A Robotech comics of Zentraedi fighting the Invid.

[Invid99]

I've always been fascinated how similar both factions are. Both has insectoid, organic looking mecha, colorful paintjobs and they reminds me of long distance cousins. There are some snippets of them fighting each other in the Robotech comics, but I would like one dedicated a plot just being about them two going at each others. 

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Invid99

[jenius]

The scales are crazy different but it'd still be fun to see. 

[Invid99]

39 minutes ago, jenius said:

The scales are crazy different but it'd still be fun to see. 

Yes true, but don't the Invid rely on swarming their enemies despite being smaller?

[DewPoint]

Planetary scale bombardment can make most stories very short.  Or you could start a story that way... 

[Podtastic]

2 hours ago, Invid99 said:

I've always been fascinated how similar both factions are. Both has insectoid, organic looking mecha, colorful paintjobs and they reminds me of long distance cousins. There are some snippets of them fighting each other in the Robotech comics, but I would like one dedicated a plot just being about them two going at each others. 

 

Yes this would be awesome. In the Robotech universe this is THE major conflict. One we barely catch a glimpse of.

Two things I would want for this to work for me.

• One, the Zentraedi and Invid mecha must be on equivalent scale.

In the Robotech novels its made clear, in both the introduction and the Battle of Tawkhan, that the Invid Shocktrooper is on the same scale as the Regult. There is even a scene where a Zentraedi soldier (not micronised) runs under a Gurab, something that is impossible at the niggardly Mospaeda scale.

I think this scale is visually better for this conflict.

For the remaining Invid Assets such as the Malar and Inorganics I favour the scale shown in the Sentinels comics. The Invid Malar Troopers would still be smaller than Zentraedi Soldiers, but not so much so that its like shooting at beetles.

The simple retcon would be that the Invid evolved mecha at a different scales to suit their needs.

• Two, the Invid must outnumber the Zentraedi

In both novel encounters the Zentraedi are heavily outnumbered which, due to their firepower advantage, I think is necessary to make things interesting. It also would explain why so very many Zentraedi were made, why they are engineered to want to fight and be able to keep fighting, and why they do things on such a generous scale.

 

 

[jenius]

If the IP wasn't such an issue, a Robotech Zero featuring Zor and the SDF-1 navigating that solar system and being the catalyst for all the future wars ending with Zor sending his ship to Earth could have been awesome... probably would have gotten a whole lot more love on Kickstarter also. That could have had plenty of Zentraedi on Invid violence... though it may have required punting Sentinels from the timeline (no big loss) or they could have incorporated some of those aspects and made it all work 

Edited December 21, 2021 by jenius

[Invid99]

9 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Yes this would be awesome. In the Robotech universe this is THE major conflict. One we barely catch a glimpse of.

Two things I would want for this to work for me.

• One, the Zentraedi and Invid mecha must be on equivalent scale.

In the Robotech novels its made clear, in both the introduction and the Battle of Tawkhan, that the Invid Shocktrooper is on the same scale as the Regult. There is even a scene where a Zentraedi soldier (not micronised) runs under a Gurab, something that is impossible at the niggardly Mospaeda scale.

I think this scale is visually better for this conflict.

For the remaining Invid Assets such as the Malar and Inorganics I favour the scale shown in the Sentinels comics. The Invid Malar Troopers would still be smaller than Zentraedi Soldiers, but not so much so that its like shooting at beetles.

The simple retcon would be that the Invid evolved mecha at a different scales to suit their needs.

• Two, the Invid must outnumber the Zentraedi

In both novel encounters the Zentraedi are heavily outnumbered which, due to their firepower advantage, I think is necessary to make things interesting. It also would explain why so very many Zentraedi were made, why they are engineered to want to fight and be able to keep fighting, and why they do things on such a generous scale.

 

 

In the movie Sentinel, the Invid soldiers seems to be much larger than humans unlike in the original series Mospeada, where they are slightly taller than the tallest man.

The Eager scout are bigger too. 

I agree, the Invid needs to be bigger than what they are in Mospeada, but I wouldn't make them bigger than any of the Zentraedi units. Like the Invid Shocktrooper, I would enlarge them to the same size as a Zentraedi soldier. Same with the Eager crab scout, but a bit smaller than the Shocktrooper.

While the Commander and Enforcer will be taller than a Zentraedi grunt and same size as a VF-1 Battleoid.  Despite the size difference, the Invid could still pull up a fight because of them swarming in huge numbers and more agile than Zentraedi mecha. 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Invid99

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Invid99 said:

I've always been fascinated how similar both factions are. Both has insectoid, organic looking mecha, colorful paintjobs and they reminds me of long distance cousins. There are some snippets of them fighting each other in the Robotech comics, but I would like one dedicated a plot just being about them two going at each others. 

That would be worth seeing... but not because it would make a thrilling story.  It'd be worth seeing because it'd be a fountain of memes.  Not just because Robotech media is pretty uniformly terrible and therefore meme-able, but because of the massive size difference involved is going to make it look completely idiotic.  Essentially, it's gonna look like this:

 

Your average Zentradi is between 9m (29.5ft) and 10m (32.75ft) naked and flat-footed.  10m is the number most often cited, so let's roll with that one because it makes the math a lot easier.

The Invit Iigaa is 2.5m tall.

If you shrunk that Zentradi down to a statistically-average 5 foot 10 man... the Invit Iigaa is about the size of a corgi or the coconut crabs the fellow in that charming illustration is fighting.

Then consider that the Regult is 15.12m tall.  The Glaug is 16.55m tall.  The Nousjadeul-Ger is 16.4m tall.  Scale those down to approximately statistically-average human size and that Invit Iigaa is smaller in scale than a standard Barbie doll.

Now consider, if you will, that this isn't Gulliver's Travels and the Zentradi aren't likely to sit idly by while the Invit swarm them... they have laser machine guns, particle cannons, and missiles with extremely powerful high-explosive blast-fragmentation warheads.  Any face-to-face fight is likely to be little more than the Zentradi massacreing an enemy that can't reasonably fight them in any capacity.  Never mind that the Zentradi are likely to just roll up and flatten the planet from orbit.  Even the Invit's largest mecha are not going to be any bigger to a mounted Zentradi than a toddler or a grade schooler, so it'd be like watching a grown boxer savagely beat a group of small children.

[Invid99]

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That would be worth seeing... but not because it would make a thrilling story.  It'd be worth seeing because it'd be a fountain of memes.  Not just because Robotech media is pretty uniformly terrible and therefore meme-able, but because of the massive size difference involved is going to make it look completely idiotic.  Essentially, it's gonna look like this:

 

Your average Zentradi is between 9m (29.5ft) and 10m (32.75ft) naked and flat-footed.  10m is the number most often cited, so let's roll with that one because it makes the math a lot easier.

The Invit Iigaa is 2.5m tall.

If you shrunk that Zentradi down to a statistically-average 5 foot 10 man... the Invit Iigaa is about the size of a corgi or the coconut crabs the fellow in that charming illustration is fighting.

Then consider that the Regult is 15.12m tall.  The Glaug is 16.55m tall.  The Nousjadeul-Ger is 16.4m tall.  Scale those down to approximately statistically-average human size and that Invit Iigaa is smaller in scale than a standard Barbie doll.

Now consider, if you will, that this isn't Gulliver's Travels and the Zentradi aren't likely to sit idly by while the Invit swarm them... they have laser machine guns, particle cannons, and missiles with extremely powerful high-explosive blast-fragmentation warheads.  Any face-to-face fight is likely to be little more than the Zentradi massacreing an enemy that can't reasonably fight them in any capacity.  Never mind that the Zentradi are likely to just roll up and flatten the planet from orbit.  Even the Invit's largest mecha are not going to be any bigger to a mounted Zentradi than a toddler or a grade schooler, so it'd be like watching a grown boxer savagely beat a group of small children.

True what you say, but in the Robotech world it seems the Invid are bigger than what they were as Inbit in Mospeada. Here is a page from Robotech the graphic novel. You can see the Shocktrooper is the same size as a Zentraedi soldier, like I wrote I wanted them to be. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, Invid99 said:

True what you say, but in the Robotech world it seems the Invid are bigger than what they were as Inbit in Mospeada.

Nope!  In actual fact, the official/canonical Robotech stats are based on those from the MOSPEADA OSM... plus or minus a few rounding errors and typos.

The official size for the Invit Iigaa in MOSPEADA is 2.5m.  The official size for the Invid Scout in Robotech is 2.5m.

The official Robotech stats actually make the Invit Grob/Invid Trooper SHORTER than its MOSPEADA counterpart... 4.4m instead of 5.1m.

 

1 minute ago, Invid99 said:

Here is a page from Robotech the graphic novel. You can see the Shocktrooper is the same size as a Zentraedi soldier, like I wrote I wanted them to be. 

That's not how big they actually are in Robotech, though.

As anyone familiar with Robotech knows, the pre-reboot (pre-2001) licensee-created materials were a study in half-assery by third- and fourth-rate authors and publishers who had inclination to put more than the most cursory effort into adapting the series.  The only reason any of that material got approved for publication is that nobody at Harmony Gold was paying any kind of attention to what its licensees were doing, and we have Harmony Gold's own word for that.  That was the reason they gave for disowning all that hilariously awful, wildly inconsistent licensed material when they were trying to relaunch their brand as a sci-fi/mecha anime franchise that they hoped could be taken seriously by the industry.

If they were that big, they'd be towering over literally everything in the "New Generation".

Even if they were as big as the Zentradi, they wouldn't be a threat because most of them don't have ranged weaponry... they'd just be easier targets.  It just changes the format a little from "man stomping on insects" to "turkey shoot".

[Invid99]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nope!  In actual fact, the official/canonical Robotech stats are based on those from the MOSPEADA OSM... plus or minus a few rounding errors and typos.

The official size for the Invit Iigaa in MOSPEADA is 2.5m.  The official size for the Invid Scout in Robotech is 2.5m.

The official Robotech stats actually make the Invit Grob/Invid Trooper SHORTER than its MOSPEADA counterpart... 4.4m instead of 5.1m.

 

That's not how big they actually are in Robotech, though.

As anyone familiar with Robotech knows, the pre-reboot (pre-2001) licensee-created materials were a study in half-assery by third- and fourth-rate authors and publishers who had inclination to put more than the most cursory effort into adapting the series.  The only reason any of that material got approved for publication is that nobody at Harmony Gold was paying any kind of attention to what its licensees were doing, and we have Harmony Gold's own word for that.  That was the reason they gave for disowning all that hilariously awful, wildly inconsistent licensed material when they were trying to relaunch their brand as a sci-fi/mecha anime franchise that they hoped could be taken seriously by the industry.

If they were that big, they'd be towering over literally everything in the "New Generation".

Even if they were as big as the Zentradi, they wouldn't be a threat because most of them don't have ranged weaponry... they'd just be easier targets.  It just changes the format a little from "man stomping on insects" to "turkey shoot".

Ah okey, but it seems in the comics the scale of the Invid are bigger than their official heights. But would be fun to see Zentraedi fighting against crab-sizes mecha with firepower lol. 

[Podtastic]

40 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

True what you say, but in the Robotech world it seems the Invid are bigger than what they were as Inbit in Mospeada. Here is a page from Robotech the graphic novel. You can see the Shocktrooper is the same size as a Zentraedi soldier, like I wrote I wanted them to be. 

 

This is kind of the scale I'm talking about. (Of course my chosen size for a male Zentraedi is 40 m and a Malar-Gan around 20ft, so the Invid pilot depicted is probably not in scale to those dimensions.)

Nevertheless at this scale the apects depicted in the novels work. A Gurab CAN seize a Regult in its claws and rend it. It CAN dismember a Zentraedi pilot. Regults CAN concentrate fire on a single one etc.

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Podtastic

[Podtastic]

19 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

Ah okey, but it seems in the comics the scale of the Invid are bigger than their official heights. But would be fun to see Zentraedi fighting against crab-sizes mecha with firepower lol

You cant have awesome without ignoring some canon.

And Ostriches fighting comparably sized Crabs is awesome.

A Zentraedi vs Invid war would sure as hell be more interesting than Pickachu...Hairdo...who cares pining over Min Maid.

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Podtastic

[Invid99]

12 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

You cant have awesome without ignoring some canon.

And Ostriches fighting comparably sized Crabs is awesome.

A Zentraedi vs Invid war would sure as hell be more interesting than Pickachu...Hairdo...who cares pining over Min Maid.

 

Cool! But I would prefer a scale size like this:

 

[jenius]

A quick couple points:
1) There's no need to change the scale of existing mecha. It wouldn't happen in the exact same timeframe as Mospeada so you can introduce similar but different mecha for the Invid. The Invid are a constantly evolving species, maybe in this incarnation they evolved to be much larger based on some story element. Since Robotech canon is basically limited to the original show, there's lots of wiggle room. If the story happens later in the Robotech timeline, the Invid just need to be shown getting their butts handed to them and then deciding to go much larger. If it happened before Macross, it would be the earliest incarnation of the Invid which may have been huge to fight the Zentraedi and only got smaller when the Zentraedi left to chase Zor leaving the Masters as the main threat.

2) There's no need to change the scale anyway. Despite the cannibal crabs references, there have been plenty of stories where smaller adversaries swarm larger ones through sheer numbers. In SciFi you can absolutely make this work.

[Invid99]

If we taking the official size scale of the Invid, then they will be like this when confronting the Zentraedi:

 

[Knight26]

IIRC the Robotech storyline was that Zor, as a rep of the Masters, stole the flower of life from the Invid.  This caused the Invid to invade, and using the FOL Zor and the Masters created all their great tech and the Zentraedi.  Given that, the Masters likely created the original Zentraedi as massive as a means to fight the smaller Invid, but the Invid Mecha proved overpowering, requiring the Zentraedi to be equiped with their armored pods and mecha to fight back against the swarm tactics.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

IIRC the Robotech storyline was that Zor, as a rep of the Masters, stole the flower of life from the Invid.  This caused the Invid to invade, [...]

The Robotech timeline is super vague thanks to the lack of any planning during the show's production.  The Robotech Masters supposedly invaded, ransacked, and glassed the home world of the Invid in the ancient past (thousands of years ago, at one point IIRC they imply it was 500,000 years ago) and the Invid didn't get around to counterattacking until ~2022 with the Robotech II: the Sentinels OVA showing the start of their offensive.

 

3 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

and using the FOL Zor and the Masters created all their great tech and the Zentraedi.  Given that, the Masters likely created the original Zentraedi as massive as a means to fight the smaller Invid, but the Invid Mecha proved overpowering, requiring the Zentraedi to be equiped with their armored pods and mecha to fight back against the swarm tactics.

Robotech is never clear on why the Zentradi were created, when, or to fight whom... the post-reboot franchise always stayed away from the idea that the Zentradi were created to fight the Invid since the Masters sacked their homeworld before creating their interstellar empire and the whole idea's kind of silly on the face of it because of the massive difference in their scale.  It doesn't really make a ton of sense to create an army of giants to fight an enemy who's smaller than your existing military hardware.

[jenius]

I thought they retconned Robotech to have the Zentraedi be slaves of the Masters, designed to mine Opterra (not sure if that was the actual planet name).  This was reimagined in Exosquad as the Neosapiens. The development into a fighting force being one of the triggers to get Zor to abscond with his matrix.

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, jenius said:

I thought they retconned Robotech to have the Zentraedi be slaves of the Masters, designed to mine Opterra (not sure if that was the actual planet name).  This was reimagined in Exosquad as the Neosapiens. The development into a fighting force being one of the triggers to get Zor to abscond with his matrix.

That backstory was created for the Robotech novelization, which was never canon and these days is officially considered by HG to be "Robotech in name only".

[Keith]

Yeah, Exosquad was a good show, I wish someone would pick up both seasons on blu-ray...

[Dynaman]

Invid scale is like the speed of ships in Babylon 5,  scale of plot.

[Knight26]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That backstory was created for the Robotech novelization, which was never canon and these days is officially considered by HG to be "Robotech in name only".

I wasn't aware that it was never considered Canon.  Before I saw the light I read them all and assumed it was.  Given the time loop in the recent comics, it felt like they were harkening back to that, especially given that they kept all the Sentinel's Characters, and TR Edwards, in some form or another.

3 hours ago, Keith said:

Yeah, Exosquad was a good show, I wish someone would pick up both seasons on blu-ray...

Preach Brother!!!  All I have is some really bad rips from back in the day.

[Podtastic]

17 hours ago, Invid99 said:

Cool! But I would prefer a scale size like this:

 

That can work.  I would prefer the Gamo (and the Gurab and Ligaa obviously) be larger because I see it as the counterpart to the Glaug.

13 hours ago, Invid99 said:

If we taking the official size scale of the Invid, then they will be like this when confronting the Zentraedi:

 

It would be like watching the Army Guys fighting Angry Bees. Hardly fun at all.

I like the size you've chosen for the Gosu BTW as it fits in with my own (rough) scale preference (non-canon obviously) which is centered on 2 main themes:

1) A 40m tall Zentraedi soldier to get my preferred Zentraedi-human size ratio

2) Having humanoid mecha (except the Zentraedi humanoid mecha obviously) be on the scale of a Zentraedi soldier. This way a Battloid, Gosu, Bioroid, Zentraedi can all engage each other eye to eye.

@jenius makes a valid point that you could have the Invid have entirely different mecha for this conflict. That can also work, although I see no reason for them not to be able to rescale the mecha we know given how they seem to shape/grow their mecha rather than manufacture it. I like both options.

@Seto Kaiba made a valid point as well. It does make sense that the mecha be scaled as it was to fight the enemy. So I like the idea of the Invid scaling their stuff up to fight the Zentraedi - just as the humans did with their Battloids.

Edited December 22, 2021 by Podtastic

[Invid99]

11 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

That can work.  I would prefer the Gamo (and the Gurab and Ligaa obviously) be larger because I see it as the counterpart to the Glaug.

It would be like watching the Army Guys fighting Angry Bees. Hardly fun at all.

@jenius makes a valid point that you could have the Invid have entirely different mecha for this conflict. That can also work, although I see no reason for them not to be able to rescale the mecha we know given how they seem to shape/grow their mecha rather than manufacture it. I like both options.

@Seto Kaiba made a valid point as well. It does make sense that the mecha be scaled as it was to fight the enemy. So I like the idea of the Invid scaling their stuff up to fight the Zentraedi - just as the humans did with their Battloids.

I can see the good comparison between the Glaug and Gamo/Enforcer.

So the Grabu and Ligaa are more the expendable foot soldiers like the Regult. 

Ghoss are equal to the Nousjadeul-ger and Quaedluun-Rau. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Invid scale is like the speed of ships in Babylon 5,  scale of plot.

Eh... it's more like "scale of budget".

The lower the budget for a given Robotech project, the less incentive the staff has to do a quality job and the more inconsistent the scaling becomes.  Robotech's efforts to develop an original work have always operated on a hair-shirt budget, and the licensees who worked on the comics and novels cheaped out so badly that even the pittance spent on developing new animation looks like unprecedented largesse by comparison.  Needless to say, consistency has consistently been more than they could afford. 😅

 

1 minute ago, Knight26 said:

wasn't aware that it was never considered Canon.  Before I saw the light I read them all and assumed it was.  Given the time loop in the recent comics, it felt like they were harkening back to that, especially given that they kept all the Sentinel's Characters, and TR Edwards, in some form or another.

The novelization was... contentious... to say the least.  It differed so heavily from the series that even its proponents advocated treating it as a wholly separate story, and Harmony Gold ultimately weighed in on the side of its critics twenty years ago by classifying it as "Robotech in name only". 

Titan's time loop plot seems to have been entirely to set up skipping the other two Robotech "sagas" in favor of doing their own original storyline.

[Podtastic]

2 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

Ghoss are equal to the Nousjadeul-ger and Quaedluun-Rau. 

Yes. I also like the idea of them fighting Bioroids, although you havent included the Tirolian forces in this scenario.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

@Seto Kaiba made a valid point as well. It does make sense that the mecha be scaled as it was to fight the enemy. So I like the idea of the Invid scaling their stuff up to fight the Zentraedi - just as the humans did with their Battloids.

's why it makes so much more sense to have the Bioroids do it... not only because it fits with the series chronology, but also because they're already about the right size for the larger Invit/Invid forms.  There was a fan film that tried to do that, but it got shut down on a copyright claim.

[pengbuzz]

Zentraedi vs Invid?

Yeah...that's going to be Britai and Exedol in swim trunks on a beach somewhere, boiling crabs by the bucketful in a large pot while Quamzin is melting some butter and getting the beer cooler from the ship.

[jenius]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That backstory was created for the Robotech novelization, which was never canon and these days is officially considered by HG to be "Robotech in name only".

I don't think Robotech has a canon other than what's in the show any more. They basically went YOLO with their comics and the brand is dead. If someone were to make a comic with the Invid squaring off against the Zentraedi, it would just be best that it doesn't directly conflict with the show. Even then... I don't think anyone is minding the store, so really it's up to how flexible the readers were with whatever the comic maker peddled. 

[Podtastic]

3 hours ago, jenius said:

really it's up to how flexible the readers were with whatever the comic maker peddled. 

And the quality of what's being peddled.

It would be something really worthwhile if they were to say have Dan Abnet as the writer, Fransciso Etchart as the artist, and stay true to the mecha designs and spirit of the story (no wokeism).

[Invid99]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

's why it makes so much more sense to have the Bioroids do it... not only because it fits with the series chronology, but also because they're already about the right size for the larger Invit/Invid forms.  There was a fan film that tried to do that, but it got shut down on a copyright claim.

Oh was there a fan film? Did they release any footage before getting shut down?

Is it this? 

 

Edited December 22, 2021 by Invid99

[Invid99]

13 hours ago, Podtastic said:

That can work.  I would prefer the Gamo (and the Gurab and Ligaa obviously) be larger because I see it as the counterpart to the Glaug.

It would be like watching the Army Guys fighting Angry Bees. Hardly fun at all.

I like the size you've chosen for the Gosu BTW as it fits in with my own (rough) scale preference (non-canon obviously) which is centered on 2 main themes:

1) A 40m tall Zentraedi soldier to get my preferred Zentraedi-human size ratio

2) Having humanoid mecha (except the Zentraedi humanoid mecha obviously) be on the scale of a Zentraedi soldier. This way a Battloid, Gosu, Bioroid, Zentraedi can all engage each other eye to eye.

 

I agree about Gomu being in the same size as the Bioroid and VF-1. I still think the Grabu is too big. 

Made my own size scale on how I think the various Invid mecha will be.

 

[Invid99]

Okay I changed the Gamo's size since you said it will be the counterpart of the Glaug.

@Podtastic

 

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Zentraedi vs Invid?

Yeah...that's going to be Britai and Exedol in swim trunks on a beach somewhere, boiling crabs by the bucketful in a large pot while Quamzin is melting some butter and getting the beer cooler from the ship.

Let us not do or say anything that might give anyone the insane idea to revive the Robotech Swimsuit Spectacular.

There is nobody sane on this Earth or any alternate Earth who wants to see that.

Mind you, if you want to tell a story like this - about an army of interchangeable and expendable one-dimensional gung-ho stock characters fighting a pitched battle against a huge swarm of interchangeable and expendable utterly generlc giant space bugs - in the final analysis you're just doing an unauthorized remake of 1997's Starship Troopers without any of the social commentary and satire that justified the original's hamminess.

It's basically a story for one very specific kind of fan...

 

10 hours ago, jenius said:

I don't think Robotech has a canon other than what's in the show any more. They basically went YOLO with their comics and the brand is dead. If someone were to make a comic with the Invid squaring off against the Zentraedi, it would just be best that it doesn't directly conflict with the show. Even then... I don't think anyone is minding the store, so really it's up to how flexible the readers were with whatever the comic maker peddled. 

The last official position they had was that the 85 episode TV series, the non-AU post-reboot licensed comics, and the Shadow Chronicles "movie" were canon and everything else was non-canon except the Sentinels movie, which was broad strokes canon only.

That said, they definitely gave up enforcing their official setting in licensed works after they finally admitted Shadow Rising had been cancelled all along and ragequit a Kickstarter for an animated side story.  That's when the bottom fell out again and we started seeing the licensees just doing whatever again followed by Harmony Gold essentially farming all future licensed product development out to Funimation.

 

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

And the quality of what's being peddled.

Which is inevitably embarrassing for the authors and audience alike at best... and is all downhill from there.

 

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

It would be something really worthwhile if they were to say have Dan Abnet as the writer, Fransciso Etchart as the artist, and stay true to the mecha designs and spirit of the story (no wokeism).

That would kind of require Robotech to... y'know... not have been a complete and utter trashfire for the last 36+ years? 

 

15 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

Oh was there a fan film? Did they release any footage before getting shut down?

There was an attempt... but the fan group working on it only got as far as producing one very basic teaser trailer to promote their project before Harmony Gold slapped them with a cease-and-desist order and then filed DMCA notices against all of the group's DeviantArt pages.  (Oddly, they even went after non-Robotech fan works on those DeviantArt pages... like the director's Star Trek fan art.)

I ended up with a front row seat to that one because one very stupid Robotech fan tried to shift the blame for the cease-and-desist to me personally.  He tried to convince them I'd forged the legal papers they received demanding a halt to the project, and when they didn't buy that, that I'd somehow influenced Harmony Gold to kill the project because I'm just such an evil guy, y'know?  He even tried to persuade them to file a lawsuit against me.  Ironically, I only learned about the project because of that... when the fan film group behind the project reached out to me to let me know what that particular crazy person had been saying and assure me they didn't believe a word of it.  Swell guys, as it turned out, shame they fell afoul of Harmony Gold's attempts to create a fan film section on the old robotech.com site with the same draconian submission guidelines as the fan art and fan fiction sections.  

 

15 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

Is it this? 

No, it was called Robotech: Genesis.

It was supposed to be the Robotech origin story, with Zor discovering the Invid, the Masters attacking their homeworld, etc. etc.

No Zentradi in sight, it was all Bioroids and Invid.  The one shot I remember really clearly from their development portfolio was a massed regiment of Bioroids marching.