RavenHawk

Just watched Macross Zero and Blue Gender. Macross Zero: Pleasantly surprised by it, since I haven't had much interest in Macross in many years. Gorgeous animation, and an Earth-based story, which appealed to me. Blue Gender: Ssaw an episode on Cartoon Network years back, but stopped watching when I realized it wasn't a MOSPEADA sequel, lol. Decided to check it out now, after watching the Starship Troopers anime, which I liked a lot. It was actually very good, much better than you would expect from a lot of people's apparent hatred of it. Fairly realistic mecha, realistic casualty rates, nice and gradual character development. Really the only fault with it, in my opinion, is the ending, which made minimal sense (though I'm sure everyone who has seen it has theories on it, if they care), but that's pretty standard of a lot of anime, especially ones like this which were cut short by 10 episodes. I'm watching the Blue Gender: The Warrior movie now, though so far it's almost a shot-for-shot remake of the show, with identical looking animation, same voice cast and dialog most of the time, etc., just some minor conversations that are different, and Yugi's hair.

All I've seen from Rideback for merchandise (besides the prototype models mentioned above) is 2 different t-shirts and a windbreaker. That said, does anyone know where I can find this shirt? The only place I've seen it is HLJ, but they're out of stock.

$777? That's insane! Don't get me wrong, it looks like the design work and quality on that are amazing, but that's still an insane amount of money for, essentially, a toy/display piece. I DEFINITELY want the Viper's Creed maneuver blade, but I'm thinking a Beagle MOSPEADA type price is probably as high as anyone would be willing to go on this one, myself included. Plus, if they do variants for the different characters, and the red one at the end... could get very pricey. Thanks for the links! Wow... still getting over the sticker shock of their products... looks like anywhere from $90 to $800, with the perfect change ones (and this looks to be complicated enough to qualify) being in that $700-$800 neighborhood.

Remember, this was for Shadow Chronicles, which was just Tommy taking unused or little-seen MOSPEADA designs, with tiny tweeks so that Tommy could claim them as his own. The Gamma fighter is just a MOSPEADA AF-03C Combat (Robotech name is Conbat) with Tommy putting in a modified Legioss transformation. Here's the Conbat pic from Robotech.com: And MOSPEADA lineart:

I've never heard of this company before (I'm kind of new to the scene). What type of pricetags do they typically have on this kind of stuff? Do they sell just at hobby shows, or at places like BigBadToyStore or HLJ? Thanks.

This is the interview that I was talking about: http://www.rtucn.com/curtain/staff/t-tommy-en.htm I don't see mention of Steve in this, so either they deleted it, or I'm mixing it up with another interview. Either way, this one is an, ahem, "entertaining" read.

Toynami issued the recall, not Harmony Gold. Just to be clear. I can't imagine Harmony Gold ever voluntarily recalling anything. I've dealt with their customer "service" before...

Best news I've heard in a good long while. I am psyched. Thank you so much for finding and posting this, electric indigo! EDIT: This is Studio Halfeye's page with more pics: http://studio-halfeye.com/himiken_blog/takaken/ Since I don't read Japanese, and the google translation of this page is no help, can anyone tell if this is something that will be available for sale sometime?

Supposedly it's the same mold as all the others, but it was made by a different manufacturer at a different factory, so their were issues with inferior plastic being used and inferior assembly, etc. In the interview for the Chinese Robotech website, Tommy says that Steve is not related to him. Then he says that Steve was working for Harmony Gold first, as their webmaster, and then when they were looking for more creative people (don't remember, think it was for artists, not specifically a Creative Director), Steve suggested a comic book artist that he had heard of, namely Tommy.

Not sure. Here in the USA, a lot of people have said that they're brothers. On the other hand, in that interview Tommy did for a Chinese Robotech site, Tommy said that they're no related.

That's the problem right there. Who cares even if he can draw original crap? That doesn't make him a writer. That doesn't make him a director. You don't hire somebody with a minimal amount of artistic background (even though his art is nice) to be your creative director. That is, frankly, more of a marketing job. You hire WRITERS to write your project, if you don't want it to seem amateurish. You hire someone with an actual directing track record to direct. It's that simple. The problem with a company like Harmony Gold is that there is no oversight. Somehow both Tommy and Steve got hired at that company, and now they do whatever they please, with no oversight whatsoever.

It may be better known among anime fans, but I don't know about the general public. I know a lot of my friends remember the Cyclones from Robotech (though they don't know anything about MOSPEADA itself) but not a single one of them has heard of Megazone or would recognize a Garland.

You're right. If there wasn't any update on that one specific toy three and a half months ago, then clearly there could possibly be any news about the series in general three and a half months later. Do you really have nothing better to do than troll like this?

Ok, well, I personally didn't see pics of the new head sculpt until well after I had heard about it.

I definitely agree that it was a bleak story, and went in a very different direction than I expected. While there wasn't as much character development as, or in the direction that, I would have wanted, they actually did a decent job considering just how many characters there were, I think.

Ok, you linked back to a thread of mine from 3 1/2 months ago that no one replied to... thanks...

I know a lot of people didn't like Blassreiter. If that's the case for you, just ignore this thread. No need to chime in just to say "I don't care, it sucked." I actually ended up liking this show a lot. What I'm wondering is, is there anything new going on? It seemed like when it first came out there was such a MAJOR push for it. Manga being released simulatneously, two different companies making fairly expensive, high end toys (MegaHouse, and I forget the other one)... Now what? It seemed to me like the story was fairly complete and didn't lend itself to having a sequel, but I'm wondering if anyone has heard about any sequels, more manga, more toys, anything? There was a prototype of a Paladin toy/model that was shown around, but it doesn't look like it was ever released. I REALLY liked the look of that one.

I have. I watched it with one of my boys last years year when he was 13. He came into the room a few weeks back (14 now) as I was rewatching it to see if it was any better upon a second viewing. I asked if he wanted to watch it with me. He said, "No, it really wasn't too good." He then went upstairs to his room and watched Tansformers Gen 1 on dvd, then played Robotech: Battlecry on his PS2. Seriously.

On one hand, they announced the new head on the Scott sculpt right away, but haven't mentioned it on the Rand. On the other hand, we didn't actually get to SEE that new sculpt until right before the toy was released, and even then it was from toy reviews from people who got early copies of it, and not through any official Robotech source, so... Who knows? I'm in the group that initially liked the Beagle sculpt better, but once I saw the Toynami in person, I really didn't mind it. Either way, the visor is always down on mine.

While we may be in essentially an identical demographic, Tommy CLAIMED that they were advised by their Japanese story advisor (forget his name right now, but SUPPOSEDLY he worked on Southern Cross and MOSPEADA, though I personally think the brilliance in MOSPEADA lay in what came out of ARTMIC, not what was later added in by the producers) to target Shadow Chronicles for a teen audience, rather than us old fogeys in our 30s.

Is that why we don't have any MOSPEADA games? Because Tatsunoko doesn't allow it? See, if we had SOME sort of continuation of MOSPEADA, it might finally keep me away from Robotech... (That's why I started a thread about how disappointed I am in Robotech: Shadow Chronicles, because it is the only place I can get my MOSPEADA fix... which Taksraven still insists was me just baiting for more Shadow Chronicles bashing, which it wasn't) While that does make more sense to me, we did have that TERRIBLE Megazone 23 game for PS3 not too long ago... is MOSPEADA really that much more obscure than Megazone? Well, I think the Robotech: The Movie: The Untold Story excuse may be someone legitimate. Having seen the thing, and read the descriptions of the original treatment, which was just to be Megazone 23: Part 1, dubbed and with some passing references to make it sound like it fit within the Robotech universe and was set on Earth (much more like the original plot for Megazone actually was, in fact), I do actually buy that if it had been done as Macek first wrote it, and had not been advertised at 6am, it might have actually done reasonably well.

It's the one on Robotech.com. I pre-ordered mine a couple weeks ago.

This seems to be one of the main misconceptions that people who hate McKinney but love the animation seem to have spread around. You know, the whole argument that "this can't be, because it wasn't in the original animation." Ok, forget for a second about Macross, just think Robotech. Robotech is a new story using the old animation, so just because something didn't exist in Macross, doesn't mean that it can't exist in Robotech. It just means it can't exist in the animation for Robotech, since that is all taken from Macross. The surviving half of McKinney has said in a number of different interviews that the thinking caps were Macek's idea, since he didn't like how the mecha were controlled in the animation, but since he couldn't change the animation, there was nothing he could do about it. So, based upon Macek's suggestion, thinking caps became a part of the novels. I'm not saying you have to like it, but let's not blame those writers for putting in a concept that the show's "creator" asked them to.

Ok, I've watched through episode 4 of Burst Angel. So, basically, every episode Meg gets captured by the bad guy, then Jo goes the rescue her? Is that basically the format for the whole series? How did this run 24 episodes, plus an OVA prequel, while Viper's Creed and Rideback were only alotted 12 episodes, and the MOSPEADA OVA was almost all old footage? Just doesn't seem fair... I was hoping this would be a good Bubblegum Crisis substitute for me, in the absences of any new BGC material, but so far it's just kind of boring (though the mecha designs are pretty decent).

Oh, gotcha. No, I meant sort of across various incarnations of Transformers, that she's been a big name for a decent number of fans.