Ginrai

Palm action series? Wow, that's a pretty... unfortunate name for a toy line.

Palm action series? Wow, that's a pretty... unfortunate name for a toy line.

Man, I glanced at that and thought it said, "Michael Bay dies". SO DISAPPOINTED. Anyway, I don't care about the Transformers movie changing things so much, I just care that Michael Bay is a horrible director who makes terrible, aggressively stupid movies like Pearl Harbor and Armageddon. YUCK.

Wow, that's really awesome KidK. I'd buy one.

Place blame where it lies. That was the the Waltrip brothers' idea for their revised version of the end of Sentinels which was never used in the original Sentinels comic since it was cancelled when Academy lost the Robotech comic license. Prelude was largely a quick way to let the Waltrips finish the Sentinels comic and setup Shadow Chronicles, and the Waltrips worked on it. They are the source of the mutated Edwards, not Tommy Yune.

Is that really a giant hologram of Minmay behind Hikaru's Strike Valkyrie when he kills Bodolzaa or is that just artistic representation?

I'm not a guitarist, I'm a bassist/synth guy, but I do remember that my Macross 7 Roman Album had some sheet music in it. I will try to remember to check it out when I get home.

Actually I saw Ulysees 31 DVDs with COPS DVDs at Fry's Electronics, along with the Zelda cartoon and Super Mario 3 cartoon.

I keep saying this, but Kawamori designed the original Battle Convoy for Diaclone, and you'll note Shinji Aramaki also worked on Diaclone.

The Zeta movies are licensed, so "ethical" fansubbers will probably not do it, but that doesn't mean it won't be fansubbed...

Okay, cool. I don't have a proper joystick, but I'm more comfortable with Gamepads anyway. Have a Sidewinder pad and a USB connector for a PS2 controller so either way I should be good to go.

Most of the original art was medicore in those old Robotech RPG books, but goddamn if the REF Field Guide does not have a bunch of really amazing Mospeada line art.

Hey, if you're up for it I'm definitely interested in some VO gaming. Back in the day (around 2002) I used to play online with Japanese players who would completely kick my ass.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but wow! That's really cool art!

Yeah, because Spike Witwicky is a mature adult role model. So is Orko! And Snarf! Stop and think about what was popular for kids in the 80's. Do remember The Goonies? How about The Karate Kid? Every show on Nick about the kids where adults are either stupid or downright evil (even Mysterious Cities of Gold). Remember any of that?

Nope, there's no FAST packs for Bandai's VF-19 toys. Sorry.

I wonder why they made me send the entire Garland and sent me a whole new one when they just sent you the arm?

A broad? Are you like a 60 year old man?

And it's a good thing I just killfiled you!

Boncrusher was a Constructicon. The question is who the hell are barricade and blackout. Also spell Scorponok right.

I disagree. The Destroids are not supporting characters, they are extras. They don't have speaking roles, they just walk on to provide background flavor to battles where they promptly die. Once in a while they are used en masse as a mob, just like a mob of extras is used in a movie with people and not robots. Kill some Zentradi in a pit, lynch Frankenstein's monster, you know... same thing. The only Destroid with a speaking role is Hikaru's Spartan. I find it pretty disingenuous to say that Destroids weren't featured because the story didn't "merit" it. The story was designed to be what it was designed to be. It's not like they made a bunch of robots up and couldn't find room in the story for all of them. The story was about fast little jet/robots from the very beginning. Destroids are background elements. I think they're cool, but they are a very minor part of Macross and do not help you argue that Macross mecha are bulky and ugly and strictly utilitarian. The Valkyries are a high stylized, lithe, thin little series of robot/jets and they are Macross' main focus. I do not think they are that realistic and I do think aesthetics is terribly important for them. If you want to see robots designed to be ugly and bulky and highly "realistic", you need look no further than Votoms, Dougram, Srungle, or any of those other really real robot shows from the early 80's. The Valkyries have a flamboyance that pushes them well into the category of highly stylized robot.

Warpath is a tank. You mean Powerglide.

I think the CG in GITS is not very good either. I mean, whatever, it's not cheap, but it sticks out badly and screws up the show for me. I can dislike whatever technique I want to. I don't like it, and I would prefer full CG ala Appleseed or just fully animated digital 2D. You can still draw robots with a stylus. They don't have to be CG. So make your movie in CG. It's like making a movie with paper dolls pasted over a real environment. It's gimmicky and distracting and I don't like it. The characters don't make the environment at all, and there's zero depth. Bad bad bad. I'm sure it's unfortunately here to stay, but it's not here to stay for artistic reasons, it's here to stay because it's a lot cheaper to build a model in a computer once and then just rotate it and pose it and whatever on screen. Who cares if it jars badly with everything else on screen? It's cheap. It's not for artistic reasons at all. Yeah, go to hell DR Movie! How dare those stupid hacks animate for Macross Plus, Hellsing, Reign, Heroic Legend of Arslan (god that one is awesome), Ghost in the Shell, they even did in-betweens on Yukikaze. Those talentless losers.

There's a tiny bit of CG in Macross Plus, tiny bit in Escaflowne... it was just starting out. 99.9% of the series is hand drawn, and the CG fold sequence only works because it's an altered reality thing and the entire thing is CG. Did you miss the part where I was complaining that CG and 2D stuff clash badly? The characters walking in front of the CG ocean look terrible in Macross Zero. No, it has to do with them using whatever materials they had at hand to avoid spending more money. What makes you think they wouldn't have re-edited and redubbed Sentinels as a new show in Japan? It would have been a waste not to. Yeah, Robotech Art 3 also mentions that. And I don't doubt it. But the scenes with the redesigned Macross characters in Sentinels are really poorly animated, especially any scene with Minmay in it. God, the scene when they're in the store trying on the wedding dress is horrible. RA3 also says they couldn't use the Japanese scripts because they totally marginalized the Macross characters and no matter how much HG pushed them they insisted on focusing on the new characters, so that's why Sentinels switched to American scripts.

Now, I haven't seen Shadow Chronicles yet, just the trailers online, and it looks about the level of your average mecha TV animation in Japan in the last year or two. It's not fair to compare anything to Macross Plus these days since that was traditionally animated and NO ONE does that anymore (sadly). A better comparison is, like I said, any other Korean animated TV animation aired in Japan these days, and it's competing at that level. Personally, I absolutely hate CG/2D productions and despite the CG robots infesting anime these days. Even Macross Zero looks like crap in my opinion, especially the normal anime characters clashing badly with the awful CG water and the jerky movements of the CG robots, so don't get me wrong here. I really really dislike CG robots being used for anything other than a straight CG movie (like Appleseed). I'm just saying you have to be fair with what you're comparing it to. So I hate the entire technique, but this is on par with stuff coming out of Japan, so don't act like it some horrible American abomination. Furthmore, Sentinels' animation by 1986 or whatever standards is mostly not bad... as long as the Macross characters are not on screen. Those look like crap. But the action scenes on Tirol with Inbit blowing the hell out of Bioroids are good for the time, definitely outpacing Mospeada's sloppy Animefriend-only animation. Rumor has it the Japanese animators intentionally made the scenes with Macross characters crappy and did a good job on the other scenes because they intended to cut it into a new show in Japan that did not have the Macross characters. Macek talks about in Robotech Art 3, and points out how this essentially happened with Zillion when a ton of Sentinels designs were used in that show.