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Pterobat

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  1. Pterobat
    I want things to be new as new can be. I don't have a "perfect" Macross tone and formula in mind, no preference for gritty or sweet, I just hope for something fun and interesting and not going backwards. But if I really had to pick something...I'd like some strong, developed Zentradi stories, ones that don't lean so heavily on previous character types or homages. Macross the Musicalture shows the direction I'm thinking. A reboot is a possibility, but I hope no one produces the "definitive" SW1 to officially and without question slot in before the other two Macross TV series. Not that I think the franchise's methods are preferable to the way other media does it, but just that I know my favourite parts of SDFM probably wouldn't survive a One SW1 to Rule Them All. Pretty sure no one's going to directly revisit Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay again. Not that their ending was handled well, but a new hunk of story with them would just be excess. Revisiting the world before SW1 I dunno...it could work, but I feel like the Protoculture are best left in the background. All we need to know of them is what they left behind. The Protoculture are something to react to, rather than characters themselves.
  2. Pterobat
    Whoo-hoo! I got an early birthday present, looks like! (Is nerd-praying for an entirely new story.)
  3. Pterobat
    A nice real long listen this time. Thank you. Even if you were joking, a Salvador Dali / Macross mash-up sounds amaaazing. The actually existing art of Macross characters with Tezuka characters is also pretty nice. Alas, I dislike Ranka, too, though not for shippery reasons. As for the cost of Valkyrie toys, I've never owned one so I can't comment on if you get enough bang for you buck, but it's hard for anyone to see outside of their regional culture of distribution and costs. I'm still floored whenever I remember how much things cost over in Japan, glad I don't have to pay, but I don't necessarily blame the country for their business model. The idiot in me wants to laugh at every Harmony Gold C n' D out there, since, hey, HG isn't doing much with their stuff anyway. Gah, it's still painful to watch Harmony Gold pretend they have a viable media franchise, and so many people going along with it. Sadly, I got the Laszlo Zand reference. Sigh.
  4. Pterobat
    Yep, I'm sadly familiar with the "Macross should be gritty" crowd. I do wonder why it's Destroids, though. Those things aren't that popular--maybe that's the point?
  5. Pterobat
    Yay, more SpeakerPodcast! Once again, Gubaba, great job on translating "White Reminisces". Even if it was a rough translation, it was still poignant. Good old Sheryl and her good old birthday.... What's that about a Destroid-centric story that you guys keep mocking? Is it a reference to something? (The only thing I can think of is someone from Robotech fandom who wrote a Destroid fanfic series, but he was a huge jackass, so mock away!) I was one of the first people to notice the indelicate Valk placement on the Macross Christmas art, and I'm surprised you're taking that slight issue with it. I hope Kawamori finds a way to incorporate two or all of the prime Macross elements into a new work: look forward to something else from the franchise. The Musicalture sounded like a strong tribute to these tropes, even if not literally, and was also less conventional. Macross fans not wanting to settle for the franchise's notion of "canon" has never bothered me, because this involves expecting viewers to rewire their entire perception of what mainstream storytelling is and what it does, and viewers shouldn't have to make that effort. The viewpoint of Macross on "canon" also isn't a streamlined and refreshing alternative to the ideas that most wester viewers grew up with. Eventually these viewers gotta learn that nothing will change, but it's still not something to not be flustered with. The exception to this is the question of whether the Frontier movies or TV series are "canon": when movie retellings are standard for anime series and are essentially AU retellings of each other, asking which is canon seems pointless. It's like asking which Ghost in the Shell adaptation is "canon". Anyway, keep up the good work!
  6. Pterobat
    HTTYD was an excellent movie--see where earnestness gets you, DreamWorks? Eh? I'm avoiding all trailers and spoilers as much as I can, and looking forward to the content itself. The world of the film can support a new story since the first movie only took place around a small area--but the question remains how they can make HIccup interesting again, when the film finished his character arc off pretty nicely.
  7. Pterobat
    Please let it not suck, amen. And avoid the cah-razy early scripts that were told of the book "Tales from Development Hell". Because wow....!
  8. Pterobat
    Great listen, as usual. I love hearing about your concert experiences: sure, there's the heat and the crowds, but it still sounds awesome to be there, and reminds me of what a great franchise Macross can be. Lots of great music...I don't think I could pick a very favourite song out of all of them. And a crossover concert with a storyline was beyond cool. Cool to hear of another female Macross fan in NA, too. Yeah, I don't hold out much hope for the fates of Alto and Sheryl to be ever resolved. That kinda sucks.
  9. Pterobat
    I know that my brand of geeking out is different from a lot of people here, but I'd just like to say that the info on the Zentradi of "Fastest Delivery" make the episode more palatable than it used to be. The explanations for things like the repeated character designs and the nature of their rebellion make sense, though I'm still not on board with the idea that it's a male Zentradi "thing" to go nuts over pop stars, rather than it being part of a specific setting and context in Macross.
  10. Pterobat
    I can't wait for this. To add to your Wattersonian experience, read "Looking for Calvin and Hobbes", about one man's study of the impact that Watterson has had on other cartoonists, while never being able to contact Watterson himself: http://www.amazon.ca/Looking-Calvin-Hobbes-Unconventional-Revolutionary/dp/1441106855
  11. Pterobat
    Of course I'm going to say EoE. Both franchises are a few of my favourite things, but I slightly prefer Evangelion overall. If you speak in terms of beauty, End of Evangelion and DYRL are very different visually, but I believe the quality of those visuals are about the same, in technical terms (we really need an R1 EoE release with higher video quality than we got). Beauty is more than visual, though, and End of Evangelion is a film I have much deeper emotional investment in than DYRL, as well. (Also, I enjoy both endings to Evangelion, but at this point don't consider EoE essential to make Evangelion "complete".)
  12. Pterobat

    VF-1 Plush toy

    Pterobat replied to Phalanix's topic in Toys

    Wargh. I normally don't go for Valks, but I was tempted by the Max Valk plush (Max is a righteous dude). However, the delays are putting me off. And I would love, love, an SD Regult or Glaug plush.
  13. Pterobat
    Wow! This stuff is gold..keep up the good work!
  14. Pterobat
    Nobody really knows. During the wars, the life of the average Zentradi grunt was said to be very short: about three years. Unfortunately, I can't find a citation for that, but it likely meant that they were getting killed so often that they died quicker, not that their lifespan was literally three years. It's a common fan theory that Zentradi are potentially immortal or at least very long-lived because of their genetic engineering, and would be so if no pesky wars got in the way. Nothing official states that explicitly, though a lot of people seem to base it on Milia in Macross 7, who still looks young and once said that she had never gotten sick (though the latter was used to set up a gag). For a few of the original Zentradi characters, they're given an age in years that seems to roughly align with how old they seem relative to human anime characters: Milia is 15, Britai is 34, Kamjin is 23, but it's not clear if these are equivalent to human years or not. I tend to assume they are, but referring to how long since they emerged as adults, not including how long they were cooking in a cloning chamber. And of course, the Bodolza living engine in DYRL said that he was "120,000 cycles" old, but that probably doesn't count. http://www.animeigo.com/liner/out-print/macross-tv-series
  15. Pterobat
    Laplamiz's fleet did have an advisor. She appears in "Blue Wind" (ep. 13) and gets a few generic lines with Laplamiz, and a character model somewhere in Macross Chronicle.
  16. Pterobat
    I am very confused. Of course, that's nothing new for me.... This confusion isn't going to give way to righteous indignation, though. I want to see what kind of crazy bullshittery they come up with over there.
  17. Pterobat
    Whoa, that sounds amazing! Holy hell! I also lost it at hearing about the sequence with Sheryl and Alto. I never expected something like that--well played. Well-played.
  18. Pterobat
    Awesome! So, it looks like Britai's headplate was just an eyepatch after all, rather than any kind of cybernetic replacement. You would wonder how a Zentradi can be effective without depth perception, but he's so badass that it wouldn't matter. Also, I doubt having any Britai expies with headplates suggests that all male Zentradi commanders are given them and so Britai's is not the result of an injury. More likely the animators are just copying the Britai design and it doesn't mean much.
  19. Pterobat
    You're doin' God's work, Gubaba. This translation captures the "feel" of SDFM even across different mediums. It fits so neatly into the tone of the TV series: told in a soft, almost romantic focus, yet not shying away from harder truths. You really get a feel for what made Misa the person that she is in the present time, for good or ill. And I liked that Mr. Hayase is a loving father, which makes their later conflict much harder to watch I thought it was pretty corny that Misa met Minmay before the TV series, and the "little did they know" bit made it even worse, but thankfully the story didn't dwell on that fact. Can't wait to read the last bit.
  20. Pterobat
    I'm surprised this thread hasn't been killed yet. I'm also surprised Harmony Gold managed to get anything off the ground, though it's impossible to forget that it took them *this* long to make something that's mostly old footage. It's painful to watch the company and fans in this sparse n' masochistic relationship, while it tries to imitate a successful multimedia franchise. It'd be better for Robotech to be nuked, but you all knew that already, didn't you? Everyone trying to decide which story elements are goofier...I'm going to give you this one. They're all goofy.
  21. Pterobat
    I love Tezuka. Phoenix is my favourite of his works, and I've managed to track down all the English volumes except for the elusive and overpriced #4. Most of what I've read are his "adult" works, which include MW, Apollo's Song, and Ode to Kirihito. I've also read most of Black Jack at this point, depending on what the library has in stock. The best thing about Tezuka is that his work is simple but profound. The stories are basic, but there's a lot of heart and conviction involved, and despite being dated in many ways, they also feel timeless in one sense or another. I also don't mind his art style, which others consider to be too cartoony these days. I find this doesn't impede the seriousness of the story, any more than the rest of his humour does. I want to read more Tezuka, and I'm always checking to see what the local library has in stock.
  22. Pterobat
    I'll PM you any Robotech stuff from now on, since the mods don't like us discussing it. Well, the Macross 7 Docking Festival Album had liner notes that said Warera, Rori, and Konda had turned into bitter, burned-out alcoholics, and that Rori had married Vanessa but did not work. Needless to say, that was very horrible and not at all in keeping with the tone of the series. Later, "Macross: The Musicalture", a Japanese musical, told an original Macross story, and one of the characters was Sonia Dosel, Rori's granddaughter. Presuming that a healthy, happy descendent means a better life, it might mean the horrid concept mentioned above was overwritten.
  23. Pterobat
    Nah. A lot of the movie's changes in characterization and behaviour are not necessarily in service of a shorter plot, and even if they were, that doesn't mean you can't be repelled by them. Like, in my case, DYRL portrayed Exsedol and Britai as much more cold and distant characters, which didn't mean anything for the plot but made them very unappealing. Actually, it's hard to put things like this into intellectual terms: you either "get it" or you don't. There probably are some lines changed in the dub that, intentionally or not, make Minmay look like a worse person than she originally was. And Reba West's speaking voice is pretty whiny, too, which might colour one's impression of her. I've seen interviews with Carl Macekt that suggest he had a very cynical intepretation of Minmay that might have influenced the scripting and voice direction for the Robotech dub, but no one has come out and confirmed this direct connection. But none of that means that everyone has the same reasons for disliking Minmay in the Robotech dub, or that everyone dislikes her in the same way. Hell, some people just don't like Minmay, period.
  24. Pterobat
    I know the feeling. Don't worry: the film's not exactly hurting for fans. I don't actually like Bodolza as a character, but I at least prefer him in an ambulatory humanoid form, because it means he had the potential to accept culture, but refused. As a living ship's engine, there's never a question of what he can take. I don't think there's anything badass about him, ever. He's a guy who clings to something he never chose, and refuses to admit the possibility of change. I could talk your ear off about the portrayal of Zentradi in that film. I know DYRL has great objective merits, but I simply don't care about that enough to actually like the film. Which means that I never got to the stage of analyzing the logic of the human characters' behaviour in that film. Though a little bit of illogic helps to keep characters more human.
  25. Pterobat
    Eh...well, I'd rather accept no explanation than to make assumptions based on various small things. It feels too fanfic-y to me, and thus doesn't carry any weight. I would need something absolutely concrete and explicit to consider any issue solved. And since we're not going to get it, I'm not going to try to fill in the blanks myself. The difference probably is that Exsedol is my favourite character in Macross, and so it's something I get picky over and hold any explanations to a high standard. I know this seems weird in light of how mellow everybody else is here about continuity, but this is just normal fandom stuff. Besides, I look at all the ways the DYRL aesthetic has influenced later TV series and can't think that Exsedol is the only thing that has / needs an in-story explanation when everything else is all, "Kay they're using those designs now but SDFM is also official too." Regarding the other tangent, I might have to recant what I said about Max, since there was a WWI ace named Kurt Wintgens who received the Blue Max medal and wore out-and-out glasses...and piloted a Fokker plane (yes, I know the spelling is different, but...). Dang Wikipedia is the best source out of a cursory Google search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wintgens
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