Jeff J

RIP. Kind of surprised to hear he was only 68; in my head, he was a lot older. Guess it speaks to how influential he was.

For sure. My biggest complaint about Apocalypse's first few appearances was that it was so ambiguous how to beat him. I can understand being beaten later on by all the psychics in the realm of psychics, but most of the other times he just quit because his initial plans failed and he chose to skedaddle. Part one of the techno virus two-parter made it clear if it ever came down to a confrontation, he could easily wipe out the entire X-Men. The show was cool for a lot of reasons, but its writing wasn't up to snuff with a bunch of other cartoons from its era.

Agreed. It was fun to watch when I was in jr. high and high school, but it was clear at the time that it didn't have the quality of writing of a Batman the Animated Series. Regardless of the series finale's cliffhanger ending, I just never felt like I needed to see the show brought back 27 years later. To be fair, DC had done similar things with Batman '66, and Wonder Woman '77, so it's not like Disney has a monopoly on nostalgia-baiting sequel series, but thanks to being a TV show on D+, it's got a much higher profile.

The first season of House of the Dragon gained some traction. My sister keeps reminding me that Season 2 is coming to MAX in August! 😅 I think GoT's popularity was big enough that even half the viewers is still pretty decent. Though as far as A Song of Ice and Fire goes, I just don't care at this point.

George R.R. Martin could speak at length on this topic. 🙃

I came into this movie with my only knowledge of the Dune series from part one. I thought the movie was pretty good, though it almost felt too short, like they rushed to get from plot point A to B throughout.

Was wondering about this after seeing the trailer this weekend. You mean to say they're still going with the argument that there were no witnesses?

I have similar concerns about revisisting the OG series. Instead of just celebrating it as it was, it'd likely be recontextualized in ways I wouldn't be interested in experiencing. ... This weekend, I was chatting about a certain sci-fi/fantasy sequel writer who (we didn't think) really understood the source material, and during that conversation this Carl Macek quote came up: Assuming this is how he truly felt back in the 1980s, it would really explain why RT changed Vrlitwhai's request from the 1000+ ships in the Adoclas fleet to the million plus in RT. In short, he wanted the end of Space War I to be on closer to even terms (4:1 instead of nearly 4900:1) with regard to the number of ships because he didn't think the music would be enough to turn the tide. Then again, maybe he just said that after the fact to make RT come across more favorably; who really knows? This then got me thinking of the actual scene when Vrlitwhai got sent back to Earth and how the resulting RT version might be the worst nonfunctional* change they made for RT. We lost the foreshadowing that Vrlitwhai figured out that Boddole Zer was going to exterminate him, and instead it just became a generic scene where "Dolza" just warns him that failure will be punished. This played out several episodes later when Laplamiz informed Vrlitwhai that the Boddole fleet was on its way and Vrlitwhai explained they were going to get executed, but the RT version makes it so much more ambiguous as to what "Breetai" was so concerned about. *Nonfunctional as in it wasn't done for any specific intended effect, e.g. trying to mesh together three disparate storylines or making Minmay more of a dislikable/buffonish character for audiences to dislike or laugh at. I'd describe a "functional" change as something that has at least some give and take, whereas a nonfunctional one serves no purpose to gain anything in exchange for what's lost.

Oh, I didn't think you were, was just thinking out loud about what-ifs. 🙂

Interesting! If they edited out more than a minute of content from each episode, then how'd they fill the standard Japanese TV time slot? 🤔

That lines up with my recollection of the AnimEigo panel at Anime Central 2001. They also had pricing tiers based on the number of pre-orders they received. Basically, it was the 2001 version of a Kickstarter campaign. EDIT: Oops, floating cursor... Anyway, funny comment under bullet one about English dubs...

The only property that has come remotely close to my interest in Macross is Superman/Justice League. I hope Gunn hits it out of the park for Superman Legacy and have a certain amount of optimism he will, but I didn't like the way Gunn addressed replacing Cavill by saying it was all these other guys at fault for screwing Cavill over as if he had no say in keeping the guy. It's pretty hard to find an actor, director, or writer who's as passionate about Superman as Cavill was. Most of these guys use the Superman license as a stepping stone for another project they'd rather be doing.

I've been meaning to watch Toy Galaxy's videos, but not sure I have the... energy... for it. Reading or watching about HG just gets me so irrationally fired up. I could do that in the late 90s, but today? Not so sure I want to open that can of worms. It's on my YT "Watch Later," but so are about 300 other videos... 😁 Is there such thing as Uncanny Valley for adaptations? Probably not; I'm guessing that the core of my complaint is really that they weren't close enough... Regardless, I still wonder if the general proximity of HG's iteration to the Real McCoy makes things worse... would it have been less frustrating for many of us if HG changed the show more dramatically? I fundamentally agree that RT's "Macross Saga" captures 90-something percent of SDF Macross, but that kind of description bothers me because it generally comes across as sounding like the shows are functionally equivalent or equally as good. Moreover, that description glosses over the quality issues stemming from the loss of fidelity while incentivizing people to watch RT (or worse, pay HG to watch...) to experience the story and not bothering to seek out the source material. If HG's iteration was so much more substantially different, it would've greater emphasized the value in watching the show as it was originally intended to be. Yeah, my general take is that HG priotized simplicity over nuance. Anything "mature" about RT comes from the originals, whereas a lot of nuance got ironed out for the sake of a streamlined (pun intended) story that's easier to digest, especially for kids from 1985 who might not've been prepared to watch such a plot-driven cartoon. Take out content that's surpasses the threshold of complexity, or add a lot of narration/exposition.

I'm biased of course, but I think you'll like it. I was digging into internet archives, and I had forgotten that AnimEigo had also released individual discs for $22.45 a pop, meaning collecting the nine individual discs or the three three-disc sets was going to cost twenty-something percent less than buying a boxed set. The $260 we early adopters paid for the boxed set was a marked up price. But hey, we got to enjoy it a year earlier, plus we got a box and the lenticular-motion picture! 🤣

Wow, still shrinkwrapped for vol. 2-9. What a find! I'm visiting my parents's place and looked at my old boxed set. The colors on the spines are so faded lol.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Speaking of the Saturn/PS1 game, the Macross Perfect Collection trading cards featured shots from the game's intro cut scene as if it were part of the actual movie. Or at least I'm pretty sure they did; my set is stored away so I can't reference them at this moment. I collected the cards before I got my PS1 copy, and I recall being confused because I didn't recognize the scenes featured on the cards. Anyway, I tend to think the destruction of the Prometheus, as depicted in the game, is canon. Edit: actually, I take that back. I don't remember if the dialogue in the actual movie is in line with the cut scene intro.

That title is admittedly kind of confusing, but what I generally mean is has anyone documented the evolution of the official Macross timeline? So for instance, take Macross II. When it was released, the "official timeline" had it placed 80 years after DYRL. Then a few years later, it was established that Macross II was set in an alternate universe, and that was the case for a few decades. Now, it's back in the official timeline (I think; most of my knowledge of the Macross timeline comes from the late 90s through mid-2000s and is based on the research of Egan Loo of Macross Compendium). I'm far less interested in what the last iteration of the timeline says about Macross II, and more interested in how its place in the chronology has shifted. Hence, a good Macross II historian (IMO) would be sure to say it started as A, then became B, and is now C, or something like that. This is a pretty broad question, so maybe I can narrow down the ask with a few specific questions: 1) When did they come up with the decision that DYRL was an in-universe, movie re-telling of SDFM? Was it when the movie was released or was that decided years afterward? 2) Were games like Macross 2036, Macross Eternal Love Song, or Digital Mission VF-X ever considered part of the official canon? I vaguely recall an old Animerica issue from 1998 or so that made it seem like PC-Engine CD games were... Thanks.

Yeah, I've been suckered by many a misleading YouTube title. Whoever created that video, I'm guessing, titled it as such to make it seem official and get more clicks. I don't click the "dislike" button very often, but when it's misleading like that, you get an automatic click from me. Anyway, I didn't want to link the video here because I'd rather it came from an official channel than just a fan's uploading, but for the sake of answering your question, here's the pachinko video, which is a little longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_zDqmsBcQ&ab_channel=TheBlueOne And here's a fun side-by-side of the original intro and the BluRay version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJ0ih4-lMc

LOL, so triggered right now. 🤣 But seriously, some fan just shaved off the Macross intro and dubbed it over with the RT soundtrack. The full, unedited version of this animation is on YouTube, as well. Not sure if you know this, but sharing just in case. 😀

Hehe, I meant to say I'm older now, but you got me by at least one year. 😁

Fair point. I was also wondering if there were two sets of animation for the gift scene and they "accicentally" used the wrong one. The episode features animation from episode 2, FWIW. I can only guess putting together 29 was quite difficult.

Just to be clear, I'm asking why they didn't reuse the birthday gift animation. They used brand new, worse-looking, animation in episode 29 when it (seems like it) would've been so much easier just to reuse animation from episode 8.

Speaking of those games, what I'd do for an official compilation of 16- and 32-bit Macross games...

One specific observation I forgot to mention earlier: I don't think I ever read any behind-the-scenes comments on this, but one thing I always thought was strange was that even though the show relied a lot on reused animation, the team insisted upon re-animating the birthday gift scene in episode 29. Putting aside the sepia tones to make it more clearly a flashback, the re-animated scene just looks worse, making it IMO a confusing decision to use time/resources when stock animation would've made a lot of sense. At first I was thinking that perhaps they went for an artistic reinterpretation of the scene where Minmay's recall was imperfect, so why not animate the details slightly differently? However, the audio sounds almost exactly the same, which kind of squashes the imperfect recall theory. Also, it's the second of two flashbacks in that scene, the first's being when the VT-102 Battroid crashed into her room, and that reuses episode 2's animation (and thankfully so, considering the relatively high production value from episode 2). I wonder if there are other flashbacks that were redrawn that I might've missed/forgotten.

I actually think they got Kaifun right in the post-war arc. His story is one of a downward spiral, and one of the central themes of the arc is that it's a struggle for everyone to adjust to the new normal. Thus, that he'd be bitter and become an alcoholic that would lead to being more abusive is, IMO, pretty good storytelling. Plus, we needed to create impetus for Minmay to want to cut herself off from him. I don't think I was criticizing here. I was trying to say when I was 18-25 or so (and maybe 18-35), I probably would've said something like, "I wish the show gave a more realistic/practical explanation of how/why they could retrieve the buildings floating around in space, bring them into the ship, re-erect them, and get the electricity and water running, all in 12 days." These days, I say just go with it. I think "Kid's show" gets kind of bandied about like some sort of pejorative, when I think it shouldn't necessarily be thought of that way. And when I say Macross was a "kid's show," I say that as a compliment. "Kid's shows" don't use up screen time to explain nitty details but instead jump straight to engaging the viewers's imagination. Also, it's important to get appeal to younger viewers interested. I'm also a Superman fan, and somewhere I think WB and DC screwed up is they forgot to make their past few Superman movies appealing to younger audiences. That sort of leaves you with a rapidly-aging, shrinking audience, and waning interest in the IP. Compare that to something like Super Mario games or The Lego Movie where multiple generations of audience can enjoy. There's no one right way to do things, which is a change to my mindset since my early days of being a Macross fan. "Normal teenager" and bad decision making often go hand-in-hand, no? 😀 The show is predicated on a certain amount of relationship drama, and the drama results from a certain amount of dysfunction. If these three teens figured it all out quickly, it would certainly be a different show, and probably a less interesting one, too. If we tried to look at things objectively, or if we were somehow mentors/parents/counselors for Hikaru and Misa, and we wanted to give it to them straight instead of coddling them, I think most of us would say that they were making decisions that unnecessarily tortured themselves. They took unhealthy approaches to their relationships that needed correction, which is understandable given their age and circumstances, and gives the show its distinct personality, but (IMO) was nonetheless the wrong way to handle things. This is what I was alluding to when I said, "I think the principal characters engage in some troublesome behavior that people in real life need to avoid." Maybe there was a nicer way of saying that... And I think relationship drama is neither good nor bad, you just have to know your audience when you recommend a show. For some folks, these kind of rocky relationships or love triangles are just no-gos, which contributes to why I wouldn't immediately recommend this show to someone without knowing what that person is into. If I had to change one aspect of the back nine episodes, I'd probably adjust the timeline with respect to the relationships. Pretty much the only thing I'm not fully satisfied with is it feels like Hikaru and Misa are in relationship stasis/holding pattern throughout the two years between episodes 27 and 28. I thought it was kind of weird that she had the keys to his place and was washing up after him but the implication was that they weren't actually dating at that point. It just didn't feel right, at least not to me. I don't even mind the idea that Hikaru would be drawn back to Minmay even though he thought he conceded her away to Kaifun in 27. Stuff like that isn't unrealistic, especially given that he wasn't in a relationship. But going back to counselor mode, if we had to give advice to an 18-20 year-old kid and he told me he still has romantic feelings for someone he gave up two years ago, we'd probably all tell him either tell her or move on, just be decisive. And I'm fully aware of the production hell the creators had to go through. The animation and incomplete sound effects weren't the only thing affected by tight deadlines, so if the creators had less interference and a more forgiving schedule, they probably would've done things differently.