Seto Kaiba

I know, I know... but hope springs eternal, even for this jaded Macross II fan. Since I'm really not too enthused about the current offerings in #22-24, I'm probably gonna wait 'till #25 before I order again.

Nah, most of the ones who enjoyed screwing with me seem to have all gotten the banhammer at one time or another and haven't been back to vex me since. The only one left is Treiz, who really isn't specifically targeting me, he's just using the message boards as an outlet for his stupidity. Oddly enough, there are quite a few members there who respect and value my opinion... made even stranger by the fact that many of them even LIKE me, despite my best efforts to offend them. I'd take umbridge at that remark about me being a know-it-all jackass who likes to toy with Robotech fans... I most certainly do not like toying with Robotech fans! I prefer to regard them from a distance... like watching monkeys fling poo from behind the plexiglass windows at the zoo.

I really find it hard to get worked up about this one... there's really not a lot worth saying about the ships, and what little worthwhile information there is, I already have. What's got my attention is the Hibiki Kanzaki character sheet... which will hopefully confirm some of the details about how he got hired into SNN (reportedly he covered a BIG scandal, but they don't say what) and maybe even mention the 2082 Zentradi invasion that inspired him to become a reporter.

Nah, these days they've gone back to the old standby of trying to divorce Robotech from its origins. Just look at that damn fool Treiz... trying to claim that even Harmony Gold's official line on the mecha of the series is wrong because it's based off of the Japanese specs. Wait, they were reliable once? Eh, it's pretty much common knowledge that Steve and Tommy select moderators based not on who was best suited to the job, but who kissed the most ass and toed the company line the closest. Really, between the asinine behavior of most of the moderators, the complete and utter lack of anything like new content, and the increasingly restrictive Terms of Use, it's no wonder the intelligent and knowledgeable people abandoned the site in droves starting in 2003. These days, if you take me out of the equation, you're left with a few occasional contributors who know what they're talking about, and a lot of frothy-mouthed baboons like Treiz, who couldn't spell his own name if you spotted him the T and the Z.

Eh, it's bound to start repeating itself a little bit eventually... usually they're not shamelessly ripping each other off, it's just repetition of common themes and plot devices, some of which have existed in stories since before we even had a written language.

Illogical it may be, but that didn't stop the U.N. Spacy from giving Misa Hayase command of a ship and its escort fleet at the rank of Major...

Oddly... no, my account is still fully active. Oh, the moderators there haven't kept it a secret that they want to get rid of me. Seifrietti Weisse told me flat out that he considers me the site's worst troublemaker, and that he thinks the site would be a lot better off without me. I'm fairly sure Maverick_LSC is in the same camp, which means the only moderator who's really not actively looking for an excuse to ban me is MEMO1DOMINION.

The article doesn't say anything about copyrights... all it says is that Harmony Gold wasn't affected by the outcome of the lawsuits over the intellectual property rights to Macross. Since they never had those rights to begin with, that's actually a true statement... the lawsuit did not affect the film distribution rights or the merchandising rights. So long as they have the film distribution rights, they can release it outside of Japan and edit it at their discretion. I'm sad... they locked my post after I got in my parting shot at Maverick_LSC.

As far as the VF-1 goes, the cockpit was significantly changed, the hexagonal three-panel main screen was replaced by a single-panel main screen, the controls were simplified (including eliminating the two extra joysticks for battroid mode, moving the transformation controls onto the throttle lever, etc), the HUD went from being a projection on transparent panels to being a holographic projection on the canopy, the hands were redesigned, etc. etc. etc.

Oh yes, I've no doubt that the more deluded fans will make a huge fuss that I've dared to inject common sense and fact into the proceedings, and Kevin McKeever will probably try to publicly chew me out for daring to question the legitimacy of his claim that Harmony Gold flat-out owns Macross.

Ladies and gentlemen... open your umbrellas, because the poo's about to hit the fan.

Eh, that's not really a discussion... the whole thing was started as a pineapple salad joke. Now it's just an excuse for two guys who hate each other to take potshots at each other. The few remaining mods there are too apathetic to do anything. You want full-on nonsense? There's a thread in their tech debates section where a bunch of frothy-mouthed nutjobs are trying to prove that the AFC-01 Legioss/VFA-6 Alpha is superior to the VF-1 in every way, mainly by making up "facts" as they go. I still maintain that the long wait between the "original" series and the Shadow Chronicles movie unhinged most of the Robotech fanbase.

I rationed it to two episodes a day... with lots and lots and lots of extra-strength Tylenol.

I'm in the clear... I've seen it all (yes, even all of Macross 7).

According to his staff bio on Robotech.com, Steve's only prior experience in anime was a brief stint as a digital animator, after which he earned his BA in Creative Writing at U of C Riverside. It makes no mention of him having any role in the development of Robotech.com. Tommy's staff bio mentions that he got admitted to UCLA to study engineering, but he dropped his enrollment there to attend the ArtCenter College of Design, and says that he "helped design" Robotech.com, though it's unlikely he had any real involvement in the development of the software (maybe he specced out the layout or did the graphics). Robotech.com itself wasn't designed in-house, the whole thing (including the store) was farmed out to a studio in West Hills, CA, called Bold New World. It's fairly likely that Bold New World also handles site maintenance and developed the few new features that've popped up since 2001. It looks like their domain registrar's a low-cost choice... NetworkSolutions. The IP resolves to a NS-owned server farm in Boise. Their choice of meta keywords was pretty shameless too... it includes Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. Don't go giving them credit, because (as usual) it looks like Harmony Gold's taking credit for work they didn't do. Hell, don't even give the writers and editors credit... Sentinels was a Star Trek clone without shame, and the only thing that changed between Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles was the name of the show they're ripping off... (namely, Battlestar Galactica)

That's what the ridiculously advanced computers are there for...

He isn't... as far as anyone has been able to ascertain, he's a glorified moderator responsible for posting news articles and policing the message boards. The only education his profile mentions is a BA in Creative Writing. By the look of things, all the actual site hosting and design is contracted out. Well, Robotech's creators would certainly like to imagine the show is a mid-to-top tier franchise. The reality of the matter is somewhat different.

There's something to be said for that... but it may be even simpler than that... the VF-17's gunpod doesn't have a cartridge ejection port... it's probably using caseless ammunition. I don't think it's a dedicated beam rifle or a beam gatling... the former didn't come into semi-common use until the VF-27. Glad you liked it. Yeah, it looks like the "beam adapter" fits over the barrels of the gatling cannon, which makes me wonder if it's not just doing that as a means of sharing the gunpod's trigger.

"The beauty of recycling footage."

I only glanced over the sheet briefly when it arrived, but the gunpod sheet's got the gunpods sorted by type... and the VF-17's gunpod was put together with another field-reloadable gatling cannon, so odds are Chronicle says that it's a gatling cannon. All the art of it that I've ever seen has it down as a gatling cannon, even going so far as to show the barrel assembly without the magazine in place.

Seto stealthily sneaks back into the thread after several days of absence Not really, no. Apart from a few small groups on RPOL and Palladium's message boards, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in actually playing the RPG. A lot of the fans I've talked to have either purchased the book to use it as a sort of tech manual. Most of those who actually bought the books with the intent to play the game can't find enough interested fans in their immediate area to get a game started. I didn't buy it, but I borrowed a copy from someone gullible enough to send out for it (the local bookstores won't stock it because they know it won't sell) and it seems to be pretty much a retread of the old books, with the MDC values adjusted and a fair bit of mediocre new lineart.

Nah, they already did the colonization thing in Sentinels... they actually even touch on it in the "Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles" comics. The booster assemblies for the "neutron-s missiles" are actually old Angel-class colony ships that were going to be retrofitted as bulk cargo haulers. They're trying to rip off Battlestar Galactica, with a ship full of soldiers and civilians fighting a running battle against evil robots. Nah, I doubt they'll kill her... they need an obviously-crowbarred-in love interest for "Scott".

He's living in his own little world... he has been since day 1. It's a strange world, populated by all the major fictional creatures... leprechauns... fairies... unicorns... people who liked Robotech 3000... he likes to think that he actually had an influence on Macross, and like Kevin McKeever so often claims, thinks his hackjob rewrite with lousy synth-pop music was a dramatic improvement on the original. He is, of course, completely wrong. As I've illustrated many times before, Harmony Gold doesn't want to do that because tie-ins with the original series are literally all that's keeping the franchise intact. Finding out what had happened to Rick Hunter and the SDF-3 was far and away the most popular reason why people bought Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Every time Harmony Gold has tried to move away from the original three sagas, the fanbase has crucified them for it. That's why the new "Shadow saga" is just a continuation of the "New Generation". History offers us several damning pieces of evidence that make it painfully obvious that the men in charge of Robotech can't write good original material. Their one brave stab at telling their own story (Robotech 3000) was so poorly received that it never made it past the production of the teaser trailer. All that has changed between the original creative staff and the current creative staff is the title of the sci-fi series they're trying to imitate... Carl Macek and company wanted Robotech to be Star Trek. Tommy Yune and company want Robotech to be Battlestar Galactica.

Wanz has this really bad habit of quoting things he half-remembers me saying... I just stepped in to offer my genuine thoughts on the subject... (yes, I don't care for Macross 7, and I find Macross Frontier only so-so... Macross II was the last one in the storytelling tradition of the original... after that it went to some new and not necessarily good places) Considering the horrid mess that was Carl Macek's vision for Robotech's future, is that necessarily a bad thing? If there's one thing the damn near continuous failure of Robotech title after Robotech title on every media format illustrated, it's that Robotech fans have a crippling fear of new and original ideas. They want the same tired, boring, predictable stuff with familiar characters and stories. Think of it not as a sci-fi or action series, but as a giant robot soap opera... What I can't get is why Carl Macek continually acted as though Robotech was his story... even in his interviews he acted like the whole thing was his opus, instead of just a rewrite. He had to know anybody with a brain would figure out it wasn't his writing... I tried to explain that to Tommy Yune once... he didn't get it. Robotech's creators don't feel safe when they have to come up with a story and characters and setting all their own, for them it's much more comfortable to write a big, convoluted fanfic using somebody else's characters, mecha, and overall plot. In this case, Genesis Climber Mospeada. Yeah, there is a lot of irony in that... though it doesn't really stop there... Not only is the "Masters Saga" the most reviled of the original three sagas, but the other story that's integral to the ongoing plot (Robotech II: the Sentinels) is a close runner-up in terms of the fans least-favorite saga... and everything in Shadow Chronicles hinges on it. Even the new alien race debuted in Sentinels. Yet the fans usually answer please for more information about Sentinels with "to hell with that poo!".

That's what Tommy Yune tried to do with the continuity reboot comics... he made Leonard, Edwards, and a few others into corrupt, power-hungry, and often treasonous fellows to explain why they worked so hard to gain power... Nah... I consider the popularity of Macross 7 proof that most of humanity has gone what is medically known as snoop-the-loopy... I consider Macross II: Lovers Again to be the last true Macross sequel, and everything produced after Macross Plus to be Kawamori's attempt to prove P.T. Barnum right... "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". Oddly, looking at Robotech sequels... I think Harmony Gold's decision to toss Carl Macek out on his ear and bring in Tommy Yune was actually the best judgement call they ever made. I get the feeling Macek hero-worshipped Gene Roddenberry, because he was trying his hardest to turn Robotech into Star Trek with Robotech II: the Sentinels and Robotech III: the Odyssey.