New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)

[Lorindor]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

After the most recent posts I have to agree. Actually I'm going to go with terrifying - I don't want my Macross turned into a hentai dammit.

Who said anything about hentai?

[Seto Kaiba]

21 hours ago, Marzan said:

 I don't think you can expect that from a Macross production. The series in general can be pretty camp as it is and I would expect any LGBTQ characters to behave in predictably stereotypical over the top ways.

I think that the intention of Kawamori and the writers this time around was precisely not making her an asskicker. Every member of that family we've seen behind the stick has been a natural (even Mylene flew well), and this time around they some emphasis on how Mirage not only isn't anything special, but probably never will be. She's a 'try hard and give it all you've got' kind of character and I think that threw a curveball to most old school fans who expected a Jenus to be a genius.

The annoying thing about that is the fact that the obligation to have a Jenius in every Macross series combined with the apparent limit of one Token Girl Teammate means that if you want the gals in the cast to actually DO something besides sing from the sidelines your only option is the Jenius du jour.  I appreciate that the damsel in distress is a classic storytelling technique, and Japan loves its barrier maiden trope, but I'd personally like to see this setting, in which the Zentradi have all-female elite forces, cough up a few more female pilots.  The (New) UN Forces doesn't bar women from frontline combat service, so where are they?

The Macross II: Lovers Again OVA and its prequels didn't seem to have a problem with it, and the light novels, manga, and video games that've been made for Kawamori's chronology have cheerfully included loads of 'em, but the animation seems reluctant to include them.

[ZOR prime]

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The annoying thing about that is the fact that the obligation to have a Jenius in every Macross series combined with the apparent limit of one Token Girl Teammate means that if you want the gals in the cast to actually DO something besides sing from the sidelines your only option is the Jenius du jour.  I appreciate that the damsel in distress is a classic storytelling technique, and Japan loves its barrier maiden trope, but I'd personally like to see this setting, in which the Zentradi have all-female elite forces, cough up a few more female pilots.  The (New) UN Forces doesn't bar women from frontline combat service, so where are they?

The Macross II: Lovers Again OVA and its prequels didn't seem to have a problem with it, and the light novels, manga, and video games that've been made for Kawamori's chronology have cheerfully included loads of 'em, but the animation seems reluctant to include them.

Robotech.com is back.

But that's all I will say

 

[Podtastic]

14 hours ago, Lorindor said:

Who said anything about hentai?

Who says anyone did? Its just where I fear things may eventually end up if there is too much focus on sexuality.

I want the focus to be kept on the mecha and battles.

[Lorindor]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

Who says anyone did? Its just where I fear things may eventually end up if there is too much focus on sexuality.

I want the focus to be kept on the mecha and battles.

It's Macross. There will always be relationship drama.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Who says anyone did? Its just where I fear things may eventually end up if there is too much focus on sexuality.

I want the focus to be kept on the mecha and battles.

If you were to ask Kawamori, he'd tell you flat out that the focus has never been on mecha and battles.

As he would, and has, put it the focus of Macross has always been on the love story.  All that stuff with space battles and transforming fighters is just an expansive backdrop for the all-important romance to play out on.

[anime52k8]

22 hours ago, Lorindor said:

Who said anything about hentai?

What's wrong with hentai?

[Lorindor]

6 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

What's wrong with hentai?

If the question is rhetoric, the meaning eludes me. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, as I see it. But there's many different types of hentai and there's definitely problematic examples out there. But that's very much off topic.

But I agree with Podtastic that outright hentai content, as in explicit, pornographic sex scenes, don't really belong in Macross. I just don't get how he got those fears from the most recent posts.

[Podtastic]

1 hour ago, Lorindor said:

If the question is rhetoric, the meaning eludes me. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, as I see it. But there's many different types of hentai and there's definitely problematic examples out there. But that's very much off topic.

But I agree with Podtastic that outright hentai content, as in explicit, pornographic sex scenes, don't really belong in Macross. I just don't get how he got those fears from the most recent posts.

Maybe I'm just paranoid.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth after the sex scene in Batman the Killing joke animated movie.

 

 

 

[Mommar]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If you were to ask Kawamori, he'd tell you flat out that the focus has never been on mecha and battles.

As he would, and has, put it the focus of Macross has always been on the love story.  All that stuff with space battles and transforming fighters is just an expansive backdrop for the all-important romance to play out on.

The problem with this is he puts so much effort into designing the mecha with real world characteristics, even building models from Lego's that will actually transform, that none of us are inclined to believe him.  Or at the very least that focus is giving all of us mecha/battle fans some spectacular mixed-messages.  There's an awful lot of focus on designing war machines he doesn't want to actually have perform for us.

[Gerli]

3 hours ago, Mommar said:

The problem with this is he puts so much effort into designing the mecha with real world characteristics, even building models from Lego's that will actually transform, that none of us are inclined to believe him.  Or at the very least that focus is giving all of us mecha/battle fans some spectacular mixed-messages.  There's an awful lot of focus on designing war machines he doesn't want to actually have perform for us.

He also make 100% working Waifus with legos, but we don't see those. 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Mommar said:

The problem with this is he puts so much effort into designing the mecha with real world characteristics, even building models from Lego's that will actually transform, that none of us are inclined to believe him.  Or at the very least that focus is giving all of us mecha/battle fans some spectacular mixed-messages.  There's an awful lot of focus on designing war machines he doesn't want to actually have perform for us.

The aircraft designs are, as we know, his personal passion... but Macross has always revolved around the love story first and foremost.  The war, and the characters involvement in it, always serves mainly to advance the love story.

It's not like Macross is the only series where parts of the audience miss the forest for the trees.  Star Trek has that perennial problem where its audience misses the allegory and social commentary that were the main reason for its existence because they're distracted by the sci-fi shiny bits.  (I'm frequently guilty of that myself.)

Edited July 31, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Podtastic]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The aircraft designs are, as we know, his personal passion... but Macross has always revolved around the love story first and foremost.  The war, and the characters involvement in it, always serves mainly to advance the love story.

It's not like Macross is the only series where parts of the audience miss the forest for the trees.  Star Trek has that perennial problem where its audience misses the allegory and social commentary that were the main reason for its existence because they're distracted by the sci-fi shiny bits.  (I'm frequently guilty of that myself.)

Well colour me distracted because what hooked me in Macross was the concept of the Zentraedi in SDFM. In terms of my personal aesthetics their military machine was on par with that of the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

That being said, I have wondered whether the Zentraedi in SDFM are not an allegory of the US military forces in WW2.

 

 

 

 

[Convectuoso]

If the love story was really Kawamori's focus for Delta, then he failed completely. The love triangle was forced and sucked terribly. The only good thing about Delta was the VFs design.

[Zx31]

...and I think the love triangle in Delta was handled the best out of all of the shows so far, so to each is own I guess.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Well colour me distracted because what hooked me in Macross was the concept of the Zentraedi in SDFM. In terms of my personal aesthetics their military machine was on par with that of the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

Yeah, it's pretty easy for me to get distracted by it sometimes too... especially considering the sheer amount of detail Kawamori and Chiba pour into the mecha, which goes way beyond just about every other mecha series I've worked on translations for.  Make no mistake, even if Macross is truly a love story first and mecha series second, the mecha are themselves a labor of love for the creative staff.

(Mind you, I'm pretty darn sure the Zentradi Army monstrously outnumbers and outguns the Galactic Empire... I've never really found another sci-fi series where there is an antagonist that has THAT kind of manpower behind it, with billions of ships and tens of trillions of clone soldiers.  It really drives home how a pangalactic civilization could be wiped out in the space of just a couple years, when you have clone armies that large fighting.)

 

 

2 hours ago, Podtastic said:

That being said, I have wondered whether the Zentraedi in SDFM are not an allegory of the US military forces in WW2.

I doubt it.  Kawamori's never been one for that kind of allegory, and his Aesops are usually delivered with all the subtlety of a half-brick to the head (e.g. Macross Dynamite 7's "save the whales").

(Plus, usually when there ARE World War II allegorical links being drawn in anime, the Japanese or ersatz-Japanese characters always seem to land on the Allies' side.  The original Mobile Suit Gundam is an incredibly blatant example of this, with Japan and the Japanese characters explicitly on the Federation side and Zeon being essentially just "Space Nazi Germany".  In a few titles I know of where characters somehow end up sent back in time to World War II, it usually takes the form of "the folly of our ancestors" with the characters attempting to stay out of the war for fear that if they intervened Japan wouldn't be able to throw off its imperialism, etc.)

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Convectuoso said:

If the love story was really Kawamori's focus for Delta, then he failed completely. The love triangle was forced and sucked terribly. The only good thing about Delta was the VFs design.

53 minutes ago, Zx31 said:

...and I think the love triangle in Delta was handled the best out of all of the shows so far, so to each is own I guess.

IMO, the love triangle in Macross Delta suffered from the same problem the one in Macross Frontier did: it was incredibly one-sided.

Like Ranka in the TV series, Mirage was marginalized by her opposite number to the extent that she never really got any time with the main character that wasn't about the other girl to some extent.  The characters were interesting, but from about the fourth or fifth episode it was incredibly obvious that Mirage was not going to win that the love triangle was almost in-name-only.  Like Sheryl, Freyja got all the screen time, all the character development, and all the alone time with the protagonist while the other only really managed "clingy jealous girl" and "can't spit it out".

[Zx31]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IMO, the love triangle in Macross Delta suffered from the same problem the one in Macross Frontier did: it was incredibly one-sided.

You aren't wrong, I just think Mirage handled it a lot better than Ranka, though she is older. Also, the triangles have been one sided since 7, except in 7 it wasn't so much a triangle as a line from Gamlin -> Mylene -> Basara -> Basara's Singing

Edited July 31, 2017 by Zx31

[Mommar]

7 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, it's pretty easy for me to get distracted by it sometimes too... especially considering the sheer amount of detail Kawamori and Chiba pour into the mecha, which goes way beyond just about every other mecha series I've worked on translations for.  Make no mistake, even if Macross is truly a love story first and mecha series second, the mecha are themselves a labor of love for the creative staff.

After the hand-wavium you've proven my point exactly, there's TOO MUCH effort put into something he apparently doesn't want to show us.  That's a gigantic mixed-message.  If he loves aircraft and puts detail into aircraft and makes shows featuring this don't make a show with said highly detailed aircraft and then tell us to watch the poorly-conceived love-triangle off in the corner when we all ask why we can't see the detailed aircraft.

[Zx31]

6 minutes ago, Mommar said:

After the hand-wavium you've proven my point exactly, there's TOO MUCH effort put into something he apparently doesn't want to show us.  That's a gigantic mixed-message.  If he loves aircraft and puts detail into aircraft and makes shows featuring this don't make a show with said highly detailed aircraft and then tell us to watch the poorly-conceived love-triangle off in the corner when we all ask why we can't see the detailed aircraft.

Just because supporting elements get a lot of attention doesnt mean they are the focus. A lot of good fiction has very detailed supporting elements that are rarely shown or mentioned. It helps that Valkyries sell merch, though.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Zx31

[frothymug]

57 minutes ago, Zx31 said:

Just because supporting elements get a lot of attention doesnt mean they are the focus. A lot of good fiction has very detailed supporting elements that are rarely shown or mentioned. It helps that Valkyries sell merch, though.

Starship Troopers is a good example of this.

[Master Dex]

I think Seto is entirely on point. On the subject of Delta basically doing the same thing with the love triangle as Frontier, perhaps even worse really: It was said once Kawamori wanted to drop the love triangle element in this show originally but the studio demanded it so he wrote this one in. It is entirely possible he basically phoned it in as such.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, frothymug said:

Starship Troopers is a good example of this.

Star Trek is a fantastic example of it... reams and reams of technical detail go into developing the setting, most of which never come up except as part of lists of THOU SHALT NOTs that the writers are expected to comply with.

99.9% of this technical material being developed for Macross never shows up or is even mentioned in the shows, it's entirely for the consumption of the fans and guidance for the animators about what a mecha can or can't do.

[Kyp Durron]

20 hours ago, Zx31 said:

You aren't wrong, I just think Mirage handled it a lot better than Ranka, though she is older. Also, the triangles have been one sided since 7, except in 7 it wasn't so much a triangle as a line from Gamlin -> Mylene -> Basara -> Basara's Singing

A "Love triangle" is supposed to keep you guessing as long as possible, preferably till either the very end or close to it. A one sided triangle isn't a triangle, it's a constant obvious couple paring + third wheel tag-a-long, which isn't fun or suspenseful at all, just incredibly PAINFUL to watch from start to finish.

In the name of the "Hoary Froating Head", PLEASE MAKE A frakkING REAL TRIANGLE THIS TIME OR DON'T BOTHER AT ALL, KTHNX.

[Marzan]

The problem with the triangle in Delta vis a vis Frontier, is that the characters were simply not as well fleshed out and put together. There was a certain tangible feeling to them, that Delta characters didn't have. Frontier had more solid writing and directing from top to bottom.

[Zx31]

I felt like the writing and directing in Frontier was directionless and that they didn't know where they wanted to take the story for about 18 episodes in the middle. <shrug>

[Focslain]

8 minutes ago, Zx31 said:

I felt like the writing and directing in Frontier was directionless and that they didn't know where they wanted to take the story for about 18 episodes in the middle. <shrug>

had the same issue with the series myself, the two movies were a massive improvement

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/1/2017 at 7:19 AM, Kyp Durron said:

A "Love triangle" is supposed to keep you guessing as long as possible, preferably till either the very end or close to it. A one sided triangle isn't a triangle, it's a constant obvious couple paring + third wheel tag-a-long, which isn't fun or suspenseful at all, just incredibly PAINFUL to watch from start to finish.

In the name of the "Hoary Froating Head", PLEASE MAKE A frakkING REAL TRIANGLE THIS TIME OR DON'T BOTHER AT ALL, KTHNX.

I concur wholeheartedly... though I'd suggest a corollary that, when we get a proper love triangle, there should be an actual winner from among the participants.  I don't mean a "Babies ever after" ending or anything saccharine like that, just that there has to be actual closure on it or it's a total waste of effort.  Having one party in the love triangle inexplicably frak off to parts unknown for a indeterminate span of time like that complete prat Basara did is not a resolution.  Attempting the One True Threesome or Tenchi Solution in either its romantic or platonic forms like that utter berk Alto did in the Frontier TV series isn't workable either.  Leave that one to the harem shows.

 

 

15 minutes ago, Marzan said:

The problem with the triangle in Delta vis a vis Frontier, is that the characters were simply not as well fleshed out and put together. There was a certain tangible feeling to them, that Delta characters didn't have. Frontier had more solid writing and directing from top to bottom.

I dunno, I thought within certain bounds Hayate and Freyja managed to actually be more likeable than Alto and Ranka.  Maybe that's just because Freyja was actually a participant instead of a spectator and Hayate was a bit more mature and actually seemed to enjoy life.  (Alto always felt like he was going through life looking for something to be angry about... which is perfectly realistic for a teenage boy, but not all that interesting in the bargain.)

[Chronocidal]

59 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I concur wholeheartedly... though I'd suggest a corollary that, when we get a proper love triangle, there should be an actual winner from among the participants.  I don't mean a "Babies ever after" ending or anything saccharine like that, just that there has to be actual closure on it or it's a total waste of effort.  Having one party in the love triangle inexplicably frak off to parts unknown for a indeterminate span of time like that complete prat Basara did is not a resolution.  Attempting the One True Threesome or Tenchi Solution in either its romantic or platonic forms like that utter berk Alto did in the Frontier TV series isn't workable either.  Leave that one to the harem shows.

If Delta's "triangle" winds up playing out as was predicted, it might actually wind up as something entirely new.. we get a new twist on murdering the hypotenuse, when the "winner" of the triangle keels over in their mid-twenties due to old age, and Mirage gets to run in and pick up the leftover pieces.  That is, if she's still even available.  Heck, I don't even know how Zentraedi genetics even work, it might be really freakin' weird if Freya passes Hayate off to Mirage when she looks old enough to be their mother.  

 

[Kyp Durron]

13 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

If Delta's "triangle" winds up playing out as was predicted, it might actually wind up as something entirely new.. we get a new twist on murdering the hypotenuse, when the "winner" of the triangle keels over in their mid-twenties due to old age, and Mirage gets to run in and pick up the leftover pieces.  That is, if she's still even available.  Heck, I don't even know how Zentraedi genetics even work, it might be really freakin' weird if Freya passes Hayate off to Mirage when she looks old enough to be their mother.  

 

Actually, it seemed as she was going to age even faster, since she was already showing signs of it at age what...15? I think mid 20's for her wasn't even possible.

 

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I concur wholeheartedly... though I'd suggest a corollary that, when we get a proper love triangle, there should be an actual winner from among the participants.  I don't mean a "Babies ever after" ending or anything saccharine like that, just that there has to be actual closure on it or it's a total waste of effort.  Having one party in the love triangle inexplicably frak off to parts unknown for a indeterminate span of time like that complete prat Basara did is not a resolution.  Attempting the One True Threesome or Tenchi Solution in either its romantic or platonic forms like that utter berk Alto did in the Frontier TV series isn't workable either.  Leave that one to the harem shows.

I agree with you 100% The ending to Frontier's triangle really pissed me off. The only time we've seen it done decently compared to the last several Macross series was in the original. It's been over 30 years, it's high time they got it right.

[spacemanoeuvres]

I really like the ending to the triangle in the frontier tv series lol

Something about the ambiguous ending really made it feel like the beginning to a whole new story. I fell for it hook line and sinker 

 

[Convectuoso]

So is it confirmed that we are getting a Delta movie instead of a new series? 

[azrael]

Delta movie project AND a new series.

[Convectuoso]

Great. I thought it was just going to be one or the other, but not both.

[Kyp Durron]

Delta movie is an easy pass for me, I've had enough Delta to last me several lifetimes. 

[ZOR prime]

Where did u see that?

I haven't seen no such news.

I did see an article in Forbes,that Macross hasn't been released in its entirety across the world.

 

 

According to an interview with kawamori