Zinjo

On 10/15/2021 at 5:01 PM, pengbuzz said:

Who says it has to be Earth (or reference Earth) at all? Maybe a fleet that built replicas of Earth monuments as part of their culture, and had a Macross class ship in their fleet?

In my fantasy re-edit of M2 to shoehorn it into the current continuity, M2 takes place in a system remarkably similar to our solar system, but is surrounded by dense fold faults.  The only ships capable of traversing the faults are old school Zentradi cap ships with the original fold quartz still in their engines.  Unfortunately, they are in very short supply there.  Retrofitted ships and Earth built ships use fold carbon.  This "downgrade" made it possible to make fold jumps in the shipping lanes, but as was discovered in the later part of the 2050's not so much through fold faults.

Thus the "lost colony" was cut off from the galaxy network and had to rely on existing tech and their own ingenuity to defend themselves from rogue Zentradi fleets who were able to travers the briar patch surrounding their system.  Then the Mardook arrived and all hell broke loose. 

In my fantasy edit, the Mardook are SA microns who woke from their PD mind control and chose to use mind control on their Zentradi soldiers to keep them from turning on their commanders.  Over time the arrogance of the PC commanders turned into a cult that believed their culture was superior to all others and went on to conquer the systems they encountered.   Their tech is superior to the Zentradi and the humans because they have direct access PC technology and knowledge. 

Allusions to a potential link between the two continuities came in Delta, when Mikumo transformed into the Star Singer and her body had curiously familiar markings, similar to Ishtar and the other emulators in Mac2.

On 4/15/2021 at 10:37 AM, GabrielV said:

Still kind of wish we had got an answer to what that ship was that Ishtar was having the vision of.  It's the thing that kicks off the whole OAV.  It's important enough to prominently feature in the opener.  It's the thing Ishtar searches for the entire OAV and mistakes the SDF-1 for somehow.  Ingues knew of something at least called the same thing, and at least momentarily entertained the idea that the SDF-1 was it, but I don't think he ever truly thought the SDF-1 was related to it at all barring the moment of fear while the main cannon was firing at his ship.

Most MacGuffins don't really need to be explained once they are revealed to be irrelevant to the story...

On 4/18/2021 at 8:33 PM, sketchley said:

This highlights a culture gap between English speaking countries and Japan.  In short, education is mandatory only until the end of junior high school (grade 9).  Thereafter, people tend to go into either private high school, public high school, or something akin to a technical college (somewhere between high school and a trade school).¹²

In-universe, Macross has been treating Valkyries like they are cars since Macross 7.  While it's ridiculous to assume that people would be trained in tactics and weapons just to get a basic 'driving licence', it's plausible that these characters are well versed in how to drive the family car (the Valkyrie) by the time they graduate from junior high school.

That said, I agree that what is depicted in Macross is pushing the limits of plausibility, but it is plausible—especially if one keeps in mind that everything in-universe is fundamentally different after the surface of the Earth was annihilated and priorities changed (E.g. Valkyries becoming the equivalent to the car).

 

¹  case in point: one of my students graduated junior high school, and went to a technical college to learn about aircraft mechanics/maintenance (grade 10 and onward) at a school that is basically a glorified airport (possibly the basis for Mihoshi Academy in MF?)

² the Japan Self-Defence Force has its own junior/senior high school.  So, in-universe it's plausible for people to attend the equivalent and having been learning how to pilot Valkyries (and have essentially been in the armed forces) since grade 7.

 Frontier addressed this very thing.  The high school setting for the series had a flight training school as part of the curriculum.  A trade school of sorts for pilots.  Imagine graduating from high school with your pilot's wings and then going on to train in the military. 

Damn, now I have to break out those DVD's and try this!

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

On 5/7/2021 at 7:08 PM, Roy Focker said:

I'm going to be a Debbie Downer and say I think they've both lost their chance.  There was a period when this joint agreement would have meant that our dreams had come true.  I saw Gundam and Dragon Ball Z toys at Target today.  A North American fan who knows their anime will consider Macross of equal importance.  Everyone else maybe they've heard about it.   Delta did come out around 5 years ago.  I can see more specialty stores carrying stuff and small streaming services putting up some series but Macross lost its chance to be a global juggernaut.

A lot will depend on how they do it.  If they spend the money on quality dubs they could end up on streaming services like Netflix.  My plan would be to do quality dubs, translate the songs and re-record them just for the series.  But that is me....

There are several tunes that are pretty timeless (thank you Ms. Kano )

On 5/7/2021 at 4:36 AM, Radd said:

 I still have and cherish my Animeigo DVD set, but I could see it being difficult now for someone to pick up SDFM if they went looking for it. HG's web store doesn't have it. I couldn't find it on Amazon. It's listed on Prime Video on Amazon but every episode says "video unavailable", so I'm not even sure SDFM is streaming anywhere.

 It's my modest hope that as BigWest begins pushing the Macross franchise in the west it will prompt HG to rerelease SDFM to Blu-Ray and streaming.

On a somewhat related note, is anyone else disappointed that every video after Flashback 2012 on the Macross YouTube channel is region locked? I subscribed to the channel the day of the announcement and every time they upload a new video it's "not available in your region".

Animego's release was the best outside of Japan.  The audio was sourced from BW and they went to a lot of effort to remaster it from the limited source material they had. 

The HG dub was an awful mess and in many ways an insult to Macross fans.  Getting Mari to reprise her role in the dub really didn't work as well as they thought.  Her accent is still pretty strong which became a bit distracting.   As it was, I saw the first disc and that was more than enough to send me running back to my Japanese subtitled version.

On 5/6/2021 at 9:38 AM, pengbuzz said:

Well, BW now being able to do the release would be (at least IMO) impetus for them to consider doing a new animated series for SFDM. Update the story a little bit (tech, terms and whatnot, maybe push the timeline a bit into the future like 2099 instead of 1999 for the launch of the SDF-1) and tailor the dialogue so english and Japanese dubs would work.

Fingers and toes crossed brother!

I've been wanting that ever since I saw what they could do in CGI with Mac 0.

May'n turned out to be a fitting successor to Mari Ijima in the Macross Idol lore.  Junna is a very close second, IMHO.

The Nousjadeul-ger had a better design in DRYL.

I realize these are all "canon" (if such a thing can be applied to Macross), but what about the SWX fighters?

Um WOW!

On 4/22/2021 at 1:46 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

... why Barbie pink?  Meltrandi gear is typically either kind of lavender, blue, or red.

Or Chloe's gold custom...

On 5/13/2021 at 11:07 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

It's coincidence.

The only - and incredibly tenuous - connection between the SV-51 and VF-27 is that one of the lead developers of the SV-51 who defected to the UN Government as the Alliance was collapsing later became a co-founder of General Galaxy, a subsidiary of which developed the VF-27 decades after his death.

Note that both Nora's SV-51 and Brera's VF-27 are "ace custom" units and not representative of typical fighters of their types.

True.

The production model of of the SV-51 is a sandy brown and the production model of the VF-27 is green. Both can be seen in "blink and miss it" moments of each series.

On 4/21/2021 at 3:12 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Their primary business is a moderately successful rental property management operation that manages eleven apartment complexes in the greater Los Angeles area.

They also hold licenses on several live action imports that they distribute.  Before acquiring the rights for SDFM from Tatsunoko, they were/are an import distributor of licensed foreign works.  How many of the original licensing agreements they still have is an open question.

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And it would only take about 2-5 minutes of additional animation to work it in.

True,

it was very tricky to try to add the series into the main continuity before MF introduced fold faults and how fold quartz is able to cut through them.

Though I would think 10-15 minutes would do it, as a prologue would have to be added and the reaction of the M2 NUNS to seeing the federal NUNS task force arriving in their system.

1 hour ago, deathzealot said:

That is your opinion, but while I am a Macross fan I also like Robotech. I really wish they managed to keep Shadow Chronicles going for I was actually interested in where they would take the story in that. I also wanted to see what they were going to do with Robotech Academy. Sigh. However, that said I do understand why everyone does not like Robotech.

I was hoping for something more with SC.  Not comic book cutouts delivering painfully awful dialogue.  The premise was interesting but execution was horrible.  

The worst scene had to be when one pilot goes into a suicide run against the enemy for no good reason.  I guess that's to be expected from stellar writers like Tommy Yune and Carl Macek...

56 minutes ago, Nied said:

I meant from now on

Guaranteed, HG will distribute the post SDFM videos. 

That is what they have always done with other people's works.  They license it and distribute it in their sphere of influence.

49 minutes ago, Nied said:

Except the press release says HG retains the rights to use those names or designs.

Correct, as HG has an agreement with Tats for merchandizing outside Japan for SDFM only. 

And they did use the original character names when they released SDFM on DVD a few years back. 

An awful dub job, but it is what one could expect from a creatively bankrupt organization.

1 minute ago, Nied said:

That's true which is a climb down from HG I missed, although it does appear they may be involved in distribution of those properties.

Nope. 

Central Park Media had the  distribution rights to M+ in the 90's and I believe Manga had Mac2, or the other way round....

6 minutes ago, Nied said:

You literally listed at least two derivative works.

Actually the works are derivatives of SDFM which HG can do as per their agreement with Tatsunoko who technically owns SDFM outside of Japan due to the 2003 ruling. 

No post SDFM properties can be used such as M+, M2, M0, MF, etc... despite HG's false claims they had rights to.

I'm skeptical,

BW gave away the farm in 2006 when they didn't defend their IP rights with respect to trademarks.  Hopefully they are smart enough now to ensure their IP rights are better protected from the hacks at HG.  Time will tell. 

For HG it's a win, because they don't have to spend any money to distribute BW paid for properties....  This is what HG was founded on, distributing other people's stuff!

From the comments I've seen it sounds like a 21st Century version of M7.  Heavy emphasis on the music, less on the story and action.  Unfortunate....

On 4/2/2021 at 6:57 PM, Dax415 said:

Hi guys, like many others.... loved quite a bit of the mecha eye candy when I first saw it.  Now that we have even further macross shows, I kept wondering how well ,,,,,or perhaps....not so well.... Macross II would do coexisting in the macross lore.  What I was thinking,,,, is that it was actually a pre mega road colony that settled on a planet closely resembling earth in a star system similar to our own.   The fleet.... composed of a SDF class class ship as well as numerous zentran ships eventually get cut off from the rest of humanity.  Wanting a truely new start and to show case how rich earths original culture was.....they simply set out to rebuild the new planet as earth once was before the war.  Which would explain the construction and eventual prolonged use of the Minmei defense system and original style valkyrie mecha against rogue zentraedi fleets.  At least that would be the gist of what I was thinking.  I do realize there are further differences ....such as zentran vs meltran...... but I figured somebody more creative could fill that in, lol.

It could, 

My pet idea to shoe horn the series into the main timeline is that M2 takes place on in a colonial system trapped by fold faults for decades.  The only ships to effectively navigate the faults are the PC equipped ships with actual fold quartz and not the fold carbon common in most human made ships.  So when the Mardook arrive in their PC era ships they traverse the faults relatively easily.

It would explain why the mecha look like derivatives of the original designs as the colony didn't have the engineering expertise found in the federal system.  So their versions were simply derived from what they had when they arrived.  The Macross class ship they had was an escort to the original emigration fleet.  If you look at the environment designs of the cities they look very much like repurposed colony ships that landed on the planet.

To finally bring it into the continuity, they could animate a sequence with an NMC carrier arriving shortly after the events of the series to "find" them.

That is how I'd do it.

On 11/6/2020 at 7:34 AM, twich said:

That looks way different, but kinda YF-21/vf-4/vf-14/variable glaug vibe going for it

Yeah,  definitely looks like a next gen AI drone with a total VF-4 vibe. 

Some fan service for the VF-4 fans out there....

The cockpit reminds of the Tin Man cockpit from "Stealth"

On 8/25/2020 at 11:18 AM, Sanity is Optional said:

Personally I prefer the various series with music by Yoko Kanno (Plus, Frontier).

7 wasn't bad, and would probably rate higher if I hadn't marathoned it listening to Planet Dance over and over and over and over and over.

Delta, the music was Jpop, and decent Jpop (as far as I could tell), but it just never meshed with the action on screen the way Frontier and Plus did.

The series could be condensed to 1 season and it would have been much better rather than  stretching it out to flog the music for merchandizing...