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I don't think there were ever any 1/3000 Robotech SDF-1's released with any imprint other Bandai on the toy itself. I may be mistaken, but that's my impression from what I've seen in this forum and from watching eBay auctions, correspondence with sellers, and other pics I've seen on the web. I also have the impression that Bandai's name never appeared on the box (except possibly fine print). Matchbox definitely had its name on one release. (Like the one shown at Valkyrie Factory.) I know that some of the Matchbox Robotech stuff was later rereleased with Harmony Gold instead of Matchbox on the box, but I don't know if that ever happened with the 1/3000 SDF-1. I suspect not.

I'm sure that's what most of the scientists wanted to vote for, but they wouldn't admit it. Very funny movie, although it might help to have lived through the 70's. Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Stanislaw Lem, who wrote the novel Solaris, and the film by Tarkovsky is an interesting, meditative film, but a little slow for my tastes. (Essentially the same reaction I had to his historical film Andrei Rublev.) (I haven't seen the Clooney version of Solaris yet.)

haha, back when Toynami first annouced the notice about 1-3000 being variants, we were all joking, "Oh yeah, we found some problems, but we're just start fixing it now and call the first 3000 special variants." instead of scraping the whole batch and starting over. Assuming the 1-3000 units have a higher defect right, that could be the reason. It could also be that they produced both the variants and the main line at the same time but with different personnel.

They have about the same rate of lemons over at robotech.com. They seem to have concluded rightly or wrongly that the QC issues are concentrated in the pre-3000 units. Over at the Waist Joint (requires a quick and painless registration), a fellow who goes by Shaggydog initially offers a mildly positive review, with caveats, but eventually in the thread, after owning one for a week and experiencing more and more problems, he wrote that the Alpha is "almost comically breakable". Meanwhile, other posters reported various minor and major problems.

There was never a Bandai release, only a Matchbox release with Bandai printed on the bottom.

It's cool because it was cheezy. They only polled 60 scientists. Doesn't that seem to be a very small sample? I'm not a statistician, but 60 just doesn't sound like very many to be accurate. The poll doesn't claim to be representative of all scientists--it just shows what a particular group of top scientists thinks. If they wanted to show the opinions of "scientists in general", they should have used a random sample instead of selecting the group to be surveyed.

kanedaestes, you're mistaken about a fundamental fact. Harmony Gold has no objection in principle to products using the Macross name and based on the original Macross story. Provided, that is, that HG is recognized as the licensor and gets paid. Cases in point include the SDF Macross DVD's released by Animeigo, the SDF Macross Super Posables relesed by Toynami, and the new DYRL Super Posables by Toynami. If you want to debate this, you might try to legal debates section of the Other Anime and Science Fiction forum. Actually, this thread belongs in that forum assuming you really want to talk about a Robotech movie. An if that's what you're talking about, then I doubt you'll find many interested parties, because the changes to Macross in Robotech are disliked here. Furthermore, because Harmony Gold lacks any real creative talent or insight, regardless of general storyline used in the movie, it would probably be crap. Now if HG could somehow be sidelined, I suppose a good live-action movie based on the original Macross plot could conceivably be made. But it would run into the same difficulties as DYRL--i.e., how to take the story elements spread over 27 or 36 TV episodes, and compress or edit them into a 2-3 hour movie? It would also have to deal with the difficulties of translating transforming robots airplanes and giant aliens to the live action medium without evoking giggles from the audience. There are also many other elements which work well in anime but which may be hard to accept in live action. So the producers would have a difficult decision: retain those elements and risk looking foolish, or cut them and risk destroying whatever it is that makes Macross enjoyable. Not to mention enraging the existing fanbase. Anyway, yes, if the producers and director somehow managed to make a good movie, I'd watch it. BTW, if scientists genetically engineer a miniature elephant that eats nuclear waste and poops gold bricks, I'll buy one.

Okay, I was misremembering about Minmay's manager. Yes, he's based on Mikimoto, no, he does not have a name which refers to Mikimoto. What I was thinking of, instead, was the director of Shao Pai Lon. According to the Animeigo Liner Notes,

Ah, yes, I can barely remember "Big Jim", or was that "John"? For some reason I never saw much of him as a kid.

Yeah, I'm still waiting for the original on DVD too... Bladerunner is one of my faves, but I gotta say I'm surpised that the geeks didn't vote for Alien or 2001. (Right Max?) I can't remember which version I saw, but while I came out of the theater respecting the movie, I wasn't extremely excited by it. Maybe I saw the director's cut, because I didn't see the film until around 1988. Given the above list, I would have voted for 2001, hands down. I think I could watch that movie again and again and again. (I would have nominated "Quatermass and the Pit" aka "5 Million Years to Earth", and Carpenter's "The Thing" although I'm not sure I would have voted for them over 2001.)

You people who are saying GI Joe--are you talking about the 3-3/4" hard plastic toys or the 12" "action figures" (not dolls, please, not dolls!) I haven't really collected toys other than Macross since I was a kid, but of the ones I bought/inherited before the age of 13 or so, I'd say my favorites were: 1) The 12" Adventure Team GI Joes. Joe switched from being a true soldier in the 60's to becoming a sort of adventurer/explorer around 1970, what with the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and all. I think the switch was actually pretty good, because it gave Joe a lot of cool accessories to play with, from hover sleds to ALVIN-like one-man minisubs, various critters to fight (a pygmy gorilla, a giant squid, a giant octopus), and treasure to "rescue" (pirate booty, a golden idol). But why did all the AT Joes look like Ed Bradley? Oh well, I still have two or three Joes, including one who talks, and one "Mike Powers", who was a cleanshaven bionically-enhanced friend of Joe introduced to compete with the Six Million Dollar Man. Plus a good amount of Joe equipment. 2) Not exactly a toy, the Aurora "Prehistoric Scenes" snap together posable models. 1:13 scale models of dinosaurs (including a huge T. Rex), other prehistoric reptiles, a cave bear, sabre tooth tiger, neanderthal man, cro-magnon man (and woman), woolly mammoth, giant carnivorous bird, etc. I had nearly all of them--and still do, stored in a box but missing many essential parts, waiting to be resurrected. Someday, someday... 3) The Best of the West series. I didn't have any, but I admired my friends' and cousins'. They were the same size as Joe but Cowboys & Injuns. Lots of neat accessries including, of course, horses. I remember the clothes were made out of rubbery plastic instead of cloth. The line gets points for having (gasp) a GURL among the figures (no gals for Joe, unless he stole Barbie from your sis's collection). 4) Major Matt Mason, a toy that would never be sold today in the original form, because unlike Joe and Johnny West, his articulation was achieved by making him out of rubber over a pliable wire skeleton. The wire was subject to popping out and it was sharp at the tips! Anyway, Matt was an astronaut, and he had a bunch of astronaut friends, plus a few alien friends and enemies. I had Matt, Scorpio (not sure if he was a friend or enemy, but he looked cool) and giant alien friend, Captain Lazer, who was made out of hard plastic and giant space cannon as an optional accessory. 5) A runner up would be the Aurora monster movie models, including King Kong, Godzilla, Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, and the Wolf Man. Not very playable, since they were glue-together non-posable models, but they did have optional glow-in-the-dark parts, and somehow I still managed to enjoy waving them around and making various kinds of growls and roars.

Can you rephrase that, please? If you're asking, did Kawamori work on every Macross series, the answer is "no", since he didn't work on Macross II. http://macross.anime.net/production/animat...gain/index.html If you're asking, is Kawamori the only creator to get a cameo in a Macross series, I think the answer is "no". He does appear in a couple shots of the first episode of SDF Macross, as well as in a shot in DYRL. But there is also a minor character in episode 31 based somewhat on Matsuzaki Kenichi, and Minmay's manager in episode 15 is supposedly based on Mikimoto. See http://www.animeigo.com/Liner/MACROSS.t I also seem to recall that the manager's name is somehow a pun on Mikimoto's name, although I forget where I saw that.

As nifty as these things are, I wouldn't get them unless and until I got a 1/3000 SDF-1...and even then maybe not, if I had a Matchbox version. So I had to vote "no" even though I do hope they get made for all you guys who need them.

Thanks for the tip, mikeszekely. Golden Arms, your comments may point out one of the reasons that non-Chinese viewers (including me) have trouble with some aspects of kung fu movies. A lot of the stuff that may seem nonsensical or overwrought may contain references to concepts, stories, or aphorisms which Western viewers won't recognize. It would be interesting to see a detailed "annotation" of a martial arts film, with all the references explained. Anyway, getting back to "Hero", or the director, Zhang Yimou, I can't say I'm particularly a fan of his, either, having seen "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Ju Dou". They had elements which I enjoyed (and as with Hero, the cinematography is gorgeous), but they were too melodramatic for my tastes, with IMO stereotyped characters and situations. I often wonder if some of Zhang's popularity is from Western arthouse audiences' love of exoticism, combined with the fact that Zhang is relatively daring (in terms of plot and other elements) for a mainland director.

urk~!..i was referring it as a valk..doesn't the alpha is also considered as a valk? aaajin No, never. In Robotechspeak, variable mecha (including the VF-1, the Hovertank from Southern Cross, the Alpha, and the Cyclone) are all Veritechs. The VF-1 may be referred to as "Valkyrie" in some rare cases, but "Valkyrie" is never used as a generic term for variable mecha, only as a nickname for one particular type. In Macrossspeak, "Valkyrie" is the official nickname of the first type of variable fighter, the VF-1, and the informal way of referring to a variable fighter in general. Sort of the way that "Dreadnought" or "Monitor" are the names of specific ships, while "dreadnought" and "monitor" refers to to subsequent ships of similar type. The Legioss is part of Mospeada, and the Alpha is part of Robotech; neither is part of Macross, so neither is a "valk". Is that clear? (Clear as mud, I'll bet! )

I've suggested that they could go for a story that's more exploration oriented and/or which mainly concerns an encounter with the Supervision Army. More of the Protoculture background has been revealed in M7 and M0, but I'm sure there's still stuff to explore. I'd see it as something like "Macross meets 2001". On the other hand, in another thread I basically agreed with Final Vegeta that Kawamori isn't necessarily interested in fleshing out the Macross universe so much as using it as a convenient background for certain stories that interest him. So I'd suspect that if he's going to do any more, his first step would be to find a theme, then make it into a Macross story only if it fits the setting and expectations (i.e., Valks, music, and romance). What I'd really hate to see is a sequel that undermines the previous stories. E.g., one of the main points of SDF Macross was the creation of a new human society (Egan Loo's liner notes say that Kawamori viewed the Macross "as a new 'Earth of Culture' compared to the Earth of nature" that rejects the SDF-1 in episode 20.) I wouldn't want to see the new culture split by an all-out civil war just to provide an excuse for action scenes.

I figured it was regarded as some kind of classic, but I just found it boring and contrived. I saw it many years ago, but my vague recollection is that there was no really good reason for the fight to happen up there, for so long, but the characters had this really serious "must-stay-on-top-of-the-ladders" attitude. It's possible, though, that I'm mistakenly remembering a dislike of the movie overall, and transferring it to that particular scene. Also, I could be misremembering the exact details of the fight and/or movie. I'm not sure how many of OUATIC 1-3 I saw; mainly I just remember being bored during a fight that happened on top of a bunch of ladders or scaffolds.

Make that "super robot", not "giant robot". Here's an interesting summary of Japanese animation over the years: Recommended Anime: TV Series (See also the Movies and OAV links.) Recent giant robot anime on the list: Rayearth (1994), Evangelion (1995), Escaflowne (1996), Nadesico (1996), GaoGaiGar (1997), Vandread (2000), RahXephon (2002). Not on the list (for whatever reason) is Blue Gender (1999). Although some of the above may be somewhat parodic of earlier works, I don't think it would be accurate to say they represent a nostalgic revival of a dead form. Instead, Japanese anime (like the Super Sentai stuff and HK cinema) constantly recycles themes and comments on them self-referentially.

GHQ sells an N-scale Abrams: http://www.ghqmodels.com/store/58003.html A company called Roco minitanks also makes a few N-scale military vehicles including a Leopard II.

I don't know...it seems to me that anime has branched out from robot stuff but the real robot genre never really went away. The giant robot genre on the other hand may be due to nostalgia. Anyway, if people keep using Gundam as the yardstick for whether a show is popular in Japan over the long term, I doubt that anything will come close to measuring up. Put Macross up against anything else, and I'll bet it does pretty well.

Spoilers in white below I picked up the region 0 DVD in Oakland Chinatown a couple weeks ago. Some thoughts... The cinematography is superb, and I think that is one thing that both this film and CTHD offer over many other Hong Kong martial arts films--although I suspect the quality has improved overall since the 80's/early 90's. The story, however, is awful. Some spoilers here, so stop reading this paragraph (or if you're the kind of person who reads out loud, cover your ears). If you're okay with spoilers, highlight the rest of the paragraph to continue. It contains a Rashomon-like series of different versions of the same story. However, unlike Rashomon, there's no psychological ambiguity as to which story is "real". Instead, the first and second versions are simply misleading "theories" about previous events (one is a deliberate lie by the main character, while the other is a partially correct guess by the king); the third version is what really happened. Each telling is of course an excuse for various fight scenes. The actual plot concerns a man who conspires with several famous outlaws to assassinate the king of Qin, who is on his way to conquering China and becoming the first emperor. Jet Li's character is motivated by revenge for his father (I think) who was killed during one of Qin's conquests. By pretending to have killed the three outlaws, Li hopes to gain access to the king. But once the final story is told, Li realizes that his personal vendetta is less important than the peace which will come about if Qin finally unifies China. On top of all the melodrama and opaque character motivations which have been mentioned above, I found this ending particularly unconvincing and, in fact, distasteful. It's hard not to see the heavy hand of contemporary politics, with the director, Zhang Yimou kissing up to the current PRC authorities by saying, essentially, that order and unity are higher ideals than justice and freedom. Historically, the Qin dynasty lasted only about 37 years and is remembered as a tyranny for imposing heavy burdens on the population and burning literary classics which were not "politically correct". The implications for Hong Kong's autonomous government, Taiwan, and activists for human rights in China are obvious. I suspect that the nature of Zhang's story may have been influenced by the need to obtain permission to film in the Forbidden City, as well as by Zhang's difficulties with the government over the nature and funding of his earlier films. In general, I do like the "flying" style of martial arts movies such as Zu, Savior of the Soul, East is Red, as well as more realistic (though over the top and funny) Jackie Chan stuff. I really don't care for Jet Li that much--I remember enjoying Bodyguard from Beijing, being only mildly interested in My Father is a Hero, and downright bored with the various Once Upon a Time in China movies. The latter I remember as being extremely unrealistic even though there was no magic. I recall a scene where for no particular reason the characters had to fight on top of a bunch of bamboo frames and ladders and it just went on much too long for me. One more thing--Zhang Ziyi is almost completely wasted in the movie.

Azrael, thanks. Great info. Also, thanks to Golden Arms for the heads up.

Beltane70, to be precise, plutonium is formed by bombarding uranium with neutrons. In other words, it's not a fission product of uranium, as it has a higher atomic number. But it is correct as you say that plutonium can be a byproduct of uranium-based reactors, because some of the uranium in the reactor gets hit by stray neutrons and turns into plutonium. (Here's one description of what goes on.) Plutonium can also be used to create a self-sustaining fission reaction, both in bombs and reactors. Anyway, yes, the VF-1's engines are based on an advanced fusion reaction developed by overtechnology, and thus do not use heavy fissile elements such as plutonium and uranium.

Yup, we've talked about this in several threads. Not only has animation technology advanced, but styles develop and change. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about how maneuverable the two fighters are based on the animation. Unless and until we see a VF-1 in M0, or Kawamori makes a direct comparison, it's probably more useful to look at the specs for the two aircraft. Here's one thread where we talked about it: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...opic=3755&st=40

Well, the interview will probably be in English. It's an American web-station for people who like anime and Japanese pop music.