Aladdin Sane

So he's outright lying now instead of just being vague and misleading? Huh.

I'm generally against segregating anime and manga from the larger cartoon and comic mediums as it just doesn't make sense to me to go "Okay, this stuff is from Japan, so it's anime/manga but all that stuff from America, all the different European countries, Australia and whereever else? You're all lumped into the one category together" (though I guess you could argue that there's more similarities between, say, American and English comics than between either of those and Japanese comics, especially given that two of the more prolific writers in American comics for the last twenty years, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, are English and Scottish respectively) but the western colloquialism of "anime" being "stuff from Japan" has kind of stuck now and it's, ultimately, easier to go with the flow. And when, in the case of R:TSC, such a deal is made of calling it "anime" rather than just "animation" or "a cartoon" I feel the people doing so are trying to make a particular point.

Kinda irrelevant to the current topic of discussion, but could somebody explain to me why Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles is considered anime? I mean I know the franchise has its roots in anime, and that the new material takes its visual style from anime, but it was written, directed, produced, voiced and scored in America and animated in Korea. Apart, perhaps, from some early consultation with Tatsunoko nobody from Japan was involved with the project at any time in development. It's no more anime than The Simpsons. I dunno, I guess it's ultimately irrelevant and probably kinda pedantic of me to pick up on this kind of thing but it's like when you see someone talking about Wakfu or something and calling it "a French anime". Well no, it's not. Anime is, by definition, Japanese animation and if something isn't from Japan then, well, it's not anime.

Because being a Robotech fan has very little to do with liking or being knowledgeable about the franchise.

Well yeah, from our perspective as Macross fans or to other people that generally have a bit of taste you're right, but it'd be interesting to see the reactions from the hardcore Robotech tribe that have insisted that everything that came after SDF Macross was rubbish once such things get incorporated into Robotech (though, really, I suppose it wouldn't go much further than "Well yeah, but they made them better now so it's alright"). Yeah, that's the other angle I was looking at it from. Robotech fans in general hate the slightest change to the status quo, imagine what this kind of upheaval would do to them. I suppose "funny" wasn't really the best way to put it, "a fascinating trainwreck" might have been more appropriate.

Wouldn't it be funny if they managed to get the international licences for DYRL? and Mac Zero and pumped out dubs of said products as Robotech The Movie: Memories of Love and War and Robotech: 0rigins or whatever, looking to fill gaps in their production left by Shadow Rising and the LAME, using a tagline along the lines of "Celebrating 25 Years of Robotech by taking you back to the beginning and beyond" or whatever. I was tempted to mock up some posters or trailers as if the above paragraph were actually happening and seeing if MEMO and friends would fall for it as "leaked materials" but I'm, ultimately, entirely too lazy.

Haha. Y'know, I hadn't really noticed that. Well as far as I know it's set in World War 2, though I don't know why that'd necessitate Daleks with webbing. I don't imagine it'd be all that useful with those plungers.

Was always going to be looking at Doc Eleven with an open mind without jumping to conclusions, but based on his little bit in TEoT2 and this trailer I think The Moff could be onto a winner. Shades of Ace and her baseball bat in Rememberance? Fantastic.

The logical conclusion would be Final Fantasy VII remake. It could really use it given the terrible early-3D mish mash graphics and terrible translation ("This guy are sick!"). Though it could just as easily be Kingdom Hearts 3. The World Ends With You 2 would be what I'd want if I could specifically request anything from Nomura and Friends at Squeenix.

I dunno about that "Death to Macross purists" bit, given that some of the Robotech comics he scripted had plenty of references to "Kai Fun" and "Shao [Pai] Long". Perhaps Mr. Yune is a frustrated Macross fan heading the Robotech franchise in order to, in a roundabout way, work on what really interests him.

Well in the novelisations, dried petals of the Flower of Life are used as an intoxicant. I guess he just figured Rick and Lisa must've been hopped up on Protoculture leaves in order to do such a thing.

They joke about it, complain about edits made in the dub, etc. Though, at the risk of sounding like someone trying to justify them, they're not really comparable to Robotech and stuff like the SDF-2; they're euphamizing things that "aren't suitable for children's television", not adding extraneously to the plot or contradicting the original story. Actually, better examples from the Dragonball Z dub could include Vegeta telling Goku that his father was "a brilliant scientist", Tenshinhan saying he can regrow the arm he loses in the battle against Nappa, or Tao Pai Pai being a General in the Red Ribbon Army. They're all the subject of jokes and/or ridicule by fandom, nobody treats them seriously or tries to defend them.

Robotech's "expanded universe" also seems to be prone to the "coincidentally, everyone important in the story knew everyone else beforehand" kind of thing. I read the Love & War miniseries for the first time the other week (my first proper foray into Robotech comics outside of PtTSC) and we learn there that Max and Ben were, of course, the best of childhood friends before the events of the series and when they enlisted in the RDF they happened to be instructed by none other than the aforementioned Mr. Wolfe.

Two words that pretty much sum up "Boba Fett syndrome" in Robotech to a tee: Jonathon Wolfe.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. It's pretty much the best thing since the best thing since sliced bread.

There are no words to adequately describe how much I hate myself right now.

There was also, much more recently, American Beauty in terms of mainstream, award-winning films to feature underage nudity. Thora Birch was only 16 when she did the topless scene in it, though I guess it doesn't count if you lesson to certain people given that she probably looks a couple years older than she was.

Weak shot . There's a lot of rubbish in Sylv's run as the Doctor, but there's some good stuff in there too. Remembrance of the Daleks, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, The Curse of Fenric and Survival are all good stories and even some of the bad stuff, like The Happiness Patrol, had some interesting concepts that unfortunately fell short when it came to the execution. It's certainly far from being the best in the series, but it has a lot more going for it than Robotech ever did.

"How the Invid Stole Christimas" would follow the misadventures of Zor, Breetai, Exedore and a Tirolian muse thing as they chase after the Regess, hoping to retreive a stolen Christmas tree. A misjudged Fold leads to them arriving on early Earth, where they spread the joy of the Tirolian tradition of Christmas. Plus Admiral Rick Hunter is in it I guess, 'cause you won't get the fans in without him.

I understand the point of letting people be who they are, allowing their points of view and not lowering ourselves to the RT.com/RTX level but the thing with MEMO is that he's a broken record. A deluded, broken record that has taken on a meaning of it's own independent of the original recording artist. Or maybe it's not ENTIRELY removed from the intended message, just taking the original message and extrapolating it to the extreme, ultimately corrupting it. We all know Big West owns the IP rights to Macross, yet Memo has the idea in his head that said rights are only relevant in Japan and that Tatsunoko own the IP rights to Macross as it relates to the rest of the world. This is the message that he spreads. Even quotes from the holy father of Robotech himself, Carl Macek, are being twisted and broken by MEMO and his partner in crime, MaverickLSC to completely misrepresent their original intention. Macek says: "We couldn't use the original designs". Sounds simple, right? HG's licencing partner, Tatsunoko, don't own the actual rights to create derivative works based on Macross so Rick, Lisa et al needed to be reworked for stuff like Sentinels to be legally released. Yet they're forcing words into his mouth, talking about how this simple quote somehow implies that the evolving aesthetic of the show necessitated the designs to be more reminiscent of Southern Cross. MEMO is purposefully obfuscating the truth, constantly regurgitating things that simply aren't true. I don't want to hold personal grudges or doubt particular individuals, but I wouldn't trust MEMO as far as I could throw him, and throwing him even the slightest distance would have to be some kind of Herculean poo given the distance between Australia and America.

Well I don't suppose it can be too big if there's been years worth of debate on where it was exactly.

Well sure, but the important thing now that we've settled on its location is: how long is it?

What about Fundamentalist Macrossism, worshiping only the original sacred text of Super Dimension Fortress Macross? Do not trust Do You Remember Love?! It is a tool of the devil, a corrupted version of the holy word of SDF:M designed to tempt you away with it's flashy lights and fancy animation. The true path to salvation lies only in the original 36 episode scripture!

Topless Robot has dabbled in anti-Macross trolling (ick, I feel like Pizza or someone going on about "Macross purist trolls" saying that) before, the first major example I can remember being here. A number of people made what I felt to be fairly reasonable, civil posts in the comments but, unfortunately, one (or possibly more) idiots felt the need to spam it with a bunch of pointless "HURPADERP ROBOCRAP IS TEH SUXX" nonsense which, I think, resulted in the tone of this next piece. This list is just the most recent entry in a trilogy of attempts to elicit some kind of response from Macross fans. I don't know how much the writers at Topless Robot believe what they're putting out there, but it's pretty obvious the reason it's being done is to annoy people. Note the tags on the two most recent posts ("Nerd baiting") and the dismissive attitude displayed in #7 on the list ("It doesn't matter what you try to say because I'm just going to ignore you").