Solidus Snake

I'm so glad that this is getting translated.

Figher mode: I like the VF-0 better, in Battroid mode, it's the VF-1 for me.

I really hope that it's a new series

So the sequel to Genesis of Aquarion, Aquarion EVOL started airing a week ago, and I was wondering if anyone here was also watching it. It's being produced by Satelight and like the first one is also being spearheaded by Kawamori. On a side note, it's always interesting to see different works by Kawamori and see how similar themes and motifs are present in the various works.

Kawamori just doesn't want to revisit these characters again. Can't blame him.

I was 9 or so when Robotech was first shown on Cartoon network. My brothers watched it when they were children. In any case they were like, "Oh awesome! They're showing Robotech and Voltron on tele, again." I still remembered watching Voltron, but not robotech. In any case, I fell in love with Robotech, especially the macross saga. For some reason, CN never showed the Next generation on tele, so we went to Hastings one day and saw that they had VHSes of Robotech, we rented the entire next generation and watched it in 2 days. When we returned the VHSes, we saw two conspicuous titles: Macross II and Macross Plus (do keep in mind that this is during the early days of the net when geocities was still around and everyone used dial up). We rented them both and were completely shocked. Nothing made sense with robotech and we scratched our heads at how it fit with the Robotech timeline (at the time we didn't know that Robotech was based off 3 different shows). We scoured the internet on a slow 56k and on one of the webrings, we found the answer. This started me on my path to of Macross. After rewatching the show subbed in horrible quality and watching M7 in horrible quality subbed (I mean .rm quality).

I don't know if I'm willing to spend $512 on this. My wallet felt a pinch when I bought Sayanora no Tsubasa, and $80 isn't all that much.

I would rather work for SMS, but only after doing service in the Spacey for a few years.

Awesome. I just watched the concert Blu-ray today, and it was awesome.

As do I, but it can't be helped. I thought both scenes were great and highlighted the respective characters in a fun way. Also, today is Sheryl's birthday

Best answer.

Not in the tv series. If I recall Ozma said something about, "She even used her real name in front of us." My opinion is still the same, but somewhat refined now. It helped that my brother just watched the series this week and I was able to put the film's story in better context. I'll explain what I mean. My brother's biggest complaint of the series was that he felt that it would have been better as a 13 episode series rather than 25 (I disagree to an extent, but I see where he's coming from). He said that there was a lot of uneeded stuff going on that were in there in order to pad it out. He also hated Ranka (we truly are brothers). In any case, this made me realise why I liked the films more than the series. They're more focused and do a better job handling the characters. Alto came off as uncaring about the Ranka or Sheryl unless they were in trouble, but in the film, he came off as actually having some investment in a relationship with Sheryl (and sort of with Ranka). Overall, I enjoyed the second film, only problems I had with it were with some of the scene transitions, the "false" deaths (they should never have given a false death to Luca), and the final battle didn't have the sense of desperation that the series did. Oh and I wish they would have given us a shot of Cathy and bobby mourning Ozma, something like that just to give his death some impact. And while some characters got the shaft in development, it was necessary in order to make a more focused story and improve the central characters. I think Alto, Ranka, Grace Leon, Wilder and to some extent Sheryl (to some extent) improved as characters in this movie. Oh and that scene when Diamond Crevasse starts playing.

Yea, I would agree with you on that. Since I listened to the OST long before watching the film, my opinion on it was "meh", but after watching the film, my opinion of it went up slightly, except for the Northern Cross part which went up a lot. I wish we could get a full or longer a capella of Northern Cross.

And it's the best part of the medley. Shame the medley isn't as good as the version in the tv series

Yea no, that goes double for anime.

I think it's already been stated in this thread a few times, but Macross like most shows (see: Code Geass...I'll get to that soon) was a collaborative effort. Kawamori did come up with the key concepts like the "battle city," the love triangle, and the Valkyries, probably others. But let's take a recent example: Code Geass. Taniguchi "created" Code Geass in the sense that he like Kawamori came up with the idea and was also the show's frontrunner, but Code Geass went through a lot of changes from Taniguchi's original concept to what we saw on the screen. A lot of changes at the staff level and at the executive level (Same thing happened with Macross for instance look at how the name Macross came about).

Macross II has a special and weird place in my heart. Back when I was a young sprite, I only new of Robotech (this was back in the early early days of the net where you had to use dial-up...aka the dark, but fun days). In any case, one day my brothers and I waltz into our local haystings and see "Robotech: the Next Generation" and "Robotech: Sentinels" on VHS. A little further down we see this odd VHS set: Macross II. "Oh cool," I think to myself, "This must be a continuation of the Macross saga. Time to find out what happened to Rick, Lisa and the SDF-3" We get home and pop it in...lo be behold! It's not a continuation of the Macross Saga, it's something completely different. There's this guy named Hibiki Kanzaki, this takes place 80 years later, Earth isn't as fraked up as it was in the Robotech Masters---more importantly, the Veritechs are called Valkyries. In any case, we load up the internet and at the speed of 56k discover the truth about Macross and Robotech. This started me on my path to Macross, a week later I watched Plus and a couple of years later, I ended up watching Macross 7 in very very very shitty quality and then Zero and ended up rewatching Macross in its original form. With all that said, to answer the question of what I think of Macross II? In all honesty, after watching it again very recently, it's not as bad as a lot of people claim. The animation is poor especially for the OVA, but the Valkyrie designs are pretty cool. It introduced some neat ideas into the franchise (the predecessor to the ghost-x9 for instance). The spin that the main character was not a pilot, but a reporter was very refreshing, also the fact that the enemy also used song was a great spin I think. Think about it, how do you defeat an enemy that uses your weapon against it? There was some bad writing in the script and it tried too hard to be DYRL rather than its own thing like we're so used to in other Macross entries. But overall, it's not that bad. I'd gladly watch it for a third time--or is it 4th? In any case, I think it needs more love and we need to love Ishtar more.

Yea I did the same too. I didn't bother with the song lyrics though. I changed some of their misspellings, translation errors (like calling Griffith Park Griffithburg, or Macross Cannons Quantum Cannons, etc). http://www.mediafire...3pxp83ou8ck35vs Also, I changed how Alto's final lines plays out in the subtitles.

Definitely is a shame

He was probably trying to appear non-threatening/showing her the true face of a human.

I watched CCS. And to be fair, the "sexualisation" of young adolescent women in anime is almost as old as anime itself. Think of elpeo ple in ZZ Quess in CCA.

The lack of manpower was reference to SDF Macross. As for Alto and co, it seems that the age of manhood is 16. I guess we can chalk it up to how society changed after post annihilation, just like back in the day you were a man at around 15-16 (talking about medieval) due to poor infrastructure, lack of population, lack of manpower, early death etc.

C'mon, there's only 1 year difference between Sheryl and Ranka. With that said Alto Turned 18 in the series. And is it any different than the UN Spacey allowing a 16yo to be a pilot (to be fair they were lacking in manpower).