New Macross Animation Announced, to be animated by Sunrise

[Graham]

Every time I see there's a new post, it gets my hopes up that it's some actual news about the new series, but nope.😅🤣

[Old_Nash_II]

Same here 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Black Valkyrie]

 

Not really interest, only if its like Macross Plus. 

 

[Space Casual Life]

On 2/1/2024 at 1:45 PM, sketchley said:

It's possible.  Kawamori-san has always said that contact was lost—what amounts to the original cast having their happy ending and having ridden into the sunset.  The specifics (and time) where unknown until that mail-in gift card.

As for Macross timelines: they tend to get rewritten a lot, and tailored to the latest Macross series.

 

Hearing those names brings back a lot of memories! LOL

Hmm. Good thoughts. Thanks. Thinking more yeah I could be wrong about Toren Smith on Animerica?, Maybe he just translated a lot of manga I read then?  Trish Ledoux was def the lead editor of Animerica though and there was a great encyclopedia of anime she did in the day and my sister gifted me back then. 

[Space Casual Life]

On 2/1/2024 at 1:51 PM, Master Dex said:

Easily, he's my favorite character.. I mean he's often my avatar lol.

I love Max too. Like me, he's a dork but got the women. 

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But also Hikaru is frankly, kind of a dumbass lol. He's a good audience avatar in the show so he is a better main character to relate to however. His character story is essentially about learning to grow up amid the end of the world and becoming responsible for his choices.

Hikaru, imo wasn't half as annoying as Amuro Rei, you could definitely empathise with him and you didn't hate him. Well I didn't as a kid anyway. Hikaru actually had depth to his character. Max is an ace pilot that uses his womanising skills to marry a hot alien. He's pretty shallow compared to Hikaru imho. 

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Minmay is honestly a great character study in someone thrust into fame with no preparation and naturally that fame breaks them down from the stress until they are just going through the motions in the post-war world while dealing with depression. They only had a passing interest in Hikaru (plus they were a kid with no sense of what they wanted in a partner at the beginning), but post-war they gravitated to him in hopes of finding comfort in a world she couldn't stand to live in. Her realization to leave Earth to seek out a better life for herself on her terms instead of letting it be based on other people is a solid endpoint for her journey.

Is it an endpoint? Doesn't have to be. And I like how you highlight the complexity of Minmay's character. On point man. 

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Misa kinda runs the broken bird ice queen that thaws out as her chemistry with Hikaru grows and she helps him grow up while he helps her to heal from the issues in her past. It's not super inventive but it was well told. I'm glad she's a Captain now but that was kinda inevitable. A show about her wouldn't offer anything different than a show about another Captain married to a pilot in their fleet.

Other than Max and Milia?

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I have no comment on Star Wars but yeah, sometimes new stuff isn't as good. That happens. Sometimes it is good or better. You'll never find the next great story if you don't venture out past the old and comfortable. Macross has proven this out with both amazing and not so amazing sequels. I'd prefer the risk to get the rewards. 

The amazing ones still weren't "Macross" to me, they were off the shelf projects with the name Macross and transforming mecha slapped onto them. Just my opinion though. 

 

Edited February 2 by Space Casual Life

[Space Casual Life]

On 2/1/2024 at 6:55 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

That Megaroad-01 disappeared in 2016 has, yes, been a part of the setting since the late 90's... though I don't believe it was definitively made official that she vanished in July 2016 until Macross Chronicle came out in the wake of Macross Frontier in the late 2000s.

Ah I see, thanks.

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Kawamori always avoided the subject of what became of the ship after its disappearance, citing that Macross: Flash Back 2012 was the coda of Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay's story and that their departure from Earth aboard the Megaroad-01 was them sailing off into the proverbial sunset at the conclusion of their story.  Their disappearance isn't even treated like some kind of enduring mystery for subsequent generations.  Ships just sometimes go missing due to fold accidents and it's treated like an unfortunate statistic.  It wasn't until the most recent movie, Absolute Live!!!!!!, that the Megaroad-01's fate was revisited and it was a huge anticlimax...

  Reveal hidden contents

... because the obvious answer turned out to be correct.  The Megaroad-01's disappearane was because of a fold accident, and the only remarkable thing about it was that the ship HADN'T been destroyed.  It was stuck in a fold fault instead, trapped in the higher dimensional spacetime of fold space for decades.

Even then, its appearance in the Absolute Live!!!!!! movie was basically incidental.  The only reason anyone was looking was because someone operating under the alias "Lady M" was using the Megaroad-01's communications frequency while manipulating the New UN Government and New UN Forces, and did so blatantly and frequently enough that one particularly respected commander went rogue and formed a paramilitary organization devoted to hunting them down.

Hmm what if Megaroad-01 travelled through that black hole and confronted the Supervision Army in the same lush animation as DRYL? or the Trumotion sequence in the DYRL video games in a second movie? (can confirm Trumotion animation in SS version I own, haven't checked out PS1 version) With ancient ruins representing the origins of humanity and epic battles?  Imagine if they resolved the universe in an epic way like Gunbuster? Would you hate it? Could all the other "Macross" sequels stand alone as "cool" anime without the Macross name but with Kawamori involvment? I think so.

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the obvious answer being "the love triangle in question is already resolved".

The problem with this premise being that, like Hikaru and Minmay, Misa's character arc is over... there isn't really a direction for her character to develop in now.  She was already a confident military officer in the original series, and she overcame her romantic difficulties with Hikaru in the original series. 

So Max getting married to Milia was "already over" too but you enjoyed a sequel involving them.  Why do you think a sequel involving a relationship and characters with more complex backstories would be potentially somehow less interesting?

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All things considered, isn't it rather ironic to make this argument given that Star Wars fans are also quite unhappy with the new trilogy for mindlessly recapitulating the story arcs of the original trilogy and for overriding the happy ending of same to drag the original characters back into action long past their use-by date

No, I and many SW fans are not unhappy for "recapilating the story"!. The original grittiness, design, real sets, story themes and great characters were absent. The "feeling" was gone. It didn't have anything to do with bring back the original cast. 

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Macross has found consistent success over the years by making each new installment a self-contained story and moving on to a new part of the setting with new characters when that story reaches its natural conclusion.  That, plus its broad strokes approach to continuity, has allowed it to continually reinvent itself and take new approaches to its premise in each successive title without being chained down to what was popular forty years ago, burying new viewers in prerequisite viewing, or wearing out its welcome.  I suspect what we can look forward to another fresh installment set somewhere different from previous works, with its own characters, set pieces, and local flavor.

I'm glad Macross is successful and new fans love it. However, I do not enjoy the new iterations. They don't FEEL like Macross to me at all. IN MY OPINOIN They could be anything with superficial transforming mecha and a band or singer tacked on.  Just an opinion. Don't ban me "bro" - appreciate being here and sharing data. I respect anyone to feel how they want about Macross but I will not necessarily feel positive about all shows just because they have the name Macross on them. 

[Space Casual Life]

I guess I'm talking about THEMES. In or before the Unification War you had mass nuclear carnage. At the end of SW1 you had Earth getting 90+% taken out by a massive orbital bombardment. Humanity still managed to play an ace, with the Grand Canon/s. It's Earth vs the Universe. That was a great thing about Macross, the HUMAN thing about Macross. It had an epic background. Macross 7 vs space vampires was..uh..non epic..the only sequel that had close to epic themes was Macross II with Earth threatened again...Anyways I always wished the series continued in the way that Earth took the fight to what threatened Earth. That would be an epic theme that would be an appropriate continuing/ending of the story, I.M.H.O. I have to admit I love the original Mars Attacks trading card story too. haha. 

Edited February 2 by Space Casual Life
clarity

[snakerbot]

2 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

It's Earth vs the Universe.

The point of Macross is that it's not supposed to be "Earth vs the universe". Every Macross series is fundamentally about how war is dumb and bad and completely unnecessary if we could just communicate better.

Zero featured an alien death machine whose entire purpose was to destroy humanity if we hadn't figured out how to live in peace. SDF had a race of aliens who were almost identical to humans and a marriage between one of those aliens and a human and their first child was a major plot point in showing how the two races could come together. Plus wasn't really a war story, but the conflict between Guld and Isamu was entirely predicated on a misunderstanding. In 7 for pretty much the entire series Basara was just trying to reach out to the Protodeviln with his music, and once the Protodeviln realized they could use music to generate their own spiritia they didn't need to fight anymore. The Vajra in Frontier were only attacking because they didn't understand humanity and thought one of their own had been kidnapped. Once Sheryl and Ranka's song got through to them they stopped fighting and just left.

I don't remember much of Delta and I haven't seen II so I won't comment on those.

You can see an "Earth vs the universe" theme in SDF, but the other series decided to expand upon a theme from it that wasn't that one.

[Jeff J]

3 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

So Max getting married to Milia was "already over" too but you enjoyed a sequel involving them.  Why do you think a sequel involving a relationship and characters with more complex backstories would be potentially somehow less interesting?

Sometimes, lesser-covered characters like Max and Milia are better candidates for a spin-off series. Think of how the Breaking Bad universe spun off into Better Call Saul and focused on Saul, Mike, and Gus instead of doing a 6-season continuation for a character like Jesse Pinkman or making the prequel series about Walter White instead.

I haven't liked every Macross title, but I do appreciate that they didn't go back to the well with Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay. Their story as is was satisfying and didn't suffer from sequel-itis. They're my favorite characters, and I'll always associate Macross with them ahead of any other characters, but this is one case where I think they made the right decision to leave well enough alone. Understood YMMV.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

Hmm what if Megaroad-01 travelled through that black hole and confronted the Supervision Army [...]

Apart from the fact that that's not how black holes work, there are three major problems with this idea right off the bat:

1. Macross 7 already did a story involving confronting remnants of the Supervision Army.  They fought its founders, the Protodeviln, and a "v2.0" of the Supervision Army in the Varauta forces.  
2. That would be a death sentence.  The 1st Large-Scale Long Distance Emigrant fleet had a population in the tens of thousands, only a few warships and a few hundred VFs, and the Megaroad-class has basically zero combat capability.  The Supervision Army operates on the same scale as the Zentradi main fleets.
3. It would also just be a lazy retread of the original series plot.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

So Max getting married to Milia was "already over" too but you enjoyed a sequel involving them.  Why do you think a sequel involving a relationship and characters with more complex backstories would be potentially somehow less interesting?

Max and Milia's "romance" in the original series was a subplot in someone else's story.  Namely, Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay's story.

Excluding the Macross M3 game, Max and Milia have never really been main characters in a Macross story.  They've a recurring pair of supporting characters who have never really been the focus of the story.  They come in for a subplot here and there but mainly because they're fan favorite secondary characters... like Sgt. Johnson in Halo, Reg Barclay in Star Trek, or Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

No, I and many SW fans are not unhappy for "recapilating the story"!. The original grittiness, design, real sets, story themes and great characters were absent. The "feeling" was gone. It didn't have anything to do with bring back the original cast. 

I have a feeling that's more "just you", given the complaints that drove actual changes to the sequel trilogy.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

I'm glad Macross is successful and new fans love it. However, I do not enjoy the new iterations. They don't FEEL like Macross to me at all. IN MY OPINOIN They could be anything with superficial transforming mecha and a band or singer tacked on.  Just an opinion. Don't ban me "bro" - appreciate being here and sharing data. I respect anyone to feel how they want about Macross but I will not necessarily feel positive about all shows just because they have the name Macross on them. 

Then why are you here, commenting nonsense on a topic about the next Macross series?  Seriously.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

I guess I'm talking about THEMES.

But apparently not Macross's themes... given that you seem fixated on "gritty" war and mass death.

Macross's themes are music as communication, love triangles, and war being based on preventable failures to communicate that, once resolved, bring peace.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

In or before the Unification War you had mass nuclear carnage.

... no, we didn't. 🤔

I think I see the problem, though.  With an assertion like that, it's likely your view of Macross is actually your view of Robotech's "Macross Saga" and not actual Macross.

In Macross, the Unification Wars (plural!) were a series of small regional conflicts that sprang up in various unstable regions around the world after the United Nations announced the existence of aliens and plans for the formation of the Earth Unification Government.  Basically a lot of little Desert Storm-y fights over things like territorial disputes, ethnic and sectarian beefs, and so on.  There was some organized opposition to the Earth UN Gov't from the so-called Anti-Unification Alliance, but that was mostly just skirmishes.  Nothing even close to national warfare.  The only use of nuclear weapons was the Anti-Unification Alliance's use of a reaction warhead against St. Petersburg in 2006, which led directly to the Alliance's collapse and the end of the Unification Wars because it absolutely annihilated support for their position.

 

4 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

It's Earth vs the Universe. That was a great thing about Macross, the HUMAN thing about Macross.

No... it's never been that.  In fact, it's always been about how conflict comes from misunderstanding or failure to communicate.  

@snakerbot has a pretty good summary of the truth of the matter.

To fill in the gaps...

• Macross II: Lovers Again was a story about an encounter with an alien race so desperate to preserve its own culture in a hostile galaxy that it turned to militant xenophobia, and the war ended when they were confronted with the reality that there's more to life than simple survival, that there's beauty in other cultures too, and that coexistence is not a threat to their way of life.
• Macross Delta was also a story about how xenophobia (and particularly nationalism) can drive conflicts by creating hate and fear, how breakdowns in communication can lead to confict, and that the desire to understand each other can bridge those gaps from both sides.  (Even the villain was anti-conflict in it, his endgame was a galaxy-wide hive mind that would prevent conflict by forcing everyone to understand each other telepathically.)

Even in the original series and DYRL?, Humanity's victory is only possible because they partner with those Zentradi whose exposure to Earth's culture had given them an interest in life outside of military duty and a forever war.  The thing that led to victory in both cases was that Humanity and the Zentradi's representatives put the guns down and started talking.  That's how they partnered with the Vrlitwhai, Laplamiz, and Quamzin branch fleets in the original series (and came up with the Minmay Attack) in the TV series, and how they came up with the Minmay Attack in DYRL? using the sheet music they got from Boddole Zer himself.  In both cases, the war ends as a direct result of both sides sitting down and talking.

It's not "Earth vs. the Universe", it's "the Power of Communication vs. Conflict".

Edited February 2 by Seto Kaiba

[Shawn]

Lets stay on target and move other discussions to a new thread please, thank you
Next comment is to be actual NEWS on some new animation

[djivaldi7]

New series, new opportunities to woo outside Japan, i.e. North America using Disney+  

Hoping the action sequences don't flash by so quickly like in Delta. There's no opportunity to enjoy the panorama and mechanicals.  After the Oscar's "crush Miyazaki" statement... well,  look at the artistry as much as his productions' depth of storytelling. Sunrise could do anything Ghibli does, leverage some Gundam talent, but they'd have to value that perspective.  

For Marketing, kids have so much ultra-fantasy out there now, sticking to neo-reality tech like Macross still has its appeal, plus grandpa is more likely to introduce the series and buy "Junior" a Macross toy since he can relate to it too...bridging fan  generations can have huge market penetration impact because you start with a large base.  Neo-reality, Newtonian Physics friendly shows like The Expanse can still attract younger viewers.  The "magic" should be applied sparingly like fold crystals and protoculture.

Zettai Live-like elements should be used.  It was the best fix to major characters and plot progress on several fronts. 

It brought back Max and Megaroad 1. It revealed AI and future tech possibilities...AI singers, and the clone/daughter baby set a new stage.  How about time travel or inter-dimensional travel to encounter the Ancients?

In Zettai-Live!!! the Fighter vs. Battleship victory took us back climactically to M7 Lt. Kinryu's suicidal run in his armored VF11.  Make sure "against the odds" sub-victories happen.

Embrace some space physics...sure, let us still hear the explosions,  but in dogfights how about exploring some true-physics spin-around and shoot the guy who's chasing you (remember Atari's Asteroids?) while you're still going in the same direction? Maybe that evens out some of the freakish high-G advantage ghost, squire(m2) and SV303 Vivasvats have?

 If this new series can continue that,  letting us have time to admire the scenery, action and mechanicals, and getting more Gundam/Ghibli-esque in the narrative,  my grandkids will surely get to visit Disney's "Macross-World" in Orlando someday.

[djivaldi7]

Interestingly enough, ghosts and squires have become a reality:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ngad-america-s-new-6th-generation-fighter-is-not-what-you-think/ar-BB1mvbz4?ocid=socialshare&pc=DCTS&cvid=b9332dd6741c4656bb124479dd76882e&ei=18

Thank you Macross for showing us the future!

[Graham]

I'm just wondering if the streaming deal with Disney+ has delayed or even scuppered the planned new Macross series that was to be produced by Sunrise?

I mean it's been over a year since the news about the Sunrise produced series broke, but we haven't heard anything since.

Possibly Disney have their own plans for a new Macross series.....hmmm?  I personally hope not, given in my personal opinion Disney is a franchise killer and most (but not all) of the Disney releases for Marvel/Star Wars/Doctor Who/Indiana Jones have been pretty bad (again just my personal opinion).

It's now 8 years since Delta TV series was released and 16 years since Frontier TV series was released. So I hope we get a new TV series soon, just not if Disney has any creative control.

None of us including Kawamori are getting any younger! 😅

 

[djivaldi7]

Hard to believe Kawamori would start playing Mickey Mouse games. (There's an AI meme waiting to happen).  Macross-II was the only part of the franchise in which he ever gave up some degree of control, righr?

[Big s]

48 minutes ago, Graham said:

I'm just wondering if the streaming deal with Disney+ has delayed or even scuppered the planned new Macross series that was to be produced by Sunrise?

I mean it's been over a year since the news about the Sunrise produced series broke, but we haven't heard anything since.

Possibly Disney have their own plans for a new Macross series.....hmmm?  I personally hope not, given in my personal opinion Disney is a franchise killer and most (but not all) of the Disney releases for Marvel/Star Wars/Doctor Who/Indiana Jones have been pretty bad (again just my personal opinion).

It's now 8 years since Delta TV series was released and 16 years since Frontier TV series was released. So I hope we get a new TV series soon, just not if Disney has any creative control.

None of us including Kawamori are getting any younger! 😅

 

I kinda doubt Disney has a big influence in upcoming series, but as far as localization after the show airs in Japan, might be a bit of a different thing.

 

24 minutes ago, djivaldi7 said:

  Macross-II was the only part of the franchise in which he ever gave up some degree of control, righr?

I don’t think he was even consulted on that one, but I’m not a big historian on the behind the scenes stuff 

[seti88]

3 hours ago, Graham said:

I'm just wondering if the streaming deal with Disney+ has delayed or even scuppered the planned new Macross series that was to be produced by Sunrise?

I mean it's been over a year since the news about the Sunrise produced series broke, but we haven't heard anything since.

Possibly Disney have their own plans for a new Macross series.....hmmm?  I personally hope not, given in my personal opinion Disney is a franchise killer and most (but not all) of the Disney releases for Marvel/Star Wars/Doctor Who/Indiana Jones have been pretty bad (again just my personal opinion).

It's now 8 years since Delta TV series was released and 16 years since Frontier TV series was released. So I hope we get a new TV series soon, just not if Disney has any creative control.

None of us including Kawamori are getting any younger! 😅

 

wait for the end of the month? just based on delta's appearance in 2015(?) followed by a preview at the end of the year...

https://www.animeherald.com/2015/10/29/first-macross-delta-trailer-art-cast-crew-unveiled/

who knows...

[PointBlankSniper]

This isn't on Satelight's production and marketing schedule though. I doubt Sunrise will copy the same pattern. If that was entirely Kawamori's decision to preview like that in the past, I doubt he is involved enough with this series to call those shots this time. He should currently be busy at the helm of the new Aquarion at Satelight.

Really hoping it's Sunrise proper thats doing all the work, with the full unlimited budget treatment, and not heavily subbed out to Sunrise Beyond or other low budget subsidiaries like where most TV gundam series have gone... They can cook for as long as they want if it is at least animated as seriously animated as gundam unicorn and other subseqent big budget OVA/movie releases.

And hopefully it's more relevant to existing loose ends and lore, like Lady M, Heimdall, maybe the NUNS politics that Max left behind, the shady group that Grace was part of, etc. IMO we honestly don't need more vaguely introduced conspiracies that won't get tied up by the end.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

This isn't on Satelight's production and marketing schedule though. I doubt Sunrise will copy the same pattern. If that was entirely Kawamori's decision to preview like that in the past, I doubt he is involved enough with this series to call those shots this time. He should currently be busy at the helm of the new Aquarion at Satelight.

Kawamori's just providing "oversight", so I wouldn't be surprised if he has Bandai Namco Filmworks marching to a similar schedule.  It's effectively his franchise, after all.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

Really hoping it's Sunrise proper thats doing all the work, with the full unlimited budget treatment, and not heavily subbed out to Sunrise Beyond or other low budget subsidiaries like where most TV gundam series have gone... They can cook for as long as they want if it is at least animated as seriously animated as gundam unicorn and other subseqent big budget OVA/movie releases.

If anything, we should be hoping that Bandai Namco Filmworks is not supplying the writers for this exercise.

The writers working on the Gundam franchise are so used to rote repetition of the same tired formula they they're all but completely incapable of writing original material.  I'd much rather not see Macross devolve into a second Universal Century Gundam where the only thing that changes title-to-title is the proper nouns.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

And hopefully it's more relevant to existing loose ends and lore, like [...]

If Bandai Namco Filmworks's Macross project is a new main series like we suspect it is, it'll be pretty much unconnected to previous works like its predecessors.

That's how Macross avoids the continuity lockout problem Gundam has.  Each new series is kept as separate from the others as possible and any required info about past events is either explained organically in-series or info-dumped at the start of the episode.

 

Spoiler

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

[...]Lady M, [...]

Unlikely, given the restrictions Big West agreed to in its international distribution agreement with Harmony Gold.

Unless they retcon out Absolute Live!!!!!! and Lady M's connection to Megaroad-01... which wouldn't hurt my feelings any.  That was a stupid decision.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

[...] Heimdall, [...]

Pretty unlikely.  After all, their leader (Ian Cromwell) is dead, their flagship and its mission critical Siren Delta System are destroyed, and the Epsilon Foundation has bailed on them as a financial and technical backer.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

maybe the NUNS politics that Max left behind, [...]

Those were more like plot holes than politics.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

the shady group that Grace was part of, etc.

They're dead too, in most versions of the Frontier story.  Labyrinth of Time seems to suggest the movie version of Frontier, where they're killed by Brera, is likely the version of events they're rolling with going forward.

 

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

IMO we honestly don't need more vaguely introduced conspiracies that won't get tied up by the end.

Agreed.  But even Macross Delta's own official publications seem to think Absolute Live!!!!!!'s plot is best swept under the rug and forgotten.

 

[Old_Nash_II]

So, any news, art or concept, about this new anime?

I mean, we know that when Sunrise finds itself in some "development alley", it creates a Parallel Universe when it comes to Gundam.
As it is a "rival franchise", I believe it will do the same thing.

Edited October 14 by Old_Nash_II

[PointBlankSniper]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

  Hide contents

Unlikely, given the restrictions Big West agreed to in its international distribution agreement with Harmony Gold.

Unless they retcon out Absolute Live!!!!!! and Lady M's connection to Megaroad-01... which wouldn't hurt my feelings any.  That was a stupid decision.

Pretty unlikely.  After all, their leader (Ian Cromwell) is dead, their flagship and its mission critical Siren Delta System are destroyed, and the Epsilon Foundation has bailed on them as a financial and technical backer.

They're dead too, in most versions of the Frontier story.  Labyrinth of Time seems to suggest the movie version of Frontier, where they're killed by Brera, is likely the version of events they're rolling with going forward.

 

It seems Absolute Live is on Disney+, so Harmony Gold somehow has no hold over Megaroad-01 or Max himself

I do believe it was implied that there was more to Heimdall than just the forces present in the movie. And I originally had Epsilon on my list of loose ends too, but it started to look like I was padding the list with petty stuff so I removed it lol.

Actually don't remember the telepathic hive mind being cleared out by Brera, but it's been too long. I also want a more conclusive closure to Alto and the Vajra than just beaming a message made of symbolism, but once again, list was getting long.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

So, any news, art or concept, about this new anime?

Nothing so far, no.

 

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

I mean, we know that when Sunrise finds itself in some "development alley", it creates a Parallel Universe when it comes to Gundam.
As it is a "rival franchise", I believe it will do the same thing.

That's how it started... with Sunrise creating the Future Century because it literally couldn't make Bandai's demands for the next series after Victory work with the existing setting... but that stopped being the case a good while back.

The Universal Century timeline was already a lot of baggage to work with in the mid-90's when the Future Century and After Colony timelines were created.  Now, the sheer volume of material and Sunrise's (now Bandai Namco Filmworks's) canon policy have made the UC so dense, tangled, and impenetrable that new UC titles simply aren't accessible to non-fans.  2002's Gundam SEED was the first time Sunrise created an AU specifically to have a stand-alone story that would make Gundam accessible to first-time viewers.  That's been their AU strategy ever since.

Macross has a much more loosey-goosey setting and no firm canon policy, so it doesn't really have the problem that drives Bandai Namco Filmworks to create so many AUs.  Each new Macross series is as separate from the others as possible and the whole thing runs on broad strokes continuity that only references specific events where it absolutely has to, so there's no continuity lockout and any information about past events you need can be summed up in under a minute.

 

 

1 minute ago, PointBlankSniper said:

It seems Absolute Live is on Disney+, so Harmony Gold somehow has no hold over Megaroad-01 or Max himself

From what we've seen in the news, that restriction applies to new titles developed after the agreement.

(Though the Absolute Live!!!!!! Max is based on the Macross 7 design, and the Megaroad-01 is outside HG's licenses.  The main sticking point would be the original trio who we saw two of in silhouette in the movie.)

 

1 minute ago, PointBlankSniper said:

I do believe it was implied that there was more to Heimdall than just the forces present in the movie. And I originally had Epsilon on my list of loose ends too, but it started to look like I was padding the list with petty stuff so I removed it lol.

It was, but the Battle Astraea and its Siren Delta System were the lynchpin of the whole operation under the organization's leader Cromwell. 

With those three key components gone, the organization almost certainly fell apart similar to how other anti-government movements in previous titles did.  It's basically a repeat of what happened to Latence when the Ravens blew up Macross 13.  The whole organization just kind of rolled up like a windowshade thereafter.

The Epsilon Foundation's still around, but the organization as a whole doesn't seem to be malevolent.  It's like General Galaxy or Gundam's Anaheim Electronics.  It's a huge, amoral corporation that's mainly interested in profit above all else and has a few employees who sell arms to both sides out of greed, sympathy, or simply for self-advancement.

 

1 minute ago, PointBlankSniper said:

Actually don't remember the telepathic hive mind being cleared out by Brera, but it's been too long. I also want a more conclusive closure to Alto and the Vajra than just beaming a message made of symbolism, but once again, list was getting long.

It happens at the climax of the movie.

That big skull-shaped pod that the Galaxy soldiers bring to the Battle Frontier's bridge is their life support system.  After Brera breaks free from their mind control, he shoots his way into the Battle Frontier's CIC and blows them up with his gunpod at point-blank range.  It's basically the last thing he does in the film before the epilogue.  So yeah, they're dead... in a "the soot that used to be them is all over the Battle Frontier's deck plating" sort of way.

[davidwhangchoi]

 so far, "ace" pilots  cameoed in other series. 

Isamu, Max, Hikaru (Isamu and Hikaru never showing their faces)

Sunrise should have Basara cameo 

or at least Quattro should make a cameo at the end of the sunrise series.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

 so far, "ace" pilots  cameoed in other series. 

Isamu, Max, Hikaru (Isamu and Hikaru never showing their faces)

Sunrise should have Basara cameo 

or at least Quattro should make a cameo at the end of the sunrise series.

I'd honestly rather see all new people and no cameos; M+ and MII didn't have any cameos (aside from mecha) that I can recall, and they did just fine. The original SDFM didn't cameo anyone (as they had no one) and had to depend on the strength of the characters and story alone.

Admittedly, I used to want previous characters to continue on, but I feel now (after some discussions with Seto) that it can detract from the heroes actually shining in the story and all leans too heavily on "what's been done before". Example: Roy Focker wasn't a badass because his VF-1S was that much better than everyone else's or that he had someone always bailing him out who was a hero from a previous series. No; he was simply that good and it took  a Zentraedi ace to finally bring him to his end(and even then he only died after ignoring his wounds for a considerable time afterwards).

Hikaru, on the other hand, had to grow into the role, and then took over after Roy had died and he inherited Skull-1. Max Jenius was something of a prodigy, but even he had a learning curve before he was considered the best of the best. And I think the main characters in the next Macross series deserve the same chance they did: to shine with their inherent abilities, and rise to the challenge and succeed/ fail on their own merits. And if they fail,  to overcome it, learn and grow, and try again until they do succeed.

I love the past characters as much as anyone, but as I've learned in the last few years: it's time to let go of them as far as future productions, and let them have their "ride off into the sunset" moment. Even M7 kind of stomps on Max and Millia by showing their family kind of splintered and their marriage on the rocks.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

or at least Quattro should make a cameo at the end of the sunrise series.

Well, we did already have a Char clone in Macross II... Lord Feff ticks a lot of the checkboxes including having a custom red mecha with a horn and higher performance than usual, and being a space nobleman aligned with the baddies.

[PointBlankSniper]

I'm honestly not fond of getting new characters that might be wimpier with each iteration. If sunrise has freedom to be as detached as they wanted, it's entirely possible we get digimon kiddies in the next one, with holographic furry mascots that summon magic fighter jets, and still claim continuity with the rest of the franchise lmao.

From my experience, stories dealing with an established commanding superior you can't trust, makes for a much more intriguing story than just charging at the obvious big bad. I'd rather all the past aces come back, and star in the next series, rather than be mere cameos, and find out Lady M is a giant interdimensional cthulu monster that ate the protoculture, then teaming up to repel her.

IMO sequels being hard to get into is a blanket excuse to shut down continuity. It just depends how the new story is introduced and framed.

[jenius]

You can't be hung up on any element too much because at the end of the day, if the story is compelling, all the characters and setting can be new with only subtle links to the original(s). 

I wonder what Macross would have been like if it didn't live in Gundam's shadow. I think so much of what the creators strive to do is stay unique and separate from Gundam. 

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

From my experience, stories dealing with an established commanding superior you can't trust, makes for a much more intriguing story than just charging at the obvious big bad. I'd rather all the past aces come back, and star in the next series, rather than be mere cameos, and find out Lady M is a giant interdimensional cthulu monster that ate the protoculture, then teaming up to repel her.

If that's the case, I'd just as soon rewatch the old series with those "aces" in it. A bad writer can ruin an established character just as easily as make an all-new one then ruin them with bad writing. At least with the new characters, you can forget them if the writing sucks; but when you ruin an old favorite hero by shoe-horning them into a new story (and the writing sucks), then you get The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, we did already have a Char clone in Macross II... Lord Feff ticks a lot of the checkboxes including having a custom red mecha with a horn and higher performance than usual, and being a space nobleman aligned with the baddies.

Yeah, I think we're good on that.

[guyxxed]

Fully agree with moving on to a new story and new people (as Macross is most likely to do regardless of what we want).  I want to see more of this universe and not keep retreading over the same people and events (ahem, Star Wars, looking at you).  Honestly, I'd be super happy if the next Macross story was smaller and they gave up on the galaxy smashing threats for a bit.  A Macross Plus or Macross the Ride sized story would be a nice change after trying to mind control the universe (again).  Really, I'll just be happy that there's new Macross, whatever they decide to do, but I think it would serve them well to go in a smaller, more personal direction the next time out.

[PointBlankSniper]

4 hours ago, jenius said:

You can't be hung up on any element too much because at the end of the day, if the story is compelling, all the characters and setting can be new with only subtle links to the original(s). 

I wonder what Macross would have been like if it didn't live in Gundam's shadow. I think so much of what the creators strive to do is stay unique and separate from Gundam. 

The issue is that, I don't feel like a story is generally very compelling or immersive if the foregone conclusion from the track record is that the franchise has a promise to always leave a bunch of loose ends with bad unfinished writing. They need to wrap up their old teasers before I can trust them with starting something new. There can only be so many surviving shady factions trying to overthrow NUNS before you start to roll your eyes and wonder where the rest of them are when the next group tries the same stunt.

I also don't find it very immersive when stories like MCU or comics leave so many villains hanging that they feel like there are more villians and heroes fighting them than there are civillians to protect. UC Gundam over crowds itself in much the same way, with so many side stories set during the one year war, that there are now more hidden wars and gundams than there are probably number of mobile suits and battles that canonically could have existed during that war.

Macross doesn't trap itself like that because it doesn't keep going backwards on its timeline. If that's a pitfall being in Gundam's shadow let it dodge, I'm glad its there, and hope it stays there. Macross has a single story that keeps going forward, so all the valkyrie development lore makes sense, and happens as a consequence of all the implied or glossed over politics. The fold magic and protoculture lore also keeps getting built upon. That's the stuff I'm invested in being explained and why I care about continuity.

 

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

If that's the case, I'd just as soon rewatch the old series with those "aces" in it. A bad writer can ruin an established character just as easily as make an all-new one then ruin them with bad writing. At least with the new characters, you can forget them if the writing sucks; but when you ruin an old favorite hero by shoe-horning them into a new story (and the writing sucks), then you get The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

I'm not bent on having old characters appear. That was just an example of how to wrap things up. But it sounds like what you want to see is bound by the forgone conclusion that the writing will be bad, so you'd rather the franchise trash itself by feeding new fodder into it. That's literally exactly what I don't want the franchise to feed into in my first sentence in this post, and hope they pull themselves out of with full effort.

[DownIsUp]

18 minutes ago, PointBlankSniper said:

The issue is that, I don't feel like a story is generally very compelling or immersive if the foregone conclusion from the track record is that the franchise has a promise to always leave a bunch of loose ends with bad unfinished writing. They need to wrap up their old teasers before I can trust them with starting something new. There can only be so many surviving shady factions trying to overthrow NUNS before you start to roll your eyes and wonder where the rest of them are when the next group tries the same stunt.

I also don't find it very immersive when stories like MCU or comics leave so many villains hanging that they feel like there are more villians and heroes fighting them than there are civillians to protect. UC Gundam over crowds itself in much the same way, with so many side stories set during the one year war, that there are now more hidden wars and gundams than there are probably number of mobile suits and battles that canonically could have existed during that war.

Macross doesn't trap itself like that because it doesn't keep going backwards on its timeline. If that's a pitfall being in Gundam's shadow let it dodge, I'm glad its there, and hope it stays there. Macross has a single story that keeps going forward, so all the valkyrie development lore makes sense, and happens as a consequence of all the implied or glossed over politics. The fold magic and protoculture lore also keeps getting built upon. That's the stuff I'm invested in being explained and why I care about continuity.

 

I'm not bent on having old characters appear. That was just an example of how to wrap things up. But it sounds like what you want to see is bound by the forgone conclusion that the writing will be bad, so you'd rather the franchise trash itself by feeding new fodder into it. That's literally exactly what I don't want the franchise to feed into in my first sentence in this post, and hope they pull themselves out of with full effort.

Imo, the only big loose thread left in my eyes is whatever the frakk was up with Lady M and Xaos, which probably won't be touched for the foreseeable future thanks to HG. With regards to the other shady organizations; everyone involved in the Vajra incident is paste on the walls of a ship that probably isn't even in the galaxy atm, Vindrance was the military equivalent of five dudes in a souped up van who blew up in Zettai Live, and the Epsilon Foundation is basically just Anaheim electronics from Gundam. For better or for worse, there's not a lot left to grapple with in a new show, barring a straight up sequel to Frontier, and even that isn't really tying up a loose end so much as emotional closure

[Duke Togo]

2 minutes ago, DownIsUp said:

Imo, the only big loose thread left in my eyes is whatever the frakk was up with Lady M and Xaos, which probably won't be touched for the foreseeable future thanks to HG. With regards to the other shady organizations; everyone involved in the Vajra incident is paste on the walls of a ship that probably isn't even in the galaxy atm, Vindrance was the military equivalent of five dudes in a souped up van who blew up in Zettai Live, and the Epsilon Foundation is basically just Anaheim electronics from Gundam. For better or for worse, there's not a lot left to grapple with in a new show, barring a straight up sequel to Frontier, and even that isn't really tying up a loose end so much as emotional closure

What does Harming Gold have to do with it? 

[Big s]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

If that's the case, I'd just as soon rewatch the old series with those "aces" in it. A bad writer can ruin an established character just as easily as make an all-new one then ruin them with bad writing. At least with the new characters, you can forget them if the writing sucks; but when you ruin an old favorite hero by shoe-horning them into a new story (and the writing sucks), then you get The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

That’s how I feel about most Disney franchises these days. The ruined everything from Willow to Indiana Jones. But if they put out a bad show like the acolyte, I felt like it didn’t hurt as bad.

and if these new Macross characters actually get a great show, then that’s even better. I can have something new to be excited for. The story of Macross needs to push ahead into the future or to be distant enough from other characters to have its own story 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, jenius said:

You can't be hung up on any element too much because at the end of the day, if the story is compelling, all the characters and setting can be new with only subtle links to the original(s). 

My feeling exactly.  As long as the characters are engaging and the story is compelling, I'm good with whatever. 😁

 

8 hours ago, jenius said:

I wonder what Macross would have been like if it didn't live in Gundam's shadow. I think so much of what the creators strive to do is stay unique and separate from Gundam. 

That's a question every mecha title ends up asking... because there are a few standouts like Macross or Evangelion, but mostly everyone's just copycatting Gundam since the early 90's.

 

1 hour ago, Duke Togo said:

What does Harming Gold have to do with it? 

One of the provisions of the agreement between them and Big West is supposedly that Big West won't use the designs of the original series in new works going forward.

With "Lady M" now linked to the Megaroad-01 and Misa and Minmay, it's highly likely to become an orphaned plot thread for legal reasons.

[PointBlankSniper]

1 hour ago, DownIsUp said:

Imo, the only big loose thread left in my eyes is whatever the frakk was up with Lady M and Xaos, which probably won't be touched for the foreseeable future thanks to HG. With regards to the other shady organizations; everyone involved in the Vajra incident is paste on the walls of a ship that probably isn't even in the galaxy atm, Vindrance was the military equivalent of five dudes in a souped up van who blew up in Zettai Live, and the Epsilon Foundation is basically just Anaheim electronics from Gundam. For better or for worse, there's not a lot left to grapple with in a new show, barring a straight up sequel to Frontier, and even that isn't really tying up a loose end so much as emotional closure

Lady M, her knowledge of and pushing of Xaos and NUNS to meddle with the ruins is the big loose end. It's no small deal if they went out of their way to retcon the whole show just to cameo Max and have him expose her as being hella suspicious and a potential foe. And the fact that they dredged up Alto and then tied him the same plot device of those ruins pretty much warrants a straight up sequel IMO. Had they not packed that MV with the movie, it would not be so suspiciously plot relevant. I'm not saying the next show has to be a direct sequel of those two series, but if they are gonna heavy handedly drop such teasers, I think they should really pay those off.

I'm fairly certian the deal with HG includes terms of non distrubution of specific OG IP in any form in HG controlled regions, and not just to not include those IP in new works. I'm quite sure ZLive being on Disney means they are in the clear, at least with how vague it was portrayed there. If there are anymore issues, they could just write off Megaroad and related characters as a red herring, and still continue that story. It's not like we know what they had planned.