JB0

I was being silly. ... Man, I have GOT to get a more mainstream sense of humor.

Then it's almost CERTAINLY the e-set I think it is.

If it's the set I think it is, the others are appended to regular episodes after the credits and preview. But hey, why worry when we have YouTube?

The revolutionary new iGrave! Ensures your eternal rest is the best rest you'll ever have! Only Steve Jobs, the greatest mind since Albert Einstein, could've designed a hole in the ground! He invented a whole new way to die! I AM sorry to see him go, but I can't help but think this is going to be the last round of shameless media quotes that can't be bothered to let facts get in the way of their blatant fanboyism, and it warms my heart a little bit.

You've never seen the 7+ short with the bridge bunnies and Captain Jenius, have you? The good lieutenant still had a ways to go before he truly mastered the art of the player.

Actually, never did see Twister. From what I heard, the tornado's role was totally phoned in. Anyways, a force of nature isn't a compelling main character across a full-run TV series. It MAY be enough for a one-shot action movie, but probably not. Hence why Jurassic Park placed the humans above the T. Rex in terms of screentime, even though Spielberg said that he considers the Tyrant King to be the star of the show. ... Did I just say Basara is a tyrannosaurus rex? Well, I'm actually okay with that.

I flew into the orbit of a sun just to be born. And MY complaints about Basara would be unchanged if he was a murderdeath force of nature instead of a phatbeathippie force of nature.

No, it would not. My problem with him is he's a force of nature, not a character. He has no personality or character development or backstory. From a narrative perspective, he exists solely to sing. As handled, he is not an interesting character, and shouldn't have been the primary focus of the story. Essentially, my problem is not one with the character himself, but with the production focusing on the non-character to the detriment of everything else.

I think we should take a step back and talk about the REAL issue here. Specifically, that jerk Gamlin getting Millia's 1J blown up!

Ewww, too much info!

I like Macross II, because every mention of it doesn't start week-long flame wars full of personal insults and strawman attacks. Also: Ishtar.

But it's SHOCKWAVE!

Even a genius can accidentally use a timed fuse instead of an impact fuse sometimes.

Hell. Yes. Dark of the Moon has the first movie Megatron I actually liked, and Shockwave is Shockwave.

Oh, so IFF sensors magically prevent Basara from physically flying his plane into other people's line of fire so no one has to abort an attack because of him, or even just pay attention to some crazy in a hot-rod-red Valk darting about the battlefield on the off chance he MIGHT fly into their line of fire? I didn't realize overtechnology was so powerful! Even if a pilot were to decide to NOT worry about accidentally shooting Basara, they still have to actually verify he's not a defender before they fire, unless they can force their computer to ignore Basara's ID code and manually flag him as neutral. The fact that he's probably flagged as a friendly on the defenders' computers does not change the fact that he's flying wildly around the combat zone with no regard for the defensive activities of the fleet. It may actually make it worse. He's a distraction, and his very presence on the battlefield constitutes being in the way and lowers the effectiveness of the defenses. Whether it's stated or not, the reality is he, either directly or indirectly, causes a higher casualty rate than would otherwise be experienced.

The key difference between Basara and everyone else is... Basara's out in the middle of the battlefield getting in the way. He's an erratic target for the varuta, but he's ALSO in the way of the good men and women of UN Spacey trying to do unto some soul-eating varuta sons of daughters before they do unto the fine citizens of City 7.

Not sought them out, as I don't understand the language. Is that why she was in the anime? As a hook for drama CDs?

It's possible to have some character development without being hardcore emo. If we want "true heroes," let's take someone repeatedly identified as such, by his friends, his coworkers, his boss, and the narrator: Gaogaigar's Guy Shishioh. He's sure of his path, and willing to do what needs to be done without hesitation. Similar to Basara. But he's still a PERSON. He has a past, he responds to current events, and he has thoughts about the people around him. Basara's past consists entirely of getting mad at a mountain for not noticing his guitar. His response to current events is to get mad because the military won't stop shooting back while he sings. His thoughts about the people around him are "Ray, fix my jet; protodevlin, listen to my song; everyone else, get out of my way." And the universe still doesn't know what Basara's lesson IS. Just that he defeated the protodevlin, and they were trying to eat everyone. Guy's lesson was clearer. Eating people is wrong and bad and you're going to get a giant hammer to the face if you keep it up, and as long as you have courage and friends nothing can stop you. I'd go so far as to say Flower Girl had more going on than Basara, and she didn't even have a speaking role. Her lesson is never give up, no matter how bad it looks. Keep trying, and someday all your hard work will be rewarded.

Flower Girl is the best character in the entire franchise. After Gubaba, of course.

The big obstacle on the VF-27 would be finding battery space, in my opinion. Everything else is available in incredibly small sizes. The big LED flash at the end could be a battery-killer, but still wouldn't be very large. Take a look at some of the cellphones they stuff those things into.

It's actually purely coincidence that the original toy line went through three Bumblebee molds, much as I'd like to claim it was part of my master plan. If Hasrbo would occasionally use Goldbug, we'd at least get a LITTLE diversi... well, okay, we'd actually just get another Cliffjumper-style shelfwarmer repaint. So more satirical comment on the cumulative effect of the movie toy lines and less homage. TF:BB is the obvious next step after the movie lines. It would star Bumblebee Prime and his cohorts Bumblebee Cliffjumper, and Bumblebee Goldbug, as they fight against the evil Bumblebee Wasp and his Killer 'Bees, the Seekers. Bumblebee Starscream deposes Bumblebee Wasp and takes command of the Killer 'Bees at the midpoint. Obviously, Bumblebee Prime can combine with the other two to form Bumblebee Maximus. And when the ancient warrior Bumblebee Sigma returns, they unlock the final, ultimate combination: BUMBLEBEE SUPREME!

Both of them are what I call secondary-mains. They are stars, but not THE star, and their story arcs are hindered by the need to spend more time on Basara. And pity poor Ray, who is a pivotal character to the plot(if only because he supplies and services Basara's valk before the formal creation of Sound Force), but has nothing at all happening onscreen.

I predict leader Bumblebee. With 3 mold variations and six paintjobs. Followed by a spinoff series, Transformers: Bumblebee, which features nothing but Bumblebee and his identical twins.

That's not all I need to know if he's going to be the main character. I need an idea of what makes him tick. I wouldn't watch an anime about an earthquake told from the perspective of the fault line. I wouldn't watch an anime about a hurricane told from the perspective of the storm. A force of nature is not an interesting focal point. That was actually what drew me into Macross 7. After the first few episodes, I WANTED to know more about Basara. He was CLEARLY someone with an interesting story to be told. By the end, I was just highly frustrated it was never told, especially as he got in the way of telling the stories of other people that wound up being more interesting.

You got the "movie", which is somewhere in the middle of the TV series and largely unrelated to anything.