Seto Kaiba

Good luck with that... you'll probably have an easier time convincing the entire Harmony Gold "creative staff" to commit seppuku. There wasn't much original about the "original" series, for the obvious reasons, and most of what came after just imitated whatever mainstream sci-fi series was popular at the time. Robotech II: the Sentinels was modeled on Star Trek, Robotech 3000 was modeled on the generic CG action shows of the late 90's (Roughnecks, ReBoot), and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was modeled on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Even many of the comics stole stories, characters, and mecha from other shows. The only parts of Robotech that can honestly be called original with a straight face are probably the McKinney novels... and we all know how much the majority of the fans love them. Wanna bet? When Rick Hunter dies, that will be the end of Robotech. A great many fans only bought/watched the Shadow Chronicles movie because they were promised that Rick Hunter would return and somehow become relevant to the story again. Take him away, and you take away the reason most of the fans were still watching.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were the case... It's common knowledge that the "Macross Saga" is far and away the most popular installment of Robotech, and that many of those who want to see Sentinels or the Shadow Chronicles continued feel that way because they want to follow the adventures of the "Macross Saga" cast, rather than the less-likable berks who came after. If the fans found out that Harmony Gold and Warner Bros couldn't use much of the "Macross Saga" for future works, it would almost certainly mean a massive drop in interest in future Robotech shows, and possibly a massive drop in interest in Robotech itself. Just look at the distribution of products produced since 2001... well over 3/4 of it is Macross-related... toys, apparel, comic books, statues, you name it. Southern Cross is almost nonexistent in their merchandise line, and Mospeada is a token handful of products compared to the huge amount of Macross stuff they've made. Even the sole New Generation comic "Robotech: Invasion" had to have a Macross-related mini-comic about Mars Base and the Zentradi in each issue to make sure it would sell. For all the empty talk about how Robotech is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, the reality of the merchandising indicates that Robotech has largely been coasting on the success of Macross, and that without it, they have little in the way of future prospects. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Steve, Tommy, and Kevin are lying... their remarks are, as far as I can tell, truthful. Deliberately misleading, yes, but still truthful. Remarks like "we have all the international rights" and "we own everything Robotech" give the average fan the mistaken impression that Harmony Gold has the right to do whatever they want with all the content of the original works as well.

You're probably in the wrong place then... this IS MacrossWorld after all... Feel free to stop me when I lose the plot here... You didn't like that a few, belligerent fans of the original works criticize the Robotech adaptation on a site which also caters (albeit minimally) to fans of the originals, so you left there and came to a site devoted exclusively to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series and its sequels, which you say you don't even like very much, to defend Robotech from perfectly legitimate observations, criticism, and legal discussion? Forgive me, but your logic seems to be horribly screwed up. I can't imagine why you telling the marketing director how to do his job didn't go over well... Still, that's par for the course as far as Harmony Gold is concerned. Their three great business strategies are to answer questions with an deliberately vague statement that only superficially appears to answer the question, to deny that criticism is legitimate or widespread in any way, and to shift the blame elsewhere when they can't simply write it off as the muttering of a few malcontents. Yes there is. The reasons why not can be found here, and in copyright law: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=29850 For what it's worth... welcome to MacrossWorld.

I think I threw up a little bit reading that... Wasn't that Carl Macek's alleged grand plan? To try and make some kind of point by having Minmay/Minmei be incredibly obnoxious, selfish, and stupid? Well, there is the outside chance that someone WILL finally provide something that adds to the body of information we have on the limitations of Harmony Gold's claim on Macross outside Japan. Of course, as we discovered recently, to our scorn, many of those claiming to have such information were blowing smoke.

What a waste... it was clearly far too optimistic of me to think that they could put aside their fanaticism and discuss the limitations of Harmony Gold's rights to Macross rationally. Too many of the remaining Robotech.com members are entirely too willing to indulge in self-delusion to escape the impending disappointments of the live-action movie and the Shadow Rising movie. I guess it's a coping mechanism for those who've been following a franchise that's been going nowhere for the last 23 years. I'll still be keeping an eye on the other legal thread there, at least in the short term, because I'm quite curious to see what Maverick_LSC concluded after doing his own research. Assuming, of course, that he posts it at all. From the sound of it, he was trying to support MEMO, and ended up forming the very conclusion he was arguing against. Other than that, I really have no interest in the goings-on over there anymore. There's nothing new or newsworthy happening now or in the foreseeable future, and even the flow of "ask the expert"-type questions has slowed to a trickle.

Shhh... they'll have a goddamn coronary if they ever figure that out... better that they stay ignorant. You gotta judge that one by different standards... it wasn't that Xake didn't want to keep it going, it's just that he didn't know HOW, because I was the one doing ALL of the behind-the-scenes work and coordination. I got busy with my own projects (the genesis of my Macross II site) and he just didn't know how to keep it running, so it fell apart. It's the ONLY piece of documented evidence that even comes CLOSE to supporting MEMO's belief that Harmony Gold owns everything from the original Macross series outside of Japan. Of course, as I illustrated previously, it does not mean quite what he believes it does.

Your confusion is understandable... as to whether the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series or DYRL is the correct adaptation of Space War 1, Kawamori essentially ducks the question by saying that the "true" Space War 1 (if such a thing could be said to exist) is a middle ground between the various depictions of the war (possibly one very similar to Macross: the First). While DYRL is nominally a "movie-within-the-universe", it would probably be more accurate to call it a pseudo-canon depiction of Space War 1 as well (at least, for the main timeline, for the alternate universe of Macross II and its prequels, DYRL is the correct version of Space War 1). Anyhoo... after DYRL, Kawamori and co. seem to have decided that they liked a lot of the DYRL designs better than their TV series counterparts, and so they simply substituted the DYRL designs for the original designs, and only occasionally justified the change with an in-universe rationale... For Exsedol Folmo/4970, it's really not clear if his DYRL or TV appearance is meant to be the correct one. It's mentioned that he WAS micloned at one time, but returned to his giant Zentradi stature and realtered his body makeup because he was afraid of losing his cerebral capacity and memories. It seems likely that he may have altered his body makeup to a more human-like TV appearance when micloned, and changed back to his DYRL appearance when at full Zentradi size. In Macross Frontier, an unnamed records officer similar in appearance to the DYRL Exsedol design is seen serving with the New U.N. Spacy's 33rd Marines under Major Ogotwhai (who also looks suspiciously similar to DYRL Vrlitwhai, and may be related to Vrlitwhai 7018 by cloning according to Macross Chronicle). DYRL stuff crept into a few other places... in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier, DYRL-style Zentradi commanders (ala Vrlitwhai 7018) are seen, as does Vrlitwhai's DYRL apperance, the DYRL pilot jumpsuits, the DYRL-style Meltrandi ships (Fleet of the Strongest Women), the Block 6 version of the VF-1 with squared-off hands, and, of course, the DYRL-style Macross-class SDF (which seems to be the mass-production type).

Wouldn't matter anyway, I'm not gonna be able to start on it 'till February 2010 at the earliest. Sad but true.

Yeah, I know... when I heard MS IGLOO 2 was going to be about the Earth Federation Ground Forces, I was kind of disappointed to hear they weren't going to figure the RX-79[G] Gundam Ground Type or the RGM-79G... still, I didn't expect the M61A5 MBT and RTX-440 Guntank to be as kickass as they were.

I've never heard anything to that effect... I've seen a fair few Robotech websites fall apart because their webmasters stopped caring, or their community members turned on each other and tore the site to pieces tho. Most of them seem to have come down because their webmasters got sick of spending years and years for the next Robotech whatever with nothing to show for it.

Actually... you hit on something I was thinking of doing. The suggestion that I and the other knowledgeable, productive folks should give up trying to convince Tommy Yune to let us fix the Robotech.com Infopedia and devote our attention to a separate, comprehensive website for Robotech was originally tabled by chrisk a while back. It sort of took on a life of its own after talking to a bunch of people over on Robotech.com and RobotechX. A lot of fans seemed really interested in the idea of a site that gave fair coverage to things like the McKinney novels and old comics, instead of focusing almost exclusively on the animated features. Kinda gave up on the idea of revamping RobotechX, since MEMO came out in favor of trolling Macross fans... so we're thinking of either getting a separate site for it, or doing it as a subdomain of my current site. Gotta find some writers who know more about Southern Cross and Mospeada tho, since my knowledge of both is limited. Oh, don't worry... the rate of questions there has fallen off to practically zero, so I don't do much there anymore.

Yeah, she rode along in the cameraman's seat in Hibiki's VC-079 twice.

It's quite sad, really... the people who, these days, are routinely being attacked as "not real fans" or "Macross purist trolls" are often the people who've done the MOST for the Robotech fandom. I've done just as much for the fans of Robotech as I have for the fans of Macross over the years, answering questions, helping people with websites, helping people find rare collectibles... but the Robotech fanbase has been so thoroughly neglected and mistreated by Harmony Gold that most of the rational, reasonable fans have been driven away. More than anything else, this is a study in the long, slow death of a franchise. Harmony Gold's hamhandedness in handling Robotech kept the franchise from producing anything original or of quality for DECADES. That, plus the general attitude of many American animation enthusiasts towards Robotech (condemnation as "anime crap") and the general attitude of many anime enthusiasts who started on newer and more sophisticated fare (condemnation as a poorly-executed rewrite) has led the fanbase having a bizarre sort of persecution complex. Even more perverse is the apparent desire of franchise staff at Harmony Gold (like Kevin McKeever) to keep the hostility the Robotech die-hards feel towards Macross as strong as possible. Why? We can only guess... but the logical conclusion would be that they want to keep their meal ticket from jumping ship to another franchise by any means necessary, even if it means maintaining a strawman enemy for them to rail against. Just look at how they stir up their fans at panels in that video MEMO posted... gabbing about how Robotech had been fansubbed in Japan as though it were a news report about how they were winning "The War on Macross". Actually, I'd say it's a matter of who gets screwed over the least, really... As is so often the case, it's the Robotech fans who are getting it in the shorts. Yeah, we Macross fans have to pay a bit extra for our fix, and watch our stuff in fansubs, but we at least get something of quality every few years. All they get is a feeble squirt of low-quality swill every decade or so, and the fanworks people come up with... but they're driving the creators of the fanworks away too. Speaking of being totally comfortable with adding useless and irrelevant information to Robotech, I got to reading through some of the old Robotech comics when a friend of mine posed me a question about them (he's new to anime, just cutting his teeth on Full Metal Panic!) since he'd heard about Robotech on 4chan. So we dug them out of the bin I keep them in and flipped thru a bunch of them. I must confess, I had forgotten just how often the authors tried to inject originality by stealing characters, mecha, and often whole stories from other books. There was a lot of tracing of DYRL VF-1 art, a lot of derivatives of the DYRL VF-1 flightsuit, and strangest of all... what appear to be cameos of a bunch of characters from Macross II: Lovers Again, Macross Plus, Independence Day, and Gundam in various books... the most blatant of which being Captain Higgins from Macross Plus.

Definitely Sheryl... she actually has a bit of flight training (sorry Misa) so the odds of her crashing the Valkyrie into the first horizontal surface she sees are pretty slim, and is a lot less obnoxious than Ranka (a useless little moepanda who's always seeking approval). 'course, if I had my say, it'd be Ishtar in the back seat instead... but she didn't make the list somehow (shame on you!).

I know... it's like looking into /b/...

I was forwarded the link just a little while ago, and thought it was both amusing and highly illustrative of exactly what's wrong with the Robotech franchise these days. Thanks to the years of having nothing worth speaking about, and their sole, lackluster sequel, the only serious Robotech fans left are the fanatics who can't comprehend why anyone would criticize Robotech. Shadow Rising is still in production limbo, as far as I can tell. Kevin McKeever said it was on hiatus, and then came out and tried to quell the resulting brouhaha by saying that he meant they were working on other parts of it, not that it was on hold. No release date has been announced, vague or otherwise.

Eh, that's just a fan-film that'll never be completed. It's not like it's a sanctioned work of Harmony Gold's. In other news, it looks like the incredibly rude and cowardly man-children of Robotech Factor, a spanish-speaking Robotech fansite, have also been following the legal debate on Robotech.com, and are determinedly badmouthing those of us who are arguing the facts. http://www.robotechfactor.com.ar/foro/viewtopic.php?t=465 I'm going to have to have words with WDKaiserV1 next time I see him...

Yeah, that link doesn't give useful information at all... it says nothing we don't already know... that the court rulings have not changed the disposition of the rights in such a way that Harmony Gold has lost the ability to use the footage for their "Macross Saga" or to produce toys based on it. Under the law, the copyright on Robotech only covers those parts of Robotech which did not exist in the original work... so basically, only the altered story. The only way MEMO's absurd claims will ever become correct will be if the fundamental operating principles of copyright law are changed dramatically.

Slight misunderstanding on your part... they can use the designs from that series for merchandise only... they can't use those designs in new animated or live-action motion pictures. Because, at some point (somewhere ~2004 by the look of it) Harmony Gold acquired the merchandising rights to DYRL... again, JUST the merchandising rights. They can't release DYRL or use DYRL designs in animated or live-action motion pictures, but they can make and/or distribute merchandise for it. That's how we got that horrible, cheaply-made atrocity they're calling the Stealth Valkyrie. No, they can't use those designs to make a new series... they only have the film distribution and merchandising rights to SDF Macross and only the merchandising rights to DYRL. It's not just you... MEMO claims that he wore the videotape out rewinding and replaying that section for whatever purpose. It seems highly suspicious, since that's the only part of the tape affected, and it's affected in highly convenient spots. Not only is the first part of the statement ambiguous, but there's another reason it doesn't support MEMO's claims... Since the term "international rights" is at best a vague one, I called up a broadcast arts professor of my acquaintance and asked him what the typical definition of "international rights" was... surprise surprise... it means exactly what I'd thought it meant... international film distribution and merchandising rights... something we know Harmony Gold does have. Par for the course... Tommy makes a generally truthful but deliberately ambiguous statement, MEMO interprets statement to mean something that supports his personal opinion, MEMO argues his point, citing vague remark as irrefutable evidence and trying to push aside such mundane concerns as court documents and copyright law. Yeah, that's how I read it as well. Possibly the most telling indicator that we are in fact correct is the recent behavior of Harmony Gold. In 2002-2004, they churned out a few Macross-derived comic books, some DYRL toys, and a game, but when the time came to make the new movie, they killed every recognizable Macross character and redesigned the only plot-critical one, then went out of their way to avoid any and all references to Macross in the dialogue... to such a degree that it became painfully obvious. Even in Prelude, which was a pretty blatant recycling of Robotech II: the Sentinels Book IV, they avoided showing the Battle of Tiresia, where a horde of those goofy "Invid Inorganics" square off against squadrons of Spartas hovertanks and VF-1 Valkyries in the middle of the city... they avoided showing Minmei's face, made Rick unrecognizable from the start, and most of the other supposedly familiar characters were already mostly unrecognizable. But perhaps the most blatant dodge of a Macross reference came in the movie itself, when whiny main character Marcus Rush is bitching about how he wants to kill all the aliens, and Maia Sterling (supposedly the second or third child of Max and "Miriya") pops up and says "If it weren't for an alien, you'd be dead right now" and then points out that she is "half-alien". Note, not "half-Zentradi"... "half-alien". They went out of their way with potentially confusing dialogue to avoid even using the word "Zentradi". As pointed out by other users on RT.com, there were also many other occasions where they passed up some obvious chances for some fanservice references to the "Macross Saga", which would almost certainly have gone over well with the fans. What's more, they've mysteriously avoided quashing that legal debate thread on Robotech.com's message boards... if I and the other users arguing that Harmony Gold can't use the intellectual property of Macross were wrong, you can bet Kevin McKeever would've showed up almost right away, told us to shut up, that we were dead wrong, and locked the thread, as is his usual pattern when someone challenges the company line... and then crowed about it later in the officer's forum. Instead... the thread has run for nearly 300 posts of multiple users arguing that MEMO is full of crap, and that HG can't use the designs of Macross in the live-action movie or any other sequel, without so much as a single post from McKeever. Yes gentlemen, I think we're spot-on with our interpretation of the rulings and the law..

Too true... most of the die-hards I've met have been in their thirties, and the mere suggestion that Robotech might not be perfect sends them into the sort of nerd rage normally only seen when Trekkies debate whether Kirk or Picard was the better captain, and most of them are firmly convinced that Harmony Gold is doing an awesome job with Robotech. MEMO's the one who posted the video... as part of his desperate, last-ditch attempt to prove me wrong on Robotech.com. It goes without saying that he failed spectacularly... made even more amusing by the fact that the crucial section of the video he claimed proved Harmony Gold had all the rights to Macross proved the opposite, and most of the rest was just a hilarious attempt to make Robotech appear more popular than it actually is. He probably disabled the comments to stop Macross fans from laughing themselves silly and telling him he's a twit.

SMS is field-testing the VF-25 Messiah prior to its adoption by the New U.N. Spacy.

If you're going to bash MEMO, at least bash him for something he can control... like his constant, obnoxious, parrot-like repetition and provably-wrong interpretation of the Harmony Gold company line. His physical appearance has nothing at all to do with what he posts. And highly illustrative of the Harmony Gold mindset... "so long as we're not the crappiest thing out there, we're doing great!" They have the same mindset as the guys who sell imitation brand speakers out of the back of a van. Hey Big West... you readin' this? Good ideas here...

Isn't that how fanatical Robotech die-hards like Pizza and MEMO see us? Based on the accusations the fanatics have leveled at me just in this past month or two, they seem to regard me either as an agent of some sort of sinister, subversive, Illuminati-like group headed up by Big West with the sole aim of bringing Robotech down to make way for Macross, or as the sort of cardboard cutout villain you might find in a black-and-white sci-fi serial from the 50's... bent on destroying Robotech because I'm pointlessly evil. (While I admit I do the maniacal laughter thing from time to time as a joke, I don't think the local zoning would permit me to build a doom fortress, and I certainly can't afford the upkeep on an army of witless minions.) Still... it's a good example of how some Robotech fans are more comfortable denying the truth because it doesn't fit into their strange worldview where Robotech is wildly popular and of the highest quality. Glad you enjoyed it.

I was talking to Talos just a minute ago when it struck me... that legal debate on Robotech.com is playing out like something out of Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back... SK: If only you knew the power of the court documents. Tommy Yune never told you why HG can't use Macross. PTH: He told me enough! He told me Robotech owns it! SK: No. Big West owns it. PTH: No! That's not true! That's impossible! SK: Search the evidence, you know it to be true. PTH: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! If only we had a bottomless pit handy...

Contents of 30... if I'm screwing anything up, feel free to correct me. I'm doing this one on the fly at the office, so I don't have my dictionary and whatnot on hand... Mechanic Sheets VB-6 Konig Monster Zentradi Troop Battleship City 7 Commercial Vehicles Character Sheets SMS Crew(?) Nanase Matsura Lynn Minmay Lynn Kaifun Timeline Sheet Fire Bomber and Rapid Advance(?) History Sheet Formation of Sound Force Worldguide Sheet Birdhuman Technology Sheet Variable Fighter / Basic 3-form Glossary Sheet MDE (bullet/warhead?) ~ Ozma Lee Goods Sheet Bandai 1/72 VF-25S Messiah Valkyrie Song Sheet My Boyfriend is a Pilot / Shao Pai Lon