40th Anniversary of Robotech

[Old_Nash_II]

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/163g67nTe7/

40 years and nothing to celebrate this date. Nothing new, animation, game, comics, nothing.
HG simply did nothing to celebrate this date.
They should sell the name to some other company and close their doors if that's the case.

Anyway, it's sad to see a franchise like Roboech (because without it, I wouldn't know Macross) be forgotten like this.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

Anyway, it's sad to see a franchise like Roboech (because without it, I wouldn't know Macross) be forgotten like this.

It probably will never be totally forgotten. This year it is still remembered as an international speed bump to getting og Macross and Dyrl streaming outside of Japan.

Beyond that it never really was its own franchise and was just a way to introduce people to Japanese Animation. Similar to Battle of the Planets or Star Blazers.

[Old_Nash_II]

13 minutes ago, Big s said:

It probably will never be totally forgotten. This year it is still remembered as an international speed bump to getting og Macross and Dyrl streaming outside of Japan.

Beyond that it never really was its own franchise and was just a way to introduce people to Japanese Animation. Similar to Battle of the Planets or Star Blazers.

It's interesting that a current Gatchaman comic is coming out, no longer as Battle of the Planets

[TangledThorns]

For my TV market I think ROBOTECH first aired on April 15th. The first episode with Rick Hunter crash landing in that transforming Veritech fighter blew my mind! ROBOTECH cemented me as a nerd and anime addict for decades.

That being said I think ROBOTECH is fading away. Hardly any new media that can attract new and young viewers and I don't even really care anymore tbh. If ROBOTECH makes a return then great but till then... HG had its chance over 20 years ago but blew it. ROBOTECH pretty much died with Carl Macek.

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:14 AM by TangledThorns

[m0n5t3r]

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

like Roboech (because without it, I wouldn't know Macross)

Same. It's really been forty years ... and memory is a little fuzzy due to being older, but I still remember being able to watch a few SDFM eps. (and even DYRL later on) on some UHF channel on TV in the 80's. Of course it was in Japanese and I couldn't understand anything... and I was much too young to undersrand or care about anything else (plot, character development etc.) except the cool planes transforming into much cooler robots. And then there were the jarring images of those weird looking zentradi ships in space!

But as a 10 yr old staying with my aunt in LA in the mid-80's, I was able to watch a good chunk of Robotech 1, 2 and 3 (and wanted to be like Rick and Scott, had crushes on Lisa and Dana)... good times. Of course life and growing up happened and I only realized the connection and the truth more than a decade and a half later. But the word Valkyrie had already been seared in my brain and had a meaning for me not connected to Norse mythology.

I still find it amazing even after so long since Macross F first aired, that Macross is still alive and well in Japan. So much so that I don't really think about Robotech much. But it's good for the toy collectors here that there are now more Chinese companies making SDFM (and Mospeada) products by using the Robotech license. 

Man, that's the most times I've mentioned the word R*****ch in a long time   

[davidwhangchoi]

are we going to get the rest of the sentinels tv show episodes?

still waiting to see what happens after rick hunter gets married and some robot sabertooths running as a pack...

 

[kajnrig]

Don't worry, that live-action movie is coming out any day now.

Any day now...

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Old_Nash_II said:

40 years and nothing to celebrate this date. Nothing new, animation, game, comics, nothing.
HG simply did nothing to celebrate this date.

Well, yeah... that's the expected result.

Harmony Gold officially pulled the plug on new Robotech development 18 years ago in the wake of the Shadow Chronicles debacle.  Their last gasp attempt to get their fans to put up the cash for new development on Kickstarter ended 10 1/2 years ago.  They even struck out re-attempting their 90's strategy of blindly farming the license out to anyone who'd cut them a check because the one publisher willing to touch it mainly just reprinted old comics and ran one new comic that was mostly a piss-take...  and even that was cancelled without notice under mysterious and unspecified circumstances.

There's a page quote from Warhammer 40,000's rulebook... "Success is commemorated; failure is merely remembered."

 

2 hours ago, Old_Nash_II said:

They should sell the name to some other company and close their doors if that's the case.

Probably, yeah.  The franchise's main value is squatting on the Macross license and associated trademarks, which let them collect royalties from Big West in select markets.  They could almost certainly get good money for it, but they seem to be content with whatever small amount of royalties they get from Macross licensing instead.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

For my TV market I think ROBOTECH first aired on April 15th. The first episode with Rick Hunter crash landing in that transforming Veritech fighter blew my mind! ROBOTECH cemented me as a nerd and anime addict for decades.

That being said I think ROBOTECH is fading away. Hardly any new media that can attract new and young viewers and I don't even really care anymore tbh. If ROBOTECH makes a return then great but till then... HG had its chance over 20 years ago but blew it. ROBOTECH pretty much died with Carl Macek.

 

Honestly, the best way to look at it realistically is what it actually was. It was a tool to bring shows like Macross to the world. And honestly, it was a bumpy road, but we’re finally at a place where several Macross series and movies can be viewed by a much much larger audience. The trip isn’t finished and there’s still the og stuff to settle, but we’re much better off without Robotech in the way. Macross isn’t perfect, but Robotech after the original shows ended was a huge mess.

I’ll never forget that without Robotech anime in general may have taken a lot longer to become standard viewing in a majority of households these days, but Robotech was never really its own thing. Maybe one day they’ll do something with it, but it would be better if they did like Battletech and distanced themselves from non original aspects.

[seti88]

Ah yes...you will comply

 

substitute the above with who the hell is hikaru!?

 

 

[Big s]

3 hours ago, seti88 said:

Ah yes...you will comply

 

substitute the above with who the hell is hikaru!?

 

 

The winter hunter

[jvmacross]

In terms of media....Robotech is dead....

However, in terms of merch (mainly toys)....it has arguably never been better thanks to all of the Chinese companies cranking out product....

For the most part, Robotech is primarily tied to Macross....as long as Macross never dies, neither will Robotech....even if HG relinquished its license, someone out there would buy it and keep releasing Robotech "Macross" toys....it's a great license to own...zero efforts in coming up with new ideas....just collect on licensing fees on all the old ones you never even created yourself, heck, the hardest part was just coming up with "veritech", "guardian", and "battloid"....LOL

[JB0]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... ran one new comic that was mostly a piss-take...  

Hey, I was interested in the epic saga of Sad Dana.

[MinmayMusicManiac]

I am 90% sure i first saw it by convincing my mother as a young kid to get The Anime Network for me here in Canada but i might be wrong as it has been such a long time. However i had seen macross DYRL prior due to that Best Film & Video Corp VHS that was being sold for cheap from the local rental shop when anime DVDs were taking off.

I do remember being confused as the name changes due to seeing DYRL first however i had no idea that Macross was its own seperate thing until i saw Robotech II & Macross II (both on VHS) side by side as non-dialup internet was still a luxury in my city

[Thom]

The only good things that ever came out of Harmony Gold was my introduction (about a decade after watching Robotech) to Macross, and Robotech's cool intro song. The rest was literally just making a profit by playing mix-n-match with someone else's creativity. HG missed it's chance after the third Robotech series to actually go off and creatively make something of their own. Instead, their name will alsways just be known for being a Macross rip-off.

But hey, even though it makes hardly anyting worthwhile, at least it's probably still good for risiduals. Got to keep the license-holders by their pool side and supplied with endless margaritas.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Thom said:

The rest was literally just making a profit by playing mix-n-match with someone else's creativity. HG missed it's chance after the third Robotech series to actually go off and creatively make something of their own. Instead, their name will alsways just be known for being a Macross rip-off.

That’s why I really think their best move is to try and work out a deal to allow themselves and big west to profit from releasing the og stuff and DYRL. And then just to do Robotech as a disconnected reboot. They could do their own designs and new characters in a story that’s new to rebuild their name. Or just watch the cash roll in from making distribution deals and the streaming rights

[pengbuzz]

30 minutes ago, Big s said:

That’s why I really think their best move is to try and work out a deal to allow themselves and big west to profit from releasing the og stuff and DYRL. And then just to do Robotech as a disconnected reboot. They could do their own designs and new characters in a story that’s new to rebuild their name. Or just watch the cash roll in from making distribution deals and the streaming rights

That would make sense, and HG won't do it. They have so little interest in reviving it (not to mention zero ability/ desire to invest any serious money into it) that it's guaranteed dead.

When they tried to launch Shadow Chronicles, they played it cheap there, and with the Titan comics (and other comic book companies they ever used), paid low and from what I recall, even rooked them.

[jvmacross]

3 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

That would make sense, and HG won't do it. 

Wait....you think BW is champing at the bit to go into a distribution-profit sharing deal with HG?

 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

On 3/6/2025 at 2:20 PM, jvmacross said:

Wait....you think BW is champing at the bit to go into a distribution-profit sharing deal with HG?

 

Honestly though..  I don't have much love for BW either.     When I was younger and first on MW,  I had nothing but vitrol for HG..  but having been through this for 25+ years its shown me 2 companies that are extremely petulant and inflexible with the fans the only ones suffering..    Willing to bet that 95% of the Macross fans outside of Japan were introduced to it by Robotech at one point or another.    I know the number might be even higher for NA and SA fans. 

 

Also lets not forget that the Robotech Box set that was released has the best looking remaster or upscaling of SDF Macross currently outside of Japan..  

 

BTW.. I still have lots of vitrol for HG for those that are wondering..   just not worth the effort.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 3/5/2025 at 8:06 PM, JB0 said:

Hey, I was interested in the epic saga of Sad Dana.

That comic was taking more piss than the World Cup stadium men's rooms.

I did find it funny that it went out of its way to establish that every Robotech story was a Bad Future timeline that just resets and repeats the same mistakes.  Imagine you license your IP to a second-tier comic publisher and the one new comic they make with it is a story about how your writing sucks, your stories never go anywhere, and how the only good ending is the one that skips the entire rest of the story.

I think that's a fair point for them to pack it in and say "Eh, maybe no more comics."  

 

On 3/6/2025 at 2:10 PM, pengbuzz said:

They have so little interest in reviving it (not to mention zero ability/ desire to invest any serious money into it) that it's guaranteed dead.

Well, yeah... they're not crazy.  As much as the folks doing Harmony Gold's convention tour might talk a good game, that's just marketing.

HG's corporate leadership are acutely aware that Robotech has tried and failed on five separate occasions to produce a viable continuation to the animated series.  The only reason they were willing to try the fourth time (Shadow Chronicles) was because the series had a brief resurgence of public interest and conditions looked almost favorable.  Even then, the HG management weren't willing to bet more than they could afford to lose on a horse that'd failed to finish the last three races.  The fifth and final time was them throwing up their hands and saying "OK fans, if YOU want it so bad YOU pay for it this time".  That's the one that ended with them cancelling their Kickstarter when it became clear they wouldn't get anywhere near their funding goal.

New development's not bringing in money, but flogging nostalgia via cheap merchandise is... so that's where their efforts are concentrated.  Cynical, but undeniably the correct choice for their business's situation.

[Bolt]

On 3/4/2025 at 5:25 PM, kajnrig said:

Don't worry, that live-action movie is coming out any day now.

Any day now...

Oh yes ... Yes indeed..! 

[davidwhangchoi]

should i wait for the 45th anniversary to finally see this in a cartoon?

[Old_Nash_II]

1 hour ago, davidwhangchoi said:

should i wait for the 45th anniversary to finally see this in a cartoon?

I was kind of pissed off because HG hadn't done anything.
I wrote what I call the RoboCross Project, a fanmade that brings together the two franchises, but in a "very different" way.
In this case, the ASS didn't fall to Earth in 1999, it "fell" 500 thousand years ago, returning to action when a Zentraedi battle fleet arrived on Earth during the conflict between the UN and the Anti-UN.
In this way, the two ended up signing an armistice because much worse was coming and they both needed to work together.

And much later, the UN would become the REF and the Anti-UN would become the Southern Cross Army, taking over the entire Southern Hemisphere of Earth as a "reward" for having fought in the war.

I planned to post this on HG's Facebook, and I even thought about a game with Unity using AI, creating a demo; but I left it there. Too many projects ahead and I lost motivation

[jenius]

I wrote something once on what Robotech Live Action would need to be to separate it from Macross. I went with the same concept of the "SDF-1" being found buried in a glacier rather than crashing into Earth. Once the humans used its technology, it became easy for Masters to identify where it was and send their slave soldier race after it (they would need a new name). I figured you would ditch the whole giant thing and just have the "Zentraedi" equivalents be convinced that the humans are the offspring of the crashed ship and unclear if they're fighting their own before ultimately realizing that the Earthlings enjoy a better existance and they'd rather be on their side... but not before the Earth took its awful beating. The Exedol equivalent would tell us that Zor had been to Earth and manipulated the DNA of the inhabitants and that's why he chose it as the hiding place for his ship when he rebelled. After that, I figured you could pretty much slide into the sequel stories but clean-up all the rough edges and sync them together better. I'd probably make the Masters look more alien and reintroduce the original Southern Cross concept that they were actually fighting enslaved, brainwashed humans rather than the Masters themselves with all the twisted moral implications. 

As I thought about it though, the more you tease apart Robotech to make it unique from Macross, the more you create a generic scifi movie that doesn't need to be called Robotech. So, if I'm Sony and I want to make a scifi epic, I would be better off paying a writer to take the concepts of the not Macross story and make a new franchise that I wouldn't need to share with any existing rights holders, especially if I don't trust the name would put enough butts in the seats to warrant the expense. You could then market the movie saying it was inspired by all the great 80s mecha anime and name drop a bunch of them. 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, jenius said:

I wrote something once on what Robotech Live Action would need to be to separate it from Macross. [...]

As I thought about it though, the more you tease apart Robotech to make it unique from Macross, the more you create a generic scifi movie that doesn't need to be called Robotech. So, if I'm Sony and I want to make a scifi epic, I would be better off paying a writer to take the concepts of the not Macross story and make a new franchise that I wouldn't need to share with any existing rights holders, especially if I don't trust the name would put enough butts in the seats to warrant the expense.

Due to the interesting way copyright law works with respect to adaptations and localizations, Harmony Gold's copyright on Robotech only extends to those aspects of it that aren't part of the original Japanese shows.  The movie license is essentially just to the brand name, some key terms and character names, and a few original plot beats.  For all the stuff fans actually care about, like the original stories and designs, the studios would have to seek a separate license agreement with the Japanese IP owners.

Why would any studio make a Robotech movie when all the license actually gets them is a brand name with a dubious reputation?  They have to develop what's essentially an all-original IP anyway, why not just call it something else and keep all the money for themselves?

[sh9000]

On 3/6/2025 at 7:46 AM, Thom said:

Robotech's cool intro song.

 

 

 

I still appreciate the intro.

[davidwhangchoi]

2 hours ago, Old_Nash_II said:

I was kind of pissed off because HG hadn't done anything.
I wrote what I call the RoboCross Project, a fanmade that brings together the two franchises, but in a "very different" way.
In this case, the ASS didn't fall to Earth in 1999, it "fell" 500 thousand years ago, returning to action when a Zentraedi battle fleet arrived on Earth during the conflict between the UN and the Anti-UN.
In this way, the two ended up signing an armistice because much worse was coming and they both needed to work together.

And much later, the UN would become the REF and the Anti-UN would become the Southern Cross Army, taking over the entire Southern Hemisphere of Earth as a "reward" for having fought in the war.

I planned to post this on HG's Facebook, and I even thought about a game with Unity using AI, creating a demo; but I left it there. Too many projects ahead and I lost motivation

i want Jack McKinney and Carl to make Minmay the mother of Zor, then she'll best Delta Lady-M

[JB0]

33 minutes ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i want Jack McKinney and Carl to make Minmay the mother of Zor, then she'll best Delta Lady-M

Please, no! Every time I manage to forget End of the Circle, you people pick that wound open again!

[davidwhangchoi]

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

Please, no! Every time I manage to forget End of the Circle, you people pick that wound open again!

Just admit it, the story is better than Delta

[JB0]

3 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

Just admit it, the story is better than Delta

I can't say that in good faith. I didn't finish Delta. It sounds like a mess.

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i want Jack McKinney and Carl to make Minmay the mother of Zor, then she'll best Delta Lady-M

Can't we just make Minmei:

Spoiler

The mother of the Xenomorphs?