Gubaba

Thanks. That's a relief. I know, but isn't "Howard" spelled ハウワード, not ハワード? Or am I simply making something up without realizing it...? EDIT: Never mind. I just googled ハワード, and while the first thing that showed up was "haward.com," the second was Japanese Wikipedia's entry on Howard Hughes...so I'll change it to Howard when I add the next section.

Don't you remember getting up REALLY REALLY early to watch cartoons when you were a kid? Japanese tots just get started earlier.

I think just "Pinpoint Barrier System" works best. Azrael basically got it right, but the Japanese text doesn't say "only" (it does, however, implicitly emphasize that the other variants are not different enough to require new numerical designations), so I took it out. And I just added the next section, about the armaments. To be honest, the paragraph about the gunpod almost broke me, and I'm not sure I got it all right, so if one of you wants to go over the text and double check it for me, I'd be grateful. It'll probably be at least a few days before I get the next part up. Sorry for trying everyone's patience.

Yeah, I would've been happier with 08th MS Team if they hadn't felt the need to give ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE a Gundam. That, and the tone really seemed like "One-Year War Lite." On the other hand, I really loved 0080, especially since I went into it thinking that "No Tomino = Not Gundam" and was pleasantly surprised at what a good story it had. But yeah...I'm not a mecha-head, so I think a lot of the loving detail so clearly put into MS Igloo goes over my head, but the mecha scenes certainly look stunning. Makes me wonder why "The Hidden One-Year War" got such short shrift upon its release (and, as far as I know, you can still only *rent* it in Japan, not buy it). I kind of wonder if the whole story isn't a commentary on the OVA's production: the staff works hard to create this exceptional CGI Gundam story, only to have the Bandai higher-ups basically ignore it in favor of SEED and its offshoots.

I've (FINALLY!) got around to first MS Igloo episodes. I watched "The Hidden One-Year War" last week, and I started "Apocalypse 0079" yesterday. The stories are kind of predictable (disgraced or otherwise ignored character vindicates himself, then dies), and sometimes the characters move more like Supermarionation puppets rather than real people, but overall I think it's pretty darn good. And as someone who disliked "The 08th MS Team" for being too upbeat and cheery, I'm glad to see that Igloo captures a lot of the coldness and desperation of the original Gundam.

As far as I can tell, Egan Loo makes his decisions on romanizations based on whatever version is most prevalent. For example, while the name "Miria" shows up in Macross 7, "Millia" shows up in the animation for SDFM and on the toys and models. So "Millia" it is. "Vrlitwhai" is on the Arii model kit boxes. Of course, the lineart connected with the BW/Tatsunoko lawsuit romanized the name as "Bullitie," but that's the only place where that spelling has shown up, so it gets discarded. Birla's name never actually appears in romanized form in Macross Frontier, so we're all pretty much left to our own devices. (And of course, sometimes official romanizations can make mistakes: I think it's likely that "Ranka" should have been "Lanka," and "Michael" should have been "Mikhail," but that ship has sailed. I did try to play fair with the latter, switching between "Michael" and "Michel," depending on what people were calling him. I'm a little concerned that anyone not familiar with the show and not really listening to the audio will just think it's a typo, though. ) Y'know, there's a lot to be said for Sketchley's method of simply romanizing the names as plainly as possible (so that we'd be left with "Biruraa"), but I'm trying to take my cues from Fredrick L. Schodt's guidelines for transcribing Gundam names: try to romanize the name as closely as possible, but try to do it in a way that will resonate with English speakers in a way that enhances the work rather than detracts from it, which is why I'll probably go with "Klan Klan" instead of the more official "Klan Klang." Of course, Schodt ended up with "Sha Aznable" instead of "Char," which seems to have enraged a sizable number of Gundam fans...so I guess sometimes you just can't win.

Well...he's unstuck in time, but he was still himself. I don't think he could visit a time and place where he's not present anymore than you could walk to someplace, but not be there (does that make sense? You can't exist in any place you're not, and neither could Osterman...now if he came back a visited later, then he could see what happened...) Oh, I don't think the cloud was Jon's "comment" on Veidt's plan, I think it was a coincidental shape...and an ominous one, just like so many other coincidental shapes in Watchmen. Hmmmm....good point.

A few months ago, Shouta (I can't remember which fansub group he was working with) made the case for Birla, as opposed to Bilrer, Bilra, Habillar, and any number of other ways peple were saying it. Basically, what it came down to is: A) "Birla" is a real name, and B) It's a Hindu name, and this fits with Kawamori's naming conventions. At any rate, he convinced me, which is why I changed it from "Bilrer" to "Birla" on Xeros's subs.

Barton was the stuffy colonel who hated Basara and championed the Jamming Birds. You'll probably remember the (pretty funny) scenes of him trying to train them. As for a translation of Mylene Beat, I've certainly never seen one. I've never even even seen scans until quite recently, when macrosshare uploaded the Chinese version. I had to track down the book itself to find out what it was all about, but given how hard it was to get my hands on, I'm loathe to cut it apart so that I could make a proper scan. I'd like to make a scanlation of the comic at some point (i.e. not real soon), but the macrosshare scans are not all that great, so we'll have to wait at least until I get my hands on another copy of the book.

I added a bit more to the VF-25S entry. The armaments section is taking longer than I thought it would, but I'm nearly done with it. Later tonight, or (more likely) tomorrow, I'll have it up.

Enh, it always happens that way. I remember when I was a kid, looking at Macross and Gundam books, and thinking that every question I ever had was probably answered somewhere in the text (which of course I couldn't read). Imagine my disappointment years later when I looked back at those books and realized just how little they said...

I think it's pretty clear that Rorschach's journal gets published and ruins everything. Among other signs, look at the dark, dark clouds on the horizon on the second-to-last page of the last chapter. That's a mean storm coming in...and I think it's likely symbolic (as is nearly everything in Watchmen). Who cares? Well, the pirate comic is a parallel to to the story of Adrian Veidt. Just as the "hero" of the comic kills and kills again in order to save his home, only to destroy everything he cared about, and damned his own soul...well, the connections to Veidt should be obvious, and there's another clue as to how the whole thing turns out. But bear in mind that Osterman can see HIS OWN future, not the general future. If he's not even in the same universe as the Watchmen world when the sh*t hits the fan, then I don't think he could see it. The important thing, I think, about the "nothing ever ends" line is that he vanishes in the next panel, leaving a plume of smoke in Veidt's orrery that looks like a mushroom cloud. Again, I think it's pretty clear what's going to happen next...

Is that on the "Military Vehicles" page? If so, it doesn't say anything about what it's called or what type of tank it is. All it says is, more or less, "During Space War I, seeing small tanks in places like the city was a normal occurrence."

Did we ever figure out what the "more than two hundred" differences were between 1.0 and 1.01? I only noticed two: the fifth angel's legs moved as it approached NERV in 1.0, but not in 1.01; and in one scene, the word EMARGENCY was replaced by EMERGENCY.

Are you talking about the Streamline dub? There was one before that, which I saw in...'87, I think. There was only Megazone Part II, and IIRC, it also had a lot of Aussie voice actors in it. It never became as widespread as Clash of the Bionoids...I only knew one guy who had it, and his was a copy of a copy of a copy.

Hmmm...having never used a scanner before, I guess I don't know what I'm getting myself in for... Not only that, but I don't have Photoshop; I'm currently figuring out GIMP.

Careful...it might be booby trapped...

Probably not...for the same reason I don't share the Chronicle. If nobody's buying it and it gets cancelled, I don't want it to be on my head. I'm going to practice my scanlation skills on some of the comics, though...and I'll most likely share those if I'm happy with the results.

Since I (FINALLY!) have access to a scanner, I may pick up two copies of at least the first issue, so I can rip one apart for my, um, digital Macross collection. Especially if "Macross the First" is anything like "Gundam the Origin," and has more color pages in the magazine than in the collected volumes.

Good points overall...I think MD7 gets a lot of short shrift in the fandom, because it (like Mac0) is primarily about nature (which of course includes death). Oh, and I can explain the Mylene Beat stuff...Mylene's getting annoyed because she feels like she's in Basara's shadow, and then she joins the Jamming Birds girls to form a side band called Jamming Angels, who are of course managed by Sazapi (AKA Evil Lesbo Rapist). Sazpi's working with Colonel Barton to create a new EVIL Series (or revive one that that they found...I'm not really clear on that part; I've skimmed the manga, I haven't sat down with a dictionary and really READ it. At any rate, at the story's beginning, it's an embryo...and it grows throughout the story). As Mylene's trying to decide whether to stay with the Jamming Angels or not, Basara leaves for Zola, so she stays singing with them. Sazapi does the classic "separate the victim from her friends" move, so that Ray and Veffidas aren't around much. Sazapi is also planning on using Mylene's Song Energy to awaken the EVIL, at the attempted rape is really an attempt to throw Mylene into such distress that it will wake up the EVIL (which at this point looks like a giant dragon). As Ray and Veffidas arrive to save Mylene, her mental energy does indeed wake the EVIL, which is now bonded to her psychically. It breaks its bonds, flies to City 7, and destroys Sazapi's place. Mylene talks to it for a while, and then it says goodbye and flies off to explore the galaxy. Oh, and Colonel Barton shoots Dr. Chiba at one point but doesn't kill him, to the disappointment of many, I'm sure. I have to say though, I'm not sure if Mylene Beat is really supposed to have "happened," or if it's an alternate version of the story. The manga artist is very clever in the way she works around in the Dynamite 7 story (think of the way Back to the Future Part II worked its way around Part I, contradicting nothing, but adding another story layer to it). Ray asks about the EVIL just before the "Ha Ha Ha, you really learned a lesson" conversation, and EVIL talks to Mylene immediately after that scene. And while the implication in the anime is that Veffidas wrecked Sazapi's space-age bachelorette pad, it could just as easily have been the EVIL. As I said, nothing contradicts Dynamite 7...it just seems strange that all of this big stuff was going on, but in the anime, none of the Fire Bomber Members act like anything out of the ordinary is going on.

Yeah...I didn't catch Fold Quartz until I say it written in Japanese; and then for some reason it leapt out at me.

I just picked up the January issue of Gundam Ace, and there's a big ad for Macross Ace in it. There's not a whole lot of information, but here's what I've gleaned from it: * "Super Dimension Fortress Macross THE FIRST" by Haruhiko Mikimoto will be 80 pages in the first issue (just like Gundam the Origin, before Gundam Ace went monthly...). * Latest Movie, Music, Game, Model kit, and other goods news. * An original Macross F story by Macross F's director (not Kawamori, the other guy...Yoshino). * Contributions by various MacF related people: the guy who does the main Macross F comic (bleh), the guy who does the "Macross F: Hold Me...to the Edge of the Galaxy!" comic (which I haven't seen...it's a gag manga, no?), and the guy who wrote the MacF novels (could be interesting). * Some comic artist I've never heard of named "Noshi" doing "Macross F: Secret Files." The Fact that "Secret Files" is English, but written in Hiragana leads me to believe that this will NOT be a serious MacF comic. To be honest, I don't think it sounds terribly promising; but then, neither did Gundam Ace when they announced it. I know I bought the first issue of that solely on the strength of "Gundam the Origin," and then later they started expanding the premise, and starting some really good comics, so maybe this will be the same way.

Macross Quarter Ranka being a quarter Zentradi Fold Quartz

Ah, good ol' Boxtorrents. I'm using my Freeleech time there now to plump out my Space Battleship Yamato collection, as well as updating my U.C. Gundam collection from HK sub XviD to fansubbed h.264.

Man...I remember when they used to play that at the Kontrol Faktory, the industrial club I used to go to lo, these many years ago...