JsARCLIGHT

The MPC is a good *copy* of the old imai kit, but Toynami took several liberties with the imai design that caused it to become a rather unstable toy. Despite all the "added features" they felt they needed to put on, there is this general "softening" of all the edges of the toy and a subtle rescaling of other areas. If you see a pro done 1/48 imai Legioss (or even the sloppy one I own) next to a Toynami MPC they look similar but quite different in a lot of areas... mostly in all the areas Toynami decided to "improve". If you own any of Aoshima's "toy from a model" toys like the Aliens dropships you'd see how close to the model they stay but how sturdy and well designed their updates and revisions are that create a quality toy. Those Aliens Dropships are really nice updates of what is really a sub par Halcyon kit. I was expecting the same from the Legioss. And for the record I feel Toynami did a shitty job of "interpreting" the kit. They were more concerned with adding opening flaps and extra moving pieces that they overcomplicated a pretty straightforward design.

When the Aoshimas were first announced I thought that is what we were going to be getting... nice painted metal and plastic toy versions of the old imai kits. I would be interested in seeing what something like that would look like. Sure it would still be small, but at least it's proportions would be better IMHO.

Well, it's a difficult design to make the head turn. In the anime, when the Legioss' head turns that little radar pod thing turns with it. If you watch episode 1 of Mospeada there is a shot where you clearly see Stick's Eta turn it's head about 45 degrees to the side and the radar pod moves with it. The problem with the toys are that the radar pod is a separate piece that is permanently moored to the shoulder and it obstructs the Legioss' long head from turning left or right to any decent degree. Past "workarounds" to this design flaw have been to shorten the head or only allow the head to turn in very minute amounts. Then there is the complex mechanism connecting the head that allows it's transformation. The big problem with these toys are that the design itself uses so much squash and stretch and pure anime magic that creating faithful toys is very, very difficult. The guys who designed the Mospeada stuff did not exactly have the same anal retentiveness and mechanical discipline that a Shoji Kawamori has... there is a big difference between designing something to "work" and designing something to "look good". To a good degree I think it's kind of great that modern mecha anime is going over to 3D, that alone allows the designers to think three dimensionally and better create their art in a form that can translate into toys easier.

I remember when I was a newbie. Anyhoo, I myself am expecting an influx of new blood with the new TV series out. It's a good thing to see our fanbase expanding rather than dwindling. And just to be on the safe side your friendly neighborhood moderation team just placed a nice big order for some new riot gear, tear gas and a huge crate of rubber bullets.

From all I've seen Lucas is a blind Blu Ray camper. Plus he is one of the guys who gets something in his head and keeps it there (remember his maniacal devotion to laser disc?). Cutting prices and giving away stuff is a sure way to move product short term... but long term does HD DVD have a future? Without the wide studio support that Blu Ray seems to be garnering does HD DVD have "staying power"? If Paramount jumps ship leaving only Universal, and with the majority of Universal's best properties tied up because their directors favor Blu Ray and would most likely fight HD DVD exclusivity, the future doesn't look too bright. I would say that cutting the prices and winning the "price war" is a good first step. Step two is pay Paramount/Dreamworks any dollar amount to get them to stay HD DVD only. Third is wrangle contractual agreements (or just plain "drop the bomb") with Universal to release all their big name movies on HD DVD despite their director's protests (Jaws, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, ET and so forth). Fourth is to literally "buy back" support... in other words bankroll some more supporters. A good place to start would be 20th Century Fox. If HD DVD could somehow buy off Fox they would get quite the feather in their cap. The loss of Warner Brothers would be minimized if they could take Fox... they can't of course, but it would be quite a coup.

Every scenario I can think of relies heavily on the BD camp falling apart somehow. Sales are one thing but they'd really need their competition to have a galactic failure... and so far if you believe the numbers the fight has been in BD's favor the whole time. I mean, no matter what HD DVD does right now it seems to me like they'd have to have the BD camp totally poop their pants to have any hope of regaining ground let alone pulling ahead.

Kind of an empty question, but what would people think HD DVD would need to gain a resurgence? Outside of Sony getting busted for transporting Coke in their blu ray shipments or something else that harms the BD camp, is it even possible for HD DVD to stage a comeback now?

Uecker: Juuuuuuuuust a bit outside. Low and away, strike one... wow he really laid into that whiff, didn't he? Morgan: He sure did, Bob.

Oh I agree... I just believe that much like the studios, major retailers like Best Buy have also signed "push contracts" with the different formats and the companies that back them and they will be advertising HD DVD and it's hardware for a while yet, even as it's sails sink beneath the waves. For major retail to suddenly start marking down HD DVD movies and players IMHO would spark simultaneously a "run" on the format (all the bargain hunters) and a "flee" of the format (everyone else). The second things go "clearance" the consumer knows it's "over". Retailers would be wise to not mark things down just yet lest they prematurely kill an already dying animal.

Flipping through the new Best Buy ad this morning it seems they are still hawking a HD DVD player (with SEVEN free HD DVDs!) big as ever. If the "war" is over it seems nobody told Best Buy... and to a good degree I doubt anyone at Best Buy CAN tell you the war is over. I have only very rarely been to a retail store that has product on the shelf that they will intentionally NOT sell you. I bet if you walked up to a blue shirt and asked them what to buy they will sell you whatever is on their shelf... and if one of their supervisors heard them telling you "You don't want to buy this because it will be defunct in a year" I bet they'd get pulled aside after you left and told "shut up, just sell it". You can't trust someone who's job it is to get you to buy something... anything. Plus all this talk about how HD DVD is "dead" and "the war is over" is still premature. It may be a foregone conclusion at this stage of the game, but the war isn't over until the Allies take Berlin... and as we all know it took them months to do that long after they said the war was "going to be over any day now". I fully expect HD DVD to be around even until next Christmas. Admittedly it will probably be in discount bins by then but it will still be around. Hell, UMD is dead as the dodo but you can STILL buy UMD movies everywhere and they are still shelved at retail joints.

If I was buying these I would really only want the "freedom fighters" lineup, which was a blue Eta, a green Iota, a red Zeta and a blue Tread and perhaps the Ride Armors that accompanied them. Those were the "hero" units of the show. Sure you saw a green Tread or two in the background on one episode and you saw a few Dark Legiosses, a single Dark Tread and a tiny fleeting glimpse of a Dark Legioss drone or two but those don't warrant a purchase in my mind. I'm that "kid" who just wants his Luke, Han and Chewie... and maybe the Princess... I could care less about the Death Star Droid and the Rebel Soldier. If CM's wanted my business they'd pack a blue Eta, a green Iota, a red Zeta and a blue Tread in one box, call it the "Mospeada show special edition" and THEN I'd pay $300 for it as it would be a "complete" set in my mind.

We're all on a cartoon message board posting about a $300 toy, I would just hope that $300 toy would at least be accurate. Oh and wait until you own your own business. I have to occupy my thoughts with mundane stuff like this or I'll go mad worrying about deadlines, contracts, clients and other matters.

My problem is that I am a stickler for accuracy, keeping a toy as close to the original creator's vision as possible. My "issue" with a red Tread is that if the original creators never gave us the color specs for a red Tread, how do we know what we are seeing is "correct"? It's like saying Han Solo had a blue Xwing... you never actually saw it and you don't have any original Lucas approved color sheets of what one looks like so if a toy company makes a blue Han Solo Xwing how do you know it's "right"? Then again this toy is so "wrong" to begin with it's pretty much a moot point. The only thing I was pointing out is that we never see a red Tread. We can assume they exist in some shape or form but what that actual shape or form is is anyone's guess as the creators of Mospeada never really told us what one would actually look like.

I'm not complaining about anything, I'm just pointing out that there is no red Tread. It doesn't exist. And as such there is no "real" color scheme for it. The red Zeta Legioss has a unique color scheme different from the other two standard fighters which goes to reason that if it did indeed have a Tread, that Tread would also have a similar unique color scheme. No official color scheme for a red Tread has been seen ergo my "complaint" if you can even call it one is how is the toy company to know what color pattern to paint a red Tread?

But they didn't... and that was the whole mess. The human "war plan" for the second recapture mission was horribly managed and executed. They thought they were just going to punch right in but they were bogged down fighting in orbit, their Tread equipped trans-atmospheric escort units were wiped out and they had to scramble their non-Tread equipped main force units. I'm sure the Zeta can accept a Tread, what I am saying is there where no red painted Treads. They never showed them and from what I understand of the tactics and the "battle plan" of the recapture mission the Treads were not intended to be widely used otherwise they would have brought more with them. If you look at the assault composition only like 10% of their assault Legioss units had Treads.

Everything I've seen has called the Zeta a "special atmosphere fighter" which implied to me it was a custom fighter specially designed for atmospheric fighting. It did not need a Tread because it was most likely stored in a giant storage bay like the other fighters in the fleet. Remember that only the orbital escort fighters had Treads, every other fighting unit in the fleet was stationed aboard a larger ship as just a Legioss. You can see in the first episode that only one division of fighters had Treads, the ones making the trans-atmospheric assault. All the others were kept in reserve on board the larger carriers until needed, and they didn't have Treads.

The studios are ALWAYS going to decide. In today's world the consumer is told what they want and how much of it they want. The only "choice" a consumer has is to buy or not to buy, what they actually buy was decided for them months in advance by a panel of businessmen. And as such people voted their wallets and chose to buy more Blu Ray than HD DVD. In the end they were not really "choosing" one format over another, they were simply picking the movies they wanted and leaving the rest. For one format to truly have "won" in a pure choice contest both formats would have had to have had the same movies available for the same prices... then you'd see a purely democratic "choice of the people" result. The "result" as we have it now is basically the "right" movies came out at the right times that favored one format over another. I firmly believe that if Universal had managed to release a lot of it's big big name properties (Jaws, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, etc) that they probably could have given HD DVD a real shot in the arm. That is kind of what I was talking about before... Blu Ray had all these exclusive big big titles that just seemed to be swaying the fight. HD DVD just seems to have this problem that their "exclusive" titles are a majority catalog of near hits, indie flicks and older titles. From what I've seen the majority share of HD DVD's big sellers were dual format movies with only one or two rare exceptions (Transformers, Batman Begins) while Blu Ray seems to have had more first tier, high profile exclusive titles that more people want.

The whole "Jupiter Base" markings scheme on the Zeta made absolutely no sense in the show. It was Mars Base that mounted the second "Earth Recapture Mission" and it was a detachment of Mars Base at Fallback Point K (where the freedom fighters find the Zeta)... where did a "custom" Jupiter Base atmosphere fighter come from?

My "Go To" Blu Ray demo disc is Pirates of the Caribbean 1 (specifically the ship to ship fight scene). That scene in that disc is perfect demo material. Tons of motion, tons of contrast and color, massive hard hitting bass and treble and tons of small intricate details moving both slow and fast. My "back up" demo disc is Pixar's Ratatouille. Other Blu Ray movies with very, very good picture and audio quality in my collection are Blade Runner (as you mentioned) and Pixar's Cars. Sony's Surfs Up gets an honorable mention for picture quality and sound. Other notable "very good" picture and audio discs are Corpse Bride, Chicken Little and my personal favorite The Road Warrior. Road Warrior is not a demo disc picture and sound wise but the marked improvement from DVD to Blu Ray alone makes it a noteworthy title. If I just want to showcase my sound system my Blu Ray of choice is Black Hawk Down (great audio with thunderous bass and tons of multi channel audio).

Nope. That is a point I point out every time. The only Treads shown in the show were Mars Base units of the Eta, Iota and Dark variety. The Jupiter Base Zeta Legioss has never been seen with a Tread... and seeing how the Zeta has such a different paint job than the two Mars Base Eta and Iota units it only goes to assume if the Zeta did have a Tread it's paint job would be different as well. Edit: and from what I recall a lot of Mospeada text refers to the Zeta as a special "Atmosphere Fighter". If that is the case why would a terrestrial fighter designed to fight inside earth's atmosphere need a trans-atmospheric booster?

If you ask me (which no one does so I just elbow my way in and start talking) what has really "won" this format war is that Blu Ray has had far more "we actually care" releases than HD DVD. The "problem" with introducing a new format is that you have to really "sell" that format to the consumer. In the early days of this fight both formats really only offered one thing: improved picture and sound. The reason you bought a BD or HD DVD disc rather than a standard DVD was for the promise of an improved audio visual experience. I can look on my video shelf at home and just start pulling Blu Ray discs that I consider to be outstanding examples of HD media... but when I look at my HD DVD discs there are really only a handful of them I actually consider "demo material worthy". Now some of those HD DVDs are outstanding in their quality (Hot Fuzz anyone?) but that quality is really sort of few and far between from my experience. The lion's share of my HD DVD discs are "ok"... not stellar, not spectacular... just "decent". On the other hand I consider the lion's share of my Blu Ray discs to be excellent with really only a handful of "sour" movies. Needless to say some companies "got it" and put effort into releasing high quality HD movies while other companies just sort of phoned it in and released a lot of sub-par "not worth the upgrade" movies. As the formats soldiered on, I started noticing a growing trend of some studios really taking their time and trying to release high quality HD movies. These "flagship" titles were pretty rare at the beginning but now more and more are coming out. One thing I will have to say is that more and more of those titles were Blu Ray. That is not to say that HD DVD does not produce some good discs, but by and large the studios that backed HD DVD just seemed to have this sort of blahze "meh" attitude towards their releases. Both formats produced some really good discs, but it just seems to me that the Blu Ray folks "cared" a lot more. Heck, they cared so much that they re-released The Fifth Element and replaced the old copies for people... I'd like to see them do that for Dune on HD DVD.

I've always wondered... how do you pronounce that name? Gel Goog? or Jel Goog?

I just want my Indiana Jones and Aliens. Where's that petition?

As far as I know the original Larry Hama penned Marvel Comics are the "official" canon of GI Joe. They are widely accepted as the "true" story of GI Joe followed by the Sunbow animated TV show... except that Sunbow pretty much did their own thing story wise and the two mediums clash on several subjects and characters. For what it's worth, the Hama comics are miles above the relatively juvenile TV show.

I should probably rephrase that the price seems high for what you are getting. Much like my complaint about the Legioss / Tread set, if these things were of a larger scale the price would not bother me at all. It just seems like CM's wants to sell "small" for the price of "big". I myself would much rather have a big plastic toy than a small metal if the price was the same.