Macross WorldOn Wednesday. November 4, the bi-annual Miyazawa Mokei showcase was held in Asakusa, Tokyo.
SpeakerPODcast co-host and MW forum regular SAVE was on-site and got some great shots of Evolution Toys’ upcoming VF-2SS, Mwgahobby’s Cosmo Fleet Special SDF-1, and more!
On Friday, Oct 29 at 12:00 JST, a special live-streamed NicoNico event unveiled first details for Macross Delta, including Valkyrie designs, Character designs, winner of the idol contest, prototype toys, and a teaser trailer.
Full details can be found at Anime News Network.
A TV Special will air on December 31st which will apparently include an almost complete first episode. The official start date of the new tv series has yet to be announced.
It’s a musical deculture episode as Tochiro & Renato report on Mari Iijima’s 2015 Tokyo gig and then wax nostalgic about some of the lesser-known songs of the galaxy’s favourite singer song writer.
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EP.29
00:00:00 – Renato’s impressions of the All Japan Model & Hobby Show 2015.
00:10:30 – Mari Iijima Live in Tokyo 2015 – ‘For You’ – Report!
And remember – you can support Mari by purchasing her music either via Marimusic or Amazon!
Setlists & photos after the JUMP!
Hot on the heels of the recent translation of the Kazutaka Miyatake interview from the SDF-1 book, comes yet another Miyatake heart-to-heart, this time the big man is talking about his work on Super Dimension Century Orguss, or as I like to call it, “Kei Katsuragi’s Adventures in Wonderland”. I hope you find it as fascinating as I did, giving an insight into the state of mind he must have been in during that entire 1982-84 period.
This interview is from a booklet that was included with the first edition of the Megahouse Variable Action Hi-Spec Orguss toy from earlier in the year. I chose to tackle it at this time since it would be perfect to brush up on our Orguss trivia as this year’s Macross World Convention will have a dedicated ORGUSS panel for all your Space-Time Oscillation needs!
The translation starts after the jump. Enjoy!
The first information on MACROSS DELTA is here and the SpeakerPODcast crew were at ground zero at the All Japan Model & Hobby Show 2015 to hear what Shoji Kawamori himself had to say about it.
Then everyone rocks out with Ranka and Co. at the inaugural Totsugeki Deculture fan concert!
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Timestamps & photos after the JUMP!
After initial images leaked last night, AnimeAnime and ANN are reporting that the Logo, title and first key visual image for MACROSS DELTA have been revealed in the lead-up to this weekends All Japan Model and Hobby Show.
With the title confirmed to be ‘Macross Delta’, the key visual’s tagline is “Shoot (it) down.’
Interestingly, the logo also reveals some sort of planet. Could the new series be set somewhere other than a colonization fleet?
More details are expected at a ‘Macross Modellers’ talkshow event at the All Japan Model and Hobby Show tomorrow.
This will be followed by a “‘Chō Jikū'” Seisaku Happyōkai” (“The Super Dimension” Production Unveiling), live-streamed event on NinoNico on October 29 which will reveal character designs, main staff on the production, and the winner of the recent idol auditions.
To commemorate the upcoming new series, 5 previous Macross movies are getting a budget re-release on Bluray on December 24. Macross Do You Remember Love, Macross Plus Movie Edition, Macross 7 The Galaxy is Calling Me, Macross Frontier The False Songstress & Macross Frontier The Wings of Farewell will all be rereleased at 5000yen each. There is no information regarding English language options on any of these discs at this time.
(Thanks to Egan Loo and Adrian Lozano)
As we board the hype train leading up to Kazutaka Miyatake’s exhibition of original artworks, let us look at a recent interview with him conducted earlier this year for the “SDF-1 Macross: Thorough Dissection” book — you know, the one which also doubles as an enormous 1/2400 scale papercraft model of the Fortress Exceeding Space and Time itself (the cover of the book stoically assures us that it is genuine “Deculture Scale”, no less).
The translation starts right after the jump! (I tried to be as accurate as possible, and that is why the four in-text notes are oddly numbered: there are two #3’s, and there is no #1. 😛 )
MW member and Macross SpeakerPODcast partner-in-crime Gubaba has provided us with another new translation! I’ll leave it to him to introduce it… Download link at the bottom!
The Plundering Fleet is one of two short stories included in the Macross Perfect Memory book from 1983, in the section “Macross Outside Story” (by which, they mean “side stories”). It was written by Kenichi Matsuzaki, who was the script editor for the series and also wrote plenty of episodes, including the first three and “Love Drifts Away.”
You may remember that in Episode 15 of the series, Global tells Misa a story about her father pulling off some wild scheme involving pretending to be Anti-Unification Forces and raiding a UN storehouse. That’s what this story is about, but really, only partially.
I’ve always been kind of curious about the story. MW member Roycommi posted a version over a decade ago, but since that was only two pages long, and the story in Japanese covers four pages of extremely small, dense text, there was clearly a lot missing. I started the translation in late 2011, while still working on the Misa novel. I did most of the first section, and then put it away for a few years, picking it up a little less than a year ago. I worked on it sporadically this year, and finally finished it yesterday (mostly… There will be a slightly revised version coming later). Honestly, I found it a real slog. Fun to read, I hope, but really difficult to translate. Neil Nadelman and Frank Reynolds helped with the submarine terminology, and my old housemate in Tokyo, Irina, helped confirm that the “Russian” names in the story aren’t actually Russian, and okayed my spelling of them. Any errors that remain, however, are my own.
Download HERE: The Plundering Fleet
Stop the presses — it’s the BIG ONE!
The City of Yokosuka will hold a Kazutaka Miyatake exhibition from next month — on an actual BATTLESHIP.
Kazutaka Miyatake is a living legend. He, along with Kunio Okawara (who incidentally currently has his own exhibition running at the Ueno Royal Museum until the end of September), practically created the “mechanic designer” position in the animation industry.
He is famous for having worked on the Powered Suit design for the Japanese editions of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers — immensely influential in the history of Japanese animation as it informed every robot design in anime thereafter including Mobile Suit Gundam. He is renowned for his design work on Space Cruiser Yamato, Super Dimension Century Orguss, Aura Battler Dunbine and of course, pretty much every Macross series: SDF, DYRL, Seven, Dynamite, Zero, Frontier, and most of the games (except Macross II 😛 ).
As bonus trivia, his credit in Macross: Do You Remember Love was “Production Design” — in other words, he created the entire world of the theatrical Macross movie from scratch, a feat that traverses the boundaries of “mechanic design”.
A talk show will be held on the 24th of October with guests Miyatake-sensei and fellow Studio Nue member, the legendary SF illustrator Naoyuki Kato!
The Kazutaka Miyatake Gengaten will be held from October 24th to November 23rd at the HIJMS Memorial Battleship “Mikasa”.
Info about the Mikasa in English here:
http://www.kinenkan-mikasa.or.jp/en/build_of_mikasa.html
Info on the event in Japanese here:
http://www.city.yokosuka.kanagawa.jp/4450/nagekomi/20150911.html
Arcadia’s ‘Mr. K’ posted a blog entry recently that’s been a hot topic of discussion among Macross toy aficionados, as of late. Why do Arcadia’s valkyries command the prices they do? What goes into making them? The SpeakerPODcrew weighs in with their thoughts on the piece.
But first, we get together with a room full of Macross 2 fans (YES, they DO exist!) and meet the voice actor for Hibiki Kanzaki, Tsutomu Takayama.
(Many thanks to Hisame for organising the event. For more of her Macross cosplay, follow her on Facebook!)
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Renato’s full translation of Mr.K’s blog post can be found here.
Timestamps & photos after the JUMP!