Gubaba

I heard (or, more precisely, read) about it when it was first getting started, but I never saw any follow-up. Is it still on, or did it fall apart? If they could have done it in the same spirit as that awesome "Robotech III" done lo, these many years ago, it would've been a real pip. But it seemed like they were serious, which ruins the whole thing.

NOW you're going too far! Of course Robotech has its own story...it's all about flowers that can be used to power spaceships and can also somehow control the universe. And to think people natter on about Robotech's "realism"... ...and did the talk about "THE ORIGINAL 85 EPISODES" (which, you're right, is pretty weird) start before or after Shadow Chronicles?

Well...people DO get just as rabid about, say, Star Wars or Star Trek, but I agree with you. If someone wants to follow in the grand tradition of Robotech, what took tens of thousands of dollars to do in 1985 can now be done with the right software, a downloaded copy of Orguss or High-Speed Jecy, and five or six people who can do voices. It doesn't help that Robotech is full of plot holes and bizarre inconsistencies, and die-hard fans jest LOOOOOOVE to try to find a way to rationalize those. It makes the whole thing more "interactive," I guess. (Not, of course, that Macross doesn't have inconsistencies of its own...but at least no one in Macross ever talked about a gigantic space fortress that wasn't there.)

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be completely true. RT fans, as I'm sure you know, like to use this as their trump card to show that the lack of Macross in the US is Big West's fault. My feeling is, HG, by claiming that they could've gone after the US releases of MII and Plus, made Big West look like they were acting in bad faith with Manga Ent. So if they're going to make Big West look bad, trademark the name "Macross" so that Big West HAS to work with them, and then act surprised that Big West doesn't want to...well, can you blame BW? I hope you're right. I doubt it'll be that simple, though. (Oh, and in answer to your sig's question, John Galt is a technological genius, a rapist, and a guy makes a speech that is way too long in a book that is WAAAAAY too long. )

*shrug* If anything, it makes me feel sorry for HG's staff, knowing that there are rapid, disgruntled fans not only loudly complaining about their work, but also lambasting them as terrible human beings as well. Now, if they ARE lying to the RT fans (and I see no reason to believe that they're being truthful), that's kind of despicable, too. But it doesn't mean that they should have self-appointed Truth-Guardians stalking them at conventions. The whole thing seems so toxic. There are a lot of franchises, and a lot of them crash and burn, or (at the VERY least) "aren't as good as they used to be." There are a lot of almost-franchises that try to take off and never quite manage to get off the ground. Rarely do I see the fans get SO unhappy that they feel like they have to do what they can to wrest the franchise away from the guys in charge of it, which usually ends up meaning they write snarky comments about it. There are a lot of Macross fans who have been disappointed with a lot of the sequels. No one that I know of has decided that the best way to get a better Macross sequel is to shadow Kawamori and be a constant thorn in his side. Perhaps the best thing HG staff can do is seclude themselves away. If Tommy Yune acted less like a rock star and more like someone working for a small company in charge of a small property, he might become less of a lightning rod for more extreme fans. Either that, or he should start being more honest and forthright, but that would probably cause panic among anyone who has invested in HG's projects. Anyway, the man is not the work. I may dislike Robotech (and I do), and I may feel that Carl Macek messed up Macross (and I do), but that wouldn't stop me from being polite and cordial to him if I were ever introduced to him socially. Ditto Tommy Yune. I think HG is boneheaded and I intensely dislike the fact that I can't legally get Macross stuff here because of them (I assume), but really...there's complaining, there's ridiculing...and then there's just going off the deep end of fandom.

Yeah, the time abyss was why I avoided it when it was originally released...late '80s, early '90s, I was really REALLY getting sick of sequels set roughly 100 or more years after the original...Gall Force, Dunbine, Megazone, then Macross and Orguss. It seemed cheap and mercenary to me. Actually, I still have never seen a lot of those sequels that I read about in Animag oh-so-long ago...

I remember about a year ago (maybe a bit less), I spent a few otherwise dull hours checking out Robotech fansites to see how the series was holding up...the blogger you linked was one of the ones I came across most (along with darkwater and pie-guy). There seemed to be a number of times where he would get banned from RT.com, and everyone would tell him he deserved better and he should say good riddance to HG. He would always agree, but then, when HG let him back in, he would happily jump at the chance to. I guess he finally got TOO disgruntled. (He's a good artist, though.) Anyway, I'm not sure how much stock to put in what he says. Certainly, he's putting everything in the worst possible light, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Jasonc's been closer to the center of operations than any of us, and if it rings true to him, it might very well be what's going on. I haven't seen the Shadow Rising treatment either, and I hadn't heard about it until now. My guess is that it was really, really lame...?

The thing I thought was strange is that he generally sounded the same in every role...except Shin in Area 88. I went for YEARS without knowing that that was him. But yeah, much as I miss Hikaru Ichijo, Syala/Haro/Geperunichi, and Captain Bright/Kaifun...M'Queve/Shin/BD/von Oberstein is the one I miss the most. Anyway, Megazone. Never saw Part III. Worth it?

NO ONE'S voice is as cool as Kaneto Shiozawa's was...

I don't think it's Bandai's negative stance on the series that's hurting its toy chances, I think it's the general public's lack of interest in the series that is.

Damn. I never would have made that connection. And to think I was so proud of myself for getting the "Macross/Maguro" pun...

Not to reawaken a thread probably best left dormant, but I have to wonder...where are these Bobby/Ohnogi interviews coming from? A while back, magnuskn posted the MF "liner notes" (by Shaloom, from Macross Generation) translations that made reference to SDFM novels by Ohnogi. Now, I knew Ohnogi had written "Misa Hayase: White Reminiscences" and a story in "Dreaming Prelude: My Fair Minmay" (as well as a couple of stories I haven't seen, apparently in the Studio Nue Mechanic Design Entertainment Bibles), but novels? I did every Google search I could think of, in both English and Japanese, and found nothing. I checked Japanese Wikipedia and Amazon. I found a promising-looking Japanese Macross Wiki. All came to nought. So I finally asked magnuskn if he would talk to Shaloom, which he very graciously did. And Shaloom was kind enough to provide an answer...that Ohnogi wrote seven Macross novels which were amateur publications. So I renewed the search, and finally ended up asking the nice people at the macross.co.jp BBS. They told me that "White Reminiscences" was the only Macross novel written by Ohnogi. I checked my copy of the book, and he says in an interview in the back that it's his first novel. So I reviewed this thread, and notcied that Ohnogi says the reason he got back in touch with Kawamori was because "in the episode Mother's Lullaby, I saw Kawamori put some tributes to the novels of Macross TV Series written in 1983." (White Reminiscences was written -or at least published- in 1984). So, since I have all the "Macross F○※△" radio episodes, I decided to go back and check the August ninth episode (#20: "Macross Flash Anime," in case you were wondering) to listen to the interview for myself to see what Ohnogi says. Strangely, there is no Bobby/Ohnogi interview in the episode. And there were no other Macross Radio shows at the time (although "Macross F○※△" was preceded by "Radio Macross" and succeeded by "Macross F○x△"). So where did this come from...? Is it really from the radio show? And is there a seven-volume Macross novelization about which no one knows anything? EDIT: In case I haven't made it clear, I want to state unequivocally that I have the highest respect for both Shaloom and manguskn. Both of them have done all of us a service by bringing us information we didn't have before. Magnuskn especially has been quite generous with his time in talking to me, especially since he and I initially got off on kind of the wrong foot here...

Yep, we know. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=22938

Um...yeah. If we got heavy snow in the San Fernando valley area...it probably WOULD be the apocalypse. I live in a heavily irrigated desert. Heavy snow only happens in the mountains. If it were otherwise, that would mean some severe shifts in global weather patterns. Anyway, I see through your "You're comfortable but I'm tough" talk...and I'd rather be comfortable.

Man, can we gloat or WHAT?

My dad and I used to strap long fiberglass planks to our feet, and then we would use the snow as an entertaining mode of transport, as it conveyed us from the top of a mountain to the bottom. In more recent news, I took a nice walk to Peet's Coffee today, and sat outside, sipping an iced tea and enjoying the sunshine. Many happy joggers ran past.

It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day in lovely Southern California right now.

Erm...you DO realize that Roy Focker is being sarcastic, don't you...?

I won't be convinced until you change your custom title from "Beauty of moderating" to one of the many, many brilliant, memorable lines from TSC.

The project is lifting off nicely...Episode 02 is up!

Roy Focker...you, like your namesake, kick serious ass. The OVA-quality animation was eyeball-rendingly awesome, n'est pas?

Because nobody can pronounce names like Hikachoo Itchy-joe.

Can't argue with you there... Don't they plan almost EVERYTHING to be Japan-only at first...? And it was 1994...NOTHING traveled fast online. Okay, this just HAS to be wrong, since MII was originally put out in the western world by U.S. Renditions, and Manga only nabbed it with Renditions went out of business, and Manga bought all their assets. They were not "pulled" by HG, HG simply gave them the license for (I believe) five years and then didn't renew it. believe me...those Animeigo DVDs were THE big news at the time among old-school anime fans. I don't have sales figures, but I bet that they sold more than ADV did. With Macross 7 Trash, AFAIK, you can only guess as to why it didn't go through....or was it actually confirmed that BW pulled out because of HG...?

Gad, We3 gave me nightmares. I still find it amazing that Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely could pull it off...it ain't easy writing a story THAT cruel, and yet somehow making it so touching and humane.

Hmmm...The lack of an official release of SDFM didn't stop MII and M+ coming through (to be fair, the "Robotech Perfect Collection" was being released at that time, though). Besides, SDFM came out in the U.S. in 1999. Zero didn't start until 2002. Oh, c'mon...the advertising would've been great: "From the makers of Macross Plus and Escaflowne! Don't let the shitty ending and half-assed love triangle put you off...there's lots of pretty, pretty variable fighters kicking the ever-livin' stuffing out of each other in EVERY ACTION-PACKED EPISODE!" It'd sell like hotcakes, I'm tellin' ya. (And for the record, I do think the battle sequences in Macross Zero are the best Itano's ever done...and I even liked the ending, in an early '60s avant garde sort of way.)