Seto Kaiba

Really? I can honestly say I've never met a Robotech fan who wanted Tommy to churn out Robotech comics on a regular basis to replace the old comics, or thought that he would keep doing miniseries titles on a regular basis. In the Robotech fandom, comic books and novels are second-class content at best. Continuing the story of the original series has always been what Robotech fans wanted most, and it's no stretch at all to say that while most fans see the new comics as idle curiosities or vaguely interesting side stories, most of them would much rather see Tommy work on the next half-assed direct-to-DVD movie. Admittedly, the novels attached an ending where Carl Macek never intended for there to be one. In his "vision" for the unplanned and unpursued Robotech III, Robotech IV, and Robotech V, Macek explained that he wanted the story to essentially by cyclical, with the whole affair ending with an Admiral Hunter reminiscing about how the whole mess got started, looping back onto episode 1 from a planned episode numbering somewhere around 365. What Tommy did was toss that stuff was largely never intended to be there in the first place, and attempted to modify the New Generation's ending to provide a new villain for the ongoing story... and it didn't work terribly well.

Admittedly, you might have a point there... some of the more atrociously off-model moments in the old Robotech comic books are right up there with the famously-awful work of Rob Liefeld in terms of anatomical improbabilities, oddly shifting body proportions, and a bizarre inability to understand how people's bodies interact with objects around them. I wouldn't evens say that the Waltrips were exempt from these screwups, since the size of Jack Baker's chin seemed to change from panel to panel, as did the size of pretty much every character's hairdo on occasion. We have to cut them a little slack since these guys were not exactly big-name publishers, and their amateurish quality of work could easily be chalked up to their relative inexperience. Still, the one thing that probably killed more Robotech comics than any other factor was the tendency many series had to have exciting looking, reasonably well-drawn covers and contents that completely fail to live up to the promise of their packaging. "Interesting cover, bland comic" was a real problem, particularly once Academy Comics got ahold of the license. "Moderate activity" seems to consist primarily of MEMO banishing anything that resembles dissent to the hidden "Cannon Fodder" forum, and people plugging podcasts. Saying that the Robotech franchise is back where it was about 10-15 years ago is probably giving the current state of affairs rather more credit than it deserves. At least prior to 2001 there was a steady trickle of low-quality comics and novels to give the fans the feeling that the franchise was moving forward even after Carl Macek's third failed attempt to continue the story. These days, literally the only signs of life from the franchise have been overpriced toys trotted out at a rate of one or two per year. That some fans actually take ill-informed, boorish people like MEMO, Maverick, and Doug Bendo seriously is a pretty sad sign of the times for Robotech. For all practical purposes, the franchise died back in 2000 when Carl Macek's latest pet project (Robotech 3000) was canceled and Tommy Yune took over.

Totally... though for me the most interesting bit of this VF-4 translation (thanks Sketchley!) was the mention that the VF-4 does have alternate weapons modules that can be mounted in the forearms. I'd always thought that was dubious since I first saw it in a magazine article, but it looks like it's canon. Actually, as seen in Macross Zero the VF-0 didn't have reaction engines, it was using overtuned conventional turbofans, so the larger size is probably part fuel storage, part extra mass for the larger engine.

Even if it's not your thing, the job has to be done by someone. If the whole series of incidents surrounding dougbendo and Pizza the Hutt proved anything, it's that MEMO is NOT the right man for the job. Regardless of whether it was "your thing" or not, that MEMO was gleefully looking the other way while his cronies dougbendo and Pizza the Hutt were busily calling most of the site's active membership everything from trolls to pedophiles and child pornographers should have prompted a reaction from you without needing me, HP, Viper, and a handful of other people getting on your case about it. Having to wait days or weeks for moderator intervention definitely did nothing to help the already-tense situation. Now that's a stretch... even by the standards of independent publishing houses, the Robotech comics were, at best, nothing special. One of the most common complaints that crops up whenever they're mentioned is that issues often had decent cover art that caught the eye, and that the contents were almost invariably of substantially lower quality. Calling them "good or better" is definitely reaching a bit. Some of them had vaguely interesting stories (and I'm saying this as someone who has all but two or three of them), but more often than not the stories were trite, cliched, and boring, with flat, uninteresting characters and art that not only failed to ape the animation style of the original works, but frequently couldn't even stay on-model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaw Honestly, I think the decision to place the majority of the old comics and the novels outside of the continuity was easily the smartest decision Tommy has made during his tenure as creative director. The old comics and the novels diverged from the series far too frequently and contradict each other and the series far too often for their effect on the continuity to be anything other than detrimental.

The Valkyrie at the bottom of that chart is a VF-0A. Hey, it's progress... they've acknowledged the missile disparity and the ramjet engines in the wings... that alone is a nice step forward.

Unless the Robotech forums out there have undergone a dramatic transformation since last I looked, the forums are definitely not a place that will entice anyone to purchase the non-canon expanded universe material. Usually, the fans who frequent those forums react badly to mention of the old comic books and novels, with a range of responses that vary from mild antipathy to the sort of vehement condemnation that leaves you wondering if the poster's family was murdered with (or perhaps by) the expanded universe title(s) in question. Once in a while you get someone who actually likes them, but they're exceptional cases and have been growing increasingly rare since the Robotech Purists have scourged fans of the comics, novels, and Japanese originals from their midst on most sites. Well, most of them would be rather difficult to obtain without resorting to eBay or similar measures, since Harmony Gold hasn't seen fit to reprint the novels which bridge the gaps between sagas, the Sentinels novels which wrap the whole thing up, or most of the old comics. Some people pursue them as simple curiosities, evidence of a bygone age that will never come again... like taking a little kid to a museum display of obsolete technology so they can wonder how people ever got things done with monochrome green and black screens and 5" floppy disks. Others pursue them out of nostalgia (duh). Robotech's continuity is such a mess that nobody but the purists actually give a toss about it. Those who don't give a toss about continuity usually pursue them simply for their own sake as stand-alone stories. It's this cavalier attitude towards continuity that contributes substantially to making debates on Robotech sites exercises in frustration and repetition... like arguing with a deaf macaw that only knows three phrases.

At present, it doesn't look like there's any way for Harmony Gold to salvage what remains of the Robotech franchise except tossing the entire established setting and continuity out the window and starting from scratch under the direction of someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing. This is more-or-less a fair description of what they hope the live action movie will be... a reboot, created by someone competent, that stays well clear of all the intellectual property issues which make continuing the story of the "original 85" a complete boondoggle. Really, with so much of their merchandise aimed solely at nostalgic or obsessive long-time fans it doesn't seem at all out of place for Harmony Gold to reprint the more popular novelizations (in short, just the adaptations of the TV series) to appeal to the fans who are either curious or have loved their original copies to death... which many McKinney fans seem to have done over the years. Unless you're overly nostalgic, curious, or just plain stupid, there's very little reason to buy any of the merchandise in the Robotech.com store... particularly with the store's atrocious customer service record.

I know... I know... I'm just using the "flushing them" because I never liked them as a plot device, and thus it's somewhat therapeutic for me to picture them being chucked unceremoniously out the nearest airlock. Max and Milia would probably have had them hospitalized like they did with the captured enemy pilot. On the whole, I probably would've been a lot happier with the plot of ep12-13 if it'd been Varauta soldiers breaking into the ship and hijacking the fold system by force rather than having the somewhat silly (IMO) spirita vampires doing most of the legwork. Unlikely, the whole vampire business didn't really tie into the discovery of spirita regeneration by the U.N. Spacy... that was caused by letting their hospital patient listen to the radio and theorizing based on how Sivil retreated after meeting Basara. Deleting the spirita vampires from the equation probably wouldn't have had any effect on that part of the story at all.

Quite... while I won't belabor the issue of Basara bearing most or all of the hallmarks of a Canon Sue, specifically those of a "God Mode Sue", it's pretty much beyond dispute that had Max and Milia rounded up all the spirita vampires in Gepernich's advance reconnaissance party early on and flushed the lot of them out the nearest airlock they would likely have never discovered the spirita regeneration phenomenon. Without that discovery, we wouldn't have had the spirita farm plan that drove most of the plot later on. City-7's actually surprisingly small... the whole dome has an area of less than 19.5 square kilometers (or about 7.5 square miles if you like imperial notation), and that something like a fifth of its area is devoted to parkland. Since it's highly unlikely the vampires would set up shop in the city proper where anyone could easily spot and report them, it leaves just the sewers, the parkland, and the Akusho area. Remember, this isn't an open community like a city on Earth, where anyone can get in and out without attracting notice... this is a domed city traveling in space... a literal city in a bottle. This would almost certainly make the search substantially easier.

Eh... that might've been a concern initially, but the public relations fiasco and resulting loss of morale caused by repeated failures to catch the "vampires" and the subsequent escalation of their attacks would've reached a break-even point with the potential damage done by sweeping the ship and/or declaring a state of emergency. Once the vampires managed to infiltrate the fold section, trigger an emergency separation of the Battle-7, and fold the city section away from the rest of the fleet the damage to the public's confidence in the government and military would've been far worse than it would've been had they simply swept the ship and had done with it. "We're taking every measure possible to ensure the safety of our citizens" sounds a helluva lot better than "Sorry we dropped the ball and let the enemy abduct 350,000 civilians and repeatedly place them in mortal jeopardy, it won't happen again". By that point, the citizens probably would have been quite happy with a large-scale military intervention... yet the military and civilian police all but ignored the vampires on City-7, and allowed them to conduct further large-scale attacks well up through at least episode 34, a good six months later. When you think about it that way, the people who barged into Milia's office and demanded her removal were probably well justified in that demand. Despite knowing exactly what the vampires look like, and the vampires themselves not taking any pains to disguise themselves and occasionally walking around in broad daylight (Ep33), both the police and the military failed to put a stop to the attacks. Calling their security measures "inadequate" doesn't even begin to cover it. Aside from the fact that Batman can and has used guns and lethal force on occasion, particularly back in the silver age, having Max and Milia more or less ignore the vampire problem on their ship doesn't preserve their integrity as characters, it damages it. Milia is supposedly feels a great maternal protectiveness towards her citizens, and yet she sits on her hands and bitches at Max about the vampire problem, and Max, the slightly uncomfortable set of shoulders on which the duty of protecting the entire fleet rests heavily, sits around and is griped at by Milia while protesting that they don't have enough information. That's not preserving the character, that's sacrificing characterization and the character's perceived competence at their job to inflate a minor nuisance into a major threat so that Basara's singing would be necessary. It would've taken a certain something away from the borderline Canon Sue characterization of Basara and the show's entire magical spirit energy bollucks if Max and Milia were able to upset the whole spirita farm main plot by chucking all of Gepernich's advance scout out the nearest airlock and watching the explosive decompression pop them like party balloons. Eh... I think that too is a case where the damage to the public's confidence caused by inaction exceeded the damage that could've been caused by preventative action. Which is more damaging... a widespread Vajra attack throughout the entire ship, or having NUNS forces flamethrower the bloody things to death before they can cause trouble? If you said the latter, there's probably something wrong with you. The citizens probably would've been patting the NUNS troops on the back and breathing a sigh of relief that their homes and lives didn't get horribly farted up along with the ship they're living in instead of picking through debris and contemplating a growing environmental crisis.

Oh yes, I find it almost perversely amusing that after decades spent obfuscating Robotech's origins and exaggerating the importance of the TV series, Harmony Gold openly admits that Robotech's Expanded Universe was nothing but a series of knee-jerk attempts to wring a few more bucks out of the comatose franchise without getting their "creative team" involved, and that the resulting mess is so badly executed and so inconsistent with the core story that there's no way that they can classify any of it as canon. Well, even McKeever somewhat sheepishly admits that the reason the "expanded universe" titles are essentially non-canon is that they were created with little or no oversight or input from Harmony Gold's creative team. The end result is that their stories often contradict the "core continuity" of the series and each other, incorporating a great many stories, characters, and mecha which simply don't fit with Robotech's story and design aesthetic. Likely the frequent "borrowing" from other copyrighted sci-fi works like Macross: Flashback 2012, Independence Day, etc. is also a factor. If you actually take the time to examine the new Robotech material, you'll see that the only part of Robotech's expanded universe that they're overly picking up and running with is Jason and John Waltrip's Robotech II comics. The new stories pick up literally right where the old Sentinels comics left off when they were canceled, with Edwards going on a backstabbing spree before murdering Kyle and kidnapping Minmei. There are superficial similarities to End of the Circle in RTSC, but the primary title that's Tommy is using as inspiration shaking down for ideas to use is the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Owww... brain hurting... Anyway, I still don't understand why Robotech fans have such a difficult time accepting that the 1,210m long SDF-1 could accommodate 86,000 people in reasonable conditions when they readily and unquestioningly accept numbers that make that look positively conservative by comparison: SDF-1 Macross Length: 1,210m Capacity: 86,000 SDF-3 Pioneer (Post-Refit) Length: 1,240m (counting fins) / approx. 1,200m (w/o fins) Capacity: 120,000 SDF-4 Liberator (fmrly. Izumo) Length: 1,305m Capacity: 180,000 Ark Angel-class Colony Ship Length: 2,140m (w/o antennae and fins) Capacity: 750,000 On what grounds are they taking issue with the SDF-1 when willingly accept that there are ships that are only marginally larger that accommodate as many as 100,000 more people with no problems, or for that matter a ship barely twice the SDF-1's size that accommodates nearly nine times the number of people the SDF-1 can? Did they subcontract all of their shipbuilding out to the Time Lords? Not directly, no... he's still supporting lil' dougie's bitching and openly endorsing dougie's behavior.

For me, seeing Max and Milia reverse roles like that always felt a bit unnatural... like the writers got the character descriptions backwards when they started work on the series. Well, the VF-14 (and presumably its derivatives) were supposedly selected for their excellent performance in space, and thus might be at a slight disadvantage dogfighting against a fighter designed (primarily) for atmospheric combat.

Well now, that's a statement that depends entirely on your definition of "causing trouble", isn't it? One would think that his infrequent attempts to derail this thread by presenting the same ignorant, provably-wrong garbage over and over again in his usual illiterate manner is pretty much the textbook definition of trolling. He can't possibly expect us to take anything he says seriously, so what other explanation does that leave besides malicious intent? There's also his well-known habit of coming here to spy on this and other threads for "dissident behavior" so he can then target those people for bans if they're on sites where he has authority. His activities here aren't any less malicious than they are elsewhere, they're just less blatant. Honestly, I don't think a cordial manner is any excuse for willfully and repeatedly spreading malicious misinformation, and cyber-stalking and trolling anyone who calls you out on it. You've never been in direct conflict with him over anything like that... you've been taking kind of a backhanded approach to needling him (and PTH), which he doesn't seem to fully comprehend. Of course, he's so carried away with delusions of his own cleverness for getting rid of most of the dissenting voices in his Orwellian Robotech fanboy world that he'd probably miss direct insults made right under his nose so long as they didn't call into question his credibility or authority. MEMO pays the bills, but SIGHUP is supposedly the one who does most of the actual work necessary to keep the site running. SIGHUP also doesn't seem to care, as he ignored pretty much every report of Bendo and PTH's harassment. MEMO gets most things his way there anyway, because SIGHUP doesn't seem to care. The only things that seemed to get SIGHUP moving were when the troublemakers went after him personally like PTH did, or when a good half-dozen of the site's most active members were barraging him with complaints.

Well, the record for previous incarnations of this thread is 67 pages, so we're making pretty good progress on that front, albeit unintentionally.

"Cute" definitely isn't a word I would use for it, though "obnoxious" certainly fits the bill. I admit there is a certain amount of entertainment value in watching them flail around like the frothy-mouthed fanatics they are while they try desperately to justify their love of Robotech and convince us the franchise isn't completely bereft of redeeming merits that can't be boiled down to either keeping their nostalgia blinders on 24/7, ignorance of what quality anime is like, or simply being too thick to realize Robotech is imitation-brand garbage and Harmony Gold is just playing them for suckers. Really, it's easy to see why the Robotech fans who come here don't usually last very long. About half of them are people like dougbendo, Maverick_LSC, and MEMO1DOMINION, who are just looking to troll and stir up some drama so they can pretend they actually matter. In the remaining half, you've got the Robotech fans who come here out of the misguided belief that our criticisms of Harmony Gold and Robotech are motivated by ignorance, and that they just need to enlighten us; the fans who honestly can't tell the difference and think Robotech is welcome here; the fans who think this is a hideaway for Robotech fans who've been banned from Robotech.com; and the fans who're vaguely curious about this Macross thing they've heard about and may or may not find something of interest to keep them here. Well, it may be that some of them aren't coming here specifically looking for trouble, and are merely stumbling across this thread while looking for something familiar to talk about to ease their transition to a new community. They then get up in arms after they see that the "HG and Robotech Debates" thread isn't an open chat about Robotech, but rather vocal criticism of Robotech in varying degrees of harshness... some of which they might, in their Harmony Gold-induced ignorance, think is unwarranted or simply untrue. Which, of course, could potentially turn otherwise curious Robotech fans into the frothy-mouthed nutjobs we encounter on occasion. Of course, that's all idle speculation on my part, since I can't recall anyone ever coming here and thinking that the HG and Robotech Debates thread was for something other than criticism and talk about the legal debate. Well, dougbendo does live in a fantasy world... he's made that abundantly clear on his podcast, between threats of violence aimed at me, JT, Robelwell202, and his girlfriend... and the occasional threat that he'll pee on someone. Honestly, I think you give MEMO far more credit than he deserves. An apeface who deliberately attempts to mislead people and tells malicious lies in a cordial manner is still a malicious liar and an apeface. Putting a turd in a chocolate box will not make it edible or do anything to diminish the stench.

This is another unsupported assumption put up as fact... in this case, drawing conclusions about the extent to which Zolan culture and entertainment preferences have been affected by prolonged exposure to Earth's culture using a impractically small sample population. We can't draw any rational inferences about the way human culture has influenced Zolans, since Macross Dynamite 7's story only involves a handful of Zolans directly... many of whom (the Zola Patrol) use human overtechnology out of simple necessity. We only see a handful of Zolan civilians, and Basara only interacts closely with Lawrence and the Hoyly family, and as such it would be unwise to assume that their taste in names and/or entertainment are representative of the entire Zolan population. For all we know, radio dramas like "Zomeo and Zoliet" and human music like Fire Bomber are a niche market on Zola in much the same way anime and jpop are in the Americas. We could take that same assumption even farther and say that the human-sounding names some Zolans have might be the closest approximation of their actual given names to make it easier for non-Zolans to pronounce (presumably the Zolans did have their own language before they encountered human explorers), or nicknames they adopted after humans had difficulty pronouncing their given names. After all, there's a limit to the number of different noises the human(oid) mouth can make... Which may or may not be originally Zolan technology... like the adhesive-firing gun pods carried by their secondhand VF-5000s, they may be simply be a Zolan adaptation or modification of something humanity developed. Obviously the human security forces, who deal not only with criminals but also with terrorists and the like, would probably find using stun beam weapons inadequate in much the same way that some police complain about the inconsistent effectiveness and unreliability of non-lethal technologies like the beanbag gun, rubber bullet, and taser. The Zolan security forces appear to be pretty committed to taking a non-lethal approach to crime, which would probably prompt them to adopt something like that even if it wasn't entirely effective. It is also entirely possible that they used portable sound-energy detection gear to track him down... they did it once before in the Macross 7 "movie".

Eh... there's a world of difference between just being preached at by the Robotech die-hards who come here looking for trouble and actively trying to engage them in discussion. Why bother wasting our time taking them seriously when they can't even form a cogent argument?

Some are just looking for a fight. Others are so wrapped up in self-delusion that they honestly think they can change our minds and instill us with hope for Robotech's future by telling us all how wrong we are to think Macross is the better and more successful show. Isn't that Tom Bateman's anti-HG shindig? I remember he was waxing poetic about how he was going to throw a big private 25th anniversary party, get as much of the actual talent involved as he could, and then leave Steve, Tommy, and the other Harmony Gold mooks to flap in the wind. Hmmm... turns out it isn't the event Tom Bateman was talking about doing last year. I wonder what became of the plans for that? Still, I can't see anyone other than the most die-hard fans wanting to spend $70 for little more than dinner and a panel discussion with the cast. An event like this would've been an ideal platform to make the big announcements about the future of Robotech (assuming, of course, that HG is holding out... unlikely, but still possible) and try to promote new material instead of the endless low-key convention panels that seem dedicated to fluffing Carl and Tommy's egos. It doesn't surprise me that an event like this isn't Harmony Gold's doing though...

The YF-19 No.2 prototype did support internal munitions pallets. Isamu discharges a pair of fairly large missiles from them during his dogfight with Guld over Earth's surface in the Macross Plus OVA. Also, the production model VF-19F/S was shown to support at least one pair of wing-mounted hardpoints for carrying reaction weapons (in episode 44 of Macross 7), so it's possible they could be mounted there as well.

Yeah, I'll second that motion too... Yes, that would leave a rather substantial hole in your theory... Well, the pronunciation used by the commander of Macross-5 in the series itself (ep23 "Sound Force") is definitely "Lux" rather than "Rax". It would make a good deal more sense too, since "Lux" is the Latin word for "Light", and "Rax" is the name of an Austrian mountain range containing Hell Valley and a regional fast food chain based in the American midwest, neither of which is a particularly inspiring thing to name a newly colonized planet after.

Okay... you do realize that unused concept art is non-canon, right? It means nothing. Considering the Protoculture relics scattered on the Vajra homeworld are designs similar to the birdhuman sculptures found during the Mayan island conflict back in 2008, the logical assumption is that biotechnological constructs like the birdhuman are the result of emulating the Vajra. Since the tangible links to Zentradi mecha don't exist outside of non-canon early concept art, it's unwise to infer a link there... Dubious at best... as I said before, the preliminary design art isn't canon and thus forming a theory around it is unwise. I would say that the design similarities between the Stage 2 Vajra and the Regult are only very general things like the knee joint being reverse-jointed. Otherwise, the Stage 2 Vajra has much more in common with the Big Zam than with the Regult. Likewise, the only commonality between the design of the Glaug and the adult (big red) Vajra is that they have a large beam gun mounted up top. Otherwise they couldn't be more different.

Generally speaking, when you see someone making a serious attempt to defend Carl Macek's artistic integrity and the quality of his work it's a pretty good sign that hilarity is about to ensue. Y'know, I had always suspected that Robotech's Minmei was a member of an alien race cursed with the psychic power to turn people into masochists and an irrational compulsion to sing... it's nice to know I'm no longer the sole proponent of that theory. I'd welcome you to MacrossWorld, but since you're already well aware I'm not terribly fond of you for standing by and letting the idiot brigade overrun what may very well have been the last bastion of common sense and impartiality in the Robotech fandom, I won't waste your time with insincere pleasantries. Ah, my bad... of course the inherent hilarity in RobotechX plugging a podcast that is overwhelming critical of exactly the kind of overly-political mess you've allowed the site to become no doubt has your sides splitting with barely-suppressed mirth. I know I'm laughing long and hard over here. Okay, serious points for the realistic outlook... it's a welcome change from the usual course of events we follow when a Robotech fan registers here. They usually come in hard and fast with the denial and insist that all's right and well in the Robotech franchise. Like I said, Robotech's "protoculture" is an all-purpose spackle for filling plot holes of all sizes.

So far, it doesn't look like anyone who actually matters bothered to even acknowledge the existence of Robotech on March 4th, let alone bothered to tell the rest of the world about the show's 25th anniversary. Very few fan sites even took notice and did something special for the occasion, with the sole attractions being a brief announcement from the idiot duo over on RobotechX and the "anniversarycast" on JT's Protoculture Times blog. Harmony Gold didn't even bother to put up anything about the anniversary on Robotech.com's front page. It's certainly possible that they're holding back on some kind of big announcement for one of the bigger conventions, but knowing them there won't be. By all accounts, the only big news this year is Carl Macek's return to Robotech after being fired a decade ago for wasting the company's money on a string of embarrassingly bad projects that all failed long before they could be released. No show of pride in having made their crapshoot franchise last this long. Not even a party for their faithful fans to celebrate the occasion. Just silence and the awkward feeling that they might've finally pushed the fans too far. Give them a little credit, some of them DO know that Harmony Gold has nothing to show for 25 years of ineptitude and failure... they're just too busy being harassed by MEMO and Maverick to crow about it. Presumably yes... Tommy did announce the existence of a sequel project several months before the announcement of the live-action movie project rolled in and put the kibosh on everything. The VAs insist that they were contracted to do three movies, and that Harmony Gold let them know things were on hiatus fairly swiftly. So presumably at one point it was going to be a serious attempt to keep the ball rolling. Wow... issues of grammar and punctuation aside, whoever wrote that needs to ditch the prescription rose-tinted glasses they've been viewing Robotech's history through. What this person is asking for is for us all to give Carl Macek the chance to not royally fart things up like he did on every Robotech sequel he worked on. No, he did not do a good job on Sentinels, he made the Japanese writers throw up their hands and say "fart this poo", then handed care of the script over to a bunch of hamhanded idiots who had only the vaguest clue of how to write sci-fi. No, he did not do a good job on the Robotech story... it's a crummy mess of plot holes and dialogue errors stuck together with copious amounts of all-purpose protoculture-brand plot spackle. For that matter, Tommy did NOT do a good job on Shadow Chronicles either... the animation would've been an embarrassment to any competent studio over a decade ago, and the writing reads like a bad Star Trek-and-Robotech crossover fanfic. So no, you ignorant buffoon whose post I can't be arsed to find, nobody can revive the "old Robotech spirit from back in the day" because it depended entirely on the audience being completely ignorant of what real anime is. There never was any great golden age of Robotech. It was immediately outshined by Transformers as soon as it came out, and never came even remotely close to being popular or iconic. Bringing Carl Macek back into the creative staff ensures one thing and one thing only... that the next Robotech sequel, whenever it comes, will fail before it ever reaches the hands of the fans. So, yes, my fellow Macross fans... let's give Carl Macek a chance... a chance to do what Tommy Yune hasn't yet managed to do: run the Robotech franchise the rest of the way into the ground and put it to rest with what little dignity it still has.

Which isn't the rationale you were espousing before... Okay, you're half-right this time... in truth, Kariba says that his father was a whaler and that he fulfilled his wishes not by created the poaching group, but by expanding it. And posting assumptions as fact is bad practice, as is using them as supporting points while making your argument. You have, thus far, been posting stuff that is simply and demonstrably untrue, mixed with a fair bit of material that can't be supported by any currently-available source. We've been through this once recently already, with someone who posted assumptions as fact, and it didn't end well. Unfounded speculation simply has no place in a debate. If you want to make educated guesses, go right ahead... but don't just guess wildly. Oh yes, and nothing forms or moves in spirals without intervention from the Protoculture... right. Anyway, this wonderful counterargument of yours depends on another unproven assertion... namely, that the Zolans are another species that was manipulated by the Protoculture. It seems likely that they were, but there is no hard evidence of such available in the animation, and no explicit confirmation outside of it. It's the same sort of gray area as the whole "Mardook are the Protoculture" thing, where all the evidence points to it being the case, but the show's creators leave it unanswered. As such, we have no way of confirming whether or not the Protoculture ever encountered the planet Zola and/or the galactic whales. The galaxy is a mind-bogglingly huge place. Also, has there ever been explicit confirmation (in-universe) that the Glaug and/or Regult were based on the Vajra? I'm not aware of any, but then again I haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to the Macross Frontier stuff in Chronicle. Unless there has been, we can't say that's true either... the Vajra have undergone hundreds of thousands of years of guided evolution since the Protoculture encountered them... they could very well have copied some of those ideas from Zentradi mecha they encountered rather than vice-versa.