HG and Robotech Debates

[terry the lone wolf]

What does it mean to be creative? Does being creative means to copy word for word from the original scripts and no deviation from the source material or does it mean adding your own sensibilities(your spin)and not being held back by the restraints of the original source?

Or is this a battle between subtitled and dubbed anime. In every dubbed anime liberties are taken to the Japanese language scripts to make them sound more English/American. I don't feel you ever get a direct translation with dub anime. In subs with the "Engrish" ommitted you get material closer to the original source.

Me personally I'm not looking for an experience closer to the Japanese fans; I just want good stories that engages me.

Edited July 4, 2010 by terry the lone wolf

[azrael]

Or is this a battle between subtitled and dubbed anime. In every dubbed anime liberties are taken to the Japanese language scripts to make them sound more English/American. I don't feel you ever get a direct translation with dub anime. In subs with the "Engrish" ommitted you get material closer to the original source.

I don't think they were trying to put themselves in the dub-v-sub debate, more like making commentary on dubs in general. While dubs have some inaccuracies due to matching words to lips, they still try to maintain some accuracy to the original dialog, especially with anime released these days. Kramer seems to have leaned toward the argument of why match what the Japanese want and just use your own dialog. Just make it all English. At which point, the thought comes to mind, "Well why not just animate your own damn show if you're gonna go through the trouble of coming up with your own dialog." Look at Power Rangers. Of the few more recent episodes I've seen of compared to their Sentai origins (Whatever they used from Gekirangers, Dekaranger, Hurricanger), Power Rangers have in actually thrown out most of the suit-action, retaining only the mech combat. They re-did their own henshins, their own stunt sequences, on top of their own non-action sequences. That's an example of a current popular franchise which seems to not fit Kramer's idea of a good show. After a certain point, Power Rangers stopped using the Sentai villains and plots so that also puts holes into the idea of keeping the story and throwing out the dialog.

[Funkenstein]

Did that Youtube have the section where Tommy or Steve asks people in the seats to email Kevin if they work for or have a connection with a place or someone who can make the decisions to distribute Robotech? That was a far, and sad reach for "Hey, we wanna be cool again. Can you fans help us?" Came off very unprofessional in my opinion. The Carl Macek stuff and stuff he was working on was interesting. At least he had the mindset to move forward with something, not just sit stagnant and pretend to be doing stuff.

They can call my toilet, thats where I "distribute" robotech.

BTW, it looks like the May'n concert was a smash success. And Yoko Kano was there too. I wonder when Robotech will get a Reba concert.

[Seto Kaiba]

Also, an unintentional burn towards Tommy Yune by Kramer. I thought Tommy was actually Carl's successor this whole time. Does that mean everything he's done for Robotech has been BS and they knew it?

Y'know... that completely slipped by me until you pointed it out. It would be pretty easy to read that as a subtle dig at what Tommy's done with Robotech since he was given the post of creative director back in 2001. True, he did what Macek couldn't and actually managed to get Robotech's first animated sequel successfully released, but it's no stretch at all to call it a legitimized piece of Sentinels fan-fiction, since the entire movie is made from characters and set pieces poached without shame from both the Sentinels TV series materials and the comic books.

With the Robotechies wanting more Robotech and no Macross, I find that the two fences on nostalgia are strong here. In regards to the Macross sequels, the Robotechies are in the "We don't like it because it's not the same as it used to", "RUINED FOREVER" and so on. We Macrossers are in the crowd of "we like the sequels because of (insert blank) even though it sucks" and so on.

Now that's a dubious statement... especially given that every time Harmony Gold has put up a poll about what saga is the favorite, the result is inevitably the Macross Saga by an enormous margin. What the Robotech fans want, as anyone who's interacted with them as much as I have can tell you, is for future Robotech shows to basically be Macross in everything but name. They want the continuing adventures of Rick and Lisa Hunter, of Max and Miriya Sterling, and the other mooks who survived the end of the Macross Saga. They've been dangling Rick Hunter out there like a particularly grizzled carrot to get people interested in the Shadow Chronicles movie.

With regard to the Macross sequels, the Robotech fans largely don't want 'em because they've been told by Harmony Gold that they're inferior to Robotech, and are blinded by nostalgia, or just find something offensive about Japanese cultural references in the shows. They want more comfortably Americanized shows in the same vein as Macross, but under the Robotech name. Whereas Macross fans are generally operating in the realm of "I like the sequels, except (NAME)", where (NAME) almost invariably is either Macross II or Macross 7.

BTW, it looks like the May'n concert was a smash success. And Yoko Kano was there too. I wonder when Robotech will get a Reba concert.

Never... if memory serves, Rebecca Forstadt said on her blog that she was rather ashamed of the quality of her vocal performance in Robotech and that even when they were originally recording her singing she knew she was bad at it... and that they had to get her a bit buzzed before she could record her songs.

[chrisk]

Hey, can anybody encircle who is MEMO or any other similarly crazy fanperson who left their spouse, children or job to ogle at how old all the Robotech people are?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4596456&id=234880208284

[BeyondTheGrave]

Hey, can anybody encircle who is MEMO or any other similarly crazy fanperson who left their spouse, children or job to ogle at how old all the Robotech people are?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4596456&id=234880208284

MEMO is off camera.

I'm saying that just by how the video was shot.

[Einherjar]

With all the talk of RT at AX, I can't help but think that Yune is now facing the problems just like Rick Berman was doing Star Trek during the airing of "Enterprise". With the amount of bad fanservice found in TSC, it's about as bad as T'Pol in a catsuit. You know what, HG should hire Rick Berman since the guy's unemployed and likes writing stories revovling about technobabble and saying that all humans are awesome.

I disagree, that happened because most of the staff had been working continuously on content for the franchise since 1987, starting with The Next Generation. As someone who watched the journey to the end, it must have been very stressful to come up with a season's worth of storylines year after year. And remember, some of those years had two shows running at the same time as well as a movie in production. A breaking point was inevitable.

I believe Robotech is facing a very unique situation, all caused by Harmony Gold themselves, that other franchises have never dealt with and probably won't because they actually have their act together.

Edited July 5, 2010 by Einherjar

[JB0]

True, he did what Macek couldn't and actually managed to get Robotech's first animated sequel successfully released...

I'm sorry? What about Robotech 2: The Sentinels?

Was it a truncated TV movie made from 3 episodes worth of content that ended as the story actually began? Well, yes.

Did it actually get made and released? Yeah. I think I still have my taped-off-the-air copy from way back when somewhere... complete with thunderstorm warnings!

From what I hear, Shadow Chronicles isn't complete either, so... the first point's not really relevant.

And The Sentinels had higher production standards and robot wolves, so it's CLEARLY the better product.

Tommy Yune: Failing even to achieve his achievements.

[Seto Kaiba]

I believe Robotech is facing a very unique situation, all caused by Harmony Gold themselves, that other franchises have never dealt with and probably won't because they actually have their act together.

I'd be inclined to agree with what you have to say, though I wouldn't be quite so hasty as to lay the blame for EVERY obstacle the Robotech franchise has encountered at Harmony Gold's door. All the same, there's no denying that the overwhelming majority of the problems besetting the Robotech franchise are the result of their ineptitude and arrogance. The heart of their problem will always be beyond their control. That the show itself is composed of source material they don't own is, above all other concerns, going to limit the potential avenues for continuing the series dramatically. Everything else that's standing in their way is the result of a set of business practices that are practically an itemized list of things no business should ever do, and thus is their own fault.

I'm sorry? What about Robotech 2: The Sentinels?

Now, you raise a valid point here... it's a question of how you define "success". By any rational standard, Robotech II: the Sentinels was a failure. The final product we got wasn't what they'd intended to make. It was hastily slapped together by Harmony Gold as a means of salvaging what they could from the project as it came crashing down around their ears, put out to recoup the losses incurred by the project's failure. Now, whether or not you want to call Harmony Gold's unwillingness to continue the story with a sequel a failure for the story arc as a whole, the fact remains that, for better or worse, the Shadow Chronicles movie was the result of a project that was carried all the way through to completion and released. It was, in the most basic terms, a success, whereas Sentinels was a failure.

Putting aside subjective judgments of the content, there's a world of difference between kicking a literal abortion out the door and releasing a completed product.

And The Sentinels had higher production standards and robot wolves, so it's CLEARLY the better product.

Not sure about the higher production standards... even for its day Sentinels was animated rather poorly. Just as with Shadow Chronicles, they definitely did NOT get their studio's first string animators.

Tommy Yune: Failing even to achieve his achievements.

And the hilarious thing is that Yune has still achieved far more in his brief tenure as creative director than Macek did in something like fifteen years.

[j_wong00]

Sure you can... the internet produces thousands of talentless fan-fiction writers every year, many of whom have no respect whatsoever for the works they bastardize. The lot of them are already operating on Macek's level in terms of both creativity (or rather, the lack thereof) and artistic integrity. At the end of the day, Robotech is nothing more than a badly written piece of Macross-Southern Cross-Mospeada crossover fan-fiction granted partial legitimacy via a licensing agreement.

Here is a rare occurrence where I'm defending fan fiction writers:

1 - They fully acknowledge the work of the creators, and they do NOT own them.

2 - Distributed for free (or at least non-profit).

Which of course, totally doesn't apply to RT.

[HappyPenguins]

And the hilarious thing is that Yune has still achieved far more in his brief tenure as creative director than Macek did in something like fifteen years.

Yune's "achievement" was nothing more than a personal fanwank with a budget

and while the turd was still polished and released, it's still a turd.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 - They fully acknowledge the work of the creators, and they do NOT own them.

Granted, many do... but merely acknowledging that the characters and set pieces that they so ardently molest are not of their own creation is not the same thing as showing respect for the original work. In virtually all cases, it's nothing more than a simple disclaimer intended to keep the lawyers away, inserted simply out of habit or because the website on which the fan-fiction is hosted requires it to ensure their asses are covered. Of course, if fan-fiction writers actually respected the integrity of the original work, we wouldn't have things like Mary Sues and author-insert fan-fiction, or at least they wouldn't be as common.

2 - Distributed for free (or at least non-profit).

Not always... and, of course, there are plenty of sites that use fan-fiction hosting to help keep their operating expenses down and/or turn a profit via banner ads and various stats-tracking tools. Again, the not-for-profit nature of most fan-fiction still really boils down to keeping the rights-holder's lawyers off the fan-fiction writer's back.

Yune's "achievement" was nothing more than a personal fanwank with a budget

and while the turd was still polished and released, it's still a turd.

And you'll never hear me say otherwise... though, as I said, addressing Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles as the first real sequel to Robotech's TV series is done on the grounds that, unlike all the attempts that preceded it, Shadow Chronicles was completed and released according to plan. Subjective judgments of quality and the show's dubious claims of originality are immaterial in the face of the fact that it's the only Robotech to ever be finished and released normally.

Of course, once we delve into the realm of the actual content and it immediately becomes evident that the movie is a godawful mess shat out by a clique of "writers" who ought to be forbidden near a writing implement again for the rest of their natural lives. That it was "inspired" (ripped off from) the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and made up of characters and set pieces shamelessly poached from Robotech II: the Sentinels certainly does nothing to make it an attractive option for the prospective viewer, but you'd have a hard (impossible) time finding a Robotech sequel that isn't a crime against cinema or at the very least painful and nauseating to watch.

[Seto Kaiba]

On a generally unrelated note, the handful of active members left on Robotech.com are now starting to spazz out because Harmony Gold added a tiny and dim "Coming Soon" graphic to the right of Shadow Chronicles on the series navigation bar.

[HappyPenguins]

On a generally unrelated note, the handful of active members left on Robotech.com are now starting to spazz out because Harmony Gold added a tiny and dim "Coming Soon" graphic to the right of Shadow Chronicles on the series navigation bar.

OMFGGGG NO WAI!!!!!!!

[JB0]

Now, you raise a valid point here... it's a question of how you define "success". By any rational standard, Robotech II: the Sentinels was a failure. The final product we got wasn't what they'd intended to make. It was hastily slapped together by Harmony Gold as a means of salvaging what they could from the project as it came crashing down around their ears, put out to recoup the losses incurred by the project's failure. Now, whether or not you want to call Harmony Gold's unwillingness to continue the story with a sequel a failure for the story arc as a whole, the fact remains that, for better or worse, the Shadow Chronicles movie was the result of a project that was carried all the way through to completion and released. It was, in the most basic terms, a success, whereas Sentinels was a failure.

Fair enough.

But.... robot WOLVES!

Seriously, I want to see toys of the inorganics(I think that's what they were called). NEVER gonna happen(especially not at any decent quality), but I want to see 'em.

Not sure about the higher production standards... even for its day Sentinels was animated rather poorly. Just as with Shadow Chronicles, they definitely did NOT get their studio's first string animators.

Admittedly, it's been many years since I watched it. I don't remember anything as garishly offensive from a purely technical standpoint as I've heard Shadow Chronicles has(I gather the low-budget CG is especially atrocious).

Obviously, from an aesthetic perspective, Shadow Chronicles benefits greatly from not having Super Buckethead/Breetai.

...

Man, you're gonna make me dig the tape out at this rate.

[Seto Kaiba]

Seriously, I want to see toys of the inorganics(I think that's what they were called). NEVER gonna happen(especially not at any decent quality), but I want to see 'em.

Now there's a desire I'll never be able to understand... I always found the designs that Tatsunoko helped create for Robotech II: the Sentinels appallingly ugly, and the Invid inorganics were at the top of the list.

Admittedly, it's been many years since I watched it. I don't remember anything as garishly offensive from a purely technical standpoint as I've heard Shadow Chronicles has(I gather the low-budget CG is especially atrocious).

From a purely technical standpoint, there was nothing wrong with most of the attempts to revive Robotech except that they had the overall poor quality one would expect of a film produced on a shoestring budget by incompetent idiots. The bulk of the glaringly awful stuff was in the story, and the designs for the characters and mecha.

Obviously, from an aesthetic perspective, Shadow Chronicles benefits greatly from not having Super Buckethead/Breetai.

Sure, the Shadow Chronicles movie was free of bucket-wearing Breetais, but the story arc itself is not. The aforementioned blue-skinned buckethead does show up in Prelude, where he's promptly killed off in an exercise intended to get as many leftover Macross characters out of the picture as possible. Exedore shows up and dies too, though he now looks like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with slightly longer hair.

[JB0]

Sure, the Shadow Chronicles movie was free of bucket-wearing Breetais, but the story arc itself is not. The aforementioned blue-skinned buckethead does show up in Prelude, where he's promptly killed off in an exercise intended to get as many leftover Macross characters out of the picture as possible. Exedore shows up and dies too, though he now looks like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with slightly longer hair.

Oh. Well, then...

...

They seriously reused the buckethead design? Geez...

[Seto Kaiba]

They seriously reused the buckethead design? Geez...

Indeed they did... very few of the designs Ippei Kuri created for the failed Robotech II: the Sentinels series were updated and reused in Shadow Chronicles, though Breetai's bucket was one they opted to keep. Like the other Macross holdovers, he appeared only briefly and was abruptly disposed of. The only things that really changed when he was updated was he's got the same spandex-clad superhero thing going on that all the other characters do, and his old uniform was replaced by the standard RTSC jumpsuit.

[VF5SS]

What does it mean to be creative?

it means not pissing off the people who ultimately own a key part of your franchise

[terry the lone wolf]

it means not pissing off the people who ultimately own a key part of your franchise

So, you don't know either...Next!

[azrael]

OMFGGGG NO WAI!!!!!!!

Hold on...

big news...big news...big big news...rt.com changed their sc-logo to coming soon....

...naw, coffee ain't working.

[Einherjar]

So, you don't know either...Next!

But I thought it really summed up how a franchise goes from 85 episodes to a scrap of artwork to attract people... and a box.

[Funkenstein]

Its going to be a picture of a full armor legios. And it'll have GN Particles.

[BeyondTheGrave]

But I thought it really summed up how a franchise goes from 85 episodes to a scrap of artwork to attract people... and a box.

HG and Lego Mega Blocks Duplo team up to make robotech inspired kits.

Edited July 6, 2010 by BeyondTheGrave

[VF5SS]

So, you don't know either...Next!

You know the way you bend over backwards trying to justify everything about Robotech is getting old.

[Dynaman]

On a generally unrelated note, the handful of active members left on Robotech.com are now starting to spazz out because Harmony Gold added a tiny and dim "Coming Soon" graphic to the right of Shadow Chronicles on the series navigation bar.

Reminds me - a month or so before the SciFi channel went live they showed a screen full of static, but in the static was pictures from scifi movies and TV shows. Sadly I "watched" quite a bit of that...

[terry the lone wolf]

But I thought it really summed up how a franchise goes from 85 episodes to a scrap of artwork to attract people... and a box.

Oh, you must have forgot that the 1st time Macross F was promoted was sketches and pre-production artwork......

[Robelwell202]

Oh, you must have forgot that the 1st time Macross F was promoted was sketches and pre-production artwork......

I sincerely doubt that MacF's promotion was forgotten. More to the fact, people were actually GLAD to see these promotional pieces, because they knew there would actually be something substantial coming, as opposed to a never-ending stream of "We're working on it. I can't say anything about it, but we're working on it." -- K.McKeever,

[Seto Kaiba]

big news...big news...big big news...rt.com changed their sc-logo to coming soon....

Hey... azrael is secretly Elmo Kridanik!

But I thought it really summed up how a franchise goes from 85 episodes to a scrap of artwork to attract people... and a box.

Just think of it as "scalable marketing". The amount of effort and thought they put into their generally futile attempts to get someone to care about what they're doing nowadays seems to be inversely proportional to the size and desperation level of the fanbase. Now that they've whittled the fanbase down to almost nothing and ensured that those who are left are both devoted to the franchise no matter what and starved for new content, they know they can get by with the bare minimum amount of effort... a scrap of artwork and a cardboard box full of surplus merchandise.

Its going to be a picture of a full armor legios. And it'll have GN Particles.

No no no... "protoculture" particles. After all, the fans'll believe anything so long as you say protoculture is at the bottom of it. It's so ill-defined that there's no problem with doing that either...

Oh, you must have forgot that the 1st time Macross F was promoted was sketches and pre-production artwork......

Promoted with sketches, pre-production artwork, and frank discussion about what they were doing with the series... and it was a hell of a lot more than just one piece of art. The creators of Macross Frontier put a fair bit out there to stir up interest in their new show, whereas Robotech's "creators" can do no more than toss out a badly drawn picture of a Mospeada character and say "We have something that might be coming in 2011 but we're not allowed to show you anything relevant to it or even actually tell you anything about it".

Can you see where this might be different? If not, then you might be more at home over on Robotech.com.

[terry the lone wolf]

Promoted with sketches, pre-production artwork, and frank discussion about what they were doing with the series... and it was a hell of a lot more than just one piece of art. The creators of Macross Frontier put a fair bit out there to stir up interest in their new show, whereas Robotech's "creators" can do no more than toss out a badly drawn picture of a Mospeada character and say "We have something that might be coming in 2011 but we're not allowed to show you anything relevant to it or even actually tell you anything about it".

Can you see where this might be different? If not, then you might be more at home over on Robotech.com.

Yes, there was a treasure trove of information at the beginning like it might be set in school.

So you get to pick and choose who are the members of Macross World?

[Seto Kaiba]

Yes, there was a treasure trove of information at the beginning like it might be set in school.

Even if the only piece of information we'd gotten were just that tiny tidbit, we'd still have gotten more from Macross Frontier's creators than Robotech fans have gotten from Harmony Gold about their latest abortion that may or may not actually be in production. Hell, they even made more of an effort with Shadow Chronicles, though even that was just three or four pieces of concept art, mostly for minor characters, and one tiny picture barely bigger than a postage stamp that depicted a fighter design they didn't even use. Are you still having difficulty seeing the difference here? I can explain in more depth if you are.

So you get to pick and choose who are the members of Macross World?

No, it was just a polite suggestion... I would, after all, be quite concerned if this was making you uncomfortable, and thus suggested an alternate venue where factually unsound defenses of Robotech would be welcomed with open arms.

Edited July 6, 2010 by Seto Kaiba

[chrisk]

Has the Robotech franchise really come to this? That a teeny tiny "Coming Soon" JPEG is enough to make the hardcore Robotech fans prematurely orgasm?

[Einherjar]

Nevertheless, I'd follow what news sources say or not say about recent events. Bloggers, twitters, and podcasters may find it significant enough to talk about, but if places like Anime News Network don't, it probably doesn't mean anything. If you want to be more positive about it, it probably doesn't mean anything, yet.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2010/anime-expo

'>

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2010/anime-expo

Then people will say HG is waiting for a bigger event to reveal something to blow people's minds, like Comic-Con. Someone please clarify to me the order of importance of yearly conventions for something like this.

Edited July 6, 2010 by Einherjar

[azrael]

No no no... "protoculture" particles. After all, the fans'll believe anything so long as you say protoculture is at the bottom of it. It's so ill-defined that there's no problem with doing that either...

Protoculture particles would work much better than where they were trying to get it from. Just think, then we'll have Protoculture swords, Protoculture beam guns, Protoculture beam sabers, Protoculture missiles, Protoculture fields, Protoculture drives, etc... the Protoculture possibilities are endless.

Then people will say HG is waiting for a bigger event to reveal something to blow people's minds, like Comic-Con. Someone please clarify to me the order of importance of yearly conventions for something like this.

At that point, why didn't they just say "Comic-con" in all their answers....But if they're not ready to announce anything, chances of SDCC being somewhat the same as AX2010 are fairly high.

[Seto Kaiba]

Has the Robotech franchise really come to this? That a teeny tiny "Coming Soon" JPEG is enough to make the hardcore Robotech fans prematurely orgasm?

Pretty much, yeah... the hardcore fans have been thrashing around protesting that they really are working on something new for a while now, so this little "coming soon" JPEG probably feels like vindication to them.

Protoculture particles would work much better than where they were trying to get it from. Just think, then we'll have Protoculture swords, Protoculture beam guns, Protoculture beam sabers, Protoculture missiles, Protoculture fields, Protoculture drives, etc... the Protoculture possibilities are endless.

Oh hell... I've opened up a bottomless pit of protoculture-themed technology.

At that point, why didn't they just say "Comic-con" in all their answers....But if they're not ready to announce anything, chances of SDCC being somewhat the same as AX2010 are fairly high.

They're NEVER ready to announce anything... hell, if you take them at their word they've only got the Twitter feed so they can sidestep the incredibly long approvals process they need to wade through to get stuff up on their own website.