Bri

"A truth that's told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent."

My gut feeling would be "Back to the Future". Just because it's plain fun and pure sc-fi. Thinking of quality then I'd say Blade Runner and Twelve Monkeys, both movies breathe atmosphere. Which is probably why I'm more of a Riddley Scott fan over Cameron and prefer Gilliam over Kubrick. Special mention goes to the Fifth Element. *Multipass* Got to love Leeloo

It looks like an art book of the Macross Fever Pachinko game by Sankyo. Some info in this thread, never seen the anything about an artbook though. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...5&start=175

Clearly the Pink peckers should be manned by Bearforce 1, the boy band for older, hairy gay men... guranteed to send any Zentradi fleet running

Now this bird is great news. *must have*

I really like that 1/5000 Megaroad-01. Amzing they could make a model on so little line art.

I wish, just the R2 2004 DVD release. Replaced my old VHS and fansub versions. Afaik only the Galaxy Express movies have made it to Bluray sofar.

Watched the remastered Waga Seishun no Arcadia/Arcadia of my Youth : Glad to finally have a decent version, it's just is so damned epic.

Can we simply compare pilots from different eras? I'm under the impression that valks in the era of MF are far easier to pilot then SW I era mecha. Pilots are younger ( MFs high schooler pilots) and iirc the VF-25 lowers the G-forces the pilot is exposed to in the cockpit, removing most of the physical requirement for a pilot (points at the shotacon pilot). Comments were made that the NUNS relies on poorly trained pilots for it's VF-171s which suggests the mainstay fighter is easy to handle. Compare that to the launch ceremony in 2009 where Focker announces the VF-1 to be the latest and newest fighter. Given the small compliment aboard the SDF-1 we can assume that all original pilots were handpicked veterans from the worlds airforces. Come to think of it, the artrition of on the civilian turned VF-1 pilots during the return of the SDF-1 to earth must have been horrible (unless they were world class areobatics pilots like Hikaru or freaks of nature like Max)

Should I read that as that the F-35 is primarily an attack craft with secondary air to air capability? Most of the smaller European partners in the project are going to use it as their main air defense fighter. The lightweight F16s were ideal for that role. I guess a stealth plane will give it an advantage and off course good integration with other NATO systems. I can't help but wonder that later generation F-16s pretty much offer the same but with a proven track record.

In the way this thread develops I'm quite happy that Kawamori does not do the same thing twice. If the average of fan tastes would decide we'd end up with an SDFM remake in the form of an echi show like Queens blade with Valkyries...

In what way is the F-35 going to be an upgrade over the F-16/F-18s it's going to replace? Most of the discussions I have read seem to focus on it's cost and number built rather then what it can do. The national debate is completely absorbed by compensation orders and noise/emission worries. Any sites or magazine issues that anyone wouldn't mind recommending on it's performance and future roles?

I guess I'm sort of lucky in that department altough it leads to it's own problems. My girlfriend is a worse sci-fi/fantasy nerd then I am but she draws the line at mecha and space ships. I mean elves, fairyfolk and whatever strolls in the forrest are fine off course. Anything magic, however unrealistic is great, but starships and robots go pew pew get me a wary look as if saying, "really, that's so unrealistic, hun". Must be something hardwired in the female brain... My poor Valks and G1 transformers have to share their cupboard with her "My little pony" and "She-ra" collection *sigh*. She also loves games so getting her off the desktop whenever I need it for work is a pain if she is too wrapped up in killing stuff in CS or whatever mmorpg she is playing this month. Off course I can't complain too loud, she is a vet and any women that castrates for a living should be handeled carefully

Seems consitent with the outcome of the lawsuit. Tats owns the economic rights to SDFM and BW/Nue own the creative rights to Macross. No idea if there is any room for maneuvering under US law for shared copyrights.

Finished Bakemonogatari: I have a very double feeling about this show. The show is visually interesing with a minimalist aproach to animation, clever camera angles and a brilliant soundtrack. The dialog between the characters is refreshingly ssharp and antagonistic. Not the standard rom-com fare. But on the other hand, while this show tries very hard to look complex and different, it's still a fairly basic harem show mixed with some supernatural elements. It's weak and predicatble plot carried by the characters and voice actors. It was the most popular show of 2009 but I'm not completely convinced yet. Finished Summerwars: Nice movie on a near future world where your online identity starts to mix with the real life one. Very recognisable if you ever did some online gaming. It's not as good as the girl who leapt through time but it does show a nice insight of the rise of social and online networking without being judgemental. Finshed Kara no Kyoukai (garden of sinners): Seven movies revolving around supernatural crimes and a "slayer" (can't really think of any other description for this trope). Based on the novels of Kinoko Nasu the movies each tell part of the story in a non-chronological order. The movies have excellent build ups and the atmospheric setting and music work. Still there were some parts that really grated my nerves. I found the heavy use of CGI in the visuals and coloring very distacting and the cliches of the genre really pop up a lot. Quite often the movies reminded me of Ghost in the Shell, somehow the movies fell like a supernatural clone but without the touch that made GitS work. That said, Kara no Kyoukai is not bad by any means. Also the rather lyrical reception by reviewers as if the show is a milepont in animation was somewhat off putting. Good use of CGI effects can help the visuals but sometimes this show comes to close to being a visual novel game.

Yes, it was broadcasted in Okinawa if I'm not mistaken, there was even a member of a Japanese Robotech fansite posting on this board a while ago. That's my understanding as well, HG, Tats and Warner have no acces to the designs for future animation/movie projects. Either this or Yune forgot to consult the company lawyer and said something he really shouldn't have. Unless something has changed in the relations between both sides that we are not aware off.

I would go the Gundam treatment: 3 movies condensing the SDFM story and here and there updating some less then well animated parts but keeping everything else intact to atract new viewers. But... to celebrate the launch with these movies, I'd like to see a prequel to Macross. And I'm not taking M0. A classic space opera set in the time of the Protoculture revolving around the adventures of the crew of the protoculture exploration ship Gosroth that will eventually end up on earth. Set againt the slow collaps of the old stellar republic with massive Zentradi and Supervision army fleets duking it out, fleshing out the lore of Macross. \ hey, I can dream...

Hear, hear, wish we could get rid of all this stealth nonsense and get back to building planes that actually look good. Which is off course the most important thing!

You could be right, but the Russians will have to replace their ageing Mig29s and Su-27s someday. We may not see many in the Russian airforce but who knows how many will be built for India.

Looks amazing, really does justice to the Zent design.

True, these company structures are often result from taxes and regulations. But in fairness this happens in every country. Mulinationals operating in the US or Japan adapt their stuctures to local legislation as well. Japan is know for it's conglomerates. A lot of companies, even small ones, outsource the financial administration to accountancy firms. A good ccountant can save you a lot of money and hassle. The EU VAT or taxes in general are not as a big an issue compared to the problems with the labor markets and it's regulations. In fact the EU vat is considered on of the areas of where harmonisation was rather succesful (member states are allowed to vary it within a bandwith of 15 to 25%) The difference in factor mobility makes the EU internal market hard to compare to the US. Differences in social security, language, culture and education make it a lot more costly for people (labor) to migrate to other member states. You need mobility in both capital and labor to have a functioning competative market like the US has. The current situation is far from optimal but you need harmonisation on social policy and education (which does not have popular support) or a US style competative market wont happen in the EU. Coming back to Haruhi, which is a more fun topic: Found an AMV that brought back memories. The old Tenchi Miyo opening just sounds like it was written for Haruhi even though it predates the series by more then a decade: wish there was a version with the Japanese original too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4kObq8y2Q

Anime virtual is the German daughter company of Kaze, which in turn, is a French subsidiary of BEEZ (European branch of Bandai Virtual). So you have the official Bandai discs on your hands. Got to love the transparancy of multinationals

Wonder what a small company with an 100 odd people can do with a manufacturer like Saab. Still Victor Muller is crazy enough to pull it off.

Sorry to get your hopes up, R2 is both Europe and Japan. I've bought mine from CDJapan as the Japanese version of season 2 has an English sub. For a while it was not certain there would be a US release, and tbh the difference in price after shipping and taxes would not make it much cheaper for me to wait for a US release. I've bought the Season 1 version from BEEZ in 2008 that's Bandai Europe which is also in R2 and can be ordered from quite a few UK vendors like Play.com. I'm still collecting the Japanese Limited Editions from season 1 but most are sold out.

I've ordered the last two boxes of the R2 release. If the Bandai release will be anything like it, your in for a treat, the quality is extremely good. Wonder if the extra's will be the same. On the R2s is a guided tour by the makers of the anime through the places that were the inspiration for the animation. It's a strange sensation to see that pretty much all the buildings and locations in the anime really exist.