Gubaba

I'll second that. Shaloom has been very gracious and generous with his time. I just wish he had added better references to his liner notes...

So the big question: where did you hear that?

Okay. I hope someone can waltz in with some explanations, because this all seems very, very weird right now. I heard about Ohnogi joining the staff quite a while back, and I'm sure I heard about it here, but I can't remember when or from whom. It seemed interesting, and kind of cool (I like Ohnogi's work, especially on the Area 88 TV series, but it seems I'm alone there), and I didn't question it. But phantom radio shows, undocumented amateur-press novels, and all of this information coming out with no way to verify any of it...it's all getting a little too X-Files for my taste. Some of the "liner notes" Ohnogi interviews seem to have a real ring of authority to them (I was actually rather moved by Ohnogi convincing Kawamori to allow the Sheryl/Alto kiss by comparing it to "Love Drifts Away"), and I can't bring myself to believe that they were faked (why would anyone go through all the trouble to do that, anyway?), but something sure seems to be screwy about all this.

CRAP IN A HAT! How much more confusing is this going to get? Strangely, the site you link to is one of the ones I found by accident in my search yesterday...I didn't even think to look if Ohnogi was credited for writing the last clutch of episodes. That said, I thought it was a verified fact that he worked on the second half of the series...is even THAT under suspicion now...?

Geperuniti was named Ivano Gunther, and he was an advisor or archivist of some sort (at least, they use the same word to describe his job that Britai uses to describe Exsedol's). Gigle, I can't remember as well...his name was Audemaur or something like that...not sure what his job was...

Being a former English major, I'm quite the sesquipedalian myself. For DYRL (or any song, really...I've done a bunch of song translations over the years), there are a few things to consider. Do you want it to be a literal translation or do you want it to be more free? Does it have to fit the music, or not? Do you want it to rhyme? I tend to go more for the literal meaning usually, but I don't doubt it could "work" any number of ways, done by any number of people. The specific problem with DYRL is that, like a lot of Japanese songs, things like the subject of sentences get left out, and must be supplied by the translator. Also, the parts I like most in the Japanese lyrics are the "eye and eye" and "hand and hand" lines, but I can't figure out any way to keep them like that in English without it coming out lame ("Do you remember, when eye and eye first met? Do you remember, when hand and hand first touched" just doesn't sound great, does it? In fact, it sounds kind of creepy). Anyway, you've given me an idea to write an essay about translating the song on my Galaxy Network blog...kind of a step-by-step thing.

Tattoo the words "ROBOTECH TO THE RESCUE" on your forehead, of course.

I would've liked to see...well, not a full nine episodes like SDFM, but maybe one or two wrap-up eps. I still think that in all of Macross, M7 probably had the most satisfying ending. ("Yeah, because it was over!" I hear the naysayers shouting. ) But I was fine with Frontier's conclusion. VF5SS on Destory All Podcasts probably had the best description of it ever, when he said "It was like getting punched in the face with a fist made of Awesome." Anyway, it wasn't the first nor likely the last time we get a rushed ending in an anime. And as far as rushed endings go, I liked it a lot more than a lot of other series I could mention.

It's a little off-topic, but I found "Angel's Paints," if anyone's interested. Unfortunately, I never noticed that a guy in the thread asked me to translate "My Boyfriend Is a Pilot Part II" as well...Oops. Oh well, I finally got around to it last year, since it was on "Miss DJ."

C'mon, man..."QUATTRO IS A CHAR" is one of the greatest lines ever! And yeah...the DYRL screencap translation is definitely accurate, if not the most poetic version. I did my own translation of "An Angel's Paints" a number of years ago (I'm not sure if I still have it anywhere...), but I've never done a full translation of DYRL. Some of it is very difficult to render into English without it sounding unbearably lame.

So (IIRC) did AnimEigo. I remember hearing that they tried to acquire the rights to the movie, but no one had any idea who owned it in which country, since many of the companies that released it went out of business and sold all their holdings. Of course, I can't verify any of this, so take it for what it's worth. But if that IS the case, the solution is simple. Before they even started working on the first Friday the 13th movie, the producers bought a full-page ad in Variety, announcing the film. Partially this was done to gain interest in the movie among investors, but mostly it was to see if anyone else held the rights to the name. When no one came forward, claiming that the name was theirs, the producers went ahead with the movie. Really, would it be too difficult for someone who wanted to release DYRL to do the same? Just put a vague ad for it in the anime magazines, and see who crawls out of the woodwork. Deals and pay-offs could be made (or not) afterwards.

Sorry...I haen't read the whole page in a long time, and I forgot that was there... My Spidey-Sense tells me the 1998 copyright date is key...possibly.

You'd have to ask boinger about that; I really don't know. I know he uses Handbrake to rip his DVDs, with most of the settings at the highest possible quality. I ripped a few music videos using his settings, and a four-minute video comes out to roughly 100 to 150 MB. I think the episodes look absolutely stunning, but I certainly hope I have a lot of people to help out with seeding when it comes time to do batches...

Yeah, while I like working on Chronicle, it's amazing the difference is when I go from that to something with a narrative and dialogue. As soon as I got Macross Ace, I put the Chronicle work aside and banged out scripts for Macross the First and Macross F: Secret Visions in a few weeks. Compare that to the almost two months it took me to complete the VF-25S article (of course, it helped that about 70% of Macross the First dialogue came DIRECTLY from the TV show, and I already had completed subs for that). Anyway, don't spread yourself too thin...I've had to say "no" (or at least "not yet") to a few projects recently because the secondary material for SDFM is taking up all of my translation time.

To answer your quote, let me quote the quote from original quote, er, post from Final Vegata: Anyway, I've spent WAAAAY too much time on this today, and ended up exactly nowhere. Still, I managed to waste another Sunday without cleaning the house, so I guess I accomplished my mission.

Well...the "liner notes" clearly say they were from a RADIO show. Now, there may be some Macross-related radio show I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't think so. And Google searches (in Japanese and English) for any combination of "Hiroshi Ohnogi," "Bobby Margot," "kenta Miyake" "radio," "August 9," and "interview" turn up nothing except either the original "liner notes" on macrossgeneration, or to magnuskn's translation of them on animesuki. I dunno. I'm at a loss. But if Shaloom is right, and there really IS a seven-volume Macross novelization done by Ohnogi, I'd really like to get my hands on it. But so far, he's the only source I have for their existence. (Why is there no single, authoritative website devoted to Macross in Japanese, anyway? That would make all of this a hell of a lot easier... )

Short answer: Isn't that what the Live-Action Movie is for? Snarky answer: That would take money and talent, two things in short supply at HG. Thoughtful answer: I think anybody who is complaining that Shadow Chronicles is sub-par would say exactly the same thing, but with more vehemence, about a remake. There's really no good way forward for HG, as far as I can tell. There have been several attempts to continue the Robotech story, and all of them have ended in failure (except the novels, but even then, many would say they were an artistic failure). Unfortunately, that's left plenty of room for the fans to speculate and create their own perfect Robotech in their heads. It's the "interactivity" I mentioned before, which (as VF5SS pointed out) leads to all sorts of troubles for storytelling. Anyone who liked Robotech back in the day has their own idea for how it should have proceeded, and the only way HG could top that would be to make something SO mind-blowingly awesome, SO unexpected-and-yet-somehow-inevitable, that everyone would have to recognize it as authoritative. It would also have to be better than any of the Macross sequels so that no one could compare it to them unfavorably. Unfortunately, I'm not sure anyone could write that story. Generally, if a writer wants to do something like that, it takes careful planning, and creating a lot of seemingly innocuous (and thus, easily overlooked) loose ends throughout the first stories, which can later be connected and make everything come together in resoundingly triumphant fashion (the works of Stephen R. Donaldson generally work like this, because he comes up with an end first, and then plots backwards...not a bad strategy, really). But there are no such loose ends present in the 85 episodes. "More of the same" would've worked in 1986 or '87, but not now. Plus, people are used to unfiltered anime these days, and have been for nearly a generation now. I think most people who like anime don't like Robotech (although I've never done a survey) and most people who avoid anime wouldn't look twice at it. Nostalgia is the main appeal of Robotech, and any reboot or sequel must be consciously anti-nostalgic in order to truly succeed...unless they take a cue from Macross F, and make a new series updated and modern enough to catch the attention of teenagers, while throwing in cute homages for the older fans to pick up on. But again, back to the snarky answer: that would take money and talent.

If you do, you'll have my gratitude. I'd like to tackle at least a little bit of the MacII stuff from Chronicle, but the character pages tend to have little new information, and the mecha pages give me hives. And now I'm busy working on SDFM scripts and the SDFM novels...so Chronicle has been low on my list of priorities... And it's unfortunate they didn't include the information from the B-Club magazine, but it really DOES seem like they're giving Macross II short shrift. No song sheets, no history sheets, no world guide sheets...only minor characters and minor mecha (at least so far).

Yeah, because NO ONE watched cartoons for bright and flashy visuals back in the '80s! Everything was like "My Dinner With Andre" on slo-mo.

Awesome! Thanks!

Oh I am big into Gundam. But I ignore a lot of it.

Well...looks like we have a mystery on our hands, don't we? Or, perhaps I should say that I do.

Yeah...I've heard that a lot of stuff created by Star Trek fans eventually becomes canonical, as well. To me, the whole concept of filling in the seams...well, I don't completely get it. On the one hand, it can be kind of a fun mental exericse, but too often, it seems like fans really want to believe that their favorite fictional universes are somehow REAL, and everything must be accounted for. Now, I like Macross A LOT. And I've been spending a lot of time with Macross materials, whether it be the SDFM TV series, Macross the First, the SDFM novels, or the drama albums. None of it fits together perfectly (and I haven't even gotten to DYRL yet!), but that's okay by me. It's fiction; it's nice if it's realistic, but there's no necessity for it to be so. As long as there's "truth" (as distinct from "fact") in the human interactions, I'm happy. (I do, however, wish they hadn't set Macross Zero in late 2008, though...because of Focker's comment (to himself, no less) in SDFM episode 1 that "it's been two years" since he saw combat. (Incidentally, I noticed that that line didn't make it into Macross the First).) I remember having a conversation in the mid-to-late '80s with a guy at Books Nippan. I was a full-on Macross purist of the most obnoxious sort back then, and he was complaining that the armies of the Southern Cross were never shown putting up any kind of fight against the Invid. I said, "Well, you know that it was three different series jammed together, right? They had no animation that SHOWED the Southern Cross against the Invid." He said, "I know, but I can't believe they didn't even give them a chance!" We went back and forth for a while, and then I just let him be. The whole thing seemed kind of surreal to me, like someone trying to figure out the EXACT flight path Santa Claus could take to cover the globe and deliver all his presents in a single night. Eventually, as you suggest, you kind of have to accept that you're thinking about it harder than the writers did, and just let it go.

Hmmm...I don't have the DVDs so I can't confirm this. Anyone else care to weigh in? But it seems kind of strange, since some of the conversation is Ohnogi saying things like "Please watch next week's episode," which adds an element of...temporality, I guess...which commentary tracks and bonus materials generally try to avoid...

No, DougBendo (who is more off-balance than most Robotech fans) proposed doing a new Robotech series using Orguss. For Robotech III, I was referring to this. I saw it years and years ago at a convention (or maybe a C/FO meeting). Wish someone would post it up on the web...I'd like to see it again.