Bri

I doubt it, as Fasa thought they had bought the rights from Tats as well through a second party arrangement. Fasa can't win if the rights are BW's. "FASA claims to have acquired the rights to these model kits and images from Twentieth Century Imports ("TCI"), which allegedly acquired them from Tatsunoko".

The way I read it, according to the document. Tats gave HG co-ownership of it's designs. However Tats never owned these designs as confirmed by the Japanese lawsuits between BW and Tats. The judge just acknowledged this information as Fasa did not question it. I guess at the time both Tats, Fasa and HG thought Tats was the rightsholder but in hindsight they are not.

Don't see any legal angle in the US really. The only issue States side is HG clinging to the trademarks on the name Macross preventing Macross releases by other companies. Afaik the HG claim to the name Macross is legal. As Azreal discribed earlier, the US trademark system has a peculiarity that puts use before registration. HG could claim the name Macross as it used it in the US before IP holder Big West did.

Looks like a super pack that can be used in an atmosphere, pretty cool imo.

Hmm, I think Frontier is a crowd pleaser. Mecha for mecha fans, harem romance, political conspiracy and characters to please every taste, a little bit of everything Macross. The way I see M7, is far more a slice of life show around a rockband with a main character who is far from generic. The relationships are more subtle and the show takes time to develop them. Certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Both shows what they are supposed too. Frontier was there to celebrate 25 years of Macross and gives new life to the franchise. M7 was a new direction that enlarged the macross universe.

Interesting point, is Macross 7 a real robot show? In the sense of physics I'd say yes, but in hotblooded awesomeness and willpower I'd say no.

I really like how both Basara and Mylene delt with Lex's kiss. Basara not freaking out and not turning all red is welcome change of the average male protagonist. Mylene just gives her own signals she likes him without a tsundere riot act. I find one of the really nice things of M7 is that characters are not caught up too much in stereo typical anime roles.

A thanks for the list. So they are a factor, interesting. The lists results are focused on high profile titles. No Noitamina anime with the women, bit odd, thought Honey and Clover would at least be on their list. Men seem to be really into moe with Nanoha, Saki, LS and K-on. And those girls like their men emo...Though there is a ray of hope, men don't put Code Geass among their favorites I guess we can expect more emo boy pilots like Alto for Macross in the future...Seems Itano had a point with his human failure remark. Where is Goto when you need him? " No, we don't use emotionally instable middle schoolers as labor pilots, what do you think this is? Mazinger?"

Are the fujoshi such a big element in (mecha) sales? Every gundam (since Wing iirc) seems to have some yaoi elements as well.

Thanks a lot, you two Feels a bit strange to be linked to a RT site and actually get accurate info on a Macross production

I wasn't talking about mecha action. Character animation, coloring, lighting and shading have all improved with the help of digital aides last few years. Allowing for more character movement and faster story pacing as less stills and other cost cutting tricks are neccesary. Compare for example what newer studios have produced like Production IG, Bones, PAworks, Kyoani or Makoto Shinkai's Comix. These studios all use new animation innovations to improve their work, instead of just cutting down on cost. Compare that to the relative unambitious work on character animation in Frontier versus 90s Macross OVAs and you'll see the difference.

Not many anime movies can match the visual performance of DYRL to this day so comparing it to Frontier isn't that useful. Frontier was all round pretty good for a TV show. Altough it looks the makers definitely prioritised the mecha action. Character animation, design and art is rather unremarkable compared to some other recent anime productions and even the 90s Macross OVA's like M Plus and M7 Dynamite look better in that department.

Interesting, I always wondered what happened in the Macross II timeline between DYRL and MII. Is there a summary of events (for those that cannot read Japanese) around that fills in the gaps? Doing some google searches left me a bit confused with several contradicting explanations, including some that deny the existance of a separate timeline.

Don't worry, Adam Smith, groundlayer of the princles of the market, captured the nobility of the working man very elegantly : "The uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration. Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor." In fairness, I don't think it's always needed, for example, Star Trek uses the "horn of plenty" story device and looks at a utopian society where people no longer need to work to provide for their material well being. Exploring a society that works on different priciples from our own is one of the attractive sides of Sci-fi. BSG on the other hand does a great job in exploring the human condition in dark circumstances.

Seems the opinions differ on this release. Have to say I like the paint scheme, reminds me of a coast guard or test plane.

Ah thank you, it was 10 till 16 for me, they are not to bad on their own but they killed the flow of the season for me when marathoning. Though it picked up again straight after.

Which part of S3 was that again? It's been a while since I saw it but I recall a part of that season where I fast forwarded through some episodes.

hmm, I still have some Kiseki tapes of Macross II, if memory serves me right that was before 1995, or am I mistaken?

Rahxephon seconded. It's hard to deny that both plot and visuals have been influenced by EVA but Rax deserves to be judged on it's own merrits. Lovely art and character design, smooth storytelling and high quality animation, can't really go wrong here.

It's quite different from GITS, more comedy oriented and character driven, but it's really good anime.

Only time will tell, neccesity is the father of invention. If the experiments are succesfull, you may see a change in attitude. I can see we have completely different experiences with Japanese firms. I have worked in the past as a consultant with several Japanese companies like MOL, Yokogawa, Shin-Etsu and Fujitsu who established subsidiaries here. The Japanese expats I dealt with speak their languages, are communicative and had no trouble adapting to changing conditions and performed without issue in an international environment. Don't take this the wrong way but I'm sure that more educated and talented individuals tend to seek jobs in industries with more perspective for advancement then animation. Still it's hard to believe that even large producers have trouble thinking in an international perspective. Actually your mistaken here, most BR content is released region free unlike DVDs. As for the second point it really depends on cost. If subs cost a few thousand dollar per hour of footage, based of costs of local TV stations and webpages of subbing companies, you'd need to sell a few hundred sets abroad at most to recoup costs, that does not seem an unrealistic sales target for even if there is only a handfull of foreign fans.

Sorry, I was unclear there. I was refering to fans not producers. What I meant to say was that for being able to read subtitles, you can get by with a limited knowledge of the english language. It's much harder for a non native speaker trying to understand spoken english then to read it. As such anime fans interested in english subbed Japanese material is not confined to English speaking countries, especially since the core fansbase are late teens and young adults who tend to have a better understanding of english then the general population. Also there is an interest in the fanbase over here to buy directely from the source, either from a desire to support the industry and/or of a perceived (true or not) lack of quality in licensed material. On the other hand there are developments like Crunchy Roll that provide online distribution of subbed anime in co-operation with the industry. This eliminates the need for english speakers in the Japanese industry, and Japanese providers have easy acces to cheap subs through the distribution network as CR aquires the subs from US based former fansubbers that turned profesional. Let's face it, if you don't have a certain expertise in house, you buy it. Haruhi S2 for example is not licensed and afaik the subs were based on the streamed version of the Kadokawa channel. I'm not saying that this development will last or that it will affect Macross anytime soon, but with the slow collapse of the US licensing industry, I wouldn't be surprised if we will see more and more anime titles (that are not licensed) have english subs in the future. Blu-ray is going to help here as it removes the last issues with region encoding.

Still there are some experiments going on with Japanese releases having English subs that have not been broadcasted outside of Japan like the upcoming Gundam Unicorn and Haruhi S2 so who knows. The international collectors market might be large enough to make the inclusion subs profitable. Subs only requires passive knowledge of english.

It always baffles me how Evangelion causes a break down in any discussion that attempts to establish a consensus in what it means. You will be alone - in your Eva fandom- *Raise AT-field*

The footage is from the pachinko game. More info in the game thread.