Seto Kaiba

It must be in one of the adverts, or a browser-sensitive ActiveX plugin... I'm using Firefox and AdBlock Plus and I'm not running into any malware. If I did, it oughta light my system's overprotective security setup up like a christmas tree. I'm not talking about the novels, I'm talking about the official continuity of the animated series and canon comics, wherein Dana sort of degenerates into Zor's sidekick and then ends up traumatized after he dies, so much so that seeing another clone of Zor (Rem, from Sentinels) completely freaks her out in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Holy crap, it intruded into the real world too... it started back in 1985. Speaking of our dear friend Mr. Capslock, it looks like he finally got sick of dougbendo causing all kinds of fights over on RobotechX, but he unwisely opted to use it as an excuse to ban a few "undesirables" who regularly call him out on his lies and crazy theories as well. He's gonna find RobotechX just became a MUCH quieter and less active place.

Yeah, there's a LOT of misinformation out there about the Macross II continuity, due in part to the fact that the only widely-available English-language publication covering the OVA is Palladium's wildly inaccurate Macross II RPG, goofs made by fans trying to correct Palladium's work without access to official source material, and errors made over the years like Macross Ace's incorrect timeline placing Macross II in 2090 in the main continuity, which is wrong on a number of levels. Some time ago, I got bored and wrote out this mildly detailed continuity, though some elements of it need to be changed in light of new information... particularly the period when the Macross was partially refitted by the U.N. Spacy. I can't post the changes there anymore because I was banned for pointing out the facts of the Macross licensing situation when I saw one of the mods there spreading misinformation about it: http://www.robotech.com/community/forum/re...&forumid=24 That'd be me... and I wrote that timeline out of boredom using the sources at my disposal to give people a general idea of what the Macross continuity looked like prior to Kawamori booting Macross II over to parallel world status and inserting Macross Plus in its place. Flattery will get you everywhere. However, I still don't get why every member of the Robotech lunatic fringe singles ME out as the "ringleader" whenever anyone decides to argue with them. Sometimes I'm not even involved and people attribute it to me.

Would you believe me if I told you that the lengthy explanation of the AU's VF design progression from my last post was actually the short version of that explanation? I originally gave a much more lengthy answer and had to perform a heavy-handed edit to get it down to a length that wouldn't automatically inspire a "tl;dr" in 90% of readers. I've gleaned a lot of new and interesting information from my digging around in old, forgotten publications, all of which will hopefully be made available for public consumption in the near future. Yeah, that's pretty much my feelings on the OVA as well. To me, Macross II: Lovers Again is the last Macross show that built on all of the themes and tone that made Macross a truly great series. Macross Frontier kind of met me halfway on the themes and tone aspect, so I'm rather fond of that show too. Yes and no... I have a site, but it's been down for renovation for a while now. What started as a minor modernization effort on a seriously amateurish design I did back when I was a website design n00b ended up as a major ground-up redesign after a massive influx of new information made it obvious that we were going to have to rewrite every single article and add at least a dozen more. It's slower going than I'm used to, since I lost a few people to all the economic woes and the various military antics in the middle east, but we're soldiering on regardless. (If you know anyone who's really good with CSS and wants to help, do feel free to let me know)

This is one of those things about Robotech that I just don't understand. The more vocal Robotech fans have always had a marked tendency to gush about how deep and sophisticated the Robotech story is and how it deals with profound real-world themes like the oil crisis, the empowerment of women, and the importance of tolerance and understanding... but it's all a crock of poo. No matter what "generation" you're watching, the story is always the just a variation on the following program: 10 "Evil" aliens come to Earth in search of something important and invariably protoculture-related. 20 Humanity responds to the alien presence by shooting first and asking questions later. 30 The conflict degenerates into a series of minor skirmishes largely won by the Earth forces largely because the aliens can't be arsed to mobile all their forces to address such a minor threat. 40 One or more "evil" aliens abandon their people and their way of life to join the human "good guys". 50 The "evil" aliens finally run out of patience with their failure to defeat the barely sapient protagonist(s) and decide to do the galaxy a favor by committing all of their forces to wiping them out. 60 Due to the intervention of the token "good" alien(s), humanity narrowly triumphs over and wipes out the "evil" aliens after they devastate Earth and annihilate out most of humanity. 70 GOTO 10 Not only does this pattern hold true for the three existing "sagas" of Robotech, the leaked draft of the "Shadow Saga" movies also fits this established pattern perfectly... with Haydonite commander Veidt getting exiled for failing in Shadow Chronicles and joining the humans to destroy the other Haydonites. The only change is that for the last bit you have to substitute "Tirol" for "Earth". As you can see, the story itself has all the subtlety of a good swift kick in the balls, and it's a safe bet that any or all of the alleged profound messages and sophisticated moral themes exist only in the minds of the viewers who read things into the story that the "writers" never intended. Robotech was, after all, "created" to be a shallow, mildly diverting TV show intended to sell transforming robot toys to young children. It was never intended to be the sophisticated sci-fi epic its few fans claim it to be. That's all post-facto BS from Carl Macek and company. Virtually all of the claims the fans make about the show having profound themes are completely absurd that it's practically impossible to take them or the fans seriously. It couldn't be more obvious that the alleged parallels to the oil crisis are fans seeing a coincidence and wrongly assuming it was intentional. The "empowerment of women" aspect runs aground rather early after the majority of the female characters are forced by various circumstances to settle down, quit their careers, leave the fighting to the men, and start popping out babies. By the end of the Masters Saga, which is pointed to as the best example of female empowerment in Robotech, Dana, Maia, and Nova have all given up any pretense of being strong, independent women in favor of having steady boyfriends. Not only does "Zor Prime" completely usurp the position of main character from his girlfriend Dana, he gives his life to win a squabble with an old man over a jar of flowers, not just breaking her heart but leaving her a shattered, emotionally fragile wreck for her entire adult life. This business about Robotech teaching tolerance is just as absurd as the rest... humanity never makes an honest attempt to understand the aliens they're constantly picking fights with, they shoot first and ask questions later, then get their asses kicked for starting fights above their weight class. After the war is over and the human forces have exterminated all the "evil" aliens, the few alien survivors are forced (at gunpoint no less) to integrate into human society, after which they promptly die out or, if they're lucky, become expendable soldiers for the war against the next "alien menace". Even the "friendly" aliens that humanity supposedly liberates from the tyranny of the Invid Regent in Sentinels and Prelude ultimately find themselves trading one despot for another when their liberators immediately enlist them in sustaining their massive and ongoing war effort. When you actually sit down and think about it, Robotech's story is actually kind of disturbing... with only one major exception, the "evil" aliens had no intention of starting a fight and were just trying to reclaim something that had been stolen from them by someone else. Ultimately, they end up being slaughtered by a bunch of human bellends who can't be arsed to ask why the aliens are even there, and the survivors are forcibly integrated into human society where they can look forward to either dying out peaceably between wars or being forced into servitude in the human war machine in order to further humanity's manifest destiny as the undisputed rulers of the cosmos. Actually, I think I might be on to something here...

Gubaba raises an excellent point, no amount of justification can make it suck less as a plot device. If I remember correctly, in the TV series it was the original Zor who encountered the Flowers of Life and sorted out how to harness protoculture on the Invid homeworld, then the Masters defoliated the Invid homeworld to feed their war machine, and the Invid attacked them for it, then Zor, who saw what went down, sent the last protoculture matrix thingy (which is used to make more protoculture fuel) to his ship and sent it on a blind jump through hyperspace where it then crashed on Earth and started the whole shenanigans of the TV series.

No, that's actually one of several fairly common misconceptions about Macross II and the whole parallel world continuity caused by a shortage of decent coverage by American publications and misinformation spread in the RPG books by Palladium. The now-alternate continuity leading up to Macross II: Lovers Again does place a bit more emphasis on the crisis of resources caused by the destruction of Earth's surface and the near-annihilation of humanity, so understandably Earth's military doesn't bounce back quite as quickly. As such, they seem to follow a somewhat different design methodology in their VFs than the main timeline does. Rather than develop and introduce a whole new fighter every ten years or so like they do in the main continuity, the existing fighters receive periodic evolutionary upgrades to enhance their performance and extend their useful service lives, rather like what's done with many modern, real-world aircraft. In truth, there are five known models of VF separating the service lives of the original VF-1 Valkyrie and the VF-2SS Valkyrie II. The first new fighter introduced was the VF-4 Siren, a number of which were assigned to the Megaroad-01 prior to its departure in 2014. After that came the VF-1R Valkyrie Kai, an all-systems evolutionary upgrade of the VF-1 Valkyrie developed somewhere between 2014 and 2030, which was the U.N. Spacy's main space VF by 2036 and first appeared in Macross 2036. After that came an evolutionary upgrade to the VF-4 Siren, the VF-4S, which was first seen in 2037 (Macross: Eternal Love Song) and came in three flavors, the basic VF-4S, the super pack-equipped VF-4SP, and the funnels-equipped VF-4ST. After that came the capture of a second factory satellite, and a major jump for the U.N. Spacy's tech level... which led to the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie, originally as a technology demonstrator and later a military-use VF in the 2060s. Then you have the original all-regime VF-2 Valkyrie II introduced in 2072, and nine years later in 2081, a space-based evolutionary upgrade of the S-variant... the VF-2SS Valkyrie II used in Macross II, was introduced. Exactly why the numbering system is like that, I can't tell you. What I can tell you is that the VF-2SS Valkyrie II is only 11 years old when the Macross II OVA starts in 2092, and that at least five models precede it. Vifam covered this pretty well... so I think I don't need to say anything about it. Waste not, want not... the official continuity for the now-alternate universe establishes that the U.N. Spacy was having semi-regular skirmishes and run-ins with small Zentradi fleets between 2011 and 2082, with three other major run-ins with large Zentradi fleets in 2036, 2037, and 2054, the latter of which decimated the U.N. Spacy's forces, prior to which they had only one known class of ship... the Daedalus II-class ARMD, which is sort of a synthesis of the TV series ARMD and the Daedalus-class assault carrier, in that it had the same weapons, but could also perform the Daedalus Attack. After the December 2054 capture of a second factory satellite, the U.N. Spacy developed all the new classes of ship we see in Macross II. The converted Zentradi ships were used simply because they were convenient, they had a lot of them, and they kept capturing more with every Zentradi fleet they encountered and defeated. Zentradi ships are very low-maintenance and extremely durable, so it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. It's a hell of a lot more efficient converting them for U.N. Spacy use than discarding or scrapping them to build new ships. I very much doubt it's a factory satellite... probably an asteroid-type space station ala Gundam. We do know, however, that the U.N. Spacy had at least two captured Zentradi factory satellites... the one captured shortly after Space War 1 which figures prominently in Macross 2036, and the one captured in December 2054 which was the source of the new technology used in the VF-XX and VF-2SS. Just one correction... the assumption would have been that the Zentradi and Meltrandi fleet remnants were the only threats remaining. There is no Supervision Army in the Macross II continuity. The SDF-1 Macross was originally a Meltrandi ship in DYRL.

For the longest time, I've entertained the pet theory that the main batteries on the Macross Cannon-class gunships don't just look like Zentradi Nupetiet-Vergnitzs-class battleships... that they are, in all likelihood, a resource-saving move on the part of the post-2054 U.N. Spacy. Instead of building an immense gunship with converging beam cannons hundreds of times the power of the Macross's main cannon, why not draw on the surfeit of captured Zentradi ships for existing spaceframes to modify and save a lot of time, effort, and materials in the bargain? Budget superweapons. I hoped against hope that Macross Chronicle might actually go yea or nay on this one, but no luck.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. Robotech was one of the shows that got me interested in anime, and Macross II: Lovers Again was my first foray into real Macross. It's a Christmas miracle!

Viper and I both did, several times... though the time it came up the most was in that podcast he put up right after his flash-scheduled Thanksgiving Day one that he used to badmouth us behind our backs... the same one where he admitted that he thinks he knows all about Macross Frontier after watching the show unsubtitled. Yeah, I heard about that too... he was claiming that he was one of the people who was in charge of developing that mod on another one of his shows, which is, as far as I have been able to discern, a lie.

No kidding. The whole business with Pizza the Hutt flying off the handle and screaming about how Macross Frontier was "pro-gay propaganda" and then accusing those who tried to explain to him that Alto was neither gay nor a crossdresser of trying to force their pro-gay agenda on everyone, before making the bizarre pronouncement that if we get our way, homosexuality'll be compulsory within a couple decades. Prior to that, Pizza and I were actually on reasonably good terms, mainly due to the fact that I helped hook him up with DYRL, which he thought was absolutely awesome. That insane rant made me start to see that he wasn't all there in the head. Eh... like I said, we have good reason to suspect that he's not actually getting ~900 visitors like he claims he is. He had his show set to an A-rating, which meant that anyone (even search bots) could get to it, and he was linkspamming all over the place. Now that only registered TalkShoe members aged 18+ can get even load the page, I think we'll see a major drop in his number of listeners... of course he'll probably lie about it all the same, just like how he claimed the first podcast of his that I attended had 20+ live listeners when in truth it only had four or five people at any one time. None taken... I'm kind of perplexed by this myself. I mean, I may be the resident Macross II expert, but by no means am I the leader of the entire Macross fandom or even a small portion thereof. I think, for them, it's a coping mechanism. It's much more comfortable for them to believe that their lunatic fringe views on Robotech and Macross are the commonly-held beliefs or the gospel truth and that any opposition they may encounter comes from Macross fans who hate Robotech and want to ruin everybody's good time. That way, it gives them a handy straw man to rail against whenever things aren't going their way. I seem to have been appointed the "face" of this straw man army for a variety of reasons. I suspect the main factor is simply that by simple coincidence I'm the one who ends up running into them first, so when everyone else posts after me saying essentially the same thing I am, they assume it's a coordinated effort rather than consider the possibility that what they wrote was so wrong that it prompted more than one person to respond. I think if my history on Robotech.com has anything to do with it, it's probably because of my status as the site's resident Macross expert (prior to my banning) and/or the fact that even after I was banned (or possibly BECAUSE of it) I'm still a fairly well-respected figure in the community... so much so that I continue to receive e-mails containing questions about Robotech and Macross from members there who've gotten sick of trying to get a straight answer from the ignorant masses. It actually gives me hope for the Robotech fanbase... it's proof that the idiots and ego-tripping witch-hunting members of the "Robotech purists" haven't managed to completely purge intelligent and reasonable people from their midst. Hey, don't get me wrong... I love the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series so much that I happily bought it twice (AnimEigo and ADV), I have a lot of respect for Macross Plus even though it doesn't feel like a Macross show (didn't stop me from getting both versions), and Macross Frontier restored my faith in the show's future and had me actually impatient for each new episode, which, as many of my friends will tell you, is bloody unprecedented. I prefer the Macross II continuity on the grounds that it does follow the themes and tone of the original series and DYRL much more closely than Kawamori's sequels do, that the timeline stresses how strained resources were with the reclamation of Earth's surface, and that the mecha feel like a more logical evolution from the VF-1 than some of the later main continuity Valkyries... but that's a topic for another thread. Indeed. He doesn't want to admit it, but a LOT of his previous shows, and indeed many of his current and planned ones, are only superficially related to Robotech. I very much doubt anyone could actually run a podcast for ~340 shows without having to abandon the premise of it being a Robotech podcast around episode 9 or so... there's just not enough material there. Now if it were something enormous like Lupin III, Macross, or Gundam, you may be able to hang on for 100 episodes or so before running out of material. Oh god, where to start... this was either put up specifically to troll Macross fans because the guy who runs it is a butthurt Robotech fan, or he's one of those people who professes to be an anime fan but has that borderline xenophobic attitude that makes him hate on any example of other cultures. #8. Aside from replacing Max's deep, manly voice with a somewhat effeminate one, Robotech didn't really change anything there... except that in Robotech "Miriya" is reduced to a hanger-on for Lisa in the Sentinels material, popping out kids and not seeing much of any combat, while she was deleted outright in the whole RTSC business. Her Macross counterpart not only raises seven kids and adopts another, but continues to be a military bigshot ace fighter pilot, then turns to training the next generation of fighter aces, and then for a break becomes the mayor of an entire colony city. Of course, if the TR author mentioned that, he wouldn't have been able to construct his claim at all. #7. Robotech is longer? No it isn't. If we don't count failed and aborted projects, Robotech is a mere 85 episodes, 23 of which most Robotech fans consider repellant, and only 36 of which the fans actually care about, and a single low-budget movie. Macross's original series may have fewer episodes, but Macross as a whole positively dwarfs Robotech with 110 TV series episodes, 23 OVA episodes, and 3 movies (not counting the movie adaptations of II and Plus, or the second forthcoming Frontier movie). You could also respond with "Yes, we can make Macross longer too by making a weak excuse and then dicking with the subtitles for Legend of Galactic Heroes". #6. Really? Half their out-of-continuity protagonists are named Jack! Jack Archer, Jack Baker, and I'm sure there's a "Jack Candlestickmaker" somewhere. Most of the Robotech names aren't materially different from their original versions, with only minor spelling differences. Of course, how is "Lunk" a sensible name? Or, for that matter, "Zor Prime", or "Musica, Allegra, and Octavia"... or to really start hitting below the belt, "Kazianna Hesh", "Veidt", "Janice Em2", "Corg", and "Eli Anatole Leonard"? #5. Another writ of "bullshit by false example" please... "empowered women"? They reduce tough gal Miriya to a housewife and KEEP HER THERE, reducing her role in the story to virtually nothing and then deleting her outright. Lisa Hayes gets it in the arse after everyone in the original series forgets she's in charge and refers to Admiral RICK Hunter, and then she gets injured while waiting to take her RETIREMENT so she can stay at home popping out babies in Prelude, then breaks down after she has a miscarriage, quits the service, and becomes a token diplomat with no authority. Dana Sterling isn't an empowered woman, he cites examples of what a ditz she is... risking her subordinates lives so she can afford a new dress, reading magazines during briefings and during operations, she's self-centered, lazy, vain, and more than a bit stupid. Nova Satori and Marie Crystal both end up bowing out and taking minor roles so Dana can have center stage. The most empowered woman in the "New Generation" is a man disguised as a woman. Let's have a look at empowered women in Macross... Milia Jenius marries a top ace, has seven kids, adopts another, and does it all while kicking ass and taking names as a fighter ace, test pilot, flight trainer, and later mayor of an entire city and is shown to be fully capable of kicking ass and taking names at 50+. Misa Hayase... marries, has a kid, and commands an entire colony fleet. Sylvie Gena is one of the top Valkyrie pilots in the Sol system at only age 17. Ishtar defies her entire race and saves her people from annihilation at the hands of their commander before going off to spread songs of peace and love to the stars. Mylene Jenius, Emilia Jenius, and Veffidas Feaze help defeat a threat to the entire galaxy with nothing but the power of song and their own determination. I don't need to bring up the contributions of Sheryl Nome, Ranka Lee, Grace O'Connor, and Catherine Glass, since we've all seen that show recently. #4. Shorten this to "Robotech inspired fewer videogames" and you have the centerpiece of this argument. It only inspired fewer BAD videogames because it only ever inspired a handful of videogames to begin with, most of which were STILL bad... like the cell phone games and Robotech: Invasion. #3. Whether a sequel is "good" or "bad" is a subjective value judgment, though it cannot be argued that Robotech has more FAILED sequels and that Macross has inspired more successful sequels. #2. No it didn't result in Clash of the Bionoids... but it DID result in a hamhanded hackjob rewrite of Megazone 23, and a number of other spectacular failures. #1. If you're a big fan of 80's synth-pop, then yes... otherwise, no.

I realize I'm tempting the tl;dr gods with this one, so here we go... Yes, it most certainly does... though perhaps the most telling part of this whole affair was that when he couldn't find any support for his argument on RobotechX, he resorted to scheduling a podcast rant about it for 10pm Thanksgiving Day, a time when he could be sure nobody would come to interrupt him. Then he fell back on saying everyone arguing against him was a pedophile and a "Macross Groupie" who, according to him, are all part of my "clique" of sycophants and yes-men. When that didn't work, he resorted to scheduling yet more emergency podcasts, but pre-recording them so no guests could chew him out on his own show. What can we conclude from all of this? Doug Bendo is so deeply insecure that any challenge to his perceived authority and superiority eats away at him until he can't control himself and has to lash out. Oh he was doing it well before then... when he tried (and failed) to prove that I didn't know anything about Macross soon after arriving on RobotechX, he insisted that I'd made the whole energy converting armor thing up. Then he went on to challenge the size of the SDF-1 (which seems to be all the rage with what's left of the Robotech lunatic fringe these days) claiming it was at least 4 miles long and trying to claim the official specs were all stuff made up post-facto and didn't mean anything. Then he started in with that whole Ranka's Age kick, which he's STILL on, claiming Ranka is twelve years old or less because he thinks she looks under twelve, despite being shown that both the animation and the dialogue establish Ranka is sixteen. He then tried to tell us all that the dialogue of the show doesn't matter, and it should be animation only that determines things because he claims to have watched the show and understood it perfectly without subtitles or a working knowledge of Japanese. He also briefly tried to dispute the size of the Zor Lords large ship from Southern Cross too, and made a bunch of claims about the Southern Cross Army using "reflex warheads" because their missiles and tank rounds make big explosions. Oh, and it wasn't just one podcast about it, there were at least two two-hour podcasts on it, and one sixty minute podcast that touches on it briefly... and he's promised at least one more touching specifically on Macross Frontier episodes 24 and 25... so you can see just what kind of an insecure wackjob we're dealing with here. I'm guessing you haven't heard his latest podcast, where in an effort to refute us all over the whole Ranka issue and his multiply-refuted claims of Robtoech's superiority he drags his girlfriend onto the show and walks her through a set of answers so obviously coached that it's almost painful. He also takes the time to proclaim himself to be not only the #1 Robotech fan on the net, but also the #1 authority on Robotech in the world. Talk about delusions of grandeur. Dude, this is only the tip of the comedy iceberg. Bendo's been living up to his legendarily bad reputation, frothing at the mouth and making a fool of himself without realizing that NOBODY takes him seriously but himself. What's REALLY funny is that despite how he professes to hate and despise us, he keeps trying get us on his show as guests, which has NEVER ended well for him. His usual routine is to challenge something someone says, then blast them with insults and say "Well, if you wanna confront me, come do it on my next podcast episode!". Actually, during the whole Ranka thing Bendo admitted that he's frequently hit on underage girls in their mid teens... so I'd doubt he ends up in that situation very often. Well, the whole reason he got on the subject to begin with was because Robelwell202 and I were criticizing Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles (a film Bendo ALSO professes to hate) and he immediately jumped to the movie's defense by claiming we were all pedophiles and that Ranka was 12 years old after I posted that "Let them eat Cheesecake" montage I made for the last thread and pointed out how Shadow Chronicles was so mediocre the best Tommy could do was try to hold the audience's attention with T&A. He REALLY went off the deep end when I pointed out that Ariel, who he was using as an example of "mature" sex appeal is only 16 months old at the official date given for the events of the movie. Oh yes, on that Thanksgiving Day podcast he announced that if he ever met Robelwell or I in person, he would "knock our teeth out" and "beat our asses". On more than one occasion he's threatened his girlfriend with a beating on the air, he's threatened to urinate on her at least once while recording his show, and I understand in his last episode he actually does haul off and hit her during the recording. Quite disturbing, actually... I understand many people lodged complaints with TalkShoe after that came to light. Exactly right... though I've noticed a trend when it comes to members of the Robotech lunatic fringe attacking Macross Frontier... it's ALWAYS something sexual. When PTH first started attacking it on RobotechX, he jumped right to claiming the series was "pro-gay propaganda", that Bobby was an attempt to force a homosexual character on the audience, and that Alto was a homosexual cross-dresser. When Bendo attacked it, he fixated on the brief moment where Ranka appears to be naked and labeled the entire series child pornography. Actually, during the recording of last Sunday's episode wherein Doug challenged us to respond to an libelous, extremely profane rant he put up about us and the whole Ranka thing, he not only had a 100% hostile audience for the entire show, TalkShoe Security showed up shortly after the show started and DEMANDED he change the show's rating to EL (Explicit Language), so now the show is only accessible to TalkShoe members aged 18+. I have reason to suspect that most of those are not even actually listeners, but are the end result of search engine bots spidering the page repeatedly due to all the linkspamming he's done on RobotechX and other websites. Well yes, he's been proclaiming himself to be the "Official" podcast headquarters of the fandom, even though he freely admits that that's a self-issued title and he's operating with no official sanction. In fact, according to him Harmony Gold has apparently FORBIDDEN employees to appear on his podcast, claiming that he frequently hears from people who say they'd love to come on his show but are afraid of retribution from the management. How much of that is actually true is anybody's guess (but skepticism is wise considering the majority of the claims Bendo makes are provably false). JT, on the other hand, has apparently not only acquired a reasonable following of his own and earned the enmity of the lunatic fringe with his well-reasoned and generally objective view of the franchise, but has also garnered the attention of voice actors and the like as a potentially favorable podcast to grant reviews to. I say that's not just good for him, but for the entirety of what's left of the Robotech fanbase, since their last impartial voice has kind of petered out, leaving them in the hands of the lunatic fringe (Robotech Fan) and the useless sycophants (RDF Underground, Space Station Liberty).

Gettin' a distinct impression that you've never actually SEEN Neon Genesis Evangelion... the EVAs were designed to fight the Angels, not human militaries. The Angels don't exactly use conventional tactics, nor are they generally suited to them. As you'd see if you watched End of Evangelion, even using the strongest available non-nuclear ordinance (the N2 mine) is no guarantee of doing more than annoying the EVA's operator. Mobile Police Patlabor? Good stuff, seriously good stuff. I was introduced to the series by Talos, and I thought most of it was pretty good, with the exception of their strange tendency to reuse the "science creates monster. monster breaks out of lab and starts eating labors" plot, which they use I think three times between the OVA, TV show, and the third movie. I just got done with a binge of comedy-tinted robot shows and some romance comedies... most of them did not thrill me. I gave Martian Successor Nadesico a go (since I missed it back in the day), and it did not thrill me for some reason, the business with that cross between Mazinger Z, Combattler V, and Getter Robo was kind of a pointless bit of camp to me. Super Heavy God Gravion didn't wow me either, and Maburaho (which a friend of mine swore up and down I would find hilarious) was so painfully bad I stopped halfway through the series when the harem comedy protagonist DIED for an incredibly stupid reason and came back as a ghost. Going back to classics with some good ol' fashioned Lupin III series 1.

Jeez, I stop paying attention to this thread for a little bit and the rumors of how cruel I am to Robotech fans get WAY out of control... For the last time, those are "alternative mulching supplies". I've just been dragging my heels about renting a wood chipper. Speaking of Robotech sociopaths, I think I may have made dougbendo cry or something... he's devoted like half a dozen podcast episodes to trying (and generally failing) to badmouth or intimidate me, and he's spent the past two weeks or so trying (and failing) to convince everyone on RobotechX that Macross Frontier is child pornography and everyone who likes it is a pedophile because he believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Ranka is at most 12 years old, and that the last episode shows her "naked in space" for all of four seconds. He first got onto that tack when some people started criticizing RTSC and saying it compared unfavorably to Macross Frontier. I hear his podcasts are currently under investigation by TalkShoe's admins for a veritable grocery list of violations including (but not limited to) copyright violations, libel, threatening to assault other TalkShoe users and his girlfriend during shows, and the use of both sexually explicit and racist language in a show rated "All Audiences". Maybe that's why he's so pissy. In related news, our mutual pal Pizza the Hutt got banned from RobotechX for the second time for repeatedly attacking an admin, and he's on his way to a second ban on Robotech.com for lashing out at anyone who criticizes the prospects of the Robotech live-action movie. I'd say if it's possible for a 11 meter tall Zentradi commander to ride a Monster into battle like a horse without adversely affecting it, then that's at least plausible.

Eh, it's not like it's the first time one of Harmony Gold's distribution partners tried to sell the originals by hyping up their ties to Robotech. The ADV releases of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada all did that. First time I've ever seen them try to sell them under the Robotech name though... kind of disturbing.

What little information I've seen indicates that they ought to be around the same size as the original destroids, with the exception of the Giant Monster. What exactly does the size comparison show? *Hasn't got that issue yet*

She dropped a hyphen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarian_section

You're not alone... I spent a good 45 minutes or more during a particularly boring meeting playing Mahjong Titans on my laptop. Naturally... though the subject of the Robotech franchise and particularly future Robotech productions is always going to be a particularly problematic one since not only do we have to contend with faulty memories, obscure facts, and rumors, we also have to sort through Harmony Gold's hype and misleading statements, and unhelpful representatives of the Robotech fanbase who (deliberately or otherwise) spread misinformation by presenting their own uninformed conjecture and crackpot theories as though they were fact.

Yep... I think that's pretty much exactly what Einherjar is saying... Of course, Harmony Gold is saying something very similar... that by pointing out that they can't use any of Macross's intellectual property in future "Shadow Saga" crap or the live-action movie, that we're undermining our own anticipation for the movie, and destroying the expectations of other fans.

Wicked cool, though I wonder how long it'll be before someone comes up with a DIY countermeasure for that. Hell, I'd be surprised if there wasn't ALREADY at least one. That's kind of disappointing. Whatever its other faults, Macross Zero was great mecha porn.

That's not necessarily the case... after all, we've seen a fair bit of evidence that Harmony Gold's representatives started buying into their own hype a long time ago. It may very well be that they genuinely believe Maguire Entertainment and Warner Bros are going to raise Robotech's profile with a moderately successful live-action movie and are banking on it without realizing that there's a very real possibility that the movie will never come out and Warner'll just sit on the license until it expires. Thus far, Harmony Gold seems thoroughly uninterested in doing a weekly Robotech TV series. I guess they think low-budget direct-to-DVD movies are the way to go, since they have neither the resources nor the talent to compete against mainstream anime or American cartoons. I'd imagine that's why they were planning the "shadow saga" as a trilogy of movies rather than a TV show. Just going by all the obnoxious honking Kevin McKeever has done over the years, it seems like the biggest stumbling block is that there's just no market for a new Robotech series and the Harmony Gold execs know it. McKeever's standard response when people ask why Harmony Gold hasn't bothered with a new Robotech series in the 20+ years since Sentinels went under is that they need to get an episode commitment from a network first, and you could easily infer from that response that Harmony Gold has tried, and there were no takers.

Not that I'm aware of... it hasn't been covered in Macross Chronicle yet, and there's nothing on it in the Macross F Official Fan Book either. I dunno if any magazine articles have covered it though.

From the rest of your post, I don't think you really know anything about the real Macross II backstory... sounds like you've got a BAD case of Palladium. Seriously, it's remarks like this that motivated me to start my website project in the first place. It's a damn shame, really, since there are at least three major Zentradi conflicts, all of which would be ripe for animated adaptation (particularly the ones in 2037 and 2054), and the whole unexplored (in animation) angle of the colony fleets, like the one that was ambushed by the Zentradi in 2054, or that business with the one in the novelizations. I'd love to see them do an animated adaptation of Macross 2036 or Macross: Eternal Love Song... especially if they use the character designs Mikimoto did for both games. Adult Komilia is just awesome on SO many levels, plus the upgraded VF-1, and the return of Quamzin... what's not to like? Um... the business with galactic whales and the Vajra has nothing to do with Macross II... 's not even part of the same continuity. For that matter, it's "Mardook", not "Marduk". Yes, they're homophones, but the spelling (and the subsequent romanization) are different and the difference is intentional (and thus significant enough to matter). There is no Supervision Army in DYRL or Macross II, they were replaced by the Meltrandi. Not sure where you're going with this Alus business either... the Macross was originally a Meltrandi gun destroyer in Macross: Do You Remember Love? and Macross II: Lovers Again, it was not a Mardook ship. The colony they found in DYRL was a Protoculture city, not a Mardook one. No... just no. For one, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II's Super Armed Pack has very little in common with conventional super or armor packs. For two, that is NOT a heavy beam cannon, that's a railgun.

No, what's REALLY sad is that for them... it IS a good thing! Due in large measure to Harmony Gold's hamhanded management and their monumental ineptitude when it comes to creating original material, the Robotech franchise's history over the past 25-odd years has been one long, slow, humiliating slide into oblivion. For them, being able to announce to the world that the fate of the franchise is no longer resting on their shoulders is GREAT news. They're probably giddy that they've handed control of a project that holds a slim promise of arresting or even reversing the franchise's death spiral over to someone who has at least a vague idea of what they're doing. I'm sure it didn't hurt the feelings of what's left of the fanbase either... they're thinking that the minor improvement in image quality will probably be worth the wait, and that the story's gonna suck no matter what since it's being written by Yun and Yune, so they might as well pick their battles. And y'know what... that's actually a distinct improvement from back when they used to pretend they actually knew how to create original material. If your strongest assets are lawyers and spin doctors, you're probably an insurance company.

Already been covered, actually... in a segment in Macross: Perfect Memory. Let me tell you right now it's nowhere near as exciting as you think it is. Aside from Hikaru doing a brief stint at the U.N. Spacy's moon base, giant Meltrandi pro wrestling, and a bit about Minmay's life after the war, there's really not much noteworthy that goes on during that period. I'll second that emotion... buncha crazy newbies who can't tell the difference between Macross and Robotech or want Macross to be more like Robotech came out of the woodwork all at once. I realize that taste is subjective, but I'd like to avoid having anyone who actually thinks Robotech 3000 was a good idea involved in the production of Macross if at all possible. I'd love to see them go back and explore the colony missions in the Macross II alternate universe continuity... we know they existed, and that at least one of 'em had a MAJOR run-in with the Zentradi, but aside from that we've got very little on them. I know it'll probably be a long cold day in hell before Kawamori actually allows that to happen though.

Yeah, but the point is, they still wanted to use force to do it...