of this latest crackpot theory. The worst thing to come from Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles isn't the childishly bad story, the bargain-basement animation quality, or the nail-in-head awful voice work, it's that the only thing it actually accomplished was convincing the self-deluded in the Robotech fanbase that this was the franchise's glorious rebirth... so now they're hoping against hope that this doesn't become another Sentinels and plunge them into another releaseless 20 years.

Y'know, I'm fairly certain that there was some B&W line art of Wendy out there, but most of her reprinted line art is the colored-in line art in This is Animation Special #5: Macross II. There was a fair bit of art for her, so I can't imagine that they made a decision to omit her based on art availability. IMO, they probably just ran out of space and had to prioritize what they'd fit into the last few issues. I know they're covered, albeit briefly, on the Mardook worldguide sheet. I think they might've also shown up on the "People of the Mardook" sheet in brief too.

Not quite the same type of conversion job, since the US-3A COD Viking was a utility cargo hauler that could use some or all of its cargo space to take passengers, while the VB-25J Mitchell and the fictitious VC-19V are dedicated VIP/staff transports built for the sole purpose of shuttling around bigshots and their attendant swarm of minions. Not surprising... though I found it interesting that the VF-19's engine-mounted verniers are using diverted engine exhaust instead of propellant tanks. I wonder if that applies to the vernier ring too?

I'm pretty sure the word for your condition is "masochism", not "nostalgia". Damn, and I thought I was cruel.

And now for the part they didn't tell you... probably 75% of those are spambots. Of course, most of the die-hard Robotech fans are so dense it's virtually impossible to distinguish between a living contributor and a badly-coded Russian or Chinese spambot.

Indeed it is... though I'd say there's rather more to the complete absence of Shadow Chronicles cosplayers than the simple fact that the movie isn't even close to being the runaway hit Harmony Gold would have the fans believe it is. Part of the problem is, I think, that quite a few of the more vocal Robotech fans maintain the perplexing insistence that Robotech is not anime. I dunno if they're just idiots, or if they believed Carl Macek's lies about the show's origins, but some of the vocal Robotech fans out there genuinely believe that a show composed of three unrelated anime titles is not, itself, anime. That bizarre belief ties into the tendency to find the original shows (and often anime in general) offensively foreign that many of those fans exhibit. To that part of the fanbase, cosplay is something they see as being beneath them because it's something anime fans do. It's pretty much a given that what's causing most of the more sane Robotech fans to refrain from cosplaying is the simple fact that the average Robotech fan is a man in his early 30s. They're at the point where they see themselves as too old for that sort of thing, and probably the conventions too. Among those that would attend a con, I doubt there are many, or any, willing to wear something as cruelly unforgiving as those skintight sprayed-on jumpsuits everyone wears in Shadow Chronicles. The uniforms in the original Macross and DYRL are something you could conceivably wear without grossing people out even if you're not in the best shape. Nobody but a bodybuilder could pull off those RTSC jumpsuits without inducing nausea almost as effectively as Man-Faye, and even then it's kind of iffy. Macross fans are a bit more willing to cosplay because Macross is much more popular, and Macross Frontier has a good bit of appeal with younger viewers and/or younger event organizers/participants who are still fit enough to pull it off. It does, doesn't it? Tommy's been approaching Shadow Chronicles (or should we call it the "Shadow saga") like he would his own personal Robotech fanfic. What he's doing is a fairly transparent attempt to keep people interested in a continuation of the Shadow Chronicles garbage by teasing them with the whole "are they dead or aren't they?" bollocks that use all the time in the comic book industry. What he's doing there is trying to maintain interest in the dead-end Shadow Saga by teasing people with the idea that he MIGHT not have killed off 99% of the remaining Macross characters.

I'm not sure if anyone's actually dug into it and done a detailed translation of the bit about the VC-19V "VIP-calibur". From what I gathered while skimming the book a few hours ago while chatting with Talos, the VC-19V is derived from the either the Block 17 or the Block 20 version of the VF-19C as a dedicated (probably non-transformable) official-use light transport for high-ranking military and government personnel. It can seat five in the passenger compartment, and a crew of two in the cockpit. This is actually something that's been done before in the real world, though it was done with bombers instead of jet fighters. During WW2, the US Army was using a derivative of the B-25J Mitchell bomber (designated VB-25J) as staff and VIP transport planes. Two of the six VB-25Js produced ended up as the personal transports of General Eisenhower and General Arnold. Y'know, I haven't bothered to check... I doubt it's ELINT or ECM, given the way that the pod is mounted. Might be photo-recon. Kinda reminds me of the FFR-31MR/D Super Sylph from Yukikaze.

It's been ages since I read the novels, but I think he was murdered by his "evil" counterpart Dr. Lazlo Zand, who also incidentally shows up in Prelude.

Not necessarily a bad thing... the need for absolute realism goes out the window once you start telling a story about people using giant robots to fight spirit sucking evil magic monsters with the power of rock. If the transformation doesn't quite work out the way the series shows, that's no big deal... it's the magic of overtechnology at play. It does say rather a lot about the Master File's writers that they went to such trouble to find ways for "overtechnology magic" to be carried out by relatively mundane means. But, with the exception of what is now Macross's parallel world continuity, we DO have the one guy keeping the canon material straight and largely deciding what's what in the Macross universe... Shoji Kawamori. What started the whole discussion about a potential retcon of the VF-19's specs was sketchley noting that Kawamori was listed as a "supervisor" on the Master File and that the alleged retcon lined up with material which had been published in Macross Chronicle. Macross has had this kind of "tech manual" book before too, and just like the tech manuals for Star Trek they were always considered non-canon. True... though the reason the whole bruhaha started was because the alleged retcon/typo changed the stats of the version seen in the animation. Specifically, the VF-19F/S used by the Macross-7 fleet's Emerald Force and produced locally by the fleet's Three-Star manufacturing ship. You're spot-on that performance will be affected by whatever the local atmospheric conditions are, but that's not what the debate was about. Large image is large, scan previously posted earlier in this thread.

Possibly. The VF-1D is the same basic design as the other VF-1 craft and is a trainer (which would likely include Super and Armor training). But since we always must be wary of using common sense over adherence to the letter of an as yet unidentified canon law, we cannot say for certain that a VF-1D can be equipped with a GBP. As for the toys, I've seen pictures of a GBP equipped VF-1D Yammie, but that doesn't mean anything official To expand on Mr March's answer a bit, we can say with some certainty that most of the standard variants of the VF-1 Valkyrie (-A, -J, -S) can use the GBP-1S protect armor packs. Obviously, the -J model is shown using them in the TV series and DYRL, while the video game adaptation of Macross: Do You Remember Love? (PS) shows the VF-1A and VF-1S using them as well. In the official timeline for what is now the parallel world continuity of Macross II: Lovers Again, the OVA's creators explain why the VF-1J was the only variant shown to equip the GBP-1S. As part of their answer, they state that the packs were initially only compatible with the -J, the other variants were later modified to interface with them as well. So, while it's not strictly applicable to the main timeline, there are some official sources that establish that the VF-1D can use the GBP-1S protect armor. EDIT: There's also a black VF-1A shown using protect armor in episode 27 of the TV series.

Despite all of the obvious contradictions in the dialogue that establishes its existence, Harmony Gold maintains that the SDF-2 does exist in Robotech. They handwave aside all of the contradictory theories and Comico's nonsensical depiction of a second ship in the lake standing back to back with the SDF-1 with an explanation that boils down to "We don't know either... but that poo's still official". Oh, no... that internal monologue about his gloves is entirely the work of the comic's author(s). After all, there's no such thing as a faithful adaptation of Robotech out there. Every author who's ever gotten their hands on a pre-existing Robotech title has had a bizarre compulsion to present how they would've done it rather than how it actually happened in the series.

Eh... I doubt we'll see much more of Master File beyond a possible VF-25 Messiah book which, as you said, should be a slam dunk in terms of sales if they release it around Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye's debut. Odds are they'd go the safest route and just lump the YF-24, VF-27, and possibly the VF-171 in there as well. As much as I would love to see this, it's unlikely it'll ever happen since only two of Macross's main characters (Hikaru Ichijo and Mahara Fabrio) have ever flown them in any prominently-featured fashion, and even then it was only briefly. Plus, I'm a bit leery about the idea of Master File's writers doing what they've done for the other two books and coming up with a bunch of new variants and even new super parts. I'm uneasy about the prospect of any more Macross II-isms (like the U.N. Spacy having two different main VFs, one optimized for space and the other for atmosphere) leaking into Macross's main continuity... and a VF-4 with Super parts and/or a S-type head pretty much tops that list.

Oh, indeed... this is one of many subjects I've discussed with the Harmony Gold employees responsible and come away wondering if, instead of doing a piss-poor job of keeping their franchise afloat, they're doing an incredibly poor job of running it into the ground. As I've been informed by no less a person that Kevin McKeever himself, the reason that they don't update their website is that every single news piece to be posted on the site needs to go through an approval process (presumably involving the company lawyer at some point) before it can be posted. Any proposal to actually improve the content or features on the website itself is immediately vetoed by senior management, who see the site solely as a means to facilitate sales in the store and regard anything Robotech-related which doesn't directly earn profit as a waste. Many suspect that the only reason Harmony Gold sprang for a new server for Robotech.com a few years back was because the old one'd been so far out of its depth that it was starting to affect the point-of-sale system that the store used.

Eh... it's been ages since I've bothered to put in a Robotech DVD and give myself a proper "shitsux" headache, but it's probably close enough to the actual narration found in the show to pass muster. Robotech's narrator was a chatty little bastard, that's for sure.