Gubaba

On their own, yes. But if Warners smells money in RT, they won't let it slip away from them. And Warners could crush everything except (possibly) another huge multinational conglomerate...which Big West isn't. Everyone keeps saying this, but I have yet to see anyone cite a reference. HG continues to maintain they own everything and can do any story they want. Any evidence to the contrary has been circumstantial and incomplete (Rick Hunter looks different, they say "alien" instead of "Zentradi"...the list goes on, all with other possible explanations). I want to believe it's true that HG can't touch the Macross section, but I've seen no proof. Merely a lot of people ACTING like it's true, and a bunch of other people acting like it isn't. I'm sick of rumor, inference, interpretation, and gossip...someone please give me FACTS.

Cripes, can I tell you how much I wanted to like Macross 7 the first time I saw it? And I just...couldn't. Of course, it doesn't help that pretty much everything I read about it made it sound like "The Further Adventures of Max and Millia." It seemed to fail on so many counts (based on my perceptions of what I wanted it to be), that it was a long time before I watched it a second time. Lo and behold, when I did...I liked it. I didn't adore it, and I still don't, but it's perfectly adequate IMO. Fonrtier, on the other hand, I loved from the get-go, and loved all the way through it. So having people say that it only exists to cater to the perversions of high school boys (Okay, that's an exaggeration, I admit) rankles me a bit. I liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the mecha. It wasn't perfect, but wit all the things it could have been, I'm exceedingly glad that it ended up being a fun, exciting show with some innovative filming and storytelling techniques. And that's good enough for me.

Do you KNOW that's why he left the production, or is that your interpretation? But HG isn't making the movie, Warner Bros. is. Big West has Bandai behind them, so Big West > HG. However, HG + WB > BW. If there's a lawsuit, the advantage is with Warners.

No, it doesn't. It moves it past ridiculous AND sublime into the realm of the sublimely ridiculous. "Give Daddy a kiss, boy! ...AAAAARRRRGH!!!"

That's it! No soup translations for you! And your avatar talks too much.

Hmmm...Ultraman was damn cool. Mazinger Z was damn cool. Iron Man No. 28 was damn cool. Jet Jaguar...? I dunno. I think even if I'd been a Japanese seven-year-old in 1974, I would've thought Jet Jaguar was kind of lame... As an adult, I simply think he's the second-worst Ultraman rip-off ever (the first, of course, being Inframan).

After looking it all up, apparently 鈴 is the surname given to her by the creators of the show, but when Macross was dubbed into Chinese, the Chinese company changed it to 林. My point was that Zinjo said he was calling her "Minmei Lin" because it's more faithful to the Chinese (Chinese-ier...?), but even that's not as faithful as representation as it could be. Really, I think it barely matters...so many of the Macross names are connected to no known language ("Shammy Milliome"...?) or ethnicity (an Italian named "Global"...?) that I was astonished to find that "Mingmei" (or "Minmei" or "Minmay") actually IS a real name.

Forget Jet Alone, what about Jet Jaguar (Original name: Red Alone)?

That weirds me out, too...I mean, Macross has been relatively well-known in the English-speaking world for quite a long time now...and the internet has been around for a long time, too. I'm supposed to believe that NOT A SINGLE PERSON has ever (for example) completed a translation of Miss DJ until I undertook the task last year...? I don't buy it. I can't have been the first person to decide to render this material in English...and yet, for the life of me, I can't find existing translations anywhere. Nor has anyone posted saying something like, "Oh yeah, some guy did a couple of the drama albums back in the Usenet days." That said, there have been a few members here who have READ the material, much as I read Area 88 a few years ago. In a way, my lack of fluency in Japanese in everyone else's gain...if I could just sit down and read the books quickly, without having to stop and look up every other word, attempting a translation might seem like too much work. As it is, making a translation is really the only way for ME to read it as well.

You sound like an old man (which is weird, because if you were a kid in the '80s, then we must be around the same age). Both Kawamori and Ohnogi had a big hand in Frontier, and both of them are older than we are. It's impossible for us to (at least, it's impossible for ME) to recapture the sense of adventure and exitement I got from watching RT when I was eleven or so...but that's simply because the story seemed so REAL to me...when Vermillion Team and Misa were captured by the Zentradi, I quite honestly thought they might never make it back; when Roy died, it was a punch in the gut. I also thought it was a realistic, gritty space opera. It was something of a revelation when, in college, I started getting the Robotech Perfect Collections, and found myself laughing out loud in the first few episodes because of the sheer amount of bad luck attended the launch of the Macross. I thought I was going to end up...not hating the series exactly, but afraid that it would lose its magic. Instead, I found myself won over by the exuberance and joy of the storytelling, the quality of the Japanese voice acting, the still-great design work, the lovely character design, and the pure sense of fun (not without its dark and tragic moments, however) in the series. Which is exactly what I like about Frontier, as well.

What's it do? Power Walk enemy mechs to death?

I saw Dreaming Prelude quite a lot in the '80s, but I never bought it...too much Japanese text, too few pictures. They're all like that; so yes, they're prose novels. I found them used on amazon.co.jp, and had them shipped to a friend in Japan, and she sent them on to me. Thankfully, they're quite cheap, about Two- or three-hundred yen each. There were some that were only one yen, but I decided that a little bit higher-priced was probably better. So here's the break-down: Dreaming Prelude: My Fair Minmay: contains five short stories (in audio script format, meaning its what the voice actors would have gotten if they had been animated), each by a different member of the writing staff, covering the time from Minmay's birthday to her rise to fame. Misa Hayase: White Reminiscnces: this appears to be about Misa meeting Riber, but I'm not sure yet. I've already translated the first few pages, which are about Misa having an awkward dinner with her father on her twentieth birthday, which turns out to be a dream. Macross TV Version Trilogy: exactly what it sounds like. The three-volume novelization of the TV series. Book I covers episodes one through five, Book II covers episodes six through twelve, and Volume III covers episodes thirteen through twenty-seven (which seems like too much for a mere 250 pages). Interestingly (to me, at least), when I was in hgih school I tried to write my own novelization of SDFM (it was going to be three books, harmonizing SDFM and DYRL), and the prologue (which is all I ever finished) had a five-year-old Minmay playing in a sandbox, building a sand castle with one of her friends, when she sees the Macross in the sky. Well, the official novelization (which I didn't know even existed until a year-and-a-half ago) begins with Minmay in 2009, serving some visitors at Nyan Nyan, and then flashes back to five-year-old Minmay...playing in a sandbox...building a sand castle...and seeing the Macross in the sky. The friend isn't there, but other than that, it's almost exactly the same as my version. Weird. By the way, these books are the only ones NOT written by someone who wrote for the TV show itself. Macross - Do You Remember Love?: The official novelization of the movie. I haven't started reading it at all yet, but glancing through it, I have noticed some differences from the movie, as detailed in a previous post. It's also a bit longer than the other books, and appears to be much denser. As far as translations go, I'm coming to the realization that I can't hold them to the same timetable as the video releases...these are full novels, sparsely illustrated, and take a lot of time. I'm hoping to have "Dreaming Prelude" finished in time for Minmay's birthday (October 10) and White Reminiscences for Misa's (March Third...I think). The TV series books don't seem like they'll be much of a problem, but DYRL...that thing is big. It won't be soon. EDIT: Oh, and as for what the TV novelizations look like: You may notice that the covers are a triptych, and make one big picture. (These, by the way, are the 1992 reissue covers...it looks like the original 1983 versions have different pictures.)

They're even easier to build than you guess...in the comic, they're shown to be snap-together. It's the "Saku," from Tony Takezaki's Gundam gag manga. It's really, really funny. My favorites include the Zeon troops going up against the old Clover toy of the Gundam, and the one that showed Char getting fired by Dozle.

Shouldn't it then be Líng Mingměi (鈴 明美)...? The "stage name" rationale for her door saying "Minmei" but the posters saying "Minmay" is something created by English-speaking fans. And you'll notice that the letter she has from the record company (in episode five) says "Minmay." Her door is the only place "Minmei" ever shows up...and doors are notoriously unreliable in Macross (remember the "Riber/Liver" problem...?)

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting frustrated trying to sort fact from fiction and speculation in this area? What you say seems quite correct, which flies in the face of what HG is saying happened ("No one was minding the store"). But I wonder...HG wasn't putting out the Robotech Perfect Collection; Streamline was. I wonder how much Robotech profit was going to HG, and how much was going to Streamline (and Macek)...I think that's a key question. I have no idea where to find the answer, however.

Shouldn't that be Tlead...?

Surely you've noticed that the design aesthetic of ghe Macross sequels is a lot of mix'n'match from SDFM and DYRL. While Zinjo's statement is Big West's hard-line stance, I don't think we're meant to think too hard about its veracity or its implications.

I don't think anyone is claiming that Macross F isn't really Macross. You could have a series with crappy Valkyries, a lame love triangle, and people singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"* and it could legitimately be called Macross...no one would watch it however. Frontier "worked" for a lot of people. It also didn't pass muster for many. I think Roy Focker was fearing that future macross stories would take their cues from Frontier rather than from the original series, not saying that Frontier was not a "real" Macross series. *Specific song added to fend off "clever" replies like, "Just like Macross 7!" or "That's Macross II in a nutshell!"

True. But she's hotter than he is.

That's because you've never actually sat down and WATCHED any of them.

Too bad I didn't find a way to hack into the site and convert all the Bobby votes into Nanase votes...

Hmm...a PG Full-Armor would be pretty easy for them to make. I kind of wonder why they haven't... A Prefect Grade G3 would be even simpler, come to think of it...

Hear, hear! To people who don't like Frontier, I advise a "Make-Your-Own-Macross" approach, which is what I do with Gundam. I watch the Gundam shows I like and ignore the ones I don't. I blame Isaac Asimov.

I actually remember nothing about it, except that the opening scene had some kid on a hover skateboard. I think I saw it in...1995? 1996? Somewhere around there... Anyway, they made a prelude video which (I believe) provided the background for the new series, and the series itself was supposed to be (again, IIRC) seven or so episodes long, but they only ended up releasing the first two or three before the project was abandoned. The Syd Mead -designed Yamato didn't look bad though, let me see if I can scrounge up an image somewhere... (One Google search and Strawberry Tart Without So Much Rat in It later...) Here we are...not the best pic, but I guess it'll do:

Does it expire in 2012? If so, that's the best news I've heard in quite a while. My unstudied, ignorant opinion is that if the Robotech movie is still on-track in 2012, they'll renew the trademark. If the movie stalls out for some reason, and Shadow Rising is also nowhere to be seen, they MIGHT let it lapse.