Seto Kaiba

If they don't, then they'll likely try to distance themselves from Macross as much as possible

Virtually all of the remaining Macross Saga characters were killed, incapacitated, or simply didn't appear in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. The only remaining character from that saga (Rick Hunter) was dramatically redesigned such that he looks like Hideo Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd gig now.

by creating sequels that push the designs that they are more confident regarding their ownership (likely MOSPEADA since Southern Cross is pretty unpopular among fans)

Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was exclusively content from Southern Cross, Mospeada, and Robotech II: the Sentinels.

redesigning any Macross era characters that do appear so as to be barely recognizable

Like the current character design of Rick Hunter...

and generally bending over backwards to avoid pushing BW into an unavoidable legal showdown HG cannot win.

Fancy that...

Okay... this is actually a matter of interest now...

MEMO is claiming that Harmony Gold has made official statements at conventions and the like that they have the ability to use anything out of the "original 85 episodes". He hasn't provided any evidence to back that one up though. If he does, it could be a very interesting breakthrough.

Anyone who goes to their panels... have they ever actually discussed their rights to the original Macross series, or is MEMO just blowing smoke?

Did he yell there too?

You bet. Pizza the Hutt's already over there throwing a fuss-fit too.

I get such a kick out of seeing him call anyone who argues based on the facts a "Seto fanboy".

Good grief, he posted the same mess in that thread on Robotech.com too.

Seto really channels everyone Intelligence in here on to the various RT sites. Too bad Maek and yune can't come up witha an idea that can put RT back in the spotlight.

Unfortunately, with people like MEMO around who are simply unwilling to believe the truth, or don't understand the situation but won't shut up anyway, there's very little that can be done.

MY ONE ARGUMENT IS [...]

Your one argument is bullshit based entirely around wishful thinking and a complete inability to understand the evidence.

Also, turn your damn caps lock off already... it's not cruise control for cool.

1. HG HAS AQUIRED THE RIGHTS INCLUDING FOR THE NEW RLAM WITH USING EVERYTHING FROM ROBOTECH 85 EPESODES DUE TO ITS FIRST AQUIRED DEALS BACK IN THE 90'S AND EARLY 80'

Harmony Gold only acquired the film distribution and merchandising rights.

That does not give them the right to use those copyrighted designs in their live-action movie, and it does not give them the right to use those designs in future animated works. We've seen proof of that already in Shadow Chronicles, with the deaths and disappearances of the entire Macross cast.

THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN JAPAN HAD THIS COURT PAPERS STATING THE OBVIOUS DOES NOT HOLD NO TRUTH OUTSIDE OF JAPAN COURTS.

Rulings on copyrights apply internationally under the Berne Convention, one of the cornerstones of international copyright law.

2."IF" ANYTHING IS FOUGHT OUTSIDE BY BW TO PURSUE THESE RIGHTS WILL FALL TO ITS INITIAL JUDGMENT OF TEH FIRST CONTARCT MADE IN THE BEGGINING. CAVSCOUT AND OTHERS HAVE ALREADY MADE THESE ARGUMENTS.

Not if, as is the case, Tatsunoko never had the rights you're alleging they licensed to Harmony Gold.

Of course, there is no proof they ever gave Harmony Gold those rights, and a mountain of evidence saying they didn't.

WICH HG BEEN SAYING ALL TEH TIME THAT THE JUDJMENT IN JAPAN CHANGES NOTHING FOR THE FUTURE OF ROBOTECH SINCE ITS INITIAL DEAL. WICH NOW WE HAVE SEEN FOR TEH FIRST TIME WITH CATALIST.

The situation with Catalyst concerned a violation of Harmony Gold's MERCHANDISING rights to Macross's original series. Nothing more.

Harmony Gold was entirely correct in stating that the legal battles in Japan didn't affect their Robotech franchise, because they never had the intellectual property rights to begin with.

THIS INFO COMES FROM NOT ONLY LAWYERS THAT I KNOW BUT AS WELL AS SAME DISCUSSIONS THAT OTHERS HERE SEEM TO HAVE WITH PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY.

In short, this "information" of yours comes from people who in all likelihood had little-to-no access to any of the relevant documentation, and were simply going by the few, incorrect details you gave them.

In fairness Robotech doesn't have much of a past either. HG has not been able to produce any spin-off or sequel worth mentioning since Macek's original 85 episode series. In that respect Robotech fans suffer as much from their actions as the Macross fan base. As you said, the only future that franchise has is if an outsider like WB takes control in the creative department.

That Harmony Gold hasn't produced a Robotech continuation the industry noticed or cared about certainly hasn't stopped the delusional die-hards from rambling on endlessly with petitions to get Robotech: the Untold Story released on DVD, or to get Robotech II: the Sentinels and Robotech 3000 finished.

Viewing the thread at RT.com was a rather unsettling experience, a few posters in there I'd file under the damaged goods department. I will take your word for it that the average poster of the RT-boards is far saner, but if your able to stay calm at all that garbage they were spewing at you then you missed a calling as a special needs teacher.

Yeah, threads like that do tend to bring out the crazies... particularly those who can't cope with the idea that Robotech failed spectacularly and Macross is successful. The average Robotech fan is quite a bit calmer and more rational.

I'm not EVEN gonna ask about the rabbit...I hope your hand heals quickly, though.

It's my brother's pet... his girlfriend hit him with the doe-eyed attack and got him to adopt it from the humane society last year.

He hates you because he hates BOBBY? Again, words fail me.

It would be more accurate to say that he hates me in part because I don't find Bobby's homosexuality offensive. As he put it on RobotechX:

"On a sad note,it is a shame that a homosexual was piloting the Macross quarter.I guess that means the homosexual plague will have a place in the future.I mean Alto was also a kabuki female dancer..Jeeze that is sad"

and after we told him to drop the bigotry and explained the cultural context of both characters:

"Sheesh!,I did not know that there was that many gay huggers out there.I can tell by all the gay huggers who supports homosexuality it will be required by law for everyone to be gay by the year 2018."

He misses the point. And why can't he tell me himself? Is he a member here?

Dammit, this is all a conspiracy to get me to join RT.com, isn't it?

I do recall him saying something about having an account here that he said he was using to spy on this thread (as though it were some secret, clandestine affair). If he really does have an account here, he's probably too afraid to post himself, since if he came out swinging like he does on Robotech.com and RobotechX.com he'd probably be banned pretty swiftly.

I'm gonna try to keep my reply here short, since my hands hurt like blazes after being scraped and smashed and gnawed on by a rabbit while helping my brother move into his room at the frat house today.

Seto, unsurprisingly, I think you should cut your losses. You've got the facts on your side, but clearly, they don't care about facts. And then idiots like Pizza the Hutt call you a "proven liar," a few posts after you link to your sources...

Well, words fail me.

Get out of that place. It'll do you a world of good, and it'll take away their punching bag. If they want to indulge a persecution complex, let 'em do it without someone easily classified as a persecutor. They'll be turning on each other before you know it.

Yeah, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment... these days, I only go there when someone points out a thread of interest or a question that falls under one or more of my particular areas of expertise. Of late, I just seem to be on the target list of some of the more deluded fanboys who just can't accept simple truths. They've taken to hounding me across multiple sites, and get smacked down by the moderators of those sites most of the time.

It'd be amusing if it weren't so pathetic... and it is sorely tempting to simply say "to hell with it all" and let them run the community there into the ground.

I mean, look at Pizza. He initially talked about Macross like it was some kind of illicit drug or perversion that he was going to "experiment" with. He tried it, he liked it, he peppered you with questions and was grateful for the answers...and now he's talking about how Frontier is a rip-off of BSG and Gundam, and insulting you personally.

A few of the more reasonable RT fans and I were actually talking about that in a chat not too long ago. Pizza's problem with me doesn't even really seem to be Macross-related. He's got his nose out of joint because I and a bunch of other people took him to task for his horribly bigoted behavior on RobotechX (he's a HUGE homophobe, and took great offense to a gay character being in Macross Frontier), and he's been hounding me for revenge ever since. I think that's probably at least 90% of why he's acting like such a twit lately. He's got big issues with cultural context too...

Pizza the Hutt had this to say on Robotech.com:

And Seto,please tell your friend Gubaba and others that I do like Macross (well some things) and just because we hate eachother til the pits of Hell does not mean I will hate Macross animes,I still like Macross Plus,DYRL and some parts of Frontier.No one gave me the idea that frontier ripped off battlestar galactica,it just occured to me,a cylon dies and its program goes to another body,and the convoy part.And I use to watch gundam too.ANd frontier could be better without the "hentai" scence (cellphone locker vibrator,panties vajra hopping,grabbing Ranka's chest and exposing her at the hosipital) so I like MAcross..just not the fans due to the evil they radiate.

Just leave them be. And hang out with people who actually APPRECIATE you instead.

That's the thing... there are a LOT of people on Robotech.com who do appreciate my input and openly seek my help and involvement with various projects and threads. Yeah, I know the Macross fanbase (or at least part of it) appreciates my work on Macross II, but there're people there who appreciate what I do as well.

It doesn't feel right to cut a bunch of good people loose just to spite one or two trolls.

I tell you what MEMO is trying to achieve. He is trying to fool robotech fans into thinking that HG is still in control of every aspects regarding the franchise.

Just like Seto said ; people like MEMO want to live and BELIEVE in their fantasy world. When you are living in a fantasy world you don't care about the truth because the real world hurts. That's why you are living in a fantasy world in the first place. Also, it seems that MEMO is a big fan of the original Macross destroid designs. So he is playing the fanboy card because he don't want to see reimagined versions of those designs for a POSSIBLE robotech LAM.

That's EXACTLY what MEMO is trying to accomplish. He's been trying his hardest to take what little evidence he can muster and twist it to support the unsupportable. MEMO, Pizza, and sanman are examples of that tiny lunatic fringe of the fanbase who have just been so devoted to the franchise for so long, that they've lost their objectivity completely and don't want to believe their waiting and efforts have been a waste.

They don't want to believe that Harmony Gold can't do whatever it wants with Robotech... because it doesn't bode well for Robotech's future... so they simply deny the truth so they can go on believing that their hideous, malformed goose of a franchise may one day lay a golden egg.

In response to all the hoopla over on rt.com, Seto dousing the threads with facts and irrefutable truths helps prove the points that we've all made. I think it maybe easy to interpret those arguing with Seto in that thread as simply ignorant, not in a derogatory way.

The best way to deal with denial-based arguments like MEMO's is to crush it under the sheer, unrelenting weight of the facts. Once it comes out that they have virtually no evidence to support their claims, or that their arguments are based on half-truths and misunderstandings, they usually shut up pretty fast.

It's not that MEMO doesn't understand the situation, it's that he doesn't want to understand the situation. If he accepts the truth, then he has to also accept that Robotech is, for all practical purposes, doomed... because the most popular saga is off-limits for future movies and TV shows.

Whoops-a-daisy... posted a half-finished reply.

You know all those nameless soldiers who the Haydonites killed? That should have been Rick Hunter, Max, Miriya, Lisa, and just about every previous cast member the show ever focused on. Sure, leave a few old fan favorites out of it so they can pop up from time to time but everyone that has any licensing issues at all should have been slaughtered. I think the show should have also been created so it could have been a Mospeada 2 but that's another can of worms.

They're WAAAAAAAAAAY ahead of you there... almost all of the surviving Macross cast is either dead, incapacitated, or missing. The one or two who are left have been redesigned to be unrecognizable.

robotech fanboys including the mods are trying to shut up Seto by calling a liar even if Seto is 110% regarding the legal mess :

http://www.robotech.com/community/forum/re...&forumid=31

The mods (Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION aka the guy having troubles with his keyboard) are always saying they are doing their job for free but they are obviously on harmonazy gold payroll.

Just business as usual... what's more obnoxious than MEMO's ill-informed denials (he seems to think the archived court documents and official statement from Big West are fanmade for some utterly insane reason) is that he's allowing the worst of the RT fascist fanboys to troll freely since they kiss his ass.

To quote Spider Jerusalem... lies are news and the truth is obsolete.

Then she's the game breaker for the entire series at the moment. All that power to call up at will without Protoculture, at least for now. But where does that leave all those mechs, ships, and weapons the good guys have?

Yeah, Tommy and company kind of wrote themselves into a corner by giving Ariel near-godlike powers, and then sending the party of one-dimensional idiots we're allegedly supposed to care about off in a barely-armed colony ship. It's shoddy writing like that which got me thinking that there might be something to the theory that Harmony Gold is putting off making Robotech: Shadow Rising so they can broom the whole "Shadow Saga" for a reboot TV series if the live-action flick's a hit.

Man, you guys are really making me want to watch Shadow Chronicles again, wtf is wrong with me?!

Can I get back to you on that? I'm not sure where to begin. (just kidding)

In other, much more relevant news... it looks like our little How-is-Battletech-using-Macross-designs conundrum has finally been brought to light.

http://catalystgamelabs.com/

It looks like the idiots who own Battletech and MechWarrior now (Catalyst Game Labs) were aware of the whole Harmony Gold et. al. v. FASA Corp. et. al. case, but not the details of the settlement. So they went ahead with making new products containing the Macross designs, and got pretty far with it before Tommy Yune found out about it (I have it from reasonably reliable sources that he found out when a fan told him at a convention booth) and sicced the Harmony Gold company lawyers on 'em. Apparently Catalyst agreed not to use the designs without having to go to court over it, and pulled the art from their new products (presumably the Tomahawk-like design will be pulled from the pending MechWarrior game as well).

Fair enough, but what DOES he say that protoculture does now? And why were the Zentradi/Masters so intent on getting back Zor's ship if the protoculture in it was not so useful? Eventually they sent nearly the entire Zentradi fleet to get it back. (unlike Macross where it was just one small portion of the Zentradi)

The Zentradi and "Robotech Masters" mecha all still use protoculture as fuel, as do ALL of the ships (even those used by the Earth forces).

As far as what protoculture DOES these days... your guess is as good as mine.

That version of Protoculture (at least Luceno's and Daley's; I'm not so sure what else Macek was planning for it) makes sense, at least in the context of the story;

From what little was released about the failed Robotech 3000 project, it seems that Carl's eventual plan was for protoculture to become the galactic standard fuel until the flowers of life evolved and became sentient (in 3000) and started trying to kill everyone. 'course, Luceno and Daley made it even more magical than Macek intended.

Her powers were also used to move the plot forward many times in Shadow Chronicles as well, but it still annoys me how they made Ariel so over powered with no apparent limit, cost, or negative to her new found Invid powers.

Tommy's playing the "Regent/Regess" angle from a literal perspective. One of the definitions of Regent and Regess is "someone who rules a country of people while the monarch/soverign is underage, disabled, or absent". The common sense answer based on that is that Ariel/Marlene is supposed to be the new Invid queen, and that's why she has haxx superpowers.

That depends on what kind of fan you are, because the crew in charge doesn't seem to care anymore. I think the most recent retcon made some or most of the equipment in the Macross Saga run on fusion or combined with Protoculture.

While it's true that Tommy recently established that all of the Earth Forces mecha from the Macross Saga and Masters Saga run on nuclear fusion, it's not actually a retcon. You see, at no point is it ever actually established that any of those mecha ran on protoculture... the fans just assumed that they all did. I talked to Tommy about it at length back when it was first announced, and he seemed pretty annoyed at the fan reaction to his decision. The other reason he gave for the change was that he wanted to impose some semblance of technological continuity on the original series.

From what I can see, Tommy wants to erase all the stupid, contradictory crap that came out during the late 80's and the 90's from the Robotech universe, and one of the major bullet points of his plan seems to be to get away from the pseudo-magical protoculture envisioned by Macek, Luceno, and Daley.

Since the seller I'd originally agreed to buy these from hasn't gotten back to me with the payment details in nearly three months, I've decided to post my little wanted list again, in hopes that I can find a more reliable seller.

As part of my plan to build a comprehensive online guide to the alternate universe of Macross II: Lovers Again, I'm looking for any Macross II-related publications I can get my hands on. I've got most of the major ones already, but there are a few I'm still looking for. If you've got one that isn't on my list, let me know and I'll offer you a fair price for it.

I'd prefer to handle all payments via Paypal, and shipping through USPS Express or Media mail... though other arrangements can be made if necessary.

What I'm looking for is:

Bandai B-Club Magazine Vol.73 (December 1991)

Bandai B-Club Magazine Vol.74 (January 1992)

Bandai B-Club Magazine Vol.87

Just got another book from OneSixMedia... smooth transaction, quick shipping, the whole nine yards. Great seller to do business with.

Investments can be structured many different ways though and HG may be able to live quite comfortably just having a good year every few years apart. Heck, they may have made enough off Shadow Chronicles and their work with WB to sit pretty for a long time... hence no need to try to push out the next item.

Well, Tommy Yune has always maintained that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was a resounding financial success, and once he gave us an approximate figure for the show's budget, it wasn't hard to see why. If Tommy can be taken at his word, Harmony Gold spent less than $1 million (USD) on Shadow Chronicles. It's the business model many have come to see as typical of Harmony Gold... develop the product as cheaply as humanly possible and then turn around and sell it to the devoted (read "fanatical") fans with a ridiculously huge markup. That, combined with the forced scarcity of many of their products, means that their sales are almost all profit. From an objective standpoint, it shows that they understand their target audience perhaps a little better than they should...

The difference is those shows are still going in some form, anime and manga at least, while Robotech has been on hiatus for almost three years now without resolving anything. Even the crew doesn't sound motivated to get back to it ever since the LAMR news.

Ever since Harmony Gold announced the existence of the live-action movie project, they've been focusing on that and nothing else. In the resulting brouhaha, Robotech: Shadow Rising seems to have fallen off the fanbase's radar until recently. Now, one of the most popular topics of speculation on Robotech.com and elsewhere is WHY Harmony Gold seems so reluctant to get Robotech: Shadow Rising done and out the door.

Perhaps the most interesting theory yet proposed, and the one which seemed to offend Kevin McKeever the most, was the suggestion that Harmony Gold put Shadow Rising on the back burner with the intent to broom it along with the rest of the dated, legally-problematic "original" continuity in favor of a new animated series only loosely based on the original if the live-action movie is a success. (In short, the Transformers Animated business model)

Eh... another issue I really can't get worked up about. From the coverart it looks like this's gonna be the VF-17S Nightmare. Too much Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7 stuff lately... I want some more DYRL/FB2012/II stuff... especially after they dared tease me with new information in the VF-2SS sheet.

The leadership of the site is beginning to look similar to the Macross Generation forum situation, with at least one member with "connections." Why bother?

Yeah, that's pretty much the conclusion I arrived at.

Oddly, about half of RobotechX's regulars ALSO arrived at that conclusion, said FGSFDS, and started building their own "by the fans for the fans" type site.

More and more people are starting to notice the gaps in Harmony Gold's argument that they outright OWN the original Macross series. It's really putting McKeever and company in an interesting spot, because they have a choice between giving a straight answer, or coming back with more doubletalk and continuing to lose face.

Then when it became unclear who even had the film rights the merchandising rights were probably all but shelved until HG came along and said "Uh, we'll take those." Anyway, that's just a thought for one of the ways this theoretically could happen.

The common sense answer to why they'd want them would be to keep any competing SW1-era Macross toys outta the US.

http://www.robotechx.com/forums/3-robotech...10&start=40

I'm sorry Seto has to deal with people like that. I'd say let them eat their fool's cake.

Somehow, I figured you guys would find that eventually.

In the beginning, I was trying to be helpful. I was nice. I was patient. I explained everything in small words that even an imbecile like Kevin McKeever could understand. The problem is that MEMO, like so many other die-hard Robotech fans these days, is determined to live in a fantasy world where Robotech is wildly popular and Harmony Gold owns everything Macross-related. I had a little bit of help from Maverick_LSC near the end, but then he bought into the bullshit and started an argument in Tatsunoko's favor where every assertion depended not on evidence, but on you accepting the previous unprovable assertion as the unimpeachable truth. Once I saw what was the wind was blowing, and that MEMO was prepared to continue acting like an ass in any thread that disagreed with his rose-colored fantasy of Robotech, I gave up trying.

Fortunately, it wasn't a total loss. Most of the RobotechX membership are the reasonable, intelligent folks, who left Robotech.com because they got sick of Harmony Gold's bullshit, and they saw MEMO's Harmony Gold company line bullshit for what it was almost right away. Some of them are so annoyed with MEMO's obnoxious attempts to defend the Harmony Gold company line from legitimate criticism, and his attempts to excuse the asinine behavior of several die-hards who attack any criticism of Robotech as the work of "Macross purist trolls" that they're building their own site.

(Somehow, I've once again been asked to recreate the Robotech.com Infopedia... does this surprise anyone?)

In related news... there's a very interesting thread here: http://www.robotech.com/community/forum/re...&forumid=31

It looks like the natives are getting restless. I predicted that the fanbase was going to get fed up with waiting for the live-action movie and Shadow Rising, but I didn't think they were going to start heckling the powers that be THIS SOON. More and more people are taking a good, hard look at the legal status of Harmony Gold's claim to Macross, and how it's going to affect their future properties, and it's producing some interesting results. We may see a concrete statement of the situation from Harmony Gold in the near future. It would probably be a very smart move, as it would stop a lot of the uncomfortable questions they keep having to try to shift aside, and the last time they tried was back in 2002.

Also, those missile pods are DYRL designs, shouldn't be on any robotech toys period.

Um... if I remember right those missile pods do appear in some episodes of the Macross TV series. It's still a non-issue tho, as Harmony Gold does have the DYRL merchandising rights.

Which thread was that? I'd like to check it out.

No thread, I'm afraid... chatroom on RobotechX. I manifest my evil self there from time to time on the request of some very optimistic friends of mine who are holding out hope that Robotech isn't completely dead.

Had a VERY interesting chat with one of the RT.com moderators, and got a very interesting fish story out of it.

According to this rumor, which was implied to have originated from Tommy Yune, Warner is courting Big West for some toy licensing to go along with the live-action Robotech movie. Raised a fair few eyebrows in the chat, and then he went a-rambling with some longwinded fantasy wherein Warner Brothers buys Big West to get their hands on Macross.

It would be even more awesome if the Veritechs could talk!!!

Robotech Defenders what?

Just to play devil's advocate...has anyone ACTUALLY INVOLVED WITH THE SITUATION come out and said HG doesn't own Macross...?

From Harmony Gold? Nah. They just keep repeating their same old line about how the litigation over Macross in Japan didn't affect them. MEMO was parroting it over there too.

Tell that to MEMO1DOMINION (aka the dude having troubles with his keyboard) because the guy is having a hard time understanding the facts (like most robotech fanboys).

Oh there's no doubt that he is... he's over there on his site preaching about how Harmony Gold OWNS Macross.

After leaving the LAMR behind, Charles Roven is now involved in the Voltron LAM.

Proposed Live-Action Voltron Film Gets New Producers

He jumped ship for that? This might be saying something.

That Roven's an idiot? Isn't the Voltron live-action movie project still tied up in the courts because the US distributor doesn't have the IP rights to GoLion?