Einherjar

Yoshiyuki Tomino Aims High: "My Next Work Will Crush Demon Slayer and Evangelion"

This happened today.  These people will live and die making anime.

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

Sorry for the clickbait Topic Title.

Macross has been going on for nearly 40 years.   We consider any Macross that Kawamori has worked on to be canon.   He's currently 61 years old.  I'm sure there's examples of people in the 70's still working in anime.  Many people have retired by then. 

The man responsible for Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, ladies and gentlemen.  Poster boy of the Sentinels curse in modern times.

10 hours ago, jvmacross said:

No idea...the only HG licensed "Macross" stuff I get recently are the products from KC which I feel are good...I also buy some of the Toynami items like the SDCC items from a couple of years ago.....If it is a quality product I would buy it regardless if it was or had a HG license.....does not bother me at all

I think at one point official skateboards using Macross visuals were sold.  More random stuff like that could be in the pipeline.

18 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Huh?  I was referring to what we get from the existing Japanese purveyors of these fine collectibles.......you insinuated that there was a problem with 40 year old designs...I responded by reminding you that Bandai just tweaked it yet again in the form of the DX VF-1 and we are all buying them up like it is TP during the height of an epidemic.......

The more domestic stuff HG tried to sell people like the ugly clothing.  Something the staff probably wore at a convention panel or threw at people as freebies.  The stuff most of us here wouldn’t waste our time on.

16 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

And yet....it is the venerable VF-1 Valkyrie that everyone looks forward to getting the latest and greatest version of every 10 years or so!! 

Model planes can only take a company so far, though.  They got anything else planned with those 41 besides tacky merch that just screams mid-life crisis?

*The random stuff that they’ve released under the Robotech brand for years they should have put more thought into.

Despite how significant they are at this point, I think it would have made more of an impact if those 41 characters and mecha weren’t almost 40 years old and HG did not have the reputation they currently have.

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

So after watching that video from the stream with HG...it definitely seems anyone wanting SDFM/DYRL merch of any of the "41" Macross characters or mecha needs to hope the likes of Bandai and Arcadia are willing to "pay to play" with HG to make them available outside of Japan.....I would hope that the profits to be made outweigh whatever "cut" HG has negotiated under this "brave new deal".....

Did someone actually say some of those phrases in the stream?  “Pay to play?” 

Their new partner will be watching everything they say and do at these events from now on.

13 hours ago, Keith said:

Yeah, none of that will be happening, you'll be waiting a while there.

Someone was crazy enough to think it was a good idea to make my profile pic happen!

2 hours ago, Nied said:

I mean I have been lurking here since then. I guess I don't find the evidence here very convincing. Producers talk up the talent they've approached for a project all the time when trying to attract investors and if shitty tie-in comics were all it took to kill a franchise every property since Star Wars would have been dead as a door-nail.

One of the head honchos at HG green lighting  a lot of those comics also came from the comic book industry.  His main talent was drawing close approximations of Macross characters   It’s been the go to medium of choice when their TV and film projects stalled or got unceremoniously cancelled.

@Nied Good for you for being enthusiastic about this, but I think you and other people who came back to the forums just because of this news missed out on on a whole bunch of things that happened with Robotech that explains why you are getting so much pushback.  I see you haven’t posted anything since 2010.  A LOT happened, much of which made it very clear that Robotech’s glory days came and went a long time ago, and maybe led to this happening.  Those things you’re excited about that might happen because of this agreement?  It’s just a continuation of what HG has been trying to do with the franchise this whole time.  Toby Macquire was the only actor playing Spider-Man in film when the Robotech movie was first announced.  Since then, HG has went year after year teasing everyone that various big name people at the time or someone at the high point of their career were talked to possibly getting involved it and then unceremoniously dropped and replaced with someone else.  The last person in the spotlight that I can remember was the director of the Aquaman film.  No effort made in other areas for it.  Those character names and designs they fought so hard to use with this deal?  They were already being used to help generate interest in recent projects but not utilized very well.  At this point any random artist can draw some white guy with spiky black hair, call him Rick Hunter, give him some corny lines, try and make him look like a good fighter pilot and it will get HG’s approval.  This is what Robotech has become these days.  At best, I think this deal lets them continue to make the same mistakes that has plagued the franchise while giving BW the freedom to tell the public “This has nothing to do with us, honest.”

5 minutes ago, Nied said:

The Press release explicitly talks about HG and BW partnering on FUTURE Robotech and Macross works. I seriously doubt that's going to just be comics as HG's been in the clear on promotional materials like that as part of their original license with Tatsunoko.

Then they better haul a$$ then.  The last few years haven’t been good for Robotech.

7 hours ago, JB0 said:

Future Robotech "works" is a flexible concept. They can't make more animation featuring SDF Macross elements, but comic books are still fair game. Though perhaps one they might be hesitant about, given their licensees' propensity for lifting things from OTHER Macross works and adapting them into Robotech.

They probably need a new reboot right off the bat just to undo the hot mess Remix left the Robotech universe.

1 hour ago, Nied said:

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

Kind of a moot point if future interpretations have Rick, Roy, and Max follow recent trends and continue to give them Rob Liefeld inspired body proportions.  Don’t get me started with what they did to the female characters recently.

And holy crap, the teeth.

4 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Does this mean HG could license someone to make a shot-by-shot conversion or adaptation of SDFM into live-action using the original designs either exactly or "tweaked" for aesthetics?  I mean, if the SDFM series was converted into a bad comic book back in '85....couldn't that also be done using any other medium...including a live-action TV series or film?  Weren't there also books?  If I recall correctly, they went "deeper" into the story, tech, etc. and introduced things that were not really detailed in the Robotech TV series.

They tried something like that already back in 2017.  Remember?

For people who have not been in the forums in a while, this is what HG was doing with Robotech for the past few years leading up to this.

That doesn’t excuse him being such a jacka$$ about it, especially towards the guys at the Macross Speaker Podcast.

3 hours ago, Marzan said:

No, my point was worrying about how Harmony Gold might interpret the agreement when it comes to SDFM characters that appear in other Macross shows. For example, Maximilian Jenius and Miria? You cannot have M7 without them. Focker in Zero? II, Plus, Frontier and Delta have no issues of this kind.

If the recent comic books is a sign of this new era, they probably have their own plans for the characters moving forward.  So far though I don’t think those ideas were received well.  For instance, they somehow made Max and Miria be unpleasant to see again.  Something about Max getting another girl pregnant and Miria embracing her Meltradi heritage to uncomfortable levels.  Think Macross 7 versions of them with very little chance for them to reconcile.  Add in HG’s tendency to recruit artists who at best can come up with questionable approximations of these characters and writers forcing them to do and say a lot of dumb things, I really don’t think of it as an issue unless it’s your childhood memories of Robotech getting ruined.

16 minutes ago, Marzan said:

i wonder how Kawamori feels about HG still keeping rights over some of the characters. 

I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.  They’ll never look like how they were in the 80s anyway.

I’m sure Tommy Yune, as the creative director for Robotech for almost 20 years now, will continue to green light more dumb ideas for that franchise even with this announcement.  A major difference now is that he will be more directly competing with the Macross series he has spent his career trying to imitate because the company he works for allows them to be more available to be watched and be compared to his works!

57 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

It could very well be the other way around. I can just picture everyone in this forum getting pissy if something like Macross Frontier gets released with a Robotech Frontier label like the Yamato 2199/2202/2205 series getting released as Starblazers 2199/2202/2205 etc even if the original content from Frontier is unaltered and has a faithful translation to the original Japanese version.

I’ve beaten this point to death and I accept it, but once again a dead ringer to Nikki Basara appeared in an official Robotech product.  It’s my current profile pic.  That and the material it came from should definitely count as one of top 10 betrayals in... whatever medium and genre HG considers Robotech to be part of at this point.  Good for them if they are able to recover from that.

Based on the buildup to this, I got a feeling there is a huge catch that helped make this happen which Robotech fans are not going to like.

Thinking back to the recent comics.  Is this the reason why TR Edwards had to die, continuities with elements from Robotech II, Robotech 3000, Shadow Chronicles, etc. showed up again just to be given a dubious grand finale, and a Nikki Basara clone now exists in Robotech?

Found out that people out there are abbreviating this series as LDS. 

Did you guys ever finish reviews for all of the Delta mangas?  I think some tidbits about the of the Windermere war for independence from Keith’s manga might become relevant in the upcoming movie.