Seto Kaiba

Easy... the difference between a troll and a person who posts ignorant things is a question of intent. Put simply, what separates people like yui1107 and wanzerfan from the trolls is that there doesn't seem to be any malice behind their actions... just good ol' fashioned ignorance.

Not really... if she were doing it just to annoy the piss out of us, then I'd say she fit the classic definition of a "troll". So far, she seems to think her goals are actually achievable...

'kay... I don't have the energy to do this right now, so let's just pretend I posted another diatribe about how it's wrong to label people as trolls just because they speak/act without all the facts. Or don't. 's all good. I'm just too worn out to care. Given the content of her average post, I would guess that her problem is about 50% language barrier and 50% obfuscating stupidity. She knows she was given incorrect information, but she doesn't seem to want to accept that her decision to take drastic action was asinine.

Bah... and take all the fun out of rifling madly through the LA Times and other newsprint in search of answers? Huh... now, I distinctly remember Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION running off at the mouth (or perhaps "at the fingers") about how Robotech was destined to be Warner's tentpole sci-fi franchise, but I don't seem to recall them having ever mentioned Harry Potter in connection with all this. After all, there are still two movies to go yet in the movie adaptation of Harry Potter... that'll have 'em for at least a few years yet. Now that might be a little over-optimistic... after all, we don't know what they're going to do after they finish up Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye. It'll be getting kind of close to the 30th anniversary by that point, so I'd guess they'll go for another OVA if they can swing it. I wouldn't mind seeing an adaptation of Macross: the First. In a way, it's kind of sad that the realistic outlook on Robotech's future could be pithily summed up with a simple "It's dead, Jim." Back in the day, when rewrites weren't considered raping the source material, Robotech sort of accomplished the goal Carl Macek set down for it... introducing America to Macross. It's a disappointment that it eventually became something that ran counter to the original intentions of its "creator" and is stuck floundering around under the crushing weight of Harmony Gold's ineptitude. If there is new Robotech in the future, it will be the same kind of low-quality fanwank that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was.

Eh... as I don't have a whole lot of use for Michael Bay as a director and I never was that big a Transformers fan, any news about the production of Loud Noises 2 Junkyard Sculpture 2 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen slipped right under my radar. It appears that the official reason Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was rushed out was that, at the time, both the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild were making rumbling about going on strike and the 2007-8 Writers Guild of America strike. Now, as Gubaba already said... that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was rushed out because the producers were afraid it would be competing with the live action Robotech movie is a crackpot theory put forward by a pair of robotech.com moderators (Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION). They used it a lot as "proof" Hollywood was taking Robotech seriously and that the movie was going to be the next big thing. Their boasts about it just kept getting bigger, and after a while they were preaching that the live action Robotech movie was going to be some kind of epic, genre-defying masterpiece fit to rival or surpass Star Wars and Star Trek. As you can see, it's pretty much just wishful thinking on the part of the lunatic fringe.

Ah, thanks for taking the time to translate that for us. It certainly makes it a bit easier to understand just what yui1107 thinks she's going to accomplish. Huh... well, that's pretty much par for the course where the Robotech fanbase's knowledge of the Macross legal disputes is concerned. 's not entirely their fault, considering the great pains that Harmony Gold's staff and their volunteer forum moderators have taken to keep the information out of the hands of Robotech fans. 'kay then... here I was, hoping that I'd somehow misread her intentions and wrongfully concluded that she was completely out to lunch. As much as I would like to say that I find her idealistic desire to combat the plight of the Macross fans outside of Japan, she comes across as having a rather tenuous grip on reality. If she actually does start her own company to intervene in this, the only thing she'll accomplish is wasting a lot of her own time and money trying in vain to browbeat several corporations that have absolutely no reason to listen to what she has to say. It's not like she can even take them to court over it, since she doesn't have any stake in the matter and thus no grounds for a lawsuit. It's odds-on that they've already concluded she's a crazy old lady without a clue, and I don't imagine any attempts on her part to force Big West and Harmony Gold to reach a settlement will do anything to disabuse them of that notion. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see a fan who wants to change things for the better... it's just irritating to see that she's wasting her energy on an unrealistic and unachievable goal. And y'know what... they're better off for it.

Ah... really, the way the mouthier Robotech die-hards badmouth Macross shows they demonstrably know nothing about and have never seen reminds me a lot of the way that some console gamers who found they'd backed the weaker console of that particular hardware generation would invent nonsensical grievances with the competing console(s) just so they'd have something to complain about. I've never been a moderator, but in the last couple years I spent on Robotech.com it wasn't at all unusual for it to take Steve or, really, any moderator days or even weeks to take notice of a problematic thread and take action on it even with multiple people reporting the thread. The majority of the Robotech.com moderators just don't come to the site anymore, and the few that do usually only pay attention to one or two specific forums unless drawn by a crisis.

Eh... by the conventionally accepted definition, to say that a series or movie is "on hiatus" at some point in the production process typically means that work on the production has been (temporarily) suspended. The use of "indefinite hiatus" in that same context is basically a statement that work on a production has stopped with no indication of when or if it will resume. I suspect the reason you're getting pushback over your use of "hiatus" to describe the present situation is the result of something Kevin McKeever said and had to retract back around the time they announced that Maguire Entertainment had obtained the rights to make a live action Robotech movie. The first thing Kevin said was that Robotech: Shadow Rising was on hiatus... he then had to issue a retraction after that stirred up a bit of a furor and claimed that, contrary to what it says in the dictionary, hiatus doesn't mean they stopped working on it... just that they're working on different parts of it now. Tommy Yune later came clean on the subject and admitted that Robotech: Shadow Rising is on hold pending progress on the live action movie. Mind you, there's been no announcement that the live action movie is on hiatus... it would be more accurate to say it's stuck in development hell, i.e. they're working on it but they're not getting anywhere. Okay, yeah... there's your problem right there. If the best exemplar of a levelheaded and knowledgeable fan of both Robotech and Macross is rhade, there's a problem with your sample population. In the interest of fairness, rhade knows quite a bit about Robotech and is probably one of the few halfway-knowledgeable fans left on the wretched hive of scum and villainy we know as the robotech.com message boards. The problem is that he's got ambitions of moderator-dom, so he's prone to toeing the pro-HG party line. He also doesn't know a whole lot about Macross, but at least he has enough sense to consult past posts of people who do and rephrase what they wrote so he can look like he does. I very much doubt that he's actually seen Macross Frontier: the False Diva. It sounds more like he's reiterating complaints gleaned from the movie's review thread on these forums. Neither did I... QFT. Still, I would imagine their attitude is motivated less by a jealousy of Macross for having sequels and more by a genuine feeling of disappointment in Robotech's lack of success... a situation highlighted by the inevitable comparisons to the numerous successes Macross has enjoyed over the years. EDIT: Clarity!

Y'know, the real tragedy here is that what you're saying isn't just possible... it's entirely plausible. Hell, there's a pretty good chance that some enterprising Robotech fan blogger or podcaster has already latched onto that as a way of explaining the profound lack of progress on the project thus far. It wouldn't be anything new... the usual suspects on robotech.com have already been telling people Paramount rushed Transformers 2 for fear of having competition from Robotech. From there, it's not much of a stretch. Nah... from what I hear you're far more likely to get Steve. IIRC, when he's not policing the increasingly quiet BBS over on robotech.com, his job is to manage their licensing agreements and whatnot. I could name names... but that might be hitting below the belt.

Anyone for a chorus of Harry Chapin's "Circle"?

Eh... really, that might be overly optimistic. Let's be honest here... once you do away with all of their awkward announcements and empty promises about allegedly forthcoming Robotech works, there's not a whole lot of substance in their convention panels each year. If you take away their flimflam and deceptively worded platitudes, they might as well call the whole convention tour off because they won't have anything to talk about. I'm half-inclined to suspect the real reason Tommy up and announced this new "side story" project was so they'd have something new to make empty promises and awkward announcements about since they've long since exhausted any announcement potential in what little progress has been made on the live action movie.

True... but it'll also be a minor economic stimulus for the hatmaking industry. None whatsoever... at least, as far as I'm aware. IIRC, the last noteworthy mention of the movie was the news that they'd showed the rejected Kasdan story treatment to Sylvain White. By the way... did we ever manage to confirm that the supposed 9/15 "drop dead" date attached to the Robotech live action movie was for real? It's not like there was ever really a chance of it being made, but it'd be nice to see if it's dead or just going to stagnate for a few years before Warner quietly drops the license. Frankly... calling Robotech an "untested" property is probably being a bit too kind. I would guess that they see the DC Comics properties as far safer investments since they generally don't have a track record anything like the proven track record of failure Robotech has had under Harmony Gold.

Um... if I recall correctly, the official reason they gave for suspending work on Robotech: Shadow Rising was they'd decided to wait until the success of the live action movie raised the franchise's profile in the hopes they would be able to get more favorable terms and more money from their investors, and thus make Robotech: Shadow Rising a higher quality product than Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Hey, wait a minute... what part of that is sad again?

Well, at least you knew what you were getting yourself into. It probably comes as a surprise to nobody that the trade paperback edition of Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles was an amateurish mess. Ha... no surprises there. It was pretty much inevitable that Prelude was going to be a convoluted mess. It was Tommy's hackneyed attempt to stitch two horrible Robotech titles together to provide the illusion of continuity... the old Robotech II: the Sentinels comic books and his new Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie, the latter of which is little more than bad Sentinels fan-fiction anyway. Oh, a little from column A... a little from column B. It's a nightmare all right, but only for those Robotech fans who were holding out hope that the Shadow Chronicles story arc would actually be something of quality and give the Robotech franchise some semblance of credibility. Unfortunately for them, the Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles miniseries appears to be an unambiguously canon installment in the rebooted Robotech continuity as defined by Tommy Yune.

Granted... and I'm firmly in the camp of the those who do. IMO, having continuity between these stories whose settings are so distant from each other does a lot to help the universe feel bigger and more open. It's the same general sort of storytelling style I loved in Five Star Stories. Not really, no... I don't really mind that Kawamori's taking that approach with the main timeline. It works pretty well for him, and gives him the freedom to experiment with new and different things without having to take the Gundam route of starting a half-dozen alternate universes. It just feels like an attempt to wiggle out of the tiny issue of which of his two depictions of Space War 1 is "right" and justify his playing pick-and-choose from both. Oddly... that appears to actually be an animation error in a few scenes. The line art and battroid mode scenes show it as a VF-1J with a minor color palette change. The flight suit she's wearing is actually a color-reversed version of the one she wore in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Hikaru's had blue worked into it too.

One of the few good casting decisions in the dub version was hiring Jason Douglas to voice Klein Sandman... it's a shame both voice casts generally did a pretty lifeless job.

Depends... the more comprehensive the copy protection's defenses, the more expensive it gets on a per-license basis. On the whole, if you don't expect to move hundreds of thousands of units then it's probably going to be a waste of money to use anything more than the most basic on-disc copy protection. Since anime is a niche market here in the states, it's not surprising that a small-ish company like Animeigo wouldn't even bother with the basic copy protection. Either they felt the potentially preventable losses due to piracy wouldn't be significant enough to make using even a basic copy protection suite advantageous, or they're part of that smarter crowd that knows copy protection isn't going to stop a determined pirate and concluded it was a waste of money either way.

Eh... really, this is what's known as a "massive cop-out". It's a great way to handwave aside the little technology and pop culture inconsistencies in Macross (e.g. Michael's big goofy 90's cell phone), but it doesn't really help the fans much... especially with stuff like Macross Chronicle providing a continuity for the universe and examples of a continuity in the show itself. To the casual viewer of any given Macross show, continuity matters little or not at all, so it's all gravy either way. EDIT: Mind you, I still prefer the more straightforward approach that was taken in Macross II... the TV series never happened, DYRL is Space War 1 as it actually happened, etc.

Huh... y'know, I never noticed that before. Good eye!

True... as I said, there is a marked trend towards favoring the designs from DYRL in subsequent Macross shows, particularly where the Zentradi are concerned. The really fun twist that completely screws the whole thing up is that the chronology of the universe itself seems to go the other way... favoring the version of events shown in Super Dimension Fortress Macross over those in DYRL. It's probably best to try the "A Wizard did it!" approach and blame everything on the Protoculture. After all, they're not around to refute it. No... I'm talkin' about the entirety of the Macross 7 series, not just the Macross 7 PLUS "Milia the President" omake. In the course of the series, Milia flies her old VF-1J on several occasions... and the animation clearly shows it has the "Block 5" style hands from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross VF-1 design. The flightsuit Milia wore in the Macross 7 TV series is the same model she used in the original Macross TV series, only with the colors reversed and without the "buckle" on the waist. You can see both quite clearly in ep13-14. EDIT: Images courtesy of the MacrossWorld main page art section and Sketchley's Macross Gateway.

's not really a prerequisite for watching Gravion Zwei, IMO. It stands on its own pretty well... at least as sequels go. Eh... that was pretty much my reaction too. 'cept I had the patience to sit through the original Gravion series before tackling the sequel. I'm not one for the whole super robot genre, so I found Gravion a bit on the tedious side. The only bits I really enjoyed were those handful of unintentionally hilarious displays of "engrish" in scenes intended to be serious. Likewise... I looked into Gravion and Gravion Zwei because of the trailers I saw on a handful of ADV DVDs, and it did not thrill me. Y'know... I could make that sacrifice. Godannar didn't really have a lot going for it except for the completely over-the-top levels of fanservice.

Eh... that's a bit of an oversimplification. In practice, the creators of Macross don't seem to follow any clearly defined rationale when it comes to the use of designs from the original Macross series and the DYRL? movie. True, there seems to be a pretty clear trend in the use of the DYRL Zentradi (and "Meltrandi") designs in subsequent Macross shows, but the movie designs haven't completely supplanted the TV series ones. For example, during the filming of the in-series docu-drama "The Lynn Minmay Story", the actors playing Britai and Kamjin are dressed as movie Britai and TV series Kamjin respectively. Likewise, the flightsuit Milia uses whenever she sorties in Macross 7 is a holdover from the TV series as well. IIRC her VF-1J also had the "Block 5" hands from the TV series. Also, in Macross Frontier we see the 33rd Marines use a mixture of TV series and DYRL body armor. Etc. etc.

Eh... really? Just from what I read on yui1107's blog and website, the impression I got was that this was a bog standard case of a Robotech fan going off half-cocked after getting a mistaken or incomplete picture of the whole legal fracas between Big West and Tatsunoko over the original Macross series. IIRC, she recently mentioned she was aware that she'd gotten some bad information from someone, but wouldn't say who or where...

Really... I disagree, though your response was infinitely more mature than Gubaba's, and I do appreciate that. The problem here is, I think, in the approach they take when they attempt to correct Wanzerfan after he posts something incorrect. So far, the general response has basically been variations on "You're an idiot, you have no clue what you're talking about, and you need to shut up and stop posting". That's not going to do anything but temporarily discourage Wanzerfan from posting in that thread, and make him less likely to accept corrections or help from that person in the future. Instead, it would be a lot more helpful, productive, and mature to point out to him that he's made an error, offer a correction, and then perhaps point him in the direction of resources that he can use to refresh his knowledge and/or acquire fresh perspective on the topic... this reducing the chances that he'll make a similar error in the future. That approach has worked pretty damn well for me in the past. It's probably why people on Robotech.com still refer fans with tough questions to me despite my having received a ban nearly a year ago... they know that I'll politely and thoroughly answer those tough questions and clear up any misunderstandings they might have without calling them names or accusing them of being a troll for having gotten something wrong. If, as we profess, we really do want to mend fences with the Robotech crowd and discourage the sort of hostility that we know all too well, it's counterproductive to treat people the way Wanzerfan is being treated here. Y'know what... I'd rather be hated for being the guy who said it wasn't okay to attack someone for being a bit ignorant than be part of the crowd and join in condemning them as a troll. This is really a matter of simple logic. If you help them, they will learn. If you're a jerk to them, all they'll learn is that you're a jerk. Y'know... I haven't actually checked. I'll log into my Hulu acct. and find out later. Due to simple curiosity, I actually have both the remastered Animeigo version and the ADV Films dub version on DVD. I consider the Animeigo version superior in most (if not all) regards, though the more commonly available ADV dub version isn't bad... at least not while you're watching it subbed. Yeah... that's as accurate and succinct a summary as I've ever seen. The old novels and comics aren't as big a subject of controversy as they were back before '01, but they're still looked down on... and the tragedy is, as you've said, that doing so doesn't leave them with a lot to talk about these days. Ever since Tommy and Kevin came out and said that none of the old stuff is valid Robotech anymore, the fanbase's attitude towards the old stuff is generally dismissive. I get the feeling the reason they fall back on "witch hunts" as often as they do is that it helps alleviate the boredom by finding a target to vent the fanbase's frustration on.

Wow... you really are takin' a leaf out of Bendo's book, aren't you? If you don't like what a person is saying, you leap to attack the person directly and act as though anything you say or do is above reproach. I guess in all the time you've spent on RobotechX getting chummy with MEMO, his bad habits have started to rub off on you. This makes the content of the private message you sent me all the more ironic, since I seem to be the only one here who's willing to say that it's not OK to attack someone because they say things you don't agree with. If you really need it spelled out for you this bluntly, fine. The point I am laboriously tilting at, and which you are arrogantly trying to ignore, is that you and taksraven are attacking another member for no reason other than that he's ignorant. You've already come out and personally said that you don't care what his thoughts are on anything because you've decided his opinions must be asinine. You've consistently harassed him, belittled him, and labeled him a "troll" because he makes more mistakes than the average member. That isn't just thoroughly inconsistent with what we profess to do here as far as trying to stay out of the cycle of mutual hostility between Robotech and Macross fans... it's a violation of the MacrossWorld Rules & Guidelines section 1.4, something that azrael seems to have conveniently forgotten, as he's indulged in flaming Wanzerfan himself. Furthermore, as I've already explained on more than one occasion, I find it frankly unfair of you to insist that we give MEMO a chance to not act like a bellend when you insisted that you would not give such a chance to Pizza the Hutt, who, unlike MEMO, actually apologized for his asinine behavior and made an effort to turn over a new leaf. You treated the kid with nothing but suspicion and hostility, and that makes us and MacrossWorld look like exactly the sort of villains the Robotech lunatic fringe wants us to be. Do you understand now? Has it ever occurred to you that what you're doing here is precisely the same thing that the militant members of the Robotech lunatic fringe do whenever they don't like what someone has to say? You won't hear me deny that Wanzerfan is ignorant as the day is long, but he's no troll. He's just an opinionated loudmouth who could do with a hand in getting his facts straight. Instead of acting like Pizza the Hutt used to when MEMO was egging him on, why don't you try talking to him and helping him get his facts straight? Did you notice that when I made an effort to talk to him and get to the bottom of his misunderstanding, he had no problems explaining and we quickly corrected and remedied the problem. By attacking him, all you accomplish is putting him on the defensive and making him less inclined to accept corrections from you in the future. Seriously, between you and Gubaba I feel like I've been cast in the role of a disappointed parent scolding two belligerent children for bullying other kids on the playground. You do realize you can just change the audio selector to "Japanese" on the ADV DVDs and watch it with subs instead, right? The AnimEigo edition's gonna be hard to find because it's been out of print for a while now. Y'know... as I said above, that's not really going to solve the issue. It's just going to make us look like exactly the sort of judgmental, exclusionary apefaces the Robotech die-hards spend so much time telling people we are. Of course, since you've already given carte blanche to people flaming and flame-baiting Wanzerfan in a previous post, I wouldn't expect you to understand that.