Robotech and REMIX by Titan Comics

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Einherjar said:

By the way, thanks Titan Comics for finally giving Tommy Yune’s Shadow Saga the closest thing to an ending it will ever get at this point.

Eh, I still like senior management's ending better: "F*ck off, we're not wasting any more money on your sh*t."

 

45 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Why not?  It seems like they threw in everything else.

For one, it's Robotech... a title of such low potential that even a small time outfit specializing in licensed comics like Titan made no effort to bring their A game.  If they can't be bothered to do a decent job with the art - the thing that sells comic books - why would they put any effort into the writing?

For two, it's Robotech... the target audience are 40- and 50-somethings who saw the series when it aired in 1985 but haven't given up on it yet.  If you look at what passes for storytelling in Robotech of days past, they're not here for thought-provoking tales or to have characters espouse high-minded moralizing.  They're here for "humans good, aliens bad, kill them with giant robots".  That's about as sophisticated as Robotech gets when it's not ripping something else off... and when it is, it isn't much better.  

For three, it's Robotech... subtlety is as alien to the property as the Invid/Inbit were to humanity.  Its "creators" thought the the way to bring in a mature anime-viewing audience was a ton of pointless T&A.  They're either hopelessly inept or surprisingly aware of what their faithful audience is actually like.  

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Its "creators" thought the the way to bring in a mature anime-viewing audience was a ton of pointless T&A.  They're either hopelessly inept or surprisingly aware of what their faithful audience is actually like.  

Yeah, they missed that trend by a decade. They shoulda gone with twelve-year-olds in their underwear to get anime fans when Shadow Chronicles came out.

...

So Robotech did one thing right.

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Yeah, they missed that trend by a decade. They shoulda gone with twelve-year-olds in their underwear to get anime fans when Shadow Chronicles came out.

Looking back at the 2007 release calendar, I don't think they did miss it... 2007 was the year that gave us TV anime like Nagasarete Airantou, Shuffle!, Gurren Lagann, and Gundam 00.  They just seem to have rather cynically believed that buxom women in catsuits was, on its own, going to make the OVA irresistable to the serious anime hobbyists.  It was a rather glaring demonstration that the morons at HG didn't have a clue about the very industry they erroneously claimed they created.

I won't even attempt to argue that fanservice on its own doesn't sell (Queen's Blade and To-Love-Ru proved that point well enough), but if you're going to try and sell your series using fanservice alone you have to go lewder to get the SO RONERY crowd's attention, and if you're not then the tame fanservice needs to be a sideshow to a compelling story, well-developed characters, and animation at a much higher level of quality.

 

18 minutes ago, JB0 said:

So Robotech did one thing right.

Nope, they're still batting a 0.

[peter]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For two, it's Robotech... the target audience are 40- and 50-somethings who saw the series when it aired in 1985 but haven't given up on it yet. 

It still boggles my mind there are people my age that haven't grown out of Robotech

[Podtastic]

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 1:37 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

target audience are 40- and 50-somethings

Hmmm...the same age as quite a few die hard fans of a lot of of other franchises, including Macross.

Leaving RT aside, its not a bad strategy given that such fans:

1) Are loyal

2) Are nostalgic

3) Are established in their careers and generally have disposable income

Edited March 4, 2020 by Podtastic

[Bolt]

Macross has many older die hard fans indeed. But it's constantly picking up a steady stream of younger ones. Massively so. In fact, Macross has quite a healthy fan base from most generations since SDFM  to Delta.

RT..not so much.

 

[Podtastic]

8 hours ago, Bolt said:

Macross has many older die hard fans indeed. But it's constantly picking up a steady stream of younger ones. Massively so. In fact, Macross has quite a healthy fan base from most generations since SDFM  to Delta.

RT..not so much.

 

Not releasing anything for ages will have that effect, particularly with today's youngsters

Its not like the old days where your fandom ran on nothing but memory and imagination.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Hmmm...the same age as quite a few die hard fans of a lot of of other franchises, including Macross.

The key difference being that those 40+ year old lifers are Robotech's only fans.

Other franchises, like Macross, have been continually bringing in new fans by releasing steady streams of new material.  The closest Robotech got to bringing in new fans was when old fans from the 80's rediscovered the series during the brief renaissance the franchise experienced as part of Harmony Gold's efforts to reboot and retool Robotech into a proper bloody anime franchise.  Those same fans abandoned it again shortly thereafter, accompanied by a lot of others, when Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles laid a massive egg and Harmony Gold decided criticism of it was verboten.  

It was all downhill for Robotech after the TV series completed its first broadcast run.

 

9 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Leaving RT aside, its not a bad strategy given that such fans:

1) Are loyal

2) Are nostalgic

3) Are established in their careers and generally have disposable income

While you're (mostly) not wrong in general terms, the problem is that it IS Robotech... so those fans:

1. Are obsessed, not "loyal"... and their obsession is rooted entirely in their nostalgia for the Robotech series.
    
2. Are blinded by their nostalgia... to the extent that they will reject anything that doesn't fit with their nostalgic memories and headcanon of the Robotech series.  If the franchise stops pandering to that nostalgia or tries to develop in any way they feel disrespects their (often inaccurate) memories of it, they will reject it with disgust.
    
3. Often aren't actually established in a career or otherwise lack disposable income. 
   Spoiler

   I'm hesitant to discuss this at all, as it involves aspects of people's personal lives... but I've noticed over many years of interacting with the Robotech fanbase that its most vocal (and belligerent) fans almost invariably hold either low-income unskilled or low-skilled manual labor jobs or multiple low-income unskilled part-time jobs.  Few of them seem to have much in the way of discretionary income.

    

 

This is the genesis of the Catch-22 that ensures any effort to continue Robotech is doomed.  Robotech's fandom is too small for Harmony Gold to sustain development of new media for a fans-only audience, and Robotech's fans aren't interested in anything that doesn't pander to them directly.  Robotech is too obscure and too hated to trade on its reputation for the sake of gaining a new audience, and anything they might do to get the attention of a new audience is doomed to fail because they don't understand their market and their fans (who also don't understand the genre) will pan that effort to attract a new audience for "disrespecting" the series.  Consequently, everything needs to be made as cheaply as it can possibly be in order to turn any kind of a profit from a small and shrinking fanbase, which further ensures that it won't attract a new audience because it all looks like arse thanks to having been made so cheaply.

[peter]

40+ former Robotech fan here. 

I was a Robotech fan at one point, because that's all I knew.  I'd read that RT had taken from Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada, but didn't have access to the original versions (I didn't like Southern Cross at all).  My dad bought me models and toys with only Macross or Mospeada, with no mention of Robotech on the packaging so I started to think about it a bit more.

Mac II came out in '92 and Robotech really didn't make sense anymore.

I discovered DYRL in '94 and that solidified my appreciation for Macross.  I tried to get more original material, but was cock-blocked by Robotech at every step.  I found it frustrating, but didn't really know why it was so hard to get original Macross stuff.

It wasn't until I joined this forum in '03 that I started to read more about the history and the background.  After that, I didn't want to have anything to do with Robotech, HD and the rest of it.  So it surprises me that Robotech, after all the crap HG pulled, still has any fans at all.

[jeniusornome]

The difference is that you started to think about it, got curious and looked into it some more. it was largely the same for me. 
 

but there are fans who just liked Robotech and didn’t care that it was stitched together from three totally unrelated shows, and didn’t have interest in anything Macross. Subtitles? People speaking Japanese? No time for that.

i know it’s weird to think (especially since you’re here, reading this) but a lot of people just don’t care and can’t be bothered. 
 

Funny thing is, even those who can, they keep going back to the stuff that they saw first. Macross fans still love the VF-1, enough that modern figures of it sell out as preorders. Transformers fans still love their original 1980s cartoon characters, so  those are the ones that keep getting made. 
 

sure there’s new stuff but older fans still like what they saw way back when, and there’s a market for it. 
 

Robotech die hards exist at the intersection of “fans that like the old stuff” and “people who can’t be bothered”. But you add to that: no real attempt at new media in 35 years, licensing issues that led to companies like Bandai (or whoever) not wanting anything to do with the Robotech logo and, for whatever reason, people being in complete denial that the property is still relevant. I guess HG manages to drip feed enough refreshes of the same Toynami figures every few years, or dig up Robotech tapes and Invid Shock Troopers from someone’s basement to sell on the website, that it’s just enough to keep them going.

 

It’s sad, but eh, what ya gonna do?

[Bolt]

6 minutes ago, jeniusornome said:

It’s sad, but eh, what ya gonna do?

Keep on deculturing

[peter]

5 minutes ago, jeniusornome said:

The difference is that you started to think about it, got curious and looked into it some more. it was largely the same for me. 
 

but there are fans who just liked Robotech and didn’t care that it was stitched together from three totally unrelated shows, and didn’t have interest in anything Macross. Subtitles? People speaking Japanese? No time for that.

***Snip***

Lol, so true,

 

[Seto Kaiba]

16 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Keep on deculturing

This.

[peter]

18 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Keep on deculturing

Lol!

 

[pengbuzz]

I used to be an RT fan back in the 80's, but it was only the first part (Macross) that had any attraction for me. The rest was way too depressing: how many times does earth get wasted and everything set back to "2 weeks after the stone age" (exaggeration)level?

After getting a computer and going online, I discovered Macross and its' sequel series' (Macross Plus still holds a special place in my heart, as does Macross II, admittedly), and found that for one thing, it had a far brighter future for mankind than RT!!! Also, the Valkyrie designs made more sense (seriously, who in their right minds would ever want to fly the friggin' LOGAN?!!), and it was good to see that mankind actually took advantage of their second chance after nearly being extinguished by Bodolza's fleet.

So, at this point RT is dead to me and while the opening theme song to it still elicits memories of Saturday mornings, I'll still take Diamond Calling over My Time To Be A Royal Pain in the A** Star anyday.

Just my two cents worth.

[Seto Kaiba]

59 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Also, the Valkyrie designs made more sense (seriously, who in their right minds would ever want to fly the friggin' LOGAN?!!), [...]

Yeah, this is a problem that Robotech has been grappling with for a long time now... and something that Titan's Remix plays with in one of its more self-aware moments by taking cheap shots at the Legioss (RT: Alpha) being nowhere near a capable fighter compared to the VF-1 or VF-4.

It's had an impact on the RPG, it caused a lot of grumbling when they instituted an official canon in their reboot, and even spawned conspiracy theories about merchandising.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[Podtastic]

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

 it had a far brighter future for mankind than RT!!

Not a factor for me though. I wish Macross would give the Zentradi more focus in new series.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Not a factor for me though. I wish Macross would give the Zentradi more focus in new series.

As noted on previous occasions, you are... unusual... in that respect.

[Podtastic]

On 3/4/2020 at 6:11 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Often aren't actually established in a career or otherwise lack disposable income. 

Of course my first question would be how would you know this? 

And my second would be whether these interactions could realistically be considered a sufficiently representative sample?

Even if it were to  be the case, I certainly hope you werent implying that these people were therefore less intelligent. The type of job you hold is not neccessarily an indicator of intelligence. In my country many highly educated people have no jobs at all because of the state of the economy combined with the government's racial policies.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Podtastic

[anime52k8]

Well some of them can't figure out how to operate the caps lock key. I feel like that might be an indicator of intelligence, or lack there of.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

Of course my first question would be how would you know this? 

For many of them, it's a matter of having interacted with them in a discussion/debate setting for years.  Over 15 years in a few cases.  You don't talk to someone for that long and not end up learning at least a little bit about who they are and what their lives are like.

 

7 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

And my second would be whether these interactions could realistically be considered a sufficiently representative sample?

For Robotech fans in general?  No.  For Robotech's most "devout", fanatical, vocal fans?  Probably, yeah.

 

7 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

Even if it were to  be the case, I certainly hope you werent implying that these people were therefore less intelligent. The type of job you hold isnt neccessarily an indicator of intelligence. In my country many highly educated people have no jobs at all because of the state of the economy combined with the government's racial policies.

This is part of why I was somewhat hesitant to actually mention it... that people might think I was implying that.  I am not.  

We'd have ended up here anyway if I'd just flatly denied that a lot of Robotech's most vocal fans don't have the discretionary income to blow on multiple DVD re-releases of the series and collectibles.  I know a few who were quite salty about not being able to afford to pledge for Cap's Southern Cross kit proposal.

(For what little it's worth, the Robotech fans I would rate as among the worst and most detrimental to their fandom are a pack of academics who seem to have been men on a mission to misinform.)

[Einherjar]

On 3/3/2020 at 9:38 PM, Podtastic said:

Hmmm...the same age as quite a few die hard fans of a lot of of other franchises, including Macross.

Leaving RT aside, its not a bad strategy given that such fans:

1) Are loyal

2) Are nostalgic

3) Are established in their careers and generally have disposable income

That helped crowdsource one Robotech Kickstarter for 1.5 million dollars which ultimately was not able to deliver on all its promises but couldn’t save another one asking for half a million dollars to to create either a teaser/trailer or an entire series.

[Podtastic]

4 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

Well some of them can't figure out how to operate the caps lock key. I feel like that might be an indicator of intelligence, or lack there of.

And not an indicator that their just bad typists?

If theyre doing it to be insulting (eg deliberately writing a name all in small caps) then I would agree.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Einherjar said:

That helped crowdsource one Robotech Kickstarter for 1.5 million dollars which ultimately was not able to deliver on all its promises but couldn’t save another one asking for half a million dollars to to create either a teaser/trailer or an entire series.

Eh... credit where credit is due, a large portion of the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter's success was a double handful of big spenders and the high cost of entry for a tabletop game.  It also helped that you had BattleTech fans getting in on that to get miniatures for the Unseen.

Similarly - credit where it's due - the Robotech Academy Kickstarter tanked in no small part because it offended the nostalgia of Robotech fans by 1. being yet another story set around the Sentinels period without actually being a resolution of Robotech II: the Sentinels, 2. blatantly attempting to surf Carl Macek's coffin to fully-funded status while using his corpse as a human shield against criticism, and 3. sporting even worse animation than the failed and much-maligned Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles OVA.  It was a triple-threat of Do Not Want for nostalgia-driven Robotech fans.

Titan's Robotech comic seems to be in similar straits to RPG Tactics... it's an ugly mess and almost nobody seems to have anything nice to say about it, but it's limping along thanks to some die-hards who are digging deep to Collect Them All even though they'll be worth less than their cover price in a couple years.

 

21 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

And not an indicator that their just bad typists?

If theyre doing it to be insulting (eg deliberately writing a name all in small caps) then I would agree.

Knowing the guy in question, I'm pretty sure it's not just that he's a bad typist... 

[Dynaman]

I've seen plenty of nice things written about the RPG Tactics game and the end result of the minis once assembled - assembly was a PITA though.  The fact that the other promised kickstarter items are vaporware did not go over well however.

[JohnMc]

They've really been crapping on Max from the get go. In his iconic dogfight with Miriya now Rick interferes and is the one to drive her away [because that borderline Mary-Sue didn't have enough feats already] they homage their knife fight later and Dana knocks out Miriya.  Now Dana is piloting is Skull One instead of Max. And now Max and Miriya such disdain for each other that there is no way in hell they can ever get together and have it be believable. 

I always say to fans of Max and fans of the Max/Miriya marriage that this series is not for you and you should just wait it out until the license inevitably changes hands again.

Now that its been over 2 months since 4 came out and there's no sign of 5 on their website either the series was cancelled or some major re writing is going on. 

[Bolt]

28 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

I always say to fans of Max and fans of the Max/Miriya marriage that this series is not for you and you should just wait it out until the license inevitably changes hands again.

Fans of Macross may want to stay away..

 

29 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

Now that its been over 2 months since 4 came out and there's no sign of 5 on their website either the series was cancelled or some major re writing is going on. 

Perhaps reality finally caught up..

[Einherjar]

Hope casually throwing away 35 years of Robotech lore, and Minmay, was worth this venture. 

By the way, on YouTube I found this channel called Hobotech that totally ripped off this franchise’s font.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Einherjar

[Seto Kaiba]

32 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

Now Dana is piloting is Skull One instead of Max.

Now if it were Komilia, that'd be one thing... but that wretched creature from Southern Cross?  Talk about tainting an icon.

 

32 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

And now Max and Miriya such disdain for each other that there is no way in hell they can ever get together and have it be believable. 

I think that's kind of the point... otherwise they'll just get sued for ripping off Macross M3.

 

32 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

I always say to fans of Max and fans of the Max/Miriya marriage that this series is not for you

Who IS this series for, again?  

 

32 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

and you should just wait it out until the license inevitably changes hands again.

Changes hands to who?  This isn't a world where people are living in blissful ignorance of Robotech's history of epic failure... who would possibly want this turd now that a dedicated turd polisher has apparently failed with it?

 

32 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

Now that its been over 2 months since 4 came out and there's no sign of 5 on their website either the series was cancelled or some major re writing is going on. 

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[peter]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Now if it were Komilia, that'd be one thing... but that wretched creature from Southern Cross?  Talk about tainting an icon.

 

LMFAO, almost blew coffee all over my screen, hahahahahahahaha!!!!

I hated "Robotech Masters"......didn't care for the original Southern Cross either.  How the hell anyone thought that would be a good anime to tie to Macross is beyond me.

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, peter said:

I hated "Robotech Masters"......didn't care for the original Southern Cross either.

Can't say I'm surprised... audiences in Japan didn't have much use for Southern Cross either.

Despite being in a good time slot, its ratings performance was so poor that TBS decided to drop it when the series was barely half-complete and several licensees opted to take a loss on the cost of the license and focus on other shows rather than continue developing merch for it.  It didn't do much better as a part of Robotech, and remains a perennial unfavorite of the Robotech fandom to this day.  

Rather a risky move on Titan's part to make Robotech's single most hated character the main character of their new comic series... though from what I've seen this version manages to NOT be the offensively moronic airhead that so often motivated audiences to change the channel.  "A Dana who doesn't suck" is a new and rather novel concept, TBH.

 

Quote

How the hell anyone thought that would be a good anime to tie to Macross is beyond me.

How (in)appropriate its fit with Macross was probably wasn't even on their radar... they needed to throw together a series on the cheap, and they don't come much cheaper than a total flop like Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.  MOSPEADA was probably chosen for similar reasons too, since it was only a so-so performer ratings-wise and its merchandise line in Japan wasn't much better off.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[Vifam7]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

How (in)appropriate its fit with Macross was probably wasn't even on their radar... they needed to throw together a series on the cheap, and they don't come much cheaper than a total flop like Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.  MOSPEADA was probably chosen for similar reasons too, since it was only a so-so performer ratings-wise and its merchandise line in Japan wasn't much better off.

Well that and perhaps that they were the only 2 other series that Tatsunoko was licensing at the time which had a future war with transforming robots theme going. Right?

Edited March 12, 2020 by Vifam7

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Now if it were Komilia, that'd be one thing... but that wretched creature from Southern Cross?  Talk about tainting an icon.

I need to do a sketch showing Skull-One yanking her out of it's own cockpit and drop-kicking her rather unceremoniously across the flight deck....

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I need to do a sketch showing Skull-One yanking her out of it's own cockpit and drop-kicking her rather unceremoniously across the flight deck....

Or at least the Battroid vomiting her up out the neck hatch and then being violently ill...

[jeniusornome]

I think it was more along the lines of "super dimension, super dimension, super dimension.... they must be the same show! use them all! Wait, we can't get Orguss? Eh, find something else that transforms and put the ideas into a book instead, tell people we planned it that way all along!"