Seto Kaiba

Like I said... "taking design tips from Rob Liefeld". 's pretty much the letter of things with every Robotech RPG. I know a fair few of the guys from Palladium, and they aren't bad people... they just care more about game balance than they do accurately representing the capabilities of the mecha or making things feasible... so you end up with things like the gunpods in their Macross II game, where guns only a few meters long have invisible 10,000 or 20,000 round magazines and a half dozen spares stored in some magical invisible compartment on the airframe. While nobody will deny Tommy is an uncreative hack, it might be more accurate to call the VM-9 Silverback a lack of statistics... he didn't bother coming up with anything for it himself, and it's glossed over in the official artbooks. Well in all fairness, I don't think there's much difference in effect between the two... after all, if they're anything like the silly-sounding armaments on the Super Cyclone, they were probably supplied by Fisher-Price. Not just that, but 2,000 100mm rounds are going to take up a drum every bit as big as the mecha itself... Ah, a real-world example of More Dakka in action!

I think I just threw up a little bit...

No idea... one would imagine the answer would be "no" in practical terms, but this is science fiction we're talking about after all. It does appear that the creative team at Harmony Gold might've been taking design tips from Rob Liefeld, since the gun itself has two barrels for some utterly arbitrary reason, no discernible ammunition storage or feed system, and is so huge it becomes impossible to believe that it could be mounted on a bike without tipping it over. Of course, they also seem to have forgotten little things like Newtonian physics, since the 70kJ railgun on the Super Cyclone has no recoil to speak of.

Um... actually, the Spartas's operator is exposed in two of the tank's three transformation modes. In the normal tank mode ("Sniping Clapper"), the operator is exposed from the chest up on all sides, and in "walking cannon" mode, the operator is exposed from the chest up on all sides, and has only the bicycle-grip-sized control yoke between him and the enemy at the front of the vehicle. Only in soldier ("Battle sniper") mode is the operator actually protected from such hazards as shrapnel and snipers. On balance, the VM-9L Silverback isn't any less idiotic in terms of operator safety, it just has one less mode to muck about in. Fortunately, Tommy half-assed it like he did with the one appearance of the VF-X-4, and didn't even bother trying to depict it transforming. Um... well... no. According to the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles RPG, which is the ONLY source of information on the buggering thing that I'm aware of, that's a twin-linked double-barreled railgun of the same general type as the one on the "Super Cyclone".

For great justice... also, it's about damn time. Um... haven't they already covered that? It must be either Graham's boat-turned-spaceship or the poacher support ships from Macross Dynamite 7. *yawn* Why did THIS get the cover and not the Metal Siren? Okay, so we ARE getting a B-sheet for her... must be her in her civvies. So, an unlikeable (literal) harpy who shrills the same three lines over and over again, and a canon Mary Sue who fills the requirements of a Black Hole Sue, Godmode Sue, and Jerkass Sue... delightful. Haven't these two already been covered to death (Basara Dies was a HUGE letdown... the pricks) and back again? And now for another exciting episode of... Tales! Of! Interest! Seriously, do want. I sense a theme here... is it "witty old men with mustaches"? lol, c'mon, when they half-ass it it's hard not to be a little miffed... especially when they devote a multiple issues worth of material just to Basara and Mylene. At least I have the good grace to acknowledge that my standards might be set are definitely set unreasonably high... Honestly, if they give me a thrust rating for the Metal Siren's engines and confirm its armaments, I'll consider it a victory. EDIT: Fairness...

Nah, what's REALLY messed up is that the enormous twin-linked railgun on its back is supposed to be a pair of the same model as the one carried by the "Super Cyclone", but is completely out of scale. We'll never know exactly what the VM-9L Silverback was meant for, since the damnable thing never actually sees combat in its sole appearance in the background of the 4th issue of Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Okay, so they've been taking pointers from the mechanical designers of Southern Cross... leaving the pilot exposed to everything from shrapnel to small arms fire.

Really, so was I... and let me tell you, if you're expecting epic levels of suck, you won't be disappointed. The "rough draft" designs are particularly lulzy... with everyone looking like a poorly-proportioned gorilla in spandex. The early draft of Scott Bernard has him with arms so thick that if he put them together they'd be thicker than his torso, and Vince Grant's "rough draft" version looks like The Incredible Hulk with different facial features and intact clothes. So... Voltron of the poo Universe?

Yep... the Proto Cola machine gets preliminary and final design art, while the "Super Shadow Fighter" gets a single image shrunk down so far that the battloid mode art is the size of a postage stamp, and the fighter mode art is roughly the size of a baseball card.

Impossible! If a reserved chap with a high tolerance for Robotech bullshit like me can't even get through the first 20 minutes without trying to throw something or yank the DVD out and snap it in half, there's no way any human being could marathon it over and over again without it ending in a murder-suicide. Y'know... in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, the "Protocola" vending machine gets better coverage in terms of actual production art than the so-called "original mecha" do.

Um... well, I guess I get to be the one to field this question since nobody else has a copy of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and Harmony Gold is holding off on updating the Infopedia to persuade people to buy the damned thing... According to the ridiculously brief article on the Super Shadow Fighter and Synchro Beta, which occupies around half of a two-page spread on pages 84 and 85 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, the so-called "Super Shadow Fighter" is pretty much exactly what the name implies... a VF/A-6X Shadow Fighter equipped with a Macross-style set of super parts. Almost no hard data on the packs is available, but the packs contain boosters, verniers, and missiles, and consists of a pair of dorsal packs mounted on the top of the wing root that look like slimmed-down versions of the VF-1's super parts, and packs on the forearm and outside of the lower leg. The vernier arrangement on the packs looks like it was drawn up by someone who had no clue what he was doing, as several verniers on the dorsal wing-root packs point directly inwards towards the fighter's built-in dorsal missile launchers... an accident waiting to happen. The so-called "Synchro Beta" was developed as a companion craft for the Super Shadow Fighter, and is officially the "Super Shadow Beta Fighter". Its only noticeable difference from a normal Beta/TREAD is that it has an atrocious black and purple paintjob and a small dorsal booster in the little "valley" between the upper two engines, which contains an internal missile launcher in the front that's so large it has to occupy at least 90% of the booster's internal space (leaving it little more than a nozzle), to which the synchro cannon attaches. Under normal circumstances, that synchro cannon points forward over the top of the shadow fighter from the depression between the Beta's two top engines. Oh, and I found where that stupid "VF/A-6ZX" designation for Maia's fighter came from... pg83 of AoTSC. They mention that the "squad leader" Shadow fighters have a Z-type head.

But...but...you didn't even MENTION Macross II... Gubaba raises an excellent point...

It's just another tragic example of how the Harmony Gold staffers in charge of Robotech have come to view the fans not as people to be listened to, but as a herd of gullible idiots who'll buy anything provided the word "Robotech" is on the box. Sadly, like their belief that nobody wants Masters Saga merchandise, they have good cause to think this way. The die-hard fans are so desperate for something new to validate their blind faith in Harmony Gold that they don't care if what they're buying has nothing to do with Robotech as long as the Robotech logo's on the box. Kind of surprised fans didn't cancel their preorders of the Maia MPC v2 when Harmony Gold went back on its word to have the unit manufactured in a different factory. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out where "VF/A-6ZX" came from, since it's not used in any of the promotional materials, artbooks, or anything else.

Or, knowing Harmony Gold, it could be a test market scenario where the product will bomb and Harmony Gold will quietly shift the blame elsewhere to keep the fans from realizing they aren't a bunch of incompetent bellends.

Um... those aren't beam cannons on the Defender EX's "arms", they're double-barreled railguns. In fact, they appear to be similar in size and design to the anti-ship railgun on the VF-2SS Valkyrie II's Super Armed Pack. That being the case, and the animation backing up their impressive range and firepower, it's likely that the Defender EX could serve double duty as an anti-aircraft platform and a mobile light anti-ship turret. The mechanical designers working on Macross II seem to have had a minor love affair with railguns. Just about every VF gunpod is a compact railgun, the Defender EX mounts four large railguns, and the Tomahawk II carries a pair of smaller railguns underneath its "forearm" beam cannons. I also know of a few sources that label the Giant Monster's (erroneously dubbed "Monster II" by Macross Chronicle) six main cannons as heavy anti-ship railguns as well. Well, wheeled ground mecha aren't exactly unique, so Kawamori and co. might've been inspired to use wheeled feet on the Cheyenne by another, more recent, show like Blue Gender... but they are the first instance of destroids using wheels to get around faster in Macross.

Well, the increased focus on wishful thinking and positive speculation about titles that will probably never see the light of day really is a function of Harmony Gold's ineptitude. It took their "creative team" so long to produce a continuation of the story, and that continuation was so short and insubstantial, that they've simply run out of things to talk about except wondering out loud about how great the next one will be... needlessly raising their own expectations to levels Harmony Gold will never be able to meet. Now, they're just dangling various hot topics over people's heads in hopes that the drama and ceaseless speculation will keep them excited enough to prevent their rose-tinted glasses from slipping off. So, in summation... Maverick_LSC came out of whatever hidey-hole he's been squirreled away in and said something profoundly ignorant and condescending intended to belittle everyone who isn't him... which is pretty much par for the course where that idiot's concerned. Just ignore it and it'll go away, like a door-to-door salesman or an annoying itch. Believe me, I wholeheartedly understand your outrage at the way Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have been using people and giving the decent folks in the Robotech fandom a bad name simply by association. Thing is, we all know that Maverick and MEMO are habitual liars so deeply entrenched in delusions of their own superiority and Robotech's popularity that nothing they say can or should be taken seriously. We already know they're stupid, arrogant bellends, so the only person you're really benefitting by ranting about it is them... because then they get the satisfaction of knowing their juvenile antics and "holier than thou" attitude towards the fans got a rise out of someone. So my advice to you is the time-honored adage "Don't feed the troll".

Actually, what I meant was that the inclusion of Southern Cross in a larger story went a long way towards improving the show's weak story and hurried ending. Unless I seriously missed something, the Zor Lords never really give a decent explanation of why the bioenergy of the protozor was important to them or what all this business about using it to become immortal was about. Having it tied in to the overarching story of Robotech did a lot to make the ending less of a mess (even if it didn't quite fit), and made several of the more obnoxious characters (Jeanne, Bowie, etc.) a little more appealing by tying their backstories to characters who aren't quite so easy to hate (Max and Miriya, and Claudia respectively). It is true that without Robotech, nobody would remember Southern Cross... and I can't really decide if that's a bad thing or not.

Well, in the interest of fairness I suppose my detail-oriented nature predisposes me to be rather more unkind towards the Southern Cross series and its mecha than the average viewer. Even before I located a copy of the unedited Southern Cross, I remember finding the frequent inconsistencies in mecha scale and armament off-putting, with many cases of weapons spontaneously changing nature or appearing and disappearing seemingly at will. Of course, it didn't help that the bioroid armor seemed to change durability magically (and well-beyond the realm of believability) as the story required... with at least one occasion of a bioroid being taken down at range by small arms fire. I won't even get into what I thought of the hovertank's open cockpit... we'll be here all week while I froth at the mouth. Anyhoo... most Robotech fans seem to find the whole Masters Saga story, cast, and all the related baggage just about intolerable, and tend not to buy the related merchandise. I've seen a couple of appeals and petitions for a MPC Spartas, but they never get more than a handful of signatures, and it's usually the same signatures on every petition.

After something like six years on Robotech.com, I can't honestly say that it surprises me in the least. It's exactly what the higher-ups at Harmony Gold want... to keep the fans in an endless loop of positive speculation so they won't give up hope that the live-action movie and/or Shadow Rising will turn things around for Robotech and haul the franchise's fat out of the fire. Granted... but who apart from Robotech fans really gives a toss about Southern Cross anymore? Being used as part of Robotech was the biggest break Southern Cross ever got, and even then it's solemnly detested. If you're looking for people who are at least nominal fans of Southern Cross, you're going to find the vast majority in the Robotech fandom. (Remember, the bit about the "undeserved bad rap" was for the Army of the Southern Cross, not the series Southern Cross, just demonstrating why Robotech fans have no interest in hovertanks, Logans, and AGACs either) Well, whether it's better than what Macek turned it into is a matter of opinion... and as insane as this will sound coming from me, I honestly think being tied into a bigger story did Southern Cross a world of good. The remastered ADV release that I have for Southern Cross is nothing short of atrocious.

IMO, the boards on Robotech.com were pretty dead even before Maverick and MEMO started indiscriminately revoking the posting privileges of anyone who criticized Harmony Gold and their handling of Robotech or dared to point out the facts of the Macross rights situation. For years, the only active part of the site was the off-topic section (The Lounge, before Steve split it into The Lounge and Small Talk because there was simply nothing new to discuss. Eh... from what I've gathered it's ALWAYS been that way with Robotech.

Ah, you've noticed that too... If you stick to challenging the content of his bullshit rhetoric, it's almost impossible to shut up long enough to tell him to stop preaching his views on Robotech and its superiority at you like they were gospel truth. Once you start in with probing questions about his reasons for thinking the things he does, the sources for the claims he makes, or just a good old fashioned serious question about Robotech itself, he clams right up. I dunno about that... he IS awfully fixated on penises, particularly where JT is concerned. To be fair, I've never heard anyone accuse Maverick_LSC of doing what he does out of a misguided belief that Harmony Gold will one day offer him a job like MEMO does. His behavior suggests that he acts like a twat because he desperately wants to be respected and admired by his fellow fans, and thus has gone to great pains to construct the illusion that he's a film industry expert who regularly gets inside information about the goings-on at Harmony Gold. Maverick may have been a mod on Robotech.com for ages, but he's a fairly recent addition to the moderator staff over on RobotechX.com. He was only added after MEMO noticed that Lobizon and SIGHUP wouldn't be relied upon to help him scourge the Shadow Chronicles-criticizing heretics from his site. He seems like a perfect fit for the tone of that site, particularly now that he and MEMO are both targeting JT for a ban (confirmed by RTX co-admin SIGHUP), and he had to re-ban Pizza the Hutt after cutting a deal with SIGHUP by agreeing to unban HappyPenguins if PTH was unbanned too. In truth, it actually went further than that... the condition for allowing me back on the site was that SIGHUP would have to agree to unban Doug Bendo as well, so I took one for the team and kept Douggie-boy and his "over 900 lessoners" in ban-land. Honestly, I doubt that's true... Remember, the original Southern Cross series was a failure even before it was licensed by Harmony Gold and used to make Robotech. The show's ratings were so poor that the show was canceled and the writers had to hastily wrap up the story as best they could in the space they had left. I've also heard that the show's merchandise didn't sell worth a damn either. What little Japanese merchandise I've seen for it has all borne the Big West logo, so I don't think there was (or is) any confusion about merchandising, and the use of Southern Cross characters pretty much unaltered in the failed Robotech II: the Sentinels project (and updated versions in Shadow Chronicles) leads me to suspect the intellectual property rights to Southern Cross are firmly Tatsunoko's. When asked about the profound lack of merchandise for Robotech's Masters Saga, Harmony Gold has always given the same answer... they don't think it will sell. As much as it will offend all six Southern Cross fans, Harmony Gold really does have sound reasons for believing that. In pretty much every poll about fan preferences, the Masters Saga is usually in dead last, popularity wise: In the last poll, "Do you feel that the Army of the Southern Cross has been given an unfairly bad rap?", only 19.8% of the 4463 respondents thought the bad reputation was undeserved. 75% said that the ASC's bad reputation was richly deserved, not bad enough to do their failure justice, or that they just plain didn't give a poo about anything Southern Cross-related. Likewise, on the occasions that Supreme Commander Leonard is a poll topic, the overwhelming majority usually comes out to blast his ass for being an incompetent toad (59.1% of the last one responding that Leonard was a moron, and in the one before that, 57.6% said he was an incompetent buffoon). In merchandise polls, at least 30% of respondents come out to say they're patently uninterested in whatever the Masters Saga merchandise du jour happens to be, and only about 3-4% of the votes go to Masters Saga mecha in mecha popularity polls, with Macross Saga mecha usually holding at least 55% of the overall votes, and frequently much more. That, combined with the reports that the Masters Saga merchandise in the Robotech.com store just doesn't sell nearly as well merchandise for any of the other sagas, builds a pretty strong support case for Harmony Gold's claim that they don't think Masters Saga merchandise will sell if they release it in America.

Ridiculous indeed... but I still thought it was a hilarious cop-out on his part, since he apparently couldn't come up with any believable rationale for banning me. I honestly find it funny as hell that even now, after they've banned me from both of their little playgrounds for HERESY!, they still see what I have to say about Harmony Gold and the Robotech franchise as such a threat to their blissful ignorance that they perpetuate this myth that I'm some kind of hybrid of Ming the Merciless and Emperor Palpatine, leading the Macross Illuminati in a sinister conspiracy to destroy Robotech from within... Chill dude... you're getting way too wound up about it. Really, I like to think of the time spent observing Maverick and MEMO's idiot antics as being like an occasional outing to a zoo's primate house. It's vaguely interesting, occasionally amusing (particularly when the inhabitants of the exhibit get to flinging crap at each other and the plexiglass partition), and you might even learn something, but ultimately it leaves you wondering at the alien motivations of those strange creatures you spent the afternoon watching, and then writing the whole thing off as inconsequential before heading out to dinner.

Eh... regardless of whether or not you find them aesthetically pleasing, it would be remiss of us not to cover them as thoroughly as humanly possible... a process that, where Macross II is concerned, usually involves Mr March doing his best to glean the necessarily details from my frothy-mouthed rantings on the various obscure sources I've spent the last few years tracking down. In any event, I'm currently muddling through the Mardook forces Zentradi-use mecha sheet in Chronicle, with the destroid sheet next in the queue... (followed, in the near future, by the GERWALKroid/VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie sheet).

Either that or, as was mentioned earlier, they're a homage to the head-mounted 60mm vulcan guns on the RX-78-2 and RGM-79 in Mobile Suit Gundam.

I'm not a fanatical fan (or even a fan), but I just want Robotech to come up with its own designs and narrative instead of pulling, promoting, and fan-wanking from a bunch of near-30 year old cartoons. Oh yes... I don't deny that there are a fair few people who aren't Robotech fans who'd like nothing better than for the creative team at Harmony Gold to come up with their own original story and designs instead of endlessly sponging off the work of animators from nearly thirty years ago... but only the most fanatical Robotech fans actually think that such a thing will ever actually happen, and that the end result will actually be watchable.

Actually, wasn't the character's name originally "Mark Harris" before they changed the movie's setting from during the Macross Saga to somewhere in the middle of the Masters Saga? I know they originally wanted B.D.'s movie equivalent (named B.D. Andrews in the final script) to be a younger version of the character that eventually became T.R. Edwards, world's most obvious "secret villain" and serial backstabbing enthusiast. On balance, I think we can sum up the whole of Robotech as a long, tedious voyage through the painfully unoriginal creative debris left behind by Harmony Gold's practice of slapping together material licensed, borrowed, or stolen from people who actually have talent into something which only vaguely resembles a coherent narrative, then marketing it as their latest original creation. As one of the odder pieces of cinematic history, Robotech can sustain some degree of interest, and researching the licensing arrangements that allowed it to exist is a great way to learn about some of the more bizarre corners of copyright law, but only the most fanatical die-hard Robotech fans are holding out hope that one day we'll see a Robotech show that sells on its own merits rather than those of the licensed material used in its creation.