Pat Payne

Same here. I just saw the OP on Youtube, and was amazed with the work. I'd love to see them reanimate the original series' vocal tracks with that shiny new animation

Do not, ever, call me, or anyone else in this forum, "stupid" again. Am I understood? If that is your idea of debate and discussion, throwing out ad-hominem attacks because you disagree, to Hades with you. I am not in the mood to brook that right now. I shall entertain your viewpoint on a matter, but I am not going to tolerate being slammed in a drive-by insult by someone who doesn't wish to take the time to actually make a comprehensive and thoughtful response. I gave my opinion, which may well be wrong -- I never claimed to be omniscient. I challenge you to put yours out there in a responsible and intellectually satisfying manner.

IIRC, Sunrise may not have a leg to stand on in this one -- it seems that FASA way back when actually had a valid license for the images. The reason the Dougram and other non-Macross mecha were unseen'd was that FASA panicked in the wake of the HG suit and decided that any 'Mech design that did not come from a FASA artist had to be retired, just because they were concerned about other legal tangles. That's why the IIC 'mechs (even of non-Unseen designs) were made Unseen (not that I'm complaining, they were mostly fugly anyway): The copyright, even though they were made under a commission from FASA, was held by JVC Victor. And, even so, would Sunrise go to the matresses for a number of half-remembered anime franchises that they have little marketing for? If this were Gundam, I'd see them fighting vigorously -- not so much for Dougram. And be fair to the guys at Catalyst: The FASA v. Playmates/HG settlement is a sealed settlement that's never to be made public knowledge -- it could well be that the details were "need to know" only amongst the people at FASA, and that stuff never got communicated to later rightsholders after FASA went out of business, until those other rightsholders (WizKids, FanPro and Catalyst/In Media Res) had to go digging through paperwork to find out just how far their rights to the properties DID stretch. Randall Bills himself may well have not been told the particulars outside of "you can't use that artwork in books anymore." And it was a near-20-year-old litigation -- people's memories aren't perfect. Therefore, he may have thought they were in the right with a first pass over of the paperwork, and then, a month later a lawyer may have said "umm... remember when we said you could use 24 designs? Sorry, it's only 12 you can really use."

You'd be surprised, Lynx -- in one game I was in in college, every kill save one was a clean head destruction.

I'm just glad that at least we still have the Locust, Shadow Hawk, BattleMaster, The Ost-Mechs, Wolverine, Goliath... basically anything that can't be directly tied to Macross. But I had this feeling it was just too good to be true... HG was not gonna give up that easily.

When I was in Hawaii, at Pearl Harbor on vacation a few months ago, I kept imagining the naval base as housing the rebuilt Macross. And, yeah... I've passed by HG HQ on Sunset, it's only 30 miles from where I live. Please, think of the Macross fans!

(He finally rows up on a raft made up of lashed-together Yamato boxes, bearded, with tattered clothing, looking like a BBC presenter who's fallen on hard times. Gasping for breath, he says --) Wow, so they ARE doing a "Macross the Origin"! Has this hit the US yet?

C'mon, gentlemen, let's get past the typeface, mmm'kay? As to the designs, those were some excellent redresses of the Zent ships. I love the melding of the classic Zentradi design ethic with a more modern real-word ethic. On the Flagship, was that a converging beam gun (a'la the Death Star or some ships on B5) that they have? I stumbled over the other UNS designs also...and they're not bad... I could see a VF-1 looking like a F-22...

Hear, Hear. ArcoRay, I agree with your position and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. What everybody really ought to be saying is [Churchill] "This... is your victory." [/Churchill]. This is a good sign from a company that's controlled by a company with a historical acrimony towards most of the Japanese players in the Macross Legal Saga, and vice versa. Personally, I'm enthused, and hope this is the sign of a new and fresh start between Tatsunoko/HG and Big West/Studio Nue, though breath-holding may not be in order just yet . Over on the ANN boards, one of the posters seemed to be manifesting Sith/Graham-like skills and saying that something might be coming down the pike in August. Something big. But even that was conjecture, and I have absolutely no idea what it might be. (Although if it's something earth-shattering like a R1 release of DYRL, I definetly wouldn;t say no...)

You may get your wish -- according to Toynami's press release, they want to re-issue every 1/55 valk ever made by Bandai/Takatoku, even the "rare and exotic variants."

IIRC, Macek wanted to do a subscription sort of affair at first (i.e. you'd get two episodes in the mail every month or some such on VHS casette), but found that there was no money to be had at that time, and so went the route of TV syndication.

First: Tadaima! Second, Wow-- this is genuinely good news. the last two Toynami releases were pretty dire. Now, finally we have Chunky Monkies to look forward to. I nearly keeled over when I saw that on ANN today. Whose back did they have to scratch to get that license? And does this mean that perhaps there's a light at the end of the Yammie tunnel? Oh, and where do we get these? Please say they'll be in stores.. (I did see some fo the Toynami 1/100s in a Santa Monica toystore [near, fittingly enough a gigantic statue of a Valkyrie ] not too long ago... )

First -- to the "Exedore/Exsedol" fight -- "Lum" "Lamu" "Lam" "Ram" "Ramu" "Rum", all coming from "ラム•インベーダー", and all used at one point or another on official tchotchkies from Studio Pierrot. And while I'm not discounting the uncanny similarities between Robert Donner and Exedor Folmo, (and the names of the characters) I don't quite buy that the character "Exidor" influenced the character "Exedor." Original drawings of the character (from Perfect Memory) show him to be macrocephalic and bald, and those were done well after the Exidor character first was introduced on Mork and Mindy. It could be that Mikimoto was influenced by Donner's characterization and look, but it seems a stretch. But then again, stranger things have happened, and nothing's created in a vacuum, either Oh, and JBO, I'm whole-heartedly behind your naming convention. )

I think some phones allow the user to upload mp3 files as ringtones. The cheap #$%^s at Verizon don't...

If it helps any, most times when it's subtitled in DYRL, the phrase is usually translated as "bakabanashii" or "idiotic".

Seconded. I really put down the grain to the nature of the beast -- that in some places the original film stock used was just too grainy for HD (but just fine for normal definition purposes, such as theatrical releases and VHS/LD/ND DVD), and that Bandai may have made a decision that taking out the grain would, as AnimEigo learned to their chagrin, destroy more of the picture quality than leaving it in would. (For those who don't remember -- IIRC, AnimEigo, when they remastered Macross TV back in 2000, tried to remove all the film grain, but found that doing so also took out many other details [particularly starfields] and generally made the picture look quasi-crappy, and so had to actually reintroduce film grain to the picture.) Besides, as crasis notes, Ive never seen the colors look more vibrant (particularly in the scene where Minmay's watching the gossip show about her time in the hold with Hikaru -- it looks much brighter and more vibrant that in other versions I've seen) nor the details crisper and more defined before. And so, I'm willing to live with a little grain.

If I were you, hang onto it. It's rare, so it may well become a collector's item More practically, it's one missing page -- why knock yourself silly over it?

If anyone has $130 to spend (and the worst head for bargains since the Russians said "Da, ve vill sell you this vorthless Alaska for two cents per acre" ), Amazon has started to list the set in its US store as being for sale. BTW--mine's somewhere in Los Angeles County, either at the main LA Post Office dispatch center or on its way to/at my local branch.

Here we go again...

Wait -- so they sent it to Calgary -- THEN shipped it to Anchorage, Memphis and back to Calgary? Wow, I hope somebody right now is spending Christmas with his head on a platter

Wow that is a formidibale set right there! I've been manaically checking Japan Post for mine, and right now it's waiting to be shipped from Tokyo for the handover to YOUR United States Postal Service-service-service-ervice-vice-ice -- should hopefully have mine within the week! Oi cannae break th' laws o' physics, Cap'n, but boy, do I wish I could! )

I am SO seeing this movie when it comes out! I'd be hard pressed to call Bruce Campbell a "genius actor", but he's always a hoot to watch.

Wow-- that remastered version looks so good! Will the remaster disc be OK to play on a normal TV, or would it just come out looking crappy?

I got nuttin'. They sent me the e-mail showing that mine has shipped today (or, since Japan's over the Date Line, is that yesterday -- or tomorrow? ) and shipping for EMS shipping is still somewhere in the neighborhood of $64 (depending on whatever the exchange rate ends up being when the charge processes). I can't wait to get my 4 pounds of Macross goodness

The limited edition's just showed up on the US Amazon -- it doesn't look like you can order it direct from Amazon just yet ("currently unavailable"), they may be pre-emptively listing it for expected resellers, or maybe after its release in Japan, some copies will be shifted to international sales, but either way... http://www.amazon.com/Super-Dimension-Fort...751&sr=1-49 (I'm still pre-ordering with CDJapan, though )