Space Casual Life

This is probably the most insular, closed minded and unwelcoming forum I have ever experienced. Good luck.

I showed the Macross Special to the 7 year old son of my best friend recently. WITH subs on the laserdisc. He loved it and wanted to see more. He couldn't read the subs but the quality of the animation when Hikaru crash lands in his 1D and then ends up in battroid outside Minmay's bedroom grabbed him. That giant orange Valk, lavilshly hand drawn with logical mechanical details, in a street wtih no one knowing what was going on, that would grab any sane kid.. I dare you to show the Macross Special to kids these days. And not a compressed youtube video (even worse a grain scrubbed and DNRed version) on a laptop screen or a phone - On a proper display with a proper source. No, you don't have to have a large screen CRT and LD player like me, you just have to show the show somewhat like it was actually seen at the time and I think kids will see the humanistic charm in it - I've seen some of today's "cartoons" for kids and they are soulless monstrosities of flat CGI/cell shaded whatever with perfect homogenous smoothness and they are THE WORST. It's not hard for something with as much soul as Macross to compete. Don't assume kids won't get it, don't underestimate their potential appreciation of something HUMAN.

Not older than me. I watched Macross on US TV in 1985 largely unchanged from the Japanese original and it changed my life. When the announcer said "that was the final episode of Rxxxxxxx" I cried my eyes out. I was 24. Actually, I was 7...still older than you I figure!

Palladium Robotech RPG books were basically a stand in for the line art collections I couldn't acquire in the 90s. I remember photocopying the entire rulebook from a friend's older brother at the public library in the late '80s before I got my own copy. I loved those books. I need to recollect them. I have no idea what happened to them. I know I had Robotech, Macross II, Macross II Deck plans, Invid Invasion and Robotech II the Sentinels. My buddies and I used to play lunchtimes in the library in about year 8. We went rogue from the UN Spacy, broke off from our squadron on a patrol and headed to Japan. We got their factories to produce copies of our Valks and then formed a private army of Japanese piloted Valks. From there we attacked the JSDF and took over Japan. Then we started to attack the world. It ended after about a year with us being the rulers of the world! We had chicks too. Hot ones..!

I guess I'm talking about THEMES. In or before the Unification War you had mass nuclear carnage. At the end of SW1 you had Earth getting 90+% taken out by a massive orbital bombardment. Humanity still managed to play an ace, with the Grand Canon/s. It's Earth vs the Universe. That was a great thing about Macross, the HUMAN thing about Macross. It had an epic background. Macross 7 vs space vampires was..uh..non epic..the only sequel that had close to epic themes was Macross II with Earth threatened again...Anyways I always wished the series continued in the way that Earth took the fight to what threatened Earth. That would be an epic theme that would be an appropriate continuing/ending of the story, I.M.H.O. I have to admit I love the original Mars Attacks trading card story too. haha.

Ah I see, thanks. Hmm what if Megaroad-01 travelled through that black hole and confronted the Supervision Army in the same lush animation as DRYL? or the Trumotion sequence in the DYRL video games in a second movie? (can confirm Trumotion animation in SS version I own, haven't checked out PS1 version) With ancient ruins representing the origins of humanity and epic battles? Imagine if they resolved the universe in an epic way like Gunbuster? Would you hate it? Could all the other "Macross" sequels stand alone as "cool" anime without the Macross name but with Kawamori involvment? I think so. So Max getting married to Milia was "already over" too but you enjoyed a sequel involving them. Why do you think a sequel involving a relationship and characters with more complex backstories would be potentially somehow less interesting? No, I and many SW fans are not unhappy for "recapilating the story"!. The original grittiness, design, real sets, story themes and great characters were absent. The "feeling" was gone. It didn't have anything to do with bring back the original cast. I'm glad Macross is successful and new fans love it. However, I do not enjoy the new iterations. They don't FEEL like Macross to me at all. IN MY OPINOIN They could be anything with superficial transforming mecha and a band or singer tacked on. Just an opinion. Don't ban me "bro" - appreciate being here and sharing data. I respect anyone to feel how they want about Macross but I will not necessarily feel positive about all shows just because they have the name Macross on them.

I love Max too. Like me, he's a dork but got the women. Hikaru, imo wasn't half as annoying as Amuro Rei, you could definitely empathise with him and you didn't hate him. Well I didn't as a kid anyway. Hikaru actually had depth to his character. Max is an ace pilot that uses his womanising skills to marry a hot alien. He's pretty shallow compared to Hikaru imho. Is it an endpoint? Doesn't have to be. And I like how you highlight the complexity of Minmay's character. On point man. Other than Max and Milia? The amazing ones still weren't "Macross" to me, they were off the shelf projects with the name Macross and transforming mecha slapped onto them. Just my opinion though.

Hmm. Good thoughts. Thanks. Thinking more yeah I could be wrong about Toren Smith on Animerica?, Maybe he just translated a lot of manga I read then? Trish Ledoux was def the lead editor of Animerica though and there was a great encyclopedia of anime she did in the day and my sister gifted me back then.

Thanks for that, never knew it. That would make sense as '97 DYRL for SS/PS and the games for PC Engine are all part of the Big West canon. If anyone hasn't seen it, the clip where it fills in the DYRL version of the fold from South Ataria is legendary. For a long time the dream for me was a sequal movie about the Megaroad, done in the style of animation in that clip. I'm thinking there was a timeline published even earlier referencing that "Earth lost contact with the Megaroad-01 fleet as it was somewhere near the centre of the Galaxy" though. I BELIEVE there's even a reference at the end of Macross 7 (Kawamori-verse) to this? Does Gubaba still post here? I think he used to know this kind of stuff. Oh and btw there were some hardcore otaku bilingual people on Animerica like Trish Ledoux and Toren Smith. I'm pretty sure someone there would have mailed in for the gift at the time.

Did anyone get the MADOX-01 re-release? How was the grain? I look at some 4K "restorations" of scenes from DYRL? on Youtube and they look horrible to me, clean, flat and soulless. I believe theatrical anime can be restored well though as it was originally seen at unlimited resolution on a massive screen. Grain scrubbing and edge cleanup is NOT good restoration for anything though! However, I don't get the point of restoring OVAs that, although shot on film, were never intended to be seen above 425 lines of horizontal resolution. The creators at the time knew what the end product would come out as and I believe that would have informed their work. To release something as it was never intended is a bit like putting a Lamborghini body on a Toyota Carolla, pointless.

Okay, how is Max more interesting to you than the love triangle between Hikaru, Misa and Minmei? Ok. I would have liked to see Misa as Captain of the ship, being a military pro and from her lineage I think she would have been a more interesting skipper than Max was. I think the design for the Megaroad-01 is a masterpiece. Stuff doesn't always change for the better though. Look at what happened to Star Wars when Lucas was given absolute power. SW is returning a lot to what the original fans liked, going back to the source material and more the original "feel" and people love it apparently.

Hmm, I'm sure this fact was published in timelines much earlier than the mention in the release you're talking about. I think I probably first read it in a translated timeline in an issue of Animerica in the '90s. I'm hazy on where it exactly it can be found in Japanese publications.

And don't get me started on how much I paid for Bubblegum Crisis on VHS from Kiseki then! : /

Yeah most CDs were AUD$30 on the shelf then. If you wanted a special import the staff would lay out a massive binder with THOUSANDs of pages with tiny lines listing hundreds of thousands of titles. They'd find a code. About 3-6 months later they'd give you call or you'd check and they'd have it. I don't know how much they charged for US and European imports but some of the rarer ones on the shelf were often $50. Japanese imports were always about $70. I got in 4 Macross related CDs over a few years this way and I still have them. Other than travel to Japan you had no other choice if you wanted the real ones. Chinatown in Sydney had places with SM for about $10. I had about a dozen I think, standouts were a Miason Ikkoku OST and a Ghibli collection. It's funny that some of the Japanese imports I got can now be had for basically $1 each and wages are 5 times higher. So I paid 35000% more than I would today! Of course then housing, food and utilities were much cheaper compared to income then too. I liked that world because you really had to consider your hobby purchases more and you treasured them more. I find the easy and cheap access to everything all the time now to be overwhelming, wasteful and confusing, So I live like I'm just rich in the '90s which is much easier to do in 2024. Last year I bought a TOTL Laserdisc player that retailed in the late '80s for Y280,000 (About Y328,000 today) for about AUD$700 fully landed and operational. In the '90s the original price would have been about 4 months of my wages or, for a very well paid person then about a month. Today the cost to own the player is about 3 days wage for most Australians. Anyway, sometimes I can't believe how much times have changed.

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Oh man, you got me nostalgic. Pulled my Victor '95 release (Canberra Impact Records acquired) off the shelf and took some pics. SM was cool but I trashed all of 'em about 1999 in pursuit of "purity".

Holy Shi*t? A US Tower Records sold you an SM release? I used to pick those up in Chinatown Sydney at dodgy shops and at gaming (RPGs, wargames, Bridge Commander and ASL for those that don't understand the word "gaming" in a '90s context.) conventions in the '90s in Australia. Yeah they were amazing to just have the music (and the quality of the inserts and also the music (I guess just straight PCM dupes?) was good, but the REAL sh*t was always the original Japanese releases. I remember ordering Macross Song Collection through my local music retailer, Impact Records in Canberra Australia. You could order any CD existing in print on the planet...for a price.. It was reasonably legendary. Sydney heads used to come down to Canberra just to buy heavy metal CDs from there. Anyways, Macross Song Collection, the original Japanese Victor release ended up costing me about AUD$70. I was earning about AUD$100 a week stacking shelves a supermarket nights while studying then, so a significant investment. The SM version probably sounded the same, but when I put that official Victor CD into my player I felt so much pride...still got it on my shelf. Still feel that pride when I play it. Not acquired on Y!jp or evilBay or any of that sh*t...

PLEASE be the story of the Megaroad-01 animated by hand and shot on film in the original studio used for SDFM. Marin is also still alive and professionally active by the way.

I remember drooling at the US Renditions ads in the back of probably Protoculture Addicts (?) in about '92 or '93 for for MII on VHS subtitled. I had no way of knowing what exactly this was. A couple years later I got the Kiseki releases dubbed, about the only way to see it in Australia coz US fansub releasers weren't doing it obviously and importing the official US tapes was crazy money for a student..(despite my US Renditions membership card which I had spent stupid money for me at the time on) Holy crap that was a bad dub but I could see the beauty of M2 and Big West's true vision for the franchise..the mechanical design is incredible, original and non-Kawamori but shows a true lineage with the original show. Then you had my favourite aspect of the look and feeling of Macross, Mikimoto, fully present. Story wasn't the greatest but a more worthy sequel than anything that came after imho. This opinion has made me a pariah but after playing the games that also make up the Big West canon and witnessing the modern Macross Kawamori controlled shows I feel reassured in my adherence to the BW way of continuing the story. Just my opinion. Enjoy your Kawamori-verse, like modern G. Lucas, I will not be partaking. I won't get into this release. I don't really know what a "kickstarter" is anyway and I have the show in both the CLV box set and the CAV individual releases so don't know what I would be missing, I pretty much have a perfect collection of them anyway. If you haven't seen the show or don't have a laserdisc player I would recommend this set however, it's wildly different to what came after in '94/'95 and imho more in-line with what Macross was to many people (including myself) at that time.

Macross Song Collection? https://www.discogs.com/release/5626199-Various-超時空要塞マクロス-ソングコレクション That was my first official Japanese Macross CD. Macross II definitely had A1 grade music to match Iijima perfect pop. Macross 7 had good music but imo wasn't in the tradition of Macross before it obviously.

I always used to prefer going into Sydney Kinokuniya to get books but lately their prices have not reflected the fall in yen value, they actually seem to be increasing quite a bit. Sure rent and wage inflation in Australia is a thing too but anyway. I remember going to Sydney Kinokuniya in the '90s when it was in the Japanese expat haven in North Sydney of Neutral Bay. Also Japan Book Plaza in the CBD was a must hit spot. There were other places too in the Rocks, including Japanese convenience stores with video and CD rental.. It was towards the end of a time when a lot of Sydney signage was dual langauge in Japanese. There was a huge amount of cashed up Japanese tourists then. People still thought Japan was going to take over the world too haha. So in 2024, I used Amazon Japan and got the Macross 40th book and Dougram 40th 4 days shipped to Australia. Big thick envelope and the books just plainly stacked inside that. My favourite book shipping experience is the books shrink wrapped to the base of an actual box. Anyway, there was minimum damage from stacking in an envelope, just a few minor wear marks on edges. I don't really care these days about minor stuff like that, I never plan to sell anything I buy and I'm resolving to not baby stuff as much as I have through my collecting life. I want to enjoy these and any damage that doesn't ruin reading them or isn't significant I'm trying to not let bother me. I want to have more pride of ownership - a well used book by the original owner is great - it has pride of ownership. A similar approach that I've always taken to clothes - Perfect clothes or shoes are so uncool - broken in stuff is much cooler. Aaanyway. despite the mediocre imo cover, strange left to right presentation (Not that I own much outside of the Macross franchise but can anyone think of another Japanese art book that presents LEFT to RIGHT? Huh?) and poor spine presence (next to Perfect Memory and Gold Book or anything released in the '80s or '90s it looks so pathetic and boring) the Macross Book is really cool. With my limited Japanese it comprehenvisly walks you through some really cool details and (only read SDFMTV section so far) using a wide range of art (even if tiny at times). It of coures has some of that previously discussed possibly unseen or rarely een art in it too. If I was a young guy into SDFM who couldn't afford PM or GB this would be a really cool guide. The Macross and Dougram books are similarly priced but Office J.B. have put out their Dougram book on heavier paper and with an nicer cover and presentation. Kodansha's presentation on the Macross book loses, although I love the '80s ness of the inside back of the dustcover, Minmei lineart on a windowpane pattern! So cool. Oh yeah the Dougram book is overall cooler but with much less to cover (?). All the kit box art is covered as well as lineart for all the equipment (including Federation small arms as I had hoped for my modelling aspirations). Also they talk about stuff like Dual Magazine. It's cool. Anyways I like my new books. Since I got them on Monday I've been reading through them each night with a glass of Hennessey and a good tape on in the background. Once I get my Dougram kits in I'll be using that book as reference a lot for my wargaming project with them. Hmm, if I get 1/72 Dougram on the table I might look at building my stack of 1/72 Macross destroids too and doing a Destroid only game. Transforming Valkyries and simulatneous air/ground or large scale space combat is pretty hard to game in 1/72 without 3 models for each Valk and about a football field playing area..

It's so weird how the Swedish produced so many indigenous fighters. I was mildly obsessed with the Saab Viggen in school, I thought it was the coolest thing ever and demanded the model kit. !

Yes definitely, I think at least some of them are recasts or reworkings of figures that came with the original Takara kits. I've got the Deloyer 7 set on the way to me (apparently these figures only came out in 1/48 in the '80s.) and some of the other older kits I'm also getting have a few Federation infantry - just not enough for platoons or companies so I'll model my converted guys on the official ones. I think "modern" US infantry will work better as a base than Vietnam because of the "fritz" style helmet.

Right, yes it seems that way. And for Takahashi a step towards the "ultimate real robot show" , Votoms. I was afraid he'd been restricted to Gundam tropes in Dougram with the politics and the Amuro archetype. However it soon impressed me with things like [spoiler]the wormhole port, the staged hostage situation[/spoiler] and yes as you say the more grounded depiction of the "hero" mecha. I agree Gundam was a real landmark turning point in anime. Tomino had already started getting really dark and subversive with Zambot 3 and you could see he wanted to do something different. I think he broke the mold to allow himself and others like Takahashi to try different stuff. As for kits, I love how in Dougram combat armors can't fly and are just a component, acting as MBTs, in a combined armed force, much easier to wargame in a scale like 1/72 than a show like Macross with flying and transforming stuff. I like the Max Factory kits but have nostalgia for the '80s stuff. Not only were the originals on the shelf of my local K-Mart in the mid-'80s, along with Galient and other random shows, but so were the Revell Robotech Defenders versions that included a lot of Dougram stuff (which, as a Robotech fan at the time confused the heck out of me!). I'm going to do modifications on the old Dougram kits I think, giving the Combat Armors more dynamic poses. For Federation infantry I'm just probably going to use old ESCI plastic "modern" US infantry with helmet rims, rifle carry handles and a lot of pouches hacked off, then those weird vests moulded on with epoxy...