Seto Kaiba

The picture on Claudia's right (left, from our perspective) is, unless I miss my mark, an image of the SDF-1 Macross. The same image used in a poster seen in Flashback 2012. Looks like... and an XB-70 Valkyrie too.

You're not alone... when he came over here telling us we were out of line for criticizing Robotech and its fans, and then demanded the entire community change to accommodate his wishes, it raised a LOT of eyebrows. It must be nice to be able to be that optimistic. I've long since accepted that genuine coincidences are fairly rare things in this life. For a good while now, I've suspected he either always intended to come here and start a fight, or that whatever friend recommended MacrossWorld to him did so with the intention of putting him on the losing end of a fight. Actually, I think that's probably a function of his poor (or nonexistent) understanding of the divide between Macross and Robotech. He doesn't understand the reasons for the divide, so he doesn't see the need to differentiate between the two, and thus doesn't understand why we don't generally want Robotech over here. If you really wanted to get down to the root of that particular problem, the cause is probably Harmony Gold's frequent attempts to portray Macross as having little-to-no importance except as a part of Robotech.

Well, let's give Pizza a little credit... he's at least responding somewhat favorably to the idea of a cessation of hostilities, so that's progress towards at least a semblance of peace. I've always felt that it was better to be blunt and honest and risk offending someone than to attempt to soften the blow with flowery language or lying to spare their feelings. To this end, I'd like to share one of my very favorite quotes: I guess part of the reason I'm a lightning rod for hostile Robotech fans is because I've made it no secret that I disapprove of what Harmony Gold has done to the Robotech universe, and how they've manged the franchise. Since the various feuds have driven away a lot of the people who were extremely devoted to the franchise and/or who approved of RTSC, they naturally don't take what I have to say very well. They seldom stop to look at it in the context of someone who wants to see Robotech do something different and original, beyond the scope of the "original 85", they just look at it as bashing. Actually, of late Harmony Gold has actually been pretty open about why so many of their licensed products from the late 80's and the 90's were of such poor quality. Kevin McKeever has admitted on several occasions that Harmony Gold just issued licenses and never really bothered to exercise much in the way of oversight over any of the products created by their licensees during that period. Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. The mods can ban anyone they want so long as they come up with a reason (however obviously fabricated or weak) to justify it. Then they hand it all off to Steve to sort out. Since Steve's not paying attention, and the site's best contributors are all getting the boot, I guess they might try the "nobody was minding the store" excuse again. Hey! I take offense to that. I've had the position of the supreme evil in the Robotech fanbase sewn up for years!

I realize you're all going to think I've gone out of my cotton pickin' mind here, but I'm writing to Kevin McKeever about the whole legal debate hostilities over on Robotech.com, and even proposing a truce of sorts with Pizza the Hutt right now on RobotechX. I was having a back-and-forth over the PM system with my assistant webmaster and he tossed out a few ideas that could be made to work for all parties involved, so I'm fielding them to Harmony Gold and to the opposing side right now. We'll see if anything comes of it. (even if it doesn't work, at least nobody can fault me for not trying to mend fences with Pizza, this is attempt #3 since I first met him)

Yes, it's IS insulting that Robotech fans think so little of Macross and its universe that they treat it like nothing more than a free expansion for the Robotech RPG, or a Robotech expanded universe series. Are they truly that lacking in originality that the only way they can create new material is to pilfer it from someone else? That's awfully rich of you, considering the first thing you did upon arriving here was to start leveling accusations about the content of this thread without ever having read it. ;-) It's a nausea provoked by a profound lack of originality and respect for other shows on the part of Robotech fans. Of course, since Robotech itself is by nature nothing more than a bunch of unrelated shows hastily slapped together with a few very weak excuses, what they're doing is par for the course. Robotech has always been about treating the work of others with light-fingered contempt, so it comes as no surprise... it's just disappointing to see that even the fans seem to lack originality a lot of the time. It really gets me to thinking about the various groups who've been exiled from Robotech.com over the ages... all of the groups who followed something that went beyond the simple constraints of the "original 85"... and in all cases, it was the stuff that had a far higher percentage of original material than the "original 85" did. Robotech honestly seems to be a franchise that has nothing but scorn for originality. Why yes, yes it is. Amaterasu's original Knight of Gold. I'm stoked for the forthcoming blu-ray edition of the Five Star Stories movie. Just makes me wish they'd animated more than just Destiny Three Fates Lachesis... I would've loved to see the Schpeltor and Auge animated like that.

Nah, even in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA the Inbit mecha were clearly mechanical in nature. Robotech had a nasty habit of describing everything "protoculture"-powered as biotechnology. In the lineart, there is a clearly-defined cockpit in both versions of the Gurab, where the pilot sits/floats in some of that green goop that oozes out whenever the mecha gets shot up. How they're controlled is anybody's guess, since neither version really touches on it. Logically, the Robotech version must have/use physical controls of some kind if Rem was able to pilot one. If logic ain't your bag, you can always handwave the whole thing away by pointing out that Rem is a clone of Zor, the so-called father of "robotechnology" (I hate that term) and therefore the scientist equivalent of Chuck Norris. He can do ANYTHING... he's Zor. Or if you want, you can just blame the whole thing on the assorted plot holes of "protoculture" and call it a day. Protoculture! I dunno, somewhere there's a naked Inbit/Invid running around? If you really want, you can take the easy (and obvious) way out and blame it on the eminently piss-poor writing that permeates every original Robotech production. I guess since Rem is supposed to be a clone of Zor, they wanted to make him more than just an alien fashion victim with a purple mullet.

Yeah, no kidding. I didn't get banned from Robotech.com for that though, but Maverick_LSC made it no secret that he was looking for an excuse to ban me and several other people he considered to be troublemakers. He only recently worked up the courage to actually do it, by accusing everyone he wanted to ban of being "disruptive" when they did things like post facts about Harmony Gold's rights to Macross, and other related topics. Basically, Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have adopted the ToU provision that says you're not supposed to disrupt the flow of discussion in a thread as their one-size-fits-all excuse for banning anyone who questions their lies and expresses an opinion they don't like. Indeed it is a great time to be a Robotech fan... a time when lies are news, and the truth is obsolete, and the mere suggestion that you don't think everything those in authority do is perfect can get your account terminated. It's like Soviet Russia over there... they even have their own equivalent of Pravda called Space Station Liberty. In Soviet Robotech, show watches you!

Y'know, I didn't think anyone would actually guess it on the first try. You're absolutely right, what got his goat was Tommy Yune's Day Off, though he seemed pretty hacked off about Plan 9 from Harmony Gold too.

Y'know, Maverick_LSC once threatened me with a ban for coming up with a list of derisive nicknames for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles... can you guess the one he took umbrage over? 1.) Robotech III: the Sentinels II (harmony gold 0) 2.) Robotech III: the Search for More Money 3.) Tommy Yune's Day Off 4.) Plan 9 from Harmony Gold

Yep. It's a bigger shame that nothing will come of it, except perhaps JT getting perma-banned as yet another "enemy of the true Robotech fans". They'll just see it as evidence that JT is a "Macross purist troll" and cook up an excuse to ban him like they have so many others. I wouldn't go so far as to call it tragic... it's disgusting, to be sure, but it was probably inevitable. Let's be honest here... the Robotech fanbase has been tearing itself apart for the better part of two decades. What we're witnessing here is just the latest in a long series of internal feuds where the Robotech purists (fans who think the "original 85" is the one true Robotech) ostracize one or more of the other groups in the fandom, and eventually brand them with a label and hound them off of Robotech.com. First to go were the fans of the novels (McKinneyists), then the fans of the comics (Spanglerists), the fans who don't approve of what Tommy Yune has done to Robotech (the Macekists), and most recently the fans who like the Japanese originals too (Macross purists). It seems like the only way that die-hard Robotech die-hards have come up with to express their fandom is to persecute anyone they think isn't a fan just like them. Now that the Robotech purists have effectively banished everyone except themselves and labeled themselves the only "true fans", they have nobody else to turn on to prove their fan-ness. So, of course, they've turned on themselves with an old-fashioned witch hunt to root out anyone who doesn't think exactly like they do. Of course, what drove the vast majority of Robotech fans away from the fanbase was the fact that Harmony Gold never produced a viable sequel in 20 years of trying. Simple frustration with a franchise that has been going nowhere for 25 years has driven away more fans than any other cause. No kidding... it take a certain amount of bloody-minded determination (or maybe good old-fashioned denial) to follow a franchise that went nowhere and did nothing for 20 years, and produced a single sequel whose production quality would have been embarrassingly bad back in 2002 when we were getting Macross Zero. My god, the sarcasm is so thick on this sentence you could cut it into blocks.

Yeah, they've made noises about wanting to do it, but it's highly doubtful that they'll actually get their act together in time to save any of those sites. Hell, attempting to explain away all of inconsistencies, plot holes, and stuff that just doesn't make sense is one of the most popular Robotech fan projects. Harmony Gold's been making it work for them for years. Just look at their statements about what's canon... they deliberately worded it such that it throws the door open to all kinds of crazy theories about how all of the non-canon McKinney novels, comic books, and whatnot can still potentially fit into the universe so long as they don't conflict (much) with the so-called "original 85". You want to talk about the cyclical nature of Robotech... look at its message boards. It's been nothing but the same tired, circular arguments over and over again, often with people presenting unfounded claims from past arguments as though they were facts in the new arguments on the same damn topics. It just goes to show how completely out of touch with reality Pizza really is. He's deluded himself into thinking that we give a damn whether or not Harmony Gold manages to squirt out another feeble movie in an attempt to make Robotech relevant to an industry and an audience that haven't given a damn about it in 23 years. He's not a complete idiot though, he's on the ball enough to fully appreciate that the only part of Robotech that actually matters to most of the fans is Macross, and that without Macross tie-ins any future Robotech productions will have little-to-no appeal for all but the most devoted of Robotech fans. Eh, it's no biggie. I'm used to attracting the attention of the crazy ones. I just wish that more of the crazy ones were cute women in their 20's like that one girl who kept trying to get me to look at Ishtar h-doujin and Feff x Nexx yaoi doujin she drew.

Get a good look now, that site's being deleted in a few days when Yahoo! closes Geocities permanently. Every time I see that site, I have the uncontrollable urge to vomit. It's offensive enough that the authors are pilfering stuff from Macross's main timeline for Robotech, they're freely mixing it with stuff from the Macross alternate universe continuity, Gundam, and a bunch of other shows.

Eh, isn't that still the same as saying that you're projecting your desire for sophisticated themes that weren't part of the author's intent onto the show? People with a good, firm grip on reality who find his behavior genuinely obnoxious? Of course, one could make a good case for other Robotech fans stepping up to stop him on the grounds that he's giving Robotech an even worse reputation than it already has, and damaging their credibility by association. Well yeah... that much was obvious from the beginning. We ARE talking about someone who actually believes that load of tripe MEMO thinks is a cogent argument in favor of Harmony Gold having full rights to Macross. It'd be a lot easier to take him seriously if he took the time to fix his spelling and grammar. The quality of his writing seems to be directly proportional to how angry his is, and since he seems to always be about an inch from raging so hard that he vomits blood, he usually writes like a goddamn loon. Unfortunately for the few decent Robotech fans left, MEMO1DOMINION and Maverick_LSC seem to find the behavior Pizza has been displaying a desirable trait in the fanbase. They've been steadily eliminating the decent contributors over the past few months. Give it a year, two at the outside, and people like Pizza the Hutt will be all that's left over on RT.com. It'll be the next RDF HQ/DoZ message board... a hiding place for a few frothy-mouthed fanatics to howl their outrage at the rest of us in relative obscurity.

Ah, I've received another wonderful private message from our mutual friend Pizza the Hutt / Ghost Maker. It seems he really has deluded himself into thinking we care what name he's supposedly lurking under over here. This guy really is a sterling example of the sort of fans who've given Robotech such a dire reputation. He openly professes to not be a Macross fan, yet he claims he's been lurking and posting here pretending to be one for months just to spy on us, as though what we did here was some clandestine operation.

Eh... most Macross fans take a dim view of people trying to pillage material from Macross and other shows to beef up the Robotech universe... the reason why should be fairly obvious. That it happens a lot certainly does nothing to improve people's opinions of such behavior.

Isn't this just a fairly weak justification for "I want to believe it, therefore it's true"? Again... ALIEN TECHNOLOGY. It's one of those specific terms that passed into general usage to describe a whole family of things. Kind of like how most people refer to generic tissues as Kleenex. Originally the term "Valkyrie" only applied to the VF-1 Valkyrie, VF-1R Valkyrie Kai, VF-2 Valkyrie II, and VF-2SS Valkyrie II but it sort of became the common term for a variable fighter along the way. Both, actually. When Kawamori originally drew the concept for his Advanced Valkyrie design series, he called it the VA-X-3. When he later built on the design for his Air Cavalry Chronicles series, he called it the AF-49 (since Air Cavalry Chronicles is not strictly Macross, but just him dicking around with new design ideas). Um, no.

Actually, I think it's really the other way around, that you're reading a lot into the story that frankly wasn't the intent of the Japanese creators or the American rewriters/editors. Yes, the futility and pointlessness of war is a recurring theme, mainly because that was a common theme in many shows of that period, but this isn't Star Trek, these are three unrelated shows smashed together with a hasty rewrite... not a single unified vision, and certainly not a platform for social commentary. It was, after all, a heavily dumbed-down version of the originals marketed to young children. What cure? EoTC establishes that the whole thing is a stable time loop, sending the SDF-3 back in time and making them the root cause of all of the genocide, hatred, and oppression in the galaxy. They don't solve anything. It's not a question of accepting things a face value, it's a matter of the intent of the show's creators, and willing suspension of disbelief. Macross's creators have repeatedly, and on no uncertain terms, established the SDF-1 Macross's length to be 1,210m. That's really not open to debate. That's what the official publications say, and what the animation shows. Yes, the city layout in the original series is slightly unfeasible, but that's what willing suspension of disbelief is for. You're a self-professed gearhead, do you have similar beefs with other sci-fi ships and technologies like this? More often than not, set design for the interior spaces of a ship clashes with the ship's exterior. Star Trek was particularly bad about it, often having large, plot-critical rooms with large windows that were clearly not present on the physical model of the ship. You just sort of have to take the creators at their word. They've done a pretty good job sticking to the 1,200m size in the subsequent animation whenever a Macross-class SDF has appeared... incl. DYRL, Macross II: Lovers Again, Macross Plus, and Macross Frontier. I'm not seeing a problem. Yes, the 58,000-strong civilian population is a bit excessive, but it's something that was undertaken in extraordinary circumstances. The actual mass-production colony ships didn't even carry HALF that, which is far, FAR more feasible in the long term. What's to conclude, there's literally hundreds of sources that give the 1,200m-1,210m figure, and they've done a damn good job of sticking to it in the higher-quality animation that followed the original series. It doesn't really seem to be a debate-worthy subject to me. If you think THAT'S bad, you should let me explain the differences between the two universes sometime... that'll make your eyes cross so hard they'll switch sides. Well, you're not dealing with conventional rocket booster technology, you're dealing with an impulse system cluster, which is essentially a mix of a nuclear pulse rocket and ion thruster. It doesn't have to be very big, and there's no denying that that nozzle cluster is BIG. Just eyeballing it, I'd say the meat of the engines is that large block of space immediately under the city part of the leg... y'know, the mess that's a good 50m or more thick down there. Plenty of space for a large engine system. Ion thrusters aren't the most hardware-intensive of propulsion systems after all. Well, not to split hairs, but the proper term is "Variable Fighter" or "Valkyrie", not "veritech"... that's a Robotech-only term. There are two different models of variable fighter that bear a strong resemblance to the F-117A Nighthawk... both from the main Macross continuity. There's Macross 7's VF-17D/S Nightmare, a special forces VF (see here), and a simplified general-use version that became the main VF of the U.N. forces in the early 2050s... the VF-171 Nightmare Plus (see here). Not sure what the B-2 Spirit-looking thing could be... perhaps this, or this, or perhaps this, from Kawamori's Air Cavalry Chronicles original design series? I assure you there's nothing passive-aggressive about it. This is a simple illustration of the sort of behavior that warrants individual criticism in this thread. Unfortunately, there are a fair few people who behave exactly the same way, and they are those rare Robotech fans who DO get directly criticized for their behavior here. The reason why they warrant criticism is because their... well, crazy... behavior doesn't just reflect poorly on them. These people typically profess to speak for the Robotech fanbase as a whole, and thus shame every Robotech fan with their actions. I think that definitely warrants harsh criticism. It's not a shot at Robotech fans in general. Their unusual devotion aside, most of them are decent-enough people. It's only the most exceptional troublemakers... the ones who give Robotech fans a bad name by association... who ever warrant a mention in this thread.

Speaking of hate mail, I received another delightful private message from our good friend Pizza the Hutt/Wraith_Knight/Ghost Maker/we don't know what he calls himself here because he's never worked up the courage to post. It seems he took considerable umbridge over my description of his recent behavior, and took it upon himself to convey the severity of his displeasure in the same comical fashion he used to badmouth so many others on RobotechX. For Capt Christopher Donovan's benefit, I'll remind everyone that he's been sending hostile messages like this to people for ages, usually with no provocation. Pizza's one of those aforementioned Robotech die-hards who has an inexplicable axe to grind where Macross is concerned, and feels that anyone who criticizes Harmony Gold and/or Robotech is 1.) not a real Robotech fan, and 2.) a "Macross purist troll" engaged in some grand and pointless conspiracy to ruin the fun of the "real" Robotech fans (the people who think Shadow Chronicles is perfect and Harmony Gold is staffed by people who are all more wonderful than Mary Poppins). And now, the lulzy message itself:

Eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other... Scott still died and went to another place full of bright white light to be with his dead Invid girlfriend. Most people would sum that up as "Invid heaven", but whatever floats your boat. Which is funny, because Robotech's storytelling is typically follows the model of "humanity vs the evil aliens", and the aliens invariably end up either being wiped out to the last man, or are liberated from a more evil alien race only to end up subordinate to the human forces. Since Prelude pretty much recanonized big chunks of the Sentinels comics, that really kind of brings it full circle to the McKinneyist outcome where humanity is ultimately the source of all the universe's evils. (which is lulzy for several reasons) You might not like his tone, but he raises a good point. The attitude that the differences between Robotech and Macross don't matter might fly with Robotech fans (who are used to excusing large discontinuities and total disconnects because of the nature of their favorite show), but it usually does not fly with Macross fans and in chats about Macross, because like as not, they are different universes. The only thing they have in common is the animation. You also have to remember that unlike Robotech, which cannot use the SDF-1 in anything except the Macross Saga and comic books, Macross has been able to bring the ship back (or others of its class) again and again... which really helps pin down things like size. Let's be honest here... the original Macross was not the highest quality production, even for its time. This is all hand-drawn animation, and so of course there are bound to be some inconsistencies... and not just in terms of goofs on the part of the animators, but also perspective. Subsequent productions have had much higher quality, which solves a lot of the problems like that. But the fact remains that Macross's creators have never once backed down from the 1,210/1,200m numbers they came up with for the size of the SDF-1 Macross pre- and post-refit. Frankly, in terms of scale to other objects of known size, the 1,210m number used in the TV series fits just fine. Yeah, it's a little unfeasible to cram 20,000 crew and 58,000 refugees into a ship that size, but hey, this is willing suspension of disbelief here. So long as the story is compelling and the characters are deep, who gives a damn if the ship theoretically should be shown to be a lot more crowded than it is? The canonicity of Macross: Do You Remember Love? is... complicated. I'm going to do my best to explain it, but I might get a bit wordy, so please bear with me. Macross: Do You Remember Love? isn't a retcon, per-se... it's an alternate depiction of the events of Space War 1 which were originally shown in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series. Strictly speaking, Macross's creators maintain that the "true account of Space War 1" is somewhere between the different depictions of the war. Over the years, Macross's creators have used DYRL designs and TV designs side by side, depending on which version of the particular character or mecha they happen to prefer, though in some cases both versions of a mecha are canon, such as the SDF-1 w/ and w/o ARMDs... the former being the post-2012 refit version and mass-production model, or the VF-1's different hands and cockpit being a block upgrade. DYRL also has an odd status as an in-universe movie that came out in 2031 and inspired many of the characters in later shows to pursue careers in music, though there is some indication that the in-universe version differs somewhat, including the wedding of Max and Milia, which isn't actually in DYRL. On the other hand, the alternate universe continuity of Macross II: Lovers Again treats DYRL as the 100% accurate depiction of Space War 1, and the TV series as non-canon. Much less confusing that way. If you're still with me after that, Mr. March's website, the Macross Mecha Manual, has a section devoted to DYRL which includes a page devoted to the DYRL-variant SDF-1 Macross. Among the lineart entries is one particular piece which is printed in a few artbooks, and shows the orientation of part of the city inside the engine blocks ("legs") of the Macross. You can find the DYRL SDF-1 variant here, the city section art is at the very bottom of the "line art" part of the article. If you want to see the movie itself, there's a fan-dub available on YouTube, and most reputable torrent sites have one or more releases of the movie. EDIT: Because that third-to-last paragraph was a MESS!

No... unless that something is the status of Zen's RT.com and RTX member accounts.

I just finished reading the leaked material you sent me, and I find myself unable to find words strong enough to properly convey just how awful it really is. In a mere six pages, it opened my mind to a level of incompetence that I didn't even know was possible. This goes WAY beyond the allegations of fanwankery and a creative staff incapable of creating quality material. This is truly filmmaking on a level not seen since the passing of Ed Wood. If the plot of the so-called "Shadow Saga" has not changed materially since this leak, then we will almost certainly be forced to concede that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was the high point of the Shadow trilogy. Maybe Harmony Gold should just go for broke and hire Rob Liefeld as their creative director and attach Uwe Boll to direct. At least then it could stand a chance of hitting that hard-to-reach "so bad it's good" zone. Eh, the powers that be in both franchises said 1,200m give or take 10m... I'm not seeing the problem. How did my ass get dragged into this conversation? Believe me, if the plot is still based on the concepts in that leaked draft, not moving forward with Shadow Rising is probably the nicest thing Harmony Gold has ever done for Robotech fans.

Many thanks, I'll go have a look at that right now.

I would go further, and suggest he read the rest of this thread before trying to pass judgment on all of us. If he wasn't constantly telling us that the criticisms we've voiced are not legitimate, that our opinions are not valid, and if he was not completely dismissive of what others have to say most of the time, I could possibly see that as being true. He needs to take a breather, read the rest of the thread, and accept that other people are entitled to their opinions too. Once he stops having a go at us for having opinions, everything will be fine. Holy crap, really? I approve of them killing off the pre-existing cast (if only because it'll force them to stop relying almost exclusively on characters from the OSM), but damn if most of that doesn't sound like a bad fanfic.

There's a world of difference between building on what's been previously established, and simply COPYING something that's already been made, changing the appearance a little bit and presenting it as new material. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles falls into the latter category, as anyone who's even remotely familiar with the last few McKinney novels and the last few books of the old Sentinels comics could tell you. So yes, the criticism that the Shadow Chronicles was unoriginal, and that much of its material was pilfered wholesale from previous Robotech features is entirely valid.

You'd be surprised how often they actually voice that as though it were a legitimate counterargument whenever they make claims that run counter to what's published in the official stats on Robotech.com. I don't think ShadowLogan was able to go more than half a page without saying that the stats from the OSM shouldn't be applied to Robotech. So speaketh someone who's wasted how much of our time by bitching about behavior that he only THINKS goes on here on a regular basis. Do us all a favor. Go back and read the rest of the thread. Yes, what we have to say IS legitimate criticism. It might not be nice, polite, constructive criticism, but that doesn't rob it of its legitimacy. Naturally, but as we've said repeatedly, if all you're here to do is defend Robotech from legitimate criticism, then you're here for all the wrong reasons. Also, there's nothing elitist about our "bashing", it's legitimate criticism and our personal observations about the state of Robotech, Harmony Gold, and the people who prop up both. Considering this is a Macross site, wouldn't that make you a pro-Robotech troll, rather than making the people telling you this isn't a Robotech site anti-Robotech trolls. You came here in "attack mode", trying to tell us that we were out of line for making legitimate criticisms, comments, and observations about Harmony Gold, Robotech, and the Robotech fanbase. You're getting flak from the people you're attacking BECAUSE YOU'RE ATTACKING. Pull the stick out of your ass, take a five minute breather, and realize that people are entitled to their opinions, and no amount of pissing and moaning from you is going to change that. You think he cares? So far, he's shown us that the only opinions he considers valid are pro-Robotech ones.