Gubaba

Again...good to see you here, and welcome! (Although really, a friendly welcome from Macross World will probably make you persona non grata in a lot of RT circles, so instead, let me say: "GO TO HELL, ROBOTECH LOVER!" There. That should put you back in Memo's good graces. )

This is insane. You and others have been lambasted by "influential" Robotech fans as closet "Macross Purists" and "Robotech Haters" (which I know you're not, because, being a Macross Purist myself, I can easily tell who is and who isn't. ), and yet...it seems like you guys are actually shaking up the Robotech fandom in a POSITIVE way. What Khyron Prime said couldn't be accomplished through words, but other through confectionary IS NOW BEING ACCOMPLISHED...through words. As I've said before, a Robotech revival is not high on my list of Things I Want to See, but still...bravo. Rock on with your bad selves.

For the Minmay/Ranka comparison, I'm really not sure...I'll have to think about it (and maybe rewatch selected bits of Frontier) and get back to you. As for the technicalities, I agree with you. For something like a TV show, there are many hands at work, and so there really is no "author" in any useful sense of the term. However, sometimes, someone's talent DOES poke through. And in Macross, I think Mikimoto's character animation and Itano's mecha animation clearly stand out. The episodes I like the best tend to be either written by Kenichi Matsuzaki (who was also the series script editor, as well as the model for poor, wimpy Kenji Machizaki, whose pants Shammy threatened to tear off; he also invented Minovsky Particles, but that's (literally) a different story). So I dunno. I hope Renato can chime in at some point, since he's done a lot of research into who did what, and in what capacity, and has a much more coherent picture of the process than I do. My pleasure, sir. My very great pleasure.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Ah, that part's easy. Just upload an mp3 of "Do You Remember Love" to some torrent site, but retitle it "MEGAN FOX HOME SEX VIDEO." The culture will spread.

Oh, believe me, I know. And TheLoneWolf has been at this longer than most of us, so you're not telling him anything he didn't already know, either. And yeah, Clearly, AnimEigo tweaked the colors a bit and cleared up a lot of the scratches and blemishes and such, all of which are fully on display in the Japanese remaster. It's weird, though...for some reason, watching Robotech as a kid, and later watching the AnimEigo set, I always through the stripes on Misa's uniform were blue, so I was always puzzled when they were green on all of Mikimoto's Misa art...and then I watch the Japanese remaster, and lo and behold, the stripes ARE green. Is that just me, or did everyone have the same confusion?

This is, I think, a really unfair comparison. Mikimoto is one of the truly classic character designers, whereas Risa Ebata is fairly new and nowhere near as distinguished. What's next...a comparsion between Yoshitaka Amano vs. the character designs from, say, K-On?

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. It's also worth pointing out that the newest Japanese remaster is not really BETTER than the AnimEigo restoration...just different. The colors aren't as bright, but the details are clearer. I think both are equally good, just in different ways.

I listened (oh excuse me, I mean "lessoned") to the intro the 00 show, but I doubt I'll "lesson" to more, unless I'm really, REALLY bored some day. Everyone seems to be saying it's much more professional, but hashing out a coherent timeline and continuity for Robotech seems to me like a fool's errand, at best. If he can make it work, great. But it really seems like a huge mountain that doesn't need to be climbed.

More for the pachinko game, but it's such a nice video that I think it REALLY belongs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKvE5uZH6eg The first minute and a half or so explain the new frills they're putting into the gameplay, which are fairly uninteresting for those of us who will probably never play it. Ah, but THEN we get a full-on history of Macross, narrated by Mari Iijima herself! I hope they paid her a TON of dough for that. Then you get some clips from the game itself...which looks awesome, of course, but you knew that already.

VFTF!, I certainly can't say you're wrong in your view of the "My Fair Minmay" version being the ORIGINAL version of Minmay...I don't share that belief, but then...neither of us were there, right? So who knows? My belief is that the stories here were written well after the series began...mostly because dialogue is quoted verbatim from episodes (hell, there's even a kinda sorta joke about the constantly recycled battle footage), but I have no idea if these were ideas that they planned to put in the series initially, but couldn't. I kind of doubt it, though, since Macross Perfect Memory gives a short summary of each episode in both the original 48-episode version (VERY short summaries) and the revised 39-episode version (somewhat fuller), and none of the plot points from My Fair Minmay are mentioned in them. But, as I said, the summaries are brief, so not everything could've been covered. So the siutation could've been one where the writers said, "Hey, why don't we have a story about Minmay getting signed for her record contract? We could have two competing companies, a sleazy producer..." and someone else said. "Nope, not enough episodes." But they filed the ideas away for later. Or they simply could've come up with the ideas when hashing out the book, which is what Kawamori seems to intimate in his introduction. So it's definitely a gray area, but I'm not sure it's as gray as you're making it sound. Speaking of gray areas, Kawmaori's role in the original Macross seems to be one...he wasn't, as you suggest, the director (that was Noboru Ishiguro, who also wrote episode 4 of the show and "Pink Lady" in My Fair Minmay)...he's credited only as one of the mecha designers, and the scriptwriter for episode 36. However...under his pseudonym, Eiji Kurokawa, he's listed as the background supervisor. In interviews and such, a lot of the other members of the staff seem to defer particularly to him, and he's the one to give episode commentary in the "Macross Graffiti." So I think his role was a lot larger than reading the credits would have you believe. (I also got the feeling, and someone -I *think* it was Renato- backed me up on it, that Ishiguro was brought in mostly to allay fears among the sponsors about letting this wild young crew with no experience do a full TV series, and that he pretty much stepped back and let everyone do their thing...I have no proof of that, though.) I dunno. Mikimoto created Minmay and I believe gave her a lot of her character. He also handled most of the character animation in the show. So I think the Minmay that you see in the show is primarily Mikimoto's version. I'm not sure that means that the Minmay in the book is "Kawamori's Minmay." Kawamori didn't write any of the stories for the book, after all. And really, it shouldn't be different at all, since the writing staff for the book is EXACTLY the same as the writing staff for the show. The only difference is that the book didn't have to please the sponsors and toy-makers, or be easy to animate. So I think any differences can be chalked up, as Kawamori says, to the eccentricities of the various writers, rather than any conscious plan on the part of the creators. For the record, I don't think Minmay is the book is terribly different from Minmay in the show. I was a little surprised by her breaking off the date with the high school boy, but I was equally surprised by everyone heading off to the red-light district in one of the stories (and hey...THE MACROSS HAS A RED-LIGHT DISTRICT??? I mean, I knew that there was that "really great place" that Kakizaki wanted to go, but I had no idea that is was a whole area...). It all seems to fit pretty well together to me...I think the book allowed the writers to get a little more "adult" than they would've in the TV series, but that's about it. But again, I dunno. I see "deepening" of the characters, not "changing." But other people's mileage may vary.

Hmmm...that DOES make sense...which is odd, because those parallels never occurred to me while I was translating the book. And it's true...in the show, Minmay doesn't interact with any of the other girls in the pageant (besides Jamis), whereas for Ranka, it's pretty clear that the other girls are self-centered and opportunistic. I dunno...while there are definitely no overt homages in Frontier to this book, it's clear that the staff did A LOT of research of past Macross material in order to make the show...I'd imagine that this book was part of that, and perhaps some of the ideas from the book filtered into Frontier. On a side note, can I just say how WEIRD the whole Miss Macross bit in the book was for me...? Some of the stories made my job a little bit easier by reproducing dialogue directly from the show. I already have the subtitle files, so it was just a matter of copying and pasting. And yet...here's the Miss Macross Contest...the story in the book is written by the SAME GUY who wrote the TV episode...as I started reading the story, I had the episode ready to go, so I could locate duplicate dialogue, and...there wasn't any. Only ONE LINE is the same in both the show and the book (when Mariko tells Minmay she should've brought a proper autograph book). I think this is what Kawamori was referring to when explaining how the scenarios get changed...

...which is probably about the same time Hikaru delivered his present, so it's all right. November's going to be a busy month for all you people watching Macross in "real time"...

So you can't be entertaining AND faithful? Peronsally, I'd rather see a movie/read a book/watch a show that assumes I don't need everything calibrated specifically to my cultural background in order for me to enjoy it. Or let me put it another way...if there had been a better, uncut version of Macross out there instead of Robotech, are you saying that wouldn't have been enough to get you into it? What was it about Robotech that made it more palatable for you?

"This is Rick Hunter saying: IT'S NOT WHO YOU KNOW, IT'S WHO YOU BLOW!" "Oh, Rick, I'd LOVE to share my sherry with you!"

Enh, I think that Pokemon, Naruto, Bleach, and whatever new iteration of Gundam is airing serve that purpose better these days. AND they manage to be more faithful to the original than Robotech was.

Really? For some reason it always makes ME feel like I'm flying through the rings of Saturn...go figure.

Thanks for reading it! And yeah, I think Minmay is a little more complex in the book. I kept getting annoyed at her for ditching Hikaru again and again AND AGAIN, but on the other hand, they also showed the pressure she was under to practice, practice, practice. And I'd like to say that Labonsky the producer was BY FAR the most fun character to write. Jamis was my scond favorite...although she's the bad guy and kind of goes off the deep end, the scene after she loses the Miss Macross Contest was actually rather touching, I thought.

Well, I'm not a Robotech fan in the slightest, and even I like JT's podcast. I think a lot of it is that he really does sound like he's having a blast, and in an infectious way.

Yes: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZN6IYWWN Mmm...I'm not sure what you're referrig to here, is it Minmay's ups and downs? Because if that's the case, I think you may be overvaluing the book. I don't think the book represents the original version of Minmay, and these five stories were never meant to be a part of the series. Remember, it was published during the end of the run of the TV series, and these scripts definitely came AFTER the scripts for the TV show (I really want to emphasize this, because Shaloom states flatly in his Macross Chronology on Macross Generation that these stories were meant to be in the series but were eliminated when the series was cut down and compressed before production. The episode outlines from Macross Perfect Memory and Kawamori's introduction to My Fair Minmay contradict his statement, however). The TV series is, let's face it, Hikaru's story, and the lion's share of the drama stays with him. The book, on the other hand, focuses almost entirely on Minmay. Hell, Jamis plays a bigger role in the book than Hikaru does. As such, some drama and tension had to be created for the book where none existed in the show. The book is definitely a LATER version of Minmay's story, and a lot of care has been put into making sure the book has drama and conflict without contradicting the show TOO much. So yes, while scenario scripts pre-date the AR scripts, these particular scenario scripts were written specifically for the book, not for the show. But yes...I have to admit I thought it was interesting that Minmay is called "the Cinderella Girl" at one point in the bok, and that Jamis at one point says, "I'm the biggest star at Imperial Records! Me! Jamis Merin!" So Ranka, so Sheryl...

Beatles right now. Lots and lots of Beatles.

Yeah, I liked that artwork a lot, too. Rarely seen stuff... You also may notice that her friend Seiko looks a lot like Seiko Matsuda, whereas Akina bears a remarkable resemblance to Akina Nakamori.

Yeah. Bad idea. The original wasn't perfect, but I doubt Tim Burton could improve it But speaking of Labyrinth, my friend Sarah once told me that she loves that movie solely because it let her know what it sounded like when David Bowie shouted her name.

The writing there says "ANALOG."

She's going to lead you on for a few months and then hook up with her peace-activist, kung-fu cousin...?