JB0

And yet, MOST of the anime fans from my generation seem to start talking about Robotech at some point. And, of course, there's the modern toy market. The superposables wound up damn near everywhere. SOMEONE thought they'd sell. I remember it as being moderately successful. But then... I wasn't exactly old enough to judge. Marketing failure certainly didn't hold true long-term, though. And I'm not praising RT as a pioneer or anything of the sort. I'm just saying it was a generation's first real exposure, much like Sailor Moon or Dragonball Z(neither of which is exactly great company to be keeping). Indeed. I COULD go on(I loved MASK, didn't care for Spiral Zone, have memories of Bionic Six as "that show that was on after Robotech went off", to name a few), but... why? Which I never argued against. I didn't say "Speed Racer sucks, Robotech rules!" I was saying "Robotech is relevant because it introduced a specific generation to anime, and it's already being exploited, so no one needs to be told it has any historical significance." It's no more niche than Evangelion is, and there's a movie based on THAT in production. So clearly Hollywood DOES see that niche as large enough to exploit.

Because kewl is too X-treme for the board.

Because they'd been married for 40 years, raised 7 kids, and were starting to annoy each other just a tad.

And? I must've missed the 80s broadcast. And given how many cartoons I watched at the time, that was pretty hard to do. I watched HeMan, Mario, Captain N, Smurfs, Voltron, Robotech, Transformers, Ghost Busters, Mister T, SheRa, GoBots, Centurions, Thundercats, SilverHawks, GI Joe, Scooby Doo, metric buttloads of Hanna-Barbara, disney, and WB shorts, and God knows what else... but I never saw Speed Racer until the 90s. Speed Racer was one of the 2 relevant animes of the early 80s? That was my entire argument.

I'd have to argue, much as it pains me, that Robotech is historically significant to the US market. Yes, Speed Racer, Starblazers, GForce, AstroBoy, etc. came first. But then they fell off the air. As someone born in 1981, there were only 2 "animes" on TV of any significance: Voltron and Robotech. Robotech, for all the crap it takes, was by far the better show. Similarly, my younger sister's introduction to anime was the Sailor Moon dub. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done. And may God have mercy on the kids that came in with DBZ and Pokemon. Macross is the most popular part of Robotech, of course. But as a show of it's own, it's got far less recognition. And serious legal snarls for US exploitation. Robotech has a movie coming. Albeit a direct-to-video one. Due to legal issues, it's based on MOSPEADA instead of Macross. But most of the generation won't understand what that means. They'll just complain because Rick Hunter looks funny. And it's not live-action. At least HG did something right.

But she was still hot!

I figured kids set them on the floor, then stand on them and spin. Something like that.

I like it too, actually. Well, I'm not sure on the helmet. It seems to make his head out of proportion with his body. I've also been varying the wing position in robot mode. He's just so darn versatile! Oooohhhh... Methinks it's time to do a raid! ... Not that I'll find a Grimlock. But I can pretend.

Ah yeah, forgot about the hard coatings... Pity they haven't rolled them onto other disks too. Be neat to have indestructible CDs, DVDs, etc.

That's more or less my take. If I wanted something fancier, I'd buy Masterpiece Starscream, or a Yamato. Jetfire's smaller, simpler, and cheaper. Aside from the limp laser, the only thing I really think needed adding at this price point is solid inner walls on the rifle. ... Well, and retractable fists, but the arm packs hide those fairly well.

Actually, the only real hold-up is that at least one of the groups refuses to license dual-format players. One of the manufacturers stated this publicly. If I had to bet, I'd say both groups are refusing to license dual-format players.

I got Classic Mirage from one of my sisters. And Primus from the other.

Ooooooohhhhh... Ah. There's always a catch. As far as no one using the DVD side... they would if there wasn't a standalone DVD release. No choice in the matter. Makes sense. I haven't gotten any of the incoming generation yet. And my PC isn't really up to HD, so getting one that way(the 360 HD drive works, and it's reasonably priced) isn't an option.

The "still" in there is a bit out of place, as they were originally created explicitly FOR Star Wars.

Ooooh, PS3 has a bitrate indicator? That's awesome! Anyways... The one thing I really don't get is this. You can make a dual-mode HD-DVD/DVD disk. It seems to me that that would be the best way to sell an HD format fast, at least for the HD-DVD crowd. Start shipping everything you make as HD/DVD. Then come back a year later and say "Ya know, you own like 2 dozen HD-DVDs... isn't it time you bought the player?" It also has an advantage for format war considerations. If BluRay wins, the consumer's investment is only partially lost, since the HD/DVDs will still work in BluRay players(albeit only at standard-def). But almost no one does it. I think there's something like 6 HD/DVD releases. Personally, I'm waiting for a format to come out on top before I commit. I don't have any strong opinion either way, but HD-DVD has a slight edge due to durability. And the prettier box by far(BluRay boxes are UGLY). And yes, it is close enough in my eyes that packaging matters.

Single-layer. It was their last release with their old authoring house(who weren't equipped for dual-layer), presumably because they didn't want such a high-profile release to be used as a "test" for the new dual-layer guys.

And only part of the TV series at that. They skip something like half of the show.

Thank you. That was actually specifically mentioned in the review I saw earlier. They said it was still a problem scene, but it wasn't as nasty as the DVD release was. http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews2/disc_reviews/5787.php for the whole review. Was the first review I found, actually.

Yeah. Problem is it needs to be administered orally, and Jetfire doesn't have a mouth while the helmet's on.

I finally found a Jetfire! Needs a bit of Viagra for one of his head lasers. It's floppy and doesn't like to stay up. Still a spiffy toy.

So why didn't they just represent everyone as stick figures? It would've been faster. The point to using a higher resolution for a theatrical release is that people can easily see every pixel if you render it in SD. Or film grain if you render it the old-fashioned way with ink and a camera. Not "Hey, we can see sweat glands now!11" BTW, the original Star Wars movies were "true HD" also. In fact, pertty much every movie released in the last 40 years has been. You might have a point with render times if A. you weren' pulling numbers out of your rectum(you're actually low, in this case), and B. this was a TV series on a tight schedule and not a movie. But we'll get to why you actually don't in just a minute. You're completely disagreeing with me, and claiming it as an agreement? And then pulling numbers out of your rectum to justify your stance? BTW, recent high-profile release... Haruhi was rendered in HD, and broadcast as such "where available." Yes, there is a significant difference between the HD and SD versions. No, the render times and added hardware costs for an HD release are not significant enough to deter even a weekly TV program from doing it. As far as (relatively) older animation releases... Disney's Fantasia 2000 was an IMAX movie. There was a significant amount of lost detail on the DVD release. It actually benefited Sorceror's Apprentice greatly. The original 1940 version was simply enlarged to fill the IMAX frame, and suffered from severe film grain issues in the theatrical presentation as a result. The grain isn't visible in the DVD release. Everything else suffers from the greatly reduced resolution, and this is one that I'm really looking forward to seeing come out in HD. (Not the issue at hand, but Fantasia 2k should also benefit from the improved audio of either HD disk format). Computers have come a long way from 1984's Last Starfighter, where the level of detail had to be dropped drastically to get the movie out at anything resembling on-time without introducing the "jaggies" that would've resulted from a lower-resolution render projected onto a theater screen(though the modern DVD release would've benefited from a reduced resolution at the same level of detail, since the DVD is so much lower-res). Reasonably detailed scenes can now be rendered in REAL-TIME at HD resolutions. Ask the PC gaming community if you don't believe me. Hell, ask the console gaming community, with the XBox 360 and PS3 both doing HD gaming. And you do realize that older animation was hand-drawn, right? They're initially rendered at effectively infinite resolution, and the major restricting factor is what quality film was used. Due to the need to avoid visible film grain, theatrical releases use larger film than TV releases, resulting in more of the original detail preserved. Most animated movies will show benefits from higher resolution for that reason alone. You don't think they'll do a new film transfer, like they did when they moved from Laserdisk to DVD? And if you're any indication, it was hashed out by people that had no clue what they were talking about. I close with an excerpt from a GitS2 BluRay review... "The detail that's visible throughout this, in addition to the much greater color depth, provides an amazingly superior picture to an already great looking DVD release. " That pretty much says it all.

Actually, GITS2 was rendered to be printed out to film and projected on movie screens. You know, those bigass 50-foot things? Believe me, it was rendered with shitloads more detail than a DVD can display. Whether HD is worth anything for anime depends greatly on the source. On material intended for viewing in a theater or on an HDTV, there ARE advantages. On material intended for viewing on a standard NTSC TV, there aren't. To take a Macross example: I'd buy an HD copy of DYRL. And I'd laugh maniacally at anyone buying an HD copy of SDF.

Oh, please... It's a sequel to an overhyped pile of steaming crap that was based on a pretty decent license. Go watch SAC instead. At least Shirow's involved in that one.

On the upside... if Hot Rod gets Skeleprime killed, no one will mind.