Seto Kaiba

Okay, so I'm not the only one who did a double-take and then couldn't figure that one out. My first thought was the SB-10 Starwing, but that clearly doesn't have 8 wings... could this possibly be the first of the ETC sheets, featuring one of those wacky terrorist mecha from the Macross Digital Mission VF-X games? Like the Annabella Lasiodora mobile weapon? For one wild moment, I thought this might include a reprint of the VF History article from Macross II...

Considering the entire movie revolves around the only unresolved plot point that the majority of the fans still give a damn about... the whereabouts of a Macross character Harmony Gold can't legally use... is it any surprise they had to load the movie down with useless references to previous Robotech sagas to present viewers with the illusion of continuity with the rest of Robotech? If they hadn't, the only way you'd be able to tell it was a Robotech sequel and not just a generic-looking direct-to-DVD sci-fi movie with dodgy animation, substandard writing, lackluster editing, shoddy voice acting, piss-poor music, and boring, dated mecha designs would be the title on the box. I guess Bright Noa got bored after the One Year War and started teaching at the U.N. Spacy's Officer Candidate School. Maybe they're hoping that, if nothing else, having a reasonably attractive woman on the cast will keep the fans coming to conventions. Or maybe they're hoping for a Zentradi style lolicon attraction with Miley?

Did Roven actually bail from the project? Harmony Gold's official position is that he was reassigned.

Odds are I'd probably end up buying at least four. Five or six if they release the color-stripe decals to do each character's version. That's all the time it gets... that's the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie, 's the VF-2SS's predecessor. But for that one scene, it exists only in lineart and history snippets. It's a neat design, but there's virtually no information about it. Both are Earth-designed, but the VF-2SS has a lot of Zentradi hardware under the hood. Nitpick patrol... five auto-attacker bits, not three. That was pretty much my take on it... a lot of the hate for the VF-2SS that's getting voiced here is either based on the 1:100 transforming model kit (which is not a fair representation of the mecha), or without any perspective on the worse "big gun" offenders in recent shows.

Somehow, when I ponder this, all that comes to mind is Maguire Entertainment filing a lawsuit against Harmony Gold for fraudulent misrepresentation of the Robotech live-action movie license. I can't help but think that Harmony Gold might've... exaggerated... Robotech's popularity and the live-action movie's prospects a bit, in much the same way that Robotech.com moderators and staffers like Maverick_LSC and Kevin McKeever do on the message boards. Then again, Cerberus Capital Management let the Daimler group off the hook after they supposedly misrepresented the state of Chrysler, so who knows? If it's one of those things where you have to prove deception and/or malice, it'll be in court forever, since Harmony Gold's employees and volunteer staffers have started believing their own lies. Isn't it really a matter of them having nothing at all to show and/or license out to interested parties? With the live-action Robotech movie still very much a "what if" rather than a certainty, and Robotech: Shadow Rising mired in pre-production, I can't quite see them having anything new to peddle. I suspect that they probably signed over the merchandising rights to the live-action movie to Maguire Entertainment in exchange for royalties, and this early in the game, there isn't even a script, let alone mechanical or character designs to peddle to the toymakers. They're not known to be working on any new comics, novels, etc. and it's unlikely that they'll part with their usual toy manufacturers for the Shadow Rising toys, if any are ever produced.

Y'know... people wonder why I prefer Macross the way it was before Kawamori got involved with the franchise again. The next time somebody asks me why, I can just point to this thread and say "that's why".

No kidding... even just within Macross II there's still plenty of good stuff coming... Macross Chronicle's actually publishing new information about the characters and mecha, we've got the promise of at least one VF-100 series toy, and more...

If Macross 7 was exactly the same but had SK's name taken off of it, it would still be a train-wreck of horribly ugly mecha designs, bad music, unlikeable characters, and imbecilic storytelling, and I'd still hate on it. If you don't like Macross II, that's your own business, but the OP asked if we were going to see any toys of the Macross II valkyreis in the near future, and the answer is unequivocally YES. If you don't like that, too bad. It's not like someone's holding a gun to your head until you buy one. If you replaced "MacII" with "Macross 7" or "Macross Frontier", you would have my complete agreement. Kawamori clearly had Gundam on the brain when he was doing Macross Frontier, and the only way you could make the Sound Force valkyries look more like the VF equivalents of the sort of cheaply souped-up rice-burner you see high school kids driving is if they fitted big, gaudy chrome spoilers behind the cockpits. And it's no better than any of them either... thank you. :3 Fancy that... the VF-2SS's railgun is pretty much all hollow barrel... hell, the barrel isn't even sealed, a full side of it is open to space. The weapon's placement on the mecha is essentially a non-issue anyway, since it's a dedicated space fighter, and the weapon is essentially recoil-less. Even if it was, it's not like it's up there unsupported, being on a massive support arm that looks to be bigger around than the VF-2SS's actual arms. In its intended operating environment, it's a less cumbersome weapon than the front-heavy, over-long rifles used by the VF-25G and VF-27.

Same guy in both cases... Pizza the Hutt, formerly known as Wraith_Knight, was hating on Macross because he'd had some bad experiences with Macross fans criticizing Robotech, and he didn't know anything about Macross beyond the existence of the original series and DYRL. I filled him in on what he was missing, explained some of the more common reasons why Macross fans criticize Robotech, and hooked him up with DYRL. He numbers among the Macross faithful now. I totally misjudged him, when he's not all defensive, he's actually a pretty cool guy too. *puts down his bazooka* I am the great communicator...

Nah, there's a few more... there's the Haydonite ship, their two mecha ("Wraith" and "Infiltrator"), the super parts for the Shadow fighter and Shadow beta, the VR-057 "Super Cyclone", the Icarus, and the Ark Angel. Actually, she didn't even get that much. Maia Sterling appeared in two, maybe three, panels of the Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles comics, and only then in the epilogue of the final issue. All she really has to her credit is the incomplete film and that one short paragraph in Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. That's exactly it... it seems they expect that, if nothing else, the sex appeal of Maia, Janice, and Ariel will endear them to the movie's target audience... teenage anime viewers. The Shadow Chronicles movie was never targeted at the fanbase in general, the stated goal was to use it to bring new, younger fans into the franchise. So of course, since the average anime fan has nothing but contempt for Robotech, they had to try and appeal to the next best thing... the teenagers with holes in their pockets. Remember... prior to Robotech, Tommy Yune's chief credentials were drawing for Superman and Danger Girl... that's just what he does...

Prior to finding a copy, I'd assumed that Tommy Yune was the main author, and that Vincent McHenry had "consulted" on the book. When I actually got around to reading it, I was surprised to see that virtually none of it is by Tommy Yune, and most of it is copied wholesale from the Robotech.com Infopedia. While the cover may proclaim that the book is by Tommy Yune with a foreword by Carl Macek, the truth of it is that there are four "contributing authors" who aren't mentioned except on the inside cover and at the back of the book, authors who appear to have been the ones to actually get the work done... Vincent McHenry (McHenry), Dr. Kenneth Olson, Jonathan L. Switzer (Captain JLS), and Pieter Thomassen... four fans whose devotion to the franchise eclipses their common sense. A lot of the stuff in Carl Macek's foreword on the "creation" of Robotech is obvious stuff that you could find pretty much anywhere. Apart from some minimal details about the new characters and modified mecha, virtually none of the content is new or in any way original. A lot of it is content copied almost word-for-word from the Robotech.com Infopedia, and what little isn't copied from the Infopedia is all blindingly stupid statements of the obvious about stuff from the movie and the Prelude comics. Except for the excessive use of screen captures in the foreword, almost all of the art is new. The only sections that use Mospeada production lineart are those for the mecha and ships, which use the existing lineart as a reference point, and then show the 3D art (based on/modified from) it. There is literally NOTHING in the book about cut material from the movie, or about the future direction for the series.

That wouldn't hurt my feelings any... I'd probably buy a few. (Says the man with about a half-dozen unbuilt 1:72 VF-2SS SAP Valkyrie II kits)

Without Macross designs, Robotech probably never would've made it in the first place, and those same Macross designs are pretty much all that kept the franchise afloat for the twenty years between the failure of Robotech II: the Sentinels and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Hell, the only thing keeping Robotech afloat now is the promise of finding out what became of the few remaining Macross characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're "sexier" than RTSC's. It's true Sheryl does have a bit of sex appeal, but it's not her defining characteristic like it is for Maia Sterling, Janice M2, and Ariel/Marlene. The character designs are a lot closer to real human forms too... rather than the Barbie-doll-like women and superhero-esque men of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Badly. I bought a copy (used) at a garage sale for $1.00 just a few days ago. It's easily the worst anime artbook I've ever laid eyes on. I actually feel like I overpaid. The book was written in large measure by fans (Vincent McHenry, Jon Switzer, and Pieter Thomassen), though the cover bears only Tommy Yune's name, and the announcement that the foreword was written by Carl Macek. The content of the foreword is basically a history of the Robotech franchise as viewed through rose-colored glasses. Parts of it read more like a love letter from Carl Macek to himself. That agonizing bullshit goes on for a full TWENTY pages, complete with reprints of Tommy's various posters and screen captures. They piss away about 12 pages on settings and locations, most of which is wasted on corridor cross-sections, room layouts, and for some stupid reason... VENDING MACHINES. 26 pages are devoted to character art, which pretty much consists of a one-paragraph blurb about each character, an early sketch, a mid-development sketch that looks like something out of 90's DC Comics, and the completed design. 21 pages are devoted to the mecha designs, which are also one brief paragraph, plus some Mospeada lineart, one or two images of the completed design (movie screencaps) and occasionally a mid-development view. No multiple angles, nothing even remotely useful. Even if they are multiple pictures of the same mecha it's always from the same angle. 20 pages are devoted to ships, pretty much the same damn thing as the mecha pages, a waste of time. At the very end, there's a 10 page article on actually MAKING the damn movie, and then a brief two-page glossary of terms, a brief mecha stats section made mostly of reprinted Infopedia data, and a two-page Index.

Yeah, the old Bandai 1:100 transformable kit leaves a bit to be desired, accuracy-wise. The mecha itself is fairly accurate to the art and animation, but the backpack of the Super Armed Pack system is about twice as thick as it's supposed to be, and sits much higher up on the airframe than it's supposed to. Presumably there's some kind of hinge or other retaining mechanism holding it in place besides that one large retaining arm, but it isn't shown in the art. I suppose it IS possible that large arm is the main structural element holding the rail cannon in place. It's rare for a toy to be 100% accurate to the mecha seen in the show... it's just too difficult most of the time. I am hoping that the VF-100 series VF-2SS (if a SAP version is released for it) will be more accurate to what's shown in the lineart and the animation.

Are you sure you're talking about Macross II, and not, say, a far worse offender called Macross Frontier? The VF-2SS Valkyrie II's rail cannon is far and away the largest VF-mounted weapon in Macross II, and it's only about 7 meters long. I seem to remember the VF-27 lugging around a beam rifle that's well over 14 meters long... longer than the entire VF-2SS WITH THE RAIL CANNON. I also seem to recall the VF-25G lugging around a railgun that's at least 10 meters long, significantly larger than the one on the VF-2SS. Of course, if you want to talk disproportionate weaponry, you can't do better than the VF-25 Armored Messiah. So we're left with two conclusions... you're either misinformed, or you're projecting so hard I could point you at a wall and use you to show the Powerpoint presentation at my next meeting. There's already been one... Bandai did a 1:100 scale transforming VF-2SS w/ SAP parts kit back in the 90's, and they're releasing a VF-2SS toy as part of the VF-100 series. I'm hoping they'll also cover the VF-2JA Icarus and maybe even the Metal Siren eventually. I'd be over the moon about it if they released a 1:60 VF-2SS.

Yeah, they've said a few times that they were perfectly willing to bring Macross to the world, and that the problem was Big West not wanting to deal with them. It doesn't look like the actions of a company acting in good faith at all... it looks more like the actions of a company that wants to keep a stranglehold on a potential competitor and continue profiting from someone else's work.

Personally, I'm hoping that since Tobey Maguire has committed to work on Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5, that Maguire Entertainment will either cancel the live-action Robotech movie for being an unprofitable waste of time and more legal trouble than it's worth, or they'll place it on indefinite pre-production hiatus. Somehow, I can't help but think that with Harmony Gold's track record, the most likely outcome is a quiet, direct-to-DVD release for a low-budget quickie production ala Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. And this surprises nobody.

If you ask nicely, I might add it to my to-do list. Some of my translators are off on vacation, so I'm stalled for the time being. I'd love to get another VF from Macross II in Chronicle soon, but I guess I can content myself with character sheets for the time being.

Yeah, that's the catch that's supposed to keep protoculture relevant now that Tommy Yune has his heart set on taking the fairy dust out of it and turning into just another generic sci-fi energy source... having the last remaining means of it go missing. Y'know, I found that page a year or so ago, and it's STILL damn funny. I forget exactly who I was talking to (it might've been Brooklyn Red Leg), but the subject of Harmony Gold's attempt to salvage Robotech 3000 as a conventionally-animated series came up, and I went Googling for production art from the aborted project, and stumbled across Khyron_Prime's Robotech 3000 fansite. It was kind of a surprise to me, since Khyron_Prime never tried to confront me on the Robotech.com message boards, and I never once received a single e-mail because of that page, despite him posting my old e-mail address and imploring people to send me hate mail. It's absolutely hilarious that he attempts to defend Robotech on there after openly admitting that even he thinks DYRL is better than anything Robotech-related. I guess Khyron_Prime just didn't have the balls to insult me, j_wong, TotsugekiBomber7, or MechAce-1 to our faces, so he took the third-grader's way out and wrote nasty stuff about us in his private website where he was sure we'd never read it. Same guy. The "rock dudes" are one of several stupid-looking alien races created for Robotech II: the Sentinels. They're called the Sphersians, and prior to the arrival of the Pioneer Mission forces, their planet was one of many former subject planets in the Robotech Masters empire that was invaded by the Invid when the empire fell apart.

I wouldn't even classify that as an ATTEMPTED sequel... all they ever achieved was a single teaser trailer that the fans turned up their noses at. Considering past performance, Rick Hunter was going to be involved SOMEHOW anyway.

It looks to me like McKeever and co. are still trying to build awareness that there is a proposed live-action movie in the works, and not making much headway due to the general apathy of the majority of Robotech fans, and the casual anime viewer's contempt for Robotech. Yeah, that was one of the things that bothered me about the Shadow Chronicles movie and the Prelude miniseries... the attempt to re-work the events to make the new stuff fit with the end of the "New Generation Saga". I received the Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles miniseries from a colleague of mine who wanted to prove to me that Robotech was not essentially a dead franchise. The story recycled whole scenes and often large blocks of text directly from the Robotech II: the Sentinels continuation comics, but the most offensively stupid part of the miniseries was that the villains (General Edwards and the Invid Regent) seemed to have studied villainy under Gargamel from The Smurfs or Mumm-Ra from Thundercats. A villain whose only motivation is a borderline-fetishistic dedication to being a bastard is NOT GOOD STORYTELLING. What's more, they go WAY out of their way to fix plot errors introduced by the Sentinels, where Lisa was in command of the SDF-3, not Rick, by having her severely wounded in issue 1, allowing Rick to take over as Admiral. They go even farther to make Rick out to be an innocent victim of circumstance, rather than a leader who was willing to destroy Earth if he couldn't retake it... the Haydonites are so obviously evil that the only way they could make it MORE obvious would be if they all wore sandwich boards saying "HEY! EVIL ROBOT HERE!". Everybody and their cousin tells Rick that the Haydonites aren't trustworthy, and that it's a dumb idea to implement technology you don't understand... even that stupid overgrown carebear tells him as much, but he ignores it, and then he has the gall to act all surprised in the movie when the Haydonites betray his ass. Y'know, I don't think they've ever explained (or even tried to explain) why they changed the particle missiles into "neutron-s missiles". I'm guessing they wanted something that would sound more impressive and sci-fi-ish. In the Prelude comic they explain that the "neutron-s" is short for "neutron star matter", which I guess makes them into enormous gravitational weapons. That's why I keep accusing the series of coasting on the success and popularity of Macross. Every attempt at a sequel except Robotech: the Untold Story involved Rick Hunter and the rest of the surviving Macross cast. They've been stringing the fans along with the promise of finding out what happened to him for years now, and they know that'll make a title sell. Most of the people who bought Shadow Chronicles only bought it to find out what happened to Rick Hunter, and they got rickrolled something fierce when he went missing again by the end of the movie.

Yeah, Wildstorm's "From the Stars" and "Love and War" convinced a fair few fans that Robotech's creators had long since abandoned any pretense of originality or creativity, and were just coasting on the popularity of the Macross Saga, or rather, Macross. Perversely, some fans hold those two miniseries up as examples of the best Robotech comics ever made! Considering that the live-action movie doesn't even have a script yet, the mind boggles. No matter what Warner does, the mecha designs are a guaranteed lose-lose situation. Either they try to come up with something new, risking the almost certain outcome of the fans turning up their noses at it, or they try to come up with something close to Studio Nue's designs and risk getting slapped with a lawsuit. For all practical purposes, the script is a lose-lose situation too. If they do manage to accurately replicate the Macross Saga's themes and tone, the casual audience won't take to it because the terminology and modified story are hopelessly dated, and if they don't, the casual audience might take to it okay, but the fans will crucify them for turning the story into another "Michael Bay presents... Loud Noises". Between the fact that there's no way they're working with an old, anachronistic property that nobody gives a damn about anymore, and the fact that it's the legal equivalent of a minefield, the movie doesn't appear to have very good prospects.

Why would they post pictures that would show them in an unfavorable light? Robotech.com isn't exactly an objective source of information... if there's news that shows Harmony Gold or Robotech in an unfavorable light, or portrays Robotech as something less than wildly popular and successful, you won't see it there. If someone posts that unflattering news on the boards, you bet they'll get their thread locked and they'll be told off by the mods.

I think it was Phineas Taylor Barnum who once said "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". It doesn't surprise me that the die-hards are paying good money to hear the same old half-answers, half-truths, and weak excuses... after all, those exceptionally gullible people are the ones who've bought Robotech on DVD three or four times for each incremental improvement in video and audio quality and a few minor special features. They're the ones who've kept Robotech alive all these years. The answer is a resounding "no".

Yeah, but this glosses over the real problem with the live-action Robotech movie. The fans want (and are, by in large, expecting) a faithful adaptation of the "Macross Saga" with all the familiar mechanical designs. Once you take those out of the picture, and modify the story to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit, what you're left with is a project that many fans have avidly pointed out that they DO NOT WANT. Don't tell me you actually thought I paid money for that crap. An admirable summary. Unfortunately, they repeat the same bullshit behaviors on their message boards too.