Seto Kaiba

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.

Yes, and maybe afterward Shoji Kawamori and Tommy Yune will ride Unicorns to Hogwarts and board a winged mushroom for a flight to the Sherbet Kingdom. Or maybe the planet will suddenly reverse its orbit tomorrow and fling us all into space. Seriously... Big West surrendering their rights to Macross? Fat chance. That thing's a cash cow and they KNOW IT. They'd have to be blind not to, since Macross Frontier merchandise is selling like mad, and sales of the DVD broke Bandai's blu-ray sales records. If Big West ever does license the intellectual property of the original series to Harmony Gold, it'll be because Harmony Gold agrees to be contractually sodomized in hopes that the Macross designs will liven up the dreck that is Shadow Chronicles. Not necessarily... Macross characters were STILL plot-critical to Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, which is what necessitated the killing-off of everybody except Rick and Lisa, and the redesigning of those two into something that bears NO resemblance to the original Mikimoto character designs. All it likely convinced them of was the fact that the Robotech fanbase is SO gullible that they'll buy ANYTHING, no matter how poor the quality, just so long as there's somebody named Rick Hunter in it, and that continuing to recycle old characters, plot devices, mecha designs, etc. is more profitable than making original content.

Well, yes. We can be fairly certain that the actual sales figures for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles are setting no sales records, except possibly at the Robotech.com online store. Still, since the profits from the DVD sales were enough to cover the film's production costs several times over, which does technically make it a financial success. In the context of the film's budget, which was confirmed to be less than $1 million, it's a lot less impressive than it sounds.

Yeah, with particular attention to the Haydonite mecha, which looked a lot like a mix of the old and new versions of the Cylon Raider.

Yeah, but wasn't that declaration made before Funimation picked up all those shows from Geneon? Back when Funimation's catalog was a cavalcade of mediocrity? Sales to people who were already fans is one thing, the movie still failed spectacularly in its stated goal of bringing new fans into the franchise and returning Robotech to the cultural spotlight. It was ignored by the mainstream anime fans, and pretty much any publication that wasn't already kissing Harmony Gold's ass. No. In fact, considering the overwhelmingly negative fan response to the idea of a "reimagined" Macross Saga, I'd say that Macross may well be the death knell for the live-action Robotech movie, either because of the inherent legal ramifications, or the fact that the fans don't want Baytech with their Bayformers. Your memory and mine don't line up very well on this subject... I don't recall it getting much of any media attention. The response to most of it was an overwhelming "What's Robotech?". There's been precious little interest in the movie since, with only a few sites actually bothering to post what little news has come out on the film. Robotech.com remains the only site that really seems to give a damn. Plus, a WB-sponsored media blitz does not mean the movie is well-received or hotly anticipated... it means Warner paid a lot out of pocket to try and build awareness in a public that largely doesn't even remember what Robotech was. If it were a straight-up adaptation of Macross, it might have a chance. But it's a reimagining, mainly to get around the fact that they can't legally use anything from Macross in the live-action Robotech movie. The fans have already made their displeasure known. Remember how everyone thought that Speed Racer and Dragonball Evolution were going to set the world on fire? Of course you don't, nobody gave a damn about those movies either, and they fizzled in theaters. Expect the same from Robotech, if it even gets that far. Shadow Chronicles failed to impress (artistically) because it was a thoroughly unoriginal fan-wank with no story, unlikeable characters, bad music, no new mecha designs, and shoestring-budget animation. In short, the reason it failed to artistically impress anyone is because it was a movie utterly lacking in artistic merit of any kind. It was NOTHING like the "original" series, which despite all its faults, actually had a story, some relateable characters, and some interesting mecha designs.

Yeah, you've got some good points there too... I guess if you really wanted to be brutal, you could say that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is a proper Robotech sequel the same way that Robotech 3000 was... nothing more than a below-average generic story with the name Robotech slapped on in hopes that the fans wouldn't notice that it was missing everything that made the TV series even remotely watchable. I wouldn't go so far as to call the voice actors talented though. The "big name" voice talent that they were making a fuss about in the marketing blurb and the pre-release hype didn't do the movie any favors. Yes, they had Mark Hamill, but his character was killed off within the first twenty minutes. Chase Masterson barely had any acting credentials work speaking of, and I'll bet good money that she was only included in hopes of getting some Trekkies to buy the movie. Yeah, I suppose you're right. Though I do tend to classify Robotech's traditional weak attempts at cliffhangers to be a type of ending too. A better way to put it might be that nothing was really resolved at the end of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Sure, they'd changed ships, and they'd been attacked by the Haydonites, but the SDF-3 was still missing, still had a fuel crisis, etc. etc. etc. It was like the whole movie was one big side-story that didn't really matter.

Probably the same lineart the Robotech.com Infopedia used... none at all. Macross Frontier gained an active, devoted following because it was a good show. It had fairly good writers, excellent mechanical designs, downright incredible music, the whole nine yards. The characters were compelling, interesting, and developed as the story went on (except for Ranka), the mechanical designs were a mix of classic and new that was quite interesting (though I didn't really love them that much), and the story itself was original and quite well put together. So I guess you really could boil it down to being a new and original take on a classic formula. There was nothing original or interesting about Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. The characters and set pieces were all recycled from the "original" TV series and Robotech II: the Sentinels, there were no new songs of any kind, what little there was in the way of new mecha was all horribly generic and/or stolen from Battlestar Galactica, the animation looks like it was done on a shoestring budget (and it was), and the voice acting was nothing short of awful. It was like Harmony Gold decided to animate somebody's half-assed fanfic. When you really think about it, it was probably a fortunate thing that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was almost totally ignored by the anime fan community. It was a cheap, direct-to-DVD movie made to cash in on what little interest there was in the franchise, and it looks the part. Any sensible viewer would laugh it out of town as a horribly amateurish attempt to milk more money from the few fans they have left. If Robotech wasn't a virtual nonentity in the anime world, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles might've gotten some serious critical attention, and the critics would've crucified it.

Be careful... he might interpret that as a challenge.

About the only news that there's been on the alleged sequel-in-development Robotech: Shadow Rising is Kevin McKeever's insistence that "hiatus" doesn't mean what the dictionary says it means, and that they really are working on it, despite having nothing to show for it after two-plus years. IMHO, the best thing for Robotech right now would be a Robotech 3000-esque complete and total departure from the established setting, which is derived in equal measure from Mospeada and Carl Macek's Robotech II: the Sentinels. The Robotech universe IS dead. That's not even up for argument, it's a fact of life. Almost all of the new comics were recycled stories originally produced by Academy, Antarctic, and Eternity/Malibu, with somewhat better art. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is just an amalgam of story elements and characters from Mospeada and Robotech II: the Sentinels that's trying to be Battlestar Galactica. Booze won't cut it if you intend to start listening to his show "Robotech Fan" on TalkShoe... you'd better get ready to start abusing painkillers. The experience of listening can be accurately replicated by taking a belt sander to your ears. Ask the Robotech fans... for them, it's business as usual. I doubt it... for as long as I've known him (and believe me, that's longer than I care to admit) he's been determined to carry on with his irrational hatred of Macross simply for form's sake if nothing else. I suspect that his real reasons for loathing Macross stem from a grudging knowledge that it really is better and more successful than Robotech, but he's afraid to acknowledge it because he doesn't want to tarnish his cherished memories of Robotech, or lose face by admitting that he was wrong.

So what if Minmay's into bondage and clowns... her music's still good.

I know... I know... I'm a glutton for punishment. I just can't resist my helpful nature... I go there every now and again to peruse the forums for people asking burning questions that they want answered, and I do my best to give them the most complete answer I can. Unfortunately, in the course of that, I run into a fair few people like Pizza the Hutt and Doug Bendo. I guess it's nobody's fault but my own. Don't go writing 'em all off as Doug Bendo-esque wastes of carbon... I've met quite a few good people over on that site in my time... Robelwell202 being just the latest example of a decent guy who somehow ended up there. I'm sure this will shock you, but there are actually a few contributors there I respect simply because they approach their debates with a scholarly angle, rather than the stereotypical frothy-mouthed fanboy rants. EDIT: Spelling! It's a useful life skill...

Oh yeah, there are plenty of that sort in every franchise... though Robotech's seem to be the most vocal and obnoxious. I'm dealing with one right now, actually. A whiny little tosspot who used to go by Wraith_Knight, but apparently created a new account recently (Pizza the Hutt) to try and dodge the avid dislike many members seem to harbor towards him. He's currently throwing a hissy fit over on Robotech.com because I dared criticize Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and insisted that the best thing for Robotech would be to get the hell away from the OSM and try something original. The most comical bit of all is that he's apparently been coming here under an alias to keep an eye on this site and this thread because he knows we're "saying bad things about Harmony Gold, Robotech, and Robotech fans", as though this thread and our criticisms of Harmony Gold and Robotech were some dark, sinister secret. It's guys like Pizza the Hutt, Doug Bendo, and Kevin McKeever who give Robotech fandom such a bad rap... and they don't even know they're doing it. It'd be hilarious if their stupidity weren't so damn depressing. I've got no idea why the majority of the fans put up with them.

That's why it's billed as a "reimagining", and not a straight-up adaptation of the Macross Saga. It'll bear as much resemblance to Macross/"The Macross Saga as Michael Bay's Transformers did to the G1 Transformers series. Not if they have a decent copyright lawyer they can't... Gubaba, I do consulting work in the auto industry... I've seen tiny research groups crush huge multinational corporations in court over patent infringement cases. I have no doubt that if Warner and/or Harmony Gold started abusing Big West's intellectual property, they'd take 'em to the cleaners and win.

Aside from the fact that one of the producers was reassigned to a different project by WB, the only tidbits that've come out are that Maguire Entertainment got the rights to the live-action movie, and that it was a "re-imagining". Yeah, that'd be in line with what little official information has been made available... Maguire Entertainment and Warner intend to make a "re-imagining" of the Robotech story, not a faithful adaptation. Well, if you talk to Kevin McKeever, about all you'll get is "yeah, they're working on the live-action movie" followed by "you can tell they're working hard because we don't have anything to show for it". In retrospect, it seems like Harmony Gold and 3DRealms must've been following the same marketing strategy... here's hoping they'll meet the same fate. McKeever's word isn't worth the kilobyte of so of database space it took to post it.

No offense to you, Freiflug, but it sounds like BS to me... similar rumors, all started by fans who "heard it from a friend", have been flying around ever since Harmony Gold announced that Maguire Entertainment got the rights to make a live-action Robotech movie. We have it, from no less a person than Tommy Yune himself, that Harmony Gold approached Big West not too long ago to talk about Macross rights and licensing, and that Big West told 'em to go pound sand. I very much doubt that they'd change their minds just because Harmony Gold is asking indirectly through Warner Bros. I can't imagine them having any possible incentive to want to see the movie succeed... especially when you consider their long-running squabble with Tatsunoko, and the fact that we've yet to see a live-action anime adaptation that could be called a success with a straight face.

Nope, not anymore. Right around the time Robotech: Battlecry first came out, the Infopedia listed it as the YF-1R, which is what the game calls it too. Right around the time the Jack Archer MPC was released, it was changed to "VF-1R" in the Infopedia.

's why I said "most", not "all". There are some fans out there who actually like the McKinney novels, and some who prefer them to the TV series itself. All the same, they're a fairly small minority, and one with a savage persecution complex, due in large measure to the fact that the majority of Robotech fans (and Robotech's "creative staff") hold the novels in such low regard. (Usually starting a sentence with "In the novels..." in a debate over there is enough to make sure most people don't even read the rest of your post) Yeah, I was too... it only appeared for a few seconds (one scene) in Ep32 "Broken Heart". The entirety of the footage showing it (a short .gif sequence) is in the Robotech.com Infopedia article on it. I find it particularly obnoxious, since the branch of Macross I'm researching (the alternate universe) already has a "VF-1R", and every time I talk about it I have to qualify it with "no, not the Robotech one". If only it were that simple... or that amusing. Lisa DID appear in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. The Haruhiko Mikimoto design (Misa Hayase) was replaced by a hopelessly generic-looking woman with her hair done up in a simple ponytail. I guess they decided that she wasn't worth the effort, so she gets seriously wounded early in the comic and spends most of the miniseries recovering, only to quit the military and become a member of the "Sentinels Council" instead, neatly getting her out of the way so they'd be able to minimize the number of VAs they'd have to call back.

Robotech's tech specs for the VF-1 Valkyrie are basically just the Macross specs with most of the details boiled out. The only real departures from the original Macross specs for the VF-1 Valkyrie are two animation goofs that were canonized, and the whole tossup over the fuel. That one animation error where the sensor blisters on the nosecone were animated as laser cannons was made official, which is flagged as a technology upgrade unique to units aboard the SDF-1. When the developers at Vicious Cycle were looking to pad out Robotech: Battlecry, they turned the VF-1A mistakenly animated with three head lasers from "Broken Heart" (Ep32) into another variant of the VF-1, the VF-1R. The whole fuel debate is still unsettled... initially Tommy Yune didn't specify what VF-1's ran on when he did the new comics with Wildstorm, but when the new RPG rolled out, he decided that the VF-1 runs on thermonuclear fusion (based on vague dialogue from the series). Fortunately, that's a McKinneyism, and even the fans gave up trying to shoehorn that crap into the continuity. Most of them treat the McKinney novels as borderline fan-fiction, due to their often nonsensical departures from the TV series. Initially, members of the Robotech "creative" team made some remarks that they were considering a looping story for future Robotech TV shows (Robotech III: the Odyssey, Robotech IV, etc.) and speculated at an ending in the future where a retired "Commodore Hunter" would start to tell a batch of cadets about how it all began, using that to loop the story around into a self-repeating narrative.

Really? I was assuming he's temporarily gone so hotblooded that the sudden change in temperature shattered the glass of his helmet. If you think that's bad... go read Macross 7 Trash, where they actually succeed in weaponizing spirita...

Contrary to my expectations, Chronicle's been paying a lot of attention to Macross II lately. Color me surprised. I figured that issue 21 was gonna be a one-shot, but they've had one or more Macross II pages in each issue since (except #22). Sylvie, the VF-2SS, the Mardook fleet, the U.N. Spacy officers, Hibiki, and now Ishtar...

Not at all... the time-consuming job is trying to keep an IT consulting business afloat while the local economy spirals toward oblivion. There's so little activity on Robotech.com these days that it rarely takes more than five or ten minutes effort to break up all but the worst of the fanwankery threads. Occasionally there's someone who asks an intelligent question, or someone who starts an intelligent debate, and on those rare days it doesn't feel much like a job at all.

Nah, far from it. All I've become is one of several volunteer zookeepers in the primate house.

Dimensions? I already got at least part of that. The only dimensions I've seen for them are their lengths, which are repeated over and over again in multiple publications. (There's something to be said for their consistency, I guess...) As far as weapons, we're gonna get "many x guided beam cannons", and for a few ships, converging beam cannons. I'd love to find out how many mecha those ships are carrying, but odds are we won't get that much. At least the Gigamesh article cleared up the vague statements about Feff's being one of a kind. My guess would be the sheet will cram all four main classes of Mardook ship onto a single sheet, though I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Feff's scoutship and Ingues's mobile fortress got mecha sheets of their own. Are you EVER going to get my name right? Seriously, just call me "Mike" if it'll help you remember.

Yeah, but that's really more like marching into the cage to stop the monkeys from trying breathe water... Treiz is one of those special children who believes that Robotech is a wildly successful and popular sci-fi franchise to rival Star Wars or Star Trek, and he usually tries to support his arguments with some pretty tortured logic that usually relies on throwing the "canon" sources aside and creatively reinterpreting a bunch of disjointed scenes out of context. No such luck, I'm afraid. Turns out even that "Art of the Shadow Chronicles" book reprints P. Thomassen et. al.'s OSM-derived mecha specs word for word... even the spelling and transposition errors. I don't think we'll have to worry about Chronicle translations being pilfered to bolster RT, they seem content with what they already have, and what they can steal from RobotechResearch and SteelFalcon where the VF-1 is concerned.