Seto Kaiba

He is... they went out of their way to make him stereotypically Russian, right down to a borderline Pavel Chekov-accent.

Yeah, the slow pace of releases for FSS material really doesn't make it an easy series to follow... doesn't help that most of Books XI and XII still haven't been translated either. I only remember half this stuff because I have a really good memory for detail. I have heard that there are translations for the Prima Classe Hugtrang insert and part of Book XI floating around though, any truth to those rumors?

If we're lucky, Chronicle might even step up and offer us a corret(ed) romanization for his name, which could clear this whole mess up altogether.

Oh totally... and if anything the "new" comics written under the supervision of Tommy Yune are even worse offenders than the old comics were. In the span of only five issues they establish that before the events of the "Macross Saga", that all of the following characters had met and knew each other prior to the start of the Macross Saga: Roy Fokker Henry Gloval Eli Leonard T.R. Edwards Bowie Grant Claudia Grant Janice Merin Donald Hayes Jack Archer And to think they establish all that in like the first two issues. They also went to great pains to establish that Donald Hayes, Roy Fokker, Henry Gloval, and a handful of others were within eyeshot of the crash of the SDF-1 in 1999... symptomatic of their other problem "every character must have been present at every major event, even ones we just came up with".

They tried that stunt in the Macross universe with Macross II and in the Robotech universe with Robotech 3000. Actually, I think you could easily argue that, with few exceptions, the entire animated Macross continuity uses this particular concept with fairly good results... the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA is just the most extreme case. The gaps of a decade or so between most major Macross titles allows for a bit of low-key handwavery to justify pretty much any universe developments necessary to the story the show's creators want to tell. It works because the gap is large enough to accommodate some fairly major changes, but not so large that you lose everything of the established setting. One of the problems that sank Robotech 3000 was that the show's story took place so far into the future that nothing of the setting was recognizable... for all practical purposes it was a completely different universe from the Robotech the fans knew, and as such might as well have been a different universe altogether. What'd he have, overall, like five lines counting his death scream in the entire original trilogy? Oh god yes, Jonathan Wolfe and Thomas Riley "T.R." Edwards are by far the worst cases of "Boba Fett syndrome" in Robotech... ironically enough, the chief sufferer of that tragic syndrome used "Colonel Jonathan Wolff" as his handle on the Robotech.com message boards.

It's not exactly a secret that the process of editing and rewriting Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada into Robotech was carried out in an extremely disorganized fashion. In various interviews, members of the cast and staff have alluded to there having been as many as three or four episodes being rewritten at any given time, often with little or no interaction between the writers. Presumably a great many of the various inconsistencies, discontinuities, and plot holes can be attributed to this bad practice. Some of the deliberate changes, like adding the "SDF-2" to the dialogue and many of the screwball decisions about the continuity are just the result of inept writing and generally poor decision-making. Not really, no... Robotech fan culture, deprived of new material through virtually all of its life, has centered itself around retreading the same old, unanswerable questions. Various Harmony Gold mooks have, at one time or another, attempted to officially address many of the major screwups and intentional (harebrained) changes, but I don't think the fans really WANT an answer. As we've seen in the SDF-2 debate over there, even when an official answer is available, the fans will never be satisfied with it because once these questions are answered they no longer have anything to talk about, their franchise having produced nothing of substance for nearly 25 years. Because the fanbase has been starved for new content ages, they've had to turn on the TV series and try to make all something significant of all the minutiae scattered throughout the series with a zeal that borders on the obsessive. There are a bunch of guys on RT.com who do nothing but go through the dialogue with a fine-toothed comb and then barrage everyone present with detailed questions about one-shot or background characters. Before the new Star Wars trilogy, I guess we could've called this sort of thing "Boba Fett syndrome", where fans are compelled to try and make every minor character with a handful of lines into a sophisticated character with an immense backstory.

Hmmm... how can I display my approval for this image with the proper dignity and gravitas? L-O-V-E! HAP-PY MI-SA!

Not a lot of information is available on the Yen Xing... it only briefly appears in the manga during one of the chapters set during the AD era, and only for a few panels at that. I'm not aware of any artbooks which feature or cover the Yen Xing either. Like the only other known example of a machine messiah, the Yen Xing is a relic from the AD era that completely outclasses modern mortar headds. Since it was developed long before the introduction of fatimas, it can be assumed that the Yen Xing is operated via a direct neural interface with the pilot. The Yen Xing was developed by the Farus Die Kannon Empire (AKA the "Super Empire", the greatest nation of the AD era) for use by the Empire's finest chevaliers, genetically engineered supersoldiers whose descendants became the headdliners of the Joker era. The only known appearance of the Yen Xing in the manga to date has been a brief battle in the late AD era where a squadron of Yen Xings belonging to the Empress of Flame's personal guard cut an enemy fleet to pieces using only their speids. As of yet, there are no known operators of Yen Xing machine messiahs, though it's possible that Super Empire chevaliers Kensei Skins and Princess I Yarn Vatshu (Dougulas Kaien's biological parents, no less) may have used Yen Xings at some point, as both were members of the elite Black Chevaliers. It's also likely that Sir Nakkandra View Swans (the ancestor of many modern headdliners) may have used one at some point in the past. The only known Yen Xing components which are still in service are a pair of Yen Xing engines which were adapted by Dr. Zebee Corter to power the Empress Flame, the flag MH of the Hathuha Union Republics.

Yeah, HMV.co.jp's English side has had the VF-19 Master File up for preorder for a while now.

Pretty much a staple of all things Robotech... "Hey, war's over! Oh hell, now we've got to fight a new evil alien race even more deadly than the one we just finished beating who didn't warrant serious mention until they were practically on our doorstep!" Of course, it also comes with Robotech's imitation Federation where they "ally" themselves with every alien race they liberate or conquer, and essentially force them into servitude to fuel the human war machine for the next major war against evil aliens. This, my friends, is what's known as a "wall-banger". Just one of a whole host of idiot retcons in the McKinney novels intended to redeem characters Robotech reduced to cardboard cutouts, and/or just dick with the story to make it more interesting from the author's viewpoint.

LOL! Well, I never much cared for all the clunky chicken-walker type mecha that were so often trotted out as iconic mecha of Battletech, but those are some ATROCIOUS designs.

Y'know what... I can live with some subtle errors in the minor details of the merchandise so long as Macross II gets some more acknowledgment and new products. Clearly they checked at least one canon source, since they got the weight correct and the right pilot name down, but didn't want to be arsed to dig around for its size and made an educated guess based on the main continuity trends of new fighters being generally larger than the VF-1. It won't stop me from hunting down every Macross II valk that ends up being represented in the 1/250 collection.

Better hope that "theory" doesn't reach Kawamori's ears... he'd probably make it official. Macross 7 Trash already gave us VF-4G's equipped with spirita weapons.

It looks nice, and it's nice to see they've managed to spell Nexx Gilbert's name correctly, but the incorrect U.N. Spacy kite variant and the wrong size listed for the fighter kind of spoils it for me... how they came up with 15.2 meters is a mystery, since the super variant is only 14 meters long, and that's counting the big protruding railgun barrel. The unarmored variant is only supposed to be ~13.5m long. (Calculation from the size comparison in This is Animation Special #5 yields sizes of exactly 14m for the SAP version, and 13.505m for the unarmored version). A shame, to be sure, but something we're used to by now. Indeed.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but apart from confirming the 2x12 figure for the VF-19's leg launchers, it doesn't look like Macross Chronicle has shed any additional light on the capacity of the micro-missile launchers used on the VF-17, VF-19, and VF-22. I've checked Macross Plus U.N. Spacy mechanic sheets 01A-C (YF-19), 02A-B (YF-21), Macross 7 mechanic sheets 02A-B (VF-19 Kai), 04A (VF-17T), 05A (VF-22S), 07A-C (VF-17), 08A (VF-19), and Macross Dynamite 7 mechanic sheets 02A (VF-22S) and 03A (VF-19P), and unfortunately aside from the VF-19F/S sheet and VF-19 Kai sheet, none of them mention the capacity of the internal missile launchers, just the number of launchers and their location on the airframe.

Always good... the more esoteric the better in my opinion. In the animation? Yes, it does... though not the military-use version seen in Macross: Do You Remember Love?. In Macross Dynamite 7, the commercial version (VT-1C) is shown to be used by both pirates and private citizens, and Basara briefly pilots an olive-drab VT-1C he "borrowed" from the Hoyly family in his first attempt to sing to the galactic whales. EDIT: I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the "Valkyrie Work" (for want of a better name) that also briefly appears in Macross Dynamite 7 doing construction in space is probably a commercial-use VT-1 as well... though it's painted orange with some yellow and black striped hazard trim. None that I'm aware of... the only such "unofficial codename" that I think has an established reason is probably the VEFR-1 Electronic Warfare Valkyrie, which is referred to as the "Funny Chinese" because of the radome's position in battroid mode makes it look vaguely like it's wearing one of those conical straw hats. Can't think of a time it does off the top of my head, no... Aside from the so-called "dark bird" paint scheme which briefly appears in Super Dimension Fortress Macross ep5 and the dark gray/black paintjob on the VF-17D/S Nightmare in Macross 7, which could possibly both be interpreted as space-use or night combat-use stealth paintjobs, I don't think there are any canon camo-type paintjobs. It does seem a bit futile, since no amount of camo paint is going to make it hard to spot a 40 foot tall robot stomping around a city or through the woods. Can't help ya there, but if you post in the "Wanted" section I'm sure someone will be able to point you in the right direction.

Ah well, I'll take my content where I can get it... at least the Macross II material is being covered in the glossary sheet, even though we've had precious few mechanic sheets and half of the U.N. Spacy material has yet to even get touched on. I guess it was inevitably they'd cram them all onto one sheet... though I wonder if we'll get both battlepods and powered suits on the same page, or they'll do a two-page spread for it. I'd hope for the latter, but sadly suspect the former.

No, the saying goes nothing like that... it's "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades", and it's Semtex, not "symtex".

While that would be incredibly awesome, I think the anachronic presentation of the story would probably be a huge hurdle for any attempt at an animated series. It might work well in print, but in cinema it doesn't work quite so well.

It was Clash of the Bionoids, not Attack of the Bionoids... and it was a heavily edited version released under Celebrity Entertainment's "Just for Kids" line. I've never seen it myself, but I've heard the dub was atrocious, and nearly thirty minutes of footage were removed, including part of the ending to make it look like Hikaru died.

Granted, the Macross's original designation of Alien StarShip One results in an unintentionally offensive abbreviation (ASS-1) because of language differences is amusing in a juvenile sort of way, it has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand... that's really an issue for Super Dimension Fortress Macross and to a lesser extent Macross Zero. It doesn't really have any bearing on the Macross Frontier movie. Hmmm... yet another book I'm tempted to buy now. Curse my holiday-crippled budget!

Now that would definitely be a more promising situation for Macross fans... having the rest-of-world Macross distribution and merchandising rights in the hands of a company that actually had a clue how to run a franchise without having to base their entire business plan around keeping the competition out by any means necessary or resorting to chicanery to keep their fanbase loyal. Of course, Macross fans will naturally see this as a very desirable outcome, as it potentially means there's one less obstacle to stateside Macross licensing. For Robotech fans, this is nothing less than a nightmare scenario, as losing the Macross license essentially means the end for Harmony Gold's Robotech franchise. Not only is the Macross series far and away the most popular part of Robotech, almost all of Harmony Gold's Robotech merchandise is Macross-based. Without the Macross license, the story of the "original 85" falls apart, and their merchandising plans collapse.

Eh, I doubt it... I think he tried to cover too much in response to that one question and confused himself, or that what he said didn't come out like he intended it. We can confirm that they acquired the rest-of-world merchandising rights for the DYRL movie easily enough, but they've never even alluded to having any rights beyond that in any official statement, nor have they ever announced or even alluded to having the distribution rights during the actual content portion of their panel discussions. After all the noise they made about the AnimEigo release Macross and the ADV dub of same, that they would keep quiet about having the distribution rights to DYRL makes no sense whatsoever. Very tempting... I probably would, though I seldom attend conventions and killed my travel budget altogether until the economy stabilizes a bit.

If, by some strange means, Harmony Gold had actually acquired the distribution rights to DYRL, I very much doubt they would keep it quiet. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's odds-on they'd do their level best to cash in on such a notorious title in every way possible, including DVD and Blu-Ray releases, and a veritable marketing blitz at their convention panels. Instead, the only rights that Tommy Yune ever mentions them acquiring are the merchandising rights, which fits perfectly with their behavior, releasing a handful of DYRL merch as Macross collectibles and otherwise just sweeping the whole affair under the rug.

Um... where exactly in that video? I skipped to the 4 minute mark and was unable to locate any remarks as to Harmony Gold's ability/inability to release DYRL in the US and abroad. All he does say is that Harmony Gold acquired the merchandising rights to DYRL outside of Japan after news reports of the Macross legal situation in Japan prompted them to check with Tatsunoko to see if the rights they had acquired under license had been affected in any way. EDIT: Found it... but he doesn't elaborate on it... he says they can "release it as a product" but then only talks about the merchandising rights to the movie. The only rights he actually says they acquired are the "rest of world" merchandising rights to the movie... which makes me think that the "release it as a product" line is a goof and he meant to say "release products based on it". Well yes, but this isn't news... we already know that. Because they don't... I don't think they've ever claimed to have the distribution rights to it. If they had, Macross fans would probably be a lot less ill-disposed towards them, given a high-quality DYRL release in the US.