Seto Kaiba

Azrael's wording is kind of ambiguous... you can't trademark promotional art or design art, that's a copyright matter. The trademark(s) in question cover the name "Macross" itself, the Japanese spelling, the original logo, and the use of same in merchandise. #75750692 covers its the use of the name and/or logo in apparel, #76288366 covers its use on DVD and VHS media, #76385551 covers its use in broadcast/webcast, #76382155 covers the name itself and the TV series logo, and #76480124 covers its use for action figures. Pretty much what I expected then, the Disciples of Leonard are pretty quick to jump down the throats of anyone who criticizes the character, so they draw a lot of hostility. I figured he'd got the boot for arguing with them over in Series & Stories, but it looks like he got away with that and then took it too far elsewhere. One would imagine the DoL would've given up after Tommy went one step further than Carl Macek did in making Leonard totally unlikable by not only making him out to be an incompetent leader, a raving megalomaniac, and a rather violent xenophobe, but also a traitor who was secretly working for the Anti-UN in the early years of the UN Gov't.

Granted, most of it is out of print and some of it is somewhat obscure, but the really important stuff isn't THAT hard to find, and at least some of it should already be in their possession if they're reprinting the mechanical and character design lineart. Cool as it would be for them to consult me on the articles, I can't really see them doing that. XD

Well, like I said, when it came out that we were planning to provide a more permanent, full-featured alternative for the mess RobotechX has become, and rolled a few other proposed/stalled projects into it as well, people started coming out of the woodwork to offer their assistance. Most of the offers of aid come from ordinary fans who are just fed up with the way the "new guard" are running the franchise and how their cronyism has wrecked the community by turning it into a modest but friendly group of ordinary fans into a tiny clique of heretic-hunting fanatics. One of the offers of aid we got was from Michael Bradley's manager, who offered to transfer ownership of one of their unused domain names to us for our use. I'm also still scouting writers for the reference section, and looking for a CMS that'll support what we're trying to do. Finding reasonable writers seems to be something like pissing into the wind, since most of the few remaining folks who could be called experts on one or more of the Robotech sagas with a straight face also tend to be the ones who're backing (or originated) some of the crazy, baseless theories that do the rounds every now and again. It was a gradual decline right up to the point when the site started to attract the attention of the most bitter malcontents from other sites. Once they'd migrated to the site and started in with their "you're not a 'true' fan!" and decreed that the point of a fansite was to share your appreciation of the show, and that criticism of the show and its creators shouldn't be allowed. Once you had that, then things really went right to hell after the legal debates started on Robotech.com, which prompted MEMO to post an almost completely fictitious FAQ about it. When that was challenged, he turned to exiling all discussions of it to a part of the site only registered members could see so nothing would mar the illusion of accuracy in his FAQ in the eyes of the guests, and later just locking all of his "announcements" right away to stop people from telling him he was wrong. At that point, the bottom fell out and things went right to hell. Actually, I disagree... PTH has shown signs that he acknowledges that Carl Macek didn't exactly do a fabulous job with Robotech either, but would rather have a sequel true to the original intent for the ongoing story rather than some weak-ass retcon-fest that looks like it's going to be another false start. The other thing that, to me, indicates he's not likely to go the dougbendo route is that he seems to be not only starting to realize why some his remarks come across as unduly hostile (and even apologizing for it!), but doesn't seem to be afraid to let bygones be bygones and ask for information when he doesn't understand something.

I did tell you how Michael Bradley's manager offered us a few old domain names they weren't using for the project, didn't I? He's already been perma-banned from Robotech.com, though I still can't find exactly where it went down... maybe the thread was deleted? Anyway, at the rate he's going over on RobotechX, it's only a matter of time before MEMO tires of Pizza's constant heckling of his propaganda threads and his much more realistic attitude towards Harmony Gold's rather anticlimactic 25th anniversary plans.

It seems likely that those troubles were factors, but the primary cause cited by Kawamori was that humanity was simply becoming too spread out for the old system of government to govern them effectively. Not really relevant to this thread, you might want to try the Newbie Thread for this one.

Unlikely, IMO. In light of the fact that it was an informal panel, it seems far more likely that Tommy simply failed to check the facts with senior management and the lawyers. Had something major actually changed in the relationship between the creators of Macross and Harmony Gold, it's HIGHLY unlikely that Harmony Gold would've kept it quiet. That would've been front-page news on their website the day it happened, since it'd be the biggest coup in Robotech's twenty-five years of mediocrity and failure. No, smart money says this is a slip of the forked tongue by Tommy Yune... one the company lawyers are no doubt already scolding him for. The answers to your questions are: Q: Why would he go all the way to San Francisco for the first stop of the Robotech Convention Tour? A: Foolish optimism, wishful thinking, and blind faith stemming from his complete and total inability to spot a pattern in Harmony Gold's behavior over the past twenty-five years and a general unwillingness to admit that the franchise he's given so much to over the years will never give anything back. Q: Was he really hoping that anything would come out of this because of the 25th anniversary? A: Yes. Odds are MEMO will spin this however he can so that Harmony Gold comes out smelling of roses and he can continue to believe that Robotech will one day wow us all with its awesomeness instead of continuing to quietly decay in a dingy corner of the internet most people pretend doesn't exist. MEMO doesn't see it as a waste, for him the convention tour will always be proof that Robotech hasn't curled up, shat itself, and died. Don't tell me you're surprised by that... it was inevitable. Somehow, I seem to have become wrapped up in it to such an extent that I'm still working on a replacement for the fansite MEMO ruined with his almost Soviet attitude towards dissent, and have apparently drawn down the attention of more than one Robotech voice actor in the offing, though JT is at least partially to blame for that. EDIT: O.M.F.G.. Pizza is taking MEMO to task over AOD and Harmony Gold's failure to deliver there too. Gentlemen, I think we may have to consider that the proverbial honeymoon is over and the subject has contracted a terminal case of logical thinking where Robotech and Harmony Gold are concerned. He may very well be outgrowing the antics we so often criticized him for. I must confess... I am genuinely surprised.

No kidding... that, plus Kawamori changing the reason we got the "New U.N.", really makes figuring the whole thing out a fair bit messier. Given the available information, my take on the situation is that the little-n "new U.N. Government" likely was established as a continuation of the system of government they'd had before the war, and thus was only "new" in the sense that it was re-founded with new representatives after the war. After a while, the distinction would simply no longer seem important, and was probably dropped altogether, leaving the government as the U.N. Gov't, and the military as the U.N. Forces. According to Kawamori, the big-n "New U.N. Government" came along when the government was forced to reorganize after the constituency of the old government became too spread out for the little-n "new U.N. Government" to govern effectively. From the description, the big-n "New U.N. Government" is a new governmental system established to cope with the realities of galactic colonization on a large scale. The U.N. Spacy presumably became the New U.N. Spacy during this reorganization to bring it under closer civilian oversight, perhaps because of the events of Macross VF-X2. In a nutshell, the important distinction between "new" and "New" seems to be whether the actual system of government changed significantly enough to consider it a whole new government. The "New U.N. Spacy" seems to have only cropped up after the governmental changes passed the point where it really couldn't be called the same system anymore. I could, of course, be completely wrong in my assessment, but it seems to support the available facts and what Kawamori is saying in the Otona Anime interview.

Kind of a non-issue, they didn't have any problems churning out a passable but weak imitation of the old Robotech Art series (The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles) via Stone Bridge Press.

Wow, you actually managed to make something MEMO wrote make sense... It's not like it's not happening in ones and twos now... they're just afraid it'll turn into a stampede to get away from the franchise once the smell of bullshit can no longer cover the smell of death.

Assuming, of course, that MEMO's video isn't conveniently damaged in several places where Tommy appears to be saying things that don't line up with what MEMO wants to believe like the last one he posted was.

Unsurprisingly, this new stance that Carl Macek made the creative decisions he did to combine Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada into Robotech while watching the show with neither sound nor a translated script is at odds with Carl Macek's original account in Robotech Art 1 where he says he picked the latter two shows just on the grounds that they were convenient, and that he reviewed all three stories to see how best to combine them. The editors responsible for Robotech seem to have a love of revisionist history that borders on the fetishistic. They keep trying to make themselves look better by pretending the humble, honest accounts of the show's history from twenty years ago don't exist and are banking on the relative scarcity of those publications and the current fanbase's ignorance of them to mask what would otherwise be laughable, completely transparent lies. It really should be setting off some warning lights that even Robotech fans as devoted as Pizza the Hutt, who until very recently went to bat for them even when there was no hope of victory, are turning on them.

What, having the idol in Macross Plus be a computer-generated simulation wasn't androgynous enough for you? Honestly, no... I like my Macross idols performing music that doesn't suck, and that's something you just don't get from "artists" like Lady Gaga.

Actually, yes... they probably do think that. I think the specific fear is that if they come clean about their (in)ability to use Macross characters and mecha in future cinematic works they'll lose much of the remaining fanbase. Let's face facts, while Harmony Gold may be an incompetently-run outfit, their employees aren't completely stupid. They can read a trend line in television ratings and merchandise sales as easily as you or I, so they're well aware that over half of their fanbase consistently names the Macross Saga as their favorite part of Robotech, and that interest in Masters Saga and New Generation merchandise is limited at best. Their one accomplishment in the past twenty-four years, the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie, used the promise of revealing the fate of the Macross Saga cast as its primary selling point, and both the cliffhanger end and leaked draft leave no doubt that they intend to continue dangling the promise of Macross Saga characters in front of the dwindling fanbase to keep them interested. Their fear, which is extremely well-founded, is that if they announce they can't use Macross characters and mecha in the Shadow Rising movie and live-action movie, that interest in the movies will collapse and take their franchise with it. Considering that most of these guys at least claim to have been Robotech fans before joining up at Harmony Gold, you have to stop and wonder if they've just become so used to accepting obvious falsehoods during the time as fans that they've come full circle and believe the lies they're telling. Well, okay... you've got us there... they can always take THAT road. Of course, I think the implication was the use of the designs in new material, but whatever... lol

Of course, that isn't stopping MEMO from spreading half-remembered, mostly-false accounts of the AOD panel and what Tommy said as though by distorting it and taking it out of context he could overturn the court rulings and change the way the copyright laws work and give Harmony Gold the ability to use material from Macross in derivative works, which they have NEVER had the right to do. If PTH actually calls MEMO out on this latest bit of bullshit, I may very well be forced to reconsider my position on his recent bout of intelligent behavior.

I'm astonished the miasma of stupidity that perpetually surrounds him didn't suffocate you. And that brings me nicely around to prerequisite #2 for being a long-time Robotech fan... you must either be totally ignorant of the show's origins, or be deep enough in denial that you can rationalize the show's origins as something other than an attempt to imitate the success of Transformers and sell lots of transforming robot toys without having to do much, if any, actual creative work.

Well, thanks for wasting a few minutes of your time on our behalf to let us know that the Robotech's 25th promises to be every bit as anticlimactic as we predicted. Honestly, I'm not. If they didn't try to present Shadow Chronicles and the various MPC Beta repaints as new each year they wouldn't have anything to show at all, and that would make for a pretty pathetic booth and panel. Of course, what they're doing now is just as pathetic, but a little less obvious to the casual viewer. If it weren't for the fact that it's the 25th anniversary this year, I'd wonder why they were wasting the money to fly Tommy and company around the country for these conventions. It doesn't accomplish anything. Now there's an obvious bit of misdirection if ever I saw one... It looks like he's trying to, intentionally or otherwise, blur the distinction between merchandise and derivative works in the eyes of the audience by referring to toys as "productions" rather than "products". He's done it before, and it fooled nobody last time either. All the legal documentation and other evidence available indicates quite clearly that Harmony Gold is perfectly at liberty to produce merchandise based on the original Macross series and DYRL, because they hold the merchandising rights to those shows outside of Japan. It seems like Tommy's attempting to generalize his way out of the second issue... their ability to use the character designs. It's impossible for Harmony Gold to use the original Macross (or DYRL) character and mechanical designs in derivative works (animation, live action) because those designs are the copyrighted property of Big West and Studio Nue... neither Harmony Gold nor Tatsunoko Productions have any right to them. The court rulings made sure that wasn't open to debate. It's entirely possible for Harmony Gold to use the Southern Cross and Mospeada designs in derivative works, since those are the property of their partner Tatsunoko. Harmony Gold's original Robotech creative director (Carl Macek) even went on record at Robocon 10 back when he was still working on the franchise to say that they had to redesign the Macross characters for Robotech II: the Sentinels because they couldn't use the originals. Tommy's trying to sidestep the matter by being obtuse. At one convention panel, Tommy tried to claim Macross was inferior because, according to him, Robotech had been fansubbed into Japanese. All attempts to find this alleged Japanese fansub of Robotech failed.

While I don't want to (grievously) offend the more levelheaded Robotech fans out there, I really have to say that I honestly think that one of the prerequisites for being a long-time Robotech fan is having faulty pattern recognition skills. Let's face it, a complete and total inability to spot a negative trend as it emerges is the only thing that could keep someone hoping earnestly that Harmony Gold would one day roll out a decent sequel and revive Robotech after 25 years of failure and broken promises. Granted, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but you should still examine the track record and adjust your expectations accordingly. I'd bet real money that they honestly believe the stupid claims they make on a daily basis are accurate, well-reasoned, informed arguments and that we're just making fun of them out of spite. They don't stop to take stock of what they say because that would mean admitting the things they said were wrong, and they'd much rather believe the delusion that Robotech is a highly successful, wildly popular, genre-defining franchise than accept the grim reality that the majority of few the people who know about it regard it with barely-disguised contempt. They won't ever stop saying the stupid poo that they consistently get ridiculed for because that would entail admitting they've been betting on the wrong horse for over twenty years. Faulty pattern recognition skills and a frantic desire to validate two decades or more of their lives wasted waiting for a revival that will never come.

Smart money says he'd deny it flat-out, and attempt to rebut it with the sort of argument only someone who spent the entire day pounding nails into their skull with a tea tray would find even remotely convincing. Then he would no doubt launch into another comical tirade about how fear of Robotech motivated the producers of Star Trek's and Avatar to rush their movies to release, or that Macross's creators were in awe of Shadow Chronicles and decided to copy as much as they could from it to help them compete against Harmony Gold's next sure-fire blockbuster... Shadow Rising... a movie Maverick's been waiting for for over four years! EDIT: Oh, I forgot... and then he'd accuse you of taking pleasure in the suffering of others and revoke your posting privileges, assuming you were somewhere he could do the latter and get away with it.

Somehow, it doesn't surprise me at all that Maverick_LSC is trying desperately to come up with some way to convince himself that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, and Robotech itself, was something other than a lame direct-to-DVD movie many Robotech didn't think was all that good, and was ignored by the anime industry at large. He wants a way to validate twenty-plus years of waiting for Harmony Gold to get their act together and produce a sequel. Basically, Maverick's trying to legitimize Robotech and his belief in its superiority by trying to present the illusion that even Macross's creators think Robotech is the better story and are trying to imitate it. It's errant nonsense, of course... Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles has nothing that even remotely resembles an Itano circus. All they have are a few cases where large numbers of missiles are launched and the mini-missiles swarm together briefly, just once, shortly after launch, and then speed off in straight lines.

Y'know, despite Carl Macek spending a fair bit of time rhapsodizing about what he perceives as flaws in the story of the original Macross TV series and how he "fixed" them and "improved" the series as a whole, I don't think he's ever attempted to say Robotech is perfect (an indefensible statement if ever there was one), he just goes on with the standard "because I say so" assertions that Robotech is the superior story. It's certainly not what taksraven was saying in any case. Exactly what Carl Macek thinks of having Tommy Yune reboot the continuity in order to kick virtually everything he ever did, including most of his post-facto explanations and rationaliations, to the curb remains something of a mystery, as he never seems to actually comment on it when given the opportunity to do so.

No, I don't think we've bothered to cover that one, but we can be fairly certain that the VF-25 does in fact have some kind of secondary engine system providing the thrust for forward motion in fighter mode. Exactly what kind of engine it is, your guess is as good as mine, but its glowing pinkish-purple exhaust is visible in Macross Frontier episode 2 at about five minute in, when Alto and Ranka are cruising in GERWALK over the city in Gilliam's VF-25F right after Michel shoots the last Vajra down. It appears to be mounted more or less where we'd expect it to be. Just looking at the CG model, the engine's built into (or are on the underside of) the plate that protrudes backwards between the vertical stabilizers in GERWALK mode (the one with the Skull logo painted on it on Ozma's VF-25S, which is color-coded bright green in this chart).

While I could yammer on about how each culture has certain tropes endemic to its traditional storytelling, and the various regional perceptions of what constitutes "foreign" styles of storytelling, it's really neither here nor there. Your point is valid in that there is no one set of rules or characteristics that divides schools of storytelling into "Western" and "Eastern", or by any other vague geographical definition you could think of. It would be remiss of me not to qualify it by saying that while there's no objective definition of such, most every culture makes subjective classifications along those lines when the writer's background influences their style in a fashion that doesn't appear often among native writers, or draw upon some element of their native culture the readers won't be familiar with. While it IS a seriously flawed premise, people are going to make distinctions like that based on their own experiences anyway. That Maverick is using it as an attempt to draw a distinction between Macross and Robotech is pretty bloody ridiculous... he's falling back on the obviously flawed facade that he's a film industry expert and relying on the old axiom "If you can't dazzle them with your knowledge, baffle them with your bullshit." EDIT: Good grief that first paragraph sounds pretentious, but I really can't think of any way to word it better right now.

Too technical? My bad. I just cited a few examples of just how prevalent ending the story with some form of cliffhanger is these days in "Western" storytelling. It's bad practice, but it gets done a LOT in narrative-driven merchandise... not so much in cinema, but it crops up every now and again there too.

Yeah, I found that amusing too... he's definitely trying to cast Macross as an inferior product that's being "exploited" for a quick buck rather than a franchise that succeeded entirely on merit, seemingly oblivious to the irony in what he was saying... the creator of the cheap knockoff accusing the original creators of making a cheap knockoff. Actually, he says that he picked titles that were already in Harmony Gold's catalog of licensed works... he didn't decide to acquire anything, he just used what was already available. Clearly you don't play many video games... easily 3/4ths of all narrative-driven games these days end in some kind of cliffhanger or at the very least have "to be continued..." stapled onto the back end, regardless of whether or not they actually intend to make a second game, just to leave the option open if the first game sells well enough. It's the same with a lot of popular (and not-so-popular) novel series these days, where each and every installation ends in a cliffhanger or with some new villain presenting itself, to force the story to go on FOREVER... the Star Wars and Star Trek novels did it all the time, as do a LOT of fantasy series. On VERY rare occasions, if skillfully hidden under a larger, overarching plot, it CAN work... but examples of that are few and far between. The only one I can think of offhand is Dan Abnett's "Gaunt's Ghosts" series of Warhammer 40,000 novels... though after fifteen novels or so the many variations on "they recruit the disenfranchised soldiers of another destroyed unit/settlement and slog off to the next warzone" have long since started to pall.

Ask and ye shall receive... from part 1 of Robotech.com's Carl Macek fan interview, published 10 May 2001: and from part 2 of same, published 21 May 2001: Nah, I'm a computer scientist with a software engineering bias... give me the answer to the nearest tenth of a second or express it in quartz clock cycles.