Search the Community

Hey fellas.. Been a looong time posting.. actually i think i posted 2 years ago before i left for japan. Anywho. I NEED HELP from some of you who are knowledgeable about DYRL production staff. So my question is.. considering Shoji Kawamori was one of the two directors, did he sketch up the stoyboards and layouts for the movie? I've been obsessing over this for the last week and i cant find info anywhere.. Ive shared my production art collection several years ago on this forum but recently ive been haunted by this question.. I have three layouts from the production and trying to figure out if he sketched these up. *if you pay close attention to the handwriting on there, you can tell it's his writing *if you cross reference his notes and writing elsewhere... Also, the sketch appears to be his style too. Please help argh! Driving me crazy!

I translated another Miyatake interview, this time focusing on ORGUSS. I put this up on the front page, but the auto-link discussion thread that is usually created ended up being buried in the "Collectors" forum for some reason. Anyway, check it out: http://www.macrossworld.com/kazutaka-miyatake-interview-from-megahouse-variable-action-hi-spec-orguss/

I figured if this doesn't deserve its own thread, nothing does. http://www.macrossworld.com/kazutaka-miyatake-exhibition-coming-in-october/ The City of Yokosuka will hold a Kazutaka Miyatake exhibition from next month — on an actual BATTLESHIP. Kazutaka Miyatake is a living legend. He, along with Kunio Okawara (who incidentally currently has his own exhibition running at the Ueno Royal Museum until the end of September), practically created the “mechanic designer” position in the animation industry. He is famous for having worked on the Powered Suit design for the Japanese editions of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers — immensely influential in the history of Japanese animation as it informed every robot design in anime thereafter including Mobile Suit Gundam. He is renowned for his design work on Space Cruiser Yamato, Super Dimension Century Orguss, Aura Battler Dunbine and of course, pretty much every Macross series: SDF, DYRL, Seven, Dynamite, Zero, Frontier, and most of the games (except Macross II ). As bonus trivia, his credit in Macross: Do You Remember Love was “Production Design” — in other words, he created the entire world of the theatrical Macross movie from scratch, a feat that traverses the boundaries of “mechanic design”. A talk show will be held on the 24th of October with guests Miyatake-sensei and fellow Studio Nue member, the legendary SF illustrator Naoyuki Kato! The Kazutaka Miyatake Gengaten will be held from October 24th to November 23rd at the HIJMS Memorial Battleship “Mikasa”. Info about the Mikasa in English here: http://www.kinenkan-mikasa.or.jp/en/build_of_mikasa.html Info on the event in Japanese here: http://www.city.yokosuka.kanagawa.jp/4450/nagekomi/20150911.html

As you may know, I'm far more interested in the production background and history of the series than the actual content in most cases.... In fact, knowing how some things came about greatly amplifies my interest in the way the story of each series pans out, as well as how and why certain scenes were composed the way they were. Anyway, I just thought I would put up a few bits of Frontier behind-the-scenes trivia that I hadn't seen mentioned before on these pages. In no particular order: 1) The working title for the series was actually "Macross Quarter". In fact, I did mention this a few years ago in some other discussion. I was first made aware of this in the annotations to some rough Vajra designs seen in Animage Original (I believe it was issue #2). The special MacF feature in that magazine is still one of the best write-ups, and we discussed it quite a bit on the forums. My friend actually wrote it, and he had some really interesting things to say about it. 2) Originally planned to be 26 episodes. Well, this one is no surprise, as a two-arc proposal, 26 is standard. I suppose Kawamori "figured" out that the 25 motif could be used to spare some expense and labour, i.e. cut corners, i.e. be lazy Ah well, we did get two movies (well, one and a half) so who's counting? 3) Target audience: Male & Females, teens to 30s. Well, I don't have the stats but I believe most of Macross World is out of this range. I'm not, though, I'm still hanging in there Go back to watching SDF, gramps! 4) The story is set in 2088. That's 80 years from the original broadcast. Funny, MacII was set 80 years into the future of the setting of the original show.... 5) Brera comes from the "Antares Fleet". In the finished show, he is part of the Antares Squadron, but is from Macross Galaxy fleet. I'm wondering if Sheryl and Brera actually have totally different backgrounds in this, and they decided to make them both originate from Galaxy at a later date. 6) Kazutaka Miyatake's Macross Quarter rough design looks incredible. I want a toy of THIS one! I never liked the real Macross Quarter design. I have nothing against Junya Ishigaki, but I always thought it was a bit too messy, especially that "cruiser" mode. :/