danth

Wow. You're an idiot. Guts: All is not lost yet. Maybe we can figure this one out. Did you call the police? Can they help? I think there are laws where you can't just kick someone out without some sort of eviction, even if you're not paying rent. I'd at least call the police and see if they can help.

Thanks guys. A few days extra is not so bad. I was going for "cheapest" at first, then I was wishing I went for "fastest," but if Valk-Ex is as fast as LAF, I'll be okay. This thing should be out in Japan tomorrow. I hope we see lots of new pics soon.

Yeah, and then I wait for my valk to get to Valkyrie Exchange, and then I wait again for my valk to ge to me. Then I lock myself in my room and call in sick. And for the third time: DOES ANYONE KNOW IF BUYING FROM VALKYRIE EXCHANGE MEANS A LONGER WAIT TO GET MY VALK? I'VE HEARD THINGS TO THAT EFFECT. DOES IT TAKE AN EXTRA WEEK OR SO? I'VE NEVER ORDERED THROUGH VALK EXCHANGE BEFORE. THANKS. Sorry for resorting to that, but I'm hoping the third time is the charm.

In COD4 multiplayer, I get the worst freaking lag in every game. Like, when I shoot the crap out of someone and then they kill me with one shot, in the replay it turns out they shot me multiple times and I only shot them once. It's like my ping is 500 or something. I'm on Comcast if that means anything.

Hey guys, I wanna play more often than I have been. Anyone up for some regularly scheduled Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4? Or at least a one night stand so to speak? I'd love to play with more people from the west coast so the lag isn't so bad.

When I finally get my dirty paws on this toy, I won't be leaving my house for at least a day. I might fly it around the back yard if it's nice out. But I'll be locked up in my room handling this valk like it was a pair of boobies for a good deal of time when it arrives.

So these are going to be out in five days right? Shall we start the countdown? And can somebody tell me how fast or slow the Valkyrie Exchange is at shipping once a toy is released?

Whoa. That is perfect. Too bad the Yamato 1/60 1D will not look this good.

I hope they can make the blades faster. Because they're god damned slow.

I wonder if Yamato will actually go all out to make this thing line art accurate. These pictures show how tremendously different the canopies should be. Even the back plate and hatch are different.

Sure. Hey, turnabout is fair play. I just don't see what the problem with this thread is. I can only find one other thread like this from ComicKaze, so it's not like it's a nuisance.

Ha ha, yeah, let's all laugh at ComicKaze. I mean, what kind of loser watches a show from his favorite series, and then posts his retrospective opinion once the season is over? Seriously guys, if you can't handle fair criticism of a Macross show, you can always avoid the thread instead of just being snide. Or not. Just sayin'.

Now, I've only watched the first five episodes, and I don't remember all the facts, but here's how I feel on the Vajra argument: It's pretty stupid to suggest that a military force protecting a cosmic seeding expedition would only equip themselves with regular munitions until they've gotten their asses kicked multiple times and lost thousands of civilians and a number of starships. If you don't know what you'll be up against, you arm yourselves with the most powerful munitions you have, blow the sh*t out of anything that attacks you, and ask questions later. Switching to reaction weapons should have happened in the first episode after they discovered regular munitions didn't pack enough punch. Is that what happened? And the after that, taking out Vajra was no big deal, right? Actually, I seem to remember them being pretty hard to kill even in the fifth episode. One thing I do remember was that in the first couple of episodes, the Vajra were f*cking scary. To have them be reduced to a sympathy case, in favor of some predictable conspiracy story, would be very unsatisfying in my opinion. I haven't watched that far yet, but you guys are already predicting the conspiracy, and I've found conspiracies in anime to be pretty obvious and ridiculous. Plus, Earth mecha v. Earth mecha is so Gundam. I want to see Earth mecha v. aliens! Give me some effin' Supervision Army at least. I do agree with ComicKaze regarding the poor 2D animation. I also don't like how many times Alto, Sheryl, and Ranka just happened to all meet in the same place by sheer luck, with nobody else around. I also hate the roller skates + angel wing armor suits. What is this, Alien f*cking Nine?

Yeah, I think for line art accuracy, we need a longer canopy.

Oh yeah. I can't wait to see pics of this. I wonder if the front fuselage and canopy will be different. Of course it should be different, but will Yamato just cram two pilots into the same canopy?

Gotta say, Yamato sure makes the TV 1A head look great. I hope they do something like this in 1/60, since that's where I'm putting my money.

*cries* The waiting on this thing has become pure torture. It looks so goddamn perfect! COME OUT ALREADY! If I pre-ordered with Valkyrie Exchange, does that doom me to a longer wait? Because that might just drive me over the edge.

Absolutely. Especially after seeing your huge reply! Arguing further would just be too much work! But seriously, the important thing is what we have in common, and there's no point in getting into an argument with the one member of Macrossworld who lives less than 40 miles from me. I realize my point-by-point reply to you looked like I was trying to "pick a fight," but that's not really what I was after -- I just love talking about this stuff! Still, a passionate debate about this sort of thing starts to feel personal, even if it really isn't, and it's off topic anyway. So a truce is probably the best idea. For the record, I think you're a cool guy and you make a lot of valid points. But I still think there is something "missing" in almost all new anime that can't simply be dismissed as opinion or nostalgia, but arguing that would be an epic undertaking and could be the basis of an entire website. And if it makes you feel better, even though ComicKaze and Area88 probably feel the same way as me, almost nobody else does! On every other web forum where I've made my opinions on new anime known, I've been totally dog-piled. From what I can tell, my opinion is super unpopular. My argument is a tough sell because most defenders of new anime absolutely deny two of my basic premises: 1) One can talk about general trends in anime (for instance, you objected to my "blanket statements") 2) One can talk about levels of quality or aesthetic value in anime (you said it's all subjective, which ends the discussion) Also, when I said new anime was "ass," it was an unfair exaggeration born of frustration. Oh, wait. Here's where I ask you a favor. If you recommend some new anime to me, I will totally go watch them (and not just to trash them). I really, honestly, truly want to find some new anime that really wows me. Since we have a lot of the same old-school tastes, you're probably an ideal person to recommend something for me. And I know this isn't some honor I'm bestowing upon you -- you would totally be doing me a favor. So it's only if you feel like it. What do you say?

I love Yoshikazu! But I don't know what my avatar is from. It's actually a piece of fan-submitted art from an old Animage magazine. Unfortunately it's a tiny picture printed on grainy paper, so the grain really shows in the scan. I'm gonna download GIMP and try to clean it up.

I've sampled a lot of new anime. The only recent stuff that impresses me, animation wise, is Haruhi and Ghost in the Shell. If you wanna tell me what other new shows have great animation, I'll check them out. I always hear this opinion that old anime has "washed out colors." The only possible reason I can see why people would have this opinion is if the video itself is made from faded masters or something. Because largely, old shows have rich, almost wet looking color, while new shows look practically pastel. And be assured I've seen a ton of old and new anime, so yes, this is a large blanket statement. I guess, but I'm talking about poorly drawn characters. I actually like a lot of the new character designs, but in new anime, characters are pretty much off-model in every frame. Ever seen Twelve Kingdoms? I love the box art, and all of the creator's artwork, but the animation is horrible. The characters in the anime look hideous. The there's stuff like Haruhi. I don't particularly like the chara designs, but the characters in the show are drawn so carefully that it's just pleasant to watch. Except a lot of old shows had great detail and great animation, whereas new stuff typically have neither. I mean, sure, the "mentality" of eighties animation, you could argue, was to have a lot of detail, but in reality, back then they had big budgets, lots of talent, Japanese animators, and dedication to quality. Now days, regardless of the mentality, 80's-quality animation is rarely achieved. Look at the Itano Circus for example, that stuff requires many cels per second, and yet they did it back in the "detail over fluidity" days. Now they do that stuff with computers, which is fine if you like watching video games. The whole thrust of computers in animation is to reduce cost, not to make better cartoons. It happens with everything in capitalism: once something becomes profitable, it must maximize profit, and quality suffers. I know that anime has traditionally had less cels per second that US animation, but if you look deeper, you'll see that a lot of old-school anime, even though animated at 12 images per second, really took advantage of each image and had stunning artwork at each "frame", whereas new stuff looks more like 6 frames, and it's not even as well drawn. Well, it's hard to compare Frontier's computer stuff with SDF's; of course it's more fluid, but for me personally, I'd rather watch hand-drawn animation. I'd take an Itano-directed episode of SDF any day. I think the episode of SDF where Max chased Miria into the Macross is the best animation ever made. But anyway, the non-cg parts of Frontier are really bad, in particular the character animation. It looks like modern-day Anime Friend. Like I said, it has nothing to do with character designs, although I think new character designs kinda suck as well. But yeah, the 80's had it's share of crap too -- ironically, Anime Friend-animated episodes of SDF Macross were among the worst. I realize that much of this argument is subjective, but that's not the end of the argument. Beauty is subjective, but how many dudes would rather make the sexy time with Roseanne Bar instead of Jessica Biel? You can also look at things like budget, cels per second, man-hours per episode, and that's all objective. But what really gets me is this: new anime isn't even hand-drawn. The animators "draw" by bending lines with a mouse in vector-based drawing programs, instead of free-hand drawing. And it really shows because the curves in modern character drawings look awkward and unnatural. Why do they do it this way? Because it's cheaper: they can just "bend" the lines to make a new digital cel instead of redrawing everything. And what's this crap where characters have to talk out of the side of their faces just so they don't have to draw one more cel. Talk about cheap.

That was way cool. Whenever I watch quality old school animation like that, I just can't get over how much better it is than the new garbage. New anime has washed out colors, poorly drawn characters, jerky animation...it's just ass. You can't beat eighties animation. Oh yeah, apparently Go Nagai created this show. Crazy.

Geez, I didn't realize just how out of whack the VF-25 toy is. I always thought the head was weird looking, and now that people have pointed out exactly what's wrong, I'm just not as impressed. It's funny how toy makers can really nail the detail and shape of each separate piece, but they screw up on something as important as the head, and then mess up on the overall proportions (like the legs attaching to the hips way to high and the shoulders being too wide).

Dude, is this subbed?

Amazing; it seems these things will finally be released.

I think you're right. I think the slight change in distance between the lasers actually makes a huge difference visually. Good catch there.