jenius

Wow... that kinda sucks (unless you like both variants equally). Did they just not slap the sticker on the box or something?

MOSPEADA MOSPEADA MOSPEADA!

Seconded on both counts (although I think MW is pretty good considering some other forums I view).

My legioss/tread family portrait:

Inflammatory aspects aside, I think there's an interesting question there to ask. I know the creators of Mospeada occasionally sound a bit tepid about the series and seem to express some disatisfaction with the sponsor involvement. I wonder if the Southern Cross creators also feel like they had put something decent together only to have the sponsors mold it into a failure.

Yeah, Brera is definitely not friendly. He intently watches as he expects Alto to die. Then when Alto manages to get away and try to help Luca he definitely plays with the two by shooting the gun out of Luca's VF-25's hands. He's not dag-nasty evil yet though, he really has several opportunities to kill Alto and Luca but chooses instead to play with them. Whatever his vehicle is, the VF-27 or whatever, it looks like it's fully capable of folding without a foldildo which seems pretty impressive. It also looks like the long expected "embryonic sack that cancels G-forces" maybe employed here also although I guess this is all better discussed in the "technology thread." What I'm really curious about is why would the Varja capture someone? It seems the idea is there's a greater intelligence controlling them, a brain bug if you will, but would it really need to research humans and their mecha at this point (it did, after all, decimate a run of the humans 20 years ago). Since Brera blasts his way into their ship it seems he has nothing to do with those controlling them so yeah, I'd say we've set the table for a three-way battle. I'm excited. My criticism of this episode: they laid the ranka/sheryl oddness (protrusion, glowing light, Sorji/Aisha moment) on a little too thick for my liking. I was left scratching my head a bit during the mecha porn. At least this isn't like MacZero where it will end on that strange note, I look forward to having what's going on there revealed.

Thanks everyone. If I find a cache of weathered VF-1s toys I'll buy 'em all and offer them up here... not really expecting that to happen but still -

Complete and utter BS should score way worse than that!

Hey everyone, I'll be in Japan from June 15th-29th. Not a long stay to see a whole country to be sure. My girlfriend has no idea I run a website for Robotech toys, in fact, she invited me to Japan because her little brother is there doing a semester abroad. Her only clue that I even know of anime is the fact I sat her down to watch Do You Remember Love? once telling her it was "an awesome import movie from the 80s." We fly into Osaka (the 16th) for two nights, visit Miyajima for one night, Koyasan for one night, then go back to Osaka for one night, Kyoto for 2 or 3 nights, and move onto Tokyo until we leave on the 29th. Anyway, if there are any members in Japan during these dates I think it'd be fun to make the girlfriend aware of my anime-craze by introducing her to people there and taking her Macross shopping in between all our shrine visiting. Since we're spending most our time in Tokyo that'd be best. Of course, any advice on visiting Japan is welcome! If this is too self-gratifying I will totally understand if the thread gets locked down.

Alright, it's not fair for me just to blame Toynami without illustrating a scenario for how Toynami can claim it's not their fault and still be completely to blame... so let me elaborate on what I think really happened: 1) Aoshima agrees to release the MPC to the Japanese with some changes. Aoshima asks to have all production molds by 4/30 so they can release the toys four months later. 2) On 5/31 Aoshima politely requests Toynami get them everything they need to make the toys because the molds are one month late... no word back from Toynami. 3) On 6/30 Aoshima calls George Sohn who says he thought they had the molds on 4/30 and he'll look into it. 4) On 7/31 Toynami calls Aoshima to say they screwed up and shipped the molds to Macau instead of somewhere else and they'll correct this. 5) Aoshima sticks to their proposed release date and has everyone and their mother make toys for 31 days straight so they can release the toys on 8/31. 6) The toys are complete crap. Aoshima calls and tells Toynami as much and Toynami says "Wow, why'd you try to sell them so soon?" Now this is COMPLETE and UTTER BS fiction I'm making up but something I wouldn't be at ALL surprised is close to the truth. Aoshima made a best faith effort to do what they said they would only to be completely screwed by Toynami in such a way where Toynami could completely blame Aoshima.... in a way that actually works since Aoshima should have just delayed their product four months instead of letting unproven factories slap everything together.

Why would a company with an otherwise solid reputation make absolute crap toys when they paired with Toynami? I don't care what George Sohn or his goonies tell Roger... I suspect Toynami deserves a bit of culpability here.

When was the last time you were charged for an MW post?

Nothing? Nothing at all. You mean, if I could talk to the people at Aoshima they would tell me "Yeah, Toynami did everything right and we just f*cked that all up pretty hard." For some reason, I get the feeling that's not at all what they would say. Clearly they're blaming some of this fiasco on Toynami.

The VF-25 looks nice...

I can only imagine what horrible QC fauxpaus has made this long delay necessary. I can just see it now: Tester: "It's a neat toy, but this gimmick where the arms fall off is kind of annoying." Exec: "Oh... right.... uh, we meant for that to happen.... nothing to see here..." To lackey: "Tell the factory to stand down until we make some changes."

Uh, We did go over this a while ago, it's clearly just them using two of the same arm pieces so they can do a promo pic. The likelihood of the final version being like that are almost nill. This is pretty common with really early promo work of unfinished prototypes, they all have stickers instead of tampo and occasionally they take shortcuts if they don't have all the pieces.

I am working on some CMs goodness....

This needs to be Youtubed when complete.... and needs to not have a Top Gun song playing in the background!

Sniffle... I've been crapping diamonds for a week!

My understanding of this was different too (which again, might be flawed, what I get is 20th person down the telephone line). What I was told was that Yamato wanted to release their toys stateside but there was a Toynami flub-up. When it came to Yamato and Toynami working out some sort of agreement BW nixed it telling Yamato they weren't to do business with Toynami because of Toynami's HG relationship. That's why it's so odd to see Bandai doing business with Toynami now... hopefully this opens the flood gates. That all might have been the Toynami spin on things though. This might have just been a case of Yamato wanting to do business in the states while Toynami was still releasing their 1/55 MPC VF-1 toys and Toynami was resistant because it'd introduce competition. Maybe now that the MPC VF-1 is done Toynami is much more open to inviting in toys that were previously viewed as "the enemy."

OOoh, I need screen caps! Oh, or an episode name, I'd like to see it in action. Yep, all stuff I'm aware of... but within the context of the show none of that matters. It exists, then doesn't exist, then exists again, still looks like a helicopter in space, and all the mechs look like a backward devolution of "robotechnology"

I don't follow your point. Nothing you said contradicts what I wrote but the way it reads sounds almost like you disagree with me about something. For what it is, I think they did a decent job. Macross starts in a relatively current date, the Earth gets bombarded and sucks but does look more futuristic in The Masters, then another huge space battle later we get New Gen where much of the Earth is in ruins and cities are abandoned. There are lots of issues with it, most the New Gen cities should probably be rubble, but otherwise I think it's pretty much just the mechs of Southern Cross that feel totally out of place. Macross mechs look like progressions from existing technology and New Gen stuff has that boxy = futuristic vibe from the 80s but the Southern Cross stuff is just... not fun. It ends up looking like tanks and helicopters in space wedged between VF-1s with Fast Packs and Alpha/Beta combos. Somebody eventually throws how the vehicles are shown to perform in the show itself but i don't care what anybody says, you can't sell floating tanks and helicopters with those bruisers on your bookends.

While the transformation is very similar Toynami actually did come up with their own molds for their Morphers. See my website for more info

I think it'd be wrong to say they've "sold" the rights or the rights have been "purchased." Toynami *probably* has an exclusive license by way of HG, or a license that covers the type of merchandise Bandai and Yamato would be trying to import. Toynami theoretically paid well for that license so it'd make sense they would defend it from Yamato or anyone else trying to sell Macross goods outside of Japan without giving them a cut. Obviously there's all sorts of crap involved but that's the summary as I understand it.

There are modern day helicopters without tail rotors, they use their exhaust to stabilize IIRC. The AGACS was never a helicopter in space. In fact, it was never a helicopter in the entire series. It has three modes: Fighter, Helicopter, and Battroid. It is only seen in Fighter and Battroid modes. Unfortunately, it looks like a helicopter without a rotor in fighter mode so it still kinda looks like helicopters fighting in space. In Robotech the Auroran makes almost no sense. It appears in an episode where it shouldn't exist yet, is revealed in a later episode as a new fighter, and if Earth had VF-1 valkyries at any point all of the mecha in Southern Cross is a pathetic step in the wrong direction.