Macross, You & Days Before the Internet

[AcroRay]

As opposed to people just stealing it through illegally video recording it from tv and sending tapes to everyone?

Dude, I think you missed the joke....

[lord_breetai]

I never saw Robotech on TV before this year... or if I did it was when I was only a year or two old so I don't really remember it. I got into it when we rented the Macross saga from the local video store they didn't have the rest of Robotech so I thought that the 36 episodes were the complete series... Eventually we found the Robotech comics and other items... it wasn't until Jr. High that I ended up getting exposed to Macross in it's pure form... (the internet was around then but still not super big and I hadn't encountered it yet) I found the perfect collection tapes with original english and Japanese for the different shows (by this time I found the other sagas at othe rental places), Macross Plus aired on TV, and I rented II as well... then I went to anime club started copying tapes of Macross 7, and ordering more with limited exposure to the internet SASE method (no high speed downloads yet...)

My first exposure to bit comet, was also with Macross... from Macross Zero, I remember telling my friends how awesome fast it was, not knowing about peer ratio and when they tried it on files that didn't have seeds they laughed at me.

[d3v]

I never saw Robotech on TV before this year...

Some people have all the luck.

i can't remember how many times i rented the Betamax

:blink:

BETA??? Man, that's kickin' it OLD school!

I used to have my parents rent copies of Macross on Betamax as well (for some reason, Beta actually got a decent foothold here than in other places - I even remember playing them on a classic top loading Betamax player).

Edited October 10, 2008 by d3v

[MilSpex]

You collect old shoes and used pants? Wow....

Yeah. I try to get deadstock or only slightly used Jordans but its another nostalgia thing. We used to wear em in high school.

As for jeans, Levi`s made pre 1972 get way way better with age and fade beautifully with wear. Its another otaku thing, just like your friend doesn`t understand why some people would pay so much for a chunky toy made in 1983 my friends don`t understand why I just payed around $2,700 for 1950s 501s.

[oneiros]

Like a lot of people around here my first contact with macross was through robotech i

live in mexico city and i remember the first time that the show aired here it was

around the year 1985 in channel 5 of mexico city since the very first moment i loved it

i watched all the series, and remember that some stores started to bring some toys

but i never found the VF1 that was the one that i wanted, i only found a couple of

zentradi pods and the action figures of rick and lisa, in that era the only toy that i was

able to buy was a small pirated copy of the sdf-1 in a flea market near my house

A couple of years later i found a macross videogame in one of the arcades, some

years later in one of the stores i found a VF1 it was really nice but too expensive

and i wasn't able to buy it.

Then i think it was 91 or 92 i went to one of the first comic book stores here in my

city and i found a small magazine made by fans and in that magazine they made an

article about macross and robotech (in the cover of the magazine they put a couple

of pictures so i bought it) and that was the moment when a learn about macross

also around that time there was a radio show about comics and anime and they made

a feature about the history of macross and around that time was when i learn about

DYRL and i was able to get a pirated copy again in a flea market.

After that it was until i think it was 1997 when in one moment i started looking in the

internet about robotech and found the episodes in real player format and i fall in love

again and started looking for macross stuff again

That was my experience in the dark ages

[ly000001]

Back in 1983, I got interested in Gundam models through our family border, who was from Hong Kong and going to high school here in Canada. In 1984, back from a return visit to HK, he mentioned giving a cool transforming fighter jet that wasn't a Transformer to the son of the people he previously lived with. A few months later, in the lower floor of a department store, I noticed that there were imported robot model kits in their toy department, and among them were kits for this anime called "Macross" that featured without a doubt the same cool transforming fighter jet that our border talked about. Over the course of a year, I bought what little of the kits I could afford.

Then, in the spring of 1986, Starlog featured a two-part article about "Japanimation" written by the president of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, and in the second part, it talked about a recent series called Robotech that was composed from separate series called Southern Cross, Mospeada, and, of course, Macross. Then, in the fall, the local TV station started showing Robotech, but I didn't find out about it until it was already 10 episodes in. Unfortunately, they stopped airing the series after episode 24. I made up for the episodes I missed when Del Rey released the novelizations of the series by "Jack McKinney".

Around the same time that the novelizations came out, Palladium Books released their Robotech RPG manual. Through that, I learned about the mail-order sources Books Nippon, Bud Plant, and Pony Toy-Go-Round. I also learned about GTC (Galactic Trade Commission) through ads in Starlog. Although I couldn't afford the Valkyrie toys from Pony Toy-Go-Round, I was able to buy books from Books Nippon and Bud Plant (despite not knowing a single bit of Japanese at the time ), and some kits from GTC.

I don't remember how I learned about them, but at this time I also found out about a new magazine called Protoculture Addicts being published in Quebec and that was devoted to Robotech. I bought a subscription to it, and in the first issue I received, I learned about DYRL and its butchered English localization "Clash of the Bionoids."

Several months later, when I started university in Edmonton, AB, I found a copy of both "Clash of the Bionoids" and DYRL available for rent at the same comic book store. I rented Clash first, so I would know what was going on, and then DYRL later on. At the same time that I joined the campus' burgeoning anime club, companies like Books Nippon (as US Renditions) and Animeigo were starting to produce properly English-localized versions of anime ("Dangaio side-kick wave!" aside ), so I was able to watch anime both released officially and obtained through n-th generation VHS dubs traded internationally between clubs. Thus, I was exposed to both the original and dubbed/subbed versions of Macross II, Macross Plus, and the first few episodes of Macross.

By this time, the Internet began to evolve beyond e-mail, FTP, and Usenet, so Macross 7, the Animeigo pre-order for the original Macross, MacrossWorld.com, and my further exposures to Macross fall outside of this topic.

[bandit29]

My first exposure to anything Macross was Robotech of course(like alot of 80's kids) I came in from outside and saw this plane transform while crashing into a building etc.. the rest is history lol.

The Comico comics were out then. Those were just awful, especially considering titles like The Dark Knight, Secret Wars, X-men etc. were around. They used to make fun of me at the comic store for buying them lol.

And then after finding the truth about Robotech. I started collecting Macross toys, models and artbooks. Being in the midwest(Chicago), that stuff wasn't easy to find back then. Not like today with the internet.

Then the early-mid 90's came. Macross Plus and II. Fansub VHS tapes of Macross DYRL? FB2012 and Macross 7 started hitting here. And then the internet takes off in the late 90's.. The overpriced 1/55 market begins...god I kill to have some of that money back lol

I still dig Macross. I was pleasantly surprised with Macross Frontier

Edited October 16, 2008 by dejr8bud

[Jonias]

I was a huge Gundam fan (original series) back in the early 80s. I just came to the US for high school in the Boston area, and Anime was HARD to come by. The big shows back then was Gundam, then the Ideon movies, then I think Godmars. I remember reading a new show being announced, and the line art really caught my eye. No, it wasn't necessarily the Valkyries (cause I didn't know how cool they would look animated), but MINMAY. Mikimoto's line art of her in the Chinese dress looked so cute!

It was really refreshing to see a character of Chinese descent (I'm Chinese myself), I don't believe there were any major characters that were Chinese in any anime before Minmay.

Somehow I got hold of a copy of the soundtrack cassette, I must've worn that tape out and drove my roommate nuts with repeated listens of "Kyun Kyun". It would actually be a couple more years before I saw any video of the series!

In 1984 I saw DYRL in a theater in Tokyo. What I remember most was the shower scene ... some otaku ran up to the screen and took a picture, then promptly ran out of the theater! This was the bad old days before you can even be certain the movie is going to come out on video tape (yes, the days before the Internets, and DVD). That's SCREEN capture for you! (I think the idiot used his flash, which meant he got a picture of the blank screen canvas, lol)

So yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I am Richard Birla!

[aerocombatpilot]

So yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I am Richard Birla!

Brother, all us old school Macross fans ARE Richard Birla!! And there's nothing wrong with that!!

[AcroRay]

D4mn straight! Yeah!