Gubaba

If you like orgasms, you'll love Aquarion!

If it's Dave Deitrich, then it's a Robotech game. And one of my personal pet peeves is when people try to plump out their Robotech games by throwing in a bunch of Macross stuff.

RPG stuff...doesn't count as real info...especially not when it's connected to Robotech.

Damn...that's covering a lot of ground!

Tokyo. I'll probably be arriving there around the middle of June.

Really? Me too!

How was the food?

It hovered. Does that count?

Hmmm...you're probably right about that...he WANTED to believe she was innocent so badly that he made some pretty terrible choices. In his defense, I'd have to say that if a distraught Boomer came up to me begging for help, I'm not sure I'd be able to hand her over to the authorities...especially if I knew they were going to toss her out an airlock... I tried it, too. My toast tasted funny for weeks afterward. You'll be getting more info as the series progresses. Just enjoy the ride, and don't worry too much (yet) about the destination. There are some real game-changers up ahead...

Some pictures I took last July: Shibuya (with the 109 Building): A bizarre house (I think) that was behind my hotel: 'Nuff said:

Crap...you're right...they DID fold, didn't they? Too bad...those video tapes were the last thing I ever bought that had the word "ROBOTECH" emblazoned on them in big letters... And I don't think there ever WAS a fansub for the original series...I never saw one, at any rate. I finally collected all the Central Anime fansubs for M7, but it took a really long time, and I ended up getting them all out of order (basically, whichever volumes the guy at the monthly comic convention happened to remember to bring; when I finally asked him for specific volumes, he got pissed at me, because apparently, I was the only person interested in the series, and he felt he was doing me a big favor by bringing ANY of the tapes at all...insolent anime nerds...whatcha gonna do, right?). Anyway, as such, there was a lot in the later episodes of SDFm and in M7 that mystified me, since my Japanese was nowhere near good enough to understad what everyone was saying...and then I found the Macross Compendium, and wished their synopses were...a little more full. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with Robotech, but neither did anime fandom at that point.

I don't know about you, but I had EVERYTHING Macross on VHS (although the second half of SDFM and all of M7 were raw versions) by 1996. Ah, the joys of having two VCRs, and three Japanese video rental shops to choose from... That said, when Dynamite 7 came out, I was stuck. Only one of the video shops had it, and they never got the fourth episode. I didn't actually see that final part until sometime in 2001... EDIT: Also, I should probably add that my first "real" SDFM fix came courtesy of Carl Macek...in Streamline's Robotech Perfect Collection. Looking back on them, the subs weren't very good, but hey...it was something. I was really pissed when they cancelled that series...

Oh yeah...by the '90s, Robotech was vilified by any self-respecting anime fan. That was when all of the "Carl Macek is Satan" stuff started. Waaaaay overboard...thankfully, that's kind of eased up over the intervening decade-and-a-half...

Streamline came out with some good stuff, but I always hated the fact that they (almost) never released subbed versions of their titles. Still, as far as dubs went, they were pretty faithful to the originals, and the voice actors were rarely terrible.

http://www.hulu.com/super-dimension-fortress-macross

I got pretty heavily into anime circles before Robotech finished airing. People's level of acceptance seemed predicated on how much they knew about the original shows...the more you knew, the less tolerable, say, watching DYRL and talking about "Rick" and "Lisa" was. I'd also venture that Macek DID have an influence on the anime companies that sprang up...but in a negative way. I remember an early ad for US Renditions' release of Gunbuster, where they showed one word balloon crammed with Japanese text, and then another one that said simply, "SEE NORIKO RUN. RUN, NORIKO, RUN!" And then it said, "Something lost in translation?" The ad was touting their scrupulous fidelity to the original dialogue...at the time, I for one definitely read that as a swipe against Robotech (among other things). I'm not sure if it actually was, though... On the other hand, people at my local C/FO meetings (I think I was the only member whose mom had to drop him off... ) were all pretty jazzed when one guy actually got his hands on Mospeada: Love Live Alive...so it was pretty clear that everyone had WATCHED Robotech, and wanted to see more... So yeah, I dunno. On the playground, none of my friends believed me when I told them that the show was Japanese, and was really three unconnected shows...not until Robotech Art 1 came out, and they were proven wrong. By that time, though, most of them no longer cared about Robotech one way or another. Victory can be bittersweet...

Ah, sorry. I thought you were saying they were there BECAUSE of Robotech...but, since they were there before, doesn't that mean there was a market for anime before RT...? Okay, I think I've found the disconnect. All of this stuff was around before Robotech (Shogun Warriors, for example, came out in the '70s, IIRC...at least, I remember playing with them in my old house, which my family moved out of in 1980). Anime was on TV (not always in the most stellar shape) before Robotech. As you mentioned, video stores carried anime movies (or TV series chopped up to SEEM like movies) before Robotech. Most of it was done kiddie-style, but not all. It was all there...I think that perhaps you just didn't notice it as much before. Robotech made you curious to find out more. But the information was out there, even if you had to dig deep to find it. But if Robotech popularized the genre OVERALL, how do you explain the dearth of new anime following it? As I said, there was Macron-1. There was the barely-seen Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years. One of the Spanish-language TV stations in my area showed Iron Man 28 and Baxingar (which I loved, although I couldn't understand much of what they were saying). Comics stores and specialty shops carried more anime-related stuff, but they'd always had SOME (at least in L.A.). The C/FO got some more members. Comic conventions started devoting a little more space to anime. But I think anything would've done that. The groundswell had started. Robotech came along at the right time and was decent enough that a lot of people who saw it, liked it. But ultimately, it was just another crack in the floodgates, not much different than Star Blazers (and, strangely enough, Transformers) before it, and Akira after it. What's different about it - for you - is that it got you curious about where this stuff came from, and made you hungry for more. That's fine. The same is true for a lot of us...but as far as general importance goes, I think you're overstating its influence.

Well...I think he really thought she was innocent...that's a lot of egg all over HIS face, isn't it? Yeah...Adama's one of the big stars...it was always clear he was going to survive. The question is how much damage is going to be done before he recovers. I know! What's the world coming to, am I right? How far are you into the second season? Some of it didn't work for me, but it still builds to a pretty satisfying climax, I think. And I believe the election stuff is important...the fleet is not a dictatorship, so its necessary to deal with politics every once in a while (and yeah, keep an eye on that plot thread...). Seems pretty hopeless, doesn't it? I believe someone on this very board said, when she debuted, "Cylon or not, throw her out of the airlock!" I support that sentiment. That said, I like Tigh and Ellen's relationship. It's frustrating as hell to watch, but it feels "true" to me, in that I know couples like that...addicted to drama, bringing out the worst in each other, making each other miserable, but not splitting up...and somehow, kinda/sorta making it work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't all of those come out BEFORE Robotech...? After Robotech finished, there was still a real dearth of anime on TV. You had Macron-1, which featured most of the Robotech voice cast, and which sucked. And I've heard that Captain harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years aired somewhere...no idea where, though. There was already a groundswell of interest in anime...Robotech may have pushed it along (except that it seems like a lot of the people who REALLY, REALLY liked Robotech STILL only REALLY, REALLY like Robotech). But I remember seeing anime books in comic shops before Robotech aired, and I remember reading about anime and giant robots in the LA Times magazine (which included a focus on Macross) in late '84. Remember, robot toys were already big...I never went to Toys R Us, but Karl's Toys in the Pasadena Mall continually had cheap Macross, Orguss, and Dorvack model kits even before Robotech started. So yeah...I think it would've happened anyway, Robotech or no.

Not this argument again... Okay, my thinking on the subject is that, yeah, Robotech gave Macross more exposure, but at what cost? Macross is forever saddled in a lot of people's minds with two quite different (and arguably inferior) series, many portions of the original story have gotten lost in the shuffle, and the further chapters of the franchise remain unavailable legally in many places around the world. One could easily argue that had it been created differently, picked up by a different company, or had simply remained unreleased until later, things would have turned out better. Or not. It's all hypothetical, anyway.

*snicker* Which of course is why you should watch them in Japanese, the way God intended.

Mark Simmons is credited in the end titles for Unicorn, so I think he probably WROTE all the English in it!

Background can be a spoiler as well. If Project M hasn't been explained as of episode 19, then it's a spoiler.

Remember a week or so ago when Mickeyg said he didn't want spoilers...? We're only on episode 19...slow down, mister. (and yes...I'm STILL pissed that you ruined a good portion of BSG for me. )

That one (along with Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, among others), I think of as "advanced Miyazaki," in that it's probably good to have at least a couple of his movies under your belt before you see them. Others may disagree, however...