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Batou

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Everything posted by Batou

  1. I voted "battroid", but it's really the practicality of using all 3 that had the biggest impact on me when I first saw Macross (in the guise of Robotech) as a kid. They at least bothered to make up an excuse as to why it was necessary to invent a massively impractical transforming robot beyond the fact that they look eff'in cool. You also have to remember what else was being offered to kids at the time to put it in the proper perspective: These weren't silly talking robots with over the top personalities, all a pretty transparent merchandising ploy (a la Transformers, Gobots, etc). These were practical machines of war with a human being sitting in the cockpit, constituting an advanced new stage in the evolution of warfare. Also, other animated shows about "war" that were on the air at the time and aimed at kids (I'm pointing at GI Joe, in particular) portrayed old John Wayne style warfare, where the good guys always won, were never scared of anything, and no one - not even the bad guys - ever actually got shot, hurt, died, anything. Ever. Contrast that to Macross, where at least the poor brownie CF pilots started dying by the score starting episode 1, ultimately wiping out almost every living thing on the earth. I vividly remember appreciating not being patronized. War was supposed to be hell, and while it clearly wasn't Saving Private Ryan in terms of graphic violence, it was a more "realistic" portrayal of how a war would be. And yes, I cringe to use that word to describe an anime about fighter planes that turn into robots and blast aliens to tiny little bits, but I think you all know what I mean.
  2. Has anyone checked the weather report in hell? Did we skip ahead to April 1 and no one bothered to tell me??? This and the Mayan calendar coinciding soon can't possibly be coincidence ... Seriously, this is the most welcome development since the invention of casual sex. M&M Sturmvogels, here I come ...
  3. Hell, I don't usually give a flip about the licensing flame wars at this point, but this made me giggle. I wish I could comment on the trailer, but it looks like Youtube already pulled it because of HG's "copyright claim". I can't wait until Big West sues HG for "copyright infringement" when the (sure to be laughably bad) Robotech movie shows up and the "Veritechs" or whatever they want to call them are just a bit too close to the old VF-1 design (as in being a flying machine that turns into a robot) and sue HG's pants off for violating their intellectual property. This festering blight of a company really just needs to go away. Hopefully their massive-budget straight-to-dvd b movie will finally bankrupt them and the world will be a better place.
  4. If it ever gets made, I predict it will likely be on par with the GI Joe movie in how they "reboot" the property. Lots of flash, zero substance, and resembling the source material very very little if at all. Jar-Jar Binks and those awful "urban" transformer twins come to mind. Hell, why not a talking robot dog? With 'attitude'? The more characters to slap on a slurpee cup the better, right? Ugh. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt if it looks even halfway decent. My cynicism alert is flashing bright red on this one, though. Back OT, there's zero chance of a VF-1 being featured. Not to drag up the whole licensing dispute (ducks), but I don't think Big West would stand for it, and HG's legal position doesn't seem as defensible as it once may have been or they'd like you to believe. If nothing else, it could get held up in the courts indefinitely, as almost happened to Watchmen if you'll recall, and I'm sure BW would just love to poke HG in the eye given the chance.
  5. Nice trailer. More Frontier can only be a good thing, esp since this is probably the last new Macross we're getting for a while. Am I the only one who can't get the "Itchy and Scratchy" movie out of their head when seeing this, though? I suppose all that Japanese text is proudly proclaiming "53% New Footage!".
  6. Heads up, kids: Thoranime just finished Frontier. The last few eps are up on IRC, and the batch torrent for the series is out.
  7. Thanks! I'd been looking for news as to wtf happened there, but couldn't find anything ... guess they just let their '.com' registration run out without renewal or something.
  8. It "supported" mkvs out of the box, but not subtitles within a mkv container. The last firmware update they pushed out added subtitling and chapter support for mkv files, along with a bunch of other improvements. It's really quite functional now. Someone mentioned crazy fonts and graphic effects in subtitles, which do tend to send this thing into a tizzy. The plainer the subtitles used, the better the results. Typically, anyway. Most of the time, this doesn't present any problems, but for shows like Macross that have a lot of dialog spoken over singing, it can sometimes degenerate into an unreadable mess in some groups' fansubs. I'd compare its subtitling support to Gom player (a free download, if you've never tried it). Gom also has trouble with fancy shmancy effects in subs, so it should give you an idea as to what you're in for before you commit to buying. Hope that helps!
  9. I'm secretly hoping this stupid thing is sooooo limited I can't get my hands on one. Because I might just be willing to part with a kidney by the time I see that thing painted up ... I can't help myself ...
  10. Holy crap, I had one of those too ... spotted it at a Sears, I think, and made my mother buy it. I thought it was sold in a Matchbox box here in the states, definitely a bubble pack package, at least ... maybe they licensed it over here?
  11. Maybe the next thread can be about the Bat Boy from Weekly World News.
  12. OK, now how the heck do I get my limp banana-looking head lasers to stay that straight? Seriously, great find. I'm tempted to do mine when I get home now ...
  13. Warera. Rori. Konda. That is all.
  14. Finally broke down and picked up a Hikkie 1S since I skipped that one in 1/48. I swore to myself I'm not going to double up on any of these stupid things, just because a "new" version is out ... I have to say I'm fully in love with the thing. Not a hint of floppiness, nothing's fallen off after a few transformations. I couldn't be happier with it. It's such an improvement over the old 1/60 line, I may reconsider getting a few of these ... at least another brownie CF and maybe a TV Max and/or Kakizaki if they ever come out. Anyway, I knew I'd like it, but not this much. I am very pleasantly surprised.
  15. "Stage lights ... Flashing ... " <me>ducks</me>
  16. Naw ... no idea how I'd take a screenshot from my television, either. The subtitle support is pretty craptacular, I'll admit, and looks especially jaggy and aliased when viewed in 720p (hoping the upconverting Sony HD receiver I have on the way will help with that, maybe not). It definitely shows them, but seems to have trouble with multiple subs going on in a scene, and with lyrics getting translated at the same time, the screen can turn into a mess. It also doesn't like the formatting information you'll see in a lot of subs, so it spits out escape sequences and such that look dreadful (the Thora subs are confirmed wierd ... it seems to like the Aone/Menclave subs better, or at least they're easier to follow). If I had to compare it to something, I'd point it at Gom Player (for anyone who's used it). Yeah, it features subtitles and can play anything you throw at it, but odd things can and do happen with subtitles. The video quality is, for the most part, outstanding. So anyway, yeah, sub support is underwhelming, but then again what do you expect for $100? A full fledged htpc running Media Player Classic will obviously handle subs leaps and bounds better than this, but at 10x the cost.
  17. For what it's worth, I was about to shell out for a full-fledged home theater pc when I came across this: WD TV You just connect any usb hard drive to this thing, and it can spit video out over an hdmi cable in 1080p. It does read subtitles from mkv containers, but it isn't as nicely formatted as MPC can give you and it's kind of hit and miss with some codecs (particuarly DTS encoded sound ... hoping the next patch fixes that) ... still, for $99 I'd recommend it to anyone. Anyway, anyone looking to save yourself a LOT of trouble re-encoding these things just to watch them on your TV might want to give this a look.
  18. I think that might depend on the rate at which the disks are released. I also thought he was using a combination of Menclave's and Shinsen's subs for the actual subtitling, which may pose a problem after disk 4: Neither of these two groups bothered to sub anything past ep 15, which was put out (very very late, I might add) all the way back in October. And that was after a very very long break where nothing came out from either since around the Sep 1. Strange that neither group has listed it as a "dropped" project, but clearly no one is bothering to do much work on it, at least. Anyway, agreed: Thora (whoever you guys are) deserve a massive thank you from the MW community, and from english-speaking Macross fans in general. Now if we could just talk you guys into releasing 1080p versions I'd be in heaven ... Seriously, though, if anyone hasn't checked these out, you absolutely must. The encoding - even in 720p - is just breathtaking and light years ahead in quality compared to the earlier fansubs (which only had the HD television broadcast to work with). You should see it in motion on my 52" screen ... holy moly.
  19. Amen to that. If they were going to remaster it, why the hell didn't they do it in 1080p from the original film masters? I'd love to see a full digital restoral a la Animeigo as opposed to a "remastering" in dvd quality (blech), but I have no idea how much financial sense this would make for the Japanese market. Hell, just a 1080p copy of the unaltered source for the fansubbers to work their magic on would be a godsend.
  20. Hell, I will too. Tell me they're really doing that and it's not just a custom mockup for display. I'm kind of iffy on the weathering schemes they've used on the vf-1s they put out, but it looks perfect on that destroid. For once, my procrastination in not jumping right on the first one pays off.
  21. (Bangs gavel). Case closed. Kaifun was a drunk, and you can say what you will about the others: Grace is the only one who poisoned her client, covered up the evidence, tried to blow her (and the entire planet she was on) into atoms with her "remanition eater" , and conspired to infest a human colony fleet with evolving killer bugs to harvest their flavor crystals (presumably). The worst Kaifun ever did was cock block Hikaru for years and saw to it that Zentradi had access to a micronization chamber. Oh, and he liked to kick bottles after getting smashed.
  22. Because the Froating Head got sick of people asking about it would be my guess. Everything that there was to say about that story arc has been said as far as he's concerned. No mystery to it, he's just done with it. Center of the galaxy, never heard from again, that's all folks. Gotcha. There's been more Macross since, and I'd imagine there will be more to come after Frontier (damn well better be ). Maybe I'm in the minority, but I, for one, prefer it this way. It may also have to do with honoring Arihiro Hase's memory by just leaving it alone (wouldn't continue the story without doing it "right", and can't do it "right" without him as Hikaru). And I think lord_breetai was right: The Japanese perhaps don't feel obligated to milk the stupid cow until its udders collapse and fall off. And while Kawamori's creative control over Macross may not be validly compared to George Lucas and Star Wars, but I'd imagine he has enough say over the property to pretty much solely determine where it's heading in the future in a very similar way (i.e., shut down any talk about more Minmay from the other studio heads, investors, etc). Edit: Grammar
  23. (Bump) Does anyone know what's going on with Shinsen? Yeah, yeah, I know this keeps getting brought up and that they can take their sweet time ... Still, they'll be 6 episodes behind at some point tonight, and haven't had a Frontier release since Jul 2 (4 weeks now). Frontier still shows up as an active project on their homepage, but I'm really starting to wonder now. It'd really be a shame if they drop this, as their translations have been the best so far (IMNSHO, anyway). If they drop it, who else is doing high quality translations (i.e., not in the speed-sub game and really double and triple checking the translations for accuracy and readability), I'm all ears. Haven't checked out Lunar's yet ... are they worth a go? I really want to burn these to dvd for viewing on the big screen, but I'm not going to waste disks on "Brief 25" moments ... I'd prefer to only have to do it once.
  24. I've been using Nero for this, burning the Shinsen subs versions (since AiA disappeared ... pity, because I think the mp4s transferred much better, with less quality sacrificed during encoding). I'm hardly an expert, but I'll recommend you get good quality name brand dual layer dvds for burning. I've had the best luck with Sony. My dvd player, which isn't particularly old (2-3 years maybe?) or cheap seems to have problems reading lesser quality disks. I tossed out the first few disks as coasters until I realized it wasn't the encoding screwing me: they play just fine on my pc ... I just much prefer watching them on the big screen, so fat load of good it does ... Your mileage may vary. Edit: Doh! Didn't see the post right above me ... What he said.
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