Macross II: Lovers Again (Kickstarter Project) - Animeigo BD release thread

[Seto Kaiba]

While I was looking at a question about printing, I had another thought about something that may or may not wind up in the artbook.

I'm very curious to see if the artbook will have anything for Macross II: Lovers Again's two video game tie-ins: Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song.  The games are often overlooked despite being canon to Macross II: Lovers Again's parallel world timeline because they were for a console that never took off in the west (NEC's PC Engine) and they're only really referenced in one artbook (Entertainment Bible 51) and official magazine coverage of the OVA.  The games had original Haruhiko Mikimoto character art and a number of original mechanical designs that never got decent prints in artbooks.  If they have access to that content as well, the Alus Edition Kickstarter's artbook could be the first book to actually print much of that art.

[Shawn]

I'm hoping to see some pre-production art from Kazumi Fujita (Zeta Gundam designer) of the original VF-XS

 

[jvmacross]

Finally eliminating the need to pay hundreds for a couple of pages on an over-priced doujin!  

[Seto Kaiba]

If they do this right, it could be the first real definitive artbook that Macross II has ever had. 😁

So much of the art was scattered in random magazine articles in Animage, Newtype, and B-Club.  The print quality of the Bandai Entertainment Bible books always left a bit to be desired, and This is Animation Special 5 kind of crammed a lot of the minor designs into a page or two at the very end.

Even if they don't get the more obscure stuff, I've still got a good feeling about this one.  

[pengbuzz]

On 2/4/2024 at 2:37 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

If they do this right, it could be the first real definitive artbook that Macross II has ever had. 😁

So much of the art was scattered in random magazine articles in Animage, Newtype, and B-Club.  The print quality of the Bandai Entertainment Bible books always left a bit to be desired, and This is Animation Special 5 kind of crammed a lot of the minor designs into a page or two at the very end.

Even if they don't get the more obscure stuff, I've still got a good feeling about this one.  

A little undecided on this one, since funds are scarce for me. At the same time, I loved the setting and mecha for MII (albeit I don't read Japanese very well).

[Jeff J]

On 2/3/2024 at 1:26 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

While I was looking at a question about printing, I had another thought about something that may or may not wind up in the artbook.

I'm very curious to see if the artbook will have anything for Macross II: Lovers Again's two video game tie-ins: Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song.  The games are often overlooked despite being canon to Macross II: Lovers Again's parallel world timeline because they were for a console that never took off in the west (NEC's PC Engine) and they're only really referenced in one artbook (Entertainment Bible 51) and official magazine coverage of the OVA.  The games had original Haruhiko Mikimoto character art and a number of original mechanical designs that never got decent prints in artbooks.  If they have access to that content as well, the Alus Edition Kickstarter's artbook could be the first book to actually print much of that art.

Speaking of those games, what I'd do for an official compilation of 16- and 32-bit Macross games...

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

 Mr. Woodhead's latest update:

"We have received most of the raw film transfers from Japan (just a few minor elements yet to come) and the work of massaging them has begun.

We've also received almost all of the artwork and settei and are assembling them into the artbook.

First drafts of the subtitles will be going out to the proofreading team early next month.

In other news, Natsumi is currently in Japan and is meeting Mikimoto-sensei at an undisclosed location to discuss the new Macross II artwork."

It's slowly coming together.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Latest update arrived today, here are some snippets:

"Work on the OVAs continues at a steady pace. The subtitles for the japanese language track have been completed and are currently being reviewed to ensure all the fine nomenclature details are correct.

Justin Sevakis and his team at MediaOCD are working hard on the color grading and restoration of the 4K transfers. They report that everything seems to be in excellent shape and most of the restoration work is dealing with occasional dust and film weave.

Regarding the english dub, we're happy to announce that we've managed to obtain the audio track of the english theatrical release, which was only ever shown in theatres in North America.

The main difference between the theatrical release and the DVD release centers around the recasting of two parts; Dennis Lone and Exxegran. Dennis only appears in episode 1, and in the DVD release Exxegran was recast between episodes 2 and 3, and thus is played by two different voice actors.

In the theatrical release, Dennis is recast and Exxegran's lines in episode 1 and 2 have been re-recorded by the second voice actor -- thus the performance is consistent over all 6 episodes.

There are other minor differences in the edits because of the lack of episode title cards and eyecatches in the theatrical version.

Our current plan is to use the theatrical release as the basis for the main english soundtrack, but also include the DVD episode 1 and 2 audio on the disc for completeness.

Even this far into the project, new materials are still being discovered in archives in Japan and being incorporated into the project. The latest discovery is a pristine print of the eyecatch sequence.

As for the artbook, we've completed the restoration of the settei and the first pass of the settei translation; like the subtitles, it's going through a checking process to make sure all the nomenclature is correct. We've also translated all of the print interviews -- 6 in total.

The artbook is huge -- looks like it'll be just over 200 pages, with about 40 pages of full-color illustrations.

Finally, Mikimoto-sensei is hard at work on the new packaging art, and we hope to get a draft of that later in the summer. He has also agreed to take a stab at doing a custom embroidered patch design for the project!

There's a few other surprises that we're working on that we're not quite ready to announce yet, so stay tuned!"

Edited June 3 by Valkyrie Hunter D

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Just got another update:

"We've completed all the interview and commentary translations, and we've gone through several reviews of the subtitles for them. Still more work to do here making sure everything is correct.

We've also been hard at work on the captions for the English dub. The first two passes have been completed, and we're plowing through the final reviews and tweaks.

Meanwhile, Justin Sevakis and his minions at MediaOCD are making steady progress on the color-grading for both the Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Once those have been completed, we'll do our final review of the subtitles prior to the start of authoring.

The big news is that Mikimoto-sensei has sent us his rough design for the embroidered patch."

Also of note:

"We're also taking a hard look at doing an acrylic standee using this artwork. Is this something you'd be interested in?

The artbook is largely complete. All we need is the final artwork from Mikimoto-sensei (including the packaging artwork), and of course if the combat archaeology team discovers any additional materials, we'll try and squeeze it in."

 

[twich]

Got this update email as well, looks like it is going to be quite a thing come December.

Twich

[danth]

I'm down to buy a BD release of M2 but I am absolutely sick of kickstarters. The most agonizing possible way to buy something.

[Graham]

Yeah, I'm really not into Kickstarters also. 

If this eventually get's a release I may buy it.

But as it's now on D+ I've less desire to pay to  get the Blu Ray disk. 

I mean yeah, who knows how long Macross will be on D+.

But anyway, I still have my old MII DVDs as a back up,

[CollectorCanine]

Robert said there would be a new update in "a few days" over a week ago... wonder what happened?

[jvmacross]

Just looking forward to the artbook...

[Big s]

On 10/2/2024 at 1:25 AM, Graham said:

Yeah, I'm really not into Kickstarters also. 

If this eventually get's a release I may buy it.

But as it's now on D+ I've less desire to pay to  get the Blu Ray disk. 

I mean yeah, who knows how long Macross will be on D+.

But anyway, I still have my old MII DVDs as a back up,

I can see why some would buy this since here in the U.S. we still haven’t gotten the D+ treatment that many other countries have. 
I’m still hopeful that it does come by the end of the year, but there’s also a part of me that saw North America being on the list, but not which North American countries would be included.

[SSK]

"Many countries", yes and no. Contrary to popular belief, Macross stuff is currently available on Disney+ in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, Canada and some Asian countries only, with English, Chinese and Korean subtitles. Those who use a VPN may correct me but I don't think there's more languages.

Disney+ announced a 2024 worldwide release back in March, and they're active in more than 120 countries. We're still very far from it. They'll have to clarify things sooner or later. For the US, but also the rest of the world on their will to add more languages.

[kajnrig]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madoverlord/macross-ii-lovers-again-alus-edition/posts/4222477

Update #25

Should we do an Ishtar Standee?

 

Hello everyone. Before we get to the main topic of this update, a quick progress report.

Preproduction on the subtitles is almost completed, we're just in the endless paranoid rechecking stage. However, the color correction and HDR grading work has taken more time than expected, and that coupled with delays in getting the new package artwork completed (which we need before we can print the artbooks) means we're probably looking at an early spring release instead of end-of-year. As is our tradition when our original schedule inevitably blows up in our faces, we're working on making additions to the set as compensation for the delay.

And that leads into our main topic. As you will recall from the last update, Mikimoto-sensei had done some incredible artwork that was originally intended to be turned into a patch (side-note: Sasha is doing her usual obsessive job trying to ensure that every stitch goes in exactly the right place). This artwork wasn't a full-body portrait because that wasn't going to be needed for the patch.

In any case, a lot of people who saw the artwork said it'd make a great standee, and when we mentioned this to Mikimoto-sensei, he said he really, really would like us to make one.

Of course, our response was “Yes, Mikimoto-sensei. Whatever you want, Mikimoto-sensei! We'll need a full-body version, Mikimoto-sensei.” And look what just arrived...

 

 

This is the first new Ishtar illustration that Mikimoto-sensei has created in many years, so it's something special and we definitely want to turn it into a physical object like a standee.

However, here's the thing with standee production; there are minimum order quantities and a tooling fee for making a mold. This means that the project is only viable if we get 250+ orders. So that means it's time for one of our Backer Polls!

Our tentative plan is to make either a ~6.5" (1/10 scale) or ~10.6" (1/6 scale) standee (or both if there is sufficient demand). The estimated prices are $20 and $30, respectively, plus shipping.

However, as we are standee n00bs, we'd love suggestions from the standee experts out there, so let us know what you think. We'd also love suggestions about the base graphics, our current best ideas are the Marduk symbol and/or some space-themed graphics.

You can find the poll here!

Best,
Robert & Natsumi

[locidm]

Standees - I hope they're thinking about doing an acrylic one. Since they're talking about a base, I'm assuming that's the case. Ishtar looks great!

[MKT]

I love that new Ishtar art.

At the same time, Mikimoto's art have sort of changed recently. The colors seem.. less layered? As if lost some of its watercolor quality.