VFTF1

Well - for now it's a pipe dream. I've really put off Ideon and Zambot 3 for too long. Especially Ideon. I usually try to only own things from anime that I really love or at least thoroughly enjoy. SOC seems to be an exception because there's just ONE robot. Buying SOC Daimos does not mean I have to go out and get 15 Daimos toys and stuff... I really really like the idea here - also, SOC revisions are few and far between. While I do appreciate revised SOCs - I think I like the idea that the SOC is supposed to be designed superior enough to withstand the test of time. If you think about it- that's not hard. I mean - make it anime accurate, give it all the poses from the anime and the accessories and gimmicks associated with it and make it the best possible. It's a one off deal. And you just keep producing the same one toy for years and years. I would SOOOOOO love it if Takara-Tomy did this with Transformers... sorry...but I will now proceed to rant about Transformers again... Look - there are HUNDREDS of Transformers designs. Hundreds. And every year we get a new design and a new crappy toy that's imperfect and full of flaws for the design. For goodness sake. Make ONE phenomenal toy and at worse make a renewal version ten years later. How hard can it be? This way, you can go through all of the great characters making stupendous toys for them. I know, I know...it's a line for kids...the MO is lots of crappy cheap toys for kids to gobble up... But then again - there are plenty of crappy cheap Getter Robo and other Super Robot toys...but SOC is a unique line for people like me who just wan this one greatest of the greats and that's it. Um...yeah...there's TF Masterpiece I guess... but... I dunno...other than Prime and Grimlock...none of them measure up. Megatron is one big spindly mess and the seekers have extremely limited leg poseability.... but then again...maybe it makes sense to own 5 Transformers that are relatively great instead of five hundred POC(rap) toys... SOC of course has it easier in a sense too since most super robots don't transform, but rather combine with things or at parts formers or are combinations of vehicles which themselves don't transform. But yeah...Ideon..Ideon is next on the list. No ifs buts or other doubts. It's a crime that I still don't have Ideon. Pete

Allow me to spoil it for you then Bruno gets a Holywood producer to look at his demo for a TV talk show by saying that he managed to interview Harrison Ford for the demo. The producer sits behind a screen with Bruno and his agent, while the demo TV talk show tape is shown to a sample audience. The demo is 30 minutes of soft core gay porn (starring Bruno), and about 30 seconds of hardcore gay porn (starring Bruno). Then - after a looong time of really bad gay porn, FINALLY the Harrison Ford interview appears. Here's how it goes: THE ENTRANCE TO SOME RESTAURANT. THE DOOR OPENS. HARRISON FORD WALKS OUT AND IS MET BY BRUNO WHO JUMPS IN FRONT OF HIM WITH A MICROPHONE. BRUNO: Hey Harrisssson! Harisson Ford: fxck YOU!! Harrison Ford walks away. The end. -------- Seriously - that's the interview And it too is better than Robotech! Pete

And here I was thinking that this thread would be a discussion of Spinal Tap's Black Album. Pete

I'm in the process of making an Epic Haruhi Suzumiya comic featuring super robots and stuff... anyways... here's four sample pages! I've got the first chapter done - these samples come from chapter 2. When I translate all of it into english, I'll put it up in this thread from the beginning Pete

Yeah, yeah... but Mikimoto's Minmey steals the show!!! Man - she's totally the girl of my dreams!! Macross the First needs to fast forward to some scenes where Misa stops looking so stiff and starts looking attractive !!! Mikimoto's so mean - even in this litle picture Misa comes off as this utter stiff bore... I mean...insofar as Cathy in MF is somewhat an emulation of Misa - she's not ... because Cathy's just strict, and she's certainly got a sense of her own sex appeal - and besides, she dated Ozma. But Misa...dag... looking at her you wouldn't imagine she even had any feelings buried beneath that exterior... Mikimoto really really did a good job with these redesigns - but I am positive that later in Macross: First we will see Misa in a "new" light - and I'm really curious how Mikimoto will animate her then. But for now- dag! That Minmey makes me happy that I have Minmey in my avatar! Pete

I always found the designs from Gatchaman appealing. I imagine that if those vehicles combine in the show then the SOC...they are socs right?...will also transform and combine? Pete

There is? I guess I need to do some goolging... anybody have any info about it? Pete

This is why I absolutely love Bruno's interview with Harrison Ford Pete

Maybe I misunderstood that blog quote - but it looked like it said Macek authentically believed he was a great writer and wonderfully creative for coming up with the changes. That's different to coming up with the changes in order to sell a product more smoothely. Although - Hindsight is always 20/20 BUT I am and always have generally been of the opinion that all works should stand or fall on their own merits. It's actually not good business to alter original works in the vein hope of trying to get them to "sell better." That actually never sells well because people like to think they're getting a good idea and good execution rather than something that is tailored to what some marketer figured would sell. And this is evident in the fact that Macross is more popular the world over than Robotech even though Macross hasn't "officially" been released in most of the world and certainly hasn't been "packaged" to fit whatever "markets" are out there. But yeah - sure - I understand in the 80s the general idea was "Bring Japanese show over, tinker around to make translation workable and spend 1 minute talking about changes because we don't care and need to get this on the boob tube." What bugs me is - if the blog post is accurate - this notion that Macek had that he somehow produced a superior story. It not only bugs me because the story is patently worse than the original Macross story, but it bugs me to no end that someone could conceptually accept animation abstracted from the original story... That is to say - what is animation? Animation is just the story we HEAR presented in PICTURES. Turn the sound off on SDFM TV and what we see is the visual version of what we would hear were the sound on. The pictures did not arise ex nihilo. They were drawn on the basis of a story. Sure, from what you have shown of something like My Fair Minmey, Kawamorii/the writers would often leave the director a lot of leeway in terms of how he wanted to structure a scene, and I do understand that the process from script to story board to actual animation is varied. Nevertheless, the story was always the basis of it all and whatever got changed - it got changed around by the creative team making the final story. For Macek to just take that art work - the animation - and super impose his own story and think his own story somehow "fit" the art work better is just...it's crazy. It's like - if his story was that great - he needs to make his own art work for it and actually - his story can't even be called original because the framework was built by the original artwork - it had to be... Pete

I personally think Device Label Blaster was canceled for the same reason as Chrono-label and as a number of other items - namely lack of sufficient demand. While ROTF has apparently been successful with the general consumer populace, the number of die-hard TF fans has twindled and dropped off. Therefore all these fan-centered products just had no takers and retailers stopped ordering because customers stopped buying. Takara is moving the production of ROTF Transformers to Vietnam too - the point being that I think this isn't just a case of Takara moving its' special lines like Device label to 'Nam. We're talking about moving the mass produced main lines there. Device label is dead in the water because no body buy you and be remembers Blaster from the G1 cartoon and really might want one and appreciate one that turns into a USB hub and holds a G1 cassette. Hasbro has succeeded in reducing its' adult fanbase as it's relentlessly pushed to expand its' Clueless General Generic Consumer base. Thus my guess is that there will be no more Encore, no more Masterpiece, no more Device label and Alternity willl remain as it has been -dead in the water. They're out of juice for the time being. And things won't pick up in a long time. They will not focus on a Transformers 3 movie. No cartoon even it seems... In any case - I don't see much TF stuff outside of the movie line coming down the pipeline. In a bad economy why should they risk it if the main line is doing so well? 830 million USD sales worldwide this year for Transformers toys. 99% of that was likely ROTF if I had to guess. Pete

The things that guy writes sadly do make a lot of sense. I am particularly disgusted with Macek's approach - if what is written above is true. I can respect when they change around the original anime story for money. Making a cheap buck is one thing. But if Macek at some point seriously developed the delusion that his "version" of the anime was better ... that's pitiful. First of all - it would make it necessary for him to seperate, in his mind, the animation and the story. To somehow love the animation but hate the story. The treat the two as though the animation was made in a vaccum, without any sequencing or thought about what story the animation was telling - just a kind of blank slate... a brilliant blank slate upon which the stupid Japanese wrought a terrible story that only the Genius Macek could correct with his amazing prose and imagination. I have nothing against what Harmony Gold did back then - it was making a buck and doing so by bringing us all something that we otherwise would never have gotten a chance to see - in ANY form (most of us at least). It was, for its' time, a true gateway into the world of Japanese anime. Fine. But if these guys have truly become so delusional as to think that their crappy chop job is a work of art and that somehow the animation for Robotech the Macross Saga is this thing that was made perfectly seperate from the plot... that just boggles the mind. More than anything - I think the line about the "magical time" BS is correct. And this is another thing I really think HG and Robotech fans have going against them. When Bob Budiansky gets interviewed about his work CREATING the Transformers mythos from scratch - which he did - he openly says "I didn't give a fcuk. Nobody else would do the stupid thing, Hasbro liked my stuff, so I just kept spewing it out without much thought." And when fans ask him about their favorite characters or stories his usual response was "I don't really remember. I just came up with these kind of on the fly and it wasn't important enough to think about." And somehow Transformers fans can live with that - with that honest truth. And still love Bob Budiansky's stories (which I do - I adore them). Because you know - everyone understands the dynamic here - it was a toy company that decided to market toys via comics and cartoons and people with a literary or artistic vein were handed these things and thought "ok - this is a toy comic. It's not serious" and just went at it. Only later did Transformers and the rest of 80s lore grow into something bigger and the rest is history. The fact that Robotech/HG fans have to build up this bullshit fantasy like they were any different is pathetic. Hell - even with all our love for Macross, we all admit the flaws too - the bad animation in some of SDFM TV, and the whole thing about how originally it was meant to be a parody, the ship was going to be called Macbeth, etc etc etc. It is a classical masterpiece that has inspired other stories - but I've never heard so much hyperbole about Macross as I hear about Robotech... and for what? Sheesh. What a bunch of loosers. Pete

That is him. I was actually considering getting the Black version because I think the general design is so cool... but without the Dragon, Gaiking is just Gay King if you know what I mean But he and Fisting Mazinger are both long shots. I probably can't afford to get them all. I just want Ideon and Zambot 3 since I actually do love the Ideon anime and also really enjoyed what I saw of Zambot 3. In fact, I kind of have been doing things backwards with SOC... I am not a huge super robots mecha fan - but I just think the SOCs are so fun and since there is only one character for each series, each of them are unique. I actually have come to appreciate these Japanese super robot shows where there is ONE hero mecha really instead of hudreds of them running around... Pete

Where is that green polka dot dress from? Wasn't it in SDFM TV? I'm just wondering because it seems that beyond just touching up the characters, Mikimoto has also remained faithful to their fashion choices - albeit with a touch of flare. I would love to compare the original dress to the new one! Pete

Oh -yes -Gaiking ... however - I want the Gaiking with the big dragon space ship... is that GX27? Pete

That needs work. The biggest problem is the chest... Speaking of chests - Figma or Revoltech Fraulein - I don't care which - but Misato from Evangelion also needs some love! I would really like a a Misato-san. Preferably with a bath tub and Pen Pen... Pete

Does anybody own the 1/400 White Base and can anybody vouch for it being the best thing in the universe? Pete

I think the 1/48 is part of Bandai's whole "30th anniversary of MSG" thing... Pete

Very interesting news for people who like following this sort of stuff: http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/o...vietnam-168894/ If Transformers are no longer going to be made in China due to rising labor costs there - then I wonder how long until Yamato, Bandai and smaller producers also move to Vietnam? Anyways - hurray for "communist" Vietnam I guess. I'm happy to hear that they are doing something right enough over there to attract a producer of this caliber. Pete

And for my double-post.... a minor improvement --- I hope: Pete

Yeah - that's true of course. I guess if the guy she loved ASKED her to wear that outfit in private - she would. But of her own accord and in public...I doubt it. On that note - I guess I'm not a fan of the outfit on her either. It's way too athletic and hip/youthful. I actually prefer the outfits Misa chooses to wear on her own accord as seen both in DYRL and in SDFM TV. In DYRL, when she and Hikaru go out into the city after returning from Earth/captivity - I love what she's wearing. In SDFM TV when she goes to see Shao Pai Lon - I again really dig her civilian clothes. They are not scream out loud sexy like Sheryl, but rather classic, elegent and tasteful. But because of the way she conducts herself, they look very sexy on her anyways. Misa is the Lauren Bacal of Macross. Lauren Bacal never had to wear anything less than the well cut blouses, dresses and skirts she wore to look attractive. Misa need not be that glamorous - she wears "simple" 70s style jeans, skirts and sweaters - but they are enough. The only get up I think she doesn't look good in is - ironically - her uniform. The only time she looks good as a soldier is in her flight suit- AFTER getting all wet I'm not trying to say that all girls should dress like Misa, nor am I dissing lace and lingerie that Macross Frontier excels in (how could I) - but I guess I just don't want to see Misa in contemporary sexy get ups because for me - what makes her appealing is the same thing that appeals to me in my girlfriend - her tasteful tradionalism...or at the very least, let's call it her classic sense of sexy. Pete

Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father... I must admit that Doug's writing style has a poetic beauty to it... to paraphrase a quote from the end of Spinal Tap: Robotech.com is lucky to have two visionaries writing for it. They're like ice and water really. Like Byron and Shelly. Doug and Memo seem to have very different styles and different approaches, but each one of them complements the other so well. Pete

Dear Bandai: Why do you make a 1/48 scale kit with 1/144 scale hands? To answer my own question - I expect that the gun and beam weapons are too heavy at this scale and therefore the Gundam needs closed fists with no poseable fingers for stuff not to fall out. I expect he also will have hands with poseable digits. Would be shocked if he did not. Still - the more 1/60 and 1/48 stuff I see from Bandai, the more I think that nothing can surpass the Mastergrade line which is just the right scale for everything (or so it seems). Pete

Glendizer and All Spazer set are now mine! I know - you can't really see any of the other spazers...but I've been busy making a photo-comic (http://dyrl.pl/oferta.html English version coming soon) and so have a bit of a mess on the shelves... Anyways - this pretty much rounds out my SOC collection. All I really need now in 2010 are Zambot 3 and Ideon. The Fist of Doom Mazinger Z would be nice too. Then, at some point - Poseidon and the other shin Getters... but especially Poseidon as I have a fond place in my heart for him due to his starring role in the fan photo comic "As Cybertron Turns: http://spacebridge2000.tripod.com/comic.html (check out Getter Poseidon pimpin' in his purple hat!) As for the King of Space - I'm pleased with him. The box is massive and it's kind of over-glorified given that these are mainly accessories and more accesories ...but I guess he wouldn't be the King of Space without a fleet of ships...even though technically one of the ships is a submarine and the other is for drilling underground... But whatever. My 70s goofy super robot bonanza is complete! I now own the original Getter Robo set, Voltes V, Combattler V, Daimos, God Mars, Dancouga, Glendizer + All Spazer Set and the three original Evangelion SOC SPECs. I must say that Bandai's Soul of Chogokin lines is just amazing. Takara needs to give up its' license for Transformers to Bandai. THIS is what modern Transformers need to look like - Die cast, good poseability, TONS of accessories and super robot goodness. Of course - my biggest dream is that SOC Gundbuster that is out of production and not available anywhere... But in 2010 - I'll be happy with just two new additions: Zambot 3 and Ideon. Tomino - this is going to be your year! Pete

It's so out of character that I didn't recognize her. Not sexy because Misa wouldn't be caught dead wearing that... Pete

The best Beast Wars Primal is the remould/repaint of from the Takara-Tomy 2 pack which also has the BW Megatron remould/repaint. It's the same ultra class figure from the original run but with better head and chest sculpts, proper missiles, and for Primal, fingers rather than crappy boxy hands. I had that and sold it. I kind of regret that. Most of the Beast Wars toys including BW II and Neo are ace. I also had the Cybertron Deluxe Animated Prime - and he was certainly fun. But like all the rest of Animated - too goofy and doesn't really fit well with any other TFs. As for ROTF Prime - yeah, he looks nice, but I prefer a Prime that looks like G1. I dunno what to do. The problem with Transformers is that once you buy one or two then it's easy to fall back into the whole "I must collect more" syndrome... I already had all of it anyways... Beats me... I need Hasbro/Takara-Tomy to make a "For Pete" TF line. Totally new moulds of Pete's choice favorite characters. One per month. All in proper style. Like maybe they can release the entire cast of Bird of Prey with Miss Fatale Figma figure... there's just no love in Transformers toy designs anymore... but I'll shut up before I start whining again If I get my hands on Takara Bludgeon...then I'll probably go from there. Pete