Gubaba

They DID do it 25 years ago...Robotech Art 1 is a little too self-congratulatory, but it IS an essentially honest account of how Macross came to be, and then came to become Robotech. If further books in the series had expanded more on that, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we (as Macross and/or Robotech fans) have. My feeling about the whole situation (based on no hard evidence, just my personal interpretation) is that, for a while there in '85-'86, there were two schools of thought on how to proceed: The kiddie stuff (like the Robotech fan club, the Matchbox figures, the coloring books, and such) ignored Robotech's roots and acted like it was a completely original "Made in the US" work. The stuff geared for an older audience (like Robotech Art 1 and, initially, at least, the comics) were quite open and forthright about how Robotech was made, and were almost using Robotech as a springboard to talk about anime in general (which makes sense: the people who wrote Robotech Art 1 were anime fans BEFORE Robotech started airing). But then the novels came, trying to bind the three series even more closely together, and the comics started following suit. Even then, it didn't get REALLY bad until the whole "Harmony Gold owns Macross Plus, too!" fiasco ten years ago.

Indeed. In fact, IIRC, the ending credits of Star Blazers ACTUALLY MENTIONED that the show was A) Japanese, and B) originally titled Space Battleship Yamato. Not only that, but Matsumoto, Nishizaki, et al were in the credits as well. Whatta concept, huh? And, even though, as you say, Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada went through something of a blender to become Robotech, I don't think it would necessarily have to be confusing to neophytes. Look at the essay about "The Star Blazers you DIDN'T see" (which I remember reading a long, long time ago in...Animag, I believe). Any one of us could write a similar blow-by-blow account of what was edited and changed in Robotech...we've got a fine example pinned on this very forum. But yes, in order for RT.com to go that route, they'd have to stop viewing Robotech as a goose that still has a few golden eggs left in her, and start viewing it (as Robelwell202 has suggested) a "legacy series": a product of the '80s, good for its time, inspires a lot of fond memories, blah blah blah...but something that is effectively done. And they'd have to stop viewing Macross as a competing work, and start looking at things like new Macross stories or the new Mospeada book with more of an attitude of "Wow, look at what they're doing over in Japan!" But yeah...ain't gonna happen.

Well, as Daniel Radcliffe said in The Lord of the Rings Episode 1: The Ring's Fellows, "Elementary, my dear Anakin."

I dunno...I'm not a big Star Trek fan (I've probably seen about five or six episodes total of the original show, when I was a kid; I've seen Star Trek II, III, and IV, one time for each; and I saw about four episodes of The Next Generation)...but I'm guessing that since Kirk's first name is "James," McCoy's probably isn't. Am I right?

Y'know...I was thinking about this earlier today, thanks to Dynaman's (now locked) post about the Yamato live-action movie. Check out the official Star Blazers website...notice anything? Like the way it gives a comprehensive history of Space Battleship Yamato, as well as Star Blazers? The way it discusses Yamato movies, manga, novelizations, toys, and models? The in-depth blurbs about the new and upcoming Yamato films, despite the fact that these will probably never see the light of day in the US? It's a great resource for anyone interested in Star Blazers, but it's also a great resource for anyone interested in Yamato, as well. Even though there are no in-Japanese-with-subs DVD sets for any of the three Yamato TV series, all of the information is right there on the website: how the series was originally, what the American producers changed, and why they changed it. Detailed synopses of the novelizations, the comics, and other media. Hell, they even translated one of the old comics and put it up for viewing. Translations of interviews with the original creators, and detailed, well-researched articles about the show in both Japanese and English incarnations. What if Robotech.com had been as honest, forthright, and thorough?

They all have different art because they're all bootlegs.

Dunno if this is common knowledge yet, but the VF-19 book has been delayed until March.

More brilliance from the mind of Maverick_LSC: :D

I'm not sure there ever really was a coherent Red Sonja storyline. There is, of course, a coherent Conan story, but it's hard to discern through all the pastiches, sequels by other hands, and "posthumous collaborations." And if you stick only to Howard's original stories (which I think is probably the best way to go), there are huge gaps in the chronology, since Howard wrote the stories out of chronological order, and killed himself at age 30, with only about two dozen Conan stories done, and quite a few more left unfinished...which is a real shame. If he had lived to a ripe old age, I wonder if he would've continued milking Conan endlessly, or if he would've completed the series.

He didn't. She was created for the comics.

"Prospero," said the man at the table, "these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did." "All part of the game, Conan," answered the dark-eyed Poitainian. You are king - you must play the part." "I wish I might ride with you to Nemedia," said Conan enviously. "It seems ages since I had a horse between my knees - but Publius says that affairs in the city require my presence. Curse him! "When I overthrew the old dynasty," he continued, speaking with the easy familiarity which existed only between the Poitainian and himself, "it was easy enough, though it seemed bitter hard at the time. Looking back now over the wild path I followed, all those days of toil, intrigue, slaughter and tribulation seem like a dream. "I did not dream far enough, Propsero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless. "When I overthrew Numedides, then I was the Liberator - now they spit at my shadow. They have put a statue of that swine in the temple of Mitra, and people go and wail before it, hailing it as the holy effigy of a saintly monarch who was done to death by a red-handed barbarian. When I led her armies to victory as a mercenary, Aquilonia overlooked the fact that I was a foreigner, but now she cannot forgive me. "Now in Mitra's temple there come to burn incense to Numedides' memory, men whom his hangmen maimed and blinded, men whose sons died in his dungeons, whose wives and daughters were dragged into his seraglio. The fickle fools!" - From "The Phoenix on the Sword," by Robert E. Howard.

Seto can cite all the examples he wants, but I find Maverick's whole premise flawed...there IS no single school of eatern OR western storytelling. There are many, many different ways of telling stories throughout the world, and they cross and connect each other. Any attempt to codify one way as derived from Europe and other as derived from Asia is doomed to failure. Most attempts that I've seen that try to do so rely on anything "weird" being chalked up to "the Eastern style," regardless of the fact that everyone from Homer to Shakespeare can be odd, abstract, and inconclusive; and Japanese and Chinese writers are often concrete and logical. It's a simplistic notion that falls apart utterly upon examination, especially if you look at literary works over the last century or two, as western works started being translated and read by eastern authors, and vice-versa.

I posed a similar question on RTX, in response to Maverick_LSC pontificating about how Macross is Eastern storytelling, which some people like, but Robotech is Western, which most people prefer. I asked if someone took the original Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, dubbed them into French, and edited them together so that BSG took place forty years after Star Trek (adding in dialogue to say that the Enterprise had found a planet and settled, and that's what the Galactica is looking for, and also that Starbuck is Captain Kirk's grandson; oh, and the Cylons are "Robo-Klingons"))...and then claimed that they had created an "Authentic French Space Opera"...would they be taken seriously, or laughed out of the room? And would any moments of real drama and forcefulness be there because they were present in the original shows, or because it was all in French?

Do sequels count...? There was, after all, the '70s version of Farewell, My Lovely with Elliot Gould taking Bogart's place as Philip Marlowe...

The Big Sleep was by Raymond Chandler. Great book, great movie. GET THEM NOW!

Not really. I think you might be thinking of The Big Sleep, since a lot of dialogue from that made its way into the movie...but still, both movies are heavily sanitized compared to the books.

It's clearly a sequence in the movie, and someone is indeed singing. So yes. I didn't say it was a good singing sequence... Enh, they're just missing the forest for the trees. Let 'em carp. Anyone with half an ounce of sense will see that their arguments don't make sense.

Conan and the Sorcerer was written by Andrew Offutt, not Robert E. Howard. Up until about seven or eight years ago, it was really hard to tell what "Howard's vision of Conan" even was, since the only way you could find the original stories was the eleven- or twelve-volume set from Ace books, that combined Howard's original stories (all out of order) with rewrites and additions by Lin Carter and L. Sprague DeCamp. Separating what was by Howard and what was by the other writers was a challenge. Thankfully, the newer three-volume set fixes all that.

...except that it doesn't have a trilogy structure. Part 1 is all build up and information; very little actually happens. Part 2 (which of course picks up the instant Part 1 ends) is all about settling in with the Fremen, and getting used to their culture. All the action happens in Part 3, which is set two years after the first two parts. As a single book, it works brilliantly. Broken up into the three discrete parts, it wouldn't work at all. Plus, a lot of the most interesting bits (like the dinner party where everyone is saying one thing but meaning two or three other things) are entirely unfilmable.

CoryHomes is right...Dune is NOT filmable in any way that would make for a coherent movie. The miniseries appraoch is better, but still...there's too much important background material. None one could make a Dune movie that captures the book. Most books are not movies waiting to be born. They're books. They're meant to be books. They're meant to STAY books. And that should be perfectly fine. It's easy to drool over what might have been. On paper, a Dune directed by David Lynch sounds great, too.

I'm not saying it had a point...I'm just saying it's there.

Not entirely...there IS the big singing sequence at the end of Shadow Chronicles...it's just that no one ever mentions it. Also, I'm a BIG fan of the UC timeline for Gundam. Most of the old-school Gundam fans I know are also Macross fans. None of them are Robotech fans. Now that is just MY experience; others may differ. But I think you're unfairly targeting a group of people who have nothing to do with this discussion. It's funny how that keeps getting brought up again and again by Robotech fans. It's like they watched the first three or four episodes and then never saw the rest of the show. I thought it was interesting the way that Frontier started off kinda winking at the viewer, saying "Oh, look, here's the new Hikaru. And Focker. And Max. And Minmay..." and then started screwing around with the formula. "Max" dies; "Focker" lives; "Minmay" sings against the good guys; in the end, the aliens aren't anywhere near as big a threat as other humans. And the singers weren't the ones who stopped the bad guys. But I guess the RT fans made p their minds early and never really let the show get in the way of their opinions. Their loss.

It's hard to read, but I think it's just her name: 飯島真理

What took you so long? Mari's awesome.