danth

Ditto. Have you seen the two Entertainment Bible books on Artmic? So many cool robots and spaceships! I'd love to see some Gall Force mecha myself. Especially the transforming hoverbike or the transforming personal shuttle, or even the Brontes.

Thanks Area88. I must have been the first to d/l it from you. I'll let you know what I think after I watch it. Oh yeah, I just downloaded the subs, so it looks like his server is working again.

Wow, thank you for doing all that work so my sorry as could look at all the cool pictures! That artist is really good.

Man, EVERY review of Ariel I've seen totally slams it. If it's bad, hopefully it's so bad that it's funny. EDIT: Oh yeah, you should write a little review in this thread after you watch it.

Thank you. That's sig-worthy.

Oh yeah, I forgot to show my solidarity with people who think Akira is overrated. It really is. And whenever you read anime review websites, nobody has the balls to say it. It gets an automatic perfect score every time. I notice the same problem with Ghibli movies. I'm sorry, but they're not all perfect. I adore Kiki's Delivery service, and I loved Nausicaa as a kid, but I wanted Spirited Away to be over long before it was, and I thought Princess Mononoke was just okay. I think I actively disliked Porco Rosso -- I was so bored by it that I didn't bother watching it all. Yet through some sort of Ghibli fiat, all of these movies get five stars or A's everywhere you look.

I love old-school anime from the 80's and early 90's, especially OVAs (back then we called 'em OAVs). I think they get slammed too hard in most online reviews. I too love Outlanders, Appleseed, and many others mentioned. You just can't beat old anime. I personally think the new stuff stinks to high heaven, because they don't feature much movement. The budgets are so low they can't even afford to animate lips and jaws moving, so when characters seen in profile are talking, they talk out the side of their faces. And of course they don't animate people moving when they talk, or any motion at all that requires a significant number of cels. For instance, those dogfight scenes from (the non-"Anime Friend" episodes of) Macross -- you don't see stuff like that anymore (unless it's CG, which rarely looks as good). A few seconds of dogfight meant the same Valkyrie had to be drawn like 50 times from different angles and in different poses. Those dynamic actions scenes are why I love Japanese animation. Plus, they must use a line-draw tool to draw digital cels nowadays, because none of the curves in new animation look natural. You can really tell when looking at characters' faces. Not only are the curves jarring, but they're simple. I find that, in today's anime, the characters are melodramatic and overly angsty as well.

Likewise, when I was very young, my favorite movies were the Star Wars films (starring adults), and my favorite show was Greatest American Hero (starring adults). When I was around 10 years old, my favorite cartoon was GI Joe (adult characters). Kids naturally look up to adults and think they're cool, so what's with this idea that characters in kids shows have to be kids?

Dude, I love Erasure. Their old stuff is amazing. And this is the second time in the past two weeks they've been mentioned on Macrossworld. This place is getting better!

Yay for old-school 80's anime! You know, the good kind of anime. I watched this show about a week ago when Area88 found the torrent link for me. It was definitely enjoyable. Gotta love those character designs! Oh yeah, I had to download and install Media Player Classic, and then change it's default settings, to get the subtitles to work.

I think the singer herself will be a "flyer," as in a pilot! And this time, instead of flying by guitar, the valkyrie itself will have a guitar--instead of a gunpod!

I know one thing: it'll be hard for me to get into this show if Mikimoto doesn't do the character designs. I know kids these day's might not like his style, but kids these day's also like rap "music" and Naruto. Show them something GOOD and I'm sure the smart ones will like it. The rest will follow. But yeah, for me, it ain't Macross without Mikimoto (and no, I didn't care much for Macross Plus).

Dude, that thing is unbelievable! Way too many cool, expensive as hell toys coming this year. The Legioss/Tread, CM Corps Patlabors and Votoms, Spec Layzner...and now this. And that's not even including Macross stuff!

If they ever make a Lancer Cycone, which I still doubt, then yeah, they'll "steal" from the Imai design. Although I don't mind them stealing at all; I was one of the few who really liked their Aplha fighters, which I thought not only "stole" from the Imai model but improved upon it. Agreed. EDIT: Wanna make a friendly wager that that they will ever make the Lancer? I'm game.

Niiice. Love that design. Does it ever appear in animation?

The second Cyclone will be Lancer's? No way in hell. Mark my words, Rand's will be number 2. Once they realize they have to make a whole new Cyclone for Lancer, they'll push that off to some time later, and it will eventually become vaporware. I'll even wager money on it.

That's the theory, but in reality, CG is only used to make animation cheaper. No animation done in the last 10 years approaches the quality of DYRL and other old-school OVAs. If you want specifics, all the curves in modern anime are very simple, as if a person was using the curve tool from MS Paint. This looks plain ugly when drawing characters. Also, movement is restricted mostly to translating and scaling, without any actual rotation. Even the 3d stuff is unimpressive. The only recent show I find visually decent is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The 3D CG for the Tachikomas is seemless. Plus it's got Shirow's character designs. So is it confirmed that Kawamori has nothing to do with the new show? Not even doing mecha designs?

I never like the Votoms mecha designs...until I saw these: Those are form the Blue Knight novels. Are there any other cool Votoms mecha I should know about?

Any chance this will be cel-drawn with Mikimoto character designs? Or is this gonna be yet another "slightly better than Flash animation" deal like everything else the animation industry has shat out for the last 5 years? I guess that was a rhetorical question. Well, hopefully the toys will be good. Corollary: I hope Yamato doesn't get the license.

Perfect Memory is a great book for starters. It'll probably get you way more bang for your buck than the Gold Book. Perfect memory is only around $30 new instead of $200 used.

Way to pick out the one mistake in an otherwise excellent post! Okay, that's f*cking hilarious. All is forgiven. But seriously, DeathHammer, well said.

Actually, that sounds like a reason to make more of them.

That looks good, I too hope it works as a suit. Well, Yamato's done two of Shinji Aramaki's transforming motorcycles...they might as well do the Mospeada now!

Either way it looks cool to me!

There are some weird kits here: http://ga.sbcr.jp/g-toys/wonfes07win/19/index.html I dunno if they're customs or what, but there is a n unfamiliar delta-wing VF-19 and a battroid YF-21. Are these new Hasegawa kits?