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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Not likely, it's not like this made all the legal problems associated with a film like that go away... and it didn't magically make their brand any less unpopular either. I don't think Sony will move forward with it, just like Warner Bros didn't do anything with it... and the brand is even less popular now than it was then. They will bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate the truth to make mountains out of molehills to give the illusion that someone at Sony gives a crap about the property but nothing will happen because Sony isn't stupid enough to schedule a tap dance recital in a field of antipersonnel mines. It's the same as Harmony Gold's endless routine about cancelled projects. They'll hem and haw about how, no, they're really just on indefinite hiatus which totally isn't the same thing as cancellation and then after a few years of pretending they're still working on it they quietly stop mentioning it unless someone brings it up and eventually people just stop asking... then they reveal it was really cancelled all along. They spent seven years pretending they were still working on Shadow Chronicles Part II only to eventually give up and admit Part II was cancelled mere months after Part I came out. They tried the same stunt with Robotech Academy and the studio they'd partnered with called them on it, but that didn't stop them... the fandom hatred for the idea did.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    In the UK, yes.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Let's just hope they don't go for the more authentic ending... it's kind of a total downer.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The way anime distribution in the west is set up, releases usually flow through US distributors to their partners, affiliates, and local subsidiaries in other countries. Ordinarily, a UK home video release would probably be dubbed in the US... hence the problem.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    You still have us fan translators plodding our way through books and magazines, and our boys from SpeakerPodCast reporting from Japan and working on official subs. It's inconvenient and frustrating, but not the end of the world.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    This talk of Disney erasing gingers just brings to mind that wonderful faux protest sign "Stop Killing Gingers to make Ginger Ale".
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That was my hypothesis as well.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    They were pretty open about not having one... they never bothered to even decide who she was when they were making the series.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    This season seems to have a number of atypically strong offerings.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, HG has trademarks on not just the title and certain key terms, but also certain pieces of key art like the characters from the original series and some of the mecha. The approach they're talking about here is not workable for that reason.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... "traitor" is a bit childish and hyperbolic, but I do think we as a community should actively discourage discussion and promotion of the imitation-brand Macross goods produced by Harmony Gold and its licensees here and on Facebook. It's not real Macross merchandise and not only does it not support Macross's creators and the creation of new Macross products, it actively hurts Macross fans worldwide by directly putting money in the pockets of the people working to keep Macross products out of the hands of fans. There's no reason for the community to condone financially supporting a company that is deliberately trying to undermine Macross. I think just making it clear that this kind of thing hurts the fandom should be enough. Solidarity with our fellow fans is important, especially when we can't get direct support from the owners of the property.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    The most logical approach would have been for Tatsunoko to pitch the idea of acting as international distributor for all Macross titles in exchange for clearing the legal obstacles... and there were some indications Tatsunoko was seeking a cordial relationship with Big West. Approximately 0.133 decades... and that's counting the delays in the appeals process and court scheduling. There was a grand total of one actual lawsuit filed over Macross rights between Big West and Tatsunoko... Tatsunoko's 2004 claim that, for its role in producing the original series, it was entitled to a share of the profits from subsequent exploitation of the IP in the various sequels. The court unilaterally rejected Tatsunoko's claim on 1 July 2004, and again on appeal on 27 October 2005. The cases most fans refer to when they think of "Macross lawsuit" are voluntary copyright confirmation hearings that weren't instigated by either party... but rather, by Harmony Gold's false claims to have rights to all Macross sequels back in 1999-2000. That wasn't acrimonious, as such, that was simply due dilligence after one side's business partner (Harmony Gold) made a claim that didn't tally with what the two had understood their contract to be. That there is a long, arduous, and ongoing history of lawsuits between Big West and Tatsunoko is a popular but entirely false myth perpetuated by Robotech fans and Harmony Gold. The whole shebang, from copyright confirmation hearings to Tatsunoko's one and only actual lawsuit, only lasted four years (2001-2005). Too many, but their partnership has been an acrimonious one over the last several years given that Tatsunoko accused HG of skimming from royalties owed for home video and streaming and was firm enough in their belief to not only go to court over it, but defy a court order when the arbitration didn't find in their favor.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Big West and Bandai just gotta keep doing what they're doing... putting English subs on Japanese domestic market DVDs and BDs and sell direct from Japan. HG can't do crap about it. For now, I guess the fan translators aren't getting a break.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-07-05/harmony-gold-renews-license-to-1st-macross-southern-cross-mospeada-anime-series/.148700 It was the subject of their AnimeExpo panel, apparently.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Bingo. This was the stupidest possible move they could've made. Let's hope it comes to naught, as Big West slowly gains ground in the trademark area worldwide. For lessons, I think appropriate ones might be that we shouldn't condone Macross fans supporting and promoting Robotech's toy lines, since they helped put the money in HG's pocket to pay for this travesty, and we shouldn't support any future works from the clown college at Tatsunoko either.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Ugh... Harmony Gold is claiming they've secured a renewal of their license agreement with Tatsunoko Production. What a waste.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Seems like almost every enemy in the second half of Stardust Crusaders gets a two-parter. The Oingo Boingo brothers are, in their own way, bizarrely compelling as possibly the most incompetent, and therefore most sympathetic, antagonists in the story thus far... and they actually survive their two-parter.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Hiring a professional vocalist for the lead role would seem a strange choice otherwise, given that her filmography is almost exclusively "choir member" in various films.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    What I was hoping for was someone who knew if it was or wasn't a case of specifically picking those letters as an abbreviation for a relevant term... in the same fashion that the VF-1J in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross was given the out-of-sequence J designation to denote its country of origin (Japan). I've read most of Complete Art Works and I haven't come across anything like the info I'm looking for in it. I have a number of other publications yet untranslated, but currently lack the time to peruse them all, so I was hoping someone might've already found the answer. Normally, with variant letters, you expect them to progress through the alphabet sequentially unless there's some special reason for an out-of-sequence letter. Zeta, Eta, and Iota are the sixth, seventh, and ninth letters of the Greek alphabet... or seventh, eighth, and tenth if you go old-school and count digamma. An odd starting point for the first transformable fighter's first production variants... hence my suspicion that they might be abbreviations of something like "Leader" (Ηγέτης) and "Trooper" (Ιππέας) for the Eta and Iota types. I'm at a loss as to what Zeta might be... unless it derives from the unit being produced at Jupiter Base (Ζεύς "Zeus" being the Greek equivalent of the Latin "Jupiter").
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Here's a random question for those learned in the details of MOSPEADA... Has anyone ever given an explanation of the variant letters chosen for the Legioss armo-fighter? Eta, Iota, and Zeta are pretty odd choices for humanity's first variants of the first transformable fighter. Are they using deliberately out-of-sequence letters for symbolic purposes the way Macross's creators did with the VF-1J and VF-1S?
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I don't think that's the case for anyone here, but the internet being the internet there is almost certainly some toxic collection of twits in their native habitat of Twitter ranting and raving about that precise subject. Mostly, I think it's just uncertainty in the midst of Remake Madness. Like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid was one of the most celebrated installments in Disney's animated canon, so the announcement of a live action remake is naturally going to garner skepticism from almost every angle despite the reception the previous remakes receiving a generally favorable response from audiences. You'd see similar reactions to, say, whomever was cast in a remake of My Fair Lady because whoever is cast, no matter how competent, will never be Audrey Hepburn... unless some serious strides are made in cloning in the next couple years. There is, I suspect, an element of wary caution to it as well. Over the last few years, fans have learned that when studios start promoting a film or series on the basis of the diversity of its cast it's the studio/network preparing to weaponize social media against the critics. The critics are stuck with a Sophie's Choice of praising the film/series even if it's bad, or risk the inevitable accusations of [racism/sexism/LGBTQ+phobia, check all that apply] and the harassment that inevitably follows. We've seen this with Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars: the Last Jedi, Doctor Who season 11, Captain Marvel, and so on (where critics sing their praises and general audiences react with "meh" or worse). While @BlackRose and I will likely end up taking my niece to go see it, I would expect a lot of folks to go see if for its own sake. Disney films have always had pretty strong all-ages appeal, the "animation is only for kids" thing is this weird cultural preconception that is constantly subverted but refuses to just crawl under a rock and die. I'd probably still go see the film even if I weren't taking my niece, simply because Disney consistently sets the bar astonishingly high for music in its films. Even when the films themselves aren't the best, the music is still flat amazing (e.g. The Hunchback of Notre Dame). (It's not for nothing that The Lion King is in its 22nd consecutive year as a stage musical, with OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND performances under its belt and a firm hold on the title of highest all-time box office earner, highest grossing broadway show, and third longest-running broadway show behind Chicago and The Phantom of the Opera.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Granted, but the story was also set over 182 years ago even in the bowdlerized adaptation Disney is remaking... I think that's the reason a lot of people are going to have issues with this casting decision. As @BlackRose noted, to call attitudes towards people of color 182 years ago "less than enlightened" would be a monstrous understatement. I'd be more concerned about Disney's execution, to be honest. I haven't seen the remake of Aladdin yet, since for me nobody will be able to replace Robin Williams as the Genie, but from previous films Disney's handling of "ethnic" character roles has been fraught with issues. We've come a long way from 1967's The Jungle Book with its implicitly black swing-dancing orangutan who wants to be a person (and was originally meant to be played by Louis Armstrong), but even semi-recent efforts like 2009's The Princess and the Frog tried to get away with stuffing the cast with racist caricatures because they had a minority main character. (Besides, we all know if Disney wants to make a fortune all they have to do is remake Treasure Planet and cast Zoe Saldana as Captain Ameila... the two highest grossing films to date have her painted funny colors, so why not try for a hat trick?)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Mother nature decided to rain on our cookout, so @BlackRose and I started Domestic Girlfriend today. I'm not sure I'm sold on it. It definitely feels different from the usual fanservice-heavy step-sibling love story nonsense that's been done to death in the anime industry, but not by all that much. Mostly it's a gender flip so the one doing the lusting-after is the step-brother rather than the step-sister and the cold, aloof one is the step-sister. If this were Punch Out!, this poor kid's up against Mr. Dream in round one and not doing so hot. EDIT: Ok, yeah... pretty different. This is starting to feel like an overlong setup for a tragic murder-suicide sort of love story.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Well c'mon, Disney's peddling these movies to kids. Watership Down was traumatic enough for the children in the audience, never mind what childhood traumas that could be inflicted by faithful adaptations of some of the stories Disney used for their animated feature films. These old stories are NOT kid-friendly. Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid has its protagonist subjected to constant torturous pain as part of her human guise and the story ends with the prince marrying someone else followed almost immediately by a NTR-induced attempted first degree murder, the protagonist's body horror death-by-magic, and a minimum sentence of 300 years community service for the crime of not having a soul (extended every time a child cries). That'd still be one of the Lighter and Softer ones too... imagine a faithful version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame where the lead is a mentally ill, violent, deaf man who is sent to kidnap a gypsy girl, publicly flogged for it, and then commits suicide by starvation to be with her after she's executed by hanging on a trumped up attempted murder charge because the two guys who were into her are both complete bastards. Or Mulan, where the Khan successfully invades China, summons Mulan to be his concubine, and she kills herself. Or The Jungle Book, complete with the part of Mowgli's story where he learns the villagers are planning to execute his adopted family because they think he's a witch and uses his command of animals to murder the entire village. Or Snow White, in which the evil queen is made to dance on hot coals until she dies of exhaustion. Real kid stuff, y'know? It's a bit different to randomly have, say, a black Danish prince in the 18th century... (Though feel bad for Belle and the prince from Beauty and the Beast, becuase they're young French nobles living less than fifty years from the French Revolution...)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    EDIT: Wrong Halle, lol. Not sure a R&B singer is the right move for The Little Mermaid.
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