Penguin

Except the Excalibur, those show up in Robotech Art 3 originally. The Long versions from the RPG are an improvement over the "art" in that book. There are underwhelming Defender and Spartan "descendents" too. Actually, I kinda liked the one-gun Excalibur design, except for those stupid little missile-launcher "antlers" over its head. But then, I love the Tomahawk and all variations on it.

Wow. After reading that article, I'm all conflicted, on a number of levels. Not about Robotech vs. Macross per se, but rather... - There's a deep philosophical conflict between my love of the free sharing of information encouraged by the internet and a deep, abiding desire to punish the egos of people so that they realize that just because they can publish their opinion doesn't mean said opinion is meaningful, valuable, or worth uttering in the first place, and they should be ashamed for even considering airing it in public. - My inner literary geek is desparately trying to construct a minutely detailed deconstruction of the entire article and its inability to actually make any sensible arguments, restrained by my inner censor and the simple recognition that the people who most needed to read it wouldn't understand it. - The engineer in me is using the power consumption of my monitor, the time I spent reading the article, and my power utility's average kWh price so that I can figure out how much to bill the author for the power wasted reading that tripe. Thankfully, that's reduced to idle amusement by the absurdity of the idea, 'cause I love absurdities. - My love of absurdity is clashing with my disgust for inanity with regards to the article in general. Really, it's a miracle I'm not lying a pseudo-schizophrenic coma by all this inner turmoil in my poor little brain.

Nonetheless, kudos for your diligent efforts to correct my gaff.

A "warm, familial comradeship" doesn't "feel terribly real"? That's bleak. It definitely doesn't make for very gripping drama, but it feels kinda real in my life... which wouldn't be a very gripping drama either, unless you're enthralled by interesting and creative solutions in Engineering.

My bad. Apologies all around.

Well, I think "genuinely good" is a wildly subjective phrase, but I do enjoy the original BSG and not just for nostalgia. In fact, I'm pretty draconian when it comes to dumping my "misty childhood" recollections if they don't measure up to my adult sensibilities, so nostalgia ain't part of it. I don't compare them as to which is "superior", 'cause I don't see the point in drawing such a distinction. They are different, and I like what I like. For me, it's all about character. Good characters draw me in and hold my interest. The new BSG would have lost me in the miniseries if I wasn't interested in the characters. I would have missed the and not blinked an eye. Same goes for the original BSG. I like the characters (most of them anyway... Boxey I never liked even as a kid). I like the way the actors portrayed them. For me, there's heart and charm in the cast and the characters, and I continue to enjoy it in subsequent viewings. There are some truly cringe-inducing episodes ("The Young Lords" being one I skip every time I watch the series). There is frequently cheesy dialogue. There are some really bewildering plot holes (as with the aforementioned "where do all these humans keep coming from?"). None of this offends me as a viewer, though I completely understand how it could be a real stumbling block for someone with different tastes. It's not an "excuse for bad storytelling"... I just don't find the storytelling bad enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the show. Speaking with one or two of the more coherent of those who ride the GINO train ('cause there are some real frothing-at-the-mouth nutjobs in the anti-Moore camp), the primary complaint I've heard about the new BSG is the change in tone. They are invested in the lighter, nobler, optimistic tone of the original. Seeing their beloved characters "degraded" into flawed and fault-ridden people is, to them, a betrayal of the spirit they associate with BSG. It's why they call it "Galactica In Name Only". To them, that tone is integral to the identity of "Battlestar Galactica", and the re-imagined version is a violation of that. They can't just let it be, because they've yearned for a continuation of that story and tone, but they didn't get it. If you try to raise the point that trying to continue that old style would die a quick death in the modern market, it just doesn't sink in. Like a lot of die-hard fans, they can't see past their own community.

Well, there is a segment of the anime import industry that gleefully butchers, dubs, changes the story, the names, the dialogue, the music, and never looks back, even though it has to be more expensive than a simple, competent sub. All they want is bright flashing colours to keep interest in between commercials. There are those who's motivation is "we want animation we don't have to produce to shove at TV viewers". I've known a couple of writers for some kid-aimed anime shows who admitted they ignored the original show and just made up their own story to overlay the animation. Granted, this is for stuff in the realm of Beyblades or Pokemon and other child-fodder where story quality isn't really a concern and subtitles don't fly.

I vaguely remember something about concern that if the humans retaliated with nuclear weapons, fallout could contaminate the water supply, which is one of the main reasons the Visitors were there... or that might have been something some friends and I discussed back in the day. Stupid memory...

Yeah, gotta say, not impressed. It felt slapped together. Completely predictable. Rushed pacing. No subtlety. No character. Totally unengaging. Even with its occasionally laughable FX and sometimes cheesy dialogue, the original mini-series provides superior story-telling. Are people so attention-deficit that the makers didn't think they could take a few episodes to build tension and interest before the reveals began? Man, I miss two-hour pilots.

Well, I understood it, but maybe I just read too many comics. The whole event was very clumsily handled. IMHO, it went from potential to zero pretty fast. Rather than take the approach that they did with other "Crisis" events, DC didn't run the storyline into any of the other books. It ran as a stand-alone story so there was zero effect on the running books. There were several side-stories released under the "Final Crisis" banner, but most had little to nothing to do with the real events unfolding. Final Crisis is based on so many threads from past events and stories that it's almost impenetrable to a casual reader. It would take at least a page to lay it all out and where it came from, but I don't think anyone's interested in reading all that (or me in typing it, either). Suffice to say that with one or two exceptions the story does make sense, but you have to know a whole bunch of DC history to grasp it all. In the end, with the exception of Batman's "death", the whole event was zero sum. No effect on continuity. Few to no lasting repercussions. As far as Batman's "death" is concerned, It has allowed them to shake up Batman stories with Dick Grayson as Batman, Bruce's son Damian (by Talia al Ghul) as Robin, and the most recent Robin Tim Drake now wearing the "Red Robin" mantle out to prove that Bruce isn't really dead. Aside from that, Final Crisis was kind of a wash, for me at least.

IMHO, the BGM is generic and inoffensive, memorable only because it gets drilled into your skull after 85 episodes. As for the vocal tracks, I think the "Yellow Dancer" tunes aren't ear-bleedingly bad like Reba West's Minmay dreck, but I find them only marginally listenable. I've actually got one Robotech song on my iPod... "Call On Me" by Joanne Harris, which I think was from the abandoned movie (at least, I don't remember hearing it in the series).

The thing is, one has to wonder why the Sentinels' characters ended up the way they did in the novels. Luceno and Daley have written some okay stuff. It would have been fine, for example, to take Minmay down a dark path. You could take it on a realistic arc from the end of Macross, with her optimism turning sour with time and leading her to a needy place. A need for acceptance can turn into a desparate clinging to whoever comes around. You could try to read some of that into what they attempted (if one was feeling charitable), but the result is a such a mess, dragging her into such a pathetic character that, by the end, I hated the character. And while even that is okay for a story (not every character has to end well), watching a character self-destruct with that sort of morbid curiousity reserved for car wrecks, the execution was neither engaging nor entertaining, at least for me. Don't worry... I'm certain we'll descend into decadent mockery before too long.

No argument here on any of these points. As far as the novels go, it was the main 12 that formed my best impression, before we got dragged down the Sentinels path. "Zentraedi Rebellion" is definitely the best of the "expanded universe" (to coin a term ), building as it did on the comics series of the times and providing some interesting exploration of Miria, Max, Leonard, and Wolff. While there is a sweeping narrative, which I like, the character quality suffers terribly as the novels progress. It doesn't reach a B5 or BSG level of quality where the characters remain engaging throughout, which in turn makes you actually care about the sweeping narrative. Without the character, a sweeping narrative reads like an encyclopedia entry on history. That's the main reason why my fandom of Robotech has waned with time. Most characters aren't developed beyond the original stories, and those that do continue get run into the ground. The "it was amazing when I was 8" analogy doesn't really apply for me, though . I was in my late teens when the novels came out, and there wasn't any "gee-whiz". I'd been reading Herbert, Tolkien, Bradbury, Silverburg, et al for years, so the novels were never anything more than simple diversion. Re-reading them now, I still find them enjoyable, just like those old Han Solo novels.

For some unfathomable reason, I've been mildly obsessing over this since Pete first asked the question (and oft repeated), trying to pin down what I like about Robotech that Macross doesn't provide. I write mildly obsessed since my Robotech fandom is like a muscle that's deteriorated from lack of use. I have to admit, what follows isn't really why I think Robotech is better than Macross, 'cause I don't, but it is at least a mildly thoughtful if not compelling reason beyond "misty childhood memory" of why I still think fondly of Robotech. First, I have to begin with the caveat that it was the McKinney novels that form most of my opinion of Robotech. The animation went off the air here shortly after Ben's death, so all it really did was set up my future Macross addiction . I started reading the novels partly from curiousity and partly because half of "Jack McKinney" was Brian Daley, and I've always loved his Han Solo novels. One thing I really like is science fiction with a greater continuity, showing how society changes from the events in the story (Babylon 5, new Battlestar Galactica, etc.). For me, at least, the Robotech novels were an entertaining read that provided that kind of sweeping arc. It was later that I would see just how much Daley and Luceno had expanded beyond the source material to create such a complete picture (aside from obvious things like Alphas being mentioned in Southern Cross, or the old guys with the ship in Invid Invasion having been Southern Cross troopers). I ended up viewing the animation as presenting highlights from a more complete story. This is an aspect of my overall science fiction enjoyment that Macross doesn't fulfill for me. The various Macross productions leave a lot of intervening events and societal changes to a meta-story that has to be more inferred than it is explored. This isn't a criticism, since I don't believe in knocking a story for not being what it's not trying to be, and Kawamori and Co. don't seem interested in exploring that aspect of the Macross universe. To me, it's more of a missed opportunity. Whenever I read the complete timeline I wonder about things like the "Delta War" or giant Zentraedi being banished from Earth, the events around them, and the consequences. The sequels themselves, so far, are kinda "bottle shows" in that, aside from the evolution of the VF, the sequels don't explore a lot of fallout from the previous series. Frontier visited a lot of the previous productions, but most of it (IMHO) is more homage than exploration of the consequence of past events. Each story introduces something brand new (rogue AI, Protodeviln, Vajra), whose story is wrapped up by the end. Really, we get more of an evolving story of the Protoculture than we do of humanity. Again, this isn't intended as a criticism of Macross. The way the galaxy has been constructed, with colonies and fleets spread all over the place, it's perfectly plausible that what happens to one of them doesn't ripple much throughout the rest of the galaxy, except that VFs get updated. However, it is, for me, a story style I enjoy that the Robotech Saga provides for me and Macross does not.

Once it's out, I want to see someone take a picture of it in a child's car seat.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. I get the feeling my Master Replicas Boba Fett blaster rifle will no longer be the costliest trophy to geekdom in my collection.

I'd second that. I'd go for the "origin" version or the RMV-1 Guntank II versions too.

I've got the double-disc sets for all the movies, so yet another DVD release didn't reach my radar. I did pick up the blu-ray for Wrath of Khan, just to see the transfer (pretty sweet), but I won't be partaking of any others unless they release a set at least as feature-packed as the special edition DVDs.

I've alway's loved Mikimoto's art, so he's my choice. Kenichiro's designs for Macross 7 are a close second, though.

Fighter modes are my favourite, but I'm like Sketchly in that it was the nature of the transformation that caught my attention and drew the Valkyrie (and its successors) out of the crowd of anime mecha.

I think one of the best things about Macross is that it does span so much time that there can be something for everyone. For me, I was hooked by Robotech, reeled in by Yoko Kanno's music in Macross Plus, then stayed for the mecha... and even then, mostly the fighter modes. I'm peripherally interested in most things Macross related, sorta as a follow-on of my enjoyment of the original series and Macross Plus (plus I found Macross 7 strangely charming... but I attribute that to having seen so many musicals that inappropriate song placement actually catches my attention ). Believe me, you're not alone in having a selective taste when it comes to Macross.

For sure, it's "Tenshi no Enogu" for me too. I loved the Flashback 2012 animation that went with it, and the song is Minmay's best IMHO.

I've used Hobbylink almost since they started, and literally have never had a single problem... and I order a lot of stuff. Granted, I always pay the extra for EMS, which might help. But, never any problems with an order.

Used to be that way for me too. I've found 4th edition grows on you after some time... it's good for high action campaigns. Deeper storytelling ones, we default to 3/3.5. Guess I'm an "old" thirty-something then (come to think of it, being almost 39, I suppose I am). "Brothers In Arms" was huge in my teenage years, especially with "Money For Nothing" played everywhere. I suppose if that led you to their earlier, blues-ier work it doesn't sound so much like rock anymore... might be interpreted by some as "old people" music. Or maybe they were stuck on new wave or hair metal or something.

Sylvie and Nexx would be good options for variants. Nexx even has slightly variant armour and weapons. I'd buy both of those, but only if they came with the armour. Not sure whether all of Sylvie's team had different colour stripes, but if they did I personally wouldn't be too interested. Sure, the various DYRL VF-1As differ in basically the same way, and I bought all them, but I'm more connected to Hikaru, Max, and Kakizaki than Sylvie's "VF Bunnies". The VF-2SS demonstration team that flies at the moon festival all had bold colour schemes, with the body brightly painted and a simple white stripe. One or two of those would look quite stunning, next to the standard model, so I'd be open to those "canon" variants myself. IIRC, they were also SAP-less.