Seto Kaiba

What, we're not going to invite TOMMY out for pie? He'd probably be worried he'd end up WEARING it.

He told me that in the middle of a public discussion thread... one of the earlier legal threads, actually. It doesn't actually appear in the Terms of Use, but it seems to be one of those unwritten rules that is nevertheless publicly enforced. Given MEMO's recent behavior, I would say the answer to your question is yes, though I would rather see MEMO banned for his ridiculous abuses of power.

Beats me... all I know is that MEMO told me, on no uncertain terms, that we're not allowed to post links to MacrossWorld over on the Robotech.com message boards. He didn't attach any qualifying statements, he just said it was verboten and went right back to spewing nonsense.

Actually, according to MEMO1DOMINION, links to MacrossWorld are forbidden on Robotech.com... so presumably you already could get banned just for linking here.

Wow... just wow... I have found a whole new reason to like and respect Ichiro Itano. I liked Macross Frontier rather a lot, but I have to admit he makes some VERY good points about it... Two things... 1.) You mean to tell us Macross Frontier's love triangle doesn't fit that description perfectly? 2.) In my experience, love tends to make even the most rational people act like complete idiots, so it's probably not that far from being reasonable.

Nah... having wandered amongst the Robotech fans for as long as I have, I feel fairly confident in saying that most would just say "to hell with it" and give up on trying to interact with their fellow fans. Some would jump ship to other sites, and a few would try to start their own, but most just can't be arsed. How did I get lumped in with that? My project has nothing at all to do with Robotech. I will agree, you have a point that getting booted from Robotech.com hasn't exactly hindered anybody's efforts towards their particular fan projects. All banning us really accomplished was further depriving Robotech.com of intelligent and knowledgeable contributors. Considering that said contributors were already in short supply, that does kind of highlight the shortsighted stupidity of those in charge. To my mixed amusement and exasperation, it hasn't stopped the denizens of Robotech.com from asking me questions either... it's just changed the way they ask me. That might change soon too, since most of the people who refer people to me have gotten banned for reasons that make no sense. 'kay buddy, I think you might need to take a breather from the translations and your day job, you're startin' to talk crazy now. Lately, the only love for Robotech I've seen has been coming from JT/Zen72 and Whamhammer. I think it's reaching a bit to classify what dougbendo does as "showing love for Robotech", and the rest has all been commentary on the various asinine behaviors of Harmony Gold and those associated with it. Even JT's podcast had a fair bit of hate for the suckup crowd mixed in with the "love".

Y'know, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were true... though I'm more inclined to suspect MEMO has left the thread open so that he can continue to present his misguided views as though they were fact, in hopes that now that those of us who know the facts are banned, he can drum up some people who actually believe him. It's an unfortunate thing for the entire Robotech fanbase. I wonder how long it'll be before it becomes a case of "if you question me at all, I'll ban you" from those two.

When you stop to think that people like Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION, who believe in censoring any opinion other than "Harmony Gold is wonderful, Robotech is perfect", and dougbendo, who believes the best way to express his fan status is to publicly badmouth anyone who doesn't agree with him, are considered the spokesmen of the fanbase, it really gives you a clear impression of just how far Robotech has really fallen these last twenty years. In most any healthy fandom, these people would be laughed out of town as mentally unstable or just downright stupid, yet in Robotech, a franchise kept alive by a handful of fanatics who've stuck with the series as it went nowhere for 25 years, these people are held up as what a fan SHOULD be... and that's sad. That Harmony Gold doesn't seem to give a damn how badly people like that blacken the already-reviled Robotech name just reinforces the distinct impression that Harmony Gold has washed its hands of Robotech after handing the reins over to Warner Bros. (To me, what's REALLY revolting about this whole situation is that if I were asked which group I had more respect for, I would be able to say, with no hesitatation, that I have far more respect for dougbendo than I ever will for either Maverick_LSC or MEMO1DOMINION. At the very least, dougbendo believes in voicing your opinion, even if it pisses people off... and I can respect that.)

Yeah... it's a real circus over there these days... Robelwell202 just called out MEMO and Maverick for banning people for disagreeing with them... and was banned for doing so. EDIT: Ah... I see the pathological liar patrol (Maverick and MEMO) have been here to see what we're saying about this latest development.

Indeed it has... and in the eyes of MEMO1DOMINION and Maverick_LSC, the change was good... there's one less person questioning their blind, dare-I-say imbecilic faith in each other's factless arguments. Everyone else gets it in the arse because MEMO and Maverick are too immature to cope with the fact that they were wrong. 's lookin that way, Wanz. I stepped in to a thread where MEMO's intestines were so badly backed up the poo was oozing out of his mouth and onto a keyboard and posted the facts. Maverick then accused me of "disrupting" the thread, and removed my posting privileges. It's been a month now, and Steve still hasn't responded to my initial e-mail. No, it's not that... believe me I'd like nothing better than to continue to out MEMO as the pathological liar that he is, but Maverick won't restore my posting privileges, and Steve has stopped responding to e-mails altogether (even from Maverick, apparently) so I am effectively banned, even though my account is still nominally active.

It's one of the more bizarre circumstances of the current Robotech creative staff over at Harmony Gold... they don't seem to fully realize that their core demographic is not the 13-17 year old kids they've been trying to appeal to since 2001, but rather the 30+ year old fans who've been with the show since the very beginning... people like Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION. The few 20-somethings and teenagers who crop up every now and again in the fanbase are a fairly small minority, and tend to be newly minted anime fans who quickly find something better. Well, to be fair, Harmony Gold DOES care, but it's only those staff members who were fans before becoming staffers, and only issues that matter to them... like exonerating Rick Hunter of the guilt of ordering Earth's destruction, which led to Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles coming off feeling like a fan-film. The fans supported the Shadow Chronicles movie not because they liked it, but rather because it was the first and only new Robotech title since the original series. More than 20 years of desperately wishing for something to convince them that Robotech wasn't completely dead colored their opinions heavily... so pretty much anything, no matter how poor, was going to get rave reviews simply because it was Robotech. You could've put the name Robotech on Plan 9 from Outer Space and the die-hards would still be singing its praises simply because it's a new movie with the word "Robotech" on the box. You should probably see a doctor about that... And let there be no mistake... what motivates most Robotech fans these days is stupid, blind faith, not hope.

Well... color me pleasantly surprised.

Did anyone else read this and immediately think of Voltron? Have they actually given a definition for the ARMD acronym now? I haven't bothered to give either ARMD page a good look yet, but I remember in the old Sky Angels VF-1 Tech Manual doujin it was defined as "Armament Rigged-up Moving Deck". Have they given another definition for it, or did they reiterate that one? How very... imaginative...

I think a substantial part of the problem here is that many of the most devoted Robotech fans are still uncomfortable with the idea that their favorite show is neither original nor terribly successful. A lot of these devoted long-time fans, who stuck with the franchise through the failed sequel attempts and the subsequent release droughts, are genuinely uncomfortable with the thought that most of what they profess to love about Robotech comes from the Japanese originals, and thus is not unique at all. Is it any surprise that they find the idea that Robotech's so-called creators can't use the iconic designs of Robotech's most popular saga profoundly disturbing? After all, what it ultimately means to Robotech fans is that the sequel they so ardently desire will never be made. I find it unsurprising that some of these devoted fans would rather continue to believe Harmony Gold will one day deliver the goods, rather than admit they've wasted years (and in some cases, decades) waiting in vain for a sequel that Harmony Gold can't legally make.

For PTH, that's actually pretty damn tame. You oughta see some of the stuff he's sent to HappyPenguins in response to various threads. Well, it doesn't spur much (if any) debate here on MacrossWorld... and I wouldn't go so far as to call what goes on over on Robotech.com and RobotechX a real debate. It's a lot more like several people who know the truth trying to verbally beat some sense into three fanboys who live in a fantasy world, and then being banned because the fanboys are also moderators, and want to silence any threat to their perfect little daydream. Thus far, my wall has gone unmolested, but I have had to stop and facepalm from time to time.

You're not alone in that... several of those idiots have accused me of having as many as six or seven different accounts that I supposedly use to troll the boards and cause trouble for "true Robotech fans". They seem to be genuinely terrified of anyone knowledgeable enough not to think Robotech is perfect, and outspoken enough to say so publicly.

I would be inclined to suspect that it's either the original series ones or the one from Macross Plus... the ones from Macross II are consistently referred to as "Powered Suit"... so I'd guess they would probably use the same terminology in Chronicle.

If they at least cover the various major flavors of beam weaponry and give a general explanation of how they work, I'll consider it worthwhile. Anything beyond that is a bonus for me... I'd really love a good breakdown of converging beam cannons, and the U.N. Spacy's particle beam guns.

Eh... they probably will, but because they've consolidated the Macross II stuff into a relatively small number of sheets, there's very little opportunity for new information, and it's spread pretty thin across the 50 issue run. I've gone back and double-checked, and a lot of the "new" information isn't new at all, it's just obscure... mainly because it comes from those small, borderline-illegible notes scribbled in the margins of the design sheets. Still... I guess I should laud them for their thoroughness, if nothing else. If they do have History Sheets or Timeline Sheets for the alternate universe continuity, I expect they'll probably be put in the last few issues to avoid potential confusion with the main continuity's events and timeline. Of late, the only thing that's kept me reading has been the technology sheets... the fold drive one was kind of disappointing though... didn't offer much in the way of new information.

It's a similar scam, but not quite the same. Shaloom's scam depended on the large number of Macross Frontier publications coming out in Japan, the inability of the few available translators to keep up with it all, and his staff position at Macross Generation to effectively camouflage the stuff that he made up himself. In the case of Maverick and MEMO, it's really more like a conspiracy theory than a scam, as they're relying on a document nobody has ever seen (and probably will never see) to overturn all of the hard evidence and vindicate their belief that Harmony Gold owns all the rights to Macross. It's also rather like a conspiracy theory in that the vast majority of people don't take their claims seriously. The only people who profess to believe them are the ones who either already believe as they do, or those who think they stand to gain something by playing along. Maverick and MEMO just have a minor advantage over normal conspiracy theorists, because they have the power to silence the logic-driven arguments of the opposition in certain venues. There's no doubt that Maverick and MEMO both actually believe the nonsense they've been exploiting their mod status to preach on Robotech.com, but the more I read of his posts, the more I suspect that Pizza falls into the second category of believers... ones who only profess to believe because they think they stand to gain something from doing so. In Pizza's case, it's not hard to see what he's after... he's gotten himself unbanned and now enjoys relative immunity from moderator retribution by toadying up to Maverick and MEMO. Now he can troll the people he considers to not be "real fans" with impunity.

I'm sure the beam weapons article will be enlightening, but the rest doesn't really thrill me... I keep hoping for some more Macross II stuff, and I keep getting disappointed.

Because to them, the actual content of Harmony Gold's license agreements with Tatsunoko don't matter nearly as much as maintaining the pretense that there might be some source that completely invalidates the mountains of hard evidence against what they're preaching. It's their general-purpose excuse for ignoring anything they don't like or agree with, trying to claim that "the contract" might invalidate or contradict the other evidence. Even explicit statements from Carl Macek himself, in their opinion, are invalid because "nobody" knows what that contract says. It's all that keeps the Maverick, MEMO, and Pizza's faith-based argument going... that and the first two idiots using their mod powers to ban anyone who dares to bring evidence that proves them wrong.

It won't last... just like his pretense of civility on RobotechX. As soon as he doesn't get his way, or someone says something he doesn't like, he flies off the handle and starts in with the name-calling, the slander, the racial and ethnic slurs... all the hallmarks of typical dougbendo behavior. Just look at how he acts on RobotechX. Whenever someone criticizes his podcast, or expresses a viewpoint that Robotech is anything other than practically perfect in every way, he immediately goes on the offensive. He tried to invite me onto that obnoxious podcast of his, and when I told him I wasn't interested because I didn't think he was capable of keeping things civil, he immediately proved me right by jumping in with the insults, telling me I was full of bullshit and didn't know anything about Robotech or Macross, and trying to goad me into it by saying I was afraid to face him. Mark my words, this "quality" in Bendo's podcast will not last. It's a brief lull in the hurricane of stupidity brought about by people whose brains are in the right way 'round getting involved. As soon as they stop contributing, he'll be right back to badmouthing us all and shouting about how he's gonna beat his girlfriend and then piss on her. You and I might see what they're doing as a distinct improvement in the state of Robotech's fanbase, but many Robotech fans consider these people to be trolls, malcontents, or "enemies of the fandom" because of what they have to say about Harmony Gold, Shadow Chronicles, and Robotech as a whole. After HappyPenguins was banned by MEMO for trying to get him to do his job and stop Pizza from trolling, Steve made it no secret that he had no intention of unbanning her because her site is critical of Harmony Gold and the direction they've chosen for Robotech. It's only a matter of time before JT/Zen72 gets banned from Robotech.com and/or RobotechX on some trumped-up charge for what he's been saying on his podcast. Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have made it abundantly clear that criticism and facts are verboten, no matter how well-intentioned. Ehhh... I wouldn't make that declaration just yet.

Mikimoto all the way...

Yes, it's true that Carl Macek and Harmony Gold shouldn't be given credit for anything more than importing Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, and combining them into a whole less than the sum of its parts... but over the years they've put so much spin on the facts, told so many lies, and exaggerated the nature and extent of their contribution so often that the casual reader believes they deserve far more credit than they actually do. Building on the analogy you used, what Carl Macek and Harmony Gold are doing is the equivalent of buying a pizza, then sneaking it into the kitchen, popping it into the oven, and acting like you made it yourself from scratch.