Gubaba

I just looked at your profile. You are now the new center of the universe. Oh, and consider yourself cyberstalked.

I haven't seen Avatar yet, but I thought 3D was used VERY well in Coraline. First intelligent use of 3D I've seen.

To throw a little something else into the mix... From "Macross: A Future Chronicle," as the ominous movie-voice narrator intones, "April 2010: Establishment of New Unity Government." (or should that be "new Unity Government"?)

Noriko and Misato...?

No idea. Kinda looks like Misa's dad, however.

I also like the Giant Floating Head of Dr. Squarejaw Flatface looking on with deep concern.

But see, for a short while right before Shadow Chronicles came out, the individual comics were VERY expensive on Ebay...so that justifies coming out with the book long after the prices plummeted...er, I mean...wait a sec. yeah, why ARE they coming out with it? You can get all five issues now for, like, ten bucks or less these days.

Oh yeah, Mr. "Oops, we need a villain for Sentinels, so just put a faceplate on some dude and act like all the characters already know him"? Lame. *smirk* *snicker* *Bbbbt* BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!! And you like this stuff better than Macross Plus, eh? Weird.

Y'know...when you put it like that, it makes perfect sense. I'd assume that when anime started gaining more widespread notoriety in the '90s, pretty much anyone who remembered Robotech fondly would at least put two and two together and realize it didn't originate in the US, but I sometimes forget that not everyone became hardcore bootleggers at the age of eleven, with dozens and dozen of VHS tapes crammed with Nth-generation copies of random anime cluttering up their bedroom.

That's cool. I was in Borders a couple of weeks ago and picked up the first volume of the new-ish Del Rey Conan collection. This thread's inspired me to start reading it tonight.

Well...Captain Donovan was either an EXTREME newbie, or else he was pretending to be one. If his PMs to me were to be believed, he didn't even know of the existence of Macross Plus or DYRL...and yeah, it's hard to believe that any Robotech fan could be so sheltered, but who knows? Maybe he doesn't get out much. But I think the problem for the general Robotech fan at MW is simply that it's not a Robotech site. Sure, you can enjoy the pics of toys and models, but what if you want to see a custom-built hovertank? Or you want to know what happened to Rico, Conda, and Bron after Kim, Sammy, and Vanessa died? Or you want to see fanart of Minmei jamming with Yellow Dancer? Or you want to know how long the SDF-1 is ('cause you just don't buy that 1200m. figure)? You won't find any of that here. Of course, you WILL find debate about where the SDF-2 is...but I think "lost somewhere near the center of the galaxy" isn't the answer most RT fans are looking for. Let's face it: most of the "Robotech-only" fans who come to MWe do so because this is the thread where you can get your frustrations out without fear of being banned or having the HG Police come after you. Now, it used to kinda bother me that a few people seemed to view this as a low-rent substitute for RT.com, but most of those people seem to have gone away. And only a handful of them acted trollish. I think it's the same for everyone, whatever you like You're moved to join a forum, you try it on for size, and if it doesn't fit, you move on. The only thing that surprises me is how many Robotech-only fans seem to LIKE this place. If I only liked Robotech, and had no interest in Macross, I'd find the forum to be confusing and uninteresting, just as Captain Donovan did. ...Or maybe they just find it refreshing to be around people who can spell correctly and use punctuation...

Vermilion Squadron wasn't Vermilion. Purple Squadron wasn't purple. Brown, Orange, and Cerulean Squadrons weren't...well, you get the picture. MY question, on the other hand, is...if we've got Diamond and Emerald Squadrons...where's Ruby Squadron?

But you're not ranting about this site on your podcast, acting like this thread is the only thing in the entire forum. At least, I don't *think* you are... To Jazznick's point: it's funny...when Captain Donovan was here, I suggested he play around in the "Movies and TV Series" subforum to get a better feel of the place. He responded that he tried, but having ONLY seen Robotech, and having seen no Macross whatsoever, he said he couldn't follow what ANY of the threads were talking about.

Engrish comes from Asia, makes no sense, and is often funny. The name "Octopus Army," comes from Asia, makes no sense, and is funny. Ergo, "Octopus Army" is Engrish.

Actually, it's pretty fucking easy to get around shit like that.

Here's a few that I took in Tokyo last July: And this one isn't terribly Engrishy, but it is the theater where I saw Eva 1.0 in 2007, and (as you can see from the poster) Eva 2.0 last year. And if I'd been in Tokyo a month or two ago, I would've seen Frontier there as well.

So, can you explain why there's a teddy bear with a pistol on the cover...? 'Cause that's got me almost curious enough to read the book myself.

Pizza was ranting on about that for a while, so I said he should check out Robotech Art 1, which discusses Macross's origins as a Yamato (among other things) parody. His first reaction was to assume I was talking about a Macross book (because of, y'know, me being a "Macross Purist Nazi" an' all), but then he sent a PM thanking me, saying he wanted to be nice, and how he's now apparently having some kind of fued with Memo. I'm still not sure what to make of it. Anyway, it kinda weirds me out how a good number of Robotech fans (who were fans back in '85, no less) have apparently never read Robotech Art 1...since if they had, a lot of these kinds of accusations would seem pretty silly.

Oh, I think the scriptwriters knew...they probably just figured that the viewers wouldn't.

If more teenage girls were into Conan, the world would be a better place. Actually, I think he looks fruitier there...must be all the leather.

Cripes...you're bringing out the worst "Lit Major with something to prove" tendencies in me...I'm gonna back away from this thread slowly now...

Well...he's not really a sci-fi writer in the classic sense, is he? He's more of a slipstream postmodernist. I always find it funny that so many science-fiction (and fantasy) readers seem to get incredibly annoyed by narrative techniques that have been common in mainstream lit for nearly a century now. The stuff Stephenson is doing was last considered "experimental" in the 1940s, at the latest. If Stephenson confuses you, how can you handle James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, or Franz Kafka...?

Not really. In issue 1 of Macross Ace, they gave a brief (very brief) timeline of all the Macross series, with brief (very brief) synopses of stories. They stick Macross II at the end, but neglect to mention that it's an alternate continuity. Since it's such a small section, designed primarily to get Macross F fans "up to speed" (or at least give them an idea of what else is available on DVD *wink wink*), it's really not worth getting excited over. Neither is it worth getting upset about the fact that they list Macross II as happening in 2090 (as opposed to Seto's preferred date of 2092), since nearly all promotional material for MII merely says "80 years after 'Do You Remember Love.'"

But...that's part of the point of the book. It's one of the things that makes Stephenson such an interesting writer...

I'd go a little further than Seto and say that most tie-in books are pretty awful, overall. Especially if they're tie-ins for a game rather than a show. But even with a show...one of the big problems is that only rarely will the books be able to show the characters changing or gorwing in any meaningful way. None of the Star Trek writers would, for example, be able to kill off McCoy, or have Kirk get married. (I know that in the Star Wars books, these types of things CAN happen, but I haven't read any of them beyond the Timothy Zahn trilogy, wich I found adequate but not enthralling...certainly not enthralling enough to read the dozens of books that followed it.) So yeah...tie-ins. It's more surprising when they're NOT terrible than when they ARE. Creativity-by-committee at its worst. I might nominate the equally creativity-by-committee Dune sequels...but I haven't actually gotten the nerve to pick any of them up. Heinlein has written some pretty atrocious stuff, most of it late in life. Piers Anthony has written a lot of terrible books as well...I read a lot of crappy sci-fi and fantasy when I was in junior high, and he's the only writer who still moves me to anger when I dwell on the fact that I once liked his books.