Seto Kaiba

I didn't... I was trying to err on the side of caution with my estimate of speed. Huh... I'd just gone with the figure I had on hand at the time. I don't recall the Chronicle sheet being all that precise about the time differential between the real time and subjective time, though it has been a while since I reviewed it. I'll go back to check and, if necessary, redo my math. EDIT: On re-examination, Macross Frontier's dialogue seems to posit a difference of 1:7 rather than 1:240, thought a change that significant doesn't make much sense. Gonna try to confirm with other sources... EDIT #2: 'kay... it's confirmed, but the wording isn't exactly clear. Luca attributes the unusually long (7 day) travel time to a large fold fault, but it's unclear whether the fold fault is the reason for the longer subjective AND objective time, or a larger disparity between the two... can you shed any light on this sketchley? Either way, the distance elapsed over objective time hasn't changed, so the drive speed math ought to be sound... it's just the subjective time estimates that need to be recalibrated (possibly).

I don't see any reason why fold communications would be impeded by being outside the galaxy. Yes, if you're willing to work out the distance-over-time math on your own... I've no idea where they got that 1ly/6min equivalency, because as far as I know it has no basis in canon. Thanks to some helpful info from the Worldguide sheet for Eden in Macross Chronicle that establishes how long it takes to cover the 11.7 light year distance between Eden and Earth (18-24 hours) we can establish a mean fold velocity of approximately 4,884 times the speed of light. With the approximate differential between real time and experienced time stated by Misa in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, we can estimate that the crew would experience roughly 5 minutes and 15 seconds during the 21 hour fold jump. (The velocity derived from distance over time has a pretty wide range, being as fast as 5,698c or as slow as 4,273c, in the interest of expediency, I'm just going to split it down the middle and use 21 hours) Using the above-noted mean velocity of 4,884c for conventional fold travel (11.7ly in 21 hours), it would take over 409 years (real time) of continuous fold travel to cover the 2 million light year distance to Andromeda. If that were done in one continuous fold (certainly impossible, due to the geometric progression of energy consumption) the crew would only experience about 1 year and 257 days as a result of the time differential... barring any fold faults or anything like that. Realistically, they'd probably find it impossible without using a zero-time fold engine. It'd take months between jumps to charge the drive for ~1000ly increments, and probably take centuries to get there even if they had the fuel to pull it off. If they DID use a zero-time fold engine to get there, it'd take the aforementioned ~1.7 years of continuous fold travel to get there.

I'm more curious as to who they're using as a face for the Dominion of Ishtar up there... it's clearly a Mamoru Nagano design, maybe Mecorr Litra from Five Star Stories?

Hm... a toss-up between B Gata H Kei, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, and Seitokai Yakuindomo. Honorable mention to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, since it started airing in '09, but continued into '10. Dishonorable mention to K-On!! and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya for being absolute garbage. To be honest, I don't think there was one... or if there was, it certainly wasn't coming out of Hollywood. In my experience, the best thing on TV these days is the Off button. The best series still airing new material during 2010? Probably Dirty Jobs. Probably Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood... beautifully-designed game engine wasted on an utterly mediocre game. Huh... I'd say the latest iteration of the Zune HD. Don't collect that sort of thing...

Rough 1-ply nothing... if they handle it the way they handled the Maia Sterling MPC, it'll be a roll of 40 grit sandpaper.

Eh... I think you're being overly generous. There were reportedly a fair few Robotech fans who were willing to return their Maia MPCs to be exchanged for the "fixed" version with even more manufacturing problems which came from the very same factory as the earlier defective version and which Harmony Gold promised that they wouldn't use. Knowingly purchasing a badly designed and poorly manufactured product just because it's the only one available is NOT the mark of a discerning consumer. If someone's putting out poor quality products, you're not supposed to buy them for shits and giggles. You're supposed to look elsewhere for someone who knows how to make a higher quality product. I really wish the average Robotech fan was as discerning and intelligent as you want them to be. I really do. It would solve a LOT of Robotech's problems. The sad truth is that, based on my own experiences, you often give them far more credit than they deserve. Indeed... in the past year or so, I've seem a marked increase in the exodus of frustrated and betrayed fans looking for something of actual quality instead of more dreary Robotech-as-reimagined-by-Tommy-Yune mess coupled with empty promises.

Oh, now you've done it... just you watch, a year from now that'll be their next big merchandising innovation: Robotech toilet paper.

Huh... if this latest Robotech project really is a dub of Love Live Alive, then I can only assume it's some kind of homage to all the other horrible creative decisions they've made in the last 25 years. Kind of a late "25th Anniversary Screw-Up Spectacular". I can't imagine another terribad rewrite would go over very well in this day in age... Granted, the promo art that Tommy was so mad about having leaked via cell phone wouldn't make much sense if the film were Love Live Alive. All the same, when has Harmony Gold ever let good business sense get in the way of jerking fans around and making a quick buck off of their nostalgia-blinded fans? It's entirely possible that Tommy's promo pic was something he did years ago for Shadow Chronicles and never got around to showing. He certainly didn't put much effort into designing a logo for the 25th anniversary...

I'd love to know that myself... but Jasonc is a fairly well-connected guy, so I'd weight hearsay from him at a slightly higher level of reliability than I would anyone else who wasn't directly involved in the production. Yeah, HG did a big tribute to Carl on the convention tour right after he died... and it wouldn't surprise me at all if what you predicted comes to pass.

Hell, it should go without saying that you aren't going to get an honest answer about the health of the Robotech franchise from anyone on the Harmony Gold payroll... much less their head of marketing. The common business wisdom is that marketing is the use of fraud and deception to sell trash to idiots, and a marketeer who also has a history as a frothy-mouthed pro-Robotech fanatic is even less likely to tell it like it is. He'll never try to quantify Robotech's "success" because doing so would destroy the credibility of his claims that they're doing great. Even Tommy's been more upfront about the current situation with Robotech... at least he openly admitted that Shadow Rising was on hold while they waited for the LAM that might never get made to raise Robotech's value in the eyes of investors. It's McKeever's job to backpedal, to mince words, and to dissemble copiously. It's what they pay him for. Let's make no mistake, that "2011" project is the ONLY Robotech coming in the foreseeable future, and by all accounts it's going to be a bad joke.

There's no link to give, because it's one of those "facts" Robotech die-hards made up on the spot in an effort to defend Robotech's lack of forward motion. Rhade is the one who started running off at the mouth about it, and he flat-out refuses to produce the source he claims to have gotten the information from. If such a statement had been made, trust me, you would NOT need to ask around for the source... it'd be a huge news topic here.

Doubtful... at present, all Macross licensing in the US has to go thru Harmony Gold since they hold the trademark on the Macross name and logo in the states. I don't think they've ever come out and explicitly said "we don't like HG" from Big West though. Nah... by the look of things, HG is importing them independently for sale at a markup. What I've heard is that HG is basically shopping around for Macross goods that don't sell in Japan, buying 'em cheap, and selling 'em at full price on their site... at least with regard to the Revoltech line.

Eh, I made my thoughts pretty clear in that thread already... it kinda got hijacked by one nutty Robotech fan who thinks Robotech is a part of Macross and that Macross's creators approved of, and were involved in, the creation of Robotech up 'till a "falling out" around 1999-2000 when Harmony Gold started sending cease and desists to anyone importing Macross merch. The thread's OP doesn't seem to actually want to force Macross's creators to make Robotech an official part of Macross the way the thread hijacker (Emperor Ryu) does, he just wants Palladium to be able to make a couple RPGs based on the rest of Macross so he can have "official" (lit. PB-approved) stats to use mecha from Macross shows other than Macross II and SDF Macross (via RT). I guess he's not content with fanmade stats, since those are verboten on Palladium's forums. It doesn't really bear thinking about, let alone actually re-posting. Wow... just wow.

Oh, I've got a fair few pets... my family knows I'm good with animals, so whenever a family friend has a pet they can't take care of anymore for whatever reason, it invariably ends up under my care. Right now I'm looking after four turtles, a rabbit, and a cockatiel on a permanent basis, and I'm also temporarily looking after my family's dog while they're out of town... pics to follow. Here are my four turtles... I had to photograph them in groups of two because they're rather big, and they don't quite grasp the cliche that turtles are supposed to be slow and placid. They've gotten so big I don't have a tank big enough for them, so they live in a kiddie pool in my sun porch... they've gotten rather adept at escaping the pool lately. I've also caught them climbing (no joke, no exaggeration) a fully vertical brick wall. They've got into the bad habit of knocking the towel bin for the hot tub down and sleeping in the spilled towels. Michael (left) and "Baby" (the foot in the bottom left belongs to Duke) Mark (left) and Michael Duke (the troublemaker) Don't have any pictures of my cockatiel, Sullavin... mainly because he's a jerkass who's pushing the upper limits of a cockatiel's lifespan (he's going on 20, IIRC) and keeps mooning the camera. This is Whisper, the unholy terror foisted on me by my sister when one of her friends discovered their college dorm wouldn't let her keep a rabbit... I'm fairly certain it feeds on carrots, human suffering, and the insulation on HDMI cables. and lastly, the dog I'm looking after for today (and the only creature that consented to sit still long enough to be photographed), my family's dog Abagail, a female purebred Boxer.

No, the really amusing part is that it's close enough to the shoddy animation quality of Shadow Chronicles that it really COULD be mistaken for the genuine article!

Yeah, a tendency that surprises nobody... he always was jealous of the people who got to be well known and respected in the Robotech fandom. Even I noticed, and I don't think I've had more than a half-dozen one-on-one conversations with the guy. He always did resent the people other fans looked to as experts, and I don't doubt for a second that he would share concept art like that if he thought it would increase his standing in the community...

Yup... and as Zor Primus already said, we came to the same conclusion. Even putting aside the question of the animation's age, the knee-jerk story changes in Shadow Chronicles would make adding Love Live Alive to the story untenable. Even if this side story thing is an all-new project, I doubt the sane fans will be too kind to it unless it actually advances the setting or story in progress currently on hold. It's pretty much a given that they're not making this side story show for the hell of it, it's a deliberate smokescreen to distract people from the lack of progress with the Robotech live action movie and Shadow Rising.

Yup... according to Jasonc, the image(s) that MEMO is making such a fuss over were originally "leaked" by him in the first place: Yeah... we had a brief discussion about this supposed Robotech "side story" they're working on back when the news first came to light via Twitter and that grainy, off-angle cell phone snapshot of Tommy's promo art. There wasn't much to actually talk about except how horrible the art was and how ridiculous it was for Tommy to get bent out of shape over having a grainy photo of his top secret promo art show up online. There were a couple theories about what it would be, mostly revolving around it being a dub of the Mospeada wrap-up OVA entitled Mospeada: Love Live Alive. Nothing confirmed, of course, because Harmony Gold seems to be afraid having the fans (or their detractors) find out what it actually is will put people off of it... rather a likely outcome, given the usual quality of their work. I'm not sure if anyone here is actually going to translate Macross the Ride... Gubaba and sketchley have their own things goin' on, and I'm up to my eyeballs in Macross Chronicle still. Here's the MW topic about it though: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=34229

Easy... it's coming from the same source as everything else Rhade says... his ass. The guy is a massive phony who, like many vocal defenders of Robotech, is long on rhetoric and short on actual fact. He knows very little about Robotech and even less about Macross, but tries to appear well-informed by passing off his wild guesses as fact and parroting things he's heard from people who actually know what they're talking about. In fact, he once posted a warning about a six year old computer virus as though it were the next big threat and then tried to cover his ignorance by claiming it was so new that none of the major antivirus providers had posted anything about it, that he's gotten samples of the virus's source code via MSDN, and that he was a freelance data security engineer employed by Microsoft, McAfee, and Symantec simultaneously. (His real profession is a mid-level hotel manager) That should give you an idea of what kind of guy you're dealing with and the reliability of his information. Welcome aboard, Rich... long time no chat! Yup... the second Macross Frontier movie, Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye, is due out this coming February. There's also a Macross Frontier prequel called Macross the Ride that's coming out as a serialized novel, and a few manga titles besides... and that's just the stuff relevant to Macross Frontier. There's more beyond that, like Macross the First. Because it's an easy opportunity to vilify Macross fans, and Jasonc in particular... and to cover his ass because he's the one who originally gave out those images.

Yes, I know... everybody knows those idiots have less of an influence on Robotech than the coffee stirrers in the Harmony Gold employee break room. It's just that since Tommy seems strangely reluctant to address concerns about the franchise himself, he relies on that idiot brigade to do it for him... usually it works, but empty promises and placating remarks have been losing their effectiveness of late, which is a good barometer for measuring the mood of the fanbase. The "shallow internet games" are, amusingly enough, pretty much Harmony Gold's primary form of public/customer relations. They're catching flak from all sides these days, so they were probably quietly thankful for the distraction Jason provided.

Granted, that usually seems to be their position... though at this point, with even the more loyal fans growing increasingly disgruntled with the lack of forward motion on Shadow Rising and the live action movie and directly challenging the word of MEMO, Maverick, and even McKeever himself, I guess they're thankful for whatever good (distracting) press they can find... even if it does come from "the adversary". The more I see of what Shadow Chronicles might have been, the more I think that a policy of "no news is good news" could be taken more literally than the remark ought to be. For many of the old-timey Robotech fans, the lack of news basically means that Tommy won't be raping Carl's legacy any further in the foreseeable future. For the newer fans, it just means they're not going to have to suffer a Shadow Chronicles sequel anytime soon. In a way, no news is the best thing for Robotech right now. I am kind of amused how, on chatting with several old-timey Robotech fans the other day, they have a tendency to refer to Carl's series as Robotech and the franchise as it stands today as "Robotech" (with quotes)... guess their contempt for Tommy runs so deep that they'll disown the franchise as a whole before admitting that Tommy's done anything that improved its situation.

Yeah... it was 1st Border Red Devil, though it looks like he removed the images a while ago for some unexplained reason, I assume Palladium got on his case for posting them since they're on that "don't covert other people's stuff to our game system" kick.

Eh... I'll second that emotion, though to be entirely fair the specific thread you mentioned is actually in violation of the site's Rules & Guidelines. I really don't see the harm in it, but for whatever reason the "powers that be" consider "VS" threads to be a form of spam. That'd be why your topic got the lock. If you want to pick up that discussion over PM or instant messenger, I can think of several people who'd be more than happy to indulge you (myself included). I do agree that there has been some excessive moderation stifling discussion here and there, like in the Macross R thread, but your case ain't one of 'em I'm afraid.

In a word, "yes". Oh ho! Yeah, that would certainly explain why MEMO is so eager to point fingers, he wants to take advantage of the uproar to get in good with Tommy by vilifying Tom and making this out to be some kind of conspiracy to undermine Tommy's "new Robotech". Really... knowing that MEMO is doing this to cover his own (perceived) indiscretion makes everything fall into place. Barhopping with a guy like MEMO is kind of a horrifying prospect... especially after knowing how the guy behaves when he's sober. Who knows? I might be able to exert the ominous influence MEMO says I have over Harmony Gold's legal dept. to get them to fork over those papers. After all, according to him I have enough clout there to get them to send cease and desist notices to any Robotech fan project that displeases me. Oh, I'll grant you that Tommy's resume wasn't exactly remarkable when he was hired on by Harmony Gold, and that it's gotten progressively less remarkable since, but I do think there was one factor that made him stand out in the sea of nobodies whose minimal/nonexistent design talent, lackluster writing ability, and lack of originality made them eminently qualified to serve as Robotech's creative director... he actually wanted the job. He claims, on his HG staff bio, that Robotech is what inspired him to attend art school instead of entering UCLA's School of Engineering. Tommy was a fan, and that was probably his main motivation to apply for the creative director job. Knowing Robotech's history, I doubt it was a highly sought-after position... what with the previous creative director having presided over a string of embarrassing failures that further blackened the franchise's already-dire rep as a relic of the obsolete rewrite process.

Granted, we know that Harmony Gold's main sources of income are their film distribution business and the rental properties they own in California. If the rather anemic-looking catalog of licensed films on their official website is anything to go by, I doubt their other licensed titles are earning enough to keep the doors open. It's a safe bet their hideously overpriced rental properties are what's paying the bills. Oh, it's not that hard to understand. You see, real estate is an unreliable industry with more ups and down than the knickers of an indecisive whore, so it certainly wouldn't hurt to have an extra source of income that you don't have to put in much work to maintain. Robotech is that low-effort, moderate-return source of income for them, as they peddle it to regional distributors in countries progressively further down the human development index. It's a small source of income, but one that requires almost no actual work on their part. All the dubbing work falls on the regional distributor, and the official Robotech merchandise is low-quality crap produced as cheaply as possible and then sold as "limited edition" goods at a substantial markup by a cheap fulfillment house. They might not be making a lot of money doing that, but they're definitely bringing something in by cutting all those corners. If they're telling the truth (and that is a BIG "if"), then Shadow Chronicles turned a profit all on its lonesome... they didn't need the money from Maguire to make up for shortfall. This, of course, is much less of an impressive feat when you realize the movie was made on a budget confirmed by Tommy himself to be under US $1 million. Again, it's a lot of profit for not a lot of work, since they made the movie on a shoestring budget and priced it like a competently-made movie. They're makin' money on Robotech... it's just that they're doing it by cutting corners and peddling garbage to their fanatic fanbase at obscene prices.