Pat Payne

I get mine from Amazon.com.

Funny stuff, 1BRD . The "Critical Hit" one reminds me of a D&D game I ran recently too...one of the party was possessed by the spirit of an NPC they had killed previously, and so of course they didn't want to kill him, just subdue him. Well, one of the players went and rolled to knock the PC silly with the but of a spear. He rolled a natural 20 -- a crit threat. On confirming, he rolled another 20. Confirming that one (I was using a house rule on multiple criticals) he rolled another 20. In the end, after the SIXTH natural 20 in a row on a critical hit, I said "never mind rolling again -- by this time, you've knocked him out, certainly!" I didn't even bother to roll damage...

It's on G4. they're not known for their kiddie shows, if that's any indication

But even then, they completely bollix'd it up. From minor errors like dubbing the FAST-pack equipped Valk as a total redesign to complete howlers like mistaking the Oberth-class destroyer for a space fighter, the game is full if inaccurate or downright fanon info. (and do NOT get me started on the atrocious "Japanimation Notes" which show that all they did was do a half-arsed reading of Perfect Memory [which they didn't even bother to get the title of right, even when it's in fartin' English right on the fartin' cover! ]) Further, I shuddered when Simbieda talked of adding "new mecha." The last thing we need is stupid mecha created in-house at Palladium that have no relation to the graphic design of Macross, Southern Cross or Mospeada. Palladium, although I cut them a bit more slack on their system (I prefer D20, bit Palladium is far from unplayable if you have the right GM, and I will admit that Rifts is a great sandbox to play in) had no flipping idea what they were doing when they made that Robotech game. I'm looking at chucking the book altogether and doing Macross in another game setting (probably D20, which I'm most familar at).

Sorry 'bout the error...I had read a bit of the TRASH manga and came to the wrong conclusion.

They said explicitly that they didn't want to do that, as it'd be an insult in their minds to Matt Jeffries, the original set and ship designer, and that it'd end up being too distracting to see a shiny-new high-tech Enterprise-style set with the '60s velour TOS uniforms. Presumably, it's also the reason that the SFX are so restrained. According to CBS and the Trek team, the only changes (save one) will be to space effects or to background mattes (and those are just to give them a bit more dimensionality). And, actually, I've noticed that not all the music IMHO is re-recorded, only some key pieces.

I'd love to know the reason that they didn't have Ishiguro-sensei and the rest of the "A-team" of animators work on that ep myself. It is an extremely important episode (but since the two following eps are easily as important, maybe time constraints required AnimeFraud to get involved) and one that deserved better. As for Max and Millia's marraige faling apart, I wonder if she knew that Max was catting around on her (he did have a illigitimate child some time after the series as shown in Macross 7 Trash). Hell hath no fury like a Meltrandi scorned -- although if it WERE that, I'm surprised she didn't re-macronize herself and get to work on him with her Queadlunn... Anyway, stay safe, Vinnie, and many thanks for the job you and the other troops are doing there.

I've got mine too

Actually, that was the same conclusion that Paramount came to after TMP. They were not pleased with Roddenberry's handling of the film and his constant interference with the production team to which they partially attributed the critical and commercial failure of TMP (and they were allegedly appalled at a script he was suposed to be writing for the followup that would have involved the Enterprise crew having to assassinate JFK or allow him to be assassinated to restore the timestream), and accordingly kicked him upstairs to being the "creator emeritus" of the franchise with little executive power. As to the SFX, although they get definite kudos for not being unobtrusive, I wish they had been just a tiny bit MORE visually adventurous, at least in the shots that they showed in the trailers. Although I like Star Trek: TOS, it certainly doesn't hold any claim to having dynamic SFX shots. Djer, I agree with you to a point. Braga and Berman have been a disaster for the franchise, and I'm glad that they sent them packing with STXI. Voyager, to me, is unwatchable. Janeway, as a character, couldn't make a decision to save her life. However, I did like the last season of Enterprise. If they had started THERE, and ditched that "temporal cold war" and "Xindi war" crap and gone into the TOS Prequel fanservice as they did in the last season, I think it would have gone better. The other thing though that would help, IMHO, is if they both brought back some of the original writers (I'd love to see DC Fontana do another Trek script) as well as go back to the old system of allowing outside freelancers to submit scripts (I'm not a screenwriter, and so this is not self-serving ), and bust open the closed system of a limited pool of writers who have been milked for ten years of stories. Some of the best Trek scripts from the first two series came from outside writers (such as David Gerrold's "Trouble with Tribbles" or Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever").

Nah, but I hear that they're going to have the Tribbles riding comical dino things down the corridors of the Enterprise

I agree with Sketchley, the details are too raw to repeat here. He's still waiting on death row, about a decade too long IMHO.

Actually, I'd suggest staying away from MEK altogether, as it's a known carcinogen. As for methylene chloride, what's this about it creating phosgene (a toxic gas used in WW1, BTW) under the right conditions? I think I'll stay with Testor's and Krazy Glue for the nonce...

I've gotta admit two things: 1. I can't wait for it, to get a new perspective on TOS. 2. I'm dreading the "First Star Wars, now this" battying that's going to occur. (Gaaah! the filter strikes again!)

Although I don't believe Macross had anything to do with the popularity of the term as an epithet, I do seem to remember early on in the series Hikaru adressing Minmay as "Otaku" in the original Japanese (tho' I may have misremembered). I always heard it was much the same story as the one that Chas posted, that it was an uber polite form that got picked up as a mark of nerdhood some time in the mid-to-late '80s.

That is pretty good...maybe that's the TRUE reason he wears the metal plate on his head...a bad maple syrup incident (I told him, always go for the real stuff, not synthetic. But did he listen?) BTW, don't be offended if they move it to OT...it's still pretty funny.

Darn you and your facts!

Not to mention that with the weapons, the situation may not have been as dire as it seems, at least in the early months of the conflict. Think of it this way: early on, the Macross was probably having a net loss of troops in the Valk squadrons, as the original compliment was being whittled down and they were waiting for replacement pilots to be trained and replacement Valks to be built, which takes time. That meant that the ammo that was meant for the full compliment (and remember, the ship was built as a warship and so probably had a rather hefty supply of ammo and missiles) was suddenly surplus to the current requirements of the squadrons and could be stretched. It's only as the war dragged on and more pilots and fighters entered the war that the problems probably would have become noticable, and by that time as someone suggested they could cannibalize captured Zentradi gear along with supplies taken on at Mars Base Sara. I agree that there was most likely a ration economy on board the Macross. There was only so much food to go around, and only so much space and time to grow it in that there'd have to be rationing. Perhaps there was a supplemental cash economy for luxury or non-rationable items (even in WW2, not everything was rationed, just militarily necessary items) such as the ubiquitous Minmay Dolls. As for the steak, I agree it was (even as my heart falls to have to consider the prospect ) probably tofu, as steak would be non-existent at worst and prohibitively expensive at best.

Hey, guys, I don't know if anyone's caught this yet, but Hirotaka Suzuoki died on the 6th in Japan of lung cancer. He's definetly going to be missed. News is at ANN.

I've met three famous people that I can remember: I met Harry Shearer once at a Colegiate Associated Press conference in Seattle. He was there to promote his new movie "A Mighty Wind" -- they showed the film for us, probably expecting us to give them a good review ( I was writing for the Oregon Daily Emerald at the time). He was signing autographs for people outside the theater that they showed the movie, and I ws one of those who got his autograph. At Anime Expo this year, I also got to meet both Noboru Ishiguro and Vic Mignogna , and got both of them to sign my copy of Perfect Memory.

On the other hand, that could be either Global or Captain Okita from Yamato.

Actually, you have to push the backpack up until it latches-- there's a little locking ledge (actually two on either end of the "BP-8" equivalent) that keeps it up in battroid mode. And just in case anyone missed the memo, for the love of Kawamori, don't do the same with the 1/48s . What I have trouble with is that the backpack is a little floppy in fighter mode -- putting her through barrel rolls is a little awkward

Urusei Yatsura was riddled with anime references in general, and had quite a few Macross references (at least after October 1982, that is) in some episodes. A couple that I can name off the top of my head: In one episode (I posted the pic on this one a while back, but don't remember what I did with it), the entire gang is transported into a fantasy world by one of Lum's alien consumer divices to have a New Year's party. Everyone gets dressed as a different historical or fictional character (for instance, Mendou is Sherlock Holmes with Ataru playing Heiji Zenigata as his partner). Onsen-Mark (the poor teacher at Tomobiki High) is Urushima Taro, and naturally, he gets taken down to the Dragon Palace (as in the fairy tale) for a bit. There, he's wined and dined by a group of mermaids, of which five strongly resemble Misa, Kim (with a slight hairstyle change), Shammy (with a different hair color), Vanessa (also with a slight change in her hairstyle but with her telltale glasses) and Minmay. The other episode is the episode where Lum, Benten, Oyuki and Ran's old teacher, CAO-2, comes to wreak his revenge on the foursome for stranding him on a deserted planet as a prank. During the episode, there's a lengthy flashback section showing what Lum et. al. pulled on the teacher during their time at the Intergalactic Elementary School. There are at least five times that Valkyries appear in the episode that I counted. The two that I remember clearly are the use of a Valk Battroid as a game piece in a board game that Lum and Benten were playing in the classroom, and a fighter Valk that is parked in the school's hangar bay as Lum and the other girls make their escape from CAO-2 after firing a missile at him. Edit in: Here's the picture that I made -- wow, was it already almost 2 years ago? -- of the scene with Onsen Mark...

This question may have been already addressed, but why the hell do we need even better picture quality than what we have now? Most good (read:classic) films, TV shows and anime aren't going to be significantly enhanced by HD and in some cases could actually suffer from it. It's like the boasts of some TV manufacturers now of having billions of individual colors. Can any of us really distinguish 2,000,000,000 seperate colors? (and I pity the person who has to come up with names fro all of them.) Further, according to an article on Anime on DVD from yesterday alleges that a good majority of DVDs may not be playable on HD players for whatever reason. I say "meh" to all of this HD garbage. It's just another marketing ploy by Sony, Toshiba and the other media manufacturers to get us to invest in another pricy media system because they claim that we'll be able to count the individual hairs of stubble on Indiana Jones' chin. I'll bet the discs will be pricier than normal DVDs too.

Big West is an production/sponsorship company (IIRC) that footed the bill (or most of it, as it turned out) of the production of Macross, and because of that, gained many of the subsidiary rights to the series (barring the legal fart-up). They've been involved in other shows including Orguss, Captain Tylor and others -- their name turns up now and then. They don't animate or write stories - they cut checks, which is just as important, for as Cicero might have said: "The sinews of animation is an unlimited purse." Tatsunoko is on life support right now, as they were bought last year by TAKARA Toys (the fine people that brought you Transformers) and it's seemed that TAKARA is more interested in raiding Tatsunoko's back catalogue for toy licenses, although they may also fund new projects -- but you can be they'll all have highly merchandisable toy lines behind them. Tatsunoko does (or did) animate, both through the main studio (Tatsunoko Pro) as well as "farm-team" studios such as (the maligned) StarPro and AnimeFriend. Even if they let Macross go, they would have had a place in anime history -- Tat was very well known for Speed Racer, Gatchaman and Tekkaman long before Macross was ever concieved. Yes and no. According to the recent legal modus vivendi, it's implicitly agreed (if very grudgingly) that Tatsunoko and HG, through getting there "fustest with the mostest" that at this moment they have de facto rights to the TV series only outside of Japan. HG did protest about Macross Plus and Macross 2 -- well after the fact and were told, in effect, to pound sand. the rights in Japan all reside with Big West, as well as with Studio Nue, although for reasons that are (I'MNAL) unfathomable to me, truncated to just Big West on a number of copyright notices. This may change if the lawsuits continue to work their way through the Japanese legal system. The thing is witht he movie, Tatsunoko somehow elbowed their way into that as well, and so may feel that it qualifies as one of the "derivatives" in the "over a barrel" agreement they executed with Big West a few days before the TV series premiered. From all indications, the 1/60 and 1/48 Valks are completely newly-engineered designs. I'm not sure it's that. I don't know about other toy collectors, but to me a copyright notice unobtrusively on the bottom of a wing is not the end of the world. It may have been that Yamato felt no need to assert their own copyright on the toy direct for any number f reasons: 1. The toys (particularly the 1/48) are so mechanically complex that it may be somewhat bootleg-resistant, and so Yamato took a calculated risk 2. Japanese copyright law is a bit more lax than US law (which usually demands a copyright notice of some sort) and so the people at Yamato may have seen it as a bit of superfluous tooling that they could dispense with. 3. They plum forgot, and decided that now was not the time to start adding it onto the molds.

Pretty much. They even worked the word "shower" into the opening theme! No foolin'! Spoilers: I did NOT like the ending though, IMHO. It seemed to me to be extremely forced and just a way to dispense with the series altogether. It explained very little of what was a very complex and potentially very fascinating plot point -- the triple nature of the Zor and just how the flowers on Gloire fed into their triumvirate symbiosis. Here endeth the spoilers. Other than that, it's a fairly satisfying show. and surely, a bathing Jeanne is easy on the eyes :why is there no Ryo "mokkori" smiley?: