Gubaba

I don't know about that, really...as I've said before, all during Robotech's run (which I believe started in February of '85, maybe March or April) all that was available were the Japanese toys and models. There were also the Robotech Defender model kits (which pre-dated the series), but they had about 15 models, only three of which were from Macross (the rest were from Dougram, and one from Orguss). Later, they started coming out with smaller kits from Macross, and eventually came out with the SDF-1, but that was later. The first Robotech toys I got were at Christmas '85...some of the small, die-cast Destroids, and the "Joke Machine" Valkyries, the little Super-Deformed versions of Valkyries that were egg-shaped. The action figures came MUCH later, and looked crappy (as you well know). I never got any, and I don't think any of my friends did, either. Sentinels was scheduled to start in Fall of '86, but of course it never materialized. And that was it for Robotech toys. The Comico comics continued (I stopped getting all of them around issue 6 of each series, however), and the novels started coming in '87. The Sentinels videotape came out in '87 or '88, and was available only through mail order. And then, in the '90s, a bunch of uninteresting novels and comic books, and that was it. Yes, there were many different comic series, but that's because each series was only three or four issues long (except Sentinels, I believe). So no, I don't think there was ever a glut. The cartoon was more mature than others, but the toys were very kiddie (hell, I even joined the fan club, hoping to find out more information about Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. What I got was a cheap cardboard sheet thanking me for joining the RDF, signed "Rick Hunter" and "Lisa Hayes." I felt insulted and patronized, and I was like, what...eleven? It MUST have been extraordinarily condescending to insult and eleven-year-old).

Wow...Admiral Kain is kind of a bitch.

How could Frontier have ripped it off from 00, considering the two shows were being developed more or less simultaneously?

Now THAT one, I noticed... Damn, I really need to watch this show again. I bought it all on VHS back when AnimeVillage.com was still running. I should really upgrade to DVD, shouldn't I?

Huh...I never noticed...but I always thought the frog's voice sounded familiar somehow...

'89, actually. Never gave me a lick of trouble, but then...I know a VERY good Volvo mechanic.

Well...that's the nice thing about machines, isn't it? You tell them what you want them to do, and they do it. If they don't, you just need to open 'em up and figure out why. They're very honest and simple that way.

I just wanted to say I'm watching episode 9 of season 2, and I love how they contrasted the Chief running his hands lovingly over the Viper (to figure out what's wrong with it) to flashbacks of him running his hands lovingly over Sharon. And then having him declare the Viper busted and unusable. Very clever sequence, and it made it's point without hammering you over the head with it. I also love the stuff between the Chief and Helo...it's like my worst ex-girlfriend nightmare, but ramped up a notch. NOT ONLY is the ex-girlfriend in love with someone else AND knocked-up by him, but she's not even the same person, so you can't even get pissed off at her for tossing you aside... (Can you tell I identify with the Chief more than with Helo?)

Trust me, I'm being careful. Of course, it helps that a lot of the members here are putting stuff in spoiler tags for my sake. Y'all are so considerate! Besides, I already know who the final Cylon is. It's Grace O'Connor, right? (NOW, I finally understand that joke!)

Funnily enough, I was planning on doing exactly the same thing in a few months. Currently, I have the shot of the VF-1A getting the FAST packs attached to it (from the Variable Fighter Technology Sheet B). I really like Tomotake Kinoshita's art...it strike a nice balance between making everything look almost exactly like it does in the anime, but getting almost photorealistic at the same time. It's a perfectly gratifying illustration style for mecha stuff.

I understand your (what is it...annoyance? Disappointment? Frustration? Bemusement? I'm not sure...). Anyway, I get your point. And clearly, there are a lot of people who want to know what happened to them (I just like to think they went through a fold and ended up somewhere way out there, maybe even in another time, on some idyllic world, where they all settled down and lived happily ever after). But really, it's Rick and Lisa's lot in life to be lost in space. End of the TV show? They're lost in space. End of Book 12 of the novels? Lost in space. End of the Sentinels books? Lost in space. End of the Shadow Chronicles? Lost in space. The End of the Circle? Minmei is lost in space, even if the others aren't. But it isn't like they don't crop up again, even in Macross (as others have pointed out). And even the Bridge Bunnies show up again in various extra material. But really, once the voice actress for Minmay moved to the U.S., and the voice actor for Hikaru died, I pretty much gave up all hope of a continuation. Some loose ends get tied up later, some don't. I remember an interview with Kawamori in...an early issue of Animerica, I believe, where he said something like, "We used Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay in the TV series and in the movie. If we used them a third time, you'd be bored of them, too." At the time, I thought he was just being flip (and maybe he was), but I also grew to agree with him, especially recently. I've been working on subtitles, books, albums, and comics all about Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay. By the time I'm done, I may never want to see them ever again.

I can believe it. The "farm" seriously creeped me out. Yuck...

Cripes...I'm now 8 episodes into Season 2. One thing I thought was clever about Season 1 was that they did not reveal any Cylon models beyond the four revealed in the miniseries. Suddenly now, we've got two more...and one of them is the Warrior Princess, which is pretty awesome (seriously, between Starbuck's all-around hotness, and Xena joining the cast, I can see why my cute lesbian friend likes this show so much). That said, I found the Tomb of Athena stuff to be a little silly. The rest of the show remains riveting, however.

No...um, I meant for my avatar. I don't believe I have any rare DYRL pics. The DYRL novel (unlike My Fair Minmay and White Reminiscences) only uses black-and-white screenshots from the movie. Pretty dull, actually.

DYRL pics will be next. But hey, as long as I'm here...

The Labors of Hercules: 1. Slay the Nemean Lion. 2. Slay the 9-headed Lernaean Hydra. 3. Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis. 4. Capture the Erymanthian Boar. 5. Clean the Augean stables in a single day. 6. Slay the Stymphalian Birds. 7. Capture the Cretan Bull. 8. Steal the Mares of Diomedes. 9. Obtain the Girdle of the Amazon Queen. 10. Obtain the Cattle of the Monster Geryon. 11. Steal the Apples of the Hesperides. 12. Capture Cerberus. Nope, no Kraken.

Yes, you do. Awesome, awesome stuff. I haven't rewatched it in a really long time, though, so I'm struggling to think of specific references that grabbed me... Hmmm. I always liked the Shaft Brothers. And Jet's dream where he was talking to Charlie Parker and Goethe. And I'm not a big Hemingway fan, but I really appreciated the bit where Jet recounted the story of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

I don't know if that how HG is trying to sell Robotech (do they make convention stops at SF conventions, or just anime conventions? I'm not sure), but that seems to be the audience it has. Look at Capt. Donovan, who tried to compare the RT/Macross divide to Star Trek, or JT or the Protoculture Times podcast, who likewise has mentioned Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, but hasn't said much about other anime. (I hasten to add that this is NOT a criticism on my part, just a neutral observation.) At the extreme, you've got Doug Bendo, saying that Robotech could become the "new Americana" to replace Star Wars. But he doesn't really fit the mold, since he actually DOES watch a lot of other anime. Is Robotech anime? Or is it something else? This wasn't an issue back in '85...we thought of it as Japanese (or "Japanimation," as they used to say...God, how I hated that term!), as distinct from GI Joe, and Transformers, and He-Man, and whatever other stuff was out there. But as uncensored, unfiltered anime became more the norm (and as the definitely made-in-America Robtoech novels and comics came out), it seems like Robotech fans are trying to hold up Robotech as something...special. Different. Based in anime, but turning it into something different. There may be some merit to that thought; I'm not sure. It may indeed be something different, but (to me, at least), that doesn't make it good.

To be fair, there's been a lot of offense on both sides. There are "good" Robotech fans and "bad" Robotech fans, just as there are "good" Macross fans and "bad" Macross fans (and I myself been labelled the latter by no less an authority than Shadow Chronicles fan extraordinaire Pizza the Hutt). But yeah...Capt. Christopher Donovan pointed out that people like Einherjar and Seto are just as bad as people like Memo. I don't buy it, for two reasons: first, Einherjar and Seto stick to the facts. Second, even if they didn't, even if they were as loony as can be, claiming that Macross is the most popular anime in the world, and five major film studios are fighting over the rights as we speak, or other such nonsense, they (and none of us here) have a position of any kind of authority as an official, Big West-sanctioned Macross website. No one here represents Macross in the same way that Memo represents HG. (Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.) Anyway, I wouldn't call Robotech dead yet, but Shadow Chronicles has been divisive, and I don't think it has gotten the wider audience HG wanted to bring in. But Robotech IS divisive...it has ALWAYS been divisive. In anime circles, it has gained no ground. But clearly, it is still well-respected in other science-fiction circles. Let's face it: for a lot of people, anime has a stigma attached to it, a stigma of tentacle rape, moe porn, and other distasteful things. Robotech, I believe, allows people to enjoy an anime without being "an anime fan." Because Robotech is "normal." And normal is nice.

Hmm...I find it hard to really classify Robotech's influence. For me at the time (and the people around me), Robotech was good enough that it whetted our appetite for more. Star Blazers would've, too, except that at that time, I was too young to really DO anything about it, and VCR's weren't as common in 1980 as they were in 1985. But, as I've detailed before, Robotech annoyed me because I knew they were changing things, but I didn't know what they were changing exactly (I remember explaining to a friend, back in 1985, that the three "generations" were not connected, and he said "But at the end of the Robotech Masters part, the Flower of Life calls the Invid!" I said, "They must've changed that from the original version." He countered with, "So what happened originally?" and I couldn't answer). As such, most of my friends and I got into anime as a REACTION AGAINST Robotech. Negative influence is still influence, I guess. Everyone was saying that Megazone was going to become the Robotech movie. One of my friends got a hold of it, and made copies for all of us. We watched it, and all came to the same conclusion...Why mess with it? Why change it so that it fits into Robotech's story? That wouldn't make it any better. We saw DYRL, and fell in love with it. Some of my friend wanted Harmony Gold to release it. I didn't. I just wanted to know what everyone was saying, and that was it. I didn't want to hear Tony Oliver and Reba West doing voices for it, I liked it as-is. (At one point, I actually toyed with the idea of writing to Harmony Gold, asking if they could send me subtitled VHS tapes of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada so I could see the originals. It never occurred to me that A) they probably wouldn't go through all that trouble just for one kid, and B) even if they did, they probably wouldn't be willing to do it for free. In retrospect, I must've been a pretty dumb kid.) I wanted the REAL stuff, not some retooled, reedited version that played fast and loose with the original series. We watched Zeta Gundam and Dunbine and L-Gaim, and made a game out of "What would Harmony Gold do to mess these series up?" (I don't remember many of the answers...I do remember that L-Gaim and Dunbine would have been combined, and that Haro would be renamed "Orbie"). Robotech became a joke to us. Once the Sentinels was released, one of my friends ACTUALLY BOUGHT IT, and we all sat around laughing at it. Then we watched Flashback 2012 for the umpteenth time to see some REAL Macross. So...did Robotech influence us to get into anime? Sure. But by the end of 1985, we'd already passed it by.

PM'd you.

Yeah, I also really liked that part in Episode II where the puppet fought Count Chocula.

I was avid enthusiast of Greek myths, too, and I was POSITIVE the Kraken was there, but after looking it up on Wikipedia, I guess it's not. Sorry. And yeah...the old movie bugged me with its divergences from the myth...but again, having Pegasus sprout out of Medusa's neck would've been kinda hard to pull off without everyone in the theater either laughing or scratching their heads.

And who knows when it was filmed...it might have been during VH1's '40s Flashback Weekend or something.