HG and Robotech Debates

[taksraven]

Yeah, well, Basara Nekki is _so_ the love child of Hikaru and Minmay.

Well RT Minmay is a dirty sllut, so anything is possible.

Taksraven

Edited December 29, 2009 by taksraven

[Einherjar]

I can go on and on, but this kinda crap is what makes the Robotech world so small and fake. Supposedly, it's supposed to be clever, but it's really just stupid. Can anyone not be related to someone, somehow???

Is that a challenge to find anyone in the franchise who isn't a legacy character, aka cast inbred for greatness?

[RedWolf]

Yeah, well, Basara Nekki is _so_ the love child of Hikaru and Minmay.

This reminds me of the shock I had a couple of days ago about Vandread's Hibiki both siring daughters from Dita and Meia in supplementary materials.

[Freiflug88]

I can go on and on, but this kinda crap is what makes the Robotech world so small and fake. Supposedly, it's supposed to be clever, but it's really just stupid. Can anyone not be related to someone, somehow???

Well they say no man is an island. As for Robotech charaters that have no further relations I can only think of Captain Henry Global. He is apparently the only black male in Robotech that isn't a Grand and its nearly impossible to argue any family tie to her after choosing to save Lisa. Whats more since Macross Frontier already had the SDF-4 Gloval, everyone is occupied with Rick's SDF-3, and since nothing new ever really happens with Robotech anyway I doubt there will be a SDF-4 Global anytime soon.

I wonder though. After Gloval landed the SDF-1 and Macross city was set up in Alaska did he ever see his Russia from his house?

[taksraven]

Well they say no man is an island. As for Robotech charaters that have no further relations I can only think of Captain Henry Global. He is apparently the only black male in Robotech .....

WTF!!!!!

Taksraven

[Robelwell202]

WTF!!!!!

Taksraven

Yeah... what he said.

[Jasonc]

Is that a challenge to find anyone in the franchise who isn't a legacy character, aka cast inbred for greatness?

Nah, not so much a challenge as it is just an example of how the whole story is too forced with everyone having a tie in to some character somehow. It's ridiculous, but again, it's Robotech. If they tried to introduce a new character that wasn't directly tied to the heroes, they probably feel like it isn't a great story. In turn, they've convoluted the story into a game of "6 degrees of seperation"

[Jasonc]

Well they say no man is an island. As for Robotech charaters that have no further relations I can only think of Captain Henry Global. He is apparently the only black male in Robotech that isn't a Grand and its nearly impossible to argue any family tie to her after choosing to save Lisa. Whats more since Macross Frontier already had the SDF-4 Gloval, everyone is occupied with Rick's SDF-3, and since nothing new ever really happens with Robotech anyway I doubt there will be a SDF-4 Global anytime soon.

Well, you can say that about Marcus' friend in RTSC. But, as it happens to turn out, most of the people that are "standalones" get killed off. To me, that character from RTSC was the better of the two new characters, but with no relation to the heroes, he was bound to die.

[Einherjar]

Well, you can say that about Marcus' friend in RTSC. But, as it happens to turn out, most of the people that are "standalones" get killed off. To me, that character from RTSC was the better of the two new characters, but with no relation to the heroes, he was bound to die.

Also, Alex Romero was not a space racist.

[Freiflug88]

WTF!!!!!

Taksraven

Well, I always thought Gloval was black in Robotech, even after learning that he was an Italian in the OSM. And no, I never said he was the only black male in Robotech period, I said he was the only black male that wasn't attached to the Grant name.

[Freiflug88]

Also, Alex Romero was not a space racist.

Only cause he was too attracted to the hot alien chicks.

[taksraven]

Well, I always thought Gloval was black in Robotech, even after learning that he was an Italian in the OSM. And no, I never said he was the only black male in Robotech period, I said he was the only black male that wasn't attached to the Grant name.

No, it was just the suggestion that he was black that I was focussing on....

Taksraven

[Keith]

No, it was just the suggestion that he was black that I was focussing on....

Taksraven

I thought he was supposed to be Russian... You know, "In America, Henry Gloval, In Russia, Gloval You!!!"

[Seto Kaiba]

I thought he was supposed to be Russian... You know, "In America, Henry Gloval, In Russia, Gloval You!!!"

He is... they went out of their way to make him stereotypically Russian, right down to a borderline Pavel Chekov-accent.

[VFTF1]

You know - this is just ANOTHER reason why I like the original Macross.... I mea - correct me if I'm wrong, but Global's Japanese doesn't have a russian accent, right?

I HATE silly stereotypical accents... it reminds me of Transformers: Cybertron - where Hasbro decided that since the Transformer were from various different planets, then it would make them sound alien and foriegn if they had...you know...FORIEGN accents! Australian Jetfire comes to mind here... horrible...

One of the things I really appreciate about anime in general is that it has an uncanny knack for reconstructing the world in accordance with the needs of the story and staying away from "real world" people, places, events etc - at least directly.

Via designs, geo-political generalities and good story telling, there are of course real world parallels everywhere - but ultimately - it's not our world - and rightly so.

To put a national stereotype character into Macross would, IMO, be stupid because if serves no purpose if there is no Russia or Soviet Union to speak of - and there isn't.

Never once in Macross do we find out that there's an America or a Russia or a China or anything - we just don't know what there is - we know that there's a U.N. and that the Unification Wars likely whiped away all prior national distinctions following ASS-1's crash. The war was waged over power - who gets what technology. This much is clear from Ivanov telling Nora that the UN was naive for wanting technology to be globably shared. So - we get the idea from Macross canon that the war was fought over power - who would have the power - one world government (UN Spacey) or individual nations?

Which nations doesn't therefore matter - because it had nothing to do with national heritage or culture or whatever - it was just about power.

And in the end - yes - the UN Spacey did become a military dictatorship - but notice how intelligently this was shown in Macross - it was not shown to be opressing any particular nation or national cultures - it was just monolithic and therefore oppressive for humanity as a whole - as if to communicate that independent of where power resides - it will corrupt and grow tyranical.

I really also like the fact that most anime look to the creation of a futuristic culture where human beings are not defined by nationalities and therefore I find the use of silly accents annoying.

Finally - insofar as lots of anime is specifically or particularly Japanese insofar as some behaviors...I dunno...I don't know enough about Japanese culture to know. But I DO know that - as I've mentioned before - the character designs are universal and not ethnically particular, and the culture? It has absolutely nothing to do with any nation - its also universal. Its' particular aspects (like the reverence for songstresses that became a cultural mainstay on Macross colonization vessels) grows out of the particular experiences of humanity in a given anime - combined with a genral universal human yearning for culture, knowledge etc etc etc.

Throwing in Russian or any other accents is arbitrary and shatters the magic of the futuristic science fiction vission IMO.

Pete

[Seto Kaiba]

You know - this is just ANOTHER reason why I like the original Macross.... I mea - correct me if I'm wrong, but Global's Japanese doesn't have a russian accent, right?

No, no it does not... though that might be a function of him being Italian rather than Russian in Macross.

Throwing in Russian or any other accents is arbitrary and shatters the magic of the futuristic science fiction vission IMO.

I agree wholeheartedly that ethnic stereotyping like that really detracts from most any futuristic sci-fi premise. There's a fairly sizable body of evidence that suggests quite a few members of Harmony Gold's creative staff (incl. Carl Macek) are either fans of the original Star Trek series, or unimaginative enough to try to appeal to fans of more mainstream American sci-fi shows by copying select elements from it. Paramount got rid of it in TNG, but the original Star Trek series did use the silly stereotypical accent to get character ethnicity across in the case of a few notorious characters, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if that was the reason for the silly accents in Robotech.

[RedWolf]

Throwing in Russian or any other accents is arbitrary and shatters the magic of the futuristic science fiction vission IMO.

Pete

Macross 11 and Fire Bomber American.

If DYRL and Macross Frontier opening has shown anything English is the universally accepted lingua fraca.

But it would be hypocritical to their culture doctrine if a one language causes others to cease to exist. As evidence by Sheryl French is pretty much alive.

Though Japanese may be another ligua fraca in Macross due to the likely political power of the Macross survivors.

Chinese languages too if Macross Frontier's map is any indication of the location city landmarks.

[eugimon]

I have no problem with older characters in Macross speaking with an ethnic accent. The unification war didn't last long enough to obliterate local cultures and languages and there's no reason why someone born into a particular nationality wouldn't speak with an appropriate accent just because that particular political regime is no longer around. If moved to England, I'm not going to suddenly start speaking with a British accent, unless I was a major pompous tool, like Madonna.

And different cultures and generations view assimilation differently. Real world example: the first wave of korean immigrants to North America proceeding and during the Japanese occupation of Korea adopted an assimilation is good mindset and didn't move into ethnic enclaves like the chinese and japanese immigrants did and actively taught their children english even at the expense of teaching them korean.

On the flip side, Chinese immigrants to North America, for various internal and external reasons lived in ethnic enclaves, taught their children their own dialect first and this pattern continues today with each subsequent wave of migrants moving into established "chinatowns".

Two markedly different views on migration and assimilation despite being ethnic and cultural cousins.

Of course, a robot speaking ebonics or with an aussie accent is another thing entirely.

[Gubaba]

I'd imagine that in Robotech, the various accents are not there for any purpose other than the fact that a lot of the voice actors covered multiple roles, and it it was their way of distinguishing their different voices. So yeah...the reason Khyron has a British accent is the same reason that Porky Pig stutters.

[VFTF1]

The problem with Eugimon's real world examples is that they have nothing to do with the fiction world of the anime. In that world, the Zendradi speak Japanese...but do they really speak Japanese? No. They speak Zendradi but in order for us to undertstand them - they speak Japanese. Same as how Transformers on Cybertron speak english.

Therefore - do we NEED them to have British or Russian accents in this show? No.

In Beast Wars, Rattrap had a bronx accent to mak him sound like a wise ass. That's fine.

But in general - Gloval's accent was pointless.

Pete

[anime52k8]

The problem with Eugimon's real world examples is that they have nothing to do with the fiction world of the anime. In that world, the Zendradi speak Japanese...but do they really speak Japanese? No. They speak Zendradi but in order for us to undertstand them - they speak Japanese. Same as how Transformers on Cybertron speak english.

Therefore - do we NEED them to have British or Russian accents in this show? No.

In Beast Wars, Rattrap had a bronx accent to mak him sound like a wise ass. That's fine.

But in general - Gloval's accent was pointless.

Pete

wat?

first of all, yeah they do. Even in a fictional anime world people still have ethnicity's. If Global and Misa are talking on the bridge they're probably both speaking the same language, and if that's the case they're going to talk with whatever native accent they have because that's how people talk.

And even if the situation is that they're all speaking different languages and they're just having everyone speak one language for convenience sake, you'd STILL want people to have different accents so the audience watching can go; "Oh, he's got a Russian accent, he must be speaking Russian and we're just hearing English because the creators of the show are know we're too lazy to read subtitles."

[eugimon]

The problem with Eugimon's real world examples is that they have nothing to do with the fiction world of the anime. In that world, the Zendradi speak Japanese...but do they really speak Japanese? No. They speak Zendradi but in order for us to undertstand them - they speak Japanese. Same as how Transformers on Cybertron speak english.

Therefore - do we NEED them to have British or Russian accents in this show? No.

In Beast Wars, Rattrap had a bronx accent to mak him sound like a wise ass. That's fine.

But in general - Gloval's accent was pointless.

Pete

If that's the case, there was no point in them making the characters have international backgrounds. The point of purposefully stating someone is italian or american isn't to just whitewash them and make them all the same. In fact, that's contrary to the overall message of SDFM, that we can learn to get along DESPITE our differences, not that we are all exactly the same.

[Wanzerfan]

So? Back me up or tear me down here. How do the American fans react to those edits. Does anyone try to justify them and explain them away, or do they all ignore them when they find out the truth?

I back you up. Those two scenes were tame, in my opinion, compared to other stuff out there (okay, the finger is bad, but not over the top).

[VFTF1]

If that's the case, there was no point in them making the characters have international backgrounds. The point of purposefully stating someone is italian or american isn't to just whitewash them and make them all the same. In fact, that's contrary to the overall message of SDFM, that we can learn to get along DESPITE our differences, not that we are all exactly the same.

We just have a different interpretation of Macross then. But this is very interesting.

See - I do agree with you that "the overall message of SDFM" is that "we can learn to get along DESPITE our differences, not that we are all exactly the same."

The point where we disagree is what is meant by "differences."

The way I see it - there are two distinct traits that people and, more broadly, sentient beings, have -

1) Authentic traits

2) Artificial traits

Authentic traits are the things unique about each person or being. Artificial traits are those which get super-imposed on us by chance: where and when we happen to be born, the traditions and customs of a society, the language even.

I think that Macross, like most anime, is wise to stay away from artificial traits in the real world. If Global is "Italian" - then within the context of what we see in Macross, "italian" means nothing - it's just a geographical signifier with some vague ideas that it might bring to our minds. But it's not like we see his "Italian" heritage play any role whatsoever in the character.

In fact, the one time when Global does reminice about his past is in the elevator down to the bowells of the Grand Cannon, when he tells Misa of the time he served under her father.

His memories, like the memories of all the characters in Macross, are not colored by associations that our minds are colored by when we hear terms like "America" or "Italian" or "Russian" or anything else.

I take the view that - as shown clearly in Macross: Zero's opening - the crash landing of ASS-1 effectively whiped out everything that people once thought of themselves. The Unification wars, to repeat again, were only about power. It wasn't about Russians and Israelis being patriots and wanting to preserve their culture and heritage.

The crash landing of ASS-1 and the eventual discovery that the Protoculture were the creators of Humanity put a total and complete end to everything - culturally and religiously - that makes any sense to people like us, in the real world, where no ASSes have tumbled down to Earth.

It's like the "Ontario Region" that agrees to take in the refugees. Does anyone seriously think that this should be interpreted as Macross somehow propagating the opinion that Ontario and people in Ontario are humane while the rest of the world is cruel? No. It's just a place on a map, and the politics remains pretty vague.

But it needn't be any more specific than it is.

And most anime does use this tactic and I like it.

Robotech erases this good aspect by givigin ethnic accents to characters and grounding the story more in "our" world than in the world of fantasy science fiction.

The point is not that either we have diversity or homogeneity - the point is that the question really is: what kind of diversity does Macross show us?

Macross shows us the differences between people as people with a particular focus on the tensions between a warlike technological society and a technological society that pursues culture.

Within that framework - we get universal human archetypes: the brash cocky ace pilot, the sombre woman with a sad past a stern family tradition and a conflict between her inner-femininity and her duties as a soldier, a boy who is sucked into a situation bigger than he can imagine, a happy go lucky grunt who thinks he's a hot shot but needs his friends to pull him out of the fire, a super talented pilot and gentleman, a pacifist hippie with a vicious side to him, a girl with big dreams about singing...

I could go on.

But the point is - all of these human archetypes are rooted in an understanding of universal authentic human traits inherent in universal human nature and independent of artificial distinctions such as nationality, ethnicity and culture.

This is something I really love about Macross and about anime in general - because it imagines a world - it gives us an image of the world where nothing that we take for granted exists beyond the human heart and that which is natural to the human heart. The context and artifices it builds around this world are totally alien to us - and in this sense they help pull us out of our artificial world and consider human nature as such.

By giving Gloval a Russian accent and generally by more firmly implanting the show into known ethnic/national archetypes - Robotech takes away from the original grand vision of Macross as described above.

So again - it's not a question of difference vs. homogeneity. But rather - what differences are we looking at.

Or to put it anothe way:

One guy is from Russia and the other guy is from China and they both have different languages, traditions, cultures etc etc etc.

A movie about how they learn to get along in spite of their fake, artificial and pointless historical differences would be boring.

Far more interesting - IMO - is what Macross does: relegate these places to Geographical facts and paint a picture of a character, a set of characters, interacting in a context where they are forced to be purely human - because that's really what the conflict with the Zendradi compels everyone to be.

This is particularly true of the Macross itself; of Macross City - as Minmey says "we're citizens of the Macross!"

and as those kids at the hamburger joint say "We were born on the Macross! We like it here! We don't wanna go back to Earth!"

It's all about creating a totally new vision of human beings and a new vision of organizing human life and a new vision of what human love and happiness really are.

Pete

[Jasonc]

The issue with Global's accent is interesting. With Robotech's latest "canon" (correct me if I'm wrong), Global was actually captain of a Russian sub, and was part of the military that the Russians were on during the unification wars. That would make him pretty educated, and probably did know english as a second language. In some reality, his accent to the story would work just fine, as being Russian. In the case for Khyron, well, when you have Greg Snegoff playing multiple voice roles, not only do you change pitch, but changing the accent a bit probably helps distinguish one voice from the other. Imagine if Khyron and Scott Bernard had the exact same voice.

[VFTF1]

Imagine if Khyron and Scott Bernard had the exact same voice

Wow. Yeah.

That would be as bad as if they were ...I dunno...say... characters from two completely unrelated anime.

Pete

[taksraven]

You know - this is just ANOTHER reason why I like the original Macross.... I mea - correct me if I'm wrong, but Global's Japanese doesn't have a russian accent, right?

I HATE silly stereotypical accents... it reminds me of Transformers: Cybertron - where Hasbro decided that since the Transformer were from various different planets, then it would make them sound alien and foriegn if they had...you know...FORIEGN accents! Australian Jetfire comes to mind here... horrible...

One of the things I really appreciate about anime in general is that it has an uncanny knack for reconstructing the world in accordance with the needs of the story and staying away from "real world" people, places, events etc - at least directly.

Via designs, geo-political generalities and good story telling, there are of course real world parallels everywhere - but ultimately - it's not our world - and rightly so.

To put a national stereotype character into Macross would, IMO, be stupid because if serves no purpose if there is no Russia or Soviet Union to speak of - and there isn't.

Never once in Macross do we find out that there's an America or a Russia or a China or anything - we just don't know what there is - we know that there's a U.N. and that the Unification Wars likely whiped away all prior national distinctions following ASS-1's crash. The war was waged over power - who gets what technology. This much is clear from Ivanov telling Nora that the UN was naive for wanting technology to be globably shared. So - we get the idea from Macross canon that the war was fought over power - who would have the power - one world government (UN Spacey) or individual nations?

Which nations doesn't therefore matter - because it had nothing to do with national heritage or culture or whatever - it was just about power.

And in the end - yes - the UN Spacey did become a military dictatorship - but notice how intelligently this was shown in Macross - it was not shown to be opressing any particular nation or national cultures - it was just monolithic and therefore oppressive for humanity as a whole - as if to communicate that independent of where power resides - it will corrupt and grow tyranical.

I really also like the fact that most anime look to the creation of a futuristic culture where human beings are not defined by nationalities and therefore I find the use of silly accents annoying.

Finally - insofar as lots of anime is specifically or particularly Japanese insofar as some behaviors...I dunno...I don't know enough about Japanese culture to know. But I DO know that - as I've mentioned before - the character designs are universal and not ethnically particular, and the culture? It has absolutely nothing to do with any nation - its also universal. Its' particular aspects (like the reverence for songstresses that became a cultural mainstay on Macross colonization vessels) grows out of the particular experiences of humanity in a given anime - combined with a genral universal human yearning for culture, knowledge etc etc etc.

Throwing in Russian or any other accents is arbitrary and shatters the magic of the futuristic science fiction vission IMO.

Pete

Multiculturalism in animated programs ALWAYS WORKS!!

Taksraven

[Gubaba]

The issue with Global's accent is interesting. With Robotech's latest "canon" (correct me if I'm wrong), Global was actually captain of a Russian sub, and was part of the military that the Russians were on during the unification wars. That would make him pretty educated, and probably did know english as a second language. In some reality, his accent to the story would work just fine, as being Russian. In the case for Khyron, well, when you have Greg Snegoff playing multiple voice roles, not only do you change pitch, but changing the accent a bit probably helps distinguish one voice from the other. Imagine if Khyron and Scott Bernard had the exact same voice.

The funny thing is that if you watch them all in Japanese, a lot of the characters DO have the same voices: Misa and Lana (Nova) and Houquet, Hikaru and Bowie, Shammy and Mint, Kaifun and Yellow, Kamujin and Andrzej (Angelo), Charles DeTouard (Sean Phillips) and Stick Bernard, Claudia and the Refles...there are probably more, as well.

[VFTF1]

I never even noticed that - but that might be because, not understanding Japanese, I don't have a good ear for intonation. Even when I'm trying to sing along and have romanized Japanese in front of me...my god...it's so difficult! (today I tried to sing along to Super Driver)...

But you know - a good voice actor can do multiple rolls. It's not just about the sound of somebody's voice - it's also about the voice matching the character, and the dramatic situation.

Truth be told, I have never even HEARD Global in Robotech...in fact...

wait...lemme go to youtube and try to watch a Robotech clip just for giggles...

hmm...ok...

Dear Harmony Gold:

Do you realize that because of your being so asanine - it's actually harder for me to watch Robotech on the internet than it is to watch Macross?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTfC4qxMUY8

Seriously...other than the damn Spanish version of Robotech - it's near ass impossible to find anything on youtube. I have no clue what hulu is and I think I wouldn't be able to use it anyways since I live overseas

The legal youtube channel...beats me...I dunno..and iTunes...I'm not going there... it doesn't work where I live....

anyways...

ok - I watched that clip and heard Global's voice.

Well..fine...it's a voice. It's not as bad as I imagined it might be.

In fact - in that clip, the translation is pretty faithful to the original except for in one important respect -

namely when the Zendradi scout ships get blown to smithereens - in Macross, Breetai says "what kind of weapons were those!?" and Exedol says something about how they're Reaction weapons - this kind of sets up the idea that the reason the future Macross is so important is because of Reaction weapons....

Can't have that here, of course - since only flowers matter

So we just get Breetai going "Look at that! That proves the ship is on the planet" and calling for his ships to advance...

And the music score... hm...

I'll grant the music score for Robotech is more dramatic in this clip than the stuff for Macross.

But in Macross, the music score was more MYSTERIOUS.

And good god that narrator at the beginning really spoils things. Sheesh. how about letting the story run its' course.

Besides - the narrator says that the Zendradi were bio-engineered...

in Robotech... who does that? The Robotech Masters?

I'm so confused.

I used to think dubs were great - until I started watching foriegn movies and TV and discovered how dubs often change everything around.

None of this would have happened if Harmony Gold had just SUBBED the damn anime.

And instead of putting the three of them together - they should have just done a Super Anime Show where they'd first show Macross, then Mospedea, then Southern Cross - just three anime shown one after the other..

Oh well....

I will say this:

Robotech the Macross Saga sure is better than Shadow Chronicles

Pete

[Jasonc]

The funny thing is that if you watch them all in Japanese, a lot of the characters DO have the same voices: Misa and Lana (Nova) and Houquet, Hikaru and Bowie, Shammy and Mint, Kaifun and Yellow, Kamujin and Andrzej (Angelo), Charles DeTouard (Sean Phillips) and Stick Bernard, Claudia and the Refles...there are probably more, as well.

That's the problem HG had when they decided to integrate 3 seperate series together. Especially with a small budget. While I think the VAs did just fine for Robotech, it still doesn't change the fact that yes, there are 3 seperate series that were more or less legally bootlegged together. Having the same VAs is fine for the Japanese series, cause they were simply different series. No harm, no foul. That's not to say that Robotech was all wrong with using same VAs to do different roles. The voices do seem to fit pretty well for the characters. Compare that to ADV's version of SDF:Macross...

[VFTF1]

Double Post:

Ok --- THIS is epic!! It's like they took bad Italian Porn and mixed it with ...I dunno how to classify Rebecca West (or whatever her name is) singing...

This is aweseomEE!!

Go watch this guys - it has all the nationalities in the world mixed into one!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSHeIuelNM...feature=related

ROTFL !

Pete

[Jasonc]

Double Post:

Ok --- THIS is epic!! It's like they took bad Italian Porn and mixed it with ...I dunno how to classify Rebecca West (or whatever her name is) singing...

This is aweseomEE!!

Go watch this guys - it has all the nationalities in the world mixed into one!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSHeIuelNM...feature=related

ROTFL !

Pete

Yep, doesn't seem like they put in the same work for the foreign languages as they did with the english. However, I do know that Robotech en espanol is quite popular. Supposedly, those VAs did a great job, although, I've never seen an episode, just small clips of it. Supposedly, they're working on putting out an official spanish release of the show. Don't know if they're getting the spanish VAs to do their roles again, or do cleanup or not.

[Robelwell202]

Double Post:

Ok --- THIS is epic!! It's like they took bad Italian Porn and mixed it with ...I dunno how to classify Rebecca West (or whatever her name is) singing...

This is aweseomEE!!

Go watch this guys - it has all the nationalities in the world mixed into one!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSHeIuelNM...feature=related

ROTFL !

Pete

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

[Einherjar]

And good god that narrator at the beginning really spoils things. Sheesh. how about letting the story run its' course.

Best to think of him as Carl Macek ramming his version of the show down your throat because he thought the audience were idiots back then. And he plays favorites in the love triangle really early on too, so forget subtlety in any of it.

Edited December 30, 2009 by Einherjar

[Seto Kaiba]

Best to think of him as Carl Macek ramming his version of the show down your throat because he thought the audience were idiots back then. And he plays favorites in the love triangle really early on too, so forget subtlety in any of it.

Probably the best way to interpret the narrator, yes... though in all honestly the narrator's not even terribly useful for that purpose, since his dialogue is shot through with the same screwball mistakes that pepper all of the show's dialogue, and on more than one occasion those errors leave the narrator's dialogue at odds with what's actually happening onscreen. I guess the story was so disjointed that a recap segment at the start of each episode would've been right out, leaving them to the only remaining alternative... force-feeding the audience a narrated digest version during the early establishing shots.