Gubaba

On another, much less cerebral topic, I fed the troll over at RobotechX...and it was fun. Clearly, this guy is not a "typical" Robotech fan, but so far, he's been banned from RT.com and RTX.com and has managed to convince Memo to let him back in. Someone able to "beat the odds" like that must be formidable and influential in RT fandom, right? Right. GUBABA: GHOST MAKER (aka PIZZA THE HUTT): GUBABA: GHOST MAKER: GUBABA: * This, by the way, refers to back over the summer when I had Thomas Pynchon as my avatar here. Pizza for some reason got it in his head that a photo which was obviously taken in the '50s was of Matt LeBlanc, so I sent him the link to Wikipedia. Since the only OTHER known photo of Thomas Pynchon was taken when he joined the Navy, he is shown wearing his sailor uniform. Fun times, fun times. EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention: it's been a few days, and I still haven't been banned.

You don't sound rude at all, and I apologize if my message came off as rude as well. But again, you dislike Macross Plus, and you don't want to see Macross 7 (although I think you've been misinformed about the sound boosters, and I'm not sure which mecha you're talking about...), but you like the Eternity Robotech comics. What is it about them that you respond to? Funnily enough, Douglas Adams died a few years before the Hitchhiker's. They say that the screenplay was begun by him and finished by other people, but I have my doubts... (not that that's relevant, really.) So yeah, the Robotech comics. What do you find good about them?

I knew you'd be excited. But hey...how many more Minmay pages can they do? They've finished SDFM for her, and they've gotten halfway through DYRL. Since Minmay doesn't appear throughout a large portion of the second half of the movie, I'm betting one more sheet will finish it off. And then there's Flashback, but that'll probably only be one sheet, too. The VF-1, on the other hand...well, there are many variants of the 1A, and we still haven't gotten the 1D or the Armored yet...

I always just thought they were faghags...

#35 looks a bit more promising than #34 did...although both Seto Kaiba and Azrael may rage about it a bit. Mechanic Sheet * VF-25G Messiah * VF-1A Valkyrie * Macross 7 * FBz-99G Zaubergeran Character Sheet * Monica / Mina / Lam * Gavil * Glavil * Lynn Minmay Timeline Sheet * The Night Before the Decisive Battel World Guide Sheet * Earth Technology Sheet * Variable Fighter / History and Development 3 Glossary Sheet * Factory Ship Three Star ~ G Goods Sheet * Megahouse Excellent Model Series 2 / Sheryl Nome Extra Sheet * Production Data: Macross Plus / Macross Plus Movie Edition / Macross Zero

At the time of Macrosses Plus and 7, he said he hadn't seen it. I dunno if it's still true, though...

Have you seen Flashback yet? You really should! It's 30 minutes of the purest Macross concentrate possible.

Fact checking seems to be difficult to do in this situation. Correct me if I'm wrong: First, Kevin KcKeever says Shadow Rising is "on hiatus" because of the RLAM. Then, after an outcry, Kevin McKeever explains that "on hiatus" is an industry term, and production on Shadow Rising has not been halted or slowed down, and it all has nothing to do with the RLAM. Then, HG announces that Shadow Rising is on hold because of the RLAM. Is that right?

Looks like it's going to be somewhere between Plus and DYRL...not as much changed as that latter, but not as close as the former.

There's nothing wrong with it...but I just figured that it was better to come out and SAY that no offense was intended rather than leave it vague. Especially since I before accused Wanzerfan of being a troll deliberately spreading misinformation, and I was probably wrong about that, so I wanted to make it clear I wasn't calling him out or anything.

A couple of hundred dollars put down on what was essentially a gamble...? You, sir, are a brave, brave man.

Hmm...I never realized that "Baby Got Back" and "2 Legit 2 Quit" had such heavy meaning behind them... I dunno, really...even '80s and '90s stuff generally sounds a little TOO produced for my taste, unless I'm just in the mood for ear candy. If I want something that really roars, I'd rather listen to '60s stuff.

So, in continuing with our theme of picking the brains of Robotech fans...what do the comics bring to the table for you? Just calling it as I see it, with no value judgment or offense intended, you DO seem like more of a Robotech fan than a Macross fan (at least, anyone who hasn't seen SDFM or Macross Frontier, hates Macross 7 and Plus, and never mentions DYRL, II, or Zero doesn't seem terribly passionate about Macross). So what it is about the Robotech comics that make them surpass Macross for you?

Lolicon's right. Most of them became Macross fans. Some of them still enjoy Robotech more, but they seem much less...cloistered? Defensive? A lot of them simply haven't seen Macross, and I'm confident they'll become fans when they do. But it's like the divide mentioned before (by, I believe, Bri) that a lot of general sci-fi fans remain on the Robotech side of things, whereas people more disposed towards anime like Macross. After the initial trilogy, I can kind of take or leave Dune. To be honest, I never finished "Heretics" (keep meaning to get around to it one of these days... ). But let's face facts: the original Star Wars trilogy, as good as it often was, contains not even a tenth of the world-building on display in Dune, or Lord of the Rings...hell, even the Foundation Trilogy is a more detailed as a fictional universe. As I said before, books have it ALL OVER movies and TV shows in terms of length and depth, if they care to strive for it. Look at the Lord of the Rings...how much history and backstory was alluded to in the books, how much detail was covered in the appendices, covering everything from Hobbit linguistics to calendars. The movies can broadly hint at this (and definitely have their own strengths) but that kind of depth and breadth...if someone wrote a novelization of the movies, telling only what was on the screen, it would be a poor, scraggly, emaciated thing next to Tolkien's books. It's something that the Robotech novels attempt to do, but the SDF Macross novels don't even make the effort. (The DYRL novel, however, does...to a degree.)

Yes...which is why it had the most "literary" feel of almost any anime I've ever seen. It also had the benefit of being an OVA series. If it had been on TV, there would've been more market pressure to turn it into something that anyone could jump into, at almost any point.

Again, I present...

That's a good point, too. One of the reasons I got into anime when I was a kid (and I mean once I started getting the uncut, unsubbed, rented-from-a-video-store-in-Little-Tokyo variety) was the exoticness of it. I liked that the stories made little sense to me, that it was in a language I couldn't understand, and that, really, all bets were off because anything could happen at any time, and I could never predict where anything was headed. Robotech the series tried to smooth a lot of those edges away (no baby-toss in Robotech, thank you very much), and the novels went further still in (as I noted above) trying to fit the story into a very western tradition, which doesn't fully succeed. A lot of what makes the originals interesting to me is wiped away once they're made to conform to perceived cultural standards.

Bravo, Penguin, bravo. I find it interesting how many of the more...shall we say, "thoughtful" RT fans point to the novels as coequal with or surpassing the animation in their opinion. I didn't like the books (for reasons that have more to do with me and what I wanted at the time: I wanted to learn more about the three separate series that made up Robotech; I wanted to see them split apart, not glued more closely together), but I can see why other people did like them. I don't think they can stand up to the great, epic science fiction series, like Foundation or Dune, but they're not bad, at least not at first. But I see your point. Science fiction literature has always been a great place to tell very long, cohesive (and often multi-generational) stories. It's one advantage for books that movies and television will never be able to compete with. And the Robotech novels try to tap into that grand tradition. As you say, Macross doesn't try to do this. And really, it can't. It's impossible to do such a long format, coherent tale as an original TV series. While I'd argue that the RT novels don't necessarily do what they do well, they are indeed doing something that Macross can't. That has advantages, too. But there is something nice about being able to look at a whole bunch of connected works and realize that they are telling a single, grand story. Macross can't do that. Robotech tried but, I think, failed pretty hard at it. The first ten years of Gundam almost make it. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is the only one I can think off-hand that does it well.

The last two are...going a little far, don't you think? I'd settle for them being laughed at for being silly.

That makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Fair enough, and I pretty much agree...but I find it weird switching from Star Blazers TV series to Yamato movies. It would be nice if there was a good, remastered DVD set of the whole shebang with English subtitles. That's...an unusual reaction. Gatchaman's main fault was that it's repetitive. Battle of the Planets' main fault it that it's completely chopped-up, has a "cute" robot sidekick added, AND it's repetitive. But I never see anyone go ballistic over it. To be fair, Macross fans start a lot of the fights as well. Anyway, I found this lying around the other day...enjoy, everyone!

No, only two names were given.

12 were produced, including the SDFN-01 General Hayase and the infamous SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global.

But funnier!

So what about Space Battleship Yamato fans? There has NEVER been a release (on VHS, LD, or DVD) of any Yamato TV series in Japanese with subtitles. Gatchaman has been released, but it took nearly thirty years to do so (and still no sign of Gatchaman II or Gatchaman F), and yet no one is calling for Sandy Frank's head on a platter. Golion fans weren't jumping all over Voltron fans (and vice-versa). What's so different about Robotech and Macross...?