Macross_Fanboy

Whoa that's cool!!! I would want one, but I'm saving up my money for my home ent system when I get my house.

Okay people, I finally decided to spend some of my long hours at work to give you all the skinny on this, no pics or vids yet, I guess I'll take care of that tomorrow morning or night depending on when I wake up and when I get back from my birthday dinner. So, after a few days and getting some scoops from the blogs that my GF read, it was a huge turn out, since 8AM there were already 200 people waiting in front of the Nippon Budokan and by 2PM they started selling the goods. My GF and I got there at 4PM and for a minute after leaving the train station, I felt like just scalping the tickets and going home with all of the money, there were quite a few people trying to get in or who didn't win any auctions like we did. for both tickets we paid 44,400 yen, that, each both of them were actually worth 13,600 yen. But this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity considering that was the last concert in a 6 month tour. We got in and got seated by 5:45 maybe. I pulled out an additional 9000 yen to add to my daily 5000 for merchandise that would become impossible to buy considering the line. Japanese really, really love anything that's popular for the moment, it kind of drives me crazy considering how my GF is one too. With the money I got a 7X zoom pair of binoculars for 3000. The offerings at the shop ranged from the VF-25S transforming model kit from Bandai, the black SMS Skull Squadron T-shirt which was coveted by me and is not available at Cospa yet. They had posters, Ranka and Sheryl bath towels, Sheryl and Ranka and the school outfits for outrages prices, one school shirt is as much as a good pair of jeans from Levis. They also had a display section with a planned release of a transparent VF-25, along with a Ranka-chan themed VF-25, no Sheryl, I'm guessing they're leaving that to the VF-171. Regular figures and other little niches, one thing was that they were bagging all of the goods with a Nyan Nyan restaurant bag with the chibi Chinese girl on it, I snapped a picture of that, lots of those things were being carried by a lot of people. Oh I wish I could have gotten me one. Well, we got seated finally on the west side of the theater and the show started at 6:30. The introduction to the show started wtih Captain Wilder announcing a declaration and rallying the crowd by saying: "Today we are not ordinary soldiers, we are musical soldiers!" Something to that effect and led the crowd in a chant with the bridge bunnies informing him that the Budokan theater was ready to fold. He followed by saying, "Let's go you bastards!" Well, that's one way to translate "Ikuze yaro domo!" It counted down from 10 and then a huge fold was commenced, the entire crowd already had their glow sticks ready by then because of the theater hard darkened completely when the clock struck at half past 6. Once the fold ended the orchestra led by Yoko Kanno started with the prologue music and an explanation of the general Macross story by the narrator, and usually where they introduce the Frontier colony, they introduced the Budokan theater so that was entertaining in itself. After the intro, the singing started, however I can't remember the order of the songs because there were so many. I believe the first song was What 'bout My Star, not the Formo Mall version, just the regular one, it was duet with Megumi Nakajima and May-n. God, I can't remember all of the songs, I recorded some of the performances but they were the songs I liked the most or the songs tied in right after each ended. The crowning moment of the entire concert was when the audience had to follow along, especially in Don't Be Late, Interstellar Flight, Nyan Nyan CM melody, SMS theme, and Carrots Love You Yeah! For the Nyan Nyan CM melody, the voice actors of Alto(Yuichi Nakamura), Michel(Hiroshi Kamiyama), and Bobby(Kenta Miyake) were performing the song along with the dance with Megumi who was standing on a raised platform and using the Ranka voice along with the voice actors who were playing the part and dressed as them. I got a short little video about it. The entire performance was great, especially Yoko Kanno, she didn't speak and didn't sing at all, she was on the keyboard and on the piano and coordinating with the orchestra. She broke a sweat that she took her red coat off and just tossed it on under the stage stairs. Megumi Nakajima was great, she is still a newcomer to the industry as she stated at the end of the concert. During the Nyan Service Medley, she was late on one part after after the Macross Attack on Galaxy(they showed all the greatest clips during each song) but it's ok. Lion was the last song after so many renditions of the other ones. She sang the classics as well which were My Boyfriend is a Pilot and DYRL? which were great. May-n's performance of Diamond Crevasse was bone chilling, she has such a fantastic voice. Special guest was Mayaa Sakamoto who sang Triangler towards the end and I prefer the live performance better than the albulm version, my GF does too. According to her, it sounds like she's dying when singing Triangler because her voice sounds so pained and high pitched. The best songs were Don't Be Late, Interstellar Flight, Azure Ether, Diamond Crevasse(both versions), Megumi's rendition of Don't Be Late, Triangler, Lion, Nyan Service Medley, Infinity and Yoko Kanno's piano version of Diamond Crevasse. The seats I had were not bad at all, it's just one of the stage props got in the way of the upper level of the stage which happened to block the middle and took me a minute to figure out where the singing was coming from. It was sure better than the guys that were right behind the stage and couldn't see much unless the girls moved to the side platforms, I called that part the backyard, so the money I paid for my tickets were damn good! I would have preferred an arena seat, however that might have made capturing video and pics hard since I had to watch my back from time to time. On the vids if the camera moves away from the subject it's because I'm either watching my back or focusing too much on the performance. Plus you'll here me chanting and cheering, I reveiwed the videos myself and laughed so much at myself, bear with me here! The one bad thing was one of the audience members seated in front of me, during Diamond Crevasse I was going to snap a great shot of May-n but she screwed my shot up and I wanted to punch that bitch and send her tumbling all the way down to the arena floor because she told my GF to shut up after we made a comment to each other when she did the same thing to her friend. Anyways, that was the only thing to piss me off. The finale besides the encore was great, it was the Service Medley and at the very end there was huge explosion of gold streamers from the stage as the entire theater lit up once more. The other cool effects were the puffs of smoke/steam from the stage during the Don't Be Late performance which was awesome and when May-n sang Welcome To My Fanclub's Night, she stood on the stage platform and rose up with an image of Sheryl in the background so her own shillouete was on it with her hand with the mic raised up in a Sheryl-like pose. It was awesome. In the pics and videos that'll be coming soon, May-n is the one wearing the short shorts with the knee boots while Megumi Nakajima is wearing the little dress, looks to me as if they were trying to dress the part of their respective characters. The encore was great, they didn't sing one song, they sang more like 4 or 5, this is where Yoko Kanno got on a accordion and walked with the drummer, base and acoustic guitar players along with the singers with the final song being Diamond Crevasse along with the piano performance by Yoko Kanno. It was great, then the staff with Kawamori at the center arrived carrying boquets for the girls and finished with that. After the concert I tried to rush out to buy some merchandise, but it was impossible even though they were selling until 11PM, but there wan't time for that. The merchandise will come later in my order from Cospa, one being an SMS cellphone strap. Anyways, I finally was able to do give you guys the scoopuda and pics and vids will follow soon after, just keep checking back.

Alright, well the concert was great fun and I managed to steal me some pics and videos of the performance, I'm on a gov comp right now so I can't upload any files at the time and I'll fill you all in on the details in time since my normal PC for work is getting cured of a virus and won't be back until tomorrow and I'll probably be sleeping all day tomorrow until I have to get to work soon, so just wait a minute. Just a quick word though, the Froating Head was there as well and appeared at the end!

Well, it's a good thing my GF and I split the costs down the middle. Of course I'll have money left over, it'll be for food, I'll probably buy the Lion single since the second OST didn't have the full version of that great song. As for pics and videos, of course, but Japanese rules on that are kinda strict according to my GF. I never really went to a concert before, I went to a live salsa performance by Tito Puentes' son about three years ago. Anyways, I'll try and see what I can do for it, my camera is on charge as it speaks, I'm thinking of going over to the store to buy an 8gig so I can get some good video.

My favorite is and will always be Isamu vs. Guld on Earth at the end. That fight had great pacing, great dialogue, and most of all, one of the best scores in the entire series. Shin vs. Nora is in second place.

For those of you who live in Japan, the concert is today, haha, I meant to start this thread earlier, but yes, the concert is today in Budokan Theater, which has a similar layout to the hall in the anime when I saw the pics. I scored the tickets on Yahoo auction for about 45000 yen. I wasn't going to go because I was set to deploy and join my squadron, but that all changed and when my GF and I started looking it was sold out so we resorted to Yahoo Auction with no intention of spending more than 15000yen, oh well. The original value for each ticket is 6800 yen, God, fandom is expensive, I could have bought a YF-19 and YF-21 for the amount I cost if I remember the prices correctly. Anyways, anybody here in Japan give me a holler now so we can sing along together if we got seats next to each other. Hahaha.

Oh God...just last night I had quite the shock, I got a new little TV with an HDMI port so I go ahead and pay 4000yen or something like that and then when it comes time to hook it up, I discover that I was one month away from buying the "proper" 360. If you'd only seen how mad I got! That's one thing I knocked the 360 on, oh wellz, next time I go to the States I'm gonna go ahead and trade the damn thing in for an HDMI enable one. Hopefully they take it with the alternate faceplate because I threw the one it came with away.

You are referring to the Robotech LA movie by Warner. The only Macross movie coming soon is the Frontier movie. I wish I had the link, but I don't so check out the Other Anime and Sci Fi forum. You can find information on IGN.com also.

That depends on what you pick actually, the VF-1 has two kinds of missiles, the ones that ripple fire are best for short-range. Also, you will here a little beep to know you're locked on, not much of a visual cue unlike past games. I hope they come out with another for 360 or PS3 in the near future, I can only imagine how good it'll look. Right now I'm stuck on Hikaru, oh wellz. One thing I really like that the Gundam battle games lacked(well the ones I played) was the option to paint your VF. I like how the VF-171 comes with Gamlin's colors. The YF-19 comes with the VF-X Ravens scheme on it. The game uses the exact same engine as the Gundam ones, no surprise there really. The gameplay is pretty good IMO, especially for a PSP, I just wished that the game had a push-button weapon toggle instead of holding down the L button. In Gundam it worked because you had a shield, I'm not sure how the later VFs work with the whole shield thing. It's fun either way, a way to pass the time, when I got home, I did a few minor things and got absorbed playing it and didn't stop until 6PM over here. Do some of you find yourselves humming along with the BGM while you play?

Ahh, very nice gameplay from just playing the training missions. I took a trip down to Shibuya to pick it up...maybe I picked the wrong store, but geez, 5040 yen! But...I love it! It has all of the best songs from Macross! The graphics are pretty good too, I was thrown off by the little intro video in which nothing looked very good. YF-19 baby! w00t!

Oh god, Beast Machines was gay! Beast Wars was good though! I loved it when I was growing up since I couldn't watch the original Transformers back when I was 5.

Oh god, I remember the e-mail bomb one of my coworkers got...the girls were hot and then they did what they...ugh!

I have the same kind of notion, the only non-mecha anime I have would have to be GitS SAC even if it has the Tachikomas. All of its themes reflect today's world, and even more to the atmosphere in Japan. That is an anime I have to watch more than twice, not out of enjoyment, but to further my understanding on some of the things. It's easier to feel a future like that coming sooner rather than later. I tried telling my friends and even my coworkers about it, but in all their ignorance they can't accept a form of adult animation that isn't South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, etc. Worse yet is that its from Japan and their view of it is that it's all like Pokemon or some other children's show. I like Macross much more than Gundam for the fact that the ending with SDFM seems a little better paced in that we see the aftermath rather than what you get with Gundam ending at the One Year War and then picking the story up 7 years later with Zeta. With SDFM you see the hardships humanity endured with Kamjin's rebellion. All you ever got with Gundam was the same guys(Zeon/Char/Amuro/Newtypes) fighting a bunch of colony dropping people. Later iterations proved worse by severely straying from its original roots. At least Macross stayed true to it's roots better than any other franchise in the same genre.

A song won the war, but most audiences won't open themselves up to that. I'm sure most of the audience wouldn't even know about psychological warfare extending beyond a "shock and awe" campaign. Such tactics have occurred under different forms. Although I think an airing of the most famous love scene in the middle of a fight with some music in the background of that would better suit the culture-shock method and have higher chances of approval than just some idol on a stage singing.

Anybody know if the novels were ever translated and released in the English-speaking world? If they were, where could I order mine?!

Until I need your help, I'll ask for it. Don't worry about me, worry about yourself.

Ya'know, lately a lot of Macross II threads have popped up, they should all be rolled into one monster thread where you can hate or adore or debate the entire damn thing.

Like I've said, from my experience overseas, most of the world does think of us as well ignorant and I have met some ignorant people in my line of work. I was kind of shocked myself. I'm not exactly stereotyping everybody, I know there are intelligent people out there, but certain concepts just will never fly with a majority of the population. I met a guy that doesn't believe that earthquakes are caused by shifts in the tectonic plates despite all the publications put forth since before some of us were born. I stand by my comment, so if you're offended, oh well. To each his own right?

LOL! There are some garbage-ass movies nowadays! You watched it? If you did, at least say you have kids and you took them to watch it!

Macross Zero being hated on or not liked for not having all of the stuff most people come to identify Macross with is funny considering some people are criticizing II and now Frontier for having some unoriginal concepts and a few saying Frontier was not refreshing. It kinda says to me that us as Macross fans don't quite know what we want. Macros Zero was rather dark and has some real world issues in which overpopulating and development is destroying nature. I prefer floating rocks to the SDF-1 which is just a hunk of junk in II being destroyed with the bridge magically surviving. Anybody else annoyed by the way they regarded the Macross in II? I know I was.

Hey, I'm an American too, I'm basing this off of what I know from being overseas and the way most people react to ideas and opinions from differing cultures. I can easily say that Americans are some of the most ignorant people in the world. God, some Homotech fans are in denial that Macross was what started it all for them.

Well...knowing how a majority of American audiences are when it comes to movies, I think they would find it ridiculous and would reject the idea, but a film like that would end up being a cult film in the end.

Ahh...this takes me back to about 2003 or something like that. I remember I was curious about music videos for Danger Zone and Mighty Wings(the beginning and ending songs for Top Gun) and back when Kazaa was big I found it. So I downloaded the too and I saw all kinds of anime, it wasn't what I was looking for but nonetheless I was captivated. There was some clips of Wings of Honnemaise, old-school Area 88, and the one that caught my eye in particular was Macross Plus. And before the advent of cheap broadband, I asked my friend to look for it. He downloaded 4, but the last one was in fact the 4th episode of Macross in its Homotech form. So eventually I decided to buy the Movie Edition and I was captivated...and then I was led astray by mistaking HT as Macross...but luckily I fixed that and when I was able to gather my funds, I got SDFM when they were extremely expensive and I have been a fan since I guess 2003.

That was a very good read, I was thinking that there is enough in there to warrant all of the designs irrelevant to HGs grip on the franchise outside of Asia. Not even Minmay looks like the SDFM Minmay as we've all seen and the only old-school thing that shows up is a VF-1 and that's not many. Aptly put criticisms on it, not biased at all, I can imagine what homotech fans would think

Well, I plan on watching the entire series with my girl so she can lore at my smiling face as I watch all the awesome action. One time she said, "You look happier than usual when you're watching this." So...she implies I'm happier watching Macross than I am with her! :lol: