Final Vegeta

Sci-fi in itself it's just a fantasy with less suspension of disbelief. http://www.geocities.com/naran500/infamy/b5.html Vital Fluids B5, Various In the middle ages, an idea came up that there was a life essence, a vital fluid. It could be refined, stored, transfered, etc. In the modern age, this idea is pretty much debunked, but it's still a popular cliche in SF. For example, in Babylon 5, there was a machine that could transfer life force from one individual to another. Star Wars is a sci-fantasy because people fight with swords and because there where black and white moral alignments. Macross 7 and Zero have nothing to do with this. They may have concepts that are not hard sci-fi, but are still part of sci-fi culture, like ESP powers, faster-than-light travels and time travels. FV

Anyway, they still look quite good. And I like the head variants. That's a standard zentradi look. Even Guld had pointy ears. FV

By the way, I think Dynamite has just a little Kawamori more than the film of Escaflowne. Macross 7 was a project he had not his hands on in a heavy way (most mecha design was even refined by Miyatake), it wouldn't make sense he were more involved Dynamite, despite what the ending photography could make think. Macross Zero was more about culture. One of the main flaw of Macross Zero is the baddies, which were hastily characterized, especially Ivanov. Aside from this I like Shin, he comes off more mature than most anime lead character. He just needed to be designed more consistently. There are indeed parodic elements, but not demential humour like Spaceballs (well, maybe the Battle 7 was a tad off, although still cool) so the story can still be appreciated in its own. In one novel of Miyazawa people turn into cats at the end. The movie makes several metanarrative references to Miyazawa. For example, the beginning references the quote "We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey." I found the beginning of Spring and Chaos one of the most poignant sequence ever. In Aquarion once there is a reference to the "mechanism of universe", maybe it's something from Miyazawa. Yes. The best episodes of Aquarion were his (either the serious ones and the comic ones). The other people were not always on par. I like Kawamori for his mecha, characters and ideas. In his anime there are a lot of awesome sequences. I noticed though that he'd need someone good to write "filler" contents between the concepts he likes to talk about. FV

If you mean Gandhi, you may have a wrong opinion of him. Gandhi said that he loved people like Garibaldi who fought with weapons, which Gandhi considered wrong means, but still fought, and prefered that to people who did nothing ("I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence"). Gandhi's means were mass civil disobedience. I will quote Wikipedia because is quicker than rewrite it myself: Gandhi adopted his methodology of satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time, calling on his fellow Indians to defy the new law and suffer the punishments for doing so, rather than resist through violent means. This plan was adopted, leading to a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi himself on many occasions), flogged, or even shot, for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. While the government was successful in repressing the Indian protesters, the public outcry stemming from the harsh methods employed by the South African government in the face of peaceful Indian protesters finally forced South African General Jan Christiaan Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. and "I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions.... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." Non-violence is only for the bravest of heart, those willing to bare their breasts to bullets. Also, I hear that Basara is "devoid of empathy", "unwilling to understand alternate viewpoints" and "convinced that he alone is in the right", and yet the same people who say these things are faulty of this. They are convinced they alone are in the right because "this works only in a cartoon", they scorn such alternate viewpoint and definitively can't empathize with the character. I feel this is long unresolved struggle between two different system of belief (you can see it at work in House M.D.). It is worthy to note that each system has its own way to work through life so each one find the other arrogant because it didn't spent time using its own way. In the social system you copy what others do, you spend time befriending them before telling them they are doing wrong, you show you wish to gain their approvation and such. In the intellectual (I'm lacking a better word) system you try to fix old craps that never really worked fine using innovating approaches, and you may be wrong or right but you have to try it out to see it if it really works, and what other people say doesn't matter because in the quest for truth you are alone. Truth is the secret keyword. The most intelligent people hold it in highest regard; even the aforementioned Gandhi did it. Truth is to defeat the illusory mantle of preconception and see the underlying mechanism of the universe thus turning entropy into cosmos (war can be seen as a phenomenon of entropy). If you really wish to understand an alternate point of view, meditate on this. FV

I think it's wrong. Kawamori is currently working on Uragiri no Tsubasa, an Aquarion OVA sequel. I think the Compendium meant he has already worked on "Space-Time Wars". FV

Technically, for everything to burn oxygen is required. If we take a mass of fuel placed in a tank, only the more external fuel can mix with oxygen and ignite. As long as there is fuel there can be burning, but it doesn't mean there will be always an explosion, and I think there can't be an explosion of all the fuel simultaneously. This is why in fuel/air bombs fuel is sprayed to allow large percentages of fuel to mix with oxygen, and therefore there is a big explosion. Don't believe everything you see in movies. FV

According to what I have read about seduction (Mystery, DeAngelo and others), Mylene will choose Basara. Obviously Gamlin is a better logical choice, but that's not how it works. "Now listen to my song, you kadun!". FV

Aquarion's Kawamori episodes were the best of the series. I am leaning to blame it on Hiroshi Ohnogi. He did "series composition" in Aquarion and script in Macross Zero. He actually worked as director in SDF Macross and is credited as "Eiji Kurokawa". He is credited as director only starting from DYRL?. I don't think Eureka 7 rocks, but I've seen only the first episodes. That simply means he may have left open possible story premises to be exploited in future Macross series. Which was directed by Amino. A lot of that space is going to be filled by rehashes, though. FV

Flame started When I became a man I put away childish things. Like the fear of being childish, and the desire to be a grownup. - C. S. Lewis But then, Carroll was an aspie so his worldview might be different. FV

Yes, that was one of the great moments of anime. An epic and subtle non-violent expression of might. When in the real world there are projects like the gay bomb, one shouldn't fuss about Macross 7 I found something while I was checking Star Wars on wikipedia: A concept borrowed from Flash Gordon involved a fairytale technology that had an element of traditional magic. This concept was originally developed by H.G. Wells who arguably invented the "science fiction" genre with his first novel, The Time Machine. Wells believed the Industrial Revolution had quietly destroyed the idea that fairytale magic might be real. Thus, he found that plausibility was required to allow myth to work properly, using the Industrial Era to substitute the original myths: time machines instead of magic carpets, Martians as dragons and scientists as wizards. Wells, however, called his new genre "scientific fantasia". So basically, by its inception, sci-fi is is fantasy where magic is done by machines. Macross 7 fits the canon since Basara still uses machines (I think it was called the sound energy converter). I think people are not supposed to question what are simply cultural concepts used as a foundation of a fictional work. If spiritia really existed, then Kawamori would have posed himself as a prophet a la Ron Hubbard, and would not have been credited as a "creator" but as a "discoverer". To be exact, from what I understand the energy didn't come from singing but from the expression of emotions, "vitalistic force" or whatever. Emotions as an empowering force is a typical Japanese cliché found even in many mecha anime. FV

There was a pic where each section of Sv-51 was colored so you could see where each piece goes in different modes, but I can't find it now. Well, there are swingbars for the upper chest. The heatshield is exactly over the ventral fans in fighter mode; behind the head and between the legs there is an empty space which is filled by the gunpod. The legs have their swingbar too, it has slitted holes for the ventral fans; the legs rotate 180° above the knee in battroid mode. The wings are attached to the fuselage near the ventral fans. The nose fold down in battroid. the arms are on the side of the fighter. FV

In the magazine section there are pics you could find useful: here. There are two side swingbars, they are the pieces with the canards which rotate around the cockpit. See the difference in the orientation of the canards between fighter and battroid and you will understand. On these two swingbars is attached the upper chest, and on the upper chest are attached the heatshield and the head (and the arms). FV

Aliens on a plane? FV

Lone Starr: Yogurt. What do you do here, anyway? Yogurt: Merchandising. Barf: Merchandising? What's that? Yogurt: Come on, I'll show you. (to the Dinks) Open up the shop, boys! We've got customers! (walks over to a wall filled with Spaceballs merchandise) Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made! (shows off the products) Spaceballs: the T-shirt, Spaceballs: the Lunchbox, Spaceballs: the Coloring Book, Spaceballs: the breakfast cereal. Spaceballs: the Flame Thrower... Dinks: Oooooohhhh! Yogurt: The kids love this one. And last, but not least, Spaceballs: The Animated series. Adorable. FV

And when you activate the star power the Elgerzorenes turn dark blue and you can eat them (no, maybe that was another game... ) FV

Moon Phase listed it under "TV anime" (instead of movie and OVA), so it should really be a series. I was trying to avoid hopes too high keeping telling myself it would be a recap movie a la DYRL, but now my mind is more open to that announcement. Well, that's more great than words can say. And it's likely the sequel was already thought all along. Plus the blog said Kawamori was playing with Lego, so we can expect another Aquarion mecha. I am really looking forward to this. FV

BEST MAGIC(MAGIC USER) FIGHT The last OVA of Giant Robo was pretty good. BEST MECHA/ROBOT FIGHT Escaflowne, ep. 14. Aquarion too had nice fight scenes. It deserves a mention in "best mecha swordfighting". FV

Those strips had some macrossworld in-jokes I couldn't understand at the time I read them, but I still found funny the Macross VS Harmony Gold jokes, the Valkyrie gattai and so on. I am not a Macross guy, I am a Kawamori guy. I think Macross II sucked. It's not because there is Macross featured within I find something funny (although it should be noted that obviously each anime has its own ways of being parodied). It is true that a lot of fan-based material is lame, though, with fanfics being the worst and fan-arts (including CG modeling) having potentialities. It' just that, with all the people trying, there is a chance someone will make something good. FV

What about Little Valkyrie comic strips? I think those were funny. FV

Even Oshii made fun of Kawamori's fondness of India FV

Probably this wasn't the point of this thread, but since we're talking about Lego, here I found transformable Lego Valkyries. The fact they transform is more interesting than the modelling skills. FV

About Kawamori's involvement in SDF Macross... I think there is a misunderstanding. Reading from animenewsnetwork.com, it appears that the creator or director of an anime series doesn't usually have his name credited as scriptwriter, screenplayer, series story editor or the like. There are alwasy other persons who help in delivering each episode. Macross Zero and Aquarion for example share a scriptwriter with Gundam SEED Destiny. I don't remember where, but I heard that Kawamori changed the script of Macross when he saw a Mikimoto drawing of a girl with a Chinese dress. Before that Macross was more based on space colonies, but after that the Chinese girl was included. Taking this as true, it would seem that the active role of Kawamori in Macross was bigger than what many would think. FV

He didn't draw Escaflowne's guymelefs. He is credited only for the initial version of the Alseides, but it was vastly revamped by Yamane. I think he somehow contributed to Escaflowne's transformation sequence, though. I translated a sentence where he was telling Yamane "don't worry, if you will do this it will transform perfectly in a dragon". I think he was refering to dragon mode's neck transformation. Heard that the dragon transformation gimmick was an idea of Kawamori, also. FV

I think it stays on the field. Compendium says: ACCOMMODATION: Pilot in cockpit. Cabin in main body with room for 5-6 people. I think the hull may have some space for commandoes. FV

I am not exactly on topic, but I actually would prefer something that would tie together all series made by Kawamori. Well, not exactly like Matsumoto's universe, more in the way of Alan Moore who uses character invented by others or Imagawa's Giant Robot (and the first 3 episodes of Shin Getter Armageddon). Let's say there was this Atlantean civilization who got wiped out 12000 years ago by the crush of an alien spaceship, which would be called Macross. The most powerful Atlanteans hybernated to survive (one of them is a giant monkey thing who can't talk). In the present there is a boy who is a descendant of these Atlanteans and can sprout wings on his back. Let's say the rest of humanity was made by nanomachines spread by the Macross which altered a great part of the original Atlanteans (who for the most part were still basically humans). The partner of the protagonist is of alien-modified human descent, she sings and has visions. One day the humans discovered the Macross (which is identified with the Ark myth) and use its technology to invent variable mechas. The AFOS though was activated and call for an alien fleet that immediately come to Earth and at the same time the ancient Atlanteans resuscitate. So we have a battle with these three parties: the humans, the Atlanteans and the aliens. The humans can't choose whom to allies with (heck, at first they don't even know who they are descended from). The conflict then escalates, the aliens create a base on the moon and so on. The aliens got a technology based on singing, while the Atlanteans were fond of destiny manipulation or energy absorption (Escaflowne or Aquarion?). The protagonist has a best friend with green hair who betrays humans and side with aliens (maybe he, the protagonist and the singer at the end of the series get a three-parts mecha). Also there should be an AI theme. FV